I am convinced that there is no place on earth more beautiful in Autumn than Portland. And the season lasts so long here that the leaves change slowly. You can watch the leaves change over the weeks/months, the edges get red but the center is still bright green, sometimes there's bits of yellow and orange too, all in one leaf. If you walk a couple of blocks from our house, still on the road we live on, the trees actually meet over the top of the road like a roof. These particular trees have leaves that turn pink in the fall and it's like a tunnel with a roof made out of flower petals.
(one of these days I'll actually get a good picture of the trees on Teal Blvd that isn't taken from my moving vehicle, but for now this blurry photo will have to illustrate my point. This is it, but, like, 50x prettier in real life.)
Work is going well for both of us. John is very happy in this new job, as we knew he would be. It is so nice to see him happy again in his job. Going back to what he loves, people management, was the right decision, without question. For me, cutting my hours has made all the difference. I'm not sure it's so much about working less hours as much as it's allowing me to think of this job as just a part time gig to supplement my husband's (our main) income and I don't feel that pressure to try to turn this job I hate so much into something vaguely resembling a career. I left my career, on purpose, four years ago, and I have no desire to build a new one at this time. My kids/family are my focus right now and this part time job helps us pay our bills AND have me home by lunchtime. Pretty close to ideal in my opinion.
John and I are continuing our twice a week, middle of the night dates and it continues to work beautifully. Admittedly, at 1:00 in the morning, the last thing I want to do is climb out of my warm bed, but once I have a cup of coffee, it really is wonderful to snuggle on the couch and spend some quality time with the husband I love so much.
We had a great Halloween with the boys, they both got into it so much. Alex wanted to be a Pumpkin Witch and Max, always wanting to do what brother does, insisted on being a pumpkin too. We went to Halloween carnivals and parties and parades, we toured a pumpkin patch and carved jack o lanterns and finally trick or treating.
Alex started a new preschool the first of November, he goes twice a week for 4 hours and he LOVES it! When I pick him up after school he says "My day was FANTASTIC!" Max is understandably sad that he can't go, not that he hasn't tried to sneak in anyway. We may send Max to this same preschool as early as next fall.
We're trying to eat healthier, following the basic plan of The Primal Blueprint, which is essentially eating a low carb diet focusing on natural and/or organic foods. Admittedly we got derailed over Halloween, having two full buckets of trick or treat candy, many pieces of which John and I had no choice but to consume ourselves since they contained peanuts, and we wouldn't want to just THROW THEM AWAY or anything... ha. But I really do feel a noticable difference between eating grains/sugar and not. Though I might not be perfect on this diet, overall we are eating better, healthier foods and I'm sure the longer we eat like this, the more normal it will become, eventually becoming our regular way of eating without having to think about it.
We're trying to exercise more too, but this one is tough. We literally have NO time away from the kids. John has started walking from his offsite parking lot to his office instead of taking the shuttle and I walk around the business park on my lunch breaks. If we both happen to be home, I take the dog for a walk (though it's hard to call it excersise when she has to stop to take a huge dump every 10 feet or so). Now that it's going to start getting colder, I'm hoping we can both carve out some time to use our apartment complex's gym. It's open 24 hours, so we should be able to, but we're already short on sleep and trudging up to the clubhouse in the middle of the night (him after work and me before work, for either of us would be between the hours of midnight and 3am) isn't as appealing as an extra half hour of sleep in our cozy warm bed.
We've experienced the first thing we don't like about Oregon over Utah. Fleas. Yes, FLEAS! Fancy apparently picked up an infestation on her ass about a week ago and I knew immediately what it was, I'd known this would happen sooner or later but I was in denial and let her chew at her butt for a few days before I decided to accept what was happening and give her a bath. There were several flea casualties found in the tub after her scrub down and so, naturally I freaked the hell right out and may have sent a few panicked emails and high pitched screamy "FLEAS! WE HAVE FLEAS! UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN!" voicemails to John who was at work at the time. Having lived in Utah my entire life, I hadn't the slightest idea what to do about it, Utah's too cold for fleas. Turns out, since our flea problem seemed confined to our dog's ass, it was pretty easy to take care of. Fancy got a flea treatment and I cleaned the entire apartment top to bottom to get rid of any eggs/larve that may have taken up residence in our carpet/bedding/stuffed animals. As of now, Fancy hasn't had any itchies and no one has been bitten and no more fleas have been spotted. The fleas didn't seem to take notice of Kitty/Maxine at all because she hasn't had so much as an itchy spot. Even though it was a fairly easy thing to take care of, I still have the willies about it. I feel itchy all over just THINKING about fleas! YUCK!
Blood sucking insects aside, all is well in these parts and I feel almost too happy to be allowed. I am nothing but hopeful about our future because our present is going so well. I'm looking forward to the holidays this year, we may be joining some friends for Thanksgiving dinner and we plan to get a Christmas tree this year. We got rid of all of our holiday decorations in the move, so the boys and I will be making ornaments and stuff the next few weeks. I'm actually really excited about it, which is a stark contrast to my usual scroogy attitude during the winter holidays. And to add to the general positive feelings, one thing I've been stressing out about for a YEAR, health insurance, is going to be taken care of in 3 weeks when John and I will finally be covered through his company's benefits (the boys are already covered under OHP and will be until next Spring when we'll add them to our plan).
Yes, life is good.
