in

"You are fearless," my mountaineering instructor said, as I leaned back off the edge of a rock to do my final safety check.

"Everyone has fears," I said. "I feel funny in my stomach when I stand at the edge of heights." (Facing backward is apparently fine.)

"So do I," he said. "But it doesn't stop you."

One other student and I were so excited about rappelling the forty feet off the rock that we did it three times. Everyone else did it twice, but we were first, and then we were standing at the bottom looking up longingly as the others finished up, so they let us do it again.

"You are a pro," my instructor's fiancee said, down at the bottom, as I finished my rappel, leaned fully back like I was sitting in a chair. 

"It's so much fun!" I said.

I was trying to explain it to someone the other day: I can't do sports that require much in the way of hand-eye coordination, which rules out most team sports. But give me a sport that requires fearlessness and a willingness to work hard, and I'm in. (See martial arts. See also mountaineering.)

defeated by the children, again

Scenes from a trampoline park:

1. 

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

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

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

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

"I kind of got that," the TL said. 

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

2. 

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

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

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

3. 

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

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

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

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

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

Then she showed me her caramel apple lollipop. 

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

4. 

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

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

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

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

5. 

J.'s list of injuries grew: 

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

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

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

6. 

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

7. 

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

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

...

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

expense

One thing I am learning about mountaineering is that, if you let it, it will take all your time and all your money. Three weeks in, it's taken about $800 (and counting), all my Saturdays, two Tuesday nights and one Friday afternoon. Between that and the commute, I do virtually nothing else. 

The good news is that I save money in other areas. Plans for Friday night? What plans? I'm getting ready for a hike and going to bed in time to get up at 4:45 am. 

Yesterday's hike was even harder than the previous two, although I'm getting stronger and learning how to be more efficient. The key has been the rest step, which means that each time I take a step on a steep uphill, I lock my back knee, stretching my calf and improving blood flow. With that step, the 1000 vertical feet per mile for 3.5 miles was no problem. 

Also, I stay near the front. The front moves slowly and steadily. But I've learned that the long line of 20 people inch-worms, as the instructor says, and when you are in the back you have to stop for the people who are slow getting over some obstacle and then try to move faster to catch up. 

I am not so much sore today as I am stiff. My muscles are pleasantly tired, but my joints are displeased with me, especially my knees. I got stuck with the rope, you see, the 8 pound rope strapped onto my backpack, for most of the way down, even though I had proclaimed on the way up that I would carry it all the way up if only I didn't have to carry it down. Still, somehow, after hiking up and over a couple of saddles, it was my turn again by the time we started hiking straight down.

"What are your plans for the year?" the instructor asked, on the way straight up the hill.

"I haven't really thought much beyond this class," I said. "I'd like to hike [Mountain I've Climbed Twice Before] again, because I have friends who haven't done it. And I never thought I wanted to climb [Mountain that Overlooks the City] because too many people die on it, but now I think I might try it if I were with people whose safety conscientiousness I trusted."

"You've made a good start toward [Mountain that Overlooks the City]," he said. "Most people who die on it die because they aren't being as cautious as they should be."

So that might happen, despite my proclamations only 3 weeks ago that it would never would.

We also rappelled for the first time. Not straight down, though. We just practiced the rappelling technique on a very steep section of trail, which I found harder than (at least conceptually) rappelling straight down a vertical cliff, because I had to think not just about where my feet were but also about how to get over the next obstacle between me and the bottom. It mostly worked. 

Part of the expense of mountaineering is the class. Part of the expense is the gear. Part of the expense is getting to the places. Part of the expense is the food. And part of it is the fact that I will do just about anything not to be cold, including buying more warm clothes to ensure that I won't be cold. 

(It doesn't work. You can have the best clothes in the world, and when you keep switching back and forth between steep up and steep down, you are going to be alternating way too hot (take off layers) and then freezing (put layers back on). But I keep trying.)

climbing problem

The hike yesterday was, hm, let's just say: harder. 

Much of it was very steeply uphill, so I ate my way through the ziplock bag of sour jelly bellies that I had stashed in my cargo pocket, which is my method of keeping my energy up on steep hikes.  

There were more ropes - did I mention that we all have to take turns carrying 8 pound ropes tied to our packs? no? we do, and it is not pleasant, because they are heavy and unwieldy - so we each had to take more turns carrying them. With the rope, I started up the trail with a 33 pound pack. (Truth be told, I have no idea how my pack got to 25 pounds without the rope. Maybe it was the thermos of hot chocolate? Maybe it was the climbing harness and all the carabiners?)

Our fearless leader wanted it to be as challenging as possible, so we climbed straight up a boulder field half-covered in slippery, melting snow. We walked/slid straight down a different snow field. (Not a glacier, thank goodness. The class last week made me paranoid about glaciers and crevasses and avalanches, especially since I live in a place that has constant rotation between snowing / thawing / raining / freezing / snowing, resulting in slabs of snow between layers of ice, which is apparently the perfect set-up for slab avalanches. But this was a small snow field, and I don't think the snow was deep enough for an avalanche.)

When I took my pack off at the end of the hike, I felt so free that I could hardly help but jog on my way to the restroom. It's kind of weird to me that I have so much energy after so much hard work. Never fear, it disappeared completely by the time I got home and had to try to stand up to brush my teeth. I could have used a stool to sit on in the bathroom. I was that exhausted.

Then I slept for 11 hours and today I started thinking that maybe I want to climb this mountain again. I looked it up, and it's harder than what I did yesterday but maybe about the same difficulty as what I'm doing next Saturday. Although if I go at the right time of year, there is no snow on the trail (the best time is August/September). I have time to get into better shape. And the view from the top is incomparable. I'm not sure there is anywhere else in this state with quite the same view. 

I'm turning into one of those people with a climbing problem. 

little bitty mountain

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

climbing things

I start a mountaineering class tomorrow. I think this means, like, rock-climbing and also how to not die if you start falling down down snow into a crevasse. I have that vague idea.

Every time someone hears that I'm taking this class, their response is, "Are you going to climb [the Mountain That Overlooks the City]?" and the answer is no. I am not going to climb the Mountain That Overlooks the City, and the reason why I am not going to climb the Mountain that Overlooks the City is because that mountain has a bad habit of throwing large rocks on people's heads at random and killing them, or dropping people into crevasses (presumably, although we don't actually know because the people are never found). So no, I will stay off that mountain, thank you very much.

(I reserve the right to change my mind about this. BUT, if I do, I will take a Mountain Locator Unit. I want to be findable.)

Nonetheless, I am taking the class. 

Yesterday I trekked off to one of the mountain stores, where I put on harnesses and hung from the ceiling for a while. Yeah, that's a thing you do. You want to be only somewhat miserable, not totally miserable, from straps cutting into your legs and waist. 

I learned the following: 

1. Despite having fairly skinny chicken legs, I have to open the leg holes all the way to fit them on my thighs. How...?
2. No matter how tightly I cinch the waist belt, even to the point of pain, I can still twist my fingers around between the belt and my waist. You are not supposed to be able to turn two fingers when you put them between your skin and the belt. It's like I'm just mushy or something. 
3. It seems that I have a narrow gap between my ribs and my hip bones, because the expensive, wide belts dug into my ribs like whoa. Saved me 20 bucks!

Actually, I haven't made the purchase yet (the harness is on hold), because apparently we get a coupon at class tomorrow night. Winning.

breaking all the things

The other day, I had one of those clumsy days. 

I woke up and pulled the spinach out of the fridge. It hit one of my Ball jars of chai, knocking it over and spilling chai all over the fridge and the floor. I cleaned it up as best I could in my hurry to get out the door, but our fridge is constructed strangely, and even when I've cleaned up all the visible liquid, it still drips out from somewhere for a while. I left that to deal with when I got home.

Back in my bedroom, I picked up my phone to put it in my purse. It slipped out of my hand and landed on a bottle of vitamins in a little crate next to my bed, somehow creating a volcano of vitamins. I think it hit the top of the bottle, broke it off, and jostled the bottle enough that it spewed vitamins out the top. There were little vitamin Ds everywhere. I picked up the ones I could find, stuffed them back into the bottle, tried unsuccessfully to get the top back on, and ran off to work.

The phone was fine. (This is why I buy cases.)

At work, I almost killed my delicate-looking little tea cup by dropping another dish on it in the dish rack (it's sturdier than it looks, fortunately). 

From then on, I just tried not to touch anything for the rest of the day.

removal

I've had eczema for a decade or so now, and it seemed much worse this year, which is weird, because stress is supposed to contribute, and I'm the happiest I've ever been. (I have a job I love, an awesome apartment, a steady paycheck, fun outdoor activities, and great people around me. It's all good stuff.)

And yet. The scaly red spots on my neck, they are persistent. One of them started to feel like it was just a permanent thing, like I'm actually turning into a snake, starting at the neck. 

When my mom was visiting me last weekend, we tried on a bunch of dresses at various stores as potentials to wear to my sister's wedding this summer. I tried on several of them and, being bridesmaids' dresses, many of them had open necklines. My scales were visible. Also I scratch at them a lot, because they itch unbearably.

It wasn't until my mom suggested that I try going to the dermatologist, because maybe they have some new ideas since the last time I went four years ago, that I thought things through and realized:

1. I have been trying to use up a jar of moisturizing cream that I stopped using last winter because it wasn't working (this one should come with a giant red flag), and 

2. there are other products out there.

So I did some research on the eczema websites and bought a different product, which seemed to help a little. 

Then I stopped at an actual drug store (usually I go to T@rget or something), where they had a cheap little tube of Aveen0 available. You know, the kind with oatmeal in it? I haven't really thought about Aveen0 since probably junior high, when my friends and I were trying new lotions that felt fancy to 13 year olds in the Midwest. 

I've seen the Aveen0 around, but somehow I thought it had a fragrance, and fragrances are worse than anything for my eczema. (It does not have a fragrance.) 

I bought the cheap little tube on a whim, and I put some of it on my neck. 

I really don't have words to describe the difference. This is the first product (even including prescription hydrocortisone cream) that has actually made my neck feel less itchy. I don't know if it will make the eczema go away completely, or how long it will work for me, but for now I am reveling in the feeling of applying it whenever it starts to itch, and feeling the itch go away. 

It's amazing how you don't realize the unpleasant physical sensations in your body until they are gone. 

chocolate

Me: I've figured out how to eat chocolate four times a day without ruining the healthfulness of my diet.* I have eight chocolate buttons with my chai in the morning, eight chocolate buttons after lunch, two squares of mint chocolate on the drive home, and two dark chocolate peanut butter cups when I get home. It means that I have to keep my other snacks pretty healthy, so I usually just have a cheese stick and some chocolate-covered almonds in the morning.

J: So... you don't count the chocolate-covered almonds as chocolate?

Me: Noooo...? I guess not? Because those are almonds. Just with some chocolate.

I guess I eat chocolate five times a day.

...

* Diet in the "what I eat every day" sense, not the "trying to lose weight" sense.

miracle drug

I used to be a regular taker of ibuprofen. I considered it a miracle drug. After all, something hurts and then you take ibuprofen and then it hurts less. Miracle!

A few years ago, I was overdoing it in martial arts + hiking + jogging, and ibuprofen was the thing that got me through my days. Thanks to ibuprofen, I didn't notice that my wrists couldn't handle that many pushups. Thanks to ibuprofen, the knee pain that kept me from walking up the stairs in the morning was gone by 9 am. Thanks to ibuprofen, I could work out 12 days in a row, long past when my body was telling me to take a day off.

When I quit taking ibuprofen every day, I was no longer able to do as much in the way of working out. I had to do a plank instead of some of those pushups. I had to stop jogging when my knees hurt, and get poles for hiking. I had to keep my martial arts to three or four days a week and my hiking to one or two. 

Last summer, when my shoulder started hurting and then hurt more and more, I went back to three ibuprofen three times a day and my shoulder continued to get worse, until the day I quit ibuprofen and switched to turmeric. 

(Insert turmeric evangelism here.)

I haven't taken one single ibuprofen since August. Some days, like today, I still get sinus headaches (welcome to the valley of sickness), but I can usually make them go away by drinking a bunch of water. Otherwise, the turmeric seems to keep most minor injuries from hurting too much, and I think it's helping with my allergy inflammation, too. I haven't gone back to martial arts, but many days I run 60 flights of stairs in batches throughout the day, and my knees are doing great.

I spend a lot of time trying to sell people on turmeric. It's the beeeeeeeest. No, seriously, just try it. You'll like it. You'll be hooked.

Apparently I have a new miracle drug.

endingless

A few weeks ago, I was downtown on a Saturday afternoon. It was cold. It was 28 degrees F cold (that's cold, for here). I was wearing many layers, and also a warm hat and mittens. I walked downtown, so my car was far away and the wind blew hard across the bridge.

I stopped at re1 to see if they had any good snow pants (later purchased at a cheaper store), and on the way home, I passed a man lying on the sidewalk. He was wearing a white t-shirt, khakis, and an unzipped soft-shell jacket. His shoes were off, exposing his white cotton socks. He had his hands tucked under his arms, and he was rocking and moaning.

There was a police car parked next to him, with an officer inside looking at his phone. 

Never one to leave well enough alone, I went over to the man lying on the ground and started talking to him. "Are you okay?" I asked. He moaned louder. 

"Do you need a blanket?" I asked. After some time, he and I ascertained that he did, indeed, need a blanket. I wasn't sure where we could get a blanket (or several blankets, given the temperature) short of going back to re1 and getting a sleeping bag, which would be beyond my financial capabilities at this point, but I knew that there was a drugstore not far away, and I figured we could go there and buy a fleece throw or two. I also figured that getting him moving was a good idea.

Very slowly, with a great deal of moaning, we got his shoes on his feet. Even more slowly, with even more moaning, he finally stood up.

As soon as he stood up, the police officer, who was very young, shockingly young, came over, said, "Do you still want to go to the warming center?," patted him down, and put him in the back seat of the police car. 

Hey. HEY. This was my victory. I was helping this guy. I got him to stand up. I was annoyed that the police officer just snatched my opportunity to help someone away from me. I was practically dancing around in frustration.

"Where are you taking him?" I asked the officer. "Which warming center?"

He told me and then said, "We've been getting calls about him for a while. He'll die out here overnight."

"Are you going to take his stuff?" I asked. "Can I talk to him?"

The man was calling frantically from the back seat of the police car. "Whyyyy? Whyyyyyy?" 

The officer rolled the window down so I could talk to the man while the officer gathered his things in a garbage bag and put them in the trunk.

"He's just taking you somewhere warm," I tried to assure the man. 

"Why do I have to go?" he moaned. 

"It's too cold out here," I said. "It's not safe to be out when it's so cold."

"Whyyyyy," he said. "Why do I have to go?"

And then they left, and I don't know what happened next. I guess we don't always know what happens next to the people we meet, and I don't know if that man stayed in a warm place for the night or if he ended up back on the street that night or the next very cold night. I hope he's okay.

learning

After two semi-disastrous experiences, I planned more carefully for my third round of cross-country skiing.

I only invited people who were willing to take a lesson with me. (It ended up just being two of us.)

I raced back to Gone West one evening to get to the cheaper outdoor clothing place before it closed, tried on every pair of snow pants on the clearance rack that looked vaguely like my size, and bought the only ones that were long enough. (They also happen to be a sort of teal/mint green. Yay.)

I bought toe warmers.

I was set.

The day was perfect: about 30 degrees up on the mountain, and snowing. The snow wasn't icy like the last time. 

I offered to drive, but oddly J. preferred his Subaru. As if my 18 year old Civic couldn't handle snowy mountains. My little car was insulted, frankly. He did just fine in Colorado two years ago. I only had one sheriff's deputy follow me up the pass to make sure I got out alive. That's just normal, right?

So we made it, all-wheel drive and all, and taking a lesson turns out to be the best decision I've made in quite some time. 

I'm sure cross-country skiing just comes naturally for some people: they get on the skis and zip off into the sunset. I needed someone telling me to bend my ankles and look farther ahead than the tips of my skis and twist my hips just a bit and hit the ground with my poles right next to my foot. I learned thing I didn't know there were to learn.

A week later, back out on the trail in warm, slippery snow (it was raining, actually), I wasn't afraid to push off with my poles and go whizzing down the hill. I knew I could stop if I needed to stop. I didn't fall once.

On the drive home, someone rear-ended us in SHO's SUV, and when we pulled off to the side of the road, the bumper of the car that hit us was skewered on the SUV's trailer hitch. All involved necks were fine.

trails

I've gone cross country skiing thrice this winter. The first two times were remarkable, if the remarks being made happen to be about how miserable one can be while cross country skiing. 

The first time, I raced back from State City to get to the rental place in time. They were very nice there, if somewhat unable to make the calculation from US to European shoe sizes, which was maybe a bad sign. (They brought me boots three sizes too small, and then proceeded to bring one size bigger at a time, until someone finally looked at the chart.)

I managed to wedge the skis into my little car, and then onto the roof of SHO's car, and things were good.

Except that the skis appeared to have last been waxed never. I collected an inch of snow on the bottoms of them every few minutes, so that they stuck in the wet snow instead of gliding, and I'd have to hold my skis up sideways so SHO could knock the snow off of them. And that was after two rounds of waxing on the trail.

So that trip was beautiful and fun, but also a lot of work.

On the next trip, the snow had melted and then iced over, and most of the sno parks* we tried were crunchy and slippery. We ended up at the Nordic section of a downhill ski area, where you have to pay to use the trails but also they groom the trails. The trails were still ice, just ice covered in a bit of snow, and the trails were not all easy trails. Most of them were intermediate. (Read: hills.)

My basic survival strategy was to careen down toward the right and crash into the ice bank on the side of the trail, then get up and careen down toward the left and crash into the ice bank on the other side of the trail. It hurt and it sucked and I hated it. After way too long of this, I finally gave up, took off my skis, and marched off down the trails back to the Nordic center. There was self-pity involved.

The Nordic center is mostly staffed with older people who are like wizards on skis. They zip around effortlessly. One of them told me, as I was sitting in the warmth trying to recover from the adrenaline of all the thinking I was about to crash into a tree and bash my head in, that there are skills one can learn to help deal with the ice.

Then and there, I vowed not to go cross country skiing again until I took a lesson.

* I'm not spelling this wrong. They are actually called sno parks. It's very annoying.

insured

You know what is really great? Having good health insurance.

I know I've been harping on this (over and over) since I began the Journey of What I Want to Do with My Life two years ago, but it's amazing how having money helps you save money.

For example: 

A year ago, I needed new contacts. I didn't have vision insurance, so I bought a C0stC0 membership and had my eyes checked there. It cost me about $265 (plus the $55 membership) to have the exam and get 18 contacts (12 for one eye, 6 for the other, based on what I had left over from before). 

This week, I paid $53 for an eye exam and 24 contacts. I already have the membership, but I didn't need it, because insurance covered the whole cost of the contacts - they never asked for the card - and it is only the actual contacts that are purchased from C0stC0. The eye doctor is independent.

I'm going to remember this lesson. I'm not going to forget. Those of us who already have get even more, and those without anything have to spend more because they are poor. It's mind-boggling how unfair it is.

brains

When I got my new job and told people that I was about to start commuting 2-2.5 hours a day, just about the universal reaction was, "podcasts." (There were occasional exceptions along the lines of, "books on tape," or "that sounds awful." Actually, most of them started with, "that sounds awful," and progressed to "podcasts," or "books on tape.")

The truth is that I don't mind driving. And I never intended to listen to podcasts or books on tape. If I'm going to read a book, I want to see the words. I'm much more a visual person than an auditory person. If I listen to a book on tape, I suspect that I will zone out and miss a large section and have to rewind. (I know, we don't rewind anymore. I'll have to go back, however we say that now.) I might as well just read the book and catch the whole thing.

I listened to music and jammed along in my car for six weeks. 

And then, on impulse, I switched from music to NPR last week.

So basically I'm smarter now than I was a week ago. My brain is being trained in listening, and I know all the things there are to know that are going on in the world. Brains.

Friday

I have my feet up on the coffee table, a cup of chai next to me, and a tiny dog curled at the end of the couch.*  The sun is shining. I'm in the middle of a good book, and I'm still wearing my pajamas. I just hit play on a pandora station.

This is about 1000 times better than putting on real clothes at 5:30 am, or any time ending in am, really, and going out to spend money I don't have.

There really isn't anything I want to buy. There are some things that I need to buy: a plane ticket to the Mitten for Christmas, Aquaphor for that eczema spot on my neck, mouthwash because mine is running low, a haircut. But nothing that I really want. Not badly enough to go to a store especially for that. 

I'm perfectly happy here on the couch, annoying my friends by sending them job postings. (Now that I have a job that I love, I am that annoying job search evangelist: "Just try it! You'll like it!" They are going to get sick of me really fast.)

* I am dogsitting. Not my dog. Bonus: this house has central heating. Luxury.

smoke and fire

There is a steady stream of smoke rising from the back of my oven. It's not a good sign. I know what's happening - I did not allow the crushed cookie crust to dry completely, and I also broke it when I took the tart pan out of the oven by pushing on the underside of the pan so the edge of the crust fell off, and the honey part of the tart is dripping down onto the bottom of the oven. (T., this is why a tart pan isn't always the best idea...)

Okay, I have come up with a solution. The tart pan is now sitting on baking sheet so that the honey does not drip down into the heating element. 

The stove is sill smoking like mad. It's a little worrying that the smoke detector has not gone off, because the air is hazy.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The smoke detector in the hallway just went off, but not the one in the kitchen. Admittedly, the one in the kitchen is hanging behind a straw hat that is pretty tightly woven. (Don't ask me why we have a straw hat hanging over the smoke detector. It's been that way since before either my roommate or I moved in.)

Thanksgiving dinner at my friend's house starts at 5:30 pm. It's 4:47 now, and my food is not fully prepared. I think I'm going to be the tardy one.

P.S. No actual fire so far. Just charring.

better, theoretically

The good news is that today, at the end of week three of the new job, the second full week, I am not quite as exhausted as I was two weeks ago, at the end of the first full week.

I mean, I'm still sitting on my bed all bundled up. I still didn't run the (one) (single) errand I meant to run this evening (to get sparkling water, if you must know). But I feel like I maybe could have run the errand. You know, if I wanted to. If I wanted to get up out of my warm bed and go out into the cold, I could have.

Eh-hem.

even earlier

I never knew how much I could appreciate a rainless commute. Driving home this evening in the Not Rain, I was positively buoyant about the traffic. Who cares? At least I'm not hydroplaning between a truck and the concrete under a bridge (that happened this morning at approximately 5:56 am). 

I thought getting up at 5:15 was bad. This morning I got up at 4:15 so that my coworker and I could meet in State City and get to Universe City by 8 am. 

So that was fun.

I'm not quite sure I'm coherent right now.

commute

This commute is all well and good until it's pouring down rain and the highway is flooded and getting home takes double time. 

I'm trying to hold out with this car for a year, but when I'm driving next to a triple trailer semi on the highway, focusing with all my might on the yellow line because it's the only thing I can see, feeling like a bug about to be squashed, in a tiny car with airbags that don't work, I question that decision.