“I’m just a crazy kind of girl / I’ll tell it to the world / I’ve just begun having my fun (yeah) / Inside me there’s something I found / I wanna shop around / I’ve just begun”
—Britney Spears….duh
So…an iPhone app I made is available in the iPhone store today. N B D except totally a Big Deal. YEAH!!!!!
Been hacking since 1998 and still loving it. I’m kind of almost a legit badass coder chick. PIEOW!!
“I don’t need another friend / when most of them / I can barely keep up with / I’m perfectly able to hold my own hand / but I still can’t kiss my own neck”
—Wye Oak, Civilian…see previous post!
time 5:01 PM (“and the news is next”) feeling sleepy wearing sweet new sweater vest, thanks Hakan reading Freedom music WYE OAK ready for dinner + partying/hanging out with Jeff! next finish up/apple
So I don’t really think that at all (re: lyric above), as I love my friends and enjoy finding new ones (despite 2001/sophomore year of “we don’t need any more friends!!” *shuts door*, ha ha). Just sometimes hard to figure out where to fit everyone. BUT I love this song and I am in love with listening to it while reading my latest book, Freedom…somehow I feel that these things were made for each other. While drinking sparkly water. And watching Jeff play his Western-Outlaw-Zombie game, ha ha.
I meant to do a great big EOTW but I am just not feeling it. Mostly I wanted to put this quote up there. I also want to say this: there are some people in my life who are in need of some good news and a turn of luck this year. So, Universe, I would like to see that please! THANK YOU in advance. Really.
Also: I need to draw more. Weird things, generally.
Also: I am READING. And I love it.
Also: I have the best family-practice doc in the TC area. Seriously I do. Ring me up if you want a rec.
Also: Time to go. Adios.
“I still keep my baby teeth
in the bedside table with my jewelry
you still sleep in the bed with me,
my jewelry, and my baby teeth”
Wye Oak – Civilian, & Doubt
Dark Dark Dark – Daydreaming
Timbaland – Pass At Me
^ you really should check these songs out. Now!!!
“I won’t run, I won’t fly / I will never make it by without you / without you / I can’t rest, I can’t fight / All I need is you and I / without you, without you”
—David Guetta…YES this is a cheesy pop song that reminds me of Jeff!
“Please give us nothing / so nothing can take us”
—Bachelorette, Long Time Gone
“I want to be by myself / sometimes I do”
—Lisa Loeb
“oh I’d run as fast as I can / land I can see for miles / oh I’m searching,
with only the wind whispering / Oh if you knew what it meant to me / Oh if you knew what it meant to me / Oh if you knew what it meant to me / you would see, too”
—Dark Dark Dark
It seems the fish comic is just making me want to write more.
EOTPSH (End Of The Past Sixteen Hours):
Left work to hop on the bus. It was already getting dark. Jeff was going to a Wild game with his coworker so I was on my own. Hopped on the 553. “You know, you can get on in the parking lot!” the driver assured me. “It’s getting cold out there!” I thanked him, since I don’t ride the bus often enough to always know Proper Express Bus Etiquette. Rode through DT Minneapolis and then down 35 listening to Dark Dark Dark song over and over. In love. To Diamond Lake and a quick walk home. Home.
Fantasized (yes…I am lame) about listening to Dark Dark Dark song while making myself dinner, a la the Old Days of cooking for Myself, but found myself instead upgrading the Touch to iOS5 which took forever (and is crashy, eughhh). Fail. But at least that was Accomplished. Fussed around updating iPods, putting everything away, and dealing with the dishes. I now only do dishes once a week thanks to our amazing dishwasher and it is LIFE CHANGING. I mean that. (No really. Now I have time to meditate in the mornings instead of doing dishes. And it’s just cool to live in the Future.) Listened to pop music instead of Dark Dark Dark while peeling and prepping the sweet potato and putting it in the oven. Sipped the rest of the champagne in the midst of all of this and turned on Halloween lights/fish tank, too. Nice and bubbly and mysterious (all of it).
Got into PJs and wrapped up today’s fish comic. Finished prepping dinner – big salad with spinach and peppers and almonds and avocado topped with a friend fried (yes I guess I am so in love with friends that I wrote friend instead of fried) egg. Side of Patisserie 46 multigrain toast and the sweet potato fries. I am a SUCKER for root vegetables, esp. in baked/roasted format. I note now that Trike also had roasted root vegetables last night. Fate. Kismet. 2011.
Finally put Dark Dark Dark on the stereo, and then ate dinner while reading an article on Jeff Bezos/Amazon/Kindle. It’s kind of amazing. Business is wild. I love it. I had engaged in a little $AAPL stock tweeting at the end of the day at work with a few daytrader types whom I don’t know and I found that fascinating. Reading the newspaper stock pages every day at 15 meant something, I guess. In another life I could see myself as a trader, no doubt.
I began to draw a bath to finish my evening off right. Threw a bath bomb in that I had been saving expressly for a night of luxuriating aloneness like this. LUSH white something or other. Smelled good. Burned a terrific mid-late fall CD for the car and made a few adjustments to Alyssa’s logo. Lookin’ good. I like this logo a lot. Also good to check things off the To Do list. Kind of obsessed…duh. Fun having the house to myself and the fish Gary for a rare night, eh? Shut down the computer and checked the bath temp. Too cool for our very cold house, added more hot water and eventually got in with a cup of sleepytime tea and this week’s Bloomberg Businessweek, which I abandoned to listen to more random music on the Touch. Yep. But then read an article on Scott Forstall. He’s quite the interesting fellow. Business! In another life I could also be a business executive person. However, I like my life this way, so.
Eventually got a little cold as I noticed all the steam pouring off the bath yet. Ummmm…do we have to turn the heat on? NO! NOT YET!! Got out, got dressed/PJed again, and got into bed with my book. I don’t like my book so I am probably going to abandon it. Oh well. I tried. A new one awaits me at the library. I dozed off as Jeff came home and got ready for bed. JEFF! JEFF! Yay. Then sleep…so warm under the winter comforter. Nice.
Woke up today and had a hard time getting out of bed into the cold house. Ughhhh. Finally did and then got back in bed. FAIL. Even harder to get up. Broke my rule and made coffee. (I’m trying to have coffee only 1 or 2x a week. I had it Sunday and intend to Friday as well. Oh well, this was mostly decaf, so…) Coffee turned out to be the best part of my morning though as I then schemed up a European breakfast to have after yoga. Sipped some coffee and chewed hard bread, then got onto the mat. 38 minute intermediate Vinyasa from YogaYak on YouTube. Dark and quite nice. I was bundled up, including legwarmers, but it did heat me up a bit, too. I live a very charmed life to be able to do things like this, and thought about that. I am very very lucky and grateful.
Savasana, then hot shower and getting ready. THEN Euro breakfast! Cheese, hard toasted bread, and coffee with lots of hot cream (well, that’s as close as I could get to Euro-ness, anyway). Super awesome. Read that and caught up on blogs/Twitter, then wrote this blog. And the day begins.
Side note: I am feeling so good and so peaceful these past few days. I hope it lasts. If it doesn’t…I’m glad I had it, at least.
“I’m daydreaming / Where the sycamore grow / I’m daydreaming / And oh if you knew what it meant to me / where the air was so clear / Oh if you knew what it meant to me”
Dark Dark Dark, Daydreaming…as heard on MTV’s Awkward. Yes we are kind of way into this show. Yes we love weird HS drama shows.
time 10:37 AM, creepy again feeling peaceful and relaxed and happy! wearing crisp blue shirt, khakis, gray sweater vest music Dark Dark Dark / Social Network reading Hothouse Flower and the 9 Plants of Desire ready for daydreaming next Jquery!
Fall as a 16 year old…
Newly licensed, tearing around town, mischief after dark, black car out in the night, giggling undercover with your three main-squeeze girlfriends, passing notes/the Book, forgetting to turn headlights on, bright Friday night lights of falsely-attended football games, freedom and friends, car chases, Frente and Lisa Loeb, sharp clear air from the navy shiny sky.
Fall as a 17 year old…
Hanging around parks, more mischief after dark, plotting Halloween costumes/fiestas, tentatively happily making new friends, bonding over bad movies, websites and email-relationships and naps outside, “Tell Me Are You That Somebody” and “Build Me Up Buttercup”, cloudy breaths of exploding laughter floating away in a sparkly night-etched sky.
Fall as an 18 year old…
Football games, nicknames, wild crews, apple mischief, birthday parties, Halloween parties, math parties, everyone turning 18, camping and roses and friends, cutting through to forgiveness, signs and scheming, skipping and studying, college plans, testing days, breathing the future, Garbage and Smashmouth, bright bright fall atmosphere, the blue blue bright sky.
—
Fall as a 30 year old…
Out on the bike, socializing around town, hot coffee, cold beers, friends, apples and jokes and surprise corn mazes with secret mailbox mysteries, the majestic Lake Superior and the magic of a getaway, growing and growing, piece by piece, slowly moving into the future, Explosions in the Sky and Alibi, windy windy wind blowing life in a white-scratched, star-sparked sky.
—
NO my false ramblings were not the main purpose of this update, but, it happened. Alas. FALL NOSTALGIA! That said, THIS is the main purpose of this update:
OCTOBER 29, you are busy…with these things!
-MONSTER DASH to watch Colleen and Diana…??
-something else…I can’t remember what. Oh, maybe tailgating w/ Dave??
-Mike’s Halloween party!! Jeff might come with!!!!!!!!
-Dave’s open house/going away x2. AWWWW 🙁 alas. But fun.
Socializing Saturday!
SOCIAL LIFE.
Fall.
“Was it the Sprees?!”
—Erik, 10/16/11, that caused everyone sleeping in
“I told you, I ate my beets and kale and then passed out.” “Wow, you’re a party animal.”
—me and Jeff, 10/15/11, after he and Erik came back after the concert
“I mean, I’m not a d-bag. I’m not going to show you my abs and make you do a jello shot from my belly button.” / “I have no conscience in myself. I mean confidence.”
—gems from a 21yo male, out at Psycho Suzi’s, 1am, 10/14/11
growing, growing, growing
It’s amazing how one can adapt, how the body and/or mind adjusts to adaptation of expectations. The things I used to get mad about or jealous about or seethe about just months ago are no longer, mostly because I’ve finally come to recognize this (= part of my 2011 mantra): It Is What It Is. I’ve been saying it, but maybe, just maybe, I finally believe that it’s true?
You have to take what you can get.
Which won’t always be everything.
(+ don’t worry, there are other things I’m still managing to be upset/envious about. Still growing.)
A lot of good writing to be had but it is not long for this blog. Alas. I am also again doing the Fish comic, but that may change into a drawing-journal instead. Whatever the case – that’s What’s Up and that might be where a lot of this goes. Vamos a ver.
I had a most wonderful weekend of randomness (out w/ Kristin and friends Friday, woo hoo!), friends (Cole and A-K, YAY!) + food (farmer’s market/Patisserie 46), biking in the crazy wind, a long swim, cooking and baking and hanging out with Jeff, and Erik and Jeff. Lots going on.
It’s already mid October.
It’s fall.
It’s 2011. But it’s almost 2012.
Fall fall fall. So many things to think about. For some reason it’s very memory-rich, this time of year.
Happy Fall.
As a Libra (scales), I am OBSESSED with justice/fairness. Um, clearly I need to learn that life is NOT fair. DUH duh and duh. But. I just can’t learn this lesson, ha ha.
That all said, it is an AWESOME FRIDAY and weekend of NOTHING but fun, fun, fun. Cooking + friends (Kim! Cole! AK! Dancing w/ Kristin et al tonight! Etc.!) + solo slumber party + true Fall. YEAH.
Happy October!
It is exhausting trying to chase a fantasy-reality that does not exist, has never existed, and will never exist. Do you know what that’s called? Delusion. Fantasia. Insanity. Etc.
Much better to embrace the actual, true, clear, present reality and the possibilities THAT holds. Vs. clinging to something that only existed in dreams and thoughts and unintentionally-cast-aside plans. Odds are THAT reality is and will be pretty great – and it can’t be worse than depending on something that doesn’t exist, like goblins, like fairies, like fairness, to appear.
Embrace actual reality.
Also, sometimes it’s better to say F the journey and embrace the DESTINATION. Destiny.
Reality.
Fantasy
TRUTH.
31. Not that old.
“Well, all bears who wear clothes look weird without them!”
—Jeff, 10/9/11
” ‘When are you leaving?’ / ‘Tomorrow’ / ‘I’ll miss you.’ “
—Lost In Translation
time 9:47 PM feeling relaxed, happy, thankful wearing Twins shirt music EITS in prep for tomorrow’s concert! ready for Froot Loops next Froot Loops
I can’t possibly do this past weekend justice so I won’t even try. Jeff took me to the North Shore, where I had never ever EVER been, believe it or not (what kind of a Fake Native am I?!) for a grand 30th birthday excursion of “ROMANCE!” And that it was.
In fact, the word I would use is MAJESTIC (though Jeff kept insisting on ‘mystical’, I would prefer ‘majestic’ and/or ‘magical’. Anyway). Driving into Duluth, I felt enchanted somehow. It seemed like a very far away and different and amazing land, and walking around the town and along LAKE SUPERIOR (worth every ounce of its name, indeed) only further confirmed that. We enjoyed a fantastic lunch at Grandma’s consisting of terrific ranch-y fries + a wild rice burger and continued up to the north to our lodge.
THE LODGE portion of the weekend was incredible. Jeff booked us quite the fancy room and it totally blew me away. We looked right out onto Lake Superior and I even watched the sun rise from my bed one morning. Blissful. The room was well-appointed and the staff very attentive and friendly (duh, they were ultra midwestern and semi Norwegian, of course). The first night there were terrific waves due to windiness and it just felt almost surreal. An ocean that is not an ocean? I can’t get over how beautiful and MAJESTIC Lake Superior is.
There was a cove on which our lodge was situated that we enjoyed hiking about a few times. We got out to the point on the big old old rocks and sat and watched the water. We enjoyed a real “Scandinavian” breakfast each morning (complete with pickled herring + cukes, oh yes!) and had very tasty pizza and then take-out sandwiches (yep a smoked whitefish sandwich for me – hey people, when in Rome AKA North Shore…) for our dinners. We watched our dear Lost In Translation (HOLLA Tokyo Worlds! Side note, yes I followed team prelims on Twitter Friday night/Sat AM a bit…yep) and did a lot of Hanging OUT! Which is our favorite thing of All Time Ever. Jeff playing Zelda, me reading.
(SIDE NOTE TIMEOUT: I just finished The Corrections this morning by the lake and, yes, cried AGAIN while finishing a book. What is happening to me? Ahahaha. That said, this was an incredible book and if you haven’t read it, please go out and get it right now. RIGHT NOW! Right Now!!! And read it [duh]. It was terrifically dysfunctional [and mildly offensive, OK maybe a lot depending on who you are…watch out] and reminded me of what matters most to Me which is People and Family. Love. OK, now, TIMEIN!)
We had a really awesome, really challenging bike ride along Lake Superior to the lighthouse and then Gooseberry Falls. The ride was very hilly, very windy (in our faces on the way there WHEW!) and it was a terrific workout. Which we also both love, heh. The weather was inexplicably gorgeous, sunny and 70s, and we soaked it up (literally and figuratively). Gooseberry Falls was also magical and MAJESTIC and I can’t wait to go back. We found a spot on the edge of one of the lower falls and just sat and watched water and people for almost an hour or so. True relaxation. True bliss. True love!
(^ that time at Gooseberry Falls = perhaps the Highlight of 2011?)
Today we came back to reality but what a gorgeous trip. We are already plotting our return, which is good since it’s much easier to get back there than it is to, say, Amalfi! (Though this did remind us of Positano + our wayward/terrific night there in 2010…). It felt like much longer than it was and we are both still basking in the glow of it (much like when I got back from South Dakota in June). Without being too creepy or emo, this has been the best year for us relationship-wise in our 8-year relationship and certainly in our marriage. No, things haven’t gone our way, but we’ve found the best thing out of all of it which is each other.
Thank you Jeff!
“Same old story not much to say / hearts are broken every day”
—Jewel
“What’s true in our minds is true, whether some people know it or not.”
—What Dreams May Come
Hang Out Weekend Extraordinaire / “ROMANCE!” T-2 days…!!!
I am mostly OK, so don’t take this all the wrong way, just starting off the day in one of those moods. I am hoping it dissipates, if not, I will be taking off shortly to take advantage of 88 degrees, multiple vaca days to use and general mood-improvement.
But I had a few thoughts.
1. One of my goals for a long time has been mindfulness/being in the moment. I think it’s safe to say that by hook or by crook I accomplished this, at least partway, in 2011, which feels pretty amazing, considering the kind of person I am. I say partway because it is an ongoing process…..as is all of Life.
2. Along those lines, will one of the best moments of 2011 really be this: driving up the Black Hills in the car of someone I barely know, with two women whom I barely know, to the wedding of someone I know, know, know? Because I felt so In The Moment and like it is Where I Belonged in that instant and very Magical? etcetcetc. I realize this is insane but truly it was a peace I didn’t expect to find. Hmmmm.
3. This is One Of Those Days (opposite of #2 above). So far. Ugh.
4. GUILT. I thought I was getting better at this. Maybe not. I can’t go into it but suffice it to say I haven’t been the best of friend to certain friends for certain circumstances. I wish I could be more mature but…….I can’t. Sometimes what you discover about yourself is ugly. And that piles on. And guilt. And ugh ugh ugh.
5. I realize this is crazy to post after my previous post, and because I DO love October, so….I expect to snap out of it, but in the meantime, as I’ve said, I AM crazy, so…..It Is What It Is. 2011.
In the spirit of that…things I am looking forward to:
-EOLAD with Jeff this weekend!!!!!!!!!!
-Coffee with Cole on Monday
-redoing my wardrobe slightly / being more TRENDFEST. I realize this is shallow but that is LIFE.
-trying to run again perhaps
-FALL COLORS
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Happy anniversary Stephie + Mike / Kristin + Scott!