this has happened to me so many times. i toggle through albums and come away with my top favorites paying little attention to the others...usually only stumbling across the gem-of-a-hidden-song only after i've had my shuffle on shuffle or something. i love it when that happens. when a song you didn't think you liked is suddenly filled with so much meaning; as if it were exactly made for you. this is, in part, why music never dies. not ever. this particular song struck me in the face on my walk to work early this morning. like a bird to the face. i'm so glad.
this week's been a lazy-kay week. you know those days where hitting the alarm 4x before getting up makes complete sense? where rolling over and grabbing the coffee pot instead of the running shoes or pulling the sheets over the head instead of a running jacket feels right? that was my week. i mean, it's that time of year when mornings are cold, it's still dark at 6am and the bed is a cozy place in the wee hours of dawn. even though you really never go back to bed. even though a few hours later you wish you'd just sucked it up and gone to the river for an hour. even though.
and the rest of my week follows suit: baked goods are brought into the office by the spouses/significant others of coworkers - warm banana breads, coffee cakes, or piles of leftover halloween candy. and i munch on it all. i mean, it's been a lazy week, and i don't have plans to un-lazy the sucker now that i've started. i didn't set out to make this week that way, but once it started, snowballed, i figured i'd own it and chalk it up to Fall Hallows.
The Laze (as i'm now calling it) has permeated my apartment living: i have no food in the fridge - more specifically, no fresh fruit or veggies. I've been eating out or eating hummus and chips for dinner. very healthy. my running clothes have piled up on the chair that i've unofficially made the keeper of all the apparel that finds itself out of it's respective drawer, closet, shelf. i need to vacuum, i need to do laundry, i need that toilet bowl cleaner thing and i need to clean my windows.
The Laze. felt so good for a few days but now i feel like a slob:) so it's changing this weekend and i'm excited about it. the clocks are resetting, the mornings will brighten, and i'm reclaiming my active self (and my apartment!) again. I miss the sweet exhilaration and spent happiness of a long run and the steamy sweat fog that lifts off the shoulders once it's all over.
this video inspired me this morning and i'm so glad to know that all it takes to reset the self is stepping outside, and hitting the trail.
i’m eating yogurt covered raisins, watching episode #1 of Masterpiece Theater’s Little Dorritt and just 33 minutes into it have had complete attention deficit disorder of the non-prescription kind. so i thought i’d take a hot few seconds to pull a couple rando thoughts off the conveyor belt of my brain and overshare with you:
i have half a running outfit on.
i bought a brand new bottle of olive oil but the screw cap won’t unscrew and, upon close inspection, the perforation of the safety seal never indented far enough so there’s no way it will come off. I banged it on the floor. i tried both lefty and righty twists and i thought about asking my neighbor, James, to have a go except I haven’t my sports bra on and I don’t feel like putting it on to go out there to ask him for help. so, i’ll have to bring it back to trader joe’s and i’m a bit annoyed about that.
every time the wind blows it sounds like a fly is in my apartment and i have no idea what’s making that noise except that it seems to be coming out of the vents of my AC (which is not plugged in which reminds me that I need to take it out of the window sill) which reminds me that it takes two people to pull the AC it out because I have 2x4s jammed up inside the windows so that a burglar can’t readily push the unit into my apartment and have his way about my household.
i have a small apartment
everything he’d want won’t amount to much.
i’ve checked facebook twice in three minutes. i accepted a friend request that i wish i had left in purgatory a bit longer (forever) and every time i get the gumption to unfriend i realize how pathetic the whole facebook thing really is.
my blinds are turned up so the people on the street can’t see into my apartment and watch my every move. there are people out there who do that, you know. I do it when I’m walking down marlborough. it’s fun. I once looked up into an apartment and there was an old man making dinner completely naked. he had his blinds facing the wrong way so it wasn’t really my fault. I also didn’t feel grossed out because the kitchen counter was blocking my view. but i knew he was naked because when he turned the corner and went to the oven...
BUT now i realize that with my blinds turned up every floor on the opposite side of the street can look down and see right into my livingroom/bedroom/kitchen. This makes me laugh and i like to think if I lived over there, watching me would be the highlight of my day. once i get dancing there really is no stopping this machine.
i really like my apartment. i never get tired of looking at it when i’m in it.
i really like how i can go outside and run run run and then stretch at the fire hydrant that sits outside and also sit out on the wrought iron chairs in the garden. there’s a sinkhole out there, though. a few weeks ago when it was still warm and still light after 7pm, my friend kim and i were having some wine out there and the back legs of her chair sank so fast into that ground that she went right over backwards into the bushes! she managed to keep her wine glass level all the while. atta’ girl.
i need to take a shower. I smell like running clothes which means i need to do laundry.
i need to put the yogurt raisins back in the freezer, get my coffee mug ready for the morning and set my alarm.
i remember waking up in my bed one spring day, back when i lived at 291 beacon, and hearing van morrison's "stranded" floating up through the alley (turns out it was coming through my roommate's open window into mine). and i remember thinking that that was the BEST wake-up on a saturday morning that I've ever had.
And I also remember thinking that that sax solo says everything my mind wants to say, but can't. still true.
not the best embed, but i couldn't find it on my usual sites. it's beautiful. enjoy.
this evening, a run was held to remember JT Tumilson, a Navy Seal who was one of the 38 men killed on Saturday, August 6th in the Chinook helicopter in the eastern mountains of Afghanistan. At 8:30pm, Mike Rouse (a dear friend of mine), his wife Kimmie, and hundreds of others met at Mission Bay to run whatever distance they chose, in honor of JT and his service for our country. Mike and Kim were close friends of JT's, having known him for some time. JT was a regular in the running and tri community out there and if anyone knows the Rouses, you know he was in good company:)
i met JT two years ago, at Shakespeare's Pub. I think it was a Tuesday. Rousey and a gang of maybe 10 people met there every week to reminisce, laugh, talk triathlon, running, you name it. Rousey pulled Mary, Joe and I along and boy, did we have fun. To say JT lit up the room would be an understatement. His kindness, his laughter and his genuine desire to be present with everyone around him was enough to light up the whole of San Diego. I mean that truly. He was awesome.
So tonight after work, I threw on my running shoes for a lap around the river. In those 30 minutes, i thought about how briefly I knew this man, how much I grieve his passing. How very brave and determined he was - a soldier who fought to keep our country free, who's greatest sacrifice came out of a great desire to serve his country.
And I am so very grateful to him. My heart goes out to his family, his friends, his comrades and the families of the fallen. All of the fallen, who have fought so courageously for my freedom.
And to the friends - or perfect strangers - who showed up tonight in Mission Bay, San Diego to run in honor and respect for a great man that was lost on the battlefield. May his life never be forgotten.
Have you ever just gone and done something without any expectations whatsoever? Maybe it was a last minute add, or perhaps you stumbled upon it and thought, “well why not?” or maybe you purposefully planned it and put no pressure on it to be anything but whatever it comes out to be. and sometimes when you do that - when you set no expectation it turns out to be The. Best. Time. Ever.
Well mine was the first option. sort of. i just returned from Boulder, CO for a few days with my twinner, Mary Mills. I had the Best Time Ever.
a few weeks prior to wheels up, my dearest awesome friend, Claire and I were out for an early morning run around the Charles and she told me she was thinking of booking a flight out to see Moo (Mary). WHAT. YES. DO IT. I couldn’t get the words out fast enough and suddenly, there I was, longing to be a part of it, too. the seed was planted. and with the help of another great friend, and some restructuring of work/life, i soon found myself annihilating trail mix in seat 30e, listening to bon iver sing halocene for the 8th time in a row and staring past sleeping businessman on my right at the wild atmosphere on the wing: we were soon out of the stormy northeast corridor, slicing through the bright hot blue winds of the west.
here we go, rodeo.
oh man, there are no words for the greatness of the 4 days. only four days?! It seems so much longer, and yet i write this from my couch - the only visible clue that i’d gone anywhere is my red-checkered burton bag with clothes errupting out of it.
a few snippets, shall we? The hilarious moment when a certain person almost lit the house on fire. No big deal. The laughter that lasted for days once we were able assure her that no, we wouldn’t need to buy Joe a new stove and that yes, electric kettles heat water electrically - no need to place one on the burner.....
or getting last minute tix to see john butler trio at the fox theater, where we jumped around and danced and laughed and sang hard to songs we knew and harder still at the ones we didn’t. or mary and I being told that we needed our own radio show by the lead singer of the opening act. because we found him outside and proceeded to talk about life for awhile. we almost, a l m o s t sang him our answering machine messages. we were THATCLOSE.
meeting up with people out there that i love. Joe Gambles, Mary’s beau and someone who I respect and care for and love that he loves my twinner , Jarrod and his quiet calmness, his kindness, and his ability to flippn run forever, Rinny, Darcie, Mary’s running friends, Heather and Ewen, the BBQ, the dare that I can’t wait to see come to fruition after Kona.
or the runs. the beautiful marshall mesa, the back side of teller farms, Cottonwood Trail loop with Mary and Jarrod....even the Res where i stupidly ran long in the heat of the day, then drank wine. smart. but even THAT was fun.
I won’t go into it all. all the fun we had, I mean. because maybe to you it looks downright boring, or maybe it makes your vacations look better or bad. it’s not really the point, I suppose. I suppose what you need to know here is that i didn’t expect to feel so filled up after only a few days. that I came away with a greater sense of self, of that great web of support and friendships that you sort of know is there but when you fall into even the smallest end of it, you feel its strength. I am grateful to know what it means to love and be loved.
I will end with this... this moment that may seem insignificant, but it pretty much sums up the long weekend for me:
It was the middle of the day. Joe had come back from training, Mary and I back from a run, Jarrod back from his run. We were all sprawled on the floor, the couch, talking about our adventures and soon we were fast asleep. Just....fell asleep. I remember waking up after about 20 minutes and not really knowing where I was. I turned and on my right was Moo, Jarrod beside her, and Joe, arms up over behind his head, sound asleep. I smiled and closed my eyes again. i liked this moment forever.
