I’m sitting here 2300 miles away from her, it’s 9:00 in the morning my time, and here the sun is out and the sky is blue.  It’s a gorgeous beginning to this day, her birthday, and I wish Mom was sitting here with me, sipping a cup of coffee, looking at the beautiful outdoors, and talking about what fun things we might do together today.  That’s how it is.  I miss her.

Up until several months ago I lived, all of my life, no more than 3 hours away from her.  I loved living in Oregon, was actually born there, and had never left.  Didn’t really want to live anywhere else actually.  Travel yes, move somewhere else… why?  It’s gorgeous there, the people are fantastic, and it fits me.  So there I stayed.  The bonus of that was that I was close to Mom, to my brother, to family in general.  Close to friends I love as well.  And that, well that is what it’s all about.  Family, friends, love.  Which, in the end, is why I ended up moving so far away.  Family, and love. Seems, for now anyway, we couldn’t have it all in one place.  And that’s OK.  This has been and continues to be an adventure.  Adventures in life are good.  I’m not complaining.  What I am doing, sort of lamenting, is missing my Mom.

Mom…  how to describe her.  She’s fantastic, as I said.  Though that doesn’t really get to the meat of who she is.  She smiles a lot, loves to laugh, is playful, full of energy, and she doesn’t often turn down an adventure.  She encourages without being suffocating, sometimes tells you what she thinks in a rush if there’s passion behind it, challenges herself to be better physically, and is honest about who she is, what she thinks, and what she expects.  Mom has integrity.  She says what she means and expects you to do the same.  She won’t tolerate liars, cheats, or people who try to get one over on her or the people she loves.  She can be a bear, yet she is quietly strong.  When Mom is around everything seems as though it will be OK.  It’s as if she wills it to be and it is so.  This has been the case my whole life.  When Mom is around you want to do better, be better, you don’t want to disappoint.  Her presence makes you want to be a better person because of the person she is.  Mom is always there to help, to support, to get the job done.  It seems, most times, like she could do anything.  I think, seriously, that she probably could.

And yes, like anyone, she does have her faults, before you go and think I’m nominating her for sainthood or something.  She’s hard on herself.  Too hard.  She sometimes puts the wishes of others before herself at the expense of what she really wants.  She’s sometimes incredibly shy.  But she is kind, and sweet, and full of love.  She’s welcoming to people, warm.  She accepts, never judges, and defends.  When I came out to her one of the first things she said to me, after “I love you” and basically so what, is that she wanted to be the one to call many of the family members to tell them.  She wanted to do this not so she could be the one in the know or whatever, she wanted to do it so that she could tell them, and then let them know that she was just fine with it and that, with her tone I’m sure, they should be too.  That’s my Mom.  Defending, supporting.  She loves deeply, isn’t afraid to cry, and is emotional.  I love this about her.  As I love so many things about her.

Mom is uber talented.  In my lifetime she’s played instruments, gardened in a Better Homes and Gardens kind of way, drawn, photographed, sung well, and whistled a whistle that makes my heart soar.  Mom’s whistle is amazing.  I miss her whistle.  She can build anything, use most every tool, and drive a tractor.

I am lucky to have the Mom everyone wants.  I’m lucky to have the Mom all my friends, all my life, have envied, liked to be around, and loved.  I’m lucky to have that Mom.  I know how lucky I am.  I would say, without hesitation, that, along with my honey, Mom is the best person I know.  The best.  Karen and Mom are a lot a like, which I guess would make sense that they are the best people I know.  Mom is a person I strive to be like.  She’s a person I’ve always looked up to.  Always admired.

Happy birthday Mom.  I love you more than I could ever express and I am so very proud to be your daughter.

The weather turned cold and wet in Illinois today. A 25 degree drop in temperature from where we were at yesterday. That’s Illinois. T-shirts yesterday, fleece jackets today. Too funny. I think it’s raining in San Jose today as well. Hopefully the weather improves in both places so that we can enjoy some nice California weather and Mom and Kev can have the same here as they dog sit/house sit for us and the kids.

Next stop for us… Union Station. Two hours and twenty minutes away. Then… Lunch!

It started Friday night with a Gal Up (a group we’ve found and joined) event at a local bar, the Esquire Lounge in downtown Champaign.  Drink, food, talk, pool playing, and good times had by all.  A great night with cool women.  Saturday we got up early to go watch Sebastian’s first swimming lesson here in the U.S.  He’s somewhat of a swimming lesson expert as he’s been in them since he was like three months old or something in the U.K.  But it’s been a little while since he’s been in the pool, so he was a tad cautious.  He had a big hold on Mary most of the time.  He didn’t cry, but he was unsure.  By the end though he was a champ, showing that now famous smile all over the place.  He’s going to be great and it was such a blast watching him, and watching Mary be such a fantastic Mom with him when he was unsure and scared and such.  Makes a person tear up watching the kid be so good with her kid.  Impressive.  After the swim lesson we took a jaunt over to Einstein Bagels with the kids to have a little bagel breakfast and then went over to their house for a bit to visit with Ashley, one of Mary’s friends and bridesmaids, who was visiting for the weekend from Indianapolis, where she’s living now.  It was really nice to see her.  Ashley recently got married, the wedding the kids went to over the weekend we did our overnight babysitting for the first time.   After we left the kid’s place we came home, picked up the pups, and headed out to Mahomet and a lovely new to us walking trail out there.  A great spot to walk them.  There are numerous trails to hit so it will be fun to go back out there and see what’s what with those.  On Saturday we only walked for about a mile, one way, because it was really sunny, with no shade, and Weston doesn’t much like the heat.  He was panting and kept trying to lay down in close to the tall grass.  We couldn’t keep going so we turned around, but they got a nice walk in anyway.  Afterward we came home and just enjoyed being here.  Watched some of the World Series, ate dinner followed by caramel corn, relaxed.  Nice.

Yesterday we had a nice mellow morning at home.  Brewed and drank some coffee, we each looked at our fantasy football teams and adjusted (we played each other this week), drank more coffee, pet on the pups a lot, and lounged in our living room.  Later we’d finally had enough of that lounging stuff and took the pups for a long walk.  We discovered a great area on campus only about a 15 minute walk from our house.  Fantastic.  It’s near the Arboretum, which includes the Idea Garden, and Japan House.  So great.  There’s an actual hill over there.  You can see out a ways.  We plan on going back to the garden with a camera to get some ideas.  It is the idea garden after all.  We also plan on taking the pups back over there again.  It’s so close to our house.  It’s so cool that we keep finding all these great places to take the dogs for walks.  We’re loving that.  After the walk we met up with Ann, one of our new friends here in Illinois, and drove out to Hardy’s Reindeer Ranch where we met other peeps and then all did the corn maze.  We ended up splitting into two groups and raced each other.  Texting the other group with things like… Number 5!  There were eight punch stations to get in the maze and we were racing to see which group could get them all first.  We were ahead most of the time, until the end, when they managed to squeak by us for the win.  Damn Dracula! Where were you?!?!  We also looked at the reindeer, the pumpkins, and watched the pumpkin cannon shoot a pumpkin out into a field.  The cannon was pretty impressive.  A fun time with great ladies.  After the Reindeer Ranch we headed home again, hung with the pups for a little bit, and then went over to the kid’s place for dinner.  We played with the grandson, ate some food, and watched the beginning of World Series game four with the kids before heading home where we loved on the pups and finished watching the game.

Whew.

A lot of stuff…. a busy weekend.  Fun.  Illinois is growing on us.  We love the adventure of discovering things in a new place.  We are loving… and let me say… L-O-V-I-N-G… the fall weather here.  Beautiful blue skies, gorgeous fall colors, and warmish (enough to be in t-shirts yesterday).  We are loving being close to the kids and getting to see Sebastian all the time, go to his little classes, hang out and play.  And we are finding some friends, getting to know some people, starting to make a life here.  We still miss everyone in Oregon tremendously, but we are starting to really settle in, and excited about all the new things we’ve yet to discover and do.  Everything is an adventure when you live in a new place.  It’s kinda cool….

A Few photos from the ol’ iPhone…

Tomorrow we head to Hardy’s Reindeer Ranch in nearby Rantoul with some new friends. Time to try our luck with the corn maze and maybe, if they have it (?), drink some cider.  I’m sure there will be photos galore, but for now these are some I took today during the walk.  Cheers.

Friends

We feel that as we age we should patina instead of wrinkle.  How cool would this be?  Instead of drying out and wrinkling up we would all slowly turn a lovely shade of green.  Women would get upset because men would probably turn green more quickly.  And since green would be the new “wrinkle free” this would be fodder for many a joke on the late night talk show circuit.  There would be creams developed to give that certain special shine to your patina.  But since we would patina and not wrinkle, we’d all look like we did when we were 21.  Granted, sadly this would do nothing for the whole sagging thing, but hey… we can only solve one serious world issue per walk.

That’s it… our big ah ha moment.  These are the conversations we have…

Enjoy some photos taken with our little Canon SD750 during the walk.  Notice the woman… this is the sculpture that inspired the whole revelation.

Seven states, 2300 miles, three nights in hotels with four adults and two dogs, road food, great conversation, some beautiful scenery, more gas money into a big ol’ truck and a car than two girls ever want to pay for again, and no real issues… it was a tiring, but good trip east.

Cones, originally uploaded by Tokenhippygirl.
Filed under: Oregon, Photos Tagged: cones, photography, Photos, pine cones ]]> http://tokenhippygirl.com/2011/07/10/cones/feed/ 0 tokenhippygirl http://tokenhippygirl.com/2011/06/28/a-dose-of-summer/ http://tokenhippygirl.com/2011/06/28/a-dose-of-summer/#comments Tue, 28 Jun 2011 21:55:40 +0000 tokenhippygirl http://tokenhippygirl.com/?p=5118 ]]>

A Dose of Summer