Pre-birthday, April 27, 2010

For my birthday this year, I decided to take a little trip down south to warmer weather, to a place that was near and dear to my heart for many years: Orange County, California. The plan was to go for a long weekend, leaving April 28 through May 1. Then we'd have Sunday, May 2nd to relax before heading back to work. I was super excited to be going until I realized that the flight out on the 28th was at 8AM, not 8PM. OOOOH, the ruckus this caused at work. BECAUSE, shocking, on the 27th I was informed of a firedrill that HAD.TO.BE.DONE.RIGHT.THEN. and OMG even though you're going to be out Thursday/Friday which, by the way, was communicated A MONTH AGO, those 8 hours on the 28th make you an un-team player! Nope, you've worked your ARSE off for 5 fucking months straight but this one day? Jenn's not a team player! $#*&$# Can anyone sense my frustration??

And mind you, I had ZERO 4/30 deadlines, ZERO, until April 27. Start firedrill. And all the partners were out at a partner retreat for two days that week so that was awesome timing too. But, hey, cool, I'll take the wrath for those 8 hours. Jesus.

(No one really expected this to start off with a rant, huh? Me either. But that pretty much sums up the whole "pre-birthday" that was).

Anyway. So I come home from work on the 27th after doing as much as I possibly could to get the project as close as possible to complete in my absence with a small list of things for the staff to do. WHICH SHOULD BE FINE...it's why we are a TEAM, RIGHT?! We start packing and I get pinged with an email which basically made me burst into tears. (I love my job I love my job I love my job. NOTE: repeating that does not create reality, at least in this instance). So, after dinner and doing some of the pre-birthday stuff we had planned to do (which was slightly overshadowed at this point), I pulled an all nighter and worked. OK, I lie, it was not truly an all nighter, I took a nap from about 2am-3am before getting up at 4am to get to the office by 4:30am and then to leave for the airport by 6:30am.

Oh and the best part? I STILL GOT SHIT even though I DEFINITELY made up those 8 hours on that all nighter. And EVEN though I had NO WARNING WHATSOEVER that this project was popping its ugly head again this week. I said that I had already had the worst week of busy season? This day more than surpassed that week. AWFUL. And seriously? Worst project hands down of all busy season.

I couldn't have been happier to have gone to California that day. It's a small wonder that I even made it back. I might have left holding up a middle finger.... and been thinking that I would never return...

Anyway, pictures below from the pre-birthday celebration:

The spread of presents, cake, flowers and card from Timmy. You'll recognize the cake from prior birthdays if you are a regular follower of this blog (see here for cake from last year...pretty similar, right?) German chocolate from a local bakery, Hoffmans, my favorite. SO GOOD.

A picture of the pretty flowers.

Close up of the yummy cake. The only disappointing part of this was that we didn't get to eat it all because we had to leave town. And seriously? Stale cake does NOT = fresh cake.

Dinner that night... not too exciting but what I wanted. Salad filled with tons of fresh veggies, veggie burger with tomato and cheese and organic whole wheat mac and cheese. Don't make fun. I LOVE mac and cheese.

Since we were flying, we decided to do a couple of presents early.

One was a great surprise! A camera! Sweet! If you remember, in October I dropped my camera in the sand in Hawaii and have been only using my iphone since. Not the best quality of pictures. This was VERY exciting! And the best part? The new one is sand proof, and water proof too!

The second present... hmmm.... what's in here?

White true religion jeans! LOVE. I've been wanting a pair of white jeans for a while but couldn't find any I liked. Awesome!! And hello swollen eyes. Geez. At this point, I had already been sufficiently freaking out....

Sometime around 10pm, working. The night was still young.... Yuck. Not a good memory of that night.

The experiment into determining if I have a green thumb.

Seeing how April was my birthday month, I decided upon one trip to Whole Foods that I would like to buy some plants...because it's my birthday month and I can do whatever I want, right?! And plants, as in, food plants. That I GROW. And then EAT. A sort of mini-foray into gardening, something I NEVER even REMOTELY thought I would try out. I mean the thought of dirt and digging and watering and growing is something I grew up with and while I loved the benefits of eating all of those yummy things, I really didn't want to do the work to do get to that point. (I was the kid who HATED dirt under my nails).

So you can see why when I mentioned this to Tim, he laughed at me. Until he saw my face and said, "oh you're actually serious." Well, yes, I am. And he said, "Is this going to be another phase that lasts for a brief time and then the plants die or will you actually take care of them?" At which point I rolled my eyes and thought to myself how ridiculous men are at times, especially when they might just be right. But, regardless, I was determined. We have more of what I call a "desert landscape" meaning rocks in our backyard (weird since we are in the pacific northwest and that type of yard is common in, oh, Phoenix) BUT, alas, I do have two perfectly empty large pots and a little grower thing on the house (YES, grower thing is what it's called). So I bought 3 plants to try out. 2 organic tomato plants (are these trees or bushes or plants? I do not know) and a little basil guy. I really had no clue what I was doing but when I got home we put them on the back porch and immediately Tim asks, "well, are you going to plant them?"

Ummm.... ugh. I was hoping to avoid that part.

BUT THEN! He pulled out some gloves! SCORE! Yes, I believe I will plant my plants then. Remember, the dirt under nails thing? Dislike. But, gloves=no dirt. Where did these come from anyway!? Apparently Tim bought them one time at Home Depot thinking I might need them if we ever were to do yard work. Huh. Anyway, I popped those babies into some organic dirt and plant food that we bought and then I watered them and told them to grow. I might have forgotten about them for a few weeks or I might not have realized that I had to water them EVERY DAY. Oops. So, at this point in time, the basil has passed on and didn't make it but the tomato plants are going strong. We'll see if/when we get actually tomatoes how they turn out. I'm pretty sure I was never meant to be a farmer but I do think it's totally cool to grow your own veggies so I'm hoping this experience works and I can branch out into different veggies next year. Oh, I did also buy some seeds for cucumbers and broccoli. That seemed a little bit too difficult to try for right now... Maybe after we see how the tomatoes do...

A shot of our favorite store... And where we bought the little plants.

Buying the dirt, plant food, tomato plant and basil.

And in the cart ready to go.

The little basil in the grower thing on the side of the house. Too bad that little plant didn't make it.

And one tomato plant!

Tomato plant number two... I can't believe how much bigger they are now after seeing these pictures. I guess that I must be doing something right since they are actually growing, even with my sporadic watering skills (not sure that skills should be the operative word here).

Close up of the basil....before it died.

Oh, and some nice tulips in the yard...that I did not plant...but they are pretty anyway.

Kansas City quick trip- April 23-26, 2010

Tim and I decided at the beginning of April to head back to Kansas City the weekend of April 23-26 for my grandpa's 96th birthday celebration. A lot of family was coming in for the event so we decided we should probably be there too. It was a whirlwind of a weekend!

We got in at 5pm on Friday night and had dinner with my parents and brother.


A bonus! Birthday cake for me since my birthday is at the end of the month. And my favorite too, german chocolate. Yum!

The next day we got up bright and early to make the trek up to Lamoni, Iowa. My aunt and uncle and grandparents live in Iowa so it was decided it would be a good location for the birthday celebration as there was some family coming from Kansas City, some from Minnesota and some from all over the country (like us). Lamoni is about a 2 hour drive from Kansas City. After a little delay due to some people (ahem, Jon) oversleeping, we finally got on the road.

While we were there we went to the Amish furniture store (Lamoni has a lot of Amish). Holy crap, I didn't want to go, but I was BLOWN away by the quality of their furniture. I wish I was closer so I could buy some of it (seriously!)

I'm not really sure what picture this is exactly but somewhere we stopped while we were out- my cousin took it (thank god she is such a good picture taker....otherwise this post would not have much picture documentation)....

And of course, Iowa cow statues.

Timmy and I swinging....

My cousin Danika and her daughter Katie (who I guess is my second cousin). Katie wasn't feeling very well...she had a sinus infection/cold thing... that, subsequently, I think Tim and I actually caught about a week later. Boo! We felt so bad for little Katie though.

We also played a fun game of cards, of course! Grandma, cousin Anne, mom.

Tim and I were partners. We didn't win but I think we may have come in 2nd.

Brother Jon and cousin Chanda- they won the card game.

My cousin Anne's baby, Connor- such a cutie!

All of us hanging around, playing with the kids and waiting for the birthday party to start later in the evening.

My cousin Danika's other daughter, Lilly...she is so much fun!

And again... I have no idea what we were looking at.

The birthday celebration was at Graceland, the university I went to. It was so weird being back on campus. I haven't been back in several years. Crazy how much things change but still stay the same, if that makes sense.

A picture of my immediate family with my grandma, grandpa, and grandpa's sister, Margaret.

And us!

A picture of all of the cousins... so cool to see everyone older and how much everyone has grown up.

Not sure why but Lilly thought it was fun to crawl through my legs. I'm used to this from Bella. It made me laugh.

The birthday celebration was so nice...dinner, pictures, videos and toasts to grandpa. We ended up leaving Lamoni around 8pm and got back to Kansas City around 10pm. Tim and I got in a few hours of sleep and were up and headed to the airport by 7am. I'm telling you- it was a WHIRLWIND. Always so good to see family though.

Dogs and dogs

On April 22, we went to our friends' Stacie and Rich's house for a dog party... and for some time to just relax, drink wine and grill while the dogs played. It was SO much fun and Bella found a new best buddy... or maybe he's even her boyfriend??! Stacie and Rich have a 6 month old puppy named Chukar and he and Bella were the perfect match... similar size, similar energy. They didn't stop the whole night. It was AWESOME since at the end of the night we both had extremely exhausted dogs. Pictures below...of course, I didn't even think to take pictures of people:

Bella sniffing at Chukar.... probably thinking, "Come on, dude, get up and PLAY WITH ME!!" Stacie and Rich's neighbors also came over and brought their dog, who was not as interested in being insanely crazy like Bella and Chukar were. He just enjoyed their show.

Cute little Chukar. I got more pictures of him than Miss Bella. They were going so fast it was almost impossible to get one of them together.

And... thirsty dogs....

Ah! One of them together! Too freaking cute.

See Stacie's blog about the night for more pictures that she took. We had a great time catching up with some great friends... and it was so cool that the pups got along so well...and got so worn out!

The official end of busy season...

is marked by April 15, the end for all CPA firms, well, at least the tax guys. But of course, we in the audit/assurance/consulting departments celebrate too because at least April 15 typically marks the end of weekends, crazy hours, and at least a LITTLE bit of a lightened workload. Sometimes. Regardless, we all celebrate anyway and this year was no different. Our firm went to Jillians across the water in Seattle and it was great fun. Pictures below:

Oops, the first party foul!

My friend Renee and I. She's an estate tax gal and super good at it... we kept ourselves sane throughout busy season by working out together and going to happy hours every friday night. Fun times with her always.

Trying to get a good picture but kept laughing at something...

And again......

The group of gorgeous girls...Krystal, the wife of one of my co-workers, me, Renee, and Shauna (another tax gal).

And our annual tradition: Washington red apple shots!

Me with a few of my co-workers on the audit side... Taylor, Rhett (another manager), Adrian, me, and Steve.

And another shot where Rhett isn't licking Taylor's ear.

And one more without Steve.

And again, just in case we didn't already get enough!

A shot of the audit people hanging out together.

Taylor and Bryan doing Irish shots (Taylor has SUPER red hair, hard to tell here, but the thought was to do a shot for the Irish because of his hair).

We ended the night with karaoke at Ozzies, a bar in Seattle. It was a really fun night. And even better that the president of our firm (also one of the founding partners) was out with us until the very end. I think he even closed down the bar! I left with Renee and her husband around 1am and the small group of people still there were still going strong. I work with a great group of people. The next day was so relaxing... worked for a few hours (meaning: cleaned my office) and spent the afternoon getting manicures/pedicures with Renee and then working out. And subsequently had my first weekend off in MONTHS. It was so awesome, I can't even describe it in words. There is absolutely nothing better than two whole days off when you haven't even had one off in several weeks. I almost didn't even know what to do with myself!

Puking the guts out...

Does anyone know my thing with puke? Have I ever talked about this publicly? No, I haven't? That's surprisingly given my extreme barf-phobia.

I'm not really sure what my problem is. As a kid I was RARELY sick, especially of the throw up variety. I HATED IT. And even more so than I hated throwing up (I mean, really, who doesn't?), I HATED HATED HATED when other people did. I had a year in, oh, like 2nd grade when everyone in my class was puking and my brother was puking and my mom was puking, and well, I think that that scarred me or something.

When I got into college, my first criteria of my college roommate was "are you a puker?" NOT EVEN KIDDING, I KNOW, it's messed up. BUT BUT! HAHA! She almost asked me the same question AT.THE.SAME.TIME. We knew at that moment that we were fated to be together.

As I've grown older, and gotten animals, I've had to really teach myself to deal with puke. And I can now, I couldn't at first.... I'd run out of the room and come back to be the clean up crew. I think it's the motion/sound that bugs me. I myself have only thrown up twice in my adult life, both as a result of alcohol so I don't totally remember one of those times, the other I do but I felt better afterward and I also have a paramedic for husband so he was very good at sitting with me (and then giving me an IV). Luckily also, Tim 1 never puked when I was with him and Tim 2 hasn't either in 3 years...

UNTIL....

April 9, 2010.

Oh MAN.

Let's just say we will probably not be going back to Thai food again and that food poisoning is one of the most violent illnesses EVER. We went to Thai food that night and at 2am that morning, I'm awakened my Tim telling me he feels incredibly sick and is going to go camp out in the downstairs bathroom (he knows how I am with puke). About 10 minutes later, he is DEFINITELY puking his guts out and I am sitting upstairs uncontrollably shaking and trying to figure out if I will hurt myself by jumping out of the window (no, I am not kidding, I seriously have a problem). After he's done, I still shake for another hour but I go downstairs to make sure he is ok, like I said, I'm ok with the clean up crew part. He knows it's food poisoning as he felt sick right after eating Thai (he ate some chicken, I didn't, so we think it was that). He got sick again another couple of hours later.... and I pretty much stayed awake all night and shook. Ok, seriously? How am I ever going to have kids and deal with projectile vomit??! I wouldn't want to throw the kid or something!

Eek. Needless to say I have a lot of work to do to get used to puke before I even remotely consider having kids.

Tim now feels much better, but was out of commission for about 4 days. And says he will never go back to that Thai place again. Understandable and I totally agree. That sucked for both of us.

Bella April 2010

Bella had another good month in April...the biggest and best thing being: NO TUMMY SICKNESS. We are going on a good 3 months of no tummy problems so it's seeming more and more like she is just the most allergy-prone dog EVER. As in, she is allergic to EVERYTHING. The food she is on now is one of ONLY TWO foods that she can eat, that she isn't allergic to, based on the allergy profile of her littermate/brother. We didn't run an allergy test on her at the time because she was so sick, the vet wasn't even convinced it was just allergies, and not to mention, the first 10 months of her life we tried all kinds of "allergy" diets and had pretty much ruled out allergies. Turns out that even though we were ruling out certain things at the instructions of the vet, she pretty much really is allergic to everything so even if we ruled one thing out, she was allergic to something else in what she was eating.

So, in this case, as sort of a last glimmer of a hope, it was the better idea to just a) stabilize her and then once stabilized, b) try the food that matches her brothers' allergy profile. He just so happens to go to the same vet and the vet thought, Hmm, "what if?" THANK GOD she had that thought. Why? 3 months later? A VERY strict diet (aka no treats other than food kibbles) and she is healthy and happy. It's the longest stretch of a healthy dog we've ever had with her and it's SO much more fun for all of us!! I still can't believe that everything we've been through is seemingly just an extreme case of allergies. Crazy. The vet even said she hasn't seen anything like this. Oh well, for now, Bella is healthy as can be (and no sinus infections or pink eye this month either!)

Here she is cuddling with her buddy Calvin, one of the obese kitty twins (who, I think, have lost weight since last year...they have been on a diet, too, which they dislike).

And trying to cuddle with him again.

Along with the healthy dog comes TONS AND TONS of boxer energy. As in, "If you don't run me, I will DESTROY every toy I own, I'll show you." Exhibit A, above.

And exhibit B.

Surprisingly, she loves this monkey so only holds him in her mouth and doesn't destroy him. It's pretty cute. So, the world of Miss Bella is going well. No illnesses and just lots and lots of play time. She is a happy girl.

March MADNESS!

Well, now that it's the first of April, I think it's time that we back track to the INSANE month of March, what do you say?

Basically all of March, I worked ridiculous hour weeks which essentially started at 4am everyday and ended at about 9pm every night. Oh yes, and Saturdays I worked about 10 hours on average, sometimes more. Sundays, I tried to take off but usually ended up working some. It's just the nature of my job. Some people's jobs require more steady hours year round, mine cap out in February/March and then I get to have a REALLY light, (meaning just comfortably busy at work) summer which is AWESOME especially up here in Seattle... I don't really mind it at all, in fact, I actually kind of like it. Obviously, otherwise I wouldn't do it, right?

And seriously, it's April... April! April! I am giddy with relief that this work madness is ALMOST over. And then come long summer days of sun, playing, vacation, and just pure relaxation. I cannot wait.

Anyway, as a result of what truly is March madness for me in this crazy profession, the blog was put on the back burner. But, don't fret, blog readers! This year I actually kept notes of what I did in the month of March because historically I have no idea when the month ends...all I feel like I've been doing is work so this year I actually remember some key happenings. SO! I have updates coming your way that will be backdated into March for all of the March happenings... Hopefully by the end of this weekend, we'll be on our way to back to the current date. Enjoy!