Roast

The best part about yesterday's post that is the I used the word "right" when I really meant "write". Because if anything tells you exactly the state of my brain right now, it's that I didn't even use the correct word for my favorite thing in the whole world. I was thinking tonight about moments of my life that I truly regret and the only one I can come up with is the time in the hall my sophomore year when the boy on whom I had the kind of crush only a hopelessly romantic 15 year old girl can get asked me if I was allowed to date and I said no. Good little Mormon girls wait until they are 16 to date and I was 15. My mother later told me that for this particularly charming and well behaved boy there might have been some exceptions which just goes to show my mother was entirely wasted on a daughter who didn't even manage to kiss a boy until college. But that day, alone in the hallway practicing our scene for Drama 1-2, I was so terrified of what would happen if I said yes-that he would ask me out? that he wouldn't but now my hopes were up? So I stared at the floor and said it was against our family rules. For many, many reasons I am really glad that I was such a dismal failure at boys in high school, and college, and for most of my twenties and well into my thirties. My self-esteem has had to find legitimate things to be based on besides how many dates I go on and blah blah feminism blah. But I'm still a girl and sometimes I wonder what might have happened if I'd been just a touch less skittish about cute blonde boys with really great dimples.

Books

I leave for Houston a week from today for a month of processing. I'm sort of nervous and excited and ready and not ready all at once. I'm trying to get my house super clean so when I come back half dead it will be welcoming, figuring out what I need to pack when I know I will end up wearing the same two tee-shirts pretty much the whole time, getting a pedicure and an eyebrow wax so that in the midst of ponytail hair and barking orders I can look down at my feet and remember I'm still a girl, making some playlists for the apparel room so there is always an opportunity to dance, and just generally getting amped up to go do the part of my job that I love the very most. These two songs rolled through iTunes tonight while I was scrubbing my bathtub within an inch of it's life. Both of them remind me of Boston-the Red Sox may be melting down as I write this post but every October I get a little nostalgic for 2004 when we spent every night of the playoffs staying up too late at a bar or someone's house, blowing off everything else to watch games that seemed straight out of a too good to be true movie. Both great songs, now this girl has to get to bed before 11 lest I turn into tired pumpkin who cries at work.

Show and Tell

This is really what I did at work today.

My job is so awesome.

Overheard

This week almost killed me. Between our staff training, several days of bossing interns around in the warehouse, and my leadership class, I lost quite a bit of badly needed time in the office. I ended up sticking around until way too late most evenings, sleeping fitfully every night while I thought too much about what still needed to be done and then I made a questionable decision to stay out way too late on Friday. Combine that with the complete inability to shut my night own tendencies down even when I was crazy tired and well, I slept until 5:30 today. Five-thirty in the EVENING. But I woke up feeling like a coherent human instead of a babbling zombie for the first time in a few weeks. Which is good timing since tomorrow I head down to Houston to finalize all the details for the long Team Processing stint that starts in three weeks. Probably best if I have all my wits about me.

When I finally DID wake up, I started cleaning my apartment within an inch of it's life.  To most normal people, my apartment is always clean but I am something of a freak and there were several projects I've been meaning to get to all summer that I finally decided to tackle. So tonight my house is blissfully sparkling and I think I can get myself to go to bed at a somewhat reasonable hour and keep up this ability to remember my own name and phone number business.

I like to listen to music while I clean and this is my most recent obsession. This is the guys who sings that Steve Winwood cover  I posted earlier this week. If you are in the same Bon Iver, Iron & Wine, Sufjan Stevens fan club to which I feverishly belong, you will not regret going straight to iTunes and downloading Early in the Morning in it's entirety.

CO-versary

I arrived in Colorado two years ago today.

I said on Facebook today that I have zero regrets about the move and for the first time in a looong time, no getaway plan at the two year mark. We were in Denver on Saturday at the New Belgium Brewery "Tour de Fat", riding our bikes on a loop through downtown with 5000 other lunatics in costumes and I thought,  "oh Colorado, I am so clearly in love with you right now."

In a lot of way I feel like I have been making up for some years of my life when I was too scared or too worried to live my life that way I wanted to. Last month as I was fighting my way up Hoosier Pass I got feeling pretty discouraged. My riding partner happened to be a four-time Olympian and I had no prayer of keeping up with her. Which I knew but once I told her I'd see her at the top, I heard a little voice saying, "ok seriously, maybe this just isn't something you are capable of. You are not an athlete little girl, maybe you can't get up this hill." And then I said a couple of words to that voice that I don't think my mother would be thrilled to hear about and I sucked it up and made it to  the top of that pass (elevation 11, 532 thankyouverymuch). I don't even like to DRIVE those high mountain passes. I'm always half afraid I'm going to slide right off a switchback. So as I was flying down those very curves with just a helmet between me and certain death, I felt like I was punching multiple long held fears right in the face.

It's been maybe my favorite discovery of adulthood that you can reinvent yourself as many times as you want. You can learn new things, you can make new friends, you can work on your flaws, you can spend years thinking you are not brave enough for something and then one day you find yourself at the top of a rock wall and you actually aren't afraid at all.

It's been two good years. I'm pretty excited to see what the next Coloradoversary post looks like.

Reagening

It's only Tuesday and I already feel like I got run over by a truck. I went to Noodles and Company to grab dinner tonight (I got something healthy I swear!) and I stared at the cashier for a full minute trying to remember the name of the thing I always order. There just isn't any room in my brain for anything that isn't related to Houston in three weeks.

So I'm doing a lot of listening to quiet music before I go to bed to try to really relax before it all starts over again the next morning. Here are two things I think you should check out too.

This version of the closing track off the new Bon Iver album has been breaking my heart right in two for about a week now. I already loved the song, saxophone and all, but this version really shows off what a beautiful track it is.

My friend Dainon sent this on Friday and I just about fainted. I don't think I ever really paid attention to the lyrics of this Steve Winwood classic and they are kind of great

Think about it, there must be higher love
Down in the heart or hidden in the stars above
Without it, life is wasted time
Look inside your heart, I'll look inside mine





Sold. And so time for bed.

To Whom it May Concern

Dear blog-

I haven't been writing here as much as I wish lately. We have a big event in three weeks and while I am so excited for the month I'll spend on the ground doing my absolute favorite part of my job, the 10-12 hour days that we constantly have to pull the month before are sort of soul crushing. So I don't write, and I am too tired to exercise, and I end up eating more french fries than the previous six months combined. I'm not always proud of these weeks but I'm rather resigned to this just being how it goes.

However, such behavior will not fly next May/June when I am gearing up for three crazy London months so I am going to try try try to break some of my bad prep habits. The fridge is stocked with non-fry things, I have my favorite workout DVD's ready to go for nights I can't drag myself out for a ride or a run, and I have SO MANY IDEAS FOR POSTS. We'll see. I tried to quit Diet Coke just before we left for Vancouver and my intern wouldn't allow it saying he was unwilling to bear the brunt of me making eleventh hour changes to my routine.

Accountability folks-let's give it a try.

kc

September 11, 2011

Papa Bear

Getting an email from a guy who kissed you in the race office one late night when you were 24 talking about how great it is to be a dad is at once completely adorable and utterly disconcerting.

The man who stars in two of my top ten make-out stories is someone's father.

Growing up is weird.

Fiddling Around

Labor Day weekend snuck up on me a little bit. I thought about making big plans but then we got Band of Horses tickets and I need a haircut and a day to catch up on the stack of baby presents I haven't sent to kids who are probably going off to college now. So I see sleep, a bike ride or two and maybe a massage thrown in for good measure in my future. I hope you all have fabulous plans of your own whether grand or low key.

My friend send me this last night and it has blown my brain a little bit. Sorry dad that I never practiced the violin-had I known it could turn out like this I may have tried harder.