LN #1: Tell about your life now

"Here Come the Brides" was a favorite TV show in the late '60s

It wasn't just Seattle that provided some good "scenery!"

Other than hearing all about the Space Needle and the monorail that were built here in 1962 for the Seattle World's Fair causing me to believe that Seattle was truly a city of the future (a place "The Jetsons" could live), my first "exposure" to this great city was through the TV show "Here Come the Brides."  This show about the Bolt brothers, who owned a logging mountain, had gone back east and recruited 100 brides to make their loggers happy and persuade them to stay in the lonely wilderness town.

Maybe I was easily influenced, but when I first came to Seattle on a short vacation in 2009, I had no doubt that "the bluest skies you've ever seen are in Seattle" or that "the hills the greenest green in Seattle" would be true!  Now mind you, I never had any real desire to ever even visit Seattle.  NEVER. EVER.  Never even crossed my mind to visit Seattle!  Until one day Jana (my extra daughter, best friend to Brookie) and I decided to venture to the coast to check out Forks, WA and all this Twilight excitement.  On the way back home, we stopped in Seattle and spent the night.  We toured on the Ducks, visited the Space Needle and shopped at Pike Place Market and when I headed home, I felt like I was leaving a part of me behind.  I felt like I was leaving home. I was destined to live here.  It was just a matter of time.

Space Needle: 50 years old last year!
Did I say the skies are blue?

Now, I know all that most people think of when they think of Seattle is rain and gray skies.  And it's true, yet somehow I've never seen it through those eyes.  Maybe I was pre-programmed by Perry Como's song about this great city and am truly brainwashed.  I only recently got an inkling of perhaps what other people see.  I was reading a book and one of the characters was talking about his depression: "I thought about the fact that there seemed to be no color in the world to me... none. Everything was some lifeless gray fog to me.  The sky, the grass, flowers-- nothing had color when I looked at it." Marcia Lynn McClure

It hit me then.  Was this what others see and think of when they think of Seattle?  Because this is NOTHING like what I see.  I see beautiful green; not just in the trees but in all the moss that is so alive this time of year.  And all the flowers that are coming to life, seem to be the most vibrant ones I've ever seen in my life. Bright yellow daffodils and rhododendrons and azaleas of all colors everywhere!  And the sky truly is a beautiful shade of blue! (Now Lanie, I can't say that it's any bluer than the skies you see in Cor-na-coe-pya, but it IS beautiful!)  Maybe I just appreciate it so much more because we don't see it often... But it seems to me that more often than not, it rains at night, is rainy when I go to work in the morning and, most days, when I leave work I leave looking at blue skies with just some white, fluffy clouds overhead.

Hoh Rainforest

I guess it doesn't hurt that I've always loved rain and I really hate ice, which, fortunately, we really don't get here.  It doesn't really get hot in the summer and it really doesn't get cold in the winter.  I mean, I could probably count the number of mornings I've had to scrape my windshield in the two years I've lived here!

And how did I come to live in this beautiful place?  Work.  Well, work and destiny.  There were so many times that I could have given up on my Walmart career, but I knew I could never go back to teaching, although I still love teaching.  Most of my adult life has been spent in management and retail, though.  It's what I was thrown into and it's what I know.  For ten years, I coveted an opportunity to work in Talent Development and finally, after nineteen long years and nearly losing my job twice due to restructuring, I landed my dream job in Wally World!  I finally have the opportunity to combine about twenty-nine years of life experience with my degree and love of teaching and work for one of the best bosses I've ever had (who repeatedly says she should have had me on her team years ago) with a team of people I love, to influence young people just starting out in the careers!  It's fabulous!  

And to top it all off, I have found close friends through church.  The only time I've ever felt so close to people at church was when we lived in Ashland, Ohio.  The people in that small branch became family to us.  They helped raise my kids and I like to think that I may have had a hand in helping to raise some of theirs.  But here, I've been accepted and befriended by more women than I ever would have thought possible.  I work directly with three wonderful women.  I attend a singles' family home evening most Monday nights and I work in the temple every Saturday.  That's another dream come true!

Seattle LDS Temple
Did I say the skies are blue?

Meg says she's never seen me so happy any place I've ever lived.  In a big way she's right.  Yes,  it would be better if even one of my kids lived nearby with some of my grandkids. Yes, it would be better if I had my eternal companion to share my life, but I probably wouldn't have those things anywhere else that I had a job either.  So, until I decide to retire or step down to a people greeter position, I'll just be....

"Like a beautiful child, growing up, free and wild; full of hopes and full of fears; full of laughter, full of tears; full of dreams to last the years... in Seattle!"

Lesley Gore singing "Sunshine, Lollipops & Rainbows"