Ewww!

We're in Wyoming at the moment, visiting Grandma. (Can't find the camera adaptor thingy to upload pics again.) We'd planned to visit her at her home in Wheatland, but she's fallen sick and is at the big hospital in Cheyenne.
Grandma is doing better, but several things have struck me about Cheyenne. First off, darkness makes it very difficult to tell that there is a railway hub a block and a half from your motel. Trains have been going by every twenty minutes or so. I can sleep through a lot of stuff, but that's a bit much!
The hospital here is fairly new--one of the plaques commemorated construction in 2003. It's also designed so the patient floors have an identical layout. Grandma got moved from the sixth floor to the fourth floor, but kept the same room number and location on the floor. Her new room looked exactly like her old one! If I hadn't walked down with her as the staff wheeled her bed, I would have been really disoriented.
All was going well with our visit until Shirley got bored. She started crawling on the hardwood floor, and then she started licking it! I know what gets spilled on hospital floors, and watching that made me really queasy. Needless to say, she got a bath as soon as we got back to the motel.

Really, Oregon?

I had job interview yesterday for a place I really want to work, and am otherwise wading through the maze of unemployment.
Does anyone else find it ironic that the Oregon Department of Employment's website for filing unemployment claims is www.workinginoregon.org? I suppose it's more encouraging than www.notworkinginoregon.org or www.goodluckfindingajobinthiseconomy.org, but really!

Electronic mayhem

We don't get Shirley many toys with batteries. The way we see it, she makes enough noise as it is, so why would we want to add to it? However, that doesn't stop the assorted aunties and uncles from giving her toys that make any number of interesting noises.

Like this adorable tea set. It comes with two cups, three treats, and a plate. At least, I thought it was adorable until Shirley figured out how to push the button and make the tea kettle sing its little song every ten seconds. "I'm a little teapot, ready for some tea..." The song is starting to haunt my dreams! Hope the batteries die soon.

That time of the month

Yes, it's that time of the month, the one where I lay on the couch with a hot pad and whine a lot. Adding to the whining is the fact that lost my job on Thursday, so now I'm trying to find a new job, one that offers benefits, but isn't in a nursing home. (Just because I've got a lot of experience trying to get little old ladies with severe dementia to take their pills doesn't mean I want to do that all day!)

Shirley has learned a new word: no. To be more precise, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" I hear this a lot at meal times, as I'm trying to help her hold the spoon. She desperately wants to feed herself, and has taken to screaming "no!" at the top of her lungs at any perceived attempts to hinder her independence. Usually this means she's holding a spoon in one hand and stabbing it into the plate while using the other hand to shovel food into her mouth. Watching her eat is not for the faint of stomach!

On the plus side, however, it is nice to be able to spend time with Brian and the Mimi while they're awake and it's daylight outside.

Billy's wedding pictures

I haven't posted since right before we left to drive to Coeur d' Alene for Billy's wedding. As a surprise for Billy, we arranged for our college buddy LeeAnn to car-pool with us. We also had Brad's fiancee Carin riding with us, as well as the Mimi.

All was well and good until the Mimi got carsick all over the backseat before we'd even picked up Lee! (How can someone who doesn't even weigh 25 pounds yet acheive that level of projectile vomiting?!) Thankfully, this turned out to be a one-time occurrence.

Lee's date Josh had to work and couldn't go to the wedding, so she found a "new date." (Don't put a garden gnome on your wedding registry unless you want something like this to happen.)

After seeing Billy and Sabera married and dropping people off with their respective rides/airports, we headed south to visit Mom and Aunt Tig.

We also visited Palouse Falls. It's most spectacular in March or April when the spring floods are in full force, but it's lovely any time of year.

The canyon below the falls:

Seeing this really makes me want to take up oil painting again, but I'll have to stick with yarn and other non-toxic art mediums for now while Shirley is in the "It's pretty--I wonder what it tastes like!" stage of development.