Oh ONLY in Oregon

Only in Oregon can you go from beautiful sunshine to monsoon rains, from hail to snow, all in the course of 24 hours. Not only is the weather messing around with your immediate surroundings, but it also messes with your head. I mean, you wake up, all sleepy eyed and out of it, and then you see that gorgeous sunshine, and your daily perspective immediately changes. Well, mine does, anyway. And then when you look out the window a few hours later and it’s pouring down rain, you feel a bit down, simply because it isn’t pretty outside anymore. Totally throws you off, man!

Don’t get me wrong – Oregon is amazing. Just wish the weather wouldn’t be so temperamental.

So imagine how confused I was when I woke up to both sunshine AND a layer of snow on my car this morning.

PEACHY.

Puppy Fix

All my life, I’ve grown up with a dog in my family. Our first dog, a cocker spaniel named Jasmine died when I was 8, and I was devastated. Which is strange, considering she was inbred, and therefore a little crazy. The daily chore I shared with my sister was to feed Jasmine every morning. And every morning that it was my turn to feed her, my dad had to go out with me to hold the dog back so she wouldn’t eat me alive when I put the food down.

Yeah, she was a bit nuts.

But despite all her faults, she was the family pet that I was born with, so I cried for a month after she died. Then my family moved from Oregon to Eastern Washington, and that kind of transition was difficult for all of us to deal with. Soon after we moved, my older sister and I started begging for a dog. Like next-level-over-the-top begging. Our mom took the defensive stance when this subject always came up – “Girls, you’ll have to go talk to your father about this.” So of course, we would go to my dad and beg in the way that only Daddy’s little girls can beg. But then after a while without any results, we resorted to playing dirty. Or at least a new tactic that was sure to get his attention. Subtle like a freight-train was our objective.

Our dog breed of choice was a Labrador. As a family, we had decided this, but my parents were very particular about the kind of lab we could get. It had to be the right size, it couldn’t come from a kennel, it had to be purebred, yadda yadda yadda.

So my sister and I wrote out probably 30 notes – things such as “Labs make great family pets,” and “A dog takes away family stress,” and “Your daughters really want a puppy.” We put these notes everywhere. They were wrapped around his toothbrush and razor, they were put inside his boating magazines, in his daily lunch that he would take to work, on his pillow and in his sock drawer.

And you know, after about 2 weeks of this bombardment, he finally got down to finding a dog. We drove out to a house about 45 minutes away, where a young girl had bred her purebred chocolate lab for her 4-H project, which resulted in 9 adorable black lab puppies. We ended up taking home the runt of the litter, a tiny thing that we named Sadie.

For the past 13 years, Sadie has been an integral part of our lives. It’s the family joke that she’s the “third sister,” since she’s the only one still at home with my parents. When I left for college, I went through major puppy withdrawals, since I usually used Sadie as stress-relief. Since my parents were about 300 miles away, it wasn’t exactly easy to get my stress relief.

So, I had to improvise. For the past 3 years, whenever I get really stressed, I go down to the mall and spend some quality time at Scamps, our local pet store. Just holding and playing with a puppy does amazing wonders for my stress level and blood pressure.
Because you were never stressed in college, right?

I mean, how could you NOT be more relaxed after seeing this face?

These puppies don’t do any justice to replacing the feeling I get when I’m with Sadie, but at least it’s a temporary fix. It just makes my time at home with Sadie all the more special.

God's Country

Since my parents are mainly the ones that read this blog so far, my dad was greatly disappointed by yesterday’s topic of how great Portland is. Unlike myself, my dad um.....greatly dislikes the city. He grew up in Portland, and was more than happy to get away from it to live in a small town in southern Oregon. A town that he has deemed “God’s Country.” Every time I go to visit, he tries to get me to move there, away from Starbucks, shopping malls, rush hour traffic, and metropolitan culture. When I try to explain to him the wonderfulness of sunrises over the West Hills, or one-stop shopping, his comeback is always, “But Kourtney, this is God’s country.” Which basically trumps everything good I ever say about Portland.

So yesterday, I met with him for lunch at the airport during his business trip layover. While eating sushi (something else that isn’t exactly common in southern Oregon’s version of Mayberry), he looked over my blog, and then proceeded to show me pictures from our time at home this Christmas.

“But Kourtney, look at this picture!! You can’t go out on an ATV and shoot a gun in Portland!”

“And look at this sunset over the lake! You don’t have that in Portland!”

“And OUR mayor isn’t on national news!!! Beat that!”

Yeah, my father (and I) have strong opinions on Portland-esque liberal politics. Which is one of the major reasons he wanted to get out of Portland in the first place.

But anyways, in honor of my father, and to be fair to how beautiful southern Oregon is, here are some pictures of the other side of my life. The life of relaxation, nature, and small-town appreciation.

How do I love Portland? Let me Count the Ways…

I grew up in small towns in the Pacific NW my whole life – this area is beautiful. Where else in the US can you find rainforest, mountain national parks, amazing beaches, and pristine lakes, all within a few hours of each other?


















^^View of Portland and Mt. Hood ^^Early morning fog on the beach

As pretty as growing up in the country is, I’ve always been a city girl. Most of my family is based out of Portland, and I’ve been visiting Portland my whole life. I remember driving over the river at night, and seeing the city all lit up…..almost brought a tear to my eye to see a place that had more than 5 stoplights.

Anyways, I digress.

Point is, if you’re ever visiting Portland, there are a million different things to do. Unfortunately, I never discovered this until I was able to leave my college campus and thus had the ability to get out of my college campus bubble. And after growing up in small towns, Portland is the perfect-sized city for me. It has a very small-town feeling in Oregon’s largest city. Everything is within a 30 minute drive (without traffic of course. Unfortunately, anytime you want to drive somewhere, you should add at least 15 minutes to account for the random accident or overturned semi on the freeway), and the beaches, mountains, and lake are all within an hour of the city.

For example, Portland is host to OMSI (the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, one of my favorite places to visit as a kid), the Oregon Zoo (which is home to one of the world’s leading elephant breeding programs), the Portland Trail Blazers NBA team (#4 in the Western Conference!), Forest Park (one of the West’s largest urban city parks), plus Portland is the headquarter city for Nike, Adidas, and Intel. Not to mention the fabulous shopping areas…..and not having to pay sales tax. That’s a big motivation factor for me.

Portland is growing on the national map, too. Did you know that the newly-released movie Coraline was produced by Phil Knight (owner of Nike), using one of Portland’s own up-and-coming production studios? The movie Twilight was also filmed in and around Portland. And older classics such as Free Willy, Goonies, Stand By Me, The Ring, and The Shining were all filmed in and around Portland. Rumor has it that Twilight’s Robert Pattinson used to hang out in downtown areas such as Powell’s bookstore during filming downtime.

Until recently, I never knew about half of the things I could do in Portland. Well, actually when I reached my senior year of college and had nothing better to do on weekends than homework, I finally had my motivation to get out and explore. The Internet is always a great resource, but I was able to pick up a free copy of Urban Pages, which is basically a city guide that highlights every area/neighborhood of the metropolitan area. Now, if I ever find myself with nothing to do, I just open that up to a random page and try to find something that I can do for cheap. With the current economy, price is one of my main factors to consider, and Portland has some really good deals for people on a tight budget.

Long story short, my city is pretty cool. And I didn’t know about half of the things it had to offer until I finally got up and tried to find something to do. Which is apparently a lot easier than I had anticipated.

So go find something new to do today!

Good with names, not so good with creative ones

I consider myself to be pretty good with names. I can probably name all the kids in my first grade class, the kid who sat in the back of the room during my Intro to Literature class during my sophormore year at college, and the name of the secretary at my high school. Even if I meet someone once, I can still generally remember their first name and the time and place that we first met.

Creative names, like titles of school papers or soccer team names......not so much.

Which is why this blog, my very first blog to be exact, has such a creative name. Knowing myself, I'll probably think of something at the most random time, not write it down, and then forget about it the next day, but whatever.

For now, it's Welcome to my World. Not very creative, and I can't promise that it'll be interesting, but it's my life, and I'm choosing to share it.


Sincerely yours, for now,

~Kourtney