Girl Gots Needs

Been a rough week friends.  Sometimes I don't know what I need, but others do, without any prompting. So I went from verge of meltdown to full sense of gratitude.

1.)  I needed to see this picture, and laugh out loud at my desk like a crazy person. C'mon....that face.

2.)  Sometimes I forget:

(from PB)

3.) A phone call with the BFF.

Simple needs folks, don't need much.

Baby Sitting

Literally, he's sitting!
Good job Baby A!
xo,
Auntie

ps. cutest picture of a baby ever.

I do love me a list

• I really want Hunter Rainboots, preferably red, but would settle for grey. If I had to. 
• I definitely wore one contact backwards for 6 hours today.
• The Big Bang Theory is back and life has purpose again.
• One of our grantees passed away last Friday. Monday he received the Nobel prize. I’m sure there is a lesson to learn in there somewhere but all I can think about is the Alanis Morriset song, Ironic.
• I've started dating. Its not bad. In fact I'm quite enjoying it. Its like shopping for men.
• Can we agree that fro-yo should be hyphenated?
• I own exactly 2 movies: Almost Famous & The Thomas Crowne Affair. Both of which I could watch endlessly. And I have because I have no cable or internet.
• I was asked to sit on a panel with Melinda and 3 others and represent the Global Health team. I am not freaking out. (I am totally freaking out). Given the number of times I've said in appropriate things at in appropriate times, the likelihood for this to be a disaster is pretty high. I should start job hunting now.
• In other exciting news we made a grant for $14M that only took a year and a half to make.  
• I called my aunt after a really exhausting week in a desperate need for a pep talk. After explianing how overwhelmed I am and I just can't keep up with it some days, she says, "Did you tell them to f*ck off and die?" Nope hadn't tried that one. But I'm going to keep that one stored upstairs for dire situations.

That's all.  Carry on.

Baby A Meets Seattle

Sister, BiL, and Baby A are finally back in the US for good. Making a 3-week pitstop in Seattle, we had some good times together before they departed for Phoenix where they will be stations for the next undetermined amount of time.


While he was here he fell asleep in my arms, puked all over me and stopped crying when I sang Baby Beluga. It was just like old times.


Gramma and G-pop got to meet him for the first time which was adorables. Aidan seemed unimpressed with dad's furry face and generally large stature which meant they bonded quickly. Aidan laughs at mom when she makes weird sounds and faces, but let's be honest, we all do.

I hope to see them soon. Until then, just soak up this bit of cuteness:

Inevitable True Story

Well, I turned 29. Inevitable true story. The world didn't come to an end. In fact, it kept moving, just as it had the day before, and the day before that. Additionally, as my birthday came and went I was either too busy to have a meltdown or I had officially come to terms with the day. I think it was a combination of the both.

I celebrated my birthday with my family a few days prior, where in true indication of reaching adulthood, I received household appliances as gifts and was perfectly happy. From my parents I got a vacuum, and boy does that machine suck. Literally. And from my sister, I got a toaster which has been instrumental in re-implementing my toast-for-dinner habit. See not that much of a grown up yet.

Birthday with the family was very nice. We did lunch and cake. There was even 29 candles at which point, while hovered in the hallway, I hear my dad command my sister, "Hurry up, my arm is getting fried here." It didn't make me feel old at all. When sister and dad brought out the cake, a blaze, they sang a little diddy, I made a wish. I felt really good about being 29.

The night of my birthday I got together with some of my best girlfriends, walked greenlake and ate froyo. It was mellow, it was relaxed, it was just perfect. I met up with another girlfriend later who I hadn't seen in months and she kept me company while I packed for Thailand. That's right, frigging Thailand. More on this later.

As promised I started a list of 30 things to do before I'm 30. I got to 17. What?! I've been busy. Maybe I'll add to it, but not in a cheating way, i.e. do things and then cross it off.

1. Pay off debts (car, student loan)
2. Handwrite a letter every month, send me your addresses!
3. Buy 5 strangers flowers
4. Buy 5 friends flowers
5. Make new friends…plural
6. One word: electrolysis
7. Try one new recipe a week, doesn’t have to be hard or good, just have to try.
8. Maybe it's time to run a marathon
9. Learn to drive a manual transmission
10. Write down 3 things I’m grateful for, everyday
11. Leave Continent
12. Read one book a month
13. Meditate
14. Craft the shit out of something. (this is intentionally vague to keep it open-ended)
15. Floss everday. I’m 80% there.
16. Make bed everyday and don’t sleep with anything on it.
17. Lose 30 lbs.

What else you got for me? The 29 year old me is ready. 30, you can just hold on.

Next Stop

I may or may not have mentioned I'm going to Thailand for work next week.  I will be spending the first day of my 29th year in business class headed for Bangkok.  Didn't see that coming did you?  Me neither.

Here's a few things I'm excited about:

1.) While reading a travel book about the shopping in Bangkok, I stumbled across this sentence, "…you can uncover some clothing gems, whether you’re after a Hawaiian shirt, cookie monster slippers or knee high silver boots with tassels." This means I'm going to need all of you to send me shoe sizes...for no particular reason.

2.) The food is suppose to be spectacular. While my guts tradionally don't fair well in foreign lands, I'm willing to risk it for the sake of anything delicious.

3.) I'll be attending the AIDS 2011 Vaccine Conference where new research will be made public. I'll be learning whole bunches of stuff, hanging out with the princess (for realsies), chillin' with scientists and taking social queues of when to nod appropriately in agreement because let's be honest, I have absolutely no idea what they are saying 95% of the time. I'm really hoping they have a HIV Vaccine 101...ya know, for dummies like me. 

4. ) I'm staying here. (!!!!!!!)

5.) Two words: Thai massage.

It's monsoon season this time of year and a refreshing 90 degrees so if I'm not dying of heat stroke or exhaustion, I'll keep checking in.

Countdown: 6 days to the 2-9

If you need birthday gift ideas, I've got a few:

These prints available here:

I've been eyeing this watch since March. MARCH, people. I even tried it on, admired it, borderline covet even. Almost justified purchasing it, but didn't. I just can't stop thinking about it.  I've been interested in men I've dated less than this watch. But, at $250 it makes me cringe....c'mon, there's a famine in Somalia for heaven's sake...not euphemistically either. 

Also, I accept hugs and high-fives.

Do you need a smile? Here, I got 4

Current State of Affairs - (written) two weeks ago

I’ve been having some pretty solid pity parties recently. Like real solids. Like blanket on my floor with an empty bag of Milano cookies, watching SATC 2, eating pizza. I wouldn’t have to sit on the floor if the sofa I bought fit through my door but that didn’t happen how I had planned it. Last weekend I built several pieces of furniture that resulted in a smashed knuckle, a burnt knuckle, a totally wicked blood blister and bruised knees. Once thinking myself handy I’m beginning to re-evaluate the validity of that attribute. I’m blaming the increased pity parties to my nearing birthday which I’m getting less excited about. More pity parties about my single state of affairs. More pity parties about not being where I am in my life where I thought I would be. I wish I was kidding about this whole paragraph.



Just this last week, I had a monster sized zit on my chin. You know the blistering kind that just pitch a tent on your face waiting for you to exhaust all will power not to pick at it. You know, those kinds…I had one.


So embarrassed by it I stayed in Friday night, (which isn’t unusual for the introvert me but admittedly I did turn down plans with strangers so as not to be seen in my current state) and watched a movie with myself, shielding the public from the horror that was Mt. Vesuvius on my face.


However, at work we work hard to combat the ills and evils of the world. Ills and Evils I don’t know. Bill Foege, a fellow at the foundation and a gentleman instrumental in the eradication of small pox, recently gave a commencement speech to the Cal Berkley School of Public Health that I found absolutely inspiring. In it he talks about a society that doesn’t know the dangers and ills of the world that not too long ago was plagued polio, MMR, pertussis, Hep B, TB, and a host of other diseases, mostly prevented by vaccines and improved global health standards. We are further removed from that reality, which is a major accomplishment in the history of global health and mankind. However, this distance created has also made it difficult to connect to the issues where those preventable yet deadly diseases are very much a present day reality for those without access to vaccines, those still entrenched in poverty, lacking access to clean drinking water and a place to take a shit. Their reality is so much further from the world that we know in the bubbled first world.


So as I sit in my cozy, woefully under-furnished one bedroom apartment, unmarried, gainfully employed, with health insurance and my physical, mental and emotional health (that last one is questionable sometimes), tap water, clothes, a fridge of food (sort of), clean clothes from an electronically operated washer and drier. I am grateful for all the things I don’t have. Maybe I get a giant zit on my face every once and awhile, have a few extra pounds with a death grip on my ass and thighs and a sink full of dishes I’m too tired to do; but I don’t have a chronic disease; I don’t live within the bounds of poverty; I don’t worry about where my next meal will come from; I don’t suffer…at all really.


So I’ve been thinking a lot about what I don’t have in my life and have found myself very grateful.


For my friends who fed me tonight and sent me home with leftovers and truffles. For a faith and belief in goodness, service, forgiveness and agency. For sunny days, although few. For laughter, oh man I love to laugh. For popsicles, ceiling fans, and a sunroof. For access to health care, the interwebs, and freeways. For farmers markets and farmers. To be born in this time, space, longitude and latitude.

In this context of what I do/don’t have, I’ve decided to let go of the idea of where I thought I would be at this point. Its wasteful of time and energy to think of things that might have been or what you thought would be. In that vein, for those trying to let go of something, maybe now is the time.  If I can, you most certainly can.

Trifectas of Goodness - Summer Style

I can feel summer winding down which I use the word "summer" in the loosest sense of the word.  I'm not even sure we hit 90 degrees this year.  In fact Im pretty sure you could count the number of days that hit 80 on one hand.  And while summer was short lived around here, I've been having a real good time. Here are a few highlights, in trifecta form.

1. ) Farmers markets in full force: You could probably go to a different outdoor farmers market in Seattle every night of the week. I do serious damage here.  How could you not?

2.) Home away from home: I headed up to the Sunshine Coast the Keats Island one weekend.  It happened to be the weekend that just a year before I'd celebrated ending my retirement and entering the work force again by diving into the shallow end of the ocean.  As always, Uncle O made his famous best from scratch waffles (everyone says they havee the best waffle recipe but this one actually is the best). We went crabbing to catch starfish, and spent the summer night with food, friends and family.  It really is heaven on earth.

3.) Seattle Art and Sea Fair: I'm lucky enough to count a co-worker as a friend.  A friend who lives on Lake Washington with a viewing deck (maybe she has 2 viewing decks).  I snuck out of the office early to "work from home" and "worked" while the Blue Angels practiced.  We did actually work...as far as you know. And if it were any secret, its little treasures like the rusty art installation of washington, makes me love Seattle more and more (I'm not even sure that's possible).

4.) THEY GOTS MARRIED! The bride was beautiful. He got one of the good ones.  LL-B added her own personal touch with the cake topper and bouqet, both of which I envied. I even put a dress on for the occasion which we all know how rare that is. Best wishes to the happy couple.

5.) At the tracks:  My boss invited me to attend the Emerald Downs Primera Esperanza, and event organized by his wife to honor the hispanic community and the contributions they make to the horse racing.  Having never been to the race tracks, I jumped at the opportunity for the pure experience of it and boy what a hoot it was.  I put $2 down on a horse to take first at the advice of my boss and won!  $1.40!  Of which I promptly invested in an ice cream cone on the way home.  Best investment ever.    

6.) Stace's Dirty Thirty - On Saturday night, neslted in one of Wallingford neighborhood backyard's, you could have see magic in action.  To celebrate her three decades of existance, Stace put on a private performance of her very own songs, which were just lovely.  The night carried on with treats and smores which, what more could you ask for on a summer night? Not much.

So, as you can see, summer has been good to me.