Thomas Times 2014

I realize this may be hard to read. 

If you want to see the plain text version, scroll down past the newsletter.

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So, this time last year I was writing to tell you that Damon and I were once again gainfully employed. A year has gone by and we’re still with the same companies. A few years ago, it wouldn’t seem like a big deal to hold onto a full-time job for a year, but these days, we are thankful for it everyday. (Some days more than others, lol.)

It has been an adjustment. Probably more so for me than for Damon. He has had 2 different jobs since we moved back from Oregon, this is my first since we came back. It was tough transitioning back into sitting behind a desk for 8 hours a day. I really loved my dog walking business, but I am a terrible salesperson, so I was never able to really get it off the ground.

I have also had some trouble learning to work with my new boss’s, shall we say, “strong personality.” I’m so quiet and try not to complain too much, she is 180 of that. I’ve had to endure yelling and slamming and constant complaining about anything and everything. She and I share a small office within the company’s larger office, so I realized, for my own sanity, I was going to have to figure some things out.

And that’s not to say she’s a terrible person. I’ve learned a lot from her and she really does have a good heart, we just have very different personalities. I probably drive her crazy with how quiet I am. She’s probably thinking, “yell, slam something down, you’re too quiet!”

But, there were days I would drive home from work crying, asking God why I was placed in these close quarters with this boisterous negativity. Then, I figured it out. This situation has made me realize I need to not take everything so personally. If she is yelling and slamming things around, I have to tell myself it’s not directed at me. That hasn’t been easy. I’ve always taken everything to heart and as a personal attack. So, for learning to let things go, I am grateful. It’s freeing.

My favorite thing I’ve found online this year is a perfect mantra (especially since I’m part Polish.)

It just isn’t my problem. My job is to do the best I can do, anything other than that is out of my hands.

In other good news of the year, Damon and I celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary! It’s so nice to be able to say, even with all the shit we’ve been through, that these have been the best 10 years of our lives. Because no matter how much we go through, as long as we do it together, it’s OK. We love each other more every single day.

We took a couple of days off work and went out to Palm Desert for a quiet, long weekend. I know, I know, Palm Desert? We kinda thought the same thing, but I knew I wanted to go somewhere warm (It was October and I wasn’t ready to give up on summer yet) and we had a great time.

First we went to the JW Marriott resort. You know, the one where Jesse’s dad got married in Saved by the Bell, lol. It was beautiful! They have tons of birds, so I thoroughly enjoyed that. Flamingos, herons, ducks, coots and egrets outside and some beautiful, tropical birds in big cages in the lobby. They also have a little man-made stream that flows around the resort and into the lobby where you can take a free gondola ride!

The next day we took the tram up the mountain in Palm Springs. I had never been up there before, it was fun. It was especially neat because since Damon used to work the Skyway at Disneyland, he was able to explain to me how it all worked. He even noticed that it was made by the same company as the Skyway. Here we are at the top.

Our final day there we drove to downtown Palm Springs and drooled over all the mid-century modern architecture and antique stores. We love anything mid-century modern, so we were in heaven! Of course it was all well out of our price range, but we still had a good time window shopping.

The other big news in our family this year was welcoming our first nibling! Yes, nibling is an actual word, even though my spell check is telling me otherwise right now. A nibling is a niece or nephew, ours happens to be a nephew! 

Damon’s brother and his wife brought little William Verne Larson into this world on October 11. He was 7 lbs. 10 oz. and 20.5 inches long. We fell in love immediately and we are already thinking about all the fun things we’ll get to do with him as he grows up. You know, all the things his mom and dad won’t let him do, hehe.

So, that’s our 2014. It’s the best year we’ve had in quite some time and we pray we can continue on this upswing in 2015 and beyond. We wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year! 

Love and hugs, from the Thomases.

extra! extra! read all about it!

when i was a kid, my dad worked nights for a newspaper as a pressman. every wednesday (back when people used to get paid every week) he would take me down to the paper so he could pick up his paycheck. i got to experience the giant presses, the smell of ink (oh, how i love the smell of ink!) and the comradery of working there from a young age. my dad would walk me around and show me all the different departments and i decided i, too, wanted to work there one day.

when i was 18, after i graduated from high school, my dad brought me home an application for the news paste-up department. i was so excited, that was the department i had fallen in love with during our tours. i applied and the day before my 19th birthday, i started working the swing shift in the news paste-up department at the press-enterprise newspaper.

it was all so fascinating. the big wooden banks covered with plexi-glass sheets with all the newspaper boards lined up by sections waiting to be decorated with the day's happenings was so beautiful to me. grabbing stories as they came out of typesetting machines in galley strips, running them through a melted waxer to stick them to the boards and cutting the galley strips down to size with xacto blades. there was skill, there was precision and there was artistry.

i learned everything i could, i couldn't get enough. i would even go over to other departments to learn what they did and help them out if we were slow. i loved it!

but, as much as i loved the work, what really made it was the people. some of the people i was now working with i had known since i was born and some from my dad walking me through on payday wednesdays. so, automatically, i was surrounded by not only co-workers, but family.

i'm not going to pretend it was all peaches. like any job it had it's not so good moments and like friends and family we didn't all always get along like happiness and rainbows and remember, i started when i was 19, i still had a lot of rebellion to go through. but, all in all, my memories are the good ones.

today, i got to see a lot of those people again. since we are all so close, we do keep in touch on facebook and we've seen each other at a few funerals, but today was different. today was to celebrate something we all had in common. a love of the newspaper business. the old newspaper business and the people that made it all happen.

we laughed, we cried, we fell back into old times. we all know so much about each other and each other's families, it was great to catch up with everyone and to be in a room full of familiar faces, laughter and love.

i just keep thinking about that line from the movie stand by me...

"i never had any friends later like the ones i had when i was 12. geez, does anyone?"

but for me, it's coworkers and i was 19-30 years old.

when i left the newspaper, i didn't realize what a great thing we all had. since i was so young when i started, i guess i thought every job would be like that. it's just not. we had something special and i'll always cherish those years and the relationships i was able to form because of them.

love. give it, get it, spread it, share it. be it.

so, i haven't had a blog post in quite some time. since christmas to be precise. i've been in a bit of a slump. i last wrote about getting a new job, which at the time i was so happy about. in the following months i had some real struggles with how i felt about it. i had such a bad experience in oregon, i kind of felt like i had sold myself out and landed right back where i was. i was having a hard time conforming again. after all, i had just been unemployed for over 2 years and could do what i wanted, when i wanted. i had a dog walking business which i absolutely loved, but i'm just not a self-marketer, so my client base was tiny. loyal, but tiny. all i thought about all day while feeling like i was chained to a desk again was, i could have made my business work, i just needed more time. i talked to my husband about wanting to leave my job and try my business again, but being the sensible one who lives by logic rather than feelings, he gently persuaded me to stay with the full-time gig. so, i would get teary-eyed on the way to work, and then take a cry break at noon in my car while i ate lunch and listened to comedy podcasts to try and get my mind right to get through the rest of the day.

i was also having terrible feelings of self-doubt in my field. i don't have a college degree. i have been in this industry for over 20 years and have taught myself everything i know, but i don't have the paper to back it up, so i was feeling inferior. my boss never hesitated to mention her college degree and in my way of turning all things into negativity toward myself, i took it as a jab at my lack of one.

since then, i have enrolled in school (i got an A in my first class!) and am working really hard to not take it all so personally and seriously. i've decided not to be a shrinking violet and speak my opinions, in a kind and flexible way of course, and i'm finding people respond to it. it's kind of cool.

i have also recently turned 40 and although no birthday number has ever bothered me before, this one got to me. it hurt because i felt like i'd wasted and screwed up a lot of my years. my mom talked about how she was ok with 40 as it was around the time i was graduating from high school and she and my dad were getting settled into 2 incomes after my mom taking time off to raise my brother and i and feeling comfortable in where they were in life. i had none of that. i do have a wonderful husband whom i thank God for every single day, but what else did i have? no degree, no children, no house, no long-term employment where i was making a decent amount of money to feel comfortable in where i was in life. what had i done with it all?

well, i had tried things. granted a lot (or even most) of those things didn't work out as i'd hoped, but at least i tried. i never wanted to be the person to live in one place my whole life and raise kids. it wasn't in me, so to look back now and feel like i missed out was ridiculous. i didn't miss out, i chose to go a different route. i can't have it both ways. i chose to get out of town and live and i did. it may not have turned out exactly as i thought it should, but really what do i have to complain about? in the grand scheme of things what is it that matters? is it money? no. possessions? no. a piece of paper saying i have a proper education? no. in the end, all that matters is how much love you have given away. "and now these three remain: faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love - 1 corinthians 13:13" that's it. that's the only thing that matters. it is the only thing that will live on after you die. it is the only thing that fulfills those empty places in your heart. that's it. and as soon as i figured that out. i was ok with turning 40 because i really think there are more people in this world that would call me kind and generous than people that would call me an uptight bitch. and to the people who would call me an uptight bitch (because i'm sure they're out there) well, you know what? that's their problem.

here's an example: my brother and sister-in-law and my husband knew 40 was weighing heavy on me, so they all decided to give me the most epic weekend i could imagine. my brother and sister-in-law drove all the way down from san francisco and my husband got us all tickets to a comedy show for friday night and tickets to disneyland for saturday. i was surrounded by love and support. were they all talking about what a fuck-up i was and how they couldn't believe i didn't have a degree, a house or a pile of money? no. we talked about how much we all loved and missed spending time with each other and how lucky we were to be such a close-knit family who would do anything for each other. that's where i'm rich. i'm rich in love. i've seen a quote online that sums it up. it says, "some people are so poor that all they have is money" it's the truth. you can't buy love. you have to make it and earn it. your job every single day is to live simply and try to help others in any way you can. once you figure that out, everything else has a way of sorting itself out.

so, go out and love without hesitation. hug someone and feel the hug back. there's electricity there. it mends and heals and grows. that's when you'll realize just how rich you really are. i know i did.

Thomas Times 2013

the wetlands through the insufficient lens of my iphone

lately the hubby and i have been trying to get a bit healthier and shed some extra pounds. we used to enjoy riding our beach cruisers around town, but they were stolen last year. (sad face) i had an older beach cruiser stored at my folks' house so we brought that home, but what fun is going beach cruising by yourself? "honey, i'm home. your turn to go ride the bike by yourself." i realize some people do like to ride solo, but we like to do things as a team for fun and encouragement. then, my hubby had the great idea of getting one of those stands to turn it into a stationary bike. it works great and we've been (almost) consistent with riding it. today, however, we just weren't feelin' it. i suggested we go for a walk instead. ok, where should we walk? our 2 favorite places are the wetlands and the beach. we were having trouble deciding (not an unusual occurrence in our house) and thought we'd flip for it. at the last second, i said, "wetlands!" i'm glad i did.

before we left i had a fleeting thought of taking my big camera, but decided, nah, it's heavy and bulky, my iphone should suffice. we started out on our trek and the first thing we saw was 5 turkey vultures. 1 was guarding and feasting on a corpse of some kind and the 4 others were watching and waiting. are you kidding me? we see turkey vultures all the time, but 5 of them? together? feasting? ugh. why didn't i bring my freakin' camera? i love how the one on the bottom is guarding it with his wings open like, "nothing to see here, move along." here is a crappy iphone shot of them

then, we turned around and saw about 20 brandt's cormorants sunning themselves on a log. we've seen them on the other side of the wetlands before, but not this close. crappy iphone picture #2

to the left of them were 2 beautiful american white pelicans on a little patch of earth. of course, pelicans are no rare site in huntington beach, but white pelicans? i only recall seeing one other one and that was while i was volunteering in the wildlife care center. crappy iphone picture #3

we continued walking and here's where not having the camera really hurt. we saw a super rare reddish egret. i know that's what he was because a couple of years ago we were walking along and some birders with one of those gigantic telephoto lenses (drool, want!) were kind enough to point him out to us and we got to see him do his goofy fishing dance. if you've never seen a reddish egret dance before, you should youtube it, it's pretty funny. we didn't get to see him do his dance this time, but he was standing near 2 great blue herons so we had a nice size and color comparison. he must stop by every year on his rogue migratory route. here is the wondrous bird in all his crappy iphone camera resolution glory.

and, just to add insult to injury, as we were leaving the wetlands, we saw an osprey (on the left) and a turkey vulture (on the right) sharing a tree branch. what? you've got to be kidding me! it's like the wildlife all said, "karen's coming without her camera, do some epic shit today!"

it was a beautiful day none-the-less. we got some good walking exercise in, saw some really beautiful creatures against gorgeous, bright blue water and a cloudless sky and i got to spend quality time in nature with my hubby. i really can't ask for any more than that.

and really, i have nothing against the iphone camera. i rarely take my big camera anywhere with me anymore because i can usually get a pretty good shot with the iphone. after all, it's not like i sell my photos or anything, i just like taking them for memories and to share with friends and family. today was just one of those times i really wish i had brought the big one.

here are some other shots of birds that were nice enough to be in a range better suited for the iphone camera capabilities. a snowy egret, a great blue heron and a great egret and great blue heron together.

let's get serious for a minute

after being offered a job that i was really excited about starting, it was revoked. it was not the fault of the person who hired me, but of corporate politics and a bad economy. unfortunately, i had already quit a part time job i was working and cancelled and got refunds for all the steps i had begun for the business i was starting. this one is for all the people that think i'm "taking everything so well" and that i have a "wonderful attitude" through it all. you can't see the tears streaming down my face as i post some of these positive things to the internet.

it's also to the people that think they can't take another day of whatever it is they are going through. hold on. i'm not going to say it gets better because i'm not sure i believe that. i mean, it will get better, but let's be honest, it's fleeting, it's gonna get bad again, too. we've just got to try and not get too wrapped up in either side of the curve.

i'm writing this as i'm coming off of about a month long depression. that's essentially losing a month of my life because every waking moment meant misery. yes, i've had a few distractions through it and maintained fairly well at them, but for the most part it meant crying uncontrollably while being physically unable to get myself off the couch. i would talk to myself and tell myself i needed to get up and do something, anything and i would muster up enough energy to stand up. and where would i go? to bed. that was my life for a month. bed to couch to bed and back again. just getting from room to room was a struggle.

if you don't suffer from depression let me try and explain it. it's a dam really. my "normal" days mean my dam is doing its job. i can put everything behind that dam and live a decent life with a husband who adores me and i adore just the same. but then with the snap of a finger something happens. one morning you wake up and realize your dam broke. i'm not talking a hole that you can patch where water is just trickling out (after all, that happens even when the dam is working), i'm talking your dam is completely fucked, gone, like it never existed. so everything you've been putting behind that dam, all the hateful thoughts toward yourself, all the insecurities, all the doubts, all the mistakes you've made and irrationalities you've dammed up all come rushing at you like a tsunami. there's no where to go. you're stuck taking the full force of it and it knocks you right off your fucking feet.

depression is not someone being sad. depression is not something someone can snap out of. depression is not someone trying to get sympathy. depression is all consuming. depression hurts both mentally and physically. it comes with headaches, nausea, loss of appetite and literal aches and pains. your body feels 100 times heavier than normal and moving your appendages takes intense effort. it hurts, too to know how much you are hurting others around you. the last thing i ever want to do is hurt anyone else, especially my husband.

thankfully i have a very supportive husband that understands what i go through and offers his love and support. i haven't been that lucky in all my relationships. i've been called crazy more times than i can count and i'm sure a lot of you have, too. we're not crazy. we're not. our brains just work differently and sometimes it skips a cog and breaks down for a bit until the gears get lined up again.

but, i have to say, i realized something. if there is anything good about depression it's this: when the fog of your head clears, you are re-born in a sense. you get to see and feel and taste and hear things that you haven't in a month or a week or...

i took a walk. a long walk. i am fortunate enough to live at the beach and i walked from my apartment through our natural wetlands wildlife sanctuary to the ocean and back. along my way i noticed the cactus blooming and realized how i could relate to that. here is this thorny, scary looking plant with the most beautiful blossom growing off of it. that's how i feel. my bloom is in there, but i have to endure all these sharp needles to get through to it. sometimes it takes a couple of days and sometimes the growth is so thick it takes a whole month.

so, i don't know if this has helped anybody or made any sense to anybody, but i hope so. it's been hard for me to even post it. depression is one of those things you're not supposed to talk about. how moronic is that? one of the best things you can do for depression is talk about it. if you are the one struggling with depression, please hold on. it will pass and you will get to experience all the wonderful things again if only for a while until your next episode. cherish those moments, but don't get so wrapped up in them that you think it will always be that way. continue to take your meds, be cautious and don't have false hopes that it's magically going to get better and you'll never be in that situation again, but also take the time to enjoy the happiness while you have it. and if you have never struggled with depression, i hope maybe you understand a little more what someone you love may be going through. don't take it personally. it's not about you, it's about them.

now go hug somebody.

keep the faith

today has been... wow. as you know, i've been working on starting up my own dog walking business. i've been working on it for weeks and had everything in place. the last step was getting my marketing materials ordered and into people's hands. thankfully, when i tried ordering my business cards and postcards last night the website failed, cause it turns out i won't be needing them after all...

you may remember i worked for a place at the end of last year called BH North America that sells fitness equipment. i did graphic design for their marketing department and i loved it there. it was one of the best working experiences i have had (next to working at The Press, of course!) well today, i was going about my business and i got a message on facebook from both of the people i worked with at BH saying that they tried my phone number and couldn't reach me so to call them asap. i did and my old boss, Julie, offered me a full-time job! i was floored. i immediately started crying tears of joy and disbelief. i worked with Julie and Sean from the beginning October till the end of December and leaving was such a sad day. Julie (who fought right up until the end to keep me) assured me that if anything ever came up she would call me right away. i knew she was good for her word, but i didn't expect anything with the economy the way it is. well lo and behold, she came through. 

for i know the plans i have for you, declares the Lord. plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. - jeremiah 29:11

honestly, i'm still in shock over the whole thing. i had completely given up on full-time work, i just regarded it as a thing of the past and i was going to have to make my own future. so now, here i am with a business in the works and an offer for full-time employment. what to do? take the job, of course! 

i have to admit though, i'm a little sad that i won't be walking dogs anymore, i really did enjoy it. and it's been fun getting a business going, but at least i didn't have many clients yet (thank you, Daphne for being so understanding when i had to cancel your walks!) and now, i feel i'll have a confidence i didn't have before because i know that if things go south, i can make it on my own. i started a business, i have that skill now and if need be, i can do it again.

so, today proves to me, never give up, never lose faith. i make it a point to keep my posts on facebook positive, but it's been a rough year and a half.  i've spent a lot of time down in the dumps. my supportive, loving husband can attest to that. being out of work and not knowing where my next paycheck was coming from was rough and stressful, but i tried everything i could. i've baked cupcakes, i've done freelance graphics, i've walked dogs, no one can accuse me of being lazy or not trying. i'm just so thankful that i can feel like a productive member of our family again. God is good and prayers are answered. have a blessed night everyone.

edit - a few days before i was supposed to start i received a call saying my start date was going to be moved back a week. by the time that week was over i was told i wouldn't be working there after all. it's business, i can't take it personally, the budget just wouldn't allow it. it is disappointing, definitely, but life goes on. that wasn't the place for me after all. my time will come. i've grateful for them trying to hire me back at all.