A Week in Photos: Week 9

I promise I will be working on a full post for this week. I love my week in photos, but I do have something that I am working on that I'm really looking forward to sharing for the first time. I promise this blog is going to be more substance than just pretty pictures of my life!! For the time being though, enjoy the sparkly things :)

 Sunday 2/24: Both Ryan and I work at KLEAN, a drug and alcohol treatment center in Long Beach, WA. It's a small community where health care providers have to work together and support each other. A group of KLEAN employees attended a fund raiser and auction for the Ocean Beach Hospital in Long Beach. It was a Mardi Gras themed event which all of us had a blast and Ryan even took home a silent raffle item!

Monday 2/25: Sometimes our kitties allow for very sweet moments that I have to capture on camera. Seeing my two boys in a frame together is the best. Marley isn't much of a snuggler and as you can see here, he's pulling away pretty quick, but he wasn't fast enough to avoid this picture!

Tuesday 2/26: Monday and Tuesday I got a nasty head cold. I spent those two days reading and resting. I finished two books in two days, The Shoemaker's Wife by Adriana Trigani and Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta, both of which were AMAZING! The copy of Saving Francesca I had was from Bookmooch, so I figured I would pay a good book forward. A first happened for me, someone mooched a book from me from another country! I shipped a book off to Slovenia, fingers crossed it get's there safely and in good condition!

Wednesday 2/27: A milestone birthday in early recovery is your 18 month mark. It's something that I'm pretty proud of and something that has mobilized me into action. I've asked someone to start working the steps with me which I have put off for long enough now. To celebrate, my lovely boyfriend set in motion getting me a cake and getting my co-workers to gather the clients together to sing me happy birthday. It was a wonderful day!

Thursday 2/28: For "Throwback Thursday" this week, I wanted to post a scenery shot since it's been a while. I think Astoria is one of the most interesting places to live, you can always find something beautiful if you are looking for it. Sometime last year, my dad came down for a weekend visit, and it just so happened a fleet of pirate ships were in town. The Hawaiian Chieftain, the Lady Washington and a ship from the Royal Canadian Navy were making a tour of the West Coast ports. The bight colors and the many masts are truly awe-inspiring up close.

 Thursday 2/28: There is a site that the men of my workplace love. It's called The Chive. It's a compilation site of pictures, stories and videos of things in life that are ironic, satirical and funny. There's a whole cult following of people that say things like, "Keep Calm, Chive On", "KCCO", so on and so forth. For a while now, Ryan and my good friend Vern have been trying to get some Chive swag. They have a huge section of shirts and other things that are all Chive related, that are all literally the most difficult things on earth to purchase. Whoever is doing their merchandising is definitely using the tenet of supply and demand, seeing as how NOTHING IS EVER IN STOCK. There is now a black market on eBay for Chive goods where shirts are going for almost triple the original asking price. I think I have made it my life mission now to acquire some of their goods seeing as how it's so damn hard, it's like they are personally challenging me. The one time before this that I even came close to acquiring anything they produce, their server crashed as I was trying to check out because so many people were on their site trying to do the same thing. It was a maddening experience. This time though, when the email notification of something being in stock sailed into my inbox, I dropped anything I was doing and figuratively sprinted over to the site. I was almost in like a shopping blackout as I quickly added items to my cart and checked out in a matter of 30 seconds. I'll tell you, this was one of the most stressful 5 minutes of my recent life. My pulse was racing, I had the cold sweats, my hands were clammy, it was an unreal experience. But, I came, I saw, I conquered. I was able to secure two Chive shirts for the two men in my life. Erin 1, The Chive 0.

Friday 3/1: I know I take a lot of pictures of my cats. I know I probably talk about them too much in real life also. I think I have a complex where I actually think they are real people. Like their personalities and actions make me think of them as my good friends. I realize this places me in the category of "Crazy Cat Lady", but that's a title I will accept with pride. I would caption this photo, "Like A Boss", Peanut looks very Don Corleone-esque here and I love it. Our cats are like moths to flame with the gas fireplace we have, this is a common affair. I just so happened to walk out of the kitchen to find her in this position, lounging in the heat.

 Saturday 3/2: Our new Saturday routine has become going to Long Beach to catch the AA community dinner we host at KLEAN, followed by the weekly speaker meeting. We're doing it as a way to bring the AA community into the treatment center and get them involved with what we're doing, as well as allowing the clients to hear the stories of men and women who have firmly planted their lives in the roots of AA, in hopes that the clients might hear something that saves their lives. When I was in treatment, this was one of my favorite meetings to go to, I love hearing the experience, strength and hope of others, it reconfirmed for me that a) I am an alcoholic just like them and b) that I was in the right place. This week we rode over with our good friend Brandon and a new sponsee of Ryan's. We had about an hour to kill before the dinner, so we headed to the beach to fly some kites Brandon had in the back of his rig. It was an amazingly random hour of kite flying and good weather, I was able to snap this pic right about sunset. We all had a blast.

Saturday 3/2: This is another photo I captured while at the beach. The guys were busy flying kites, I was busy finding the good shots. I don't know when I became so obsessed with documenting my life, maybe after all the years of blacking out and forgetting. A long line of having no memories can be really disheartening. I guess that's why I'm doing this blog, to remember where I've been years from now so I can look back and get a snap shot of what I was doing and how I was feeling. In this picture I loved the way the light was bouncing off the water as the tide was coming in, this is also to show that I was most inappropriately dressed for an outdoor occasion such as this.

A Week in Photos: Weeks 6 and 7

As of late, my weeks have been hectic and I have been exhausted! The treatment facility that I have been working at the last year has finally opened it's doors and Ryan and I have been working overtime to make sure our pieces of the pie are well taken care of. It's a wonderfully rewarding job, it just takes a lot of work! So the posts have been few and my free time has been short, but I'm finally feeling adjusted to the new schedule and hope to be back in the swing of things shortly! Without further adieu, here are the last few weeks in photos:

  

 Monday 2/4: As the intro said, adjusting to the new working hours (8:30am to whenever) has been a challenge. I have stopped drinking coffee because I don't like the way it makes me feel throughout the day, but of course I NEED something (anything) to energize me and get me through the day, thus, Redbull. I've been riding the bull now for a few weeks straight and I now can safely say it's just as bad as coffee for me. I crave it, it keeps me up through the night, so on and so forth, it's a vicious cycle. But until I can find a natural supplement that will keep me going and "on" through out the day, this is the lesser of the two evils.


Wednesday 2/6: Part of my job (I am a woman of many hats) is to run the girls art group once a week. When I was in treatment, it was a free-for-all lacking any real structure or creativity. My goal when I took on this challenge is to make things the girls would actually like, use and get a kick out of at a very low cost. Thus the tissue paper pom-poms. I've seen these everywhere and they make me think of Kate Spade, so I thought it would be a really fun to decorate their rooms with these gems. It was a very simple craft with a beautiful end result which the girls LOVED!


Thursday 2/7: We received a wonderful visit from Ryan's mom and brother for the week of 2/4-2/8. One of the most important things we had to do while they were here was make a trip down to Cannon Beach to visit the fabulous Sesame and Lillies. I had to have Ryan take a picture of me and my new J. Crew jacket. I am in LOVE LOVE LOVE with this jacket. It was such an impulse buy but I am so excited about it, it's a wonderful spring addition.

Friday 2/8: On Friday evening I got some very sad news from my dad, our lovely kitty cat Bella had been hit by a car on the road in front of his house. I got this sweet little girl in college when a previous boyfriend was moving into his first house, only to find out he couldn't have cats. My dad volunteered to keep her, which then she became his cat. She was a wild little girl that we all loved very much, it was a very sad day for the Briggs family.

Saturday 2/9: As a way to show his condolences and to cheer me up, Ryan surprised me with these wonderful roses on Friday evening. They've looked beautiful on our mantle this last week, even if they're in a pitcher of water. We are not a flower vase kind of family apparently :)

Monday 2/11: On another craft day with the ladies, I decided we should do something special for Valentine's Day. Last year I decorated Ryan's room with heart garland, and I thought we could do a spin on that this year. With the help of Pinterest, I came up with this heart wreath which adorned all of their bedrooms leading up to Valentine's Day!

Thursday 2/14: The "big" Valentine's Day gift I got Ryan came about two weeks before the actual day, but I couldn't not give my Valentine something on the 14th. I saw this idea on The Confessions of a Product Junkie  blog and decided it was what any 25 year old man would want to get, a sugar overload candy bouquet! Yes, I'm still reaping the benefits of this!

Thursday 2/14: As a surprise for Valentine's Day, my love took me out to a wonderful indian dinner. We have a favorite spot in Astoria called Himani that we try to go to about once or twice a month. It was the first place that Ryan ever had indian food, and for me, it's probably some of the best I've had to date. We always have one (if not two) orders of Chicken Tikki Masala (NOM!!!)

Friday 2/15: Since a treatment center is considered a medical facility, every employee is required to be CPR/ First Aid certified. It was my first time ever sitting through a class like that, so imagine my surprise when our trainer whipped these little faces out. Naturally I reached for my phone and started snapping away, right in the middle of his discussion. For my next character flaw, I will be working on: tact.

Saturday 2/16: After spending the night housesitting our bosses house and watching HGTV all night, I thought it would only be fitting to check out our favorite home decor store in Astoria, Vintage Hardware. This store has amazing upcycled pieces with the most fabulous upholstery, like this owl/deer/giraffe scenario to the right. Swoon.

Saturday 2/16: With said work situation stated above, house work and cleaning throughout the week get put to the back burner. On Saturday, I needed to take an "Erin Day" to get our living situation back to something that was more manageable. Living with two lusciously furry kitties, things can go awry real quick. Fur builds up into something that resembles little tumbleweeds across our wood floors and that it not attractive or hygienic. In the process of de-furring our couch, Marley took the no cushion occasion to remind me that my job is never going to be done. Oh the joys of cat motherhood.