Gratitude – Time Passing

Generally I’m not a great fan of time passing. My kid is getting older, I’m getting older, there aren’t enough hours in the day or the week or the month or year. Time passes more and more quickly as you get older, it has something to do with dopamine, I read it in a magazine once, before the internet was a big thing.

However, today my gratitude is for the quick passing of time because I’m in week 8 of 10 at the college I teach at. This is the week where I think: 1. well, let’s just get in there and rub some elbow grease around. And I have a pretty good attitude about everything because we are here and we have to get there, and we’ve got the tools we’ve got. 2. I know what I will do differently and it’ll be so fresh in my head (I hope) that I will remember to catch things before they get out of hand. 3. I’m happy that there’s a break coming and I can get my syllabus and ruberics and all that stuff dialed in before the term starts.

So, here’s to time passing fast… as long as it slows down immediately after I turn in that last grade on or before December 17th. Please pray for me that it’s before!

Oh no wait, apparently it has more to do with degradation of neural pathways! Yay for degradation!

Gratitude – Rock

Wow, haven’t had time to do my daily gratitudes. But this one’s a big one.

Gratitude for Rock N Roll Camp for Girls and the adult camp: Liberation Rock Camp. I attended for the second time this weekend and the whole weekend blew my mind. You cannot find a more supportive, kick-ass group of womxn anywhere in the whole universe. I needed it. Here’s our song:

Gratitude – Depression

I’ve noticed my depression and fatigue coming back as well as some TMJ. And things are hard. So gratitude is in order

I am so very grateful for my husband to hear me say in a very clinical way “I am exhibiting signs of depression, and this frustrates me.” and for him to just listen, and not say “you should… you should… you should.” And to hug me a lot and to say he’ll sleep on the couch so I can get better rest. And I’m grateful for my dog Maggie who knew I should put down my code book, stop trying so hard, and just pet her until I fell asleep.

That’s about all the energy I have for today’s post.

Gratitude – Love

It’s after midnight! So that means I get to post my gratitude for tomorrow (today) and I’m grateful for that!

I’m grateful that my friend sent me a text message response to an “I’m on my way” and she said “Thank you! I love you!” and that made me giggle out loud and kind of blush, and feel all happy about friendship when you think someone is great and you can finally make time to spend more time with them even though you’re an adult and sometimes that’s so hard.

I’m grateful for grading! I love grading! I love looking back through a student’s brief few weeks with me and see their progress and see that I’ve gotten to know each one of them in a “we’ve been through a fairly big project together” kind of way.

I’m grateful that I have a job that even though I have to work on a friday night til very late, trying desperately to get caught up, that the work I’m doing makes me really excited and proud.

I love sleep, and it’s 12:22 so I am going to enjoy some right now.

Gratitude – Asshole

Hey, what if I posted about gratitude in November every day? Let’s try it out.

I am incredibly grateful that my husband actually heard me this year tell him that every holiday season he turns into an asshole. I say if every year, very matter of factly, because it’s been true, I’ve learned to expect it, but nothing has ever changed in many years to stop him from being an asshole, so it’s more like a gentle, hey, I recognize you turn into an asshole this time every year and I wish you’d try to change that. I never expect him to. But this year, he did! Hopefully for the best for everyone involved. I hope he has a happier holiday this year. I’m grateful at the idea that might be true.

I’m grateful that my husband got off work early to come home and help with Halloween festivities. He didn’t go trick or treating, but he loves giving out candy. So he stayed home and I went out looking for our kid, talked to neighbors, and walked the dogs around.

I’m grateful that I’ve stepped down from one of my positions at my job. Today is the last day. I was spread too thin and it was the most troublesome position out of the three/four that I have there. So hurray for a little more focus on the things I love about my job!

I’m grateful that my kid is old enough to start trick or treating a little more independently and that she is so confident.

I’m grateful that about a month ago, I was an asshole and I recognized it. I was an asshole because I made assumptions about a person that were wrong and I said things that I though were self deprecating, that we were somehow both being self deprecating together. But there’s no such thing as co-deprecating, it’s just called being a dick. I’m grateful that I know that and will hopefully not ever do it again. I’m so devastated that I negatively affected this person.

I’m grateful that several months ago I made other assumptions about a friend and after months of heartache, because I’d broken things beyond repair, that I remembered, oh, I’m an adult and I can occasionally screw up, and maybe it doesn’t mean things have to be broken forever. So I held out an olive branch a week ago. And I don’t know what’ll happen from it, but I’m thankful that I was brave enough to swallow by pride and try. And that I can say “I fucked up and I’m sorry.”

I’m thankful for friends.

Random Fall Thoughts

I’ve recently discovered that wheat doesn’t hurt me anymore. It’s been 7 years of almost no wheat. I can’t stop. There are so many things to eat. Everywhere I go, there is something that I’ve missed, and I can just…. eat it. Today I ate a donut. It was SOOOOOO GOOOOODDDDDDDD.

I did hot yoga today. I got tricked into it. I did really well and that surprised me. I thought my arms wouldn’t like yoga, I didn’t have to modify too much and I felt good afterwards. So, who knows, maybe I’ll do that yoga now?

Last night I took my very first ice skating lesson of my life, which sounds like I can’t skate, but I totally can. I’ve been waiting for J to get to a level where I thought it would be good to join. Plus I get to skate for free all the time during the 7 weeks of my class. AND I get three free passes. Want to go ice skating? I really want to show off my skillz to you. I love ice skating.

I don’t miss social media. Or I should probably say, I’m surprised at how little I miss it. Because I do miss a few things. I miss seeing the faces of people I love who are far away. But I really like focusing on my here and now. I wish there was more time for reading. I bet there will be between PSU terms. And that will feel soooo goood.

I’ve missed you and I’m glad that we are on sort of speaking terms, but I don’t know how to start speaking to you again so I’m just waiting until I do. And I’m kind of excited and nervous at the idea that I don’t know what our new chapter might look like. Maybe there’s too much damage done. Maybe our book is finished. Time till tell. I’m mostly relieved that I don’t have to imagine the rest of my life with you totally out of it. Because the thought of that sounded terrible.

Next weekend is Rock N Roll LRC. Liberation rock camp and I’m gonna rock so hard. In the application it asked if I had any dietary needs and I said “Just a steady need to ROCK!”

I’m busy. I’m happy. I’m not that healthy but not that unhealthy. Alcohol is fun. So is all the wheat. I love my kid and my husband a bunch. My dogs are both totally awesome and totally annoying. The end.

Big Lake, August 2019

This week we took a last minute trip to Big Lake, to hang out with good friends. It was a short trip, Sunday through Tuesday, but we lucked out with weather. I’d never been to Big Lake before. It was amazing! Next time I’ll bring our kayaks. Big Lake is between Detroit Lake and Bend, in Southern Oregon.

This was Brandy’s first trip! Brandy is a 1975 Bradywine trailer. She’s sweet as apple pie.

We made some friends on the trip. We had the nerf guns and lazer tag, and they had the kayaks. It worked out pretty well for both sides.

  • Jordan
  • Lucas
  • Maggie Sue
  • Brandy

WordPress custom post type template not rendering

I’m working on a site for a client and ran into an issue with getting the permalink to render the template I’d created. So I search the web and found this gem: When you’re messing with custom post types and change something structural like the slug, you may need to paste <?php flush_rewrite_rules(); ?> into the body of a template file. I added it to my header.php file in order to well… flush things out. Remember to REMOVE IT IMMEDIATELY after. It’s expensive.

Thank you WordPress Stack Exchange Community!

Sou’Wester March 2019

J and I went to Sou’wester Lodge for Spring break. We spend a fair amount of time at Cape Disappointment. Waikiki beach in Cape Disappointment may be my new favorite place. We made new friends, got in fights with old friends (that part sucked), got rained on, sunned on, and sanded on. The dog only puked once and the kid never puked (amazing!). There was bike riding, scootering, and lots of walking. A tiny amount of art was made. Some writing happened. It was an awesome trip and I’m even more in love with the Sou’Wester now. Pics!

  • Astoria Oregon
  • Cape Disappointment

GitHub Forking and Pull Requests

How to Fork a GitHub Repository, clone it, branch it, make edits, and do a Pull Request

Hurray! I finally started recording short tutorials on useful web development things. I’m tired of listening to men’s voices in tutorials all the time. It’s time for some women’s voices.

I’ll start adding short videos to my playlist on a semi regular basis.

Laura Wheeler Waring

Portrait of Anne Washington Derry
https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/anna-washington-derry-26718

More About Laura Wheeler Waring

Born in 1887 in Hartford Connecticut, Laura Wheeler Waring was a teacher and artist. She taught art and music at Cheyney University  for more than 30 years. She was a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. She’s most known for her portraits and many of them are part of the permanent collection at the National Portrait Gallery.

Portrait of Marian Anderson

https://npg.si.edu/blog/church-choir-civil-rights-marian-anderson%E2%80%99s-path-hope
Alice Dunbar-Nelson portrait by Laura Wheeler Waring
Alice Dunbar-Nelson 1927 by Laura Wheeler Waring