the head and my heart

it's no secret that most of what (little) expendable income i have goes towards one of two things:  shoes and shows.  since one can really only justify owning so many pair of ridiculous work-inappropriate shoes (it's not appropriate to wear 6 inch studded heels to the office, right?), i find myself out late on a lot of school nights, on my never-ending quest to go deaf before the age of 40.

there are a lot of things i love about live music.  and every band offers a totally different experience - sometimes it's the joy of being outside on a beautiful day, sitting on a blanket in the sun and listening to good music.  other times it's having your face melted off (whether it be from the band being THAT kick ass, or because you're standing too close to the speakers), or it's the feeling you get just in seeing the band walk out onstage after the lights go down, coupled with the energy you can literally feel coming off the crowd.  but every once in a while you get lucky enough to feel like you actually connect with the musicans on stage, and it's the kind of experience where EVERYONE in the crowd is singing along to the extent where you can barely even hear the band anymore but you can see in their faces how freaking cool of an experience that is for them.  last night i caught a sold out show at the 9:30 by the head and the heart, and - despite the completely obnoxious group of girls standing next to me (really, in the middle of a band's set is not the best time to discuss the guy who took you out two weeks ago who you felt was really into you but hasn't called back yet), it was a fantastic show.  i wasn't that sold on their music until seeing them live, but they turned out to be one of those bands who actually sound better live than they do recorded.  and their fans are CRAZY PEOPLE.  i don't think the people behind me took a break from screaming the entire time.  but i will say they were the fun kind of crazy, and every person there knew every word to every song. 

when they finally got around to the one song of theirs that i did know, i think the entire audience collectively lost it.  the song has a lot of emotional value for me for a number of reasons, and i think the tears started coming somewhere right around the first note.  sometimes you relate to a song not just for the lyrics but because it reminds you of a certain time in your life or a place or a person that's significant to you and it's like being right back in that time, or right in front of that person, and for me, that very often means waterworks.  sometimes it also just makes you feel like you are a part of something that is bigger than you, or that you belong to something that also belongs to you.  sadly, my video cut off about 20 seconds before the song was over, which is really unfortunate, because the drums at the very end felt like the end of "a day in the life" - not in the sense that they are anything alike, but it sounded like the end of the world, and every beat literally rattled me to the core, and i'm pretty sure that is what the beatles were going for and it's definitely what the head and the heart achieved.  i have to admit it's a little hard to cry and sing along at the same time...but when you're in a room full of crazy people, trying to keep your cool...you actually end up being the weird one. 

and as luck would have it, as i am typing this, "a day in the life" randomly came on pandora.  someone out there must have agreed with me. 




rivers and roads
rivers and roads
rivers til i reach you

the way we were...

so, my mom recently asked me to do her the "favor" of organizing about 25 years worth of family photos, and i have to say, my immediate reaction was to be way less than thrilled.  in fact, i believe my response was something along the lines of, "oh, mom, i wish i could, but i really just don't want to,"  which of course, did not deter her.  so there are now about 20 photo albums just sitting on my living room floor, and i have been completely ignoring them for the last week because that's usually how i deal with things that i don't want to deal with (side note:  this strategy has not yet worked to date, but i will probably keep trying in the hopes that it someday will).

last night i decided to at least crack them open and check out the photos...and before i knew it, 3 hours had gone by and i'd gone through 8 years of my parent's lives.  i started with the albums from the early 1970's, right after they got married - and a full ten years before i was even around.  looking at photos of trips my parents took, friends they had, holidays they spent with their families, made me feel like i was seeing them in a new light and getting to know them as totally different people.  not just "mom and dad," but 2 people who were young, crazy in love with each other, and who had fun lives that didn't revolve around me (that part was a little hard to deal with).  as i sat there and turned page after page, i was struck so many times with the idea that they'd had an entire life - a full 8 years together - before my sister and i came along, and (weird as it may sound) i kind of wish i had been able to know them then.  i found a photo of my mom's parents and my dad's parents together and since i don't remember my dad's father and i barely remember his mom, it never really occurred to me that when my parents got married, their families all spent time together, and at the risk of sounding like a sap, there's not a whole lot i wouldn't give to have been able to be in the room with both sets of my grandparents when they were still around (and be old enough to remember it).

my mom has always teased me about how sentimental i am, but i wouldn't save all the stuff i save (dog tags from an old family pet, movie and concert ticket stubs dating back to when i was in high school, scraps of the kitchen wallpaper from our old house...good grief, i just made myself sound like a hoarder, didn't i??) if it didn't mean anything to me.  and part of knowing myself and who i am comes from knowing who i came from.  so, i suppose i should thank my mom for giving me the chance to (literally) open the book on my own history and for also reminding me that sometimes doing someone a favor can actually end up feeling more like them doing a favor for you.  (although i secretly suspect that she may have just wanted to rub in the fact that in the 1970s, she had hair that would have made farrah fawcett green with envy.  i wouldn't put that past her...)

one step closer to running away with the circus

i am, by nature, a pretty goal-oriented person. if there is not something that i am working towards on the not-too-distant horizon, i start getting all sorts of antsy and find myself feeling un-centered and slightly frustrated. the goals don't always have to be life-altering or anything crazy, but i just find i'm able to keep my sense of peace and balance on track much better when there is something attainable that i am on the path towards. when i took my trapeze workshop last year, one of the tsny staff members did a performance at the student show on an aerial apparatus called the spanish web that i was literally so impressed with, that i vowed right then and there that i was going to learn how to do it, too. it took me a year to sign up for the aerial arts workshop (in my defense, i had a few other goals to knock out before tackling this one), and even though i had never so much as touched the spanish web before, i was intent on focusing on that for the performance (the workshop also gave me the chance to try out the lyra, the static trapeze, and doubles trapeze, but we could only select one apparatus to focus on for the student show). i basically had 5 weeks of classes just on the web, and at an hour a class, you can do the math on how much actual time i had to work on my routine.


as beautiful as it looks from the ground, the web is H-A-R-D. physically (at least for me) it was the most demanding of the other aerial skills in my workshop, but i had a goal, and no amount of forearm muscle exhaustion, rope burn, or fear of falling was going to stop me. at the performance last week, i actually was first up of the entire show - and between that and my family and friends sitting in the front row to support me, i really didn't even have the chance to get that nervous. i have so much fun up there that i remember wishing that my routine was longer just so that i didn't have to come down just yet. i don't often have too many moments where i think, you know, i am really proud of me - but this was definitely one of those times. it always feels good to do something that you set out to do, and to have such an amazing time working towards a goal was a really great experience. even though my workshop is over, i still want to take more web classes because there are so many more tricks and skills i want to learn. but in the meantime, i am lining up more things to knock out - rock climbing, another half marathon, some travel...and maybe a nap. maybe.

just another typical boring monday night...

so, lincoln and i have a regular "running" route (i use quotes because it's less running than me dragging him behind me) that takes us right up to the steps on the west side of the us capitol. honestly, i love that we live close enough to get there in about ten minutes, and we post up on the steps pretty frequently and watch the sun set and make googly eyes at each other (you would do it, too, if your dog was as handsome as mine is). the weather was lovely tonight, so we headed up to claim our step and were surprised to find ourselves in the middle of a concert. i totally forgot they do this on monday nights during the summer, but a band from one branch of the military or the other (tonight it was the navy) performs literally on the capitol steps and it's never very crowded, and although i never actively remember to go up there on monday nights, i always love it when we do manage to stumble upon the concerts. sitting there on the steps, watching the sun set behind the washington monument, with the dome of the capitol right behind me and the music of a full orchestra as a backdrop sometimes gets me to feeling like i live in epcot center, like none of this could possibly be real, let alone happening less than a mile from where i live. dc really is an incredible city and i am always excited when i can take advantage of all the little things like this it has to offer. and obviously, lincoln does, too. he likes hanging out on the steps so much i think he may be considering a run for office. i told him it's a nice thought, but, i don't think he's cut out for the campaign trail. you know, since it involves moving more than twice a day and all.

summer lovin'

even though last weekend was memorial day, i really feel like this was the first "official" weekend of summer. maybe because i didn't spend it in my kitchen preparing food for 15 people (which i loved doing!!), maybe because i left my house in the middle of a torrential rainstorm to see a movie (rain in the winter keeps me in hibernation mode and it would take a MIRACLE to get me to leave my house on a cold rainy night), but whatever it was, it finally, FINALLY felt like summer is here to stay.

saturday was a perfect day for a pet therapy visit, and lincoln and i had a great time with our friends at dc autism buddies (although he was slightly less than thrilled with the girl who thought shooting him over and over with a watergun was quality entertainment), but the highlight of my day was actually spending 90 minutes in a 113 degree room in dupont circle doing bikram yoga. it was only my second class (although i've been practicing yoga for almost 7 years, doing it in that kind of sweltering heat is an entirely different ballgame), but i have decided that i think i might belong in the desert. i LIVE for that kind of heat. i mean you can feel the heat before you even walk in the room and i sort of get giddy when it's so hot you're sweating before you even get a chance to work up to it. an hour and a half of yoga is hard enough as it is, but trying not to pass out really keeps your mind from cluttering itself up with all the hundred other things i usually tend to think about in regular yoga classes. plus, the feeling of walking out of that room and into the air conditioning after class is maybe the most incredible feeling one can ever hope to experience. the evening was so beautiful when i left that i sat in dupont circle for a while and watched people come and go and i just marveled at what an incredibly eclectic city dc is and thought about how lucky i am to live here.

(side note: i did stop at sweetgreen and grab a wrap to eat while i was people watching- it was so good i vowed to make it at home and in fact i have already. i LOVE a good summer salad and this one was no exception - baby spinach and basil with fresh white peaches, almonds, goat cheese and balsamic vinagrette. so simple. SO delicious. i added dried cranberries to mine when i made it at home today. i might be eating that every damn day next week.)

and sunday i actually managed to get up early enough to hit the billy goat trail at great falls national park before 8am, which meant i all but had the trail to myself. you'd probably never know it by looking at me, but there resides within me a tomboy that cannot get enough of being outside, climbing around rocks and getting my clothes good and muddy on a hike. it's a strenuous trail but so much fun, and i couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day. combine all that with some good music while i was on the trail (louis armstrong - you can never go wrong with louis), and i could possibly argue that it might not get any better than that.

i closed the weekend out with some good food (quinoa with cranberries, spinach and almonds!), good wine, and a good book (the ticking is the bomb - it is my first nick flynn book but the way this guy writes, it will not be my last) on my patio, and i have to say, if this is what my summer weekends are going to look like...i am hoping that summer will stick around for a long, long time.