Dr Cody M Geddes, DO

Well, it finally happened. Cody graduated from med school and we were all there in attendance. Well, most of us anyway. Dave couldn’t get off work (don’t even ask) and Blane missed his plane (he’s missed three in his short life,  I have missed….none. We sort of expect it now. You’d think he would have bought the insurance)

But, the rest of us showed up.

I arrived on Friday and met up with my sister Debbie, her husband Jay, and her son Jacob and fiancée Robin. After checking in at the Holiday Inn Express in Henderson, we went out for delicious sushi. And may I recommend the HIE as a great place to stay if you are in Vegas and don’t want to stay on the strip. Which I usually don’t . It’s an easy drive to the strip, but quiet, good stores near by, and gives one the chance to see another side of the area. Great breakfast too. But next door to IHOP if you must.

And if you need to gamble right now, you can always walk over to Sunset Station

It was hot hot HOT in Vegas last weekend. Friday hovered around 100 and Saturday reached 105. Yikes. I went for a walk Saturday early AM and it was already getting warm.

 

This nice little trail is right behind the hotel.

Debbie and I spent Saturday shopping. We met up at Old Navy so I could get some T-shirts on sale. (As an aside, as I was proofing this I realized I wrote T-shits and Livewriter apparently thought that was ok, and maybe even funny. I corrected it. Nice try Livewriter……)

Then we went to Quiltique, one of the best quilt stores I’ve been to-after Pine Needles of course.

Then we decided to ramp it up a little and went over to the Fashion Show Mall-first stop-Nordstrom. Duh.

I sent Cody some pictures to guess where we were---

(by the way, I bought him some graduation shoes at the Nordstrom Rack only the day before-phase one of the graduation presents I bought in Vegas)

Debbie bought some cute shoes and a cute shirt-I held back-for now.

We stopped at the shaving store and I bought Cody part two of his presents-a straight razor, strop, and shaving kit that he had mentioned he wanted the night before. And let me tell you, that stuff is not cheap. But I suppose greener than the average disposable razors…..Still. Expensive and the risk of bodily harm quite high.

Grampa and Carol arrived Saturday night and we all met up for dinner at Todd’s Unique Dining in Henderson.

Starting from me and moving forward-next to me is my cousin Lloyd, his wife Betty, dau in law Renee. Then my nephew Jacob, fiancée Robin, sister Debbie and her husband Jay. Carol, Grampa and that little head sticking up is Cody. Yay for us. Dinner was delish, BTW.

They gave Cody a congratulation cupcake. Obviously, my kind of place. (Look closely for little cupcake with candle)

The next day was the big day. The. Big. Day. Although Cody was a bit “meh” about it. (I think he was excited and happy to be graduating, but, he has 3 years of residency ahead, like more school. And it’s uncertain because of the Navy. He might go straight through, or not…..it’s all confusing-but technically, after the ceremony, he’s a Dr.)

So, we all got organized and went over to LVH. A big hotel/casino. Places I try to avoid. It was Sunday, it was crowded. Then add 3000 of our closest friends for graduation and, well, you get the picture.

We waited in line (fortunately, we got there early so we could get in first-some of those families were pretty aggressive in the quest for the good seat-jeepers).

Here’s me and the sissies waiting in line

With Grampa

Grampa’s happier than that. Really.

We got in and got some good seats--

Touro University.

We sat behind the cutest baby ever. Well, at least at that graduation (not cuter than Cora for example, or the other Minnesota babies, but still—I debated putting her up on the blog because some people are understandably hesitant about posting their kids online. But I figure there’s not THAT many people reading this, and I think my audience is a pretty safe venue-so here we go)

Right? I know it. If it hadn’t been for her, we might have been bored after Cody and Maral graduated. Or before they graduated. Because we spent much time entertaining her, and she us. She also did NOT approve of the people yelling at the graduates. Especially those people behind us. She gave them a look. And believe me, there was no mistaking how she felt about THAT.

Anyway, after some sitting and standing and getting some water and a cookie (I’m only human people), the ceremony started.

Here’s Cody walking in-

They get better, really. It was hard to capture the moment with my telephoto lens in a crowded room. But here he is. And see that little head poking up on the right? Maral. Her last name is also a G name, so they got to sit by each other. Those two.

Being the good and obnoxious mother that I am, after they got seated I ran up and got a picture of them in their spots. Close call, Maral is right on the aisle.

We sat through the requisite speakers and the Master’s Degrees in Education, OT/PT, Doctorate in PT, and then the Doctors. The DO doctors.

Here’s Cody getting hooded. I was reading about the proper decorum for doctoral graduation garb because I thought those three stripes were just sort of fly, you know? Like a gang symbol or something. But NO-they are the required decoration for a doctoral graduate. Who knew? (Well, obviously somebody because that’s a long article in Wikipedia)

 

Maral’s dad hooded her because he’s a doctor too. I guess you have to be a doctor if you want to hood someone. Because I asked Cody why he didn’t have me hood him. Right? Like that would have been so incredibly blog worthy. (I guess it would have been all symbolic and a life event and all, but seriously, blog fodder was #1 on my mind). But he said I wasn’t a doctor. I said I was a nurse. He wasn’t interested in my credentials. Gawd. It’s already all about the doctors.

A little blurry but it’s not bad.

And here’s Cody, moments after becoming a doctor

He’s happy.

After the ceremony we posed for a few (hundred) more pictures. I’ll pick the best. You’re welcome.

Cody and his dad and dad’s wife (complicated but we are calling him dad from now on because it’s easier AND more appropriate)

Us.

Grampa, Cody, and me.

 

The Doctors. Although my son is handsome and all, Maral is totally the prettiest in that couple.

Here they are in real life. Cody is all about the shaved head thing now because he doesn’t have a lot of hair. My sister said he looked a little “chemo-ish”. I’m like-really? Can we have a little hair? Maral’s hair is lovely…..

We left soon after this and went out to dinner. And by that time I was burned out on the picture gig and so didn’t take any. Dinner was delish though.

We hit the airport the next AM-I wrangled these two into the plane (Carol asked me how I managed to make it so they could walk on the plane and just sit down. Um, it’s called 1st class dude….Jeez)

I made it home, but still don’t quite have my mind back. I left my tablet (it was returned) and my coffee cup (it wasn’t returned but I bought two new ones to replace). I was exhausted for two days but I think now I have survived.

Congratulations to Cody for a job well done.

Looking towards the future at the back of the room.

Running a Half Marathon while Yarn Crawling on Sissy’s Birthday with Ira Glass

(Disclaimer before we even start-it’s late, I’m a little tired and I might not be making sense-or making less sense than usual-now, let’s begin, shall we?)

Ok, Not really-but I did see Ira Glass and I got my picture taken with him-

See? Here he is with the unorganized crowd

and here he is with me and my bad hair.

It’s a little blurry because I was in a hurry and it was insane. But here we are. And if you can ever see Ira Glass in person speak about This American Life and radio-go. It was brilliant.

I took a selfie in the Pantages-just cause.

Ugh. I only post it so you can see how I was one of the first in the place. And I had a great seat.

Before that, I mean like a few hours before that, I ran a half marathon from the Gig Harbor Airport to downtown Tacoma. The Tacoma City Marathon. But a half marathon. Seriously people.

It poured the days previous. I think there was a record rainfall during the week. I was a little nervous about running in the pouring rain. (I had an epic compression short fail while running in a rain storm in Green Bay. The one where the detergent must not have washed out of my shorts and the wet and friction of my over developed thighs caused suds to form-a sort of foaming at the crotch if you will-something I don’t want to repeat in front of 1300 of my closest friends here in Tacoma…)

Anyway, it did rain before the race-hard.

 

But then it sort of eased up. I ran into my friend Shoe

I look a little crappy. Not really liking my portraits lately.

The Marathon started an hour before.

Keep going-only 26.199999 miles to go. You can do it!

That’s all I got for that event because my picture taker and biggest athletic supporter is 1600 miles away in Rochester MN.

But even before this-two days before actually, on May 2nd, it was my sister’s birthday-Martha. Although I often refer to her as my sissy. I have no idea why. It’s a recent development.

ANYway..we went on the South Sound Yarn Crawl.

I went up Thursday PM, and early Friday we were off-

We took the ferry to Bremerton and started our crawl-

Martha posed with a new friend.

 

He preferred his own portrait.

It was a pretty nice day really.

We had our pictures taken in Shelton-check out the little socks on the wall. This is one of our favorite stores. She dyes all her own yarns and they are fab-u-lous.

Our last stop was Firwood Farms, the Alpaca place.

There are a few Alpacas hanging around.

This one was coming up out of the ground. Easy Nessie.

These two send their regards to Laura. She loves a few free range chickens. I think. Maybe not.

I posed in the Alpaca thingy-

Gawd. Sadly, I think I have the same picture from the crawl last year with Dave.  Lord have mercy.

And that’s what I did last week or so ago. Backwards again. But if that bothers you, read from the bottom up, sort of.

I leave tomorrow for Vegas to see Cody graduate from medical school at Touro U in Henderson.

Here’s a little review

Cody in his gun totin’ Alaska days

And then graduating from High School

Then from College, University of New England.

And next? My son, the Doctor.

Henderson Nevada, here I come.

Trixie Noodle

Our little dog, Trixie, came to us 9, or was it 10, years ago. She was a rescue dog from the rescue beagle group. I got a little beagly dog because Dave had a beagle when he was growing up. However, Dave doesn’t have such sentimental feelings about his childhood dogs. Not sure he cared that we had a new beagle. Beagle mix, really. But he was certainly aware we had a new dog around.

Trixie was found as a malnourished stray and taken to a kill shelter. One of the beagle volunteers rescued her, she was fostered, and found us. I picked her up in Madison Wisconsin. The rest is history.

She was a wild thing when we first got her. She’d take off like a shot, but always found her way home. Fortunately, we lived in the country so she wasn’t in much danger. Drove me nuts though. She was pretty defensive at times, and had a little baggage that we could only guess at. But she was a sweet and funny little dog, and eventually, she decided it was ok to stay home..most of the time.

Her favorite thing was to be under something. Under the covers, under a blanket, under a cushion. We frequently found our couch pillows all rearranged so Trixie could get under them. I’d go to bed and here would come Trixie for what came to be known as “an under”. She slept down at my feet under the covers until she got too hot. then she’d sleep on her dog bed. Or on Beta’s dog bed, with Beta. Depending on her mood.

Trixie started getting sick before we even left St. Charles. It was little things, her appetite was off, she didn’t want to eat. She got picky. (I’d say, this is a dog who eats her own poop, she’s now picky about her food?) (Oh and yes,the poop eating thing. She’s a little famous for that too…..). We came out here to Tacoma and although she had a lot of energy for her walks, she got pickier and more anorexic, and thinner and thinner.

Dave took her back to MN this March and she went downhill fast. By last week, the hard decision to put her out of her misery had to be made, and on Monday, May 5th, Trixie, losing the battle, was gently put down.

We are very sad, and Beta has been up in the night poking around, we think maybe looking for her. (Not being the brightest bulb, not sure what Beta is thinking. But, being human, we put some emotion in his head and believe he misses her too).

Good luck on your journey Trixie. Say hi to Elvin and the gang. Look up Mother while you’re there. You were a good and entertaining little dog, and we loved you very much.