little box

When I came home, right at 5, the mail carrier was outside his truck, doing something to our mailbox. I paid him no mind. (I realized just now that I am only assuming the mail carrier is a man. I have no idea. I did not actually see the shape of the mail carrier because it was dark and I was coming up over the scary rise that is the entrance to my street. In fact, I have never actually seen our mail carrier.)

After a Friday evening out, I came home late and found out why the mail carrier was out of the truck: he had to wedge a little box into our mailbox.

The little box was addressed to me! I was excited, because I was not expecting anything in the way of a package.

Inside was a card from my friend D., in New York, and two boxes of Maggi Cubes.

D., you are awesome.

And the Maggi Cubes were held in place by pages of the New York Times. Especially now that the Times costs money to read online, money that I cannot seem to get around to paying, even though I theoretically am not opposed to the idea that news costs money, I more or less just stopped reading it.

Don't think I am above flattening out those pages and reading them.

hair

The internet seems to be full of people writing about hair today.

Let's talk about hair.

Disclaimer: I can't really presume to talk about any hair but the kind I have.

I possess some seriously stereotypically white people hair. It is dark blonde, almost brown, unless it is highlighted, and right now it is as long as it's ever been, which is approximately down to my boobs. You are welcome for that visual image. (Weird and random thing about having hair this long that I never knew until I had it: it can get caught in your armpit. Again, you are most welcome.)

I like my hair this long. I think it suits my face. When my hair is shorter than this, it can tend to get larger and make my face look too round. The weight of it when it is long helps keep it from getting unruly (in the sense of random little pieces sticking off in their own directions). My hair takes a lot of shampoo and conditioner, but it doesn't need to be cut very often, so I figure that is a fair trade.

My only real hair issue is that, growing up, I always wanted dark curly hair, like my mom's. I still kind of do, although I think darker hair wouldn't really fit with my skin color.

A while ago, I mentioned to my dad that it bothers me a little to have long hair because of the connotations. Long hair is perceived as feminine, which has both positive and negative repercussions, and I'm not sure I like either set of them.

Women with long hair are taken less seriously in a professional context, I think, because long hair is girly.

Women with long hair are taken more seriously as dating prospects, I think, because long hair is girly.

Part of me wants to just chop it off, to spite the stereotypes.

My dad pointed out that, for most women whose hair does grow long, it doesn't grow long forever. At some point, hormones change, and women's hair will no longer grow as healthily as it used to do. I might as well enjoy having long hair, he said, while I have it.

Which is true, since I do like my hair.

But then I read again about all weight of expectations that fall on women because of their hair, especially black women, and I get annoyed all over again, and I once again want to chop my hair off in protest.

I have no right whatsoever to talk about hair of a type that is not mine, and I'm not going to, and I know that there are a million issues that play into this that my occasional reading on the issue cannot begin to address, but for what it's (not) worth, here is the perspective of one white girl who grew up in Africa and has seen a lot of hair on people from Africa and of African descent: I think natural hair on black women f-*^%# rocks.

shiver

One thing I need to do, soon-ish, is buy a real winter coat. I do love my KLM flight attendant coat, and it is generally perfect for the mild winters of the Pacific Northwest, but it does not hold up in temperatures anywhere approaching 32F/0C degrees. I shiver, in fact, to the point that if I have to walk around or conduct a conversation outside in near-freezing temperatures, I cannot stop my whole body from shaking.

I've been inside now for half an hour, and I'm still chilled to the bone.

The funny thing is that earlier today, when I was scraping the frost off my car in the morning, I thought smugly of how this weather they call cold out here isn't that bad - I didn't even need to button my coat!

Oh, life. How it loves to mock me for my hubris.

tuesday

I like Tuesdays. They might be my favorite day of the week, other than Fridays. Fridays have an advantage because they end with some freedom, but Tuesdays are nice, too.

I like Tuesdays because they are relatively slow days at work, so I can catch up from Monday.

I like Tuesdays because I don't have fighting class in the evening, so I have several whole hours to do whatever I want.

Probably most of all, I like Tuesdays because one of the bakeries in town makes a swiss cheese and red onion bread on Tuesdays, and I'm developing the habit of stopping by there for coffee or lunch, buying a loaf of bread, and sitting in the bright little annex for a few minutes.

Bliss.

eggs

I was just talking to my friend D. about eggs. She likes them. I don't.

Well-cooked is the only way I can handle eggs. They gross me out a little.

Eggs are useful. They are great in baking. I like them as a contributing factor to things. It isn't that I can't touch them, or that I don't use them.

And when I lived in Rwanda, omeletes were one of the few non-goat foods I could reliably get, and they had protein, too. I ate an omelete "bien cui" many a day.

Then I went to Liberia in 2006, and the eggs tasted off. Many people said they could not taste this, but I could. They tasted tinny. I could even taste it in baked goods.

But my slight distaste for egg goes back well before 2006. It may, in fact, be directly related to that one time as a kid in Liberia when we took an egg out of the fridge, broke it, and found inside a perfectly formed dead little chick.

Did you know that eggs turn into chickens?

Well, obviously.

Yet my mom, all through my teenaged years, told me over and over that THESE eggs, the ones we buy in the States, cannot turn into chickens, due to lack of fertilization.

But it turns out that once a kid has buried an unborn baby chick in the back yard after it died in the cold of the fridge, it is hard to convince that kid, or the woman she becomes, that eggs do not turn into chickens.

fidgeting

I have been known to watch tv while reading a book, chatting with people online, and catching up on Scrabble games on my iPad. This level of multi-tasking means that I am practically no longer capable of doing one thing at a time. Not that I ever could do one thing at a time.

This one time, in Kenya, I went to a conference where we all took a test about our learning styles: visual, kinesthetic, auditory. I scored approximately a seventy billion on the V and the K, and about a 4 on the auditory. (Although I have since realized that I probably could do better on the auditory if I ever needed to, but I never needed to, in school.)

The result of this, according to the presenters, is that in order to process information that comes in on the lowest scoring style (i.e., auditory, for me), we frequently have to go through one of the other styles. Which pretty much explains everything about my life: why I listen better when I play sudoku, why I wrote so much during college classes, why I fidget in concerts, why I roll napkins or fiddle with silverware or light my fingers on fire with the candle when I am sitting at a table in a restaurant.

It isn't that I'm not listening, it's that I am listening, and the fidgeting makes me remember.

nothing doing

This girl tried to cut me off in traffic today in Gone West and I didn't let her, so she flipped me off and I laughed at her.

That pretty much sums up my day.

Between the Cultural Event and a very early morning start on the drive to Gone West, I was operating yesterday on less sleep than I would have guessed I could possibly tolerate, particularly with a long drive and meetings. I felt sick with tiredness a couple of times, but I just ate more food to try to assuage my stomach pain. (Somewhat effective, right up to the point where all the junk you've been eating makes you feel sick.)

Eight hours last night did not catch me up, but I still managed to keep my place in line in the crazy holiday shopping in Gone West (it's all about the elbows) and finally get those decorations for my office.

I love the days when pretty much nothing can get me down: not realizing that I can't buy those clothes from the clearance rack because I forgot the coupon, not the hypoglycemia of wandering around too long before lunch, not the driving back to Universe City through two hours of fog in the dark on the highway, not even the girl who flipped me off.

Ridiculous

Going to the Ethiopian restaurant in Gone West seems inevitably to result in overeating. It just has to happen. There is so much deliciousness, so many perfectly blending flavors, that I just keep eating and eating.

My roommate in law school and I used to admonish one another to eat through the pain at Ethiopian restaurants. It is just so good.

The dessert place afterward may not have helped, either.

"I always want to get dessert," my friend said, "and no one ever wants to get it with me. They are always complaining that they are too full."

She found the right crowd today. We ordered four rich, nutty, chocolaty desserts for the five of us, and I was responsible for cutting each one into fifths. It is hard to cut round things into fifths, but I managed. By the end, I gave myself the smallest pieces. Not because I was generous. Not because I didn't like the desserts. It was because my distended stomach was far too full.

We have ridiculous problems in this country.

i am getting sleeeeepy

I've gotten in this habit now, and it feel weird to go to bed without adding to the blog (even if it is 1:16 am and I have to leave for Gone West at 6:30 and I am the slowest person ever at getting ready in the morning). (Hi! I am blogging about blogging. Tedious.)

I have mentioned how my roommate works for an organization that organizes cultural events. Periodically she has extra tickets, and I go. Which I did, tonight.

And I was reminded once again how you can't take me anywhere.

First of all, why do they give you a program and then turn the lights down? Words are for reading. I kept putting the program up near my eyes to read about, I don't know, the instrument that person was holding (very expensive, very), and I had to strain my eyes. This can't be good for them.

Second, why is there not enough room to change your leg position without kicking the person in front of you? Am I supposed to be able to sit still for hours? Are there people who can do that?

Third, why would you start a concert of quiet music at 8 pm? That is like asking me to take a nice little snooze. Calming music, soft seats, dark room, evening? That sounds an awful lot like my bed.

I mean, don't get me wrong. I love cultural events. I am full of culture. It's just that it doesn't go so well with my ADHD when the cultural events are so soothing and quiet, and it's a bit of a let-down after a fighting class where the instructor spent the last ten minutes (running over time, making me nearly late for the cultural event) yelling at me to punch the focus mitts harder because he knows I can, and he wants me to do it right.

on the fringe

I am voraciously watching Season 3 of Fringe, gobbling up two or three episodes a night. I love this show.

There is only one problem, which is that I can't handle scary things. I certainly can't handle ghost stories (I have walked out of movies before), and it turns out that I can't handle the paranormal very well, either. Even when the paranormal is, as in Fringe, generally explained by tv-science.

One day a few weeks ago, I was afraid to walk out to my car from work at night because my car might have been affected.

Another day, I was walking toward my front door at night when I thought the fog was coalescing to chase me.

The episode I watched today involved re-animation of a corpse, and I may not sleep tonight.

I am a 'fraidy cat when it comes to scary stuff. I am a 'fraidy cat when it comes to the paranormal. I am a 'fraidy cat when it comes to dead bodies.

(Again with the irony! - if I'm right about what irony is; I am never sure - that I ended up in Rwanda eight years after a million people were killed in a tiny country. You know they haven't found all the bodies. It's just impossible. I swam in that lake. But never alone. Oh, no, never alone. You know what bothers me the most about bodies? There used to be people in them, and now the people are gone. There is just something spooky about a body that no longer is a person.)

blech

Let's use our imaginations.

Imagine that I am a gigantic horseshoe magnet. You know the kind: you played with it when you were a kid. You stuck things to it, and used it to pick up things.

Now imagine that you have a pile of little metal shavings. Remember how they stick to the magnet and lift right off the ground?

That is EVERY COLD VIRUS IN THE WESTERN UNITED STATES. Drawn to me. Attracted to me. STICKING TO ME.

My friend D. and I were talking online last night, and I wondered about getting another strep test. My throat has hurt so badly since the weekend that I wanted to reach my fingers down there and scratch it. I hear that doesn't go so well, though, and I seriously doubt that adding stomach acid to my throat would improve it. (Ew.)

And then I woke up in the middle of the night with my nose stuffed full of phlegm (you are welcome).

Ding! Ding! Ding!

The winner is yet another cold. They love me.

roasting

Roasted chestnuts are perfection on a winter evening.

It is, after all, winter, no matter what the calendar says. Winter begins after Thanksgiving. The wind knows it, even if we don't.

I roasted my chestnuts in the oven, in the absence of an open fire (fire hazard). One of them exploded with a pop like a far-off gunshot, but it tasted just fine.

cross

When asked to discuss my cross-country skiing experience, I was forced to confess that the entirety of my experience consisted of putting on multiple pairs of socks, stuffing the resulting large, lumpy appendages into Dad-sized shoes with three little spikes in the toes, attaching them to c. 1972 skis that my dad picked up at a garage sale, and tromping around our neighborhood in the Mitten. I would hardly call it experience. AN experience, maybe, but not really experience.

Undeterred (SHO did say that it was okay for beginners), I rented cross-country skis and joined a crowd of people heading up into the mountains.

People. Cross-country skiing is awesome.

Okay, I fell four times in four miles. The first time I fell directly forward, landing on my elbows straight in front of my skis, and I laughed, because who falls that way? That's how little kids fall on downhill skis, and you can't believe they can contort themselves like that.

The two middle times I just fell sideways.

The fourth time, I clothes-lined my backpack on the gate to the road we were skiing on. I bent down to ski under it, and I caught my backpack and fell. That one made me laugh, too.

But in-between were quiet woods and swish-swish-swishing. I skied much of the two miles in by myself, and there is something about snow and silence and spaces between the trees that made me much less nervous to be alone than I would be in the summer. I liked it, in fact, where normally I am afraid of what might be in the woods. (I would still never - shudder - go cross-country skiing alone in the middle of the woods. I needed the others just around the bend before and behind.)

On the way back, I talked with friends, and that was lovely, too. It's like hiking, all the good things about hiking: the nature, the strange (code word: interesting) people, the conversations, the being outside, but you can do it in the winter! It's %*#& brilliant.

shopaholic

I called my lovely momma today, and she asked if I had done any shopping yesterday.

The answer is yes. I bought a book of stamps, a cup of coffee, and four grocery items at Trader Joe's.

But somehow I doubt that counts.

I did also walk into Old Navy, but I fled as quickly as I always do. There is something about that warehouse feel and all the chaos of colors that makes me feel slightly dizzy immediately upon entering the store, and I can barely give it a walk-through before I turn around and high-tail it out of there. Seriously. My tail is in the air.

(Side note: have I recently, if ever, mentioned that the Kinyarwanda word for goat, ihene, is apparently related to the word for naked? Or so I was told during my two years working with goats and using the word ihene innumerable times. Apparently this is because goats walk around with their tails straight up exposing their little behinds. And apparently, although this may or may not be related, when you give a goat to someone in Rwanda, you never tell them that you are giving them a goat. You tell them that you are giving them a sheep, and somehow - I don't know how - they know what you are really giving them and are grateful to receive a goat instead. Because sheep = almost useless,* and goats = food.)

If you have not totally lost the initial point, I feel obligated by honesty to say that I also squandered approximately 23 minutes in TJ Max because I was too early meeting a friend. No purchases were made.

* I feel like I have mentioned the sheep thing, but I just searched the blog and did not find it. Sheep, to my admittedly somewhat limited knowledge, because I was working with all goats, all the time, have virtually no use in Rwanda. No milk, no meat, no wool. Their only evident use is to accompany cows, because they are said to divert lightning from cows to themselves. I don't get it, but my former boss, who studied animal stuff, said that he thinks there may be something to it, or at least some reason why this is thought to be. Body chemistry, maybe?

mini break

I am considering this weekend a little bitty vacation. I'm not going anywhere, except cross country skiing on Sunday, but I'm treating it like it is a vacation: sleeping in, eating left-over honey pecan tart slowly while looking out the window, sitting around in a coffee shop for a couple of hours, going out and listening to bluegrass at night.

Now that I write that out, I realize that this is the stuff I do every weekend. What makes it feel like a vacation is not so much what I am doing, it is that I refuse to feel guilty about doing it instead of something more productive, in exactly the way one does on vacation.

forget about it

After I broke the thermometer, I sighed to myself, blogged, and went into my bedroom to put on clothes reasonably appropriate for entering a grocery store (i.e. not my pajamas).

While I was standing aimlessly in my bedroom trying to decide what civilization-appropriate clothing I should put on, I glanced at my watch, realizing that I might be cutting the time a bit short.

Then I realized something very freeing: I do not have to make beer cheese bread.

I had forgotten that holidays are not made by perfection, but I remembered it in time. Instead of going to the store, I made hot chocolate, I put on music, and I made the two things I had the equipment for: sweet potato biscuits and a honey pecan tart.

And then I went off to Thanksgiving dinner. There was plenty of scrumptious food and plenty of excellent company.

Nobody missed the beer cheese bread. Not even me.

figures

My beer cheese bread turned out perfectly, two days ago. I needed that candy thermometer, though.

Today, as I started out making the official Thanksgiving Beer Cheese Bread, I knocked the thermometer against the pan of hot water.

"Oh, that would be just like me," I thought, "to break the thermometer as I start the actual batch of bread."

I didn't really think it was broken, though. It was a very gentle tap.

But it was broken, and now I am about to run out to the store on Thanksgiving morning to get another thermometer. I didn't want to make this bread on time, anyway.

It wouldn't be Thanksgiving if the beer cheese bread went smoothly.

punch

My fighting class instructor asked me today if I want to go to the annual conference in February. I was almost as pleased and embarrassed as I was when they announced that I was student of the month.

I know that I should be used to this by now, now that I've been in my fighting class for over a year, but I am still surprised that there is a sporting activity involving physical coordination that I appear to be able to do. And, to be fair, there appears to be only a minimal level of coordination required. The rest is just pure determination.

That, and showing up every single class, which I also do.

I almost never even consider skipping class. Even on days (today) when we run and jump and crunch and flutter and pushup until my lungs are burning, and that's just the beginning of the warmup, I love being there.

I could never make a bat hit a baseball. I could never line my shot up with the basket. I could never connect with the ball in the right place to make it soar into a goal box. Even when I liked the sport (soccer), I never could really enjoy it, because I sat on the bench so much.

But I can kick, and I can punch, and I love that. I love doing it, and I love that I can do it. Maybe all those fights with my brother* were good for something.

* My brother and I literally fought fist and foot, and sometimes knife and door. If someone had wanted to call the police over some of the fights we got into, either of us could easily have ended up in the juvenile justice system. I think of this sometimes, about how class and race can protect you from or expose you to involvement with The System. If we had lived in a poor apartment complex where people could hear us fighting, or if someone had thought our parents couldn't or wouldn't discipline us because of their stereotypes about the color of our skin, we could have ended up somewhere very different than the stable and adult places we are now.

adventures in baking

I practiced my beer cheese bread tonight. I think I have successfully made beer cheese bread approximately once, and never without help, because of my (formerly) gimpy arms. (Yay, pushups!)

Actually, I am not sure I have ever successfully made any yeast bread product without help. I am a terrible estimator, and that goes for temperatures as well as crowds, distances, etc.

I am serious now, though. I bought a candy thermometer. I read up on yeast on the internet. I proofed my yeast before I added it to the flour.

And the bread rose perfectly through the first rise. The only problem is that I can't bake it until tomorrow, but I want to bake it in the morning, so I have to put it in the fridge overnight.

I just checked on it. It's still rising in there.

Help?

...

I discovered, in the course of compiling bread, that the cupboard was full of ants. The almost-gone flour and the very-full sugar were, anyway.

It is very tedious getting ants out of sugar. Neither my roommate nor I have any sort of small sieve or sifter, so I had to take small bowlfuls and pour them slowly into a bigger bowl, stopping to remove ants when I saw one.

Fortunately, I also found, in the dough, the one that had made it into the yeast/water/sugar mixture. I thought I saw an ant in there, but I shook it off as just seeing bugs everywhere, which one does after living in the tropics for a while. This was before I discovered the depth of the infestation.

I realize that removing the ants from the dough, and from the sugar itself, makes me a bad missionary/ex-pat worker. I should have just left the ants and considered them protein.

The problem is that I only have white sugar for the purpose of baking, and I only bake when I am sharing with other people, and it doesn't really seem all that nice to offer anyone, on this continent or another, baked goods with ants baked in.

So I hand-sifted the sugar after putting it in the freezer long enough for the ants to die.

You can all thank me later.

Trooper

I pulled into a parking spot next to an Isuzu Trooper. It felt weird. Those don't belong here, not at all. It's on the wrong continent.

We used a Trooper, borrowed from another missionary family, when my sister was born. We were staying upcountry, at Compound Number Three, not far from LAC, the Liberia Agricultural Company, that had a better hospital, but between us and the hospital was a huge mud pit in which cars and trucks got stuck.

Somehow, I got it into my almost-eight year old mind, as one does, that in order for the stuck vehicles to block the road, they had to have been stuck sideways.

I have since learned better, having maneuvered vehicles around stuck vehicles in mud pits on several occasions.

Anyway.

The Trooper got my parents to the hospital in plenty of time for a screeching little being to be born.

We thought she was going to be a boy.

I'm kind of glad she was who she was, instead.

in which i attempt to post a recipe

The jollof rice turned out surprisingly delicious, considering that I somehow managed to ruin the rice-cooking portion of the endeavor, and it took an hour and half to cook the rice. So it was slightly mushy jollof rice. It still tasted really good, and I enjoyed it for lunch yesterday and today.

Here is how to make jollof rice (I am doing this as much for me as for you, in case it is four more years before I make it again):

Cut up an onion, a green pepper, 4-5 cloves of garlic, and a chili pepper. (More peppers if you are guaranteed an audience who can stand them. One gives a nice flavor without being hot.)

Fry them in some oil. The internet claims that you can add other vegetables: carrots, green beans, cabbage. Up to you.

Fry some meat in the same pan with the vegetables or in a different pan. Whatever. I used Gimme Lean vegetarian sausage, and it had a really nice flavor, but you can use real sausage or chicken or fish or really anything. I think the package I used was the equivalent of one pound of meat.

Add some water and a couple of cut up tomatoes and some tomato paste (I used a little can of Hunts, but whatever. Whatever is a common theme here. This is a very flexible recipe).

Add some salt and pepper and some Maggi Cubes. I can't find Maggi Cubes in the US so I used, as previously mentioned, some vegetarian bouillon cubes and some Maggi Seasoning in a bottle. This mixture should taste pretty salty and bouillon-like.

At this point, you probably want everything in a big pot, because this is a family-sized recipe I am talking here.

Add some more water. If I were smart, I would have kept track of how much water I added in total and added a little bit more than half as much rice (i.e., 5 cups of water, 2.5 or 2.75 cups of rice). I didn't. Well, I kind of did, but extremely inexactly.

Add some rice. See above. Whatever. Stir.

Turn stove down, but not as far down as you would have turned it to cook rice alone. (This was my mistake. A mixture this thick simmers at a higher temperature than rice + water.) It should be just high enough to simmer.

Cook until you no longer get steam billowing out when you wiggle the lid. I have no idea how long this will take, because I had mine at sub-simmering temperatures for quite a while.

You can probably freeze lunch-sized portions and let them defrost during the day. I kept the pan in the fridge for a couple of days, and it re-heated really well in the microwave.

There you go. A completely incoherent recipe that somehow turns out delicious. Even I cannot ruin this recipe.

free day

I wondered, during the insanity of working seven long days a week, what I would do with just one totally free day, and today I got to find out.

It was wonderful.

I went to a mixed martial arts class in the morning. I've never been to an MMA class before, and I never would have dared to go if I hadn't been going to my fighting class for over a year now, because MMA seems like such a guy thing. I was worried about being surrounded by super dedicated martial arts guys. Plus I know the instructor of this class (he sometimes attends and/or fills in teaching my fighting class), and his idea of a warmup is my idea of can I go home and sleep now?

It was a very small class, although the one other person there did lap me multiple times during the run-sprawl-some-sort-of-knee-recovery. And I did indeed feel limp like an overcooked noodle after the warmup. I recovered.

One thing about this instructor that I remembered from the TRX class I once took with him is that his classes are longer than an hour partly because he likes to do a yoga cool-down.

I can't stand yoga. I know some people love it (hi, SHO!), but I despise yoga. Partly this is just because my wrists are gimpy. Anything that requires staying in one position with weight on my hands gets almost unbearably painful really quickly. Partly it is because I am ever-so-slightly hyperactive (my sister thinks our entire immediate family is), and why on earth would you choose a sport for which you stay in one position for any amount of time when you could be HITTING THINGS?

I survived. I felt quite the tough person for making it through the class.

It turns out, if given an entirely free day, I will do the following things in addition to a crazy men's fighting class: go a bookstore, get a pedicure, do an obscene number of loads of laundry, play on the computer, and watch a movie. (This movie: Saved. I was most amused.)

It took me almost three hours to get around to making myself something to eat this evening, not because of the popcorn I intended to make (with butter and brewer's yeast and salt and pepper, yum), because it seemed like so much work to cut myself an apple. Yes, I was stymied by an apple. Yes, I know that is ridiculous. Yes, I did eventually cut the apple.

I did not, however, get around to cleaning the kitchen. That, I believe, is why weekends have two days.

jollof rice

So the jollof rice is cooking. Hopefully it will taste okay. I remember virtually nothing about ratios except that your sauce has to taste pretty strong and salty before you add the rice or it will be tasteless when you are done.

And I have no idea how much rice I was supposed to add. I added... some. I think that it might be okay to open the pan and add water later, even though it isn't okay when you are making straight rice. I hope. It has been way too long since I have done this.

The US does not appear to have Maggi Cubes, and I don't know if they are vegan, anyway. (I have to make my jollof rice vegan today due to food restrictions at the event I am attending.) I bought some Maggi Seasoning instead, in a bottle, but it appears to have a soy sauce flavor. I also added some vegetable bouillon cubes.

I did remember to pick up a hot pepper, though. I bought a chili pepper, because it's red, and I used green bell pepper. It seemed like a good idea to have the hot pepper be visible in case people want to avoid it. Very likely a single chili pepper will be laughable in terms of hotness compared to any dish made in Liberia.

It will turn out okay, I think. My fingers are firmly crossed.

recovery

When everything unexpectedly calmed down, I came home at 1 pm and slept for three hours. (I had, after all, worked almost 18 hours yesterday. Guilt: there was none.)

I almost feel human again, as long as I don't think about the towering stack of things that I will face in the morning, that I ignored while I poured myself into getting ready for the two Major Work Events.

I went to fighting class still half asleep, and we did a lot of boxing. I began to regret having upgraded to 16 oz boxing gloves. Those suckers start to feel heavy.

Tomorrow I have to remember how to make jollof rice. I used to make it a lot my last year of law school, right after I came back from Liberia, but then I discovered that the fake sausage I put in it was giving me heartburn (this was simultaneous with the amoeba, too, which didn't help), so I gave it up. This means that it has been probably 4+ years since I have attempted jollof rice, and since jollof rice is pretty much experimentation, I maybe should have, uh, experimented before I committed myself to bringing it to a friend's potluck.

I have been way too busy in a manner incompatible with life.

whine

I have not maintained a perfect blog posting record this November. I missed the 16th, it seems, and I don't even feel bad.

I could not post on the 16th because I got to work at 9 am on 11/16 and left it at 12:20 am on 11/17.

I don't want to talk about it.

I don't want to talk about it even if I could talk about it, which I can't because it's work, and work is not internet fodder.

Alright, fine. If it weren't for the fact that I can't talk about work on the internet, if you and I were at a coffee shop on Saturday morning (WILL SATURDAY NEVER COME?), I would talk about it, telling you about ALL THE HOURS I WORKED SO MANY HOURS, probably until I annoyed you.

But now I am going to sweet, sweet sleep.

Call this November 16. It isn't the next day until you go to sleep.

too long

Some days are just too long. Some days should be cut off around 3 pm and banished after that, because everything after that is useless.

I felt that way today, but it didn't seem to matter. The day just kept going on.

I think I've seen 7 pm at work every day (including today) since last Friday. 7 pm? How about 10 pm, most nights.

I need a day off. A weekend day would serve just fine.

The problem is that the next weekend day is still three days away, and in between is another Major Work Event. A day off is a distant dream.

I would settle for a day that ended at 5, actually.

alarum is actually a word

I am having an alarm clock problem.

I really hate alarm clocks.

Actually, I don't own an alarm clock. What I own is an old mobile phone, which automatically updates time and date with the towers, but no longer bears a calling plan. I set the alarm on it, and it wakes me up.

The reason I prefer this method to an alarm clock is two-fold: first, I despise that beep-beep-beep of an alarm clock (radio probably wouldn't wake me up unless it was really loud, because it's so easy to incorporate into a dream), and second, I get kind of panicky about how much time I have left to sleep and why am I not sleeping oh no the night is almost over and I haven't gotten enough sleep help help help if I have a clock with visible numbers during the night. I do not want to know what time it is when I am supposed to be sleeping.

The old phone is a perfect solution until the day when it is at one bar of battery and I forget to charge it even though I know of its tendency to just up and run out of battery without warning at that point, and I wake up to discover that I can actually be fully ready and at an important work event within 50 minutes of getting up.

And I was only 30 minutes late! Not cool.

And then there is the other problem (usually a benefit) that you can set the phone to go off only Monday through Friday.

This is sheer brilliance until the day you set the alarm for 8:30 expecting to get up and meet a friend at a new church on Sunday morning and then wake up ten minutes after church started to send her a sheepish text message because you are still in bed.

Two alarm malfunctions in one week does not bode well for the future of my old phone-turned-alarm. Or perhaps, for my brain.

ickety

You know what's really (not) awesome?

When you (I) wake up the Sunday before a week of two Major Work Events (Major = I have only had two of them since I moved to Universe City, and I have two more this week), with an earache and lopsided sore throat, and have to leave work (where I've been every day of this three day weekend) to make my first trip ever to Urgent Care just to make sure it is not strep throat.

(Spoiler: it isn't.)

(Additional spoiler: that doesn't mean I feel less icky.)

Is it weird that the doctor prescribed some sort of steroid to reduce the inflammation in my throat so I can make it through the week?

It seems weird to me. I haven't yet decided whether to fill the prescription. I suppose it depends on how icky I feel in the morning.

Webster

A couple of weeks ago, my coworker and I were talking about how handy it would be, sometimes, to have a portable way to look up laws.

Not 24 hours later, I found myself buying this:


His name is Webster. (Also, I need to work on my photography skillz.)

I am still a little surprised, myself, even though I had been thinking about it for a while, ever since I last went to the Mitten and faced the eternal dilemma: bring the heavy laptop, or be without internet access in a size big enough to actually respond to emails. Last time, I brought only my iPod touch, and trust me when I say that it was massively annoying, when I wanted to answer an email, to have only such a tiny screen. (And Winifred's battery life sucks. All my iPod touches - I have gone through three and spent an obnoxious amount of time in the Apple store in Gone West trying to get them fixed - have suffered from that failing.)

The beauty of Webster is that I actually use his calendar, because I can type on his screen. I send emails from him, ditto. Scrabble is big and easy to see. His speakers are good enough to play music. His battery lasts me almost a week.

But the best thing about Webster? Angry Birds in HD.

Yea, you know it. Worth every penny.

the ones

I'm taking back everything I said about the chiropractor (under my breath). I have been very careful to sit up straight today, but things are much better. Which is good, because I worked most of the day on a federal holiday that was supposed to be a day off, and there are few things worse than working on a day off, except maybe working on a day off with incredible back pain.

I set my alarm for 11:11, both a.m. and p.m.

I like the ones.

furthermore: ha

The beauty of having a wee little blog in a corner of the internet that only a few people read is that, particularly in the month of November when you are blogging every day and running out of things to say, you can ramble on about things that interest only you.

So, let's talk about how my back hurts.

My back hurts.

Like, a lot.

My back hurts enough that by lunch time I squirm in my chair at work. I went to the chiropractor for it yesterday, and she told me that I had pulled a muscle right under my shoulder blade on the right side. She worked on it for a while.

The result is that it now 1. still hurts just as much, and 2. feels bruised. Sweet.

She also told me to ice it and to do something she called, "resting it." I don't know what that means. Rest? What is that? Have you ever heard of it?

Apparently part of this rest thing is not doing push-ups or punches.

I can only respond like this: ha. And furthermore: ha.

Normally, I would use any excuse to laze about, but this is fighting we are talking about. I can't give it up. It's like an addiction.

I did planks instead of push-ups yesterday, and since it was just me and one of the instructors tonight, we skipped push-ups in favor of practicing the core strengthening exercises that his physical therapist has him working on. (Side note: ow.)

I did not stop punching, though, nor did I skip practicing elbows. And I recently bought my own boxing gloves, which are 16 ounces instead of the 12 I had been practicing with, so just holding my hands up at my temples is work.

Which possibly explains why my back hurts more than ever.

weirdnesses

I never flip that little lever on my rear-view mirror at night. I can't stand how it distorts things. Instead, I just deal with the glare. Somehow, moving my head feels better than moving the mirror.

Things that seem like a waste of time: showers, brushing teeth, peeing, cutting nails, basically every hygiene task. They are so tedious. Don't worry, I do them. I just get annoyed sometimes at how they never end. DIDN'T I ALREADY PEE TODAY? WHY MUST I DO IT AGAIN?

I brush my teeth in hot water. It seems strange, I know, but there is a reason: it makes the toothbrush bristles softer, and that feels better on my gums.

Twenty-one and a half years after my family left Liberia and moved to the US and got a telephone (what? Buchanan was not wired for telephones in 1990. or, say, now. or ever.), I still fear making and receiving calls, just a little. Again, I do it. I just don't like it, much.

i keep losing my keys

Last night, I couldn't find my keys. I looked around in all the normal places - the giant key on which I hang my keys, the table by the door, the counter, the dining room table, the coffee table in the living room, my coat pocket - you know, the usual.

They were nowhere in the house.

Finally, on a brainstorm, I check the door of the house, which I had locked from the inside.

Yup. Keys in the door, on the outside.

I feel like that has happened before.

elections

The times when I most miss being in Liberia are not when things are going well there. When things are going well in Liberia, I am mostly content to live in State of Happiness, if not in Universe City, because I know that things are generally improving in Liberia, and so it's fine that I'm not there.

When, as now, there are problems in Liberia, even problems so very much smaller than what has gone before, the distance hurts. It feels like I should be there. Why, I don't know. I can't do anything. I can't fix anything. It's just that, well, I left. I left, and I've talked about this before, and I was ten, and I didn't have a choice.

But still, now, I feel like I should be there, because I can. I can, but I'm not. And that feels like a betrayal.

I'm here, and I have to be here, but I will not be here forever.

I will not give that up forever.

roller derby

I went to watch women push each other around on roller skates last night. It was entertaining. It was also confusing.

So there is this thing called roller derby. These women are hard-core. You think I'm hard-core because I get myself beaten up for fun? No way. I've got nothing on these women. These women knock each other off a track with their hips. At high speeds. While on roller skates. Wearing very little in the way of clothing.

Roller derby is a whole bunch of women wearing hot pants - much - shorter than the top of the pattern on their tights. The main official was wearing fringed hot pants over torn fishnets. Her butt cheeks were on display. And she knew it, and she reveled in it, and there were children present, and no one seemed to notice that the women were wearing very little and everything was an innuendo. I kept expecting her to whip off her shirt.

I think I experienced some culture stress. We just don't... do that... where I'm from.

Her shirt stayed on, by the way.

It took most of the evening to figure out what was going on, despite having watched a youtube video describing how it all works. The teams kept changing who wore the star on their helmet, and we never could tell why a person got a penalty. (The video said you can only knock people around with your body, not your limbs.) The points were even more impossible.

All I know is that there was a lot of shoving, and every player should have, by rights, been damaged by the end of the night, but they all seemed to be fine, and I was awed and impressed.

I would try it, but have you ever seen me on roller skates? I don't even need other people running into me in order to fall. It would be a bad scene, and not because of the sight of me in hot pants. More because of the blood and broken bones.

how to

How to stop or start a conversation instantly, depending on your crowd:

Ask, "If you had diarrhea in a place with no toilet paper, would you use your hand or your scarf to wipe it?"

That is a slight paraphrase, but I think it says something about the people I hang out with that this topic started a conversation rather than shut it down.

I also think I fell asleep during the concert.

It had been a long week, but that concert nap revived me just enough that I stayed out until 12:45 am. I don't remember when I last stayed out until 12:45 am (unless I did on my birthday?), and I probably wouldn't have believed it was possible in this town, but there we were, in the lounge section of a restaurant-turned-dance-club, watching girls dressed in short skirts and tight tops dance with guys in sweatpants and flannel.

My answer, by the way, is that I would use my hand. You never know whether the scarf would ever come clean again, but skin is pretty washable.

still falling badly

So, I have mentioned that I can't fall.

I still can't fall.

No, really. I used to be able to at least fall on the not-thrown-straight-back falls, like when someone steps through with their foot behind you and spins you so you end up landing on your side underneath them. It's much easier than just a straight fall.

Except I can't even do that anymore. I must never again take a week off to go to the Mitten and then have another holiday (Halloween) in there. Two weeks without falling has made me incapable of any of it.

You are supposed to fall on your back, sort of rolling along the length of your back to spread out the force, with your head tucked in and your arms out to slap the ground.

I apparently fall in a fetal position, like a stone.

It hurts.

this is what my life has come to

Guess what! Guess what! Guess what!

Yesterday, I walked through many leaves, and they crunched.

Perhaps that was only exciting to me.

This autumn has been long and colorful, here in Universe City. There have been many more brilliant, warm days than seems usual to me, which is only fair given that the summer didn't even start until August. The trees are still flamboyantly colorful here in November, and the lack of rain means that they are not plastered pathetically to the pavement like they usually are this time of year.

Crunch.

I started taking pictures of the particularly pretty sets of trees. You'll get those here in probably several weeks, considering that I have yet to download the pictures from my trip to Michigan. I am spectacularly bad at that sort of thing, even when I know that there are adorable nephew-and-niece pictures on there.

Crunch.

sweatpants

I am sitting on my couch contemplating the fact that I need to run to the store but I am already in my pajamas.

It's tedious to go to the store in your pajamas. It's even more tedious to change. I would never go to, say, Stall-Tart in my pajamas, because I have standards, but maybe I could go to the grocery store over by campus. College students shop in sweatpants all the time. Admittedly, in order to blend in, I should roll over the waist of my sweatpants several times so a thong shows above them (I don't think I own a thong), but maybe only the college students will notice if I wear my sweatpants at a normal height without a thong showing.

I am old.

I kind of like being old. It's much more interesting than being 20 and spending all this time trying to show off your thong so the boys will think you are hawt.

Okay, I'm going to the store. In my pajamas.

...

Well, that was fun. It's cold out there. It's also raining. I was glad to have my cozy sweatpants on.

avoiding a ticket

The other night, I was driving from downtown Gone West to the K.s' house. I stopped at the light to get on the freeway next to a police car, and when we accelerated onto the on-ramp, I was ahead of it.

That silly police car followed directly behind me for five miles before it finally took an exit, and I drove exactly 56 miles an hour the entire time.

Cars around me were passing me and passing the police car. I kept driving 56 miles an hour.

The rain fell harder. I kept driving 56 miles an hour.

And I kept staying steady in the middle of my lane.

It wasn't that I was worried about a crime. I had sipped about 3/4 of a drink over 2.5 hours before I left my friend's party. I could have passed field sobriety tests.

I just didn't want to pay for a speeding ticket, or a failure to stay within lane ticket. Traffic tickets in this state are incredibly expensive. My dad got one for $300 for something when he was here - what, he was never really sure. If you can get a ticket and never be sure what it was for, things are bad.

I refused to speed up because I refused to spend $300 of my paycheck on a traffic ticket.

Also, I have a perfect record so far: I have never been pulled over in this country.* I'm not going to ruin that now.

...

* Countries in which I do not have a never-pulled-over record: Rwanda, Uganda, Liberia.

ToT Grand Total

Four adorable little kids (two sets of two).

Five pleasant teenaged kids (four girls, one boy).

Candy items consumed by me: 10.

Candy items handed out: approximately 30.

Candy items remaining: approximately 160.

Uh oh.

large handfuls of candy

P.S. As the night goes on, the kids get older, and frankly, I would prefer to deal with the older kids. There is no pressure to figure out what their costumes are. They are just here for the candy. I need to get rid of candy.

Which is down to 190 pieces to give/given out.

the little ninjas and princesses scare me

I stopped on the way home from work to buy a bag of 200 pieces of candy. It was Sweetarts and Nerds and Laffy Taffy and BottleCaps, because I figured that if there were leftovers I would end up eating them myself, or bringing them to work, and there is more than enough chocolate in both those worlds already.

By the time I got home, there were only 195 pieces in the bag.

My first Trick or Treaters did not arrive until after 7, and I was beginning to worry. What if I were left with the entire (now 194 pieces) bag of candy?

But now I have had two sets of two kids each come to the door, and I've realized that it's been so long since I trick or treated myself that I have no idea how it works. Do I give it to them? Do they take it off the platter? (I couldn't find the big bowl.) The first set of kids I let pick two each. The second set I gave a handful to each one.

The next kids, if there are any, since I live on a little dead-end street at the top of a hill, are getting huge handfuls so that 1. I don't have so much left over and/or 2. I can turn my light off and stop being nervous that another set of small people in adorable costumes are going to show up at my door asking for candy that I can't remember how to hand out.

In order to get rid of the rest of the candy in only one more group of Trick or Treaters, I'm going to have to give each one about 88 pieces of candy. Whatever. It will just be the haul of the evening.

I am an incompetent grown-up.

routine crud

My house has turned into a sick house, complete with tea, chicken soup, and strawberry cough drops.

"The way you can tell if you have a cold or something worse, like strep throat," I said today, "is that if you have a cold, cough drops make your throat feel better. If you have strep throat, cough drops make your throat feel worse."

Cough drops make my throat feel better.

More than one person at work told me to go home. Oddly, no one wanted to feel the way I looked. First, though, I did some work and spread some germs. I'm dedicated that way.

Then I came home and slept most of the afternoon, because the alternative was to claw my throat out of my neck with my bare hands. I feel a little bit better now, after three hours of sleep.

I have everything I need, but the only thing is that I wish I had something cold for my throat. Mochi, maybe, or fudgesicles. But the store seems awfully far away, even though it's only a five minute drive.

Plus it seems cruel, the sicker I feel, to go out in public and inflict this on anyone else.

pieces of home

I made sure to stomp on as many crunchy leaves as possible in the Mitten, to store up for arriving back in State of Happiness where the autumn proceeds in fits of rain, completely mushifying all leaves before they even fall off the branch.

I myself, all on my own, ate pretty much the entire bowl of apples-whipped cream-Snickers that Aunt Lisa brought to lunch, and I told myself that the six (was it six?) apples in there made up for the entire Snickers bar I ate.

I gave up on clean jeans and jumped into the pile of leaves with little R. and B., in the golden autumn light, and caught them as they jumped off the picnic table into my arms, and swung them high as they laughed with their I-know-that-smile faces that tell me that they are of us.

In a bar an hour from my parents' home, in the city where I went to college, I spent an evening talking about Uganda and Rwanda and South Sudan with a girl who married an (alleged - he looks vaguely familiar) university classmate of mine. The fundamental problem with my life right now, I realized, is its lack of travel.

mouse house

There was a little mouse running around near Gate B16 or so of O'Hare airport early in the morning, and I sat there with my chai and coffee cake, watching it dart about.

I used to be a shrieker and a stand-on-chairer when it came to mice, but that was before I lived in South Sudan. I had to give up standing on chairs at the sight of a mouse, because there were snakes to drive me up onto chairs while entire rooms of people laughed at me and then went outside in their flipflops to kill the snake with stones and sticks.

Also, there was a little mouse living in the wall of my tukul. As long as there is a mouse running around, there are no snakes. That little mouse ran along the wall of my tukul almost every morning, and now when I see a little mouse, even in an airport, I look upon it fondly.

A man startled as he walked past. "Did you see that?" he asked. "There was a mouse!"

"Yes," I said, un-alarmed. "It's been running around here for a while now."

breaking kung fu

I officially received my yellow belt today in kung fu, after a fighting class in which the instructor made me get off my knees and do more pushups on my toes. (Whoa. Hard work.)

Promptly after receiving my yellow belt, I walked out the door.

I am taking a month off from kung fu. With great regret and sadness, I am taking a break.

I'm only doing it because my knees can take no more. I mean, I love kung fu (and there is nothing like earning a yellow belt to make you want to leap into working on getting an orange belt), but not at the expense of my knees for the rest of my life.

I had a very annoying conversation with the insurance company about physical therapy to teach me ways to strengthen my knees. Insurance company take: sometimes surgery is less expensive than letting you have physical therapy. My take: whaaaaaat? This is why health care in this country is so, pardon my language, effed up.

Suffice it to say, we differed on the topic.

So, I am taking a month off (of exercise that would help keep me healthy, thank you health insurance and your wily way of making people sicker long term in exchange for short term profit) to rest my knees and (insurance work-around achieved!) go to my chiropractor, who is very good about providing exercises to correct alignment.

I had sort of forgotten how relatively un-exhausted one is after only one single hour of crazy workout. It's positively refreshing to come home after just a session of fighting class. It's like I have evenings again.

I miss kung fu, though.

incoming

Universe City is outdoing itself with beautiful leaves this week, trying to trick me into believing that there is no winter coming.

I am not fooled. I can feel winter in the chill when the sun goes down. I can see it in my fogged car windows in the morning. I can taste it in the orange cherry tomatoes that don't get ripe anymore. I can feel it even in my body's desperate clinging to the weaker sunshine we are still getting.

Winter is coming, and too soon.

nothing to see here

This day turned miraculously sunny, and I want to throw my arms around it and hug it for knowing exactly what I needed on my first day in weeks that does not contain plans. The clear air smells like smoke, and that, too, is exactly what I need today.

I celebrated my day off by drinking coffee at the hipster coffee shop and going to the horror that is that big box store that treats its workers terribly. (You know the one I mean. It rhymes with "Stall-Tart.") I generally avoid that store like the plague, but I am trying a new thing: to put the same amount of money in savings while adding a retirement account deposit every month. And not taking money out of savings. And buying plane tickets to Michigan (this week!). And having fun. And not having a credit card.

The Blue Emu that I massage into my knees every day for Project Do Kung Fu Without Permanent Knee Damage costs $17 a jar at the pharmacy near my house. It costs $11.50 at Stall Tart. Between that and the $4 I saved on my allergy eye drops, the drive out to Stall Tart was worth it. I made up for it by stopping at Goodwill on the way home for a few Halloween costume items.

I am going to be a bumblebee for Halloween. I bought a set of wings and antennae, and a black shirt that I will stripe with yellow tape.

But I am confronting, tonight, the fact of purchasing cheap, badly made junk. Not for the quality, but for the implications. How much damage am I doing the world and the people of the world by my purchasing?

I had a friend in law school who only bought fair trade clothing. One day of shopping at Stall Tart makes me think that maybe I should do the same. (The problem always comes, though, from the fact that I can't wear normal clothes. I need to buy talls, and there are no talls, that I have found, on fair trade websites.) And surely I could make my own bumblebee wings.

multiple daily falls

This morning, I fell down the stairs with a cereal bowl in my hand.

It didn't hurt, exactly, because I only fell down three steps, and I landed mostly sitting down with a little bit of pressure on my back. My cereal, however, flew up into the air. The bowl landed upside down.

Trader Joe's Os were strewn about the downstairs hallway. I found some later behind the laundry room door, once I had my contacts in.

And all the way down at the end of the hall, there was a droplet of milk on the sleeping bag that I hadn't yet put away from the weekend travels.

...

In the afternoon, I tried to sit down on a bench in front of where the bench actually was, so for a moment I was hovering in the air above nothing. Then I caught myself with my hands, and I slid backwards onto the bench.

People laughed at me.

super city drinks

I drove up to Super City on the Sound this weekend, for the first time ever (ridiculous, considering that it is only three hours from Gone West). It was my friend's thirtieth birthday, and we didn't do one touristy thing. I can't tell you anything to do in Super City on the Sound unless you want to have a lot of appetizers and drinks, with a dinner and a breakfast thrown in every now and then, in which case you are in luck, for about two days, because I know of two days worth of places to go for appetizers and drinks, and only in one specific part of the the city.

learning

At least once per advanced fighting class, lately, I have a moment of being totally overwhelmed. This is because we are doing boxing, again, and my reflexes suck, and so I never manage to block or dodge everything in time, and when I keep getting hit in the face, sometimes by more than one person at a time, eventually I feel a moment of panic.

I need that moment of panic, though. Every time I feel that moment of panic and press on to charge the person, or to whirl away, or to simply hold my ground, I am one step closer to surviving if I ever have to use this to keep myself alive.

I didn't know, before this class, that I would sometimes flinch and turn my head away when a punch came at my head, instead of dodging correctly.

I didn't know, before this class, that sometimes I would get overwhelmed and want a break from being punched at, just for a minute.

I also didn't know, before this class, that I was strong enough to take that punch a little too hard in the face, fight back the feelings of pain and overwhelmed-ness, and punch right back at my attacker.

It's good to know about yourself.

not a thing

I have the loveliest plan for the evening: to do nothing.

I'm doing it, too. I am sitting on the couch, wrapped in blankets, watching Fringe on dvd. It is just exactly what I need. I need, just for a few minutes, not to think or to move.

And then to go to bed early.

P.S. The raspberries are over for the year, I think. This is sad for me, because I pretty much survive on them all summer. I think - the pouring rain is also a clue - this lovely summer is really done.

festivities

The Super Hiking Organizer accompanied me up to Gone West for birthday festivities. I reacted approximately like a tour guide who wants to convince their customer that this is the Best! Town! Ever!, probably because that is exactly how I feel about Gone West and I want everyone else to feel that way, too. I do the same annoying thing when my parents come to town.

It was lovely to be in the city I love. We had my favorite food cart food. We went to a museum next to the park where I used to sit and eat my lunches. We got tea at the tea place. And to crown my birthday, we went with T. and S. to Ethiopian, of course, and then just next door to play pool.

I tried, this morning, as we were leaving Gone West with one of my favorite only-in-Gone-West cappuccinos in hand, to figure out what it is about that city that I love so much, and I think part of it is the feeling of possibility. Even when I wandered the city alone there, I felt like anything could happen. Someone could sit down next to me on the train wearing African clothes. I could meet someone who had a job that I could fix as my life goal. A new friend could be in line at the coffee shop with me.

I don't feel that way in Universe City, and I don't know if it's me or the town. Perhaps both - the town is smaller, and I am less enthusiastic.

It was, however, a lovely birthday, filled with just enough drizzle to remind me that I am here in the Land of Rain and Damp. Hearts.

yellow

I earned my yellow belt today in kung fu.

I am so ridiculously proud of myself. You would think that I was the first person ever to earn a yellow belt, which is the first belt that you have to earn, rather than just being awarded it for showing up to class a few times.

It's just that, well, for possibly the first time ever, I win at something that requires hand-eye coordination! Yay! Go me! Go coordination! Go ability to stand on one leg without ridiculous wobbling!

I am quite pleased not to have to wear that white beginner sash anymore. I was beginning to feel stuck.

falling down

I don't know how to fall. Still.

I should know, by now, I think, but falling is risky, and so I don't do it enough. Tonight, my instructor had to walk me through it, first doing break-falls from a sitting position (easy), then dropping from a standing position, then being gently thrown, and then being tossed onto the pads.

Only the last two times we practiced it did I manage to keep my eyes open. The second instructor was throwing me, and as he was finishing the scenario by pretending to nail me in the groin (in case I was a guy), elbow my thigh (ouch) and punch my head, I was talking happily, "I kept my eyes open that time!"

The other woman in the class laughed at me. "He's beating you up, and you are all proud of keeping your eyes open."

Well, yes. I am. Quite proud, actually.

I didn't always get the falling right, unfortunately. After class, I walked down the hill from my house to a friend's house where my roommate M. had gone for dinner, and after sitting and then walking back up the hill, I could feel the falls in my hip when we got back home.

"Do you have hip problems?" M. asked.

"I might now," I said, "after all that falling."

pieces, together

Sooooo.

Guess what I am doing?

It's awesome.

I am sorting raspberries by ripeness: Eat Immediately or Bust (which I then eat), Perfectly Ripe for Freezing, and Save for Ripeness Tomorrow.

My life is... fascinating.

(Why did I leave my traveling life again? WHY? No one do what I did. Don't move back to your home country and get boring.

I did, I have to admit, spend copious amounts of time dealing with fruit in Rwanda, too. It was usually passion fruit/maracuja, and I was trying to make juice. I guess this is a case of the world - and me - being the same everywhere.)

...

The mountain that I climbed a week and a half ago and the mountains between which I reached the saddle two and a half weeks ago are sort of a set. They go together, the three of them.

Yesterday morning, on the news, I heard that someone died climbing the mountain to the north of the one we meant to climb two and a half weeks ago. This did not freak me out as much as you might think, for one major reason: that mountain is technical, and I do not do technical.

I don't even have a desire to climb technical mountains. Do you know what mountain climbing gear sounds like to me? Dead weight, on your back. And I know that I have mentioned how very much I despise lugging things around on my back.

I suspect, though, that my reaction to technical mountain climbing is approximately the same as my reaction to jumping off high things: shudder, and then jump. (Similarly: bungee jumping and sky diving. This from the girl who doesn't even do the falling rides at amusement parks.)

If someone who knew what they were doing suggested that I try it, I would probably leap right into it, and love it.

For now, I prefer to stick with mountains that will only kill you if you do something incredibly stupid, not mountains that actively attempt to kill you just because you are there.

...

I lost my iPod today, and a low-grade level of panic ensued.

I mean, you can't REALLY panic over a lost iPod in North America, mere miles from a Mac Store, when you have once lost an iPod into a pit latrine in South Sudan, many miles from nowhere when the music of it is sustaining you on a daily basis. The two losses are just not comparable.

For example: if it turned out that this iPod was gone, I would not have sat in literal shit, crying. I would have been annoyed, yes, but this was more like, "Hm, I seem to have misplaced my iPod, and it would suck to have to spend the money on a new one."

And then someone emailed me and said they had found it, and the heavens opened and trumpets rang.

What I mean is, I was relieved, because now I can time myself when I practice the plank and mah bu for my belt test.

...

I am still sorting raspberries.

...

I think I heard a car accident a few minutes ago, and now I see twirling emergency lights a street or two over.

i need a bumper sticker

A couple of weeks ago, I was summoned to the front of my fighting class for a very embarrassing presentation of the Student of the Month award. I thought that was only for the kids, THUS THE EMBARRASSMENT.

"Your face was the color of your shirt!" more than one person told me, and yes, I was wearing a bright red shirt.

Seriously, I thought it was just for the kids. Why am I depriving the kids of the joy? Plus, pressure. Now I have to perform, or something.

Which leads me to the next problem: I am for-sure-this-time taking a belt test on Friday, and my knees are killing me.

Hi, I am the Student of the Month, and I am so decrepit that I actually can't do the class!

Hi, I am the Student of the Month, and I just failed my belt test!

Every day, I think about how I should practice my forms (there are two I should know), and every day, I stand up to work on them and groan because my knees hurt. It's really not going to go well to start in on these forms in front of the class and not remember them because I haven't been practicing them.

Since snapping my fingers has so far not worked, and my silly health insurance does not cover physical therapy until I've met a $1000 deductible, I am going with the ever-effective Plan C: overuse ibuprofen for the next five days. Ugh.

P.S. Did I mention that my Achilles and/or my plantar fascia is still burning, too? Basket case: meet belt test.

stranded

We drove half an hour south last night to watch Super Hiking Organizer's movie. (Ha! SHO thought I was going to refer to him on here as Cotton Pants/Trousers Nazi, a la the Soup Nazi in Seinfeld, because I told him I was, but I am not that rude. Quite. Also, I am not comfortable with casual use of the term Nazi. Too many connotations. Super Hiking Organizer it is.)

The movie was good, and on the way home after bar food and drinks, the car started smoking.

Not my car, thank goodness. I have overheated one car in my life, and I have no interest in ever doing so again. That call to my poor dad, who actually owned the car, was very unpleasant, even though he calmly drove up the 3/4 of the way to my college town to the side of the road where I and the car were sitting and repeatedly filled the some-sort of tank with water so that we could limp the car back home after the nearest junk yard wouldn't take it because we didn't have the title with us.

Fun! Except not, and I don't want to ever miss the fact that my car is overheating ever again.

So the car we were in last night overheated, and there we five were standing on the side of the highway. I have a slight paranoia about sitting in a car on the side of a highway due to the fact that drivers are dumb, and I don't want a car going 70 miles per hour to hit a stopped car in which I am sitting. We stood about 20 feet away, in the grass.

The owner of the car called AAA (by some odd trick of visual memory, I knew exactly at which mile marker we were), and we waited.

AAA called and informed us that there were no available vans along that entire highway, so they would be sending us two tow trucks instead, and we waited some more.

We three girls had to pee. Do you have any idea how frequently cars drive past on a highway? Way too often, is the answer, particularly when they have headlights on and the last thing you want is to be caught squatting with your pants down on the side of a major interstate.

Eh-hem. We resorted to forming a line, like a defensive line on a goal kick in soccer, and we took turns taking care of business behind the shelter of the line.

I am not sure how well this worked, except possibly by distracting any passing cars.

The tow truck driver chattered on to E. and me about his daughters who went to Mexico against his advice and his wife who had a dream that he was sleeping with another woman and started hitting him for it in the middle of the night.

"I don't even know a Stacey,* but I promised her I would keep Stacey out of her dreams," he said. "Ha! I have no idea how I can possibly do that."

* I don't remember the actual name he used. It was similar to Stacey, I think.

drift

I think I forgot that it is possible to be sick without having a sore throat. I mean, I have a sore throat pretty much all the time here in the World Center of Allergens where I am forced to live, and so I went traipsing off to work today, bleary-eyed and miserable, because I didn't have any more of a sore throat than usual, so I could not be sick.

After a nap at lunch, I went back to work and realized that I felt hot and my eye sockets hurt, and still it took me more than an hour to realize that if I did just a couple of maintenance things, I could go back home and sleep some more.

And so I did.

I spent my afternoon drifting between awake and asleep here in the sunny living room.

Sometimes, on warm-but-not hot sunny days, when the breeze blows into my living room, the temperature of the air reminds me of Rwanda, of the afternoons when I would lie in the hammock above the lake, dozing, with a pillow and a blanket, getting alternately hot and cold as the shade moved. I miss that hammock, and that lake, and that house.

wall

I kind of hit a wall in kung fu last night, which I guess is what happens when you do kung fu and/or fighting or hiking pretty much every single day for three weeks and on the approximately three days when you don't do one of those things you do something social and you never get enough sleep.

Suddenly one minute you are doing a form in kung fu that unfortunately involves a little too much getting down on painful knees, and the next minute your body has decided that it is done, it just isn't getting up.

My instructor summoned me over (he has a back injury right now and is sitting on the sidelines himself), and had me rest, for my knees' sake. After a few minutes, when the painful knee stuff was done, I went back out on the floor and tried the next few things, but I felt sick and slow, and I quickly sat down again.

Sometimes, your body is trying to tell you something, and sometimes it has to speak up before you notice. My goal is not to let it get to the screaming stage before I listen.

mountain, take 2

On Thursday, on my lunch hour, I went to rei and bought a base layer.

When I got back to work, one of my coworkers caught sight of the price tag and said, "You spent $70 on a shirt? Bring it back, right now! Bring it directly back to the store!"

"No!" I said. "I need it! I should have waited for a sale, but I need it now."

"Bring it back!" she repeated. "It's too much!"

...

Yesterday, I climbed a mountain.

This mountain:

i don't have a good, non-clouded photo of this mountain.

Standing at the top, in the possibly-60 mph wind that threw frost at me, wearing six layers of clothing including a down vest under my rain coat (I look like a puffalump in the photos), I thought to myself, "That was the best $70 I've ever spent."

Except maybe for the $70 that I spent on my mid-weight layer

Except maybe for the $70 that I spent on my hiking poles.

Except maybe for the $70 that I spent on my zip off hiking pants. (Remember how I hate zip off hiking pants? Remember how I have hated them as far back as 2007? Yes, I now own them. I own them now only because they were the only pair of hiking pants that I could find that 1. fit, and 2. came in long. They are pretty awesome in terms of functionality, but I think I would like them better without that annoying zipper on my leg, to say nothing of how much better they would look with no zipper.)

...

I climbed this same mountain two years ago this weekend. I was the only person in this weekend's group who had climbed it before, and so periodically someone would ask me a question about the route. I could answer them until we got to the last 1.1 miles and 1500 feet of elevation gain, and then I just said, "I think I was pretty much delirious on this part last time. It's kind of a blank."

part of the last part, looking down.

This trip was remarkably different. I was tired, sure. My legs are stiff today.

But when I got to the top of the mountain yesterday, I realized that I had not once had to count my steps. I could think about things other than putting one foot in front of the other as I climbed, things like life and the view and my future. I stopped periodically to look around and breathe, but I never had to stop. When we got to the top, I could have kept going, if I had to (which is not to say that I wanted to).

...

We backpacked in and camped the night before above a pretty alpine lake, where it got very cold, very fast when the sun went down, and we could not have a campfire, because we were camping in an alpine forest wilderness area. By 8:30 pm, we were all cozy in our sleeping bags with hot water bottles. Literally: water bottles filled with hot water.

At the end of summer, the alpine forest was dusty and dry, and the wind blew all night, rustling the rain flies on the tents, keeping us awake, and covering us and our belongings in a fine coating of dust.

We began climbing late, and the mountain was clouded over. The guidebook says not to summit the mountain if it is clouded over, due to the possibility of "near-blizzard" conditions at the top. We set off anyway, hoping the clouds would clear.

We walked along a long, gentle plateau above the lake, and then began climbing up and up, through trees and then between snow fields. At State of Happiness's highest lake at the bottom of a glacier, we looked up at the steep trail disappearing into the clouds, consulted some hikers coming down ("There's just an ice storm for about the last fifteen minutes."), loaded up our layers of warm clothes, and decided to go for it anyway.

After over an hour of steady, impossibly steep climbing, we stood victorious at the crater, buffered by the wall of rocks. To get to the true summit, we had to walk around the crater, exposing ourselves to the ferocity of the wind. We walked as far from the edge as we could.

note: this is not me. also note: rocks covered in ice that is flying at them and us.

It was a different mountain entirely from last time, when I climbed in jeans and a t-shirt, without poles, and could see most of the western half of State of Happiness down below. This time, there was nothing but white to see.

on a mountain, not an airplane: a break in the clouds

Climbing the same mountain two years apart with such different results is very, very gratifying, even if you can't see a thing.

more mountains

I almost climbed a big mountain last Friday, and I climbed a little mountain last Sunday, and it was all so fantastic that I signed up to climb another big mountain tomorrow. Unfortunately, climbing this mountain appears to involve lugging tents and sleeping pads and food halfway up, camping, and then climbing to the summit of the mountain tomorrow.

Have I mentioned how I hate backpacking? Have I mentioned how I am not a turtle and I should not be expected to carry my world on my back? No?

I hate backpacking. I am not a turtle. I should not be expected to carry my world on my back.

Yet I sign up for these things.

Silly rabbit.

brilliant idea: failed

I had a brilliant idea. Since I always sunburn the part of my hair, I would just pull all of my hair back into a ponytail with no part, and then the sunburn would not be a problem.

Now I have a halo of sunburn just under the edge of my hair, where the sunscreen did not reach and the hair did not cover.

Ouch.

not quite a mountain

Goal Mountain.

We set off to climb a mountain.

Except word was that the mountain we picked was not really climbable in one day.

Except some people didn't want to leave quite so early in the morning. (I suggested 5 am. The final agreement was on 6:30 am.)

Except there were forest fires in the area.

Where there is smoke there is (are) fire(s).

So we finally set off with half the number of people planned, on the trail at 7 am.

We hiked part of this trail, leading up to the mountain we intended to climb, and it was odd. I never expected to see that trail again, somehow. When I hiked it last year, I was still living in Gone West, and I didn't realize that when I moved to Universe City, it would be a mere hour and a half away. It looks much different in daylight and also when you do not feel like you are going to die from exhaustion. Less steep, for example. Also wider.

Our objective, once we settled the fact that four non-athletes were probably not going to summit the selected mountain in one day, was the saddle between Goal Mountain and North-of-Goal Mountain.

Reaching our objective involved a long, pleasant hike up through the woods, through a lava field and several meadows still full of wildflowers, thanks to a very late and cold summer, and then straight up the side of a rocky mountain face.

Not only was the mountain rocky and slippery, but large portions of the trail disappeared into snow fields. We trudged up and up them, digging our toes and poles into the snow for balance, and finally left half again our number on a rocky height two snowfields and two rock fields short of the saddle.

I climbed up the side of the second-to-last rock field, and the other person still climbing went around it through snow. I followed him up the last snowfield, and up through the last stretch of rocks.

I had to stop in the middle of the last bit to dig some sour Jelly Bellies out of my pack and put them in my pocket. I ate them as I climbed, two at a time, for some quick sugar.

And then, suddenly, there was before us the eastern half of this State of Happiness.

To the east.

We took the long way back, through my very favorite meadow of all time.

Oooh! Shiny rocks!

It was not until the very end of the 12 hours and 18 miles that my feet, and only my feet, began screaming at me. I counted the feeling of endorphin rush at the end of the trip a victory, compared to the feeling of death that I had at the end of 15 miles a year ago.

I felt so good immediately afterward that I signed up for another hike tomorrow.

Don't worry. I bought some moleskin.

Intended destination: right peak.
Actual destination: a little bit right of the mid-point between the two.

car wash

I begin to understand why my dad always used to start holidays by making us kids wash and vacuum the cars. There is just some instinct about it.

That, or I have become my dad, and my compulsion to clean the car on holidays is learned, not innate.

Knowing that your car is freshly vacuumed and the oil changed makes for a very satisfied afternoon of sitting by the pool doing absolutely nothing but turning pages in a book and occasionally switching from a deck chair to a lounger in the pool.

I took my book in the pool with me, when I was alone in the pool, and then set it safely on the side before N. jumped in. He picked it up and moved it even further away, to the table, before running and diving into the deep end.

"Barely a ripple!" his dad said, and N. proclaimed his dive a perfect 10.

"Hardly," D. said. "Your legs weren't together, and your knees were bent."

"So picky," I said, propelling myself slowly along the edge of the pool with my hand.

river running

My roommate M.'s brother and sister-in-law were supposed to be here this weekend, and her mom had purchased a white water rafting trip for them, only her brother got sick, and so the spaces were open (actually four spaces were open, but one of them had not been paid for, and so it was okay that we only managed to fill three of them).

The water was not actually that white, because it is the end of the season, and the river out of the mountains is running low.

It was a stunning day nonetheless. The sky was blue; the trees were green. Et cetera; et cetera.

The river was 54 degrees. "The warmest it's been!" the guide told us cheerfully. The sun was almost warm enough to allow us to survive the water.

The air was clear, with a faint smell of forest fire. I should not like that smell of smoke as much as I do: thank you, growing up in a place where cooking and field clearing are both done by fire.

We squirted the other boats with giant squirt guns. We coasted over the rapids, which were, given that my only other white water rafting experience was on the White Nile just north of Lake Victoria, slightly disappointing. We floated through long, calm stretches of beautiful forest.

When the two boys jumped out, S. and I yanked them back into the boat so hard they almost flew over the other side and back into the water. That's what too much tae kwon do and kung fu will do for you.

We walked far out onto a fallen tree, above a swimming hole, and jumped down into the cold water. M. walked out slowly, carefully. "I'm so scared of heights!" she said. She braced herself, and we counted, but she didn't jump. She didn't jump until finally she and I held hands and plummeted together.

be tough

I struggle with sparring, especially contact sparring.

I sort of love it, because that's the whole point, right? I'm learning to fight so that I can fight. And I get to hit people without hurting them. And it works, sometimes.

I sort of hate it, because sometimes it does hurt, and sometimes I get overwhelmed, especially when I am fighting against Instructor No. 2, who is extremely mild-mannered in real life and then turns into a crazy person when boxing.

After a terribly long, fraught day, I needed to smack someone around at fighting class tonight, but when I got smacked around, it felt like more of what I'd been getting all day. So when Instructor No. 2 batted me around and batted me around some more, easily, I had to suck it up and tell myself not to cry, and then I got mad and turned into a crazy person myself.

Instructor No. 1 has taken to calling me Tough Stuff.