Hello...Welcome to my Chaos and Insanity

This is my life. If you would have warned me about this 20 years ago...well, I don't know what I would have done. Probably just not believed you. I find myself in my 40s, divorced, broke, with three fantastic sons, having just reentered the job market with absolutely no idea what to do with myself. I've been employed for about a year and a half now, and believe me, I am grateful beyond words to have a job at all, but...well, let's just say that I am not passionate about my job, and as a passionate person, this is a Serious Problem for me. I need to be passionate about how I spend my time. My job skills are....well, I'm really good at providing an opinion on everything. I'm great at pointing out the ridiculous. Not so good at toeing a party line, or doing things because its the way its always been done. Really bad at doing something without understanding how it fits into a larger scheme (just do it, don't ask questions---wow that will send me right over the edge). Love to help people. Love to improve people's lives. I have started this blog at the urging of lotsa friends. (that's a technical term--sorry to use such jargon on the first post, but you might as well get used to how I write). I used to write an email letter to a whole slew of friends to keep them up-to-date on my life (because, ya know, everybody cares about my life). When FaceBook came along, I embraced it--I'm a military brat and it has been wonderful to see into my scattered friends' lives. However, I stopped with the email letter....much to many people's chagrin. Therefore, I am now officially a blogger. Yesterday, I took my oldest two sons on a road trip out to Eastern Washington. I had a crappy week at work....lots of political drama, some really skeevy clients that I found upsetting, and i wanted to Get Out of Town. I invited my older two (number three son had baseball practise and was therefore ineligible) to accompany me on my Escape and they accepted. Number 1 son is studying at community college and was interested in Central Washington university, so I decided we would stop and check it out. I also wanted to go check out Spokane a little bit--I had just recommended a job to a dear friend there, and suddenly realized I hadn't been there in a good 25-30 years, so I wanted to see it. (side note--can I really afford the gas for this trip?? No, I cannot. However, the mental status I have been in all week justifies the expense. That's my story and I'm stickin to it.) We left fairly early (for teenaged boys) on Saturday morning; I had doughnuts in the car eliciting 'yays' from my offspring...we set off down the road, talking faster than I was driving and laughing. We had just been together the previous evening, but we all love to talk about anything and everything and so we did. It was raining a little bit, (shocking for Washington, I know) but we thought it was a beautiful day and took notice of everything passing us by. As we crossed over Snoqualmie pass, I asked Alex if he remembered when he took skiing lessons when he was little and he barely did...but was intrigued that we were passing by where this had occurred. On the eastern side of the pass, the terrain changes significantly and we talked about that for a bit. When we arrived in Ellensburg to check out Central, the rain continued to drizzle, but we parked and walked around town anyways. There was a Farmer's Market going on, and we perused that while also taking note around town of several cafes as possibilities for lunch. The campus at Central is beautiful, and Zachary was really excited to see it and to wander around town. When he finishes up his associates degree, this is where he is thinking about attending--its his number one choice and I wanted him to have the opportunity to see it and get a mental picture of where he might be spending a few years. We liked Ellensburg; small enough to walk everywhere you need to go, lots of fun little places to poke your nose into. I could very easily picture Zachary there, and so could he. We wound up not eating in any of the little cafes because they all sounded too foo-foo for Zachary (doesn't any place just have a plain grilled cheese anymore? he grumble-asked) and so headed down the road to see if we could get all the way to Spokane or not. We crossed over the Columbia (semi-seriously Alex queried if we had crossed into Oregon--the bridge is remarkably similar and he was momentarily disoriented) checked out the Wild Horse Monument, and chattered about the wind farms with their giant propellers generating power. We arrived in Spokane and parked down near the river front park (the giant Radio Flyer slide is wicked cool!!! I made the kids let me take their picture by it MUCH to Zachary's great dismay--Alex was down though!!)...the parking meter was fed and away we walked. It's a lovely city...I would like to go back and explore more thoroughly and take all 3 kids. We shopped in Boo Radley's, checked out the carousel, meandered through a bunch of cross streets and decided to head out. This, of course, would be the point where I get lost and we discovered the Spokane ghetto (or Spokompton as per one of the t-shirts in Boo Radleys--Spokompton, Spokanistan, Spokanada....pretty cute! Plus they had things like bacon candy canes and bacon toothpaste...who knew??). And so Alex decided to point out the prostitutes, the drug dealers, the meth addict, the Catholic nursing home (no seriously) while Zachary had a Moderate to Severe Freak Out that I was permanently lost and we were doomed to forever roam the Wrong Side of the Tracks in Spokane. Obviously, we made our way out....and decided to stop for a late dinner at the booming metropolis of Ritzville WA which boasted a Perkins. Zachary re-channeled his inner 5 year old in Alaska and ate something called the Twelve--6 pancakes, three eggs scrambled and 3 strips of bacon and a big side of breakfast potatos which the waitress informed him 4 of the staff usually split--he had no difficulty inhaling it all. Alex chose the Boston Cream Pancake platter after toying with the idea of merely ordering a lemon meringue pie for dinner. By the time we left Perkins, it was past dark and Alex (who was now riding Shotgun) complained about the inability to see the landscape. He then decided that we should put Avenged Sevenfold "Nightmare" on the CD player and that's we found ourselves hurtling down I-90 in the darkness as if we were the only ones around singing at the top of our lungs.... We did then discover that the wind farm, which looks soooo cool during the daytime, has red lights that are all set to flash simultaneously at night. What this means is, you're speeding down a pitchblack road and suddenly up ahead and kind of off on the side up on a bluff this whole bank of red lights flash. It's possible that this Freaks People Out causing them to perhaps think it is a UFO before Somebody has a Prevailing Cooler Head and remembers said wind farm (note to the wind turbine people--alternating flash, for the luv of all that's good in the world ALTERNATING FLASH). Got the kids home by eleven-ish...so thrilled to have spent the day together. Twas indeed a much needed respite from the mundanity of life as it had become....