Fair Winds, Following Seas

We are all home from our California vacation. Even Remmy went with us! Clark and Remmy were gone for two weeks and I was gone for one. Lots more photos and stories to come but for now we need to rest from our big adventure. Congrats to Nick and Amy on their wedding! May they have many years of happiness together.

In the meantime enjoy these “welcome home” pictures of Remmy delighting in Clark’s arrival after a day at work:

There is a disturbance in the doggie force. Let me sniff the air and…

…I smell DADDY!

Oh my gosh…

Oh my gosh…

OH MY GOSH! I SEE YOU!!!

I AM SO GLAD YOU ARE HOME!

And now you know why Clark and I love coming home. We get the best welcomes from Remmy.

Spring has come to my house! It still rains and is overcast but that just makes it more glorious when the sun finally peaks through.

The cherry blossom tree outside my front door is also blooming. I’m so happy to see its big fluffy white flowers.

Our apple tree is also just starting to bloom. The flowers will be a delicate pink and it is so good to see the green leaves unfurling.

I just love our little house and all the trees and hedges around it. Welcome Spring!

Let’s be real now, my job is hard physical labor and doesn’t come with a lot of “perks.” But now that it is spring I have something to look forward to each day:

The arrival of baby horses! Check out this cutie, his mom was imported from Europe when she was eight months pregnant! They are VERY nice horses.

This next little guy was born in the wee hours before I came to work on Sunday. His mother had been sweet and docile while pregnant but once her baby was born, watch out! She was a very protective mama and you can even see in the picture that she is eyeing me and just waiting to shake her head at me if I came any closer. But that is her job, especially when her foal is just a newborn.

Look at that dorsal stripe down his back! That will be a unique feature as he grows up.

And I missed this little guy’s birth by only two hours! I’ve never seen a horse born and hope to sometime this spring. His mom is a pony and he was so tiny. Being such a newborn meant when I saw him he was stumbling around drunk and wide eyed in disbelief about the events of being born.

And later he rested. Just look at him sleeping.

These two little guys are also a perk at my job. They are Harold (with his back to the camera because I’m petting him) and Izzie. They have big characters packed into little tiny bodies and are always good for a laugh.

I’ve been missing my guys since last Wednesday. I am so glad we will be reunited today!

I was really apprehensive about spending so much time away from Clark and Remmy. I was trying to pretend that it would be fine but as the time for them to leave came closer I had to keep giving myself pep talks and positive mantras to repeat to myself. The last time Clark was gone for more than a night we were living in Virgina and life was rough. I was afraid all that sadness and loneliness would just come flooding back.

But although I missed them every day I was glad to see the affirmation that my life is different now. I was busy with lots of work, volunteering, I had a gym with friendly faces and warm hugs to attend and I also had the wise council and encouragement of my bible study girls. I feel so sorry for the Tovah that lived in Virgina, but it makes me appreciate the life and happiness I have now.  And today when I see my guys again I will be even happier.

Clark and I spent Easter this year at dance convention–an event we used to go to when we were in college. True to form we saw a lot of old friends, had fun competing and met new people too. However due to all the other things going on in our lives we don’t make it out dancing as often as we used to. We were so out of practice that we weren’t really expecting to do well in competition and it was really exciting when Clark made it as an alternate for finals. Both of us found the socializing to be the highlight of the event for us.

A miscommunication with Clark meant that he got video of me competing but no pictures but I took some pictures I thought were cool.

I love this one because they are both laughing. Dance pictures are hard to capture but I really like that you can see the joy that they are feeling.

Dancer friends from Seattle. I like the lighting and the subtle motion in this shot.

Dancer friends from Oregon. I like the composition of the dancer’s lines and the moment they are sharing.

No pictures of me dancing but here I am post-competition with my glitter tattoo! A girl at the convention does them and they last all weekend. They are hand drawn and I thought they were really neat.

And Clark, of course, had to get the best glitter tattoo at the convention. It’s based on Mike Tyson’s actual tattoo (see here) and it was so funny to watch people’s reactions to it. We walked around town to get dinner and people would do double takes and stare openly. We wondered if he would be able to scrub it off come Monday–since it would be WAY out of military regulation. We shouldn’t have worried though– it came off easily.

And with any dance weekend, beat up feet after a long night of dancing. It’s a sign of a good time.

Last time we left off I had a long list of random acts of kindness to do this month in celebration of turning 30 on the 30th! I’m really enjoying doing this and, like I thought it would, it brings happiness to me in addition to the person who benefits from my random act of kindness. I’ve crossed out the ones I’ve done–looks like I have a lot of work left to do!

1. Pick up trash in my neighborhood (I bought the latex gloves so I can do this without getting icky stuff on me:)

2. Pay the toll bridge fee for the person behind me (This was so exciting. Clark and I watched through our rear view window and the guy eventually passed us and waved!)

That’s the truck that we paid for!

3. Pay the ferry fee for the person behind me

4. Leave quarters at a laundromat

5. Write a letter to a friend and send it snail mail

6. Make up bags of toiletries/snacks for the homeless

7. Leave handwritten notes in cards on park benches, cars and restaurant tables with encouraging messages. (Should do more of these.)

Post it note with a happy message left on a table for someone to discover

8. Load quarters into soft drink, gumball and game machines at a grocery store.

9. Do another house cleaning sweep and donate clothes, kitchen items and furniture to Goodwill.

10. Tape microwave popcorn bags to Redbox Movie machines.

11. Drop change around a playground for children to find. (This sounds intriguing to me, will it really be a hit?)

12. Purchase & donate coloring books and crayons to the waiting room at the hospital.

13. Purchase a couple of gift cards to a bookstore and leave them inside your favorite books for people to find.(My friend Tabi joined me on this one–she put a gift card and an encouraging message in a book about handicapped children and I put one in my favorite re-read–Pride and Prejudice and a card in a lighthearted book in the teen section that made me laugh out loud when I read it a few years ago.)

14. Open doors for others

15. Return shopping carts for people

16. Volunteer at the local humane society (Okay, wait, I do this every week anyway but I’m going to go on a different day for a shift that is shorthanded.

17, 18, 19, 20, 21. Look for ways to brighten the days of the ladies in my bible study. This won’t be random in that I know these ladies but it will be an extra effort that I normally wouldn’t go to.

22. Give a stranger a compliment

23. Leave a positive comment on a blog (I need some easy ones, it is already April 5th!)

24. Let someone in line go ahead of you

25. Bring some candy to the dance event this weekend to share with tablemates and strangers as a quick little sugar rush “Pick me up.”

26. Oh man…what else? You know what, I’m going to leave some of these open so that I will be looking for opportunities to help others. But if you have any suggestions let me know.

I was also so excited when my friend Liz said that she had done a random act of kindness for me as my birthday “gift.” She helped an elderly lady that she met through her church run errands. It was something I wouldn’t have thought of and it made me so happy to know that she had spread the love. Thanks Liz!

Sometimes I wonder what Remmy is thinking. Like say, at ten at night when I’m standing at the back door and shivering in the cold and calling him to come in from his late night bathroom break. More often than not he is standing there in the middle of the yard and sniffing the air. In fact, you would be surprised at how often he gets in trouble for not coming so that he can sniff the air. We must have some good air here in Bremerton to warrant such disobedience on the regular. I didn’t really realize that he does it all the time (it’s only an annoyance at night) and recently I captured him doing it a lot. I still wonder what he’s thinking…

“I knew it! That commie squirrel is peeing in my yard! ARGH!”

“Ahhhh, I can smell the rain clouds coming. More rain for Bremerton. What a surprise.”

“The neighbors are having a BBQ. Dang. Why don’t they ever invite me? I’m a good dog, housebroken and everything!”

“Somewhere, someplace, in this neighborhood, there is a bush I haven’t peed on. I need to get on that!”

“Whew! All that sniffing is hard work. Time to just relax in the yard.”

Okay, I’m falling behind seeing as how it is already April 5th (oh my gosh how is it April 5th already?) and I haven’t done any of my 30 random acts of kindness. As I mentioned here for my 30 birthday this month I wanted to do thirty random acts of kindness. I’m also asking that instead of gifts people do a random act of kindness for me. I’d love to hear about the things you do–especially as I think I’ll be needing some ideas!

Oh and I got the idea from this post (which was so popular it became this website) and lest you think I am a saint, I do expect Clark to get me a birthday present even though I really am serious about other friends and family doing a random act of kindness. (Sorry Mom, that you had already ordered me a gift off of amazon. I know I will love it:)

So let’s get down to business and see if I can do 30 things–and some of these ideas (most) I’m getting from the website above:

1. Pick up trash in my neighborhood

2. Pay the toll bridge fee for the person behind me

3. Pay the ferry fee for the person behind me

4. Leave quarters at a laundromat

5. Write a letter to a friend and send it snail mail

6. Make up bags of toiletries/snacks for the homeless

7. Leave handwritten notes in cards on park benches, cars and restaurant tables with encouraging messages.

8. Load quarters into soft drink, gumball and game machines at a grocery store.

9. Do another house cleaning sweep and donate clothes, kitchen items and furniture to Goodwill.

10. Tape microwave popcorn bags to Redbox Movie machines.

11. Drop change around a playground for children to find. (This sounds intriguing to me, will it really be a hit?)

12. Purchase & donate coloring books and crayons to the waiting room at the hospital.

13. Purchase a couple of gift cards to a bookstore and leave them inside your favorite books for people to find.

14. Open doors for others

15. Return shopping carts for people

16. Volunteer at the local humane society (Okay, wait, I do this every week anyway but I’m going to go on a different day for a shift that is shorthanded.

17, 18, 19, 20, 21. Look for ways to brighten the days of the ladies in my bible study. This won’t be random in that I know these ladies but it will be an extra effort that I normally wouldn’t go to.

22. Give a stranger a compliment

23. Leave a positive comment on a blog (I need some easy ones, it is already April 5th!)

24. Let someone in line go ahead of you

25. Bring some candy to the dance event this weekend to share with tablemates and strangers as a quick little sugar rush “Pick me up.”

26. Oh man…what else? You know what, I’m going to leave some of these open so that I will be looking for opportunities to help others. But if you have any suggestions let me know.