house

Oh, hey. We bought a house.

We did not set out to buy a house, other than the fact that we've been going to open houses for well over a year. But that was just for fun, right? We'd sort of decided that buying a house while planning a wedding was a little too much.

Oops.

I happened to see that there were open houses near the park where we almost always take the pup, the park with the big trees for shade or shelter from the rain, the park with wood chips so it doesn't get too muddy or dusty. It was a whim, something to do on a weekend afternoon between errands and housework.

The next morning, J. went back with the realtor, and a month later, we had a (second) house. (J. already owns one.)

It just so happens that this house has a wall of south-facing windows, and a finished basement, and a yard with beautiful trees. It just so happens that it has a fireplace, and a bright clean kitchen, and a garage for all the stuff we've been cramming into the small third bedroom here. It just so happens that it has fruit trees in the yard, and a cozy family room, and a pantry cupboard. 

So we bought a house. We're moving stuff into it a little at time, and we're never quite sure where things might be - is the dog's second food dish here or there? For that matter, is the pup herself here or there? (On hot days, we sometimes bring her over to the cooler basement there to wile the day away without constant panting.)

Because we are just that smart, we also went camping twice in the weeks before our wedding. 

I even took a day off work to drive out to the mountains - J. and the pup were already there with another friend - and hang out next to a lake. The pup learned to swim. We all got a little sunburned. It actually cooled off at night, which was a welcome break from the unrelenting heat in town. 

When the pup woke me up at 6:05 am, I walked with her the nearly 5 miles around the lake, through the woods, through the campgrounds, hrough the white trunks of trees that burned years ago and past the views of the mountain, to keep her from waking everyone else up. She bounded over logs, then raced past me to sniff something invisible, then dashed past the other way. 

I breathed in mountain air, and all was well. 

Then we got back, and we made some lists in lieu of panicking about all that we have to do before the wedding. 

totality

I will admit that I was a little anxious about whether we were going to find a place to watch the eclipse. This is because the entirety of our plan was "drive into the zone, preferable somewhere remote."

Only we don't live somewhere remote, and the stories of the projected traffic struck fear into the heart of a person who commutes 2+ hours a day. The idea of more time in the car, stuck in traffic, made me feel slightly ill. I tried to talk the rest of the team into leaving earlier or making a more concrete plan, but everyone else thought it would be fine.

Sunday afternoon, we packed up the Subaru with tents and all the camping gear, and off we set.

Just inside the national forest, we stopped at a ranger station, where they gave us a map with the non-reservable sites highlighted, and then we just guessed. We picked a campground and drove.

When we drove into the campground we'd chosen, there were empty spots. There was even, upon inspection, a big, quiet spot down a little trail next to the creek, with two tables and space for multiple tents. We couldn't even hear our nearest neighbors. 

The guys took the tiny hatchet that I gave J. for his birthday and used it to hack at a fallen tree to break off pieces for firewood, and then JT took the hatchet from them and crouched down, holding it in both hands, and chipped away until she broke off a piece. 

In the morning, we lounged about making breakfast. There were eggs on the stove.

Jeff put on the eclipse glasses just to see how they worked, and suddenly said, "It's already happening!" 

We turned off the eggs, scrambled around for chairs and the rest of the eclipse glasses, and looked up.

There was a bite out of the sun. 

We all sat for the next forty five minutes, looking up, enthralled. 

When the sun disappeared through the glasses, we all tentatively took them off, and then we couldn't help ourselves. We whooped and shouted. We laughed. 

"The world is divided into two kinds of people," JT said, after the light had returned. "People who have seen totality, and people who haven't."

"Totality or bust."

We're already planning for Mexico in 2024.

I do not yoga (I do Mexico)

I do not yoga, as we know, but somehow I found myself signed up for a yoga retreat in Mexico.

Re. Mexico: I also never really had Mexico on my radar for travel purposes. It's so close to the States, and so many people go on vacation there, and I tend to want to go further afield for my adventures, so I wrote it off. I mean, I figured I would end up there someday, because it's next door, but it wasn't on the list of places to go because, well, it's close.

I loved Mexico. We stayed at a little resort at one end of a beach that had a park in the middle and a town on the other end, where foreign tourists sat drinking margaritas at the beachside bars and Mexican families played in the surf. 

"I forgot how much I love riding in the back seat of a crappy taxi through a new country while the driver plays pop music way too loud," I texted T. 

The days were warm and clear, except when it poured down tropical rain. 

J. and I played in the Pacific Ocean waves like kids. The only person who played in the waves as much as we did was 12 years old. We skipped yoga class to jump over and through waves. The other J., the 12 year old, taught us to angle into the waves so that we launched out the other side like dolphins leaping above the water, and we compared how successful our launches were after nearly every wave. 

We went scuba diving along the edge of a rocky island, with battered gear and three older people, two of whom flailed even more than I do, beginner that I am. On the first dive, I bit off the edge of my mouthpiece and had to hold the regulator in my mouth with my hand. My depth gauge didn't work. On the second dive, my mask kept fogging up. But M., my diving instructor, taught us to deal with those eventualities, and I was fine. 

We saw a cornetfish lingering motionless in the water, and schools of thousands of fish swam between us and the light. We swam down through a tunnel in the rock. 

On the way out to diving, we saw a whale breach, and on the boat ride back, dolphins swam under the  boat. 

There was yoga. We did yoga from 7-9 am and from 4:30 to 6 pm. 

"Set your intention for the week," said the instructor peacefully the first day.

"My intention is not to kill anyone while doing yoga this week," I thought to myself. 

I managed that just fine the first day or two, so by day three I thought I was ready for more. I upgraded my intention.

"Don't hate everyone while doing yoga," I thought. That one didn't work - halfway through the class, I wanted to cry or quit - so I went back to resolving not to kill anyone. Turns out I'm pretty okay at not killing anyone while doing yoga. I am less okay at not hating the world while doing yoga. 

I survived six days of yoga, although, to be honest, I was down to one class per day for the last three days. 3.5 hours of yoga a day is a little excessive for a beginner. I did a shoulder-stand thing, though. (My neck has been bothering me, so no attempts at a headstand.) J. did headstands galore. 

Between yoga and eating and playing on the beach and taking a few naps (they made me get up at 6:15 am. On vacation. There were naps), a week flew by.

I quite like Mexico. I'd like to go back. 

I don't know about the yoga, though. Maybe. I've gone to a couple of classes since I've been back. (Shhhhhhh. Don't tell anyone.)

certified

I had lofty goals of blogging at least once a week this year. That was my plan. Not a resolution, exactly, just a plan. 

(My other plan for the year, signing up for and using digit, is thus far a success. I have finally begun to train digit on the fact that I want it to save more than $0.17 at a time by forcing it to save $10 or $100 at a time. If you want to try digit, by the way, let me know. I have a referral code. It is addicting.)

So anyway, blogging. I was going to do it. I was going to do it regularly.

Then I realized that if I want to scuba dive in Mexico at the end of February, I should get certified now. I figured this out the day before the first of five Tuesday night classes that culminated in open water dives last weekend. This means that I had class from 6:30 - 10:30 every Tuesday night, and also homework. 

I loved, loved, loved the scuba classes. I got all excited every week when I knew that I was going to get to go underwater that night. 

On the first pool night (which was actually the second class, because our first pool night got canceled due to the apocalypse snow), we had to swim 400 yards. I started off slow, because 8 laps is a lot of laps. By my return on the first lap, I had switched to the time-honored swim stroke of the women in my family: the side stroke. By the third lap, I was way out ahead of the other two students. Tortoise and hare, people. It pays to be the tortoise.

On the second pool night, we had to take off our masks and sit underwater without them for a minute, then put them back on. People panic over this, mostly because you just about have to keep your eyes closed lest the chlorine destroy them. It didn't bother me at all. I knelt sightless underwater for a minute, just enjoying the feeling of being underwater. I knew that the regulator wasn't going to fail me - I could breathe - and I knew that the surface was up there if I needed it. (I would worry if I were in 50 feet of water without my buddy, but this was not that situation.)

At the end of the class, we drove up to Other PNW State for the open water sessions. J. came along, because he's a diver, and the dive shop said there are usually other people up there diving.

To dive in 36 degree water, you need a serious wetsuit. Actually, you need more than just a wetsuit. You need a 7mm farmer john (a sleeveless wetsuit) covered by a 7 mm shorts/long-sleeve combo. You also need 5mm gloves, hood, and boots. And you will still be cold just about every second you aren't moving. (For comparison, in Honduras I dove in a 3mm shortie - shorts and short sleeves.) 

It's really pretty down there. The sea anemones stand a foot or two off the ground, orange and white, faces turned into the current. There are tiny jellyfish the size of a baby's cupped hand floating through the water, opening and closing slowly. Schools of fish swim between you and the sky.

By Saturday night, after three dives and a lot of standing around in and out of the water, I was chilled through. There was no reprieve out of the water, with the wind blowing on the wet neoprene, except the few minutes when we could stand directly in front of the propane heater. Sitting in the hot tub and taking a hot shower in the evening did not raise my body temperature back to normal. I went to bed still cold. 

I guess it probably didn't help that I was in the worst days of a cold. I felt like I'd been hit by a truck - and that was before I doped myself up with Sudafed and Afrin and ibuprofen to get my congestion to the point where my ears would not explode with the underwater pressure, and then jumped into freezing water.

Sunday morning before the final dive, standing out in the 33 degree air in a still-wet wetsuit, my hands were so cold they burned. J. had to run inside and get a bottle of hot water to pour into my gloves before I could move them enough to get my gear on. My instructor's regulator was frozen, spewing air in free flow when he tested it. 

When we dove, I had an extra 3 lb weight on one side of my BCD (the diving vest) to make up for the different air tank I was using, so I kept tipping to one side. I couldn't get warm. The water was so murky that I just followed the orange fins of the instructor. All I could think was, "Is this over yet?" I'm usually pretty good with air, but I tore through it trying to stay warm and not give up. 

And then we were out of the water, and we were certified, and I took another hot shower and put on layers of clothes and slept in the car most of the way home. 

So I'm good to dive in Mexico next week. I'm guessing that will be a little more pleasant than the frigid waters of the sound.

indoor

I've taken up indoor rock climbing. J. and I took it up together, actually, but then he flew off to Spain, leaving me to find other climbing partners, and I have done so. I am shameless about hitting people up to go climbing. I will climb with anyone who won't let the rope go too slack.

I might have overdone it a little two weeks ago, climbing five out of seven days. Last week I kept it to three, thanks to busy evenings and my elbow hating me when I climb too much, but this week I'll probably be back up to four or five. I love it. I love it like I love martial arts (or would, if I could find a good dojo in this city). 

(If you don't know the numbering, anything in the 5 range means that you probably need a rope. (More details in the "Free Climbing" section here.) The gym routes start at 5.6 and go through 5.13. I started with 5.6s and 5.7s, which are like ladders, and 5.8s were my hard climbs. After six weeks, I climb mostly 5.9s and some 5.10As. My project climbs are 5.10Bs and 5.10Cs.)

My evening emails to J. for the last two weeks or so, as I've been moving up, have read like this: "So then I climbed that purple 5.10A - you know, the one in the room straight ahead right as you enter, over from the orange route that has the overhang? - and it was hard and I had to rest on the rope a couple of times when my hands got tired, but I did it!!" I'm sure he is enthralled. He's threatening to find me a support group.

Yesterday I climbed tried to climb a couple of routes that were way above my abilities, and somehow the whole afternoon passed while I fought the wall. I only figured out how much time had passed because I was so hungry that I got dizzy. It's hard to climb when you are dizzy.

Today I struggled on a route that I did successfully last week (they put in a big handhold for another route in exactly the wrong place to stop me from balancing where there are no handholds), and then when that didn't work, I climbed a 5.11A. Okay, with a little help from the rope, and I used the crack in the wall (I'm never sure whether you are allowed to use the crack or not). And it was my favorite kind of climb, with big bulby handholds far apart (tall people unite). I hate little handholds. They make my fingers cramp up.

"How far do you fall when you fall?" my mom asked. Since I am a 'fraidy cat about falling, I hardly fall any distance at all. Yesterday I was climbing with someone new, who didn't pull the rope tight when I said, "take," and so I just let go of the wall to rest my hands and fell about two feet. Which is fine, except that I was struggling with that route, and losing those two feet of climbing when you are dizzy and hungry and just want to go home is rough. The good news is that I've gotten way more comfortable with falling over the last week or two. Before that, I just clung to the wall like a burr rather than risk falling when I probably could have made the next move.

Climbing is so much fun.

defeated by the children, again

Scenes from a trampoline park:

1. 

J. went running off to try something. The trampoline lifeguard dashed after him. 

"I think he forgot about the no running," I said. 

"First I thought he was running because a kid got hurt," the TL said. "Then I remembered that you two didn't come with any kids."

"You're making quite an assumption there, thinking he's not a kid," I said. 

"I kind of got that," the TL said. 

(J. found this hilarious. I am saying nothing here that I have not already said to him.)

2. 

J. fell into the air pit while trying to walk along a challenge tunnel, one foot on each wall. 

He crawled across the pit and managed to hoist himself out. 

Across the pit, a kid fell into it and stood up, walking effortlessly on the air. 

3. 

I dropped into the air pit just to see how it felt. (Weird.) 

When I clambered laboriously out, there was a girl with dark red-blonde hair staring at me. 

"You're supposed to wear closed-toe shoes to go in there," she said sternly, and pointed at the sign not three feet from me."

"Oh," I said. "You're right. You also have to be four feet tall. Do you do this one? Are you four feet tall?"

She gravely stood with her back to the sign. She was about 1/4 inch over 4 feet tall.

Then she showed me her caramel apple lollipop. 

"Those are my favorite, too," I told her.

4. 

I jumped off a ledge onto a trampoline, but my knees gave out and I fell. I rolled into a ball and stayed there.

I finally moved when I heard the TL coming over, expecting him to yell at me for lying down. 

"Oh, good," the TL said. "You aren't dead."

"She's just embarrassed," J. said.

5. 

J.'s list of injuries grew: 

1. He slammed into the ledge as he bounced back toward it (arm). 
2. He bounced on his head (neck).
3. He got rug burn all over his feet, knees, and elbows. 
4. That pulled muscle he already had in his thigh, from softball and all the other sports. 

"I'm so old," he said on one of the injury-recovery breaks. "Why would you want to date an old broken guy?"

(That's funny because he's younger than me.)

6. 

"You guys lasted a lot longer than most adults," the TL said. "Most people over the age of, like, 18, give up after an hour. It was a mistake, though. You'll regret it tomorrow. It was a mistake."

7. 

"Was that in the 1950s?" I asked J., today, when he told me the name of his first girlfriend. "That would be a good 50s name."

"The way I feel today, it might have been," he said.

...

(We actually both feel better than we expected. Trampolines are hard work.)

little bitty mountain

I was a little bit nervous about the first hike with my mountaineering class because I am not in the best shape of my life and I hate carrying heavy things up mountains. I expected to be lagging at the back of the very fit crowd.

But lo! Apparently running the stairs in my office and walking the hills at lunchtime has kept me in better shape than I thought. I will never be able to keep up with the dudes who just race up the hill, but I can keep up with the bulk of the group. I never even felt like I was struggling. After we got down and went to a restaurant, I jogged on my way out to the car to get my rope to practice knots. (It was raining, thus the jogging, but the point is that I had the energy to jog.)

We hiked a little mountain that I've hiked before - it's about 3 miles up, with 2800' of elevation gain. Any time a hike approaches 1000' vertical feet per mile, I consider it strenuous. And I've hiked this mountain before, but it was two years ago when I was out of shape and having some issues figuring out how to pack the right food for hikes. I also hiked with some people who were radically in shape, so I almost don't even remember it. It was a haze of exhaustion and hypoglycemia. 

Not so, this time around. Even when I had to carry the rope on the steepest part of the trail, I was near the front of the pack, looking back to make sure we didn't lose the stragglers. 

The sun came out as we approached the tree line, but the wind threatened to blow us off the mountain. I put on my puffy jacket and my rain coat, and then I rolled up my neck warmer and put it over my ears. 

At the very top, some of the experienced climbers had gone up before us and were waiting with snacks and hot chocolate. 

Every climb should have people waiting at the top with snacks and hot chocolate. 

And it didn't start dumping rain until we got back to the car, which is a complete win for spring in this part of the world. 

weekending

I really needed a weekend. That sounds silly, because I am unemployed and so theoretically all of my days should be the same, but I really needed two days without feeling like there was something I should be doing to look for a job. 

I took full advantage. 

SHO and I went to a beer fest on Friday night. I do not like beer, but I like fests. I like double-fisting lemonade (strawberry in one hand and mint in the other). I like the crowds and the music. After the lovely sunset, a bit of staring out over the beautiful city, and a brief incident of not being able to find my car on the dark streets in an unfamiliar neighborhood, we came back to my apartment, where my roommate was making bagels and each of the three of us ate two dark chocolate peanut butter cups while talking about our dating experiences.

I met a potential new friend for coffee at a farmers market on Saturday morning. We sat at a table in the middle talking about all of life. The sun shone hotter. I ate red plum sorbetto. 

I took a nap.

Some friends from my old work grilled food on Saturday night. Summer nights in Gone West are perfection: cooling air under clear, spotless skies. M. and I were supposed to go for a sunset hike, but the food was good and the company better, and we stayed instead. The guys played corn hole. The women talked about our old work. We lingered.

Today we hiked. It was warm. We climbed up and up. I sweated off all of my sunscreen, I think, and I kept wiping my eyes to get the sweat away, so now I either have really irritated skin around my eyes or I got a sunburn that makes me look like a raccoon. It's hard to tell at the moment. I will know better tomorrow. 

Neither M. nor I did a good job of eating enough at the right times during the hike, and by the time we got back to Gone West, we were approximately delirious and had to go straight to food. The bar had a big spinning tank of frozen watermelon palomas, so I got one. It turns out they have tequila in them (who knew?) and we had to go take a nap in the shade in the park before I could drive home.

I consider it a victory that I am still awake now at 10:20 pm. I wasn't sure I would make it to 9.

Let the week begin. I'm ready.

making home

For a long time, I've always been looking toward the next thing. 

While I was living in Universe City, I lived in a house full of someone else's decor, and I was always hoping to get back to Gone West.

While I was working crazy hours in Gone West, living in a house that didn't feel like home, I was planning a move to the Mitten.

When I came back to Gone West after trying to move to the Mitten (a year ago this week), I was homeless and un(der)employed.

Now, for the first time in almost five years, I have a place that feels like home and a job that I love. 

I am here, and I do not intend to leave. (Except maybe to move across town to be closer to the road that starts my commute. But not any time soon.)

It's time to start decorating.

I've never really decorated before, and I don't have much in the way of money (thank you, 2014, year of brokeness out from which I am still digging myself), but I had to do something. Something had to change. I've had the same duvet cover since 2006 (red, with white vines and flowers). I couldn't take it anymore. I was so bored with it that my eyes wanted to fall out of my skull.

Friday or possibly yesterday, I've already forgotten, I picked up a set of teal sheets on clearance. I washed them this morning, and put them on my bed. 

They are so pretty that it seemed a shame to put the same boring red duvet cover back on, so I went for the cheapest possible replacement for the duvet cover: a navy cotton bedspread from 1ke@. Between the teal and the navy and some olive in the form of a couple of pillowcases and an old throw I have, things are looking totally different in here. I love it. I love it, love it, love it.

(I miiiiiiiight also have picked up a teal rug that was on clearance. But I will assert my right against self-incrimination under the 5th amendment if pressed on that.)

most special

I spent the afternoon meandering around the waterfront with a friend. 

First, though, first I opened my Valentine's Day present from my mom and dad, which was possibly my favorite present I've ever gotten. I mean, you can try, but it's unlikely that you will ever get me a present that is as special as the one I got today. (I used the word special on purpose there, Momma.)

My Valentine's Day present from my parents was a tile of my Oma's family crest. 

My mom had gotten it in the mail from her distant cousin in the Netherlands after they had them made for a family reunion last summer (to which we were invited but could not go, because it was on a different continent and all). Momma had it on the wall in their house when I was home for Christmas, and I wanted one desperately. 

My mom reminded me that what I actually said over Christmas when I asked her to check if her cousin had any more of them was, "because A. will get that one when you die." 

Okay, so there was a reason for that, which is that I don't want to fight about any of the stuff when we have to do that awful divvying up some day. The stuff doesn't matter, and I don't want it to start mattering just because I have wanted that tile forever.

But also, my sister has my Oma's name and so, somehow, I think I feel like she has more of a right to it. 

My mom sent me the one she had, and her cousin sent her another one that just arrived. So now I have my own, hanging on the wall in my living room, and it is the most special present.

naturally

My fundamental problem with getting up at 5:30 am is that it directly conflicts with my circadian rhythm. My body wants to go to bed at midnight and get up at 9 or 10 am. I can neither fall asleep at 9:30 p.m. nor wake up at 5:30 a.m. I am forcing my body to go against its nature.

I keep hoping that my body will eventually re-set to this schedule. I even set an alarm on the weekend - 9:30 on Saturday and 8 on Sunday - so that I wouldn't sleep so late that I couldn't sleep on Sunday night. 

Of course, that just meant that I made up virtually none of my missing sleep over the weekend.

I have learned one thing, which is to do as much as possible in the evening. I take a shower at night now, so I can just brush my hair and go in the morning. I have my lunch ready in the fridge as I type. It helps, a little. It keeps me from being late to my carpool, anyway.

Despite the fact that I cannot sleep at night and I cannot wake up in the morning, when someone said, yesterday, "You must hate the commute," I realized that I don't. The early mornings, the hour of driving, often in the rain, in a car full of people with opinions (we all have opinions), it's all worth it to wake up in the morning and not dread going to work. That, right there, is beautiful.

dark

Safety, etc., I know, but I love walking through the neighborhoods of this city at night. 

I love walking through them in daylight, too. That's what summer evenings are for. Summer evenings are friendly and communal, with people out walking their dogs and mowing their lawns. 

Winter evenings are for wandering in the quiet dark, feeling like the world is mine alone. I used to feel lonely sometimes, seeing people move behind their lighted windows. Now I feel self-contained. I am enough.

I was talking on the phone to a friend today as I walked, and I mentioned something I copied down a couple of months ago, from an interview with Reese Witherspoon in which she talked about playing Cheryl Strayed in the movie Wild.

"We save ourselves," she said. "Every woman knows it. Every man knows it. You look up. Nobody's coming to the rescue. It's a universal story. But it's revolutionary in the way that a woman is allowed to tell it." (No More Ms. Nice Gal, New York Times, 10/29/14)

That's what this last year has been for me, and that's why I am happy to walk alone in the dark. 

happiness

Four and a half years ago, I left a job that I loved and a city that I loved, and I moved to Universe City for a real lawyer job. I thought it was a dream job. It was the job I wanted to do, anyway. I didn't want to move to Universe City - when I moved to Gone West, it was because I was weary of moving - but I wanted that job, so I started over again. 

When I wasn't happy in Universe City, at first I blamed the town. Then I blamed a breakup. 

But three years later, back in Gone West, I still wasn't happy, so I quit my job and tried to move to the Mitten.

Back in Gone West for Round 2.5, I went back to the same work I'd been doing for almost four years. I wanted that work back. I didn't want to run a business, but it was the only way I could find on short notice to do that work and (try to) pay my bills. 

2014 was the worst year yet. I started to think that I was just not intended to be happy in this life.

It wasn't until the Major Work Event in October that I realized, walking through an unfamiliar suburb to the building where the Major Work Event was taking place, that I was done with that job. I had a very clear moment, in the cold sunshine, in which I almost heard the words aloud: "This is my last [Major Work Event]," I thought, and I knew that it was true.

I just didn't know how to make it true. 

A couple of weeks later, I met with a coworker of a friend of a friend (follow that chain, ha!) who was doing something that I had off-handedly mentioned to the friend of a friend that I might want to do, and by the time I left that networking meeting, I was determined to do what I am now doing. It took six weeks and a flurry of meetings and interviews (one week I had interviews three days in a row, and then I collapsed with exhaustion), but I found exactly what I was looking for. 

After my second day of this job, I came home beaming with happiness. 

I had forgotten that it was possible to be so effortlessly happy.

22: Firefly

"I should go out and do something," I said, at the post-work debriefing, "but I really just want to go home and watch Episode 9 of Firefly. It's my first time."

There was something of a collective gasp, and my coworker said, "I have to say, I'm really jealous that you are watching it for the first time, and that you are at that point in the series. Just be prepared for some serious disappointment when you get to the end."

"Oh, I've already been warned, from before I started watching it," I said.

"There will be denial, bargaining, acceptance," she said. 

"Serenity does give a little bit of closure," someone else said.

"Not enough," said coworker #1. 

I was introduced to Firefly while I was in the Mitten, and I've been rationing myself ever since. I can't just watch it in marathons, because I know that there are only 14 episodes or so plus the movie. I only watch it when I can devote to it my full attention.

This show was basically designed for me: crew of upright outlaws roams the universe, committing crime and running from some big super-organization. It's like they know me. It's like they had a focus group of one before they invented this show, and that one was me. I am relishing it.

It came out in 2002, when I was heading off to Rwanda, and I have no idea how I have missed it all these years. Why did no one tell me?

Now that I have found it, though, I see references everywhere. There was an article about race and privilege in Firefly that I happened upon this week. 

See also: the car parked in front of me last Saturday.

I need to be friends with this person.

pannier

We have discussed before - and by we have discussed I mean I have soliloquized* - about how money doesn't buy happiness but sometimes a new thing that you buy can make your life so much easier that you don't know how you ever lived without it.

Case in point: 

My parents bought me my bike for college graduation. (I distinctly remember my mom asking me what I wanted for college graduation, and I said, "A bike," and she literally went, "Awwww," as if it was the cutest thing she'd ever heard. That was before she had grandkids. They have trumped all cutenesses.) 

We went down to the Schwinn store and bought one, and we tricked it out. For some reason, I thought it was sexist to have a women's bike with the lower bar in the middle because I CAN SWING MY LEG OVER THANK YOU (I regret this now in my dress-wearing days), so I got a bike with the higher bar and we put fenders on it and a rack on the back - even then I was thinking that I wanted to live in a city where I could commute to work by bike.

This worked for a while. When I first lived in Gone West, I had a huge purse that I would put under the bungee net on the rack and all was fine, but eventually I wanted a new purse, which was not as large or as structured, and it got more complicated.

My old friend S. gave me a milk crate, the red plastic kind, and I belted that onto the rack with a few bungee cords. With the bungee net over the top, it could handle most of my daily commuting needs - I could even carry a gallon of milk plus other groceries in there. 

The only real downside was that the bike got really top-heavy when the crate was full, and it sat right against the seat, so if I put anything in the crate that stood up tall - a binder, a box of cereal - I couldn't sit back in the seat. Another minor issue was that I couldn't put the bike right up against a lot of bike parking spots, so my locking mechanism didn't work as well. 

It was fine, though. It worked for a long time.

A couple of weeks ago, when I was in the bike store waiting for them to replace the tire that was shredding, I bought a pannier on a whim. One can very easily spend $200 on one pannier, but I bought the $50 kind.

Life = changed. 

I cannot even explain how much easier it is just to throw things into a pannier and ride off, with no worries about whether my purse is zipped completely closed or something small is going to fall through the cracks of the crate. I can just grab it off the bike when I get to work, carry it into my office, and have what I need right there. It isn't in my way when I ride. And best of all, it lowers the center of gravity of my bike and makes it much easier to ride.

Money cannot buy happiness, but the money spent on that pannier has made me much happier for several weeks now.

* I spelled this right on the first try, which... whoa.

random Sunday points

Random point numero uno:

I will never be able to spell the word maintenance without spell check. That much has become clear in 33.5 years. 

Random point numero dos:

I drove out into the beautiful Gone West surrounds yesterday and even though I went camping out there once in the years between living here and living here again, it made me happy all over again that I get to live in this town. Those cliffs and waterfalls make my heart hurt with the beauty, in a good way.

Random point numero tres: 

I need to work on my Spanish.

Random point numero cuatro: 

Additional things that have made me proclaim aloud my happiness to live in this town:

1. A roof-top bar on Friday evening, while the sun was shining.
2. The general system in which I work here, which is much much better for the clientele with which I work than was the one in Universe City.
3. El auto-bus.
4. Thai iced tea and salad rolls from a little sidewalk stand. ("I just had to accept that I was buying the salad rolls solely for the peanut sauce," a coworker said to me, and that is completely true. I am buying the salad rolls solely for the peanut sauce. But wow, it is delicious.)
5. A little store full of locally designed and sewn dresses, with a sale rack and the willingness to alter the next size up when they didn't have my size.

love prose

I flew back last night, one flight straight from the D to Gone West, and even though I knew how very much more I like Gone West than ever I liked Universe City, still I was surprised not to feel the old tearing feeling of leaving. 

Gone West feels so much closer to the Mitten, and I don't approach returning here with dread. Instead, I feel that familiar jolt of happy recognition when I see Gone West, SH on the flight monitor and again when I watch the landscape I know pass beneath the wings on landing. I cannot explain how light I feel now that I do not dread returning to the place where I live.

I would gladly have slept in this morning, but getting up to walk to the bus was not the same burden as was dragging myself to work in a town that never did make me happy. (Even though, disclaimer, I loved and miss the place where I worked in Universe City.)

I'm not sure how long one blog can consist primarily of bits of love prose to a city, but I clearly intend to test it out.

[18] East of Eden

I don't really think of myself as much of a reader of the classics. So many of them are just so boring. I don't do boring books, which is why I don't read much non-fiction, unless it is a memoir.

(L. and I were talking about fiction the other night, and how narrative is a different kind of truth, if you don't make the mistake of thinking that truth = facts. (It doesn't. In this age of science, we would like the two to be the same, but they aren't.))

(I borrowed The Poisoner's Handbook from my boss probably close to a year ago, and I can't get into it. I want to get into it, badly, because what is more bad-ass than sitting in a coffee shop reading a book called The Poisoner's Handbook? 

But, alas, it's not working.)

The classics, though. I generally write them off, but then there are the ones that I love. Jane Austen. The Brontes. Dracula. 

Middlemarch got wearisome.

I put East of Eden on hold at the library a while ago, after reading a quote from it online somewhere, and I renewed it three times without reading it.

Then it sat on my bathroom counter for almost a week, open to one of the first pages. I just couldn't get started, not when I had the next in the Temeraire series to read.

I read Grapes of Wrath years ago, so it's not like I'm unfamiliar with Steinbeck. At least, I think I read Grapes of Wrath. I remember the movie more clearly than the book, which may not be saying much for my AP English class. But I remember conversations about the book, so we must have read it. (Isn't it odd how reading something for a class makes it inherently less interesting, even if you would have liked it absent the assignment?)

This is a very long and tedious way of saying that I finally got into East of Eden, and it's good. Go read it, if you are looking for a book to read.