Windy in Portland!

Two nights ago I picked Bridgette up from OSU. What is normally a 1 1/2 hour drive took three hours, due to the wind storm that caused power outages and damage. This picture below was/is a tree in my friend’s yard. On her way home from work she got a call from her son, “Mom, you know the tree that was half dead? Well, it fell down and took a power line with it.”  The small tree that fell in our yard during the last storm  (to the tune of a $300 removal) is small in comparison to my friend’s tree!  It’s been a windy few weeks in the Portland area. You may remember the tree that came out of the ground at the house I’m managing.

I’m so happy to have Bridgette home.  She’s not far away, so her return isn’t the same desperate feeling of getting her in my arms as some of my friends’ daughters.  Admittedly, I’m happy not to contend with that issue at this point in my life.  Plus, texting, FaceTime, and social media keep us up on each others’ lives. But given all those modern advantages, there’s no comparison to spending real time with each other.

The kids and my relationship hasn’t been easy.  I don’t think it’s ever easy raising children, even in the best of circumstances. So, given that, I believe that it’s doubly hard when the circumstances are complicated and when life gets hard.  The three of us have given much effort navigating our way through disappointments, misunderstandings, expectations, hopes, and just plain human shortcomings in how we treat one another.

We’ve had a lot of victories. As I anticipate the upcoming Christmas holiday with Bridgette home, I’m hoping one victory we can enjoy is the simple presence of each other’s company, minus so much energy and effort toward understanding each other. We’ve been at this for awhile now; I’m ready to enjoy the rewards of our efforts.

I worked four days at three different schools this week. I took Friday off, primarily because I had an interview (which I’ll talk about later), but I also needed to catch up on the pile on my desk, check in at the rental property, and other things that can’t be done when I’m at a school.

Things are coming together more and more at our new home.  I found a very reasonable handyman who installed an attic ladder, eliminating the need for us to hall the one million foot ladder from the outside to the inside back to the outside each time I want to store or remove something from the attic.

Then, there’s the fun thing I had done. I had a metal wall created!  Our refrigerator is non magnetic, so what do I do with all those coupons, fliers, announcements, the Boy Scouts Tree Removal envelope, the mini pictures that come in Christmas cards, quotes that inspire me?

BEFORE & AFTER

It’s like a 7′ tall bulletin board that serves functionally, as well as looks great.  And, it allows me to remove the nice (but too small) bulletin board on the wall across from it, so I can now install a coat rack type thing, that we need for coming in and out of the garage. No mud room in this house, so improvisions are needed.  Because my friend’s husband came over a couple of weeks ago and helped me, I’m going to try to tackle installing the coat rack based on his tutorial he gave me that day. I don’t know that he knew he was giving me a tutorial.  It was more a “watch and learn” as I hovered over him.

I’ll come back to the interview another time. It was such a great experience.  I want to save that experience for its own blog.

Joni