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.

marvel

It's funny how I spent much of my life thinking exercise was possibly the most miserable thing one could do, and then one day I walked into a fighting studio and suddenly exercise was worth the pain that comes with it.

Because there is pain.

I don't mean the trembling muscles on your 150th push-up of the evening. I don't mean the time when someone accidentally elbows you in the nose. That's just temporary pain. That's nothing.

I'm talking about the damage you do to yourself when you train for several hours four nights a week and go hiking most weekends.

I'm talking about icing your knees and groaning as you walk up the stairs, for months and possibly the rest of your life.

I'm talking about wearing trousers and sturdy shoes to work instead of fun summer skirts and sandals because you have aggravated your Achilles tendon (or possibly your plantar fascia; details) and the back of your heel burns.

I'm talking about potentially lifetime damage to my body, and how I think about that and then think, Yup. Worth it.

I seriously could not have fathomed a world in which I would be annoyed not to be able to work out on a Sunday, and would straight-up dismiss the idea of skipping a day of kung fu to let my Achilles rest.

...

I put almost $500 into my car yesterday and today. When they first told me how much it would cost, when they asked if I wanted to do it all at once or wait on some of it, I gulped a little and said, "Go ahead."

None of it was absolutely necessary yet.

Despite the massive output of money (August: the month that drained my bank account), I actually feel like I got quite some value for my dollars. For an average of a mere $120 per replacement, I got all of the following changed:

1. Some arm that holds a tire on. (Or something. I'm unclear on the details.)
2. Front brakes.
3. A muffler.
4. A throttle cable.

My driving now goes like this:

Turn ignition. Wow! This car is so quiet! Is this how everyone lives?

Put car in gear. Release clutch. Move forward/backward. Change gears. Wow! This car accelerates so smoothly! Is this how everyone lives?

Stop at intersection. Wow! This car stops so quickly! Is this how everyone lives?

Turn right. Wow! This car doesn't make a creaking noise when it turns! Is this how everyone lives?

It's tedious to be inside my head. Also, repetitive. I just keep marveling that this is how most cars (apparently) function. Mine has been, in recent memory, loud and clattery and lurchy. And now it's not.

The arm thing that they replaced was oddly bent. "We can't imagine how this happened," the shop guy told me. "It was bent as if someone hit the wheel straight from the side, pretty hard."

Since the car shows no signs of damage, and has not, to my or anyone else's knowledge, been in a side accident, "it will probably remain a mystery," he said.

It's actually not much of a mystery. It's my car, isn't it? Weird stuff like that just up and happens when I am around.

(My roommate S. from law school and I both have a talent for breaking printers. Oddly, though, the printer that was not working when one of us stood next to it would start working again if we both stood next to it. Apparently our breaking-abilities cancelled each other out.)

on notice

Notice to myself: when you are already feeling not-happy about the place where you live (where you are trapped, it seems), it's not a good idea to 1. read blogs by people living overseas and/or in Gone West, or 2. to look at photos of what was once your life overseas and/or in Gone West.

As far as ideas go, that is a very bad one. Because you will come across the simplest photo, one like, say, this:

Itabire, Rwanda, 2003

(chosen at random), and you will think, "I used to live there. I used to live there, and now I am stuck here. What has my life become?"

And it won't be the first time you've thought that. It won't even be the first time today that you've thought that.

parade tomatoes

There was a parade in Universe City. Parades out here are wacky, and Universe City is much smaller than Gone West, so the professionalism bar is low. Very low.

That's a good thing.

The result is a crazy, laughing mix of sleeping babies, kids calling out to their friends, sullen teenagers, aging beauty queens of all genders, and a great many hippies. They have to keep their clothes on for the parade, though.

One guy blew huge, persistent bubbles with sticks and rope. They floated far above us and then popped into gooey pieces that fell back down to the pavement.

My roommate M. and I kept hoping the jui jitsu guys would fight again - they'd done it long before they got to us - but as far as we could see as they walked off, they just walked. No fighting.

...

I have decided that I am a better person when I live with other people. I lived alone for almost five years of my life, two in Rwanda and three in Gone West/Universe City.

I thought I wanted to live alone when I moved to Gone West. I thought I needed to live alone when I moved to Gone West. It turns out that I was just burned out by the three months of living in team housing in South Sudan. Team housing in a place where you can barely leave your compound due to mud and a lack of places to go is a very different thing than having a roommate, particularly when you have your own activities and transportation.

So I have a roommate, and the presence of another person makes me better, even though I almost never see her. It gives me incentive to get up and do things, and so I clean more, and I have guests more, and I try more new things.

Today I tried roasting tomatoes. I love orange cherry tomatoes, having discovered them about this time last year, and I bought too many of them this week at the farmers' market. I couldn't eat them all.

I cut up and roasted a pint of orange cherry tomatoes (using this recipe), and even though I roasted them a little too long, they were so good that I ate the entire roasted pint in one sitting, plain and with pasta.

Seriously, try it.

driving my cranky car

Yesterday I was in a parking lot, getting ready to leave a lovely little space marked Compact, when a large Excursion pulled in across from me, in a space also marked Compact.

I was in a highly cranky mood, and I was severely tempted to roll down my window and say, "Hey! That is a compact car space! You are the reason people like me in actual compact cars can't get out of our car doors sometimes!" But there was no one parked around him, and there was a kid with him, and I'm a little turtley anyway.

After I drove past him, I noticed that every single spot in the lot said Compact, which is both awesome (everyone should drive a compact car unless they need hauling capabilities on a regular basis), and insane (what about those people who have to haul things? Where will they park?). I actually suspect that the stores did that to maximize their number of parking spaces, not because they care whether their customers are driving big cars or small.

Then I stopped at Trader Joe's, where my cranky mood was exacerbated by the people who stand there helplessly while the cashier rings them up and finishes and then still has all of their stuff to bag. Would it kill you to put a few items into a bag yourself, a bag that you HAVE IN YOUR HAND BECAUSE YOU BROUGHT IT IN? Really? You are going to just stand there while the cashier does it all? Who raised you, anyway?

(I am a bit of an egalitarian. I think everyone should work retail at least once in their life, and then live as if they understand the fact that retail employees are not servants. People who don't understand that tend to look like entitled jerks, and there are a lot of that sort of people at Trader Joe's.)

When I went outside, I pulled out of my parking spot and started to pull forward just in time to be cut off by a girl pulling out of a spot just in front of me. She looked back, saw me inching forward, and kept going.

I may have honked more than once.

Not nice little "hi, I'm here!" honks, either. These were serious, arm-on-the-horn honks, and she did not look back at all.

Honking did not improve the crankiness.

Kicking the door and swearing today when I realized I was locked out of work after 5 when there might be no one to let me in did feel good, for a moment.

I'm still pretty cranky.

pooling

There is a deceptively deep little blue pool in the middle of the woods in this State of Happiness in which I live. I tried to get to it last fall, but I took a wrong turn out of the parking lot and then mostly forgot about it.

This time, S. and I set out with coffee and snacks in the early afternoon, and turned the right way out of the parking lot ("Right?" she said, joking. "YES," I said, "it is absolutely, definitely right. Do not go left.").

The path meandered gently along the river, through the woods, along a lava field, and up to the pool. It was easy. It was lovely.

And then suddenly there was this pool beneath our feet. I had seen a photo, but still we both just stopped and said, "wow," and "wow" again, and possibly a few more times for good measure.

We made our way down to the edge, past the dry waterfall.

A waterfall looks so strange without its water, like a home with no people.

The water was just-out-of-the-ground, snow-melt cold, but we went in anyway, me in my quick-dry hiking clothes, S. in her suit. It was so icy cold that it hurt within seconds, and I hoisted myself back out so fast that I slammed my foot against the rock overhang that was the shore without even realizing until it swelled black and purple as the cold numbness wore off.

Three teenage boys dropped rocks off the cliff opposite us, over and over, and then jumped themselves. The small crowd on our shore watched, stunned, as they went over one after another.

We all thought, If they don't come up, I don't think I can make it across to help them. It was that cold.

But they bobbed up, each in turn, and set out swimming as fast as they could for our shore, too cold even to shout back when their friends asked, "How was it?"

S. went in twice, and after hiking another two miles further in and four miles back out in 80 degree F sunshine, after driving an hour and a half back to Universe City, she said, just as we pulled into the grocery store, "I don't think I've actually gotten warm since I got out of the pool the second time."

One dunking in 38 degree F water was enough for me.

piney wedding

The morning after I arrived back in Gone West, we packed up my car and drove to Other Western State, where my friend R. was getting married.

The wedding was in a little piney grove on a bay. Fine, it was in a grove of Douglas Fir. Piney sounds so much more romantic, though. It's one of my favorite words.

The wedding was in a little piney grove on a bay, and the sun shined, and the trees shaded, and the water sparkled. There was rose champagne (love) and smoked salmon, and later there were little bitty burgers and jalapeno watermelon juice.

We married off the happy couple, and then we talked and ate, and talked, and ate, as one should at a wedding, and then we kicked off our shoes and danced.

The fiddle played. Feet stomped.

We circled and bowed and promenaded.

The ladies swung from one gentleman to another until our partner pulled us back into the square.

We held hands in a long, looping line, in tighter and tighter circles, and then out and out and through the door into the trees and back in the other door, arms outstretched as far as we could go, my sweater hanging off my shoulder, laughing.

And then, in the dark, we sat around a fire with marshmallows and chocolate, and I drove us back to our campsite, just trying to stay awake.

water

If there is one thing that I miss about living in the Mitten State, it is the warmth of the water in the summer. I love the mountains of my New State, but the cool summers and the ocean currents and the snow melt make for very cold bodies of water, even in August. Rarely do I summon the nerve to swim in them.

Here in the Mitten, though, the water is warm. Even on a not-so-sunny day, we jumped right in off the boat in the middle of a little, slightly scummy lake. (They are all slightly scummy. It comes from the warmth and the seaweed.)

We splashed and, I confess, I dunked my sister, just once.

I was the only one who wanted to go tubing, though, strangely. What is wrong with these people? (My sister and her friend were "too tired," they claimed. Uh... they are also 23. What on earth is going on? They should never be too tired for anything at 23.)

So I went tubing alone. It took a little while to get it all worked out - I didn't like the feel of the first rope, and I pictured it breaking and whapping me in the face, and then it turned out that it actually had frayed almost to breaking - but eventually I was sailing over the glassy water out beyond the wake.

That is some perfect Mitten moment right there, with the deep summer green all around the edges of the lake, and the smooth water right in front of you.

I could have whipped around the lake all afternoon, but, uh, my back hurt. Apparently I'm too old for this.

Nah.

in between

I am a bit of a passenger aircraft nerd. Not supremely, not so that I can recognize them flying in the sky above me, but just enough that when I walked onto my plane in Gone West and saw the seat configuration, I thought, "I wonder when I was last on a 767. Was that the KLM flight on the way back from Nairobi in 2007, or did I fly Kenya Airways and they had switched that route to a 777? They don't fly them very much within the US."

(If I recall correctly, the nighttime flight from NBO to AMS is KLM, and that was a 767, but of course thinking about it I googled "Kenya Airways 777" and started watching videos of landings in Amsterdam and Nairobi and then Kigali, and then a video of some guy walking to work in Kigali. Because there is just too much internet out there.)

I felt strangely overwhelmed at O'Hare airport.

I mean, it's just an airport. I have been in many, many airports in my life. I don't think I could remember them all to count them.

But for some reason, at 5 am (Chicago time; 3 am in Gone West), the hordes of frantic people made me jumpy. There were just so many of them.

You know you need to get away from your small, deadened-downtown city when a bustling airport makes you nervous, particularly since I like bustling. I miss bustling. So maybe it was just the early hour, or the brightness and noise on two upright, middle-seat hours of sleep.

There were dozens of sailors in the airport, and one of them was standing on the moving walkway with his girlfriend, hugging quietly, until his friends walked up beside them and catcalled.

I slept for an hour across the seats of a plane sitting at the gate, until that flight was canceled and I found a couple of empty seats across from my new gate, where I slept for another hour. I woke up once to notice that an elderly woman had sat down right by my head, but I was too sleepy to care.

I was the only person happy about the canceled flight. The other people on my flight were talking about renting cars to get from the Big D to Mitten Capital of the World, but I wanted to go the Big D, and flying straight there saved me from the need to pay a taxi or persuade a hotel shuttle to get me to downtown Mitten Capital of the World, and from a two-hour bus ride to the Big D airport.

I just walked straight out into the C-S family car, where I held hands with the baby until we got to the pupuseria.

should

I should go to bed - I flew what they claim is an overnight flight from Gone West to Chicago last night, overnight being three hours and 19 minutes and then suddenly you are emerging into a bright terminal - and I'm operating on less than four hours of sleep, none of them in a bed, since Friday morning.

But now there is a baby sleeping on my chest, here in the Big D, and I'm in no rush to move away from his tiny warm self. I can hear his little snores every time he breathes.

sign

The other day, I was driving along, talking to my momma on the phone (on a headset! never fear!) when I passed a homeless man standing on a corner.

This is nothing new; there are a lot of homeless people in this city. They frequent many of the major intersections around town, holding up cardboard signs about this or that.

This man, though, had no sign. Instead, he just stood there holding his hands out, as though they contained a sign, and grinning at passing cars. After a while, he switched his hands so that he was holding his imaginary sign at the top and bottom instead of on the sides, still beaming at the cars driving past him.

broke but happy

Much as I loved living in Gone West, I realize in retrospect that I did not get out of my apartment enough. I very frequently didn't have plans for an entire weekend, and all I did to fill the hours was go for long walks and drink coffee.

Admittedly, coffee and long walks are some of my favorite things, but I rather prefer to be busy doing things with other people.

I didn't realize this until after I had been in Gone West for a while - I was so shell-shocked from being depressed in New York and from being culture-stressed in South Sudan and from giving up my international dreams that I couldn't really see anything for the first year or so that I lived in Gone West - but I needed more friends and activities.

By the time I realized it, it seemed too late, sort of, and because I didn't have a car, many activities that I would otherwise have tried felt too far away, especially when it meant meeting all new people after several bus/train transfers and then trying to get back across town late at night.

These are the travails of being a shy extrovert: you want more friends, but you don't want to have to go alone to meet them.

One good thing about moving to a new city is that I had to get out and make friends. I just had to. I knew exactly zero people when I moved here, and I love my coworkers, but they all have friends and families already.

Between fighting class and getting out and doing things, I am approximately 1000 times busier in Universe City than I ever was in Gone West.

The result is that I am happy, but broke. Also sleep-deprived.

I am not just broke because doing things costs money. I probably spend less on a day of hiking than I would spend on a day of wandering around Gone West. It's just that the more hiking and fighting, especially, I do, the more I buy.

There was the sword, of course.

T-shirts to wear for summer kung fu, when the gi is too heavy.

I kept jamming my toe, so I bought kung fu mat shoes.

I kept spraining my ankle, so I finally bought good hiking boots.

My knees have been hurting, so today I bought trekking poles.

I got tired of sunburning the part of my hair, so I bought a hat.

SOMEONE (hi, S.!) ordered us to wear non-cotton trousers, so I bought some quick-drying ones (short ones, though, since no one carries trousers long enough for me).

I sent my sister my old day-and-a-half pack that always felt a little short, so I bought myself a 60L backpack that fits me well.

I am happy about all of these things. Each of them improves my life in ways that I could probably measure if I took the time.

Most of the purchases I have made in my life that have made actual, substantial differences in my comfort and fill me with gratitude every time I looked at them are outdoor items. Unlike a dress that later begins to feel too short or not cute enough or whatever, a solid pair of hiking boots keeps giving and giving.

(Until your dad possibly throws one away when compulsively cleaning and/or leaves it in the van when he sells it. Details. Or maybe he didn't throw it away, and I've been unfairly blaming him all this time. Maybe someday we will find that single missing hiking boot somewhere in my parents' house and my long-term bitterness will be alleviated. And then I will have two good pairs of hiking boots.)

Between all of this hiking and fighting and doing, and a plane ticket to Michigan (the first one, I think, that I paid for all on my own), I am broke. Broke, and also happy.

cranky

I am feeling cranky.

There is no particular reason for me to feel cranky, except that it is almost the end of July and I feel like I haven't gotten a summer at all. *&*^^%%( cold summer.

That, and I met a friend for dinner last week and spent the whole time watching his recent photos of Liberia pass on his computer screen. Curses.

I feel stuck.

Fighting class should help, but we didn't work until we wanted to fall over today. We just did some combatives and then practiced chokes from the side.

Last week, in advanced fighting class, we practiced the front choke with actual pressure. For some reason, the instructor and the guys in the class always worry that the girls will be freaked out by things like that - the choking, the hitting in the face. I am actually quite surprised myself at how un-phased I am by it all. It really doesn't bother me.

It makes me realize how very safe my life has been. I don't have a post-traumatic stress reaction to any of it, because no one but my brother has ever hit me. Oh, and that girl next door when I was growing up in Liberia who sat on my chest and told me to bang my own head against the ground. Details.

Also, I am starting to understand how people get addicted to exercise (horrors). I made a decision yesterday to give my knees a break (kung fu + running + hiking steep hills = ouch), and it was actually hard for me. I did go for a long walk, but it's not the same.

Cranky.

the pox

I am fairly certain that I have never in my life had as many mosquito bites as I do right now, not even in South Sudan* where I bundled in a raincoat in the heat at night to avoid the mosquitoes that bit me through my jeans. The mosquitoes yesterday bit me through my clothes, too, including on my butt. THROUGH MY PANTS. (The mosquitoes in South Sudan bit me through my jeans. Similarly stubborn. Although they only came out at night.)

I didn't bring insect repellent, of course. Only wimps bring insect repellent. I don't even bring it to Africa, except to South Sudan, because when I was in Nairobi on the way there, my coworker told me that it was an absolute necessity.

I bought some 100% DEET in Nairobi and took it with me to South Sudan, where I applied it on several occasions and found that mosquitoes seemed to view it primarily as a marinade for the delicacy of my blood. Yum. Literally the only thing that worked was to have a mosquito-impermeable barrier between me and the blood-thirsty little suckers.

The mosquitoes on the trail yesterday had the same persistence. My friend T. and I ran into exactly one other person on the entire 5+ mile hike (I think everyone else had gotten the memo about the strange fact of hordes of mosquitoes in the normally insect-free Pacific Northwest), and that person had insect repellent and shared it with us. It didn't help. The mosquitoes feasted, unnoticing. Or perhaps enjoying the extra flavoring.

Only wimps bring insect repellent, but yesterday I was (metaphorically) curled up in a little ball on the trail, sobbing for some insect repellent.

Not actually, of course. What do you think I am?

We climbed up a snow-slope until it got too steep and slippery (I dropped both of my water bottles half-way up, when they fell out of the side pockets of my new backpack, and watched them slide faster and faster down the hill until they hit rocks; we rescued them on the way down), and then we climbed through the trees to the left, the slope so steep that I clung to bushes and trees to pull myself up.

From the top, we could see mountains:

(Hey! It's me! I have no photo of the mountain without me, and this one is at least somewhat identity-obscuring. Unless you know me. I think I am trying not to fall into the crevices between sharp rocks. Not visible: hundreds of chomping mosquitoes.)

On the way down, I hurled myself downward, over and over, in the direction of stable-looking trees that could break my fall. The only other option was to slide all the way down on my ass, and that seemed like a painful proposition. Too many splinters.

But it was this bad, mosquito-wise: we sat down for lunch at the top, were driven off by mosquitoes, and ended up sitting on the rocks in the middle of the snow field to get away from them. They still followed us there, but once we killed off all the ones that had migrated with us, no new ones seemed to be able to find us in the middle of the snow. So we sat there in the snow, in July, eating lunch.

The snow was actually much easier to descend than the mud, and after we ate lunch on it, I put on my rain pants and slid down the snow.

Plus: my brand new hiking boots made it the entire trip without pain or raw skin (I rarely get blisters - it goes straight to raw).

Minus: hundreds of mosquito bites.

Plus: mosquito bites don't itch me as much as they do some people.

Minus: I look like I have the pox.

(I didn't worry overly much about the mosquitoes because the bonus of living this far north is the lack of malaria and dengue fever, until my dad asked this afternoon, "Do the mosquitoes there carry West Nile virus or anything?" There is always something.)

* Interesting tidbit: with the split between Sudan and South Sudan, I have added a new country to my list without going to a new country. I was in Sudan, when South Sudan was part of it, and I was in South Sudan, except that at the time it happened to be part of Sudan. Obviously there are many far greater ramifications to South Sudan becoming an independent country, but I do find it kind of interesting that I can now put both Sudan and South Sudan on my list of countries visited, while actually only having been, back in 2007, to one country.

sit a while

You cannot be particularly picky, if you live in the Pacific Northwest, about the weather on your hiking days. You have to just pick a day and go hiking. The weather will do what it pleases.

When you go hiking in July, however, you expect... something. I guess you sort of expect, at the very least, that the day will clear up a little.

Or not, thanks to the weirdest July ever. The weather did not clear up, and I ended up hiking in puddles masquerading as shoes. Cold. Also wet. IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE SUMMER.

I sort of miss living in a place where it actually gets hot (ducks flying rotten tomatoes cast by all those who despise the heat and love this place for its lack of it). It's just, you see, that it is never actually warm enough to swim here, and I do like to swim.

After hiking to the point of being soggy and chilled through, people came over to my house.

I love this. I love that I have a house that is big enough to have people over and (generally) clean enough that I can invite them over on a whim.

I threw some cookies together, and I had mojito ingredients and par-baked bread, and people brought fruit salad and burgers, and it was just generally so nice to have people over, at my house, in my dining room, talking and eating.

One of the things that I forget, here in the US, is hospitality. It's much easier to invite people over when you live in a place where there are not so many restaurants and coffee shops and bars. Here, it is simplest just to meet someone out somewhere, but it's also less fun, because there is not the cooking and improvising and clattering about.

I need to remember how much fun it is to invite people over. In Rwanda, I would invite people over to stay a few nights, just because they didn't have a place to go. People would stop by to pick something up, and I would offer them a soda, and we'd sit a while. It was nice. I miss that.

on a saturday

In the entire 2.7 years I lived in Gone West, I only made it to the weekend farmers' market twice - once alone and once when my friend picked me up. I don't know why, really, except that it was basically closing down by noon, and I am quite emotionally attached to sleeping as much as possible on weekends. Exceptions to the all-sleep plan are made for activities that involve meeting other people, but when I'm on my own, I just don't tend to get up and out of the house very quickly.

This morning, though, I was determined to get up in time to go to the farmers' market in Universe City. I even went to bed early so that I would get plenty of sleep before the appointed hour for getting up.

Of course, I left my house 40 minutes after I planned to, but I did leave, and that counts for something.

True confessions: I got sucked in by a jewelry booth first, and delicious fruits and vegetables were therefore not the only things I purchased at the market. But eventually I found the farmers' market headquarters and bought a handful of little wooden tokens in lieu of cash. I wandered about blissfully, as one does at a farmers' market, and bought raspberries and sugar snap peas and coffee and some plants. There was a woman taking a picture of the colorful root vegetables, and little kids eating (actually eating!) samples of salad greens, and a woman handing out stalks of lavender.

"The best way to like a town is to wander around the farmers' market," I said to T., in a text. And it's kind of true, even when it's raining in July.

raspberries

Last week, my momma and I bought raspberries and blackberries and bread and coffee (me) at the farmers' market, and we sat in the sunshine and serious mowed through the raspberries. Yum.

"Just think," my momma said. "If someone tried to make these, with all these little cells filled with juice, they would be incredibly expensive."

This week, I was driving past the farmers' market for the third time that day when I noticed bitterly that they were closing down and I was on my way to a work location, and I wasn't going to get any raspberries.

And then I stopped myself, and I turned the car around, and I went back, because I had already eaten lunch at my desk while working, and I realized that the five minutes it would take to buy some raspberries, my favorite part of summer, was worth it.

I bought two boxes of raspberries and two boxes of sugar snap peas, and I put them carefully in my trunk. I went to my work location, and I went back to work, and I sat there with a mound of raspberries, eating the ripest ones first and saving the lighter ones for the next day.

I needed that.

7/4/11 or 4/7/11. whatever.

I can hear fireworks but not see them, here in my treehouse. I think the fireworks in town might be behind the trees, and I might miss them all together.

...

Just as I wrote that, I began to see fireworks. They are not the big, professional fireworks. They are the expensive, illegal, individual kind. They spark off in all directions.

Once before, in this country, I missed a professional fireworks display on July 4th. That was three years ago, and we rode the bucket truck up, in turns, to watch the individual kind go off at random almost 360 degrees around.

We rode the bucket truck up again today, at the K.s', just to see. To see the Mountain Visible from Gone West, and the other one, those two that I miss so much. To see the hills curling round protectively. To see the house below, and to wave down to the people.

"Grandma!" Little J. called, as his grandma rode up and up. "Grandma! Do I look like a toy?"

My momma is here, and the drive back down to Universe City, still painful when there is grilling and swimming going on back there, at home, was slightly less awful than usual. (I called the K.s' house home today, to my momma, as we were sitting under a tree after I threw candy from the back of D.'s fire truck in the parade. "I want to go home," I said, and she said, "To [Universe City]?" "No," I said, "to the K.s' house.") But at least with a passenger there was conversation and I could point things out: the town where R. lived for a year, the highway where a high speed chase went on, the turn toward downtown.

I love having my momma around.

like he wants his rodeo

This ain't my first rodeo, ya'll.

Fine, it was my second. That made me something of an expert, at least compared to my Bostonian friend. I am not sure she enjoyed the rodeo. I did, though, enough that I am now listening to Garth Brook's song Rodeo. I suspect that the facts that: 1. I grew up - partly - in a smallish city in the Midwest, and 2. I listen(ed) to country music, make me much more able to get the rodeo world. In fact, I like it. It feels like a fair, and what is not to love about a fair? I have only two words to say about a fair: elephant ears. And the same goes for a rodeo.

So yes, the rodeo. I like a good rodeo. I like the cowboys in their Wranglers and chaps. (All men should wear chaps now and then, yum. That is actually how my friend sold me on the rodeo idea the first time I went: "Wrangler butts," she said. "That's why we go to rodeos.") And it's funny, because going to a rodeo, as opposed to hanging out with overly-educated, quasi-urban people exactly like me, made me really miss that world.

"I've been missing Michigan lately," I told my rodeo 2 friend.

"Yes, but if you moved back there, you would miss [this state] too much," she said. "[Gone West], at least."

"My whole life is missing places," I said. "I will never be able to live anywhere without missing other places."

Every place forms you, but it takes a part of you, too. I wouldn't take those parts of myself back, not even if the places were offering, but I wish I could visit the pieces more often.

Nothing makes me feel more longing than fireworks, and this is a bad weekend for that.