birthday party no. 1, 2012

It's my birthday tomorrow, and I am going with the all party, all the time philosophy. Everyone deserves a birthday week, at least, if not a month. 

I planned a hike on Saturday, a little far away. It was a comedy of errors, in a sense - we didn't have a Northwest Forest Pass, the Forest Service office where we meant to buy a NW Forest Pass was closed on Saturdays*, the road to the trail we intended to take was closed and very sternly marked against trespassers, there was a crowd of hunters at the beginning of the backup plan trail ("Should we worry about getting shot?" I asked. "No, we're the only people up here," they said, and indeed: we did not get shot). But it was beautiful and perfect anyway, because everyone along was laid back and cool with the changes.

The world looked different from one highway south of where we usually hike. The familiar mountains were far off in the distance or hidden completely, but new ones rose around us. 

We ate lunch on a rocky outcropping with the heat of the sun on our heads, looking out at wilderness area. The temperature was ideal for hiking: warm enough to be satisfying, cool enough to keep from sweating. We sat next to a little pond while R. took a swim. "It's quite nice, actually!" he called from the middle of the pond. (Mountain lake in late September: you will not catch me even making the attempt. Everything in me revolts at such cold.)

After hiking, we made our way to the prettiest hot springs I know. I went there two years ago with N. and S., when I lived in Gone West, and I've been on a quest to get back ever since. We had to scramble up a dusty slope to get there, but the little natural pools are on a bluff over the river, and they are indeed lovely. There were fewer nude people this time, which meant that we didn't feel awkward in our suits. (If everyone else is naked, it actually does feel odd to have a swimsuit on, like you are ashamed of something.)

We lingered too long in the warm water, with a break for slices of cake and camping cups filled with sparkling juice. 

The light turned golden on the drive west through the mountains, and it was long dark by the time we got home.

...

* We got a NW Forest Pass at a sporting goods store only a block from the closed Forest Service office, but when we got to the trailhead for the hot springs, we found out that yesterday was fee-free for National Public Lands Day. Yay for public lands and free things! Even if you've already paid. (The pass is good for a year.)

tailbone

I haven't been as enamored with fighting class lately. A lot of things have played into that, including the fact that work frequently makes me late, so I'm not in the right mental place when I rush in and try to jump into the middle of the workout. 

I seem not to be able to drink enough to hydrate myself lately, and I feel desperately thirsty in the middle of the workout. (I'm trying to drink more earlier in the day to fix that.)

Now that I am a more experienced student, I often end up working with new people rather than learning from the ones even more experienced than I am. It's good for me, but it means that I can't just blast through the scenarios and get advice. I have to get my wrist wrenched over and over in service of teaching someone else how to disarm me.

One of my instructors has decided that I need to work on my speed and explosiveness, two things that are not exactly the forte of my body. My body prefers moving slowly, even when it could keep going forever. (See also: hiking.) So he pushes me to work harder, which I need, but I am also desperately thirsty at the same time, which is miserable.

The same instructor has us practicing the self-defense scenarios in the air over and over, for multiple minutes at a time. It isn't that this practice isn't useful - I have been able to focus on some things that frequently got left behind - but I also find it sort of tedious.

Tonight in the advanced class, though, we did multiple attacker scenarios in the dark - one person comes at you punching, the next kicking, the next choking, the next headlocking - and as I blasted through them, heart pounding, I remembered why I love this stuff. 

Bring it.

Despite the fact that I still can't fall. 

When I had to be an attacker and actually got thrown to the ground, I still landed every single time on my tailbone. I felt that little electrical shock that you get when you land on your tailbone. It's been two years of fighting class, and I'm still going to end up crawling out of bed in pain tomorrow morning (or worse, Saturday morning).

addicting

Sugar is amazingly addicting. I (mostly) went off sugar in April, and with a few slip-ups and self-granted exceptions, I've been (mostly) off it ever since. 

Sundays are my exception days, and every Monday my addiction is back in force. It is amazingly physical, this need for sugar. Fruit does not suffice. The one thing that will trick my brain into thinking it has had sweet without actually ingesting any sweet is flavored sparkling water. Every Monday, it is only sheer force of will that gets me back on the no-sugar bandwagon.

It isn't sugar, really, the problem. It is Red 40 and high fructose corn syrup and no one needs daily sour Jelly Bellies. They just don't. I just don't. 

I read somewhere recently that sugar is like a drug not only in the addiction factor, but that you need more and more of it to get the same high. I can see that. I can feel it, even, on Sundays, but it doesn't stop my feast-or-famine primitive brain from cramming all the sugar it can many Sundays. Which is better than cramming all the sugar it can every day of the week.

amateur

Twice before I have hiked a particularly beautiful trail through the Cascades, but both last year and the year before we hit the pretty part at the end of a long, painful hike and there was no time to stop. This year, I was determined to just sit for a while in the pretty meadow, so I gathered up some friends, ordered up a permit from the Forest Service, conceded the need to get up at a ridiculously early hour, and off we all went.

The day was charmed. The sky was blue until we headed home. The temperature was cool until we hit the meadows. The smoke from the wildfires across the mountains had miraculously lifted. The air was clear all the way to the mountain near Gone West. The route we took this time was only 12 miles, and all four of us were fit enough to be fine with the length.

The company was perfect, too. I have been realizing how very much I enjoy spending time with people who, like me, talk in stories, and all three of my companions did just that. We kept a constant flow of stories up through the trees and over the lava and through the meadows.

I kept saying, at every view, "[State of Happiness], you're so pretty." Over and over, I beamed with happiness. It was perfect, just perfect, all of it.

We hit the pretty meadow in time for a late lunch, and we sat among the sparkling obsidian to dip carrots in hummus and pass around sour candy. I laid down and put a big piece of obsidian under my head as a pillow. The sun shone warm on my head as I drifted almost to sleep.

The beautiful thing about hiking a 12 mile hike that begins at an obscenely early hour is that part of the day remains upon completion of the hike, and we took advantage of that remaining time to head to the nearby hot springs and lounge in good hot water.

I may or may not have felt dizzy by the end of this, but it was not until I'd driven all the way back to Universe City with increasingly sharp hunger pains (restaurant tally on the drive back: closed = 2, full to the brim with bingo = 1) and ordered food that finally, finally came and tried to eat it and found myself feeling sick to my stomach that I realized that I was incredibly dehydrated.

When I woke up this morning feeling like I'd been hit by a truck, it was not my muscles that ached (12 miles. please.), it was the rest of me. I was actually afraid to look at my camelback to see how little water I'd drunk yesterday.

12 miles. 8 hours of hiking or lying in the sun. 1 hour in hot springs. 3 hours of driving.

1 liter of water.

What an amateur. I know better than that.

So today I spent the whole day force-drinking myself. I haven't had to do that in a while.

call of the south

I am a bit writer's block ish. Blocky. Something like that. 

This time of year, I start to feel sort of frantic about soaking up the remaining sunshine (bigger, better happy light: only $140 at the green home products store. I am saving up my pennies), and the thought of the oncoming rain and gloom makes me want to cry, peremptorily. Sun, don't leave me, please!

But it will. It always does. 

The sun is a fickle friend.

Of course, it always does come back, too. There is that.

There has been too little hiking this summer, too little camping, too little basking in the sunlight. I want to grab it all in my arms and hang on. I know that summer will come again, but that next one, nine months away, seems far too distant to be useful. I want more time outside now. Now now. 

Last summer at this time, I had used all my vacation days. This year, I am saving them. I intend to go to Africa next year, come hell or high water. (That phrase, if you think about it, is possibly the best cliche in existence. I defy you to find me a better one.) Maybe the saving up of vacation days is why I feel like this summer has not even happened. I was waiting for summer to start, and then I had the heartache, and then the remaining months were wasted in tears, and now the days are getting shorter and shorter, and I want the long ones back. 

I need to move south.

whole

Every time I go to the farmers market, I am seduced by all the delicious-looking fruits and vegetables. I buy a bunch of them and balance them in my arms on the way back to the office. (Today one of the sellers tried for a hilariously long time to fit my little watermelon into a plastic bag that was just too small. It should have been a comedy routine. In the end, I had to carry the watermelon under my arm like a football.)

I always forget how long it takes to cook or cut or eat all that food, and that when I come home exhausted in the evening and still hoping to get a bit of a run in, I will end up snarfing some cold cereal or popcorn and then have to spend the post-run evening cutting watermelon and cooking corn and carmelizing onions and stir-frying beans and eating my way through a box of raspberries before they go bad. All of this after having ruined my appetite with the non-produce option that got me through my run.

Whole foods are exhausting.

Nonsense

The Mitten was a whirl of hugs and weddings and baby necks to snuffle. Altogether very satisfying.

On the way to the Mitten, the entertainment system apparently malfunctioned on the flight from San Francisco to Chicago. I wouldn't know. It was a red eye, and the only thing to do on a red eye is drift off as the plane takes to the air and partially wake up only to shift positions until you have to actually wake up to stumble off the plane. That is precisely what I did, although I vaguely recall feeling annoyance at the repeated announcements being made about the entertainment system when they had promised to talk as little as possible so we could sleep.

I got an email, however, offering me a free gift because of the inconvenience I suffered on a flight on which directv was unavailable. (Side note: there is approximately a zero percent chance I would pay money for directv on a flight. I bring these amazing items of entertainment with me: books. Also, I have an iPod. And the clouds below provide endless entertainment. I actually switched seats on my flight back from Amsterdam to Newark to sit in a row with non-functional entertainment systems. I had a book, and those rows had empty seats. I value sleep over television to a degree I cannot describe. One can never have enough sleep.)

I redeemed my free gift for a $75 credit toward my next flight.

On the way back to State of Happiness, I got caught in the debacle that was United Airlines last Tuesday. I don't know the extent of their computer malfunction, but I can tell you that it made my flight to SFO just late enough that the doors had closed to my flight to Universe City when I got off the shuttle across SFO at gate number no, we cannot be bothered to maintain in working condition a terminal for flights so piddly and small. (Lie. It was fine, just old.)

The last flight of the day arrived in Universe City just after midnight. My roommate, J., had to work early the next morning, so she couldn't really stay up that late, and I had to pay for a taxi home. I also had to be at work at 8:20 the next morning. It was unfun.

The moral of this story is that United Airlines will give me a $75 credit for their failure to provide me a service that I did not miss and would not have paid to use in the first place, but nothing at all for costing me several hours of my life and actual money that I couldn't really afford to spend, here at the end of the month. Odd.

small

I am quite possibly the worst person in the world at packing lightly. I just seem not to know how to do it. I need to have one shirt per day, with an extra or two IN CASE, and several pairs of shoes, and all my contact solution and shampoo, and extra layers in case the weather forecast changes, and, and, and...

You see why I almost always check in a bag. 

Also, I hate carrying things with me. I think checking in bags is the most brilliant invention in a very long time. You just hand them your overloaded suitcase, and you don't have to see it again until you get to wherever you are going. Someone else deals with it. It is worth money to me not to have to drag my world with me through airport after airport. Clearly. Because I pay for it every time. 

I don't even mind the times I've lost my luggage. It mostly comes back, and besides, valuables go in the hand luggage.

My trip to the Mitten tomorrow, though, is essentially a glorified weekend. It seems ridiculous to pay $50 to check baggage for a weekend. That, and I like a challenge. 

I am proud to announce that, after multiple ruthless edits, I will be traveling to the Mitten with only carry-on baggage.

Not only that, but I will be traveling with only the tiny suitcase that I bought in the Netherlands. It is not even the biggest piece of carry-on luggage I own. 

There will, however, be clothing repeats while I am in the Mitten. Note the horror. I am aghast. It is well hidden beneath my pride, though.

fairly

The fair came to town, and because I had a party to go to later, I went a little earlier than the people I was meeting. I haven't been to a fair in a really long time, not a proper county fair with animals. 

I wandered through the goat stable just to see. The smell of goats makes me think of Rwanda. Not only did I spend about one day a week climbing up and down mountains to check out goat stables, but soon after I moved to Rwanda, we imported these goats from South Africa. They came 42 or 43 to a pallet, two pallets loaded in the back of a DC-10. The plane was full of different crates and pallets, almost to the ceiling, and we walked back between them to the space where 85 goats had been crammed almost immobile in cages for about 12 hours as the plane skipped from African capital to African capital. The smell of 85 scared, tired, hungry, cramped goats in the back of a plane was horrifying. I have not quite recovered, even now. Still, I wanted to see them. There were very few familiar-looking goats. Goats in central Africa have ears that stand up (it's sheep that have floppy ears there), and many breeds of goats here seem to have floppy ears. They look all wrong to me.

My friends eventually arrived. I tracked them over to the pig races. Pig races. Seriously. We watched one heat. I have no idea how they got those pigs to run, but I am assuming that the pigs expected some kind of reward. We did not see the reward. 

A bunch of big cats (tigers, lions, panthers) were lying listlessly in too-small cages. We left that as quickly as possible and headed for the rides.

I think I had kind of forgotten how motion-sick I get. I can handle going upside down. I can handle rollercoasters. It's that circular motion that gets me. And the only non-circular ride was one that just went up and around in a loop of steel, but the operator had stopped that one and climbed part-way up the inside track and was hitting at something with a hammer. 

We went on a circular ride that spun you sideways and upside down (I could scarcely enjoy it because half-way through I realized that I needed to be hanging onto my earrings if I didn't want to lose them - one girl lost her sunglasses, and two people lost phones). I still felt sick when we got on the high swing that swings you in a circle high above the ground. I might have enjoyed the view if I hadn't been trying to figure out whether I felt more sick with my eyes open or closed. That jolt of almost falling near the beginning wasn't so fun, either. (You know you are a boring grownup when you start to worry about the safety of the fair rides. I catch myself imagining that they are maintained by bored roadies whose only diversion is drugs and alcohol. And I may not be wrong.)

I had ginger chews in my car, though, and I went straight for those on the way to my other party. Sweet relief.

lovely hot

For the first time in five summers, State of Happiness is having a proper August. A proper August consists of weeks of 90 degree F weather, and we finally have one. 

I, for one (possibly the only one in this state), love it. Finally, finally we have weather that does not involve lugging a jacket to every single place I go. I am reveling in it. I will gladly take the intolerably warm car after it's been sitting for hours in the sun if it means that I don't have to be cold ever, at all. 

I hate being cold.

I love being able to get up, put on a dress, and march off to work. 

Oooh, ooh! The best part? Walking out of the air-conditioning into the blast of heat. 

This does not apply to my house, of course. J. and I cannot be bothered to pay for air-conditioning. Cold air costs money. Instead, we just open up some windows at night and I try to get up early enough to close everything up and keep things cool in here. This works, sometimes. It has so far kept it to a maximum indoor temperature of 87 degrees F, which is abysmal, really, when the high was 93 today. Six degrees is not exactly victory. Oh, well. We are never home, anyway.

I kind of want this weather to go on forever. (The appropriate response is: move to Liberia, where it will go on forever!)

bright

If you had told me, c. 1995, that I would one day wear dresses without being bribed and/or coerced, I would have laughed at you. When my grandpa died in 1996, I bought a one piece pants... thing to wear to the funeral. I can't even explain it. Like a jumpsuit? Sort of? I could barely be talked into a dress for an occasional dance at school.

The me of the mid 1990s would be appalled at the me of 2012, who wears skirts and dresses by choice. In fact, right now I wear dresses or skirts every day. I can't remember the last time I wore trousers, other than for fighting class or activities occurring in the woods. 

What I have discovered, other than just a general enjoyment of dresses that Tomboy M. could not have imagined, is how easy dresses are. It's just one piece. You just put it on, the one piece, and there is no fretting about keeping your shirt pulled down or whether your shoes are the right height for those pants or if your clothes match or whatever. It's done. One item of clothing, and you can go. (Only possible in the summer, of course. I love summer.) (Obviously undergarments are a different category. I am talking about visible clothing.)

I am not ashamed that I particularly like a flowy or flippy skirt. There is something so satisfying about the feeling of a skirt flowing about one's legs. 

I really like being a girl.

My momma and the salesperson talked me into buying this royal blue dress last summer. We had stopped at the mall on the way to the airport for me to fly back to Gone West. I was feeling broke, but the dress was cute and on clearance, and I was persuaded. It took me a while to remember that I owned that dress, this summer, but now that I have remembered, I am very much enjoying it. 

If I have learned one thing this summer, it is that a bright, cheerful dress brings out the compliments in force. Feeling down? Bright dress. Coworkers, friends, loiterers, passersby on the street, all appreciate a bright dress. All will comment on the color, and it will make everyone smile.

extra

I know I've had a hard workout in fighting class when I drive home and then just sit in my car for a while, trying to summon the energy to get out of the car and go into the house. 

It took a while tonight. I may have even reached for my book. I don't remember.

I don't know if I'm going to be able to get out of bed in the morning.

Usually getting out of bed isn't the problem, actually. It's the stairs at work. I can drag myself up the stairs at home in anticipation of breakfast, but the stairs at work seem impossibly high the morning after a serious workout.

I made the mistake, two months ago, of mentioning to the fighting class instructor that I needed a good hard workout because I didn't have time to run a mile after class, and if I wasn't exhausted, I would have to do it. The entire class has been cursing my name ever since. Even I have been cursing my own name.

hot and heavy

It was 102 degrees F in Universe City yesterday, and my friend J. and I went to float the river. 

Between the two of us, we'd brought exactly 16 ounces of water. This is not enough water, certainly not for three hours on the water in the blazing sun. 

Clearly neither of us could be bothered with little details like preparation. I did manage not to leave my keys in the glove compartment of his car, though, at the top of the float. That would have been very unfortunate when we got to the bottom, where my car was, and had no ride back. (We did both accidentally keep our towels in his car, which meant that we would have had very wet seats when we got to my car if I did not keep a two-sided blanket in the trunk of my car.)

I made the discovery that sunscreen actually works. (I have always kind of doubted that it could actually keep a person their original color. Prevent burn, yes. Prevent any tanning? No. But I am proven wrong.) Out of sheer paranoia about burning my shoulders that I once blistered in a noon-hour in the sun on the Masai-Mara Game Preserve in Kenya, I applied SPF 60 an hour before we hit the river. While on the river, I applied SPF 50, and then two bouts of SPF 30. I was so effective with the sunscreen that I still have the farmer's tan lines on my arms from the sleeves I wore last week. My shoulders didn't get a lick of sun, despite three hours in the direct 102 degree sun.

When we got out of the river, a guy and girl came up and asked for a ride up to the top. "I lost my keys in the river," the guy said. "She has hers, though." She held up a ziploc and shook it, keys inside.

"Sure," we said, and all piled into my car. We chatted on the way up, about their studies and J.'s hunting plans.

We dropped them off by J.'s car, and J. and I began sorting out all of our stuff. The couple thanked us and walked off further down the road. A few minutes later, they drove by us, in two cars.

Wait a minute.

The funny thing is that I wouldn't have cared. They could had just said, "We didn't plan for a shuttle, and both of our cars are at the top." I would have given them a ride. Why the lies? And thinking about it now, I wonder where their tubes were. Was there more to this plot than I could see?

So then my roommate and I went to a neighborhood block party in a sort of, er. hippie? neighborhood. If by hippie you understand that I mean some classic hippies and some people who view meth use as a daily necessity and some people who believe that living anywhere but under the overpass would be selling out and some hipsters whose only commonality with hippies is a disdain for the niceties of societally sanctioned hygiene.

I was by this point so dehydrated from the three hours in the sun without water that I had a raging headache and I felt sick, so I started buying beverages at every available opportunity. Fruit juice soda, yes, please. Iced tea, thank you. Water, absolutely. Well, whiskey sour if I must.

We finally went and sat down inside a restaurant that lacked air conditioning. "This feels like... somewhere," I kept saying. "Liberia, I think. Or maybe South Sudan. It's all hot and dark and humid, with what might as well be a bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling." I was probably the only person in the joint relishing the heavy, hot air.

public restrooms

Despite my claims that I have no interest in running a marathon, ever, I had a flash of interest when my friend R. mentioned a half-marathon in October. I have no idea why that briefly sounded like a good idea.

Then I googled "half-marathon training schedule" and I had to laugh at myself. What possessed me to think for even one second that my knees would allow me to run 11 and 12 mile practice runs? 

Hint: they won't. 

I ran three days in a row this weekend, and now I can't walk down the stairs. And that was only seven miles in three days. (I fully intended to run more, each day, but things kept getting in the way. Things like laziness and phone calls from my Momma.)

Today, I intended to run 4 miles. I was actually at the parking lot when my Momma called, and of course I had to talk to her. After we talked for a while, I had to pee, but there were no bathrooms around, so I started out on my run without going.

This does not work, by the way. 

Just over a mile in, I found a clump of trees that appeared to be large enough to hide me, and I burrowed in. (One has to be careful which set of trees one chooses in this town, since many of them are already inhabited by camps of homeless people. I do not need anyone watching me pee.)

That would be the second time I have peed outside within the city limits of a city in State of Happiness. The other time was... worse. There were no trees, only bushes, and everything was people's yards. But it was also dark.

The bad news today was that I was nearly limping at the end of three miles. Adding another mile seemed unwise, so I headed over to the bars where I am working my way up to one single pull-up. 

Hey, I never claimed not to have gimpy arms. My arms barely function sometimes. Last year I was very proud that I could do 20 pushups in a row on my toes. It wasn't until I stopped taking a constant stream of ibuprofen that I realized that I was only masking the nerve pain. Now I trying to stay off ibuprofen, and I am back to pushups on my knees, most of the time. I might have to go back on ibuprofen for my knees, though, if I want to keep running. Sigh.

some Olympiad or other

My old roommate moved out last month to move in with her boyfriend (kind of; her stuff is all still here), and I had to transfer all the utilities to my name. This took me a while, due to the heartache previously mentioned and the ensuing lack of energy for anything except dragging myself to work, but the eventual result was that my new roommate and I now have some cable channels.

I actually turned the tv on tonight. That hasn't happened in years. Even in Gone West, when I had a tv and paid for basic cable, I somehow managed to flub up the tv/cable situation, and my cable stopped working at least a year before I moved away. (Things like this are why, despite being fairly technologically capable and fairly engineeringly capable - I actually can often fix things - while lacking any education whatsoever in either one, I really should be kept away from anything that can be flubbed.) I never did bother to figure out how to fix it, because I just don't really care if I have a functional tv.

Nonetheless, I turned the tv on tonight. 

I didn't even know that it was opening night for the Olympics, but once I saw that it was, I had to watch the parade of nations to catch the important countries: Honduras, Liberia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan (not present), Tanzania, Uganda, and the United States. That's the same important countries list everyone has, right?

The Olympics are reason enough to pay for cable.

I was feeling quiet and introspective tonight, and I spent most of the evening reading and writing and running. For the first time in this round of running, it felt good to run. It felt easy. It almost felt like the running nirvana I used to feel immediately post-Rwanda, when I was running 45 minutes at a go.

It was, admittedly, only two miles. I used to view running as useless if I did not have the time to run a full three miles.* The experts suggest THIRTY MINUTES A DAY, you know.

But now I work out independently of running. Running is only to augment my workout regimen. It is not the thing on which I am depending for my exercise. Also I read an article that basically said you will live longer if you run between one and, um, some other number of miles per week. 10? 20? 10 miles a week is only two miles five times per week. Bring it. I am trying to re-wire my brain to believe that a mile or two is enough, if three is impossible. 

Running is also very good for thinking. I suspect that might be why I have suddenly found the willpower to do it a couple of times a week, willpower that was heretofore missing in the years between departure from Rwanda in 2004 and just this last month.

* I did not have the time today because, well, I was reading a good book out on my deck and did not realize how quickly sunset was approaching.

on a dark street

Some friends are worth standing out on the sidewalk well past your bedtime just to talk to them for a few more minutes before they move away. Even on a work night.

We found a new roof deck a few weeks ago. This is a summer-changer. For a town with such amazing summers, and only 100 miles south of an awesome city with outdoor options galore, Universe City's outdoor dining options are limited to the point of pathetic. A covered north-facing corner just isn't going to do it in the land of cloudless summer evenings. 

So five of us sat out in the setting sunlight, eating pizza and mussels, drinking beer and girly drinks, saying goodbye, for now. At length, we migrated out to the street, where we stood at the bottom of the stairs to the parking structure as the night grew later. Pickups full of teenagers cruising by cranked their music so loud that our ears hurt half a block away. Cars eased down the alley, and we jumped out of the way to let them pass. There were hugs, and maybe another one for good measure. And not-the-end goodbyes, we hope.

tag

The (adult) students of my martial arts studio were invited to play lasertag at an abandoned outdoor arena in the woods. (This is all sounding very Hunger Games, suddenly. Did I mention that I saw the Hunger Games two days in a row back in March? The second time in IMAX. Awesome.)

Things got to a late start, because J., the organizer and possesser of knowledge of the location of the arena, had forgotten to go pick up a friend of his.

Conscious of the fact that we would probably lose people on the route, I sped out of the parking lot. I was third in line.

Other people were not so lucky. When we turned off the main road, I stopped at the turn and got out of my car to wait for the stragglers.

Who didn't arrive.

Not having exchanged phone numbers or even directions to the lasertag arena, I called my roommate, who looked up the number for the martial arts studio. No one answered that number, but a few seconds later, S. called me back on her cell phone. She had seen my number pop up on the studio line, looked it up on their list because she knew the lasertag was going on, and called me back. 

J., the organizer, came back to the turnoff where I waited, and the two of us tried multiple times to call the missing driver. Nothing.

We drove back to the martial arts studio, looking for the missing truck all the way. Nothing.

Just as we got back to the turnoff, the missing passenger finally called. They were "[crackle crackle], turning around, [crackle]."

We described our location as best we could through the crackle and waited.

J. and I talked about travel. He traveled through Central America a few years ago, and of course I will take any opportunity to talk travel shop. 

"I met all these women traveling alone when I was in Central America," he said, "and I never worried about them. But for some reason now that I'm married, I worry about traveling with my wife."

I was effusively reassuring. 

An hour after I first got to the turnoff, there was no sign of the straggling truck. 

The missing persons finally called and explained that they had taken that other road out of town, and were irretrievably lost. They were abandoning hope of lasertag and going for a drink. 

We proceeded. 

Lasertag in the woods is amazing. I could have kept at it all night were it not for unwashed laundry and an early morning alarm waiting for me at home. 

We fought every person for themselves (I got tagged out in about 30 seconds.) We fought teams. We fought hold-the-high-ground. K. and I snuck up around the side to take the fort. 

"You should have stayed!" she said, the next day. "We played zombies when it got dark!"

dancing in daylight

S. and PH. got married Saturday, on a lawn overlooking the valley and hills. This was not one of those weddings that you attend out of obligation, oh no. This was two of the people I most genuinely like in this town, making official what everyone already knew.

And so we drove out into the perfect afternoon and sat in the sunshine while they stood in front of the chuppah and drank a mixture of cider and porter from bottles that the officiant carried down the aisle in his sagging pockets. The little ring-bearer walked with his mom holding his hand. When he got to the end of the aisle, he took his place half-hidden behind his dad, the officiant, and PH. and her mom walked down the stairs, hand-in-hand.

We ate, of course, and drank, and even though it wasn't yet dark, we danced. You know I love me some bride and groom when I am willing to dance in daylight. And I was. I would have danced alone in daylight in front of the whole crowd, for those two.

Fortunately for all concerned, that was not necessary.

red

The other day I was sitting at a red light, one car back from the front, when the car in front just up and drove straight through the red light. 

I can't really convey how strange it seemed. I mean, the light was red. We were all stopped at the light. And that car just... went. 

How...?

It isn't just that it's not legal. It's more that it's so counter-instinctive. My instinct says, "Red light! Stop!" so strongly that I can't comprehend how that guy overcame his.

I inched forward to the front spot and looked over at the woman in the car next to me. We both laughed and shook our heads. 

light and lightning

I fully intended to run after fighting class tonight, despite a relatively hard workout, but when I got to the park, there was lightning off to the right and lightning off to the left.

It doesn't lightning much in the western part of State of Happiness, and the weather here is unpredictable. At my parents' house in the Mitten, you can pretty much watch the weather roll in from the west, cross over your head, and head east. In Rwanda, I could see the storms gathering to the east and sweeping toward my house over the bay. 

Here in Universe City, there is no knowing. See those clouds gathering south of here? Maybe on their way. Maybe not. East, ditto. Also west and north. 

I sat in my car in the parking lot for a few minutes watching the occasional lightning bolts and a deepening rainbow, and I decided that I did not want to run a circle around the park badly enough to risk wherever the storm decided to go, and I drove away.

The clouds from the south promptly moved in and started pelleting my car with rain. 

Good decision, then. I do not run in rain. Or cold. Or anything but sunny and beautiful, really.

One of my problems with exercise that is not structured (i.e., a class) is that I am so very all or nothing about it. I either try to kill myself by running every day (er, my plan this week, until foiled by exhaustion and weather) or I give it up completely (which is what I appear to be actually doing this week). I either push myself too hard, or I can't get off the couch. Oh, moderation. Wherefore art thou, moderation?

All this to say that I do so love my fighting class. Not just because I've finally found the exercise I love (getting the shit beat out of me, obviously), but also because of the structure: the instructors push me when I'm tired, and make me stop after an hour when I get crazy. Perfect.