Happy Spring Break 2k13! I’ve been having a happiness panic/heart attack ever since I left my office yesterday afternoon. The weather is beautiful, I’ve been drinking coffee and I’m ready for a mimosa. The bridge run is today, and all of Charleston is out and about for a day of sunshine and parties.
Tomorrow I leave Charleston for a week at home in Augusta. My plans include drinking beer in the sun, pimento cheese, turkey on wheat, velvet hammers, grass that is greener than your eyes can accept, azaleas, wisteria, old friends, family, and a town full of people who are all just happy to be there.
In my bedroom at my parent’s house in Augusta – I can hear the train whistle blow at night. In my bedroom in my apartment in Charleston, I can hear the cargo ship horns blow. Trains and ships make me happy.
Chocolate coconut milk freezes pretty quickly, and also thaws quick. And half frozen chocolate coconut milk is a spectacularly enjoyable treat. If you freeze it even more it becomes a tasty frozen treat you can eat with a spoon. Like if Italian ice and a frosty had a love child. Try it out. I drink zico – the plastic bottles are easier to drink half frozen, but the cardboard cartons are easier to it open for frozen deliciousness.
New Girl and the Mindy Project. So much happiness. And 1600 Penn.
Eating Krispy Kreme mini crullers with Nutella on them. And eating Nutella with a spoon. Basically anything involving Krispy Kreme or Nutella.
JT, I love you. Forever and EVER. Nothing makes my inability to go out for a run more upsetting than finding a gem like this. I could run to this sound on repeat for a long time. The version on my phone is eight minutes long, so I could listen to it on repeat like three times and feel like I got in a good workout. Right now I don’t think I could run for three minutes, which is sad. I thought I was doing better, I was really convinced of it. I went to one yoga class, and I really was okay, and my arms and shoulders and back were just as sore as my foot, and I was encouraged. Then a week later I went to a second yoga class, and during that class I felt AWESOME. I felt like I could do this yoga class every day and feel great. But that was Tuesday, and since then my foot has been a lot more painful than it was before. But I also haven’t been quite as careful with it, and I haven’t been taking the anti-inflammatory medication like I was before. I think I’m going to wear the boot for a couple of days and see if that helps at all, and take the medicine again.
Briscoe just got out of bed, I got up at 8, but she felt the need to sleep until after 10. I think she has already fallen asleep again on the floor.
I went to the Good Friday service last night, because Easter really snuck up on me and I felt like it would help me get into the Easter spirit. The service was REALLY long, but other than that, it was great. There was one passage that I really liked:
Hebrews 10:22-25
“Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you the Day approaching.”
Obviously this is a pretty sincere affirmation of God’s promise for his people, but I think that even if you don’t believe in God or Jesus, the idea that we should “provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet…but encouraging one another” is an inspirational aspiration. My own personal history with Church could be compared to an interstate slowly changing into a gravel road, but I’ve been a peace with that for a long time. We all take our own paths, but I believe that as long as you are searching for enlightenment and approaching the world with love and gratitude, the day to day theological problems will sort themselves out. And maybe I don’t go to church all the time, and maybe you never do, but the comfort of the ritual is there.
In other news, I just finished the book Gone Girl, and I thought the ending was really stupid. I had been warned that the book was questionable, and I went into it knowing it was questionable, but whatever. I am proud of myself for checking the book out from the library. I live directly behind the library, and I always say I’m going to check out books, and then I never ever do. And this time I did. And I was justified, because now that I’m done with the book I want to throw it across the room, but tossing it into the return box will have to suffice. My horoscope swore to me that this most recent full moon was going to be the most difficult full moon of 2013 for me, and that I was going to get some bad news that would leave me tense and possibly very angry between March 27th and March 30th. Since I had Miami wining the NCAA tournament and they lost to some stupid school that starts with an M by more than ten points, thereby ruining my previously beautifully unbroken bracket, I’ve decided that this was my bad news. But I’m also going to attempt a spray tan today, so if this goes extremely poorly, that could also be my bad news. It is amazing how much I care about my bracket, considering that I have yet to watch an entire (or even a large majority) basketball game this season.
I have so many things I need to do today, starting with taking my dog outside. I’ve already brushed my teeth and consumed a great deal of coffee. Oh! And I got dressed. Now I just need to put on some sunscreen (no one should ever leave the house without sunscreen, on any day, regardless of where or what you are doing. Pouring down rain is a maybe excuse, but it might clear up, you never know) and I will be ready to brave the world! After I take a zyrtec. I really want a shark mop. I think today is the day to investigate. Life is full of excitement and possibilities.
I have horrible dreams on a regular basis. Sometimes they include people I know, and sometimes they include people I don’t know. Some are worse than others. But they have a couple recurrent themes. Anxiety – like the one where I’m running down a gravel road in a dress and high heels trying to make it somewhere for something important. I’m normally in Colorado in that dream, which is weird, because Colorado is the place I am least likely to wear a dress or heels in real life. Right now I would be really pumped (seriously, stop) to wear heels anywhere, but my foot refuses to comply with these desires.
My other recurrent dream involves disasters. Sometimes it is natural disaster, and sometimes it is horrible accident, and other times it involves serial killers dressed as cops knocking on the door of the cabin in the woods in the middle of the night. Did you see the movie Secret Window? Cause I did. I’m starting to think maybe I watch too many movies and entirely too many crime shows.
When I was in the ATL last weekend, Christy’s neighbor got locked out and came by her apartment to get a spare key. Because she is someone important in the HOA, she has the keys to all the condos in her building. I’m sure I knew that there was a person like this in most condo associations, but I had two immediate thoughts. 1. Damn, she is trusted and responsible, this is what happens when you are a lawyer. 2. If anyone is ever murdered in her building, she will be an immediate suspect because she has everyone’s spare key. And then I had a third thought, which was, what is wrong with you that you think about this sort of thing?
Wish me luck, I’m off to test the ole foot out in Drew’s yoga class. I may be crying tonight, but right now I’m really excited.
Briscoe is trying to make me feel better about not being able to work out. My yoga mat and tennis equipment have been crying to Briscoe during the day about feeling neglected and abandoned, so she thought we should pull them out and make them feel loved. Just making it onto your mat and breathing deeply counts, right? Oh, and what I really want is a mini trampoline, so, if anyone has a mini trampoline laying around, I’d be happy to take it off your hands. I NEED it. For rehab.
Since I haven’t been able to work out for all of 2013, and I have very limited interests that don’t involve physical activity, I’ve picked up some unfortunate habits. I’ve been watching Homeland, which leaves me with conflicting emotions. First, it makes me feel like I’m not contributing to the real world in any significant manner and second, the fact that terrorists can apparently be lovable is confusing and upsetting. And I want to be friends with Dana and Mike, but no one else. Maybe Virgil and Max. I’m about halfway through with the second season, so don’t ruin it for me (even though television consistently breaks my heart and I’m sure showtime will ruin it for me eventually). My thoughts are crowded by this story, and it could be a while before I can adequately absorb all of it.
Homeland is a socially acceptable obsession, and I’m afraid my next confession is going to be much more damning. I’ve been playing candy crush. It might be slowly deprograming my brain. I can’t ignore the possibility that this game is like one of those Trojan horse email viruses that slowly infiltrates your computer until it has all the right pieces and can take over the whole system. This might be the next mutation of biological warfare. While homeland crowds my thinking, candy crush overrides my thinking to a point where I start seeing orange pear shapes and green squares and red jelly beans over your face when I’m talking to you. Thank god you run out of lives eventually. Luckily, I suck at this game, so I burn through lives fairly quickly. Otherwise I might never shower or have time to feed my dog. What’s my dog’s name again? Jelly bean?
My last bad habit is I’ve been eating a lot of brownies and Easter candy. But I don’t actually feel that guilty about this habit. I think it is just the generalized girl paranoia about not working out and instead eating brownies, but after a couple of glasses of wine, that goes away.
As a bonus, I want to alert you and possibility remind a few of you who might remember, that Anne Hathaway’s Oscar dress was my senior prom dress. No lie. I can’t decided if this makes me feel cool, like I was really ahead of the times, or if this makes me feel horribly old, because my senior prom was so long ago the fashion has come back around and is in style again. Maybe I should just pretend like my taste in clothing is timeless and leave it at that. I hope I still have that dress somewhee
In light of Christy’s comment that she doesn’t care what I blog, as long as I blog – here we go.
The photos of Briscoe on the pillows evidence Briscoe’s lack of concern that her bed has been taken apart for the cover to be washed, and will make do with what is available. The pictures on the couch clearly demonstrate that Briscoe’s comfort is more important than mine is when it comes to couch lounging. The photo of Briscoe asleep on the bed was taken at 10:30 in the morning when I had been out of bed for close to two hours. I think she had been asleep for a solid 12 hours.
Would it get on your nerves if the person you lived with took pictures of you sleeping all the damn time? And then posted them online?
Let’s get real. No one wants the oatmeal raisin famous Amos cookies in any circumstance, much less when they are seeking satisfaction from a vending machine. This is like when instead of peanut m&ms, they have those gross crunchy m&ms.
I’m sitting on a patch of grass, on the edge of the parking lot of my office building. My building is one of many neighboring office buildings, and my friends work nearby. Paul works directly across the street, Dan works around the bend in the road, and Friend organizes food trucks to come visit.
It might not be a glamorous area of town, and my building might be the plainest vanilla box you’ll ever see, but it takes me 15 at most to get here every morning, and there is plenty of free parking.
I took off my long sleeve shirt and am sitting in the sun in a tank top. Of note, this would have probably (or definitely) gotten me fired from last job. It is 70 degrees, bright blue sky, and I’m eating roasted red pepper hummus and carrots. A few of my coworkers are walking laps around the complex for exercise. The interstate is buzzing along behind me, and although that could be an annoyance, I’ve gotten rather fond of the noise.
At my last job, I was only allowed 30 minutes for lunch, on a good day. It is hard to drive to Wendy’s and back in 30 minutes. The job before that, my bosses liked to discuss cases at lunch, and lunchtime was not my own time, and the places we ate would have put me to sleep for the rest of the day if I’d actually eaten it. Work lunches were simply part of the job, and I think that is reasonable in certain professions like small law firms. I did lose ten pounds in the 18 months I worked there, as a side note.
Having control over my own lunch is an amazing privilege that I try to never take for granted. I go to lunch whenever I want between 11-2, and I live in a place where the weather often lends itself to sitting in the sunshine. My coworkers like to pick on me because I eat a turkey melt on an English muffin every day. But it is a privilege, and I am going to enjoy it, because it makes me happy.
Charleston can be something of a revolving door of visitors. You’d expect this in the summertime, but it is amazing how many different people have been here in January. I love visitors, but in January, the activities available in Charleston basically involve wandering around downtown eating and drinking all day and night. And, I’ve hurt myself. I was deathly afraid I had a stress fracture, because the pain started back in October, and then got better, and then got worse at the end of November, but I ignored it, and ran in a 5k, and then finished my last two tennis matches of the season, because it wasn’t so bad I couldn’t do those things, and I wanted to do them. I figured that if I didn’t run or play tennis over Christmas that by mid January my foot would be better. I probably should have been smarter about walking around in heels and going to yoga, but I wasn’t, and it didn’t get better. I finally went to the ortho last Friday, and I have posterior tibia tendinitis, but thankfully, nothing was broken. They put me in a walking air cast boot that goes all the way up to my knee, and I’m suppose to wear it for 4-6 weeks. Even though this sucks, the fact I don’t have to have a real cast or use crutches, is so awesome, that I really don’t care. I just want my foot to get better so I can go back to doing the things I want to do. I HATE being hurt. Although, I guess it is a good time of year to have a boot. If you have to have one. Maybe I will start swimming again, even if swimming makes me feel like I’m going to drown. Hopefully I will be able to go back to yoga soon.
I saw a real bluebird on Thursday. He was a soft sky blue and had a rust colored chest. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a for real blue bird before. It was exciting. I’ve also eaten a ton of oysters in the past week. Oyster roasts are tons of fun. I recommend this activity as a cure for any winter blues.
Briscoe is super bored by my inability to walk any significant distance. She is super dirty, and desperately needs a hair cut. She looks like a car wash towel, after you washed the car.
Happy Super Bowl! I can’t decide who I want to cheer for, but the Super Bowl is always fun.
the thin line between optimism and delusion... 
