It’s amazing what the power of a smell can do to a person. You can be walking through a busy mall, determined and walking with purpose, then suddenly stopped in your tracks by a familiar smell. It can be food, cologne, flowers. And suddenly you are taken back to a familiar place, a better time. Your pace slows and you take the time to look around you and absorb life.

Some scents are intoxicating: my husband’s cologne, a campfire, white roses. I get butterflies in my stomach, weak in the knees, often goose bumps.

Others invoke comfort (and sometimes hunger): Fresh baked bread, waffle cones from Baskin-Robbins, kettle corn at the farmers market. I want to curl up with a good book and a blanket.

The more powerful smells can transport you back in time to relive a moment in the past. These are different for everyone. For me, the smell of an old baseball glove takes me back to playing softball with my dad. Chanel No. 5 reminds me of the last Christmas I was able to spend with my mother-in-law. Hot buttered popcorn always reminds me of my first job working at a movie theater. All these memories are tied inside a simple scent.

Today I am wearing my new Sweet Pea lotion from Bath & Body Works. It’s very comforting, soothing. Whenever things get stressful or aren’t going my way, I find myself breathing in deeply and letting the scent wash over me, in a way that only a smell can.

Oh, it has been so nice to have the rain back. I am a true Oregonian if there ever was one. I love everything about the rain: the way it sounds, the way it smells, how it waters my plants for me. It finally up and rained on Saturday night, after what seemed like ages of nothing but sunshine. Sim and I were thrilled. We were driving home from helping Adam move into his new house. It was perfect. Sim looked over at me and smiled as he had to turn on the windshield wipers for the first time in ages. I instinctually rolled down my window and let several drops hit my hand. The weather was warm and the air was thick. The rain seemed to calm everything; the heat, the humidity, even us.

Sunday was everything a weekend should be. We slept in late, lingering in our pajamas until past noon. I finally showered and climbed back into my comfy pajama pants and a long sleeve shirt (imagine that?!). Throughout the day, we kept pausing at the windows to look outside and watch the rain bounce off the deck. I found myself opening windows to listen to the gentle sounds as the water found its way to the ground.

While we were working on fixing a drip in our guest bathroom toilet, we opened all the windows upstairs and let the clean smell of rain drift inside. We spent the rest of the day curled up on the couch watching movies. It was a great weekend. Everything in the world was right.

Its amazing how something as simple as rain can make everything better.

So I survived canning peaches with my mom. It was actually kind of fun. We started early Saturday morning sanitizing all the jars, rings, and lids, then jumped right in to the peeling and slicing. For those of you who haven’t canned peaches before, it’s quite an interesting procss. First you put a bunch of peaches in boiling water to soften the peel, then you transfer them to ice water. This process makes the peels practically slip off the peach. Then you slice the peach right off the pit and into the jar. Once enough jars are full, you top them off with syrup (sugar & water mixture) and place the lids on the jars. Finally the jars are ready to go into a hot water bath and boil for 30 minutes. Then repeat until you are out of peaches.

A little over half way through, Adam stopped by and my mom tricked him into helping up peel and slice the peaches. Plus it was nice to have someone there to do all the heavy lifting! So the process was sped up quite a bit having extra help.

All the while I was canning inside, Simeon was working on fixing the fence in our back yard. It had recently started falling over and we were afraid the dogs would knock it down and escape. Sim’s dad, Steve, and brother, Jesse, came up to help him as well. Finally our fence was restored and all was happy.

You can check out pictures of both of our weekend adventures in the photo gallery. I also uploaded some other pictures from the previous week, including my birthday party, Ellie’s bee sting, and some other random stuff. Enjoy!

So last night Sim and I went to Sauvie Island Farms and picked about 110 lbs of peaches. Why on earth would we do something like that, you ask? Because this weekend I am going to attempt to learn how to can! My mother is coming over and she is going to teach me yet another thing I can do in the kitchen.

I grew up with my mom making everything that there was to make. She cooked, canned or froze just about everything possible. At any given time, we probably could have gone a year without leaving the house and never starve. As a result, I got really spoiled with great food. In fact, to this day I cannot eat store bought applesauce. Are you kidding me people? That’s not even close to what applesauce is suppose to taste like, let alone feel like. Gross!

Since I plan to one day have children, I want to learn how to do all the things my mother did for me. So this weekend, I am going to can peaches. I can assure you I will be taking some pictures and will have some great stories to tell on Monday! Check back then!

Ok, I have been so busy lately that I haven’t had any time to sit down and blog! Here is an update of the last few days:

Ellie is fine. She was stung by a bee. I took her to the vet and she is severely allergic to bees. If she had been a small dog, the sting very well could have killed her. Thank goodness for big dogs!

My birthday was a smashing success. We started off Friday night with a little pre-funk action. We had some friends over for food and drinks. I got a little more drunk than I planned, but its my party and I’ll drink if I want to! Then on the actual day, my mom came up to take me to breakfast. My sister and her cute kids dropped by and brought me my gift (thanks guys!). Then Sim, Adam and I all headed downtown to Waterfront Park to watch the Red Bull Flugtag. We met up with my friend, Kristin, from work and hung out until the heat and crowds were no longer bearable. Then we sought out Air Conditioning by catching an afternoon showing of M. Night Shamalan’s The Village. It was not what I expected, but not entirely disappointing. Finally, Simeon took me out to dinner at Romano’s Macaroni Grill. It was a lovely day.

Then to round out the weekend of festivities, my boss and his wife took Simeon and I out for lunch at his golf course country club. We ate out on the terrace and enjoyed the beautiful day. It was all very posh and very fun. Then I spent the rest of the day resting, recovering from all the sun/heat exposure. I don’t know why, but the sun zaps every last ounce of energy out of me.

Oh well, I am now back to work and can only look forward to next year’s birthday….the big 25! Look out!

Ok, yesterday I was totally wrapping up my freak summer cold, (which thankfully only lasted a few day) so I was thinking things were going well. I had a relatively nice day at work and got to go shopping (retail therapy, yeah!) with Adam and Simeon after work. Then we stopped by our house to feed the dogs and consolidate to one car. So we took off and ran a few errands, grabbed a bite to eat, and headed back to our house to crash for the night. I was up in my bathroom getting ready for bed when Ellie wandered in for a drink of water.

Now Ellie is very set in her ways about drinking water. She always comes over and drips all over the nearest person as soon as she has consumed an entire bowl of water. So I instinctually go over to her and kind of clean her up a bit (this also cuts down on accidents due to slipping on wet linoleum). As I reached down to lift up her head I was shocked. I had to do a double take. Ellie’s head had practically doubled in size. I instantly recoiled. For a minute I wasn’t even sure it was my dog. My beautiful black lab had swollen up so badly she looked like a Shar-Pei! Her eyes were reduced to slits and her jowls were so huge it looked like she had two tennis balls in her mouth!

I called down the stairs to Simeon and Adam to come up stairs. Realizing they couldn’t hear me, I ran downstairs with Ellie in tow. I showed them her face and said we needed to call the vets office. I frantically ran upstairs to find the number, knowing that after hours they give you the number of the emergency 24-hour office. I wanted to find the office that was closest to our house, but for some reason they kept telling us we needed to drive to Tualatin! So Adam started calling the vet offices to get more information. After several attempts, he got a technician on the phone who walked Simeon through the necessary questions to help us find out why our dog was so swollen. The best thing they could determine was an allergic reaction. They instructed us to give her Benadryl and if that didn’t work we would have to bring her in.

Not being allergy sufferers, we didn’t have anything on hand, so Simeon and Adam ran to the nearest store to buy some Benadryl. We disguised the medicine in a jellybean and Ellie quickly slipped into a Benadryl induced stupor, and laid down to sleep. Not knowing if she would have a reaction to the Benadryl, we were constantly checking her to make sure she was still breathing and the swelling was going down. Needless to say, I did not get much sleep last night!

We awoke this morning to more of a Rottweiler than a Shar-Pei, which was quite a relief. She was still kind of swollen, so we gave her some more Benadryl. The only changes in her attitude are as a result of the Benadryl, so I know the swelling isn’t hurting her. But I am still the concerned “mother” and I am going home to check on her at lunch today. If she is still swollen, I am going to take her to the vet and make sure everything is ok.

From what I have been able to deduct on my own researching dogs with swollen faces and no other noticeable side affects, it that she was most likely stung by a bee and had an allergic reaction. Dogs tend to swell around their eyes and mouth because they chew on whatever bites them. But I will keep you posted on what happens next!

But I really want to thank Simeon and Adam for helping me keep calm last night and taking care of my lil’ furbaby when I wasn’t able to function. I guess I’m not always so cool, calm, and collected in an emergency as I thought. Its good to know I have people around to help me when I need it. Thanks guys. I love you both!

So as you all know I am relatively new to the whole blogging thing, but today I got to do my first guest blog. It was pretty neat. I got to play around with EE over at Joelle’s site. If you want, you can go read my post there too! Its appropriately titled “My First Time Guest Blogging.” How exciting!

Here it is!

So I’m not sure how I did it, but I am sick. I’ve got a damn cold and its a balmy 80 degrees outside. Go figure.

Yesterday I was miserable. I couldn’t go five minutes with out sneezing, which led to blowing my nose, which led to constant use of hand sanitizer. Then the cycle would start all over again. (It was really amazing that I got anything accomplished!) I kept IMing Simeon to keep him updated on my status. (Misery loves company.) He told me he had some Sudafed in his desk he would give me at lunch time. Alas, there was a ray of light!

It had never taken so long for lunch to come. I was daydreaming about Sudafed. I was really miserable. So I drove over to Sim’s office to pick him up for lunch. I called his cell to let him know I was almost in the parking lot and jokingly asked, “You got the stuff?” He said he did and would be right down. Finally I was united with my Sudafed, which when he saw the look in my eyes understood my pain and Sim announced he had my “Suda-friend.”

Once the medicine started to work my symptoms lessened, but were still there. Needless to say, I went to bed quite early, with my other friend NyQuil.

Today as soon as I got up I popped a couple Tylenol Severe Congestion and have been wandering around with medicine head. Sometimes I don’t know what is worse, the cold symptoms or the medication symptoms. Whatever the case, I need this cold gone by the weekend, cause it my birthday! Wahoo!

Oh, I have been so busy lately, but it’s been really fun. My friend Adam just moved back to Oregon after an almost five-year stint in California. (Don’t worry we got him back before he started acting all Californian…but it was a close one!) So he has been over the last few nights. He came over Sunday night and we made some yummy Margarita Chicken on the BBQ and caught up on old times. It has been ages since we have talked, so there was much to catch up on.

Then last night Adam called my cell phone and was chatting with Sim about his house hunting when his phone suddenly cut out. You can imagine our surprise when a few minutes later he showed up on our doorstep! So he came in and told us about his first day at his new job and his frustrations with finding a house up here. But Sim and I both know he really came for the high speed internet access and Wi-Fi!

So seeing Adam again got me thinking about how long we have been friends, and he reminds me that it has been since fourth grade! Can you imagine that? There are people I went to college with a few short years ago that I haven’t spoken to in ages, yet Adam and I have managed to stay friends, and more importantly stay in contact, for over 15 years! That is really quite impressive!

However it makes me wonder where all the other friendships went wrong. Were we just never meant to be lasting friends? Did our differences just change so drastically? And where are they all now? I’m still a few years away from a high school reunion, but I wonder what has happened to all of my friends over the years. Was “BFF” really just a big sham?

Ok, so I swear we have pictures and I swear some of them will be fabulous, but we are working on it. Ok, ok, I am harrassing him while he tries to work on it (Apparently “Is it done yet? Is it done yet?” isn’t really helping. Go figure.). So in the mean time, I have some fun stuff to share.

I saw this quiz over at Joelle’s.

Wackiness: 44/100
Rationality: 62/100
Constructiveness: 68/100
Leadership: 56/100

You are an SRCL–Sober Rational Constructive Leader. This makes you an Ayn Rand ideal. Taggart? Roark? Galt? You are all of these. You were born to lead. You may not be particularly exciting, but you have a strange charisma–born of intellect and personal drive–that people begin to notice when they have been around you a while. You don’t like to compromise, but you recognize when you have to.

You care absolutely nothing what other people think, and this somehow attracts people to you. Treat them well, use them wisely, and ascend to your rightful rank.

Go take it yourself.