News Trend Earthquake|Actual

July 11, 2019 3 Satsop, Washington lima.8

"I think it's an earthquake," I remember my husband saying. The first one for us Midwestern transplants, the first one for all four of our girls.

My very first happened on July tiga, 1999. My second- and third-born were already tucked into their bunk beds next door and my youngest snoozing nearby while I lay with my first-born on her bed. Our faithful dog, Casey, was curled up at our feet and my husband sat on the floor, leaning against the bed as he read a big girl bedtime story.

"I think it's an earthquake," I remember my husband saying. The first one for us Midwestern transplants, the first one for all four of our girls.

My very first happened on July tiga, 1999. My second- and third-born were already tucked into their bunk beds next door and my youngest snoozing nearby while I lay with my first-born on her bed. Our faithful dog, Casey, was curled up at our feet and my husband sat on the floor, leaning against the bed as he read a big girl bedtime story.

"I think it's an earthquake," I remember my husband saying. The first one for us Midwestern transplants, the first one for all four of our girls.

My very first happened on July tiga, 1999. My second- and third-born were already tucked into their bunk beds next door and my youngest snoozing nearby while I lay with my first-born on her bed. Our faithful dog, Casey, was curled up at our feet and my husband sat on the floor, leaning against the bed as he read a big girl bedtime story.

"I think it's an earthquake," I remember my husband saying. The first one for us Midwestern transplants, the first one for all four of our girls.

My very first happened on July tiga, 1999. My second- and third-born were already tucked into their bunk beds next door and my youngest snoozing nearby while I lay with my first-born on her bed. Our faithful dog, Casey, was curled up at our feet and my husband sat on the floor, leaning against the bed as he read a big girl bedtime story.

"I think it's an earthquake," I remember my husband saying. The first one for us Midwestern transplants, the first one for all four of our girls.

My very first happened on July tiga, 1999. My second- and third-born were already tucked into their bunk beds next door and my youngest snoozing nearby while I lay with my first-born on her bed. Our faithful dog, Casey, was curled up at our feet and my husband sat on the floor, leaning against the bed as he read a big girl bedtime story.

"I think it's an earthquake," I remember my husband saying. The first one for us Midwestern transplants, the first one for all four of our girls.

My very first happened on July tiga, 1999. My second- and third-born were already tucked into their bunk beds next door and my youngest snoozing nearby while I lay with my first-born on her bed. Our faithful dog, Casey, was curled up at our feet and my husband sat on the floor, leaning against the bed as he read a big girl bedtime story.

"I think it's an earthquake," I remember my husband saying. The first one for us Midwestern transplants, the first one for all four of our girls.

I have mixed feelings about earthquakes. In some ways, I hope I never experience another but then again, I would love to feel that spine-tingling, mind-blowing sensation right this very moment.

"I think it's an earthquake," I remember my husband saying. The first one for us Midwestern transplants, the first one for all four of our girls.

I have mixed feelings about earthquakes. In some ways, I hope I never experience another but then again, I would love to feel that spine-tingling, mind-blowing sensation right this very moment.

February 28, 2001. A busy morning at our school for homeschoolers. I'd left the older three girls, ages 13, 11, and 9, under the care of a fellow mom back at the school, and run my youngest up to her Kindermusik group closer to home. While she was busy singing and playing xylophones with other seven-year-olds, I zoomed home for a quick pit stop. I was out on the driveway, about to step back into my Mazda MPV, when I felt the first wave.

I have mixed feelings about earthquakes. In some ways, I hope I never experience another but then again, I would love to feel that spine-tingling, mind-blowing sensation right this very moment.

February 28, 2001. A busy morning at our school for homeschoolers. I'd left the older three girls, ages 13, 11, and 9, under the care of a fellow mom back at the school, and run my youngest up to her Kindermusik group closer to home. While she was busy singing and playing xylophones with other seven-year-olds, I zoomed home for a quick pit stop. I was out on the driveway, about to step back into my Mazda MPV, when I felt the first wave.

"I think it's an earthquake," I remember my husband saying. The first one for us Midwestern transplants, the first one for all four of our girls.

All I know for sure is that when the earth moves under my feet, I feel fully and terrifyingly alive.

I have mixed feelings about earthquakes. In some ways, I hope I never experience another but then again, I would love to feel that spine-tingling, mind-blowing sensation right this very moment.

All I know for sure is that when the earth moves under my feet, I feel fully and terrifyingly alive.

I have mixed feelings about earthquakes. In some ways, I hope I never experience another but then again, I would love to feel that spine-tingling, mind-blowing sensation right this very moment.

"I think it's an earthquake," I remember my husband saying. The first one for us Midwestern transplants, the first one for all four of our girls.

I have mixed feelings about earthquakes. In some ways, I hope I never experience another but then again, I would love to feel that spine-tingling, mind-blowing sensation right this very moment.

All I know for sure is that when the earth moves under my feet, I feel fully and terrifyingly alive.

News Trend No Finer Place To Be|Actual

Wind-whipped waves rock the dock.

Gold sun slips behind the land.

Ferry slides across the Sound.

Summer sky fills with pastel light.

Grey boy feeds the seagulls.

All is well at Mukilteo Beach at sunset, and honestly, I can think of no finer place to be.

News Trend Rocks On Rocks On Rocks|Actual

Welcome to my side yard.

This narrow strip of sloping soil has given me nothing but heartache ever since the day I moved in.

Too sloping and skinny for a proper walkway and too close to the fence to properly improve.

A crooked little path, it seems to be good for just one thing.

Rocks.

Rocks on rocks on rocks.

Over the years, we dug up each and every one of these granite trophies from our garden beds. There's no easy way to get rid of them, so we've made a home for them here.

Rocks on rocks on rocks.

Heaped up along a crooked little path.

Someday, I will build a long and skinny deck that fills the space between the house and the fence, and the rocks will live happily underneath.

But I don't have money for that right now.So I'm dreaming up some low- to no-cost strategies to deal with this space.

Rocks on rocks on rocks.

Heaped up along a crooked little path.

News Trend Pallet Possibilities|Actual

My latest stash of free lumber.

Wooden shipping pallets are good for lots of things.

Psh. Any Pinterester can tell you that.

^ In their original form, they shape up into a nifty coffee table.

^ And house a vertical succulent garden just fine.

^ Deconstructed, pallets can also provide useful distressed lumber. At my house, we've transformed them into towel hook holders and several types of shelving.

And now, the experiments continue as I attempt to answer the question, can pallets help to solve my side yard problems?

* * * * *

In my opinion, you can never have too many succulents, and you can never have too many stories about succulents. Here are a few to choose from:

Court And Kylee's Succulent Party

Succulent Season

Franklin Park Conservatory

Confessions Of A Crazy Plant Lady

Pallet Possibilities

Another Rainy Day

Growing Things

This Is War

All In A Day's Work

Design Dilemmas

Wait For It

Shopping Spree

Saturday Spring Satisfaction

Sprouts

Tiny Tinsel Tree

Biology 101

Little Things

* * * * *

For more of my pallet projects, check out these stories:

Pallet Possibilities

Late-Night Pallet Party

Sex In the Side Yard

News Trend Thanks, Tillamook|Actual

Hey, remember a couple months back, when the Tillamook people asked to use my 2014 tweet about taking their cheese to Vietnam in a marketing campaign?

Well, of course, I don't blame you if you don't. If you'd like to read all the details, go here.

But the gist of my story today is that when I told Tillamook yes, they promised to send me a thank-you gift.

I've been quite excited about that.

And today, when I was out and about, and my third-born texted me to say I'd received a package that commanded, "Refrigerate upon arrival," I knew my lucky ship had finally sailed into port.

So I rushed home, grabbed the box out of the fridge, and here's what happened next:

And then, later that afternoon, this happened:

Yum! Thanks, Tillamook.

* * * * *

What started as an off-the-cuff tweet back in 2014 led to an interesting offer, a dairy industry fact-finding mission, and in the end, a cheesy gift. Here's the full story:

My Tillamook Tweet

Checking Up On Tillamook

Thanks, Tillamook

News Trend Silver Threads|Actual

Trees along Chennault Beach Road decorated with tributes for the fallen,

created by my sweet teenage across-the-street neighbor.

We were wrapping up a scary movie Netflix binge when my second-born breathlessly rushed into the room.

"Something MAJOR is going down out there," she gasped, nodding her head toward the front yard.

Twenty steps beyond my home lies Chennault Beach Road, a silver thread of asphalt that comprises the main thoroughfare and sole route into and out of our neighborhood. Leading down the bluff to a small cluster of well-kept homes, even on a Friday evening after midnight, it's usually a quiet street.

But as we turned our attention away from the murderous zombies on the TV screen and followed my daughter's gaze, we immediately understood the horror in her eyes.

Police cars.

Fire trucks.

Emergency vehicles of all shapes and sizes were streaming into our little community, sirens blaring and lights ablaze.

At least twenty first-responders screamed past our front door; as five, then ten, then twenty minutes ticked by, we noticed that not one of them was coming out.

Regular traffic - strangely heavy for this time of night - began to rush through a nearby side street, clearly seeking an alternative route out of the Chennault Beach loop. Apparently, the main road was closed.

Trapped drivers pulled their cars to the curb along my yard and gathered on the street corner. From the open windows, we strained our ears in the hopes of making out their conversations, in the hopes of understanding what was going on.

My mind struggled to bring order to this jumble of riddles. I could imagine only one scenario that would explain the facts.

A live shooter.

Shaking off the chill of that ominous thought, I blamed my dire conclusion on the scary movies, and after another half hour of nothing happening outside, we all gave up and went to bed.

* * * * *

"Three people were killed at a house party down the street. One more was injured. They caught the shooter."

My husband greeted me the next morning with the answers to my questions, but the ones I least wanted to hear.

Flipping open my Facebook feed, this news was affirmed in spades. Friends across the world were tagging me to a crush of articles describing the horrors that had unfolded at this gathering of local college kids in my neighborhood, though there were few details to be found at that point.

As more facts came in, the scenario went from bad to worse.

The shooter was someone we knew. He worked for my second-born at Abercrombie & Fitch during most of 2015, and had earned her respect as a hard-worker and conscientious young man. She gave him a funny nickname and they shared pictures of cats on Instagram.

One of the victims was the best friend of a young family friend. Her name, we learned, was Anna and by all accounts, she was lovely. She had been dating the shooter and apparently broke up with him last week.

The rest of the morning was a blur of emotion and communication.

I burned through my phone battery in record time.

By noon, my soul craved some peace and fresh air.

So I turned, as I often do, to my garden to bring order and calm to my troubled mind.

How to make sense of these tragedies? Lord knows we've all had plenty of practice lately, working through the anguish of senseless shootings and terrorist attacks.

Yet how infinitely more painful the process becomes when the people involved are real, living human beings that walk the same paths, share the same streets, breathe the same air as me.

Three young lives cut short for no good reason.

Three devastated families who will mourn this horrible day forever.

Three bullets shot from a killing machine that deserves no place in civilized society.

I have no words to wrap around the injustice, the shock, the outrageous crime of their deaths.

And I pray for these three victims, for the peace of their eternal souls, for their families, for all of us who bear the scars of this brutal tragedy and all the other tragedies like it.

* * * * *

But then, what about the shooter?

Is he to be hated, despised, cast off as pure evil?

Is he as demonic and inhuman and other-worldly as the monsters I watched in my movie?

No. I can't accept that. Until Friday night, he was known to be a smart, friendly, loyal and hard-working young man with a successful life and a bright future.

How did he fall so far?

I can't explain. But I know this.

The shooter committed an act of evil.

But he is not evil.

He is a human being.

And human beings have been killing one another since the dawn of time.

Each human being on this planet is capable of great violence.

Our souls hang by silver threads, beautiful and pure, yet undeniably vulnerable and infinitely fragile.

And while I pray that your humanity and mine will never be tested by a temptation to murder, I also pray that we find compassion and forgiveness in our hearts for those whose silver threads give way.

* * * * *

To read more about this tragedy and the healing in its aftermath, try:

Dear Mrs. Ivanov

Flowers, Candles, Ribbon

News Trend Sex In The Side Yard|Actual

Well.

I never came through on that promise.

And yesterday, as I pulling weeds in the vicinity of said mystery project, I suddenly realized my oversight. So as soon as the area was tidied up, I ran for my camera and captured the long-awaited shots.

Now I'm finally ready to tell my story.

* * * * *

The best ideas are when you take two older ideas that have nothing to do with each other, make them have sex with each other, and then build a business around the bastard, ugly child that results.

-James Altucher, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Mediocre Entrepenuers

* * * * *

Part One:

I grew up in Michigan's lake country where long ago, glaciers carved a series of long grooves in the earth that eventually filled with water and became a maze of lakes and rivers. All year round, ever since I was tiny, our lives were oriented to the lake - sledding and skating in the winter, boating and swimming every summer.

Since I was old enough to walk, every summer I spent countless hours padding up and down the quintessential dock - unfinished boards bleached silver grey in the sun, running horizontally beneath my little pink toes. I miss a lot of things about those precious days around the lake, but the simple pleasure of walking up a down a wooden dock is high on the list.

Part Two:

My side yard is a tiny slip of a thing, just wide enough for a narrow path along the west side of the house. I've tried quite a few different plantings and walkways over the years but always my efforts have devolved into an overgrown, jungly, impassable mess.

Another problem with this sassy side yard of mine is that, for lack of a better place, it has become a dumping ground for the hundreds of rocks that my husband and I have dug out of our garden beds over the years. For years now, we've been piling them along the sloping bit of the side yard, where the bit of level ground slopes down to the bottom of the fence, and while the rocks don't absolutely need to live there, it would take considerable effort to lift them all out and carry them away to somewhere else, wherever that might be.

And let's not even talk about how many spiders and slugs I would encounter living among those rocks. Just ew.

Part Three:

The summer of 2016 was a glorious high point in our pallet-collecting days. A few years before, as was the demam isu, we'd used an intact pallet to make a coffee table. But since then, we'd come across the winning strategy of simply disassembling the pallets and using the wood as lumber. My husband had stored up a generous supply of pallet lumber, nails and staples removed, ready and waiting for me to dream up a project.

* * * * *

And somewhere in my brain, during the magical first week of August, all three of these ideas that had been circling around in my brain, came together in a mighty crash and BOOM! Out of nowhere, the solution was crystal clear.

Come. Let me show you.

^ Let's start here, in the far corner of my front yard. Follow the stepping stones under the trellis. Nine times out of ten, I bonk my head on those wind chimes so don't feel bad if you do too.

^ Up the little rise and then back down. I've left the gate open so you can get a glimpse of what lies beyond.

^ There it is - my new pallet walkway. My collection of pallet lumber, sanded and sealed against the weather, just the width of my narrow path, and looking just enough like a Michigan dock to make me feel quite at home.

^ The path ends here as my side yard turns the corner into my back yard, and the pallet boards give way to stepping stones. My bare feet love the feel of the different surfaces.

^ Okay, let's turn around and go back. This angle offers a better view of my rock collection which runs the entire length of the walkway. Half of them are hidden by those plants on the left:Japanese anemone. I'm not kidding when I tell you that every spring I rip them all out with my bare hands and by midsummer, they have sprung back up again. My original vision was to keep that low, clean line of rocks unbroken by any vegetation, but I admire a plant with such determination so I have struck an uneasy truce.

^ Here we are, back in the front yard again. Thank you for joining me on my much belated kecil-tour, and I hope I brought back happy memories of doing cannonballs off a wet, weathered dock in the hazy heat of a Midwest summer afternoon.

* * * * *

And in case you're wondering, this project used up most of our pallet lumber supply. But since then, we've brought home more pallets and are in the midst of some new projects.

Stay tuned for more details. And this time, I won't wait three years

* * * * *

For more of my pallet projects, check out these stories:

Pallet Possibilities

Late-Night Pallet Party

Sex In the Side Yard

* * * * *

More stories about the random ideas that fuse themselves together in my head:

Sex In The Kitchen

Sex In The Workshop

Sex In The Garden

Sex In the Front Hall

Sex On The Patio

Sex With The Bookcase

Sex In the Side Yard