Extended Weekend

I'm getting two extended weekends in a row, and it feels good. I got last Friday off from work because of Cesar Chavez day, so I took the time to collect my brother for the weekend. He's for the most part disabled after his time spent in the army, so he's not up to much physical activity without a bit of pain involved. We ended up spending literally all of Sunday watching movies on Netflix: Upside Down, Zoolander, Kung Fu Panda 2, The Boondock Saints, Red Lights, and Hanna. All of which I have already seen before.

He literally spent all of Saturday watching Being Human (US version) until he ran out of episodes. I saw the UK version already, so I now know that the US and UK versions are terribly different and will consider watching the other, once I'm done with Grey's Anatomy (currently on season 7) and caught up on Mad Men.

As for next weekend, I've taken off Monday and Tuesday to extend my stay in Seattle with my besties from Dosimetry School. The last time we met up was this past September in Las Vegas where we went primarily to see City and Colour at the House of Blues. This rendezvous was chosen in Seattle at this date because we wanted to see Young the Giant, which I'm super excited for. We're going to meet up at the airport on Saturday. I'm hoping the rain will clear up for Monday when we intend to have at least some time outside without being soaked all the way through. You can count on me to let you know about my trip when I get back!

I Love You, Mom

It wasn't until I was an adult that I realized exactly how hard-working my mom was raising me and my brother by herself. My parents have been divorced since I was a toddler, so I have no memory of anything else and the separation doesn't bother me at all. I lived with my mom and saw my dad every other weekend. He moves around quite a lot between nearby and 300 miles away in Southern California, so he would either drive up or my brother and I would fly down. We kept track how many times we flew until the numbers were well over 200 and I was probably 8 years old.

My mom put herself through college without any help from her parents while I was in elementary school, and she graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Kinesiology with the hopes of becoming a physical therapist. Unfortunately, the training program for physical therapy is very competitive and despite her 4.0 GPA she could not get in and could not use her degree for any of her following jobs. She would work early and work late, having to drop us off at our friends' homes so their parents could watch us until we could go to school or back home, and she could never participate in the weekly carpools herself. In the summertime, she bought a season pass for each of us for a water park and we would stay there all day while she was at work/school. This was completely fine because we were great swimmers, there were lifeguards, it was really fun, and she wouldn't have been able to afford a babysitter.

My mom hasn't had very good luck in her lifetime. Unsupported by her own family, every choice she has ever made was to help me and my brother lead better lives than her own. She lost her jobs for various reasons, and never for incompetence. She was just very unlucky. She was a substitute middle school teacher for a while until she trained to become an appraiser. For some time, she managed to earn a large salary and even earned an award and spa vacation for being such a highly efficient worker in the company, but was laid off when the economy tanked in 2008 and caused all home values to plummet.

Then she trained to become a nuclear medicine technologist and held that job for a bit before she was in a bike accident and broke her arm and hip. She was afraid she would lose her job for not being able to work, but lost it instead during that time most likely because she was a whistle blower. She has since been unable to find a job because the place she worked at refused to promote her as the fantastic worker she is. She is overqualified for average jobs and would have to go back into training for new jobs at her education level. No one will accept her for anything. The system sucks. Meanwhile her broken hip turned into a hip replacement, and then she later suffered from appendicitis and a lengthy and stressful divorce from my step dad of 10 years. It's like anything bad that could happen did happen.

Before she lost everything, she managed to help me climb out of the trouble I would have been in if she couldn't have encouraged me through my educational career. Since I was two years ahead in mathematics through middle school and high school, my mom asked our local state university if they would accept me with what units I did have along with taking the Proficiency Exam. They accepted, so instead of moving on to my junior year in high school, I became a freshman in college. It took me 5.5 years to graduate from college, since I was working part-time throughout and it sometimes delayed my progression through earning my Bachelor's degree in Mathematics. I ended up saving just enough to support myself through a year of dosimetry school in Texas before landing a job back home (somehow) and a spot in the high tax bracket.

Now I can take care of my mom for taking care of me. Which is great, like the American Dream, like it really is possible to dig yourself out. But I wouldn't have been able to if I didn't have any help, at least not that young and naive. I wouldn't have had the wisdom or the ambition or the intuition on my own. My mom's the one who suggested I look into dosimetry in the first place. It makes me very sad to think of the millions of people who are stuck where they are because they can't get the help or opportunities I did. I am so very thankful for her. I feel like all the luck she could have had went to me instead.

The issue now though is that, having lost everything, she kind of broke. I'm all she really has left (my brother lives out of town), and I've been forced to move back in with her because she can't afford to live by herself and she doesn't want to move. She's become very difficult to live with and I feel very stuck. I think that's why I wrote all of this up, to remind myself of all that she has done for me so that, even though all I really want to do is move out, I can push myself on to keep supporting her. I'm just afraid that I might become unhappy in the process.

Portland

July 2013

My coworker was backing out of time off he had initially decided to take for a Fourth of July weekend and asked me if I would like to claim it instead. Sure, why not! It took a while for me to figure out what I wanted to do or who I would want to do whatever with, but I eventually landed on a road trip north to Portland. Hooray for spontaneity!

DAY ONE
My lovely mother agreed to go with me so that I wouldn't have to travel alone (I'm so not ready for that). It took about 9 hours to get there, driving through flat planes of farmland and weaving through mountains and past Shasta in Northern California. Through one stretch of Oregon, we were startled to find what looked like tumbleweed floating through the air. We were very confused. There were tufts of casually floating grass everywhere in the sky. I don't know either. But you'll know when you're really in Oregon because everything is suddenly so green. It rains much more in Oregon than it does in California, so the plants are very happy and they show it. I would love to live in Oregon some day, maybe in retirement.

We arrived earlier than we expected, so we decided to let our first visit be to Multnomah Falls, a couple of miles east from Portland. It's a very popular destination, and since it was also July 4th, it was a holiday and therefore very crowded. A really cool place where you can view the wonders of nature (a very tall waterfall) without having to hike at all to see it. It's just off of the freeway with loads of parking, a gift shop, and a cafe. There's the option to hike up to the top of the waterfall too, but I wasn't about to go up that far.

Afterwards, we dropped off our stuff at the hotel and visited downtown's charming Pearl District with both high end indie stuff and homeless people areas. Not really sure what to think about that, but it was really hard to find a place to eat on the Fourth of July.

DAY TWO
The next morning, we got up early to make our way to the famous Voodoo Doughnuts. A line out the door didn't surprise me, but it did surprise me that the line also started at the door, so it was pretty misleading. The doughnuts were well worth the wait, as they were superiorly delicious and creative flavor-wise. Their main staple would the the Voodoo doughnut, a raspberry filled in the shape of a voodoo doll and shanked with a pretzel stick. The other must-have is the maple bacon (oh my god) bar. Yes, bacon. On the maple bar. It was like eating a bacon maple sweet pancake breakfast to go. I really liked the butterfinger doughnut, too.

Next we visited Washington Park where the Japanese garden and Rose garden reside among a crap ton of other things. The hills in this park are forested with these tall canopy trees that are amazing to be under. It feels very secluded. Roses don't interest me very much, but the Japanese garden was immaculate. I couldn't put my camera down!

If you want a great view of the city of Portland, visit Pittock Mansion just up the road from Washington Park. There's a nice area with benches to sit there for a while, or you could pay to go inside the mansion, which I didn't bother doing myself.

Leaving Pittock Mansion, we weren't really sure what to do next, but were heading west anyway, and eventually thought, hey, why not keep going all the way to the coast? The drive was very pretty and hilly and forested, and we eventually made it to Seaside where we got out of the car and visited some of the shops along the beach. A huge statue of Lewis and Clark alerted us to the fact that this very spot was the end of their adventure across the country.

We didn't want to drive back the same way, so we headed a little bit North to Astoria first before going east again. My mom told me that this town Astoria was where they filmed the movie The Goonies. Pretty sweet, but I didn't really recognize anything in particular. By the time we got home we were pooped, especially my mom who prefers to be the driver.

DAY THREE
In the morning we visited Portland's famous Saturday Market. Lots of craft and food booths pop up all over downtown along the Willamette river and you could literally spend hours there trying to visit all the tents. My feet definitely hurt and we had to quit early. Some of my favorite booths involved woodworking or blown glass pieces, but my mom's favorite was a guy who made chains and inspired her to learn how to make them herself.

Our last adventure in Portland was stationed at the Leach Botanical Garden. The garden feels very secluded, but it's actually in the middle of town, which is kind of disorienting. It's very beautiful, and often hosts wedding receptions, but allows visitors to tour the grounds where a stream cuts through forested areas. If Oregon wasn't so beautifully lush and green, it probably wouldn't have felt as magical as it did.

We made our way down to Salem that day in order to spare us an hour of driving the following day on our way back home. And good thing too, because our bed in Portland had a bed-ridden-morbidly-obese-man-sized dent on my mom's side.