Dispatches from the Goblin City

It's been two years since I regularishly updated this blog. Two whole years. Two years to finally decide what I'm going to do with this blog. You may not have noticed, but I haven't really had any direction here; no clue what I'm supposed to do. But now I have a plan, a direction, a purpose. I'm so excited about said purpose that I don't really feel like regaling you with what has been happening with me for the last two years. Just know that Stuff Happened and I came out the other end still alive. The dark details I'll give you are: my grandfather passed away in 2016, and my father died earlier this year. And the bright spots: my great-nephew was born in 2015, and my great-niece was born back in January of this year. Mental health has been a recurring theme in my life. Depression, anxiety, and suicidal tendencies run deep in my family. I have spent the majority of my life trying to make sense of it all because I've been depressed since I was twelve. ...

You may not know this, but I volunteer at my semi-local food pantry every week and I've been doing this for around a year now. I volunteer my time because I receive a food box every month and I firmly believe in paying it forward. I don't have money to donate to food pantries or excess food, what I have is time and that is just as important. Anyway, I started volunteering last summer and I didn't really think it would lead me on a journey of self discovery, but that is exactly where I am. Last October I was asked to participate in a Voices Focus Group where I was asked to speak about my experiences with my food pantry and my history with pantries and what concerns I had about the future and the like. I showed up and impressed the team with eloquence and wit and passion for pantries. Yeah, I didn't know I had a passion for food pantries until people from the Oregon Food Bank told me that we are in danger of budget cuts and donation cuts. Needless to say that lit ...

In a few hours I will officially be 30 years of age. Yikes. 30 sounds like such a significant number to me. And as you can probably guess, I'm not handling it very well. Don't get me wrong, I'm not having a meltdown or feeling the need to feel younger by surrounding myself with teenagers. I just don't know how to feel, really, about being 30. I've always looked at thirty-somethings as true adults; they're married, have kids, multiple cars, a mortgage and have traveled around. I know these are broad generalizations, but you have to understand that I have exactly none of those things. My life went down a decidedly different path from those generalizations I mentioned. Instead of settling down to start my own family I stayed at home and took care of my grandparents and my mother because they all started loosing their minds around the same time. It is very hard to maintain your own sanity when you are the only sane person in the house. And that wasn't just m...

As I said in one of my earlier blogs, I'm easily distracted by just about everything. And lately I've become obsessed with WWII documentaries. Seriously, I must have spent a good 6 hours in one day just watching doc after doc, desperately searching for my grandfather's tank. You see, I grew up on fairy tales and WWII stories (the former told to me by my mom and the latter from my grandpa) and I have been missing my grandfather quite fiercely. Don't worry, he's not dead. But he is lost to the deep throes of dementia and doesn't know who I am to him anymore, which has broken my heart in a way that I didn't know it could break. [Not going to cry!] He was a Sherman tank driver in the 740th "Daredevil" Tank Battalion under Gen. Patton.  And his tank was the first over the Rhine and his battalion captured the SS 1st Panzer division (or whatever they were called.) He stormed Utah beach on D-Day and paratrooped with the 82nd Airborne. But m...

The thing about Life is that it can be very distracting.  Or perhaps I'm just easy to distract.  Or both.  Yeah, I'm thinking both.  Trust me, I've been stuck with myself for ages, so I know. Right now I'm distracted by two small blond boys who are charming, cute and fabulous.  I'm a biased Godmother, it's true, but I'm not going to apologize.  They're very sweet and Henry was dancing to music by Poets of the Fall (I introduced the Denny House to that Finnish band today!) just now which makes me proud. :-P Over the past few days I've been working on blog updates in my head (that's as far as they got), but this actual update isn't flowing as well as I thought it would. But I can't really go into detail about what I'm working on because it is a SECRET. Now I have your attention, right? Haha! No, seriously, I'm not telling you. Nope, stop asking. And no pouting; it's very unbecoming! I know this isn't much of anything...

Yep, you read that correctly: we are done with pears for the year.  Huzzah and all that jazz.  And now we return to our regularly scheduled blog.... ha ha ha ha.  Nothing about this blog is scheduled! I'm trying to change that, really, I am.  But change comes slowly, unless someone is threatening to toss you off of a cliff, then change comes pretty damn fast.  And no, I'm not looking for volunteers to chuck me over a cliff! My mother has been in a wickedly bad mood for the past few days.  Oh fun.  She inherited that hot Irish temper from her father and I also have it.  Saturday she was itching for a fight and I ignored her...for awhile, then I obliged her with an argument.  I'm quite proud of my self-control.  I didn't lose it! My mother is a very turbulent creature, more so than me maybe, and for every angry day she has a morose day.  Boug and I couldn't say anything to her (we have to yell because her hearing aid isn't worki...

I originally started this blog to keep myself accountable to my writing on a daily basis.  So far, as far as I can tell, I have not managed that yet. Just as I get better with more updates and longer blog entries I fall off of the Writing Wagon because life happens. Everything that has happened since my last update I have blogged about in my head, and as soon as we can download stuff from our brains directly to our computers, I'll let you know all about it.  But for now, I can't really remember what I was going to tell you, dear Internet. I guess you'll just have to trust me when I say stuff happened.  Lots of interesting, fascinating, mildly exciting stuff.  But it has all left me because I didn't commit it to this blog in time.  I'm the self-appointed Queen of I'll Blog About That After My Nap!  Not even joking. Fear not, darling reader, for I do have a tale to share with you; a tale of appreciation.  It begins with me waiting for paperwork to ...