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Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Stories

First of all, Internets, this happened:


It's a miracle, right? I called an amazing carpet cleaning service, and they worked their voodoo magic and got the red nail polish out of the lovely blue carpet. Thank goodness.

I've been doing a lot of fun things lately. This was a couple of weeks ago:


The Moth is one of my favorite podcasts, and it was a thrill to see their live show in Portland. There were six storytellers, and I loved them all. I was proud of our little city when they said it was the largest live Moth show to date, and they did announce that StorySlams - storytelling competitions - will be coming to Portland. I will love going to those. It was a fantastic night.

I've also been going to Blazer games this season. A friend at work helped rekindle an old interest in basketball, and I've really enjoyed getting back into it. My boss has been great about letting me off early for mid-week games, and it's the perfect way to blow off steam after a tough day.



Something else going on is that I'm in training to be an Online Counseling and Suicide Intervention Specialist with IMAlive (in partnership with the Kristin Brooks Hope Center). The certification process is extensive - and impressive; I've been at it for about a month now and have several months to go. I'm still on the Tuna Team for the local homeless center, but that work is very infrequent, and I want to be contributing more often. I hope this will be a good fit. I'm enjoying the training so far, and I did similar work years ago in college and felt good about it.

A lot of other stuff is going on, and I'm anxious to blog it out. Coming up: Hawaii and surfing, Berkeley and the diversity workshop that has probably scarred me for life, an update on my midlife coffee break, online dating, and details on several more little trips I have planned for the next couple of months. (Teaser: my very first hip hop festival is just 2 months away! And that's not even half as weird as my birthday trip in March.) It's important to me to keep getting this stuff out.

But for now, here's a tiny snippet of heaven I received last week. Contact with my nephews is still sporadic, but I send them notes and packages regularly. The most recent care package, which I sent sometime in January, included a couple of books and (ready?) two superhero capes I found on Etsy. And apparently when my brother had the boys for visitation this past weekend they had their capes in tow, and they hit the playground dressed thusly:


(Harder to see the little one's cape, but easy to see his cute head with his frog hat on it in the corner of the picture.) OF COURSE after getting this pic, I had to order a third cape . . . matching . . . but quite a bit bigger. And next time I get a play date with them, I can't wait to step out of the car with my cape on, too!

5 comments:

  1. The cape design looks like that for a "Captain Awesome" t-shirt I bought a couple of years back. I LOVE that the nephews embraced your gift. There's nothing that beats that feeling of having got it right, is there?

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  2. The capes- so damn cute. :-) I gave my nephew his first cape. Heartwarming and adorable.

    Can't wait to hear your stories! I miss you.

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  3. So happy to see this, and to 'hear' you sound so happy. Love you, dude.

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  4. The capes are awesome!
    Lovely to see them playing!

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  5. 1. I love the fun you have, always.
    2. Pretty sure you're the best aunt ever.
    3. Yeah, capes!

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