just like any other tuesday...

this morning, i forgot how to get to the hospital. having been here more times than i care to count in the last ten months, i could probably find my way here in my sleep, but this morning i got in the car, closed the door, buckled my seat belt, turned the engine on...and had absolutely no clue where i was going. funny how your brain shuts down in the moments that you need it the most.

my sister is having a mastectomy today. it's her second one since being diagnosed with breast cancer ten months ago, and although this one is more for preventative reasons, i still find myself sitting here in the eerily quiet hospital waiting room thinking that there is just no way my sister has cancer. i remember the day last year when she called me in a panic, claiming to have found a lump in her breast - i was dismissive and told her it was nothing because niki tends to be a little dramatic and of course it was nothing. it had to be nothing. had it been me, i would have ignored it, or not had time to deal with it, but niki went to the doctor the next day. they wanted to do some more tests but she was scheduled to go on a three week work trip to kenya, so the testing had to wait. she emailed me while she was gone and asked me to help her set up her appointments, which i did with an eye roll because a) leave it to niki to need me to take care of something when she is 7,500 miles away and b) of course it was nothing.

when she was back home, she followed up with the doctor, but even when i accompanied her to the biopsy they had ordered for her, i wasn't worried. they were just being extra careful. nothing is wrong with my sister. this is all just standard procedure. right? a few days later i got a phone call while i was at work. it was niki's number, but her boss' voice on the other end of the line, and she didn't need to say it, because i already knew.  it wasn't nothing.  "you need to come get your sister. the doctor just called. it's cancer. she's a wreck." at some point during the cab ride over to her office from mine, my brain decided it wasn't emotionally equipped to handle this news, and so, it stepped out of my body. i'm pretty sure that is the only way i managed to stand in the lobby of my sister's building, hold her in my arms, and assure her that everything was going to be fine. it's the only way i was able to take the phone from her when she got too choked up to call my parents to tell them the diagnosis. and i know it's the only way i could have possibly kept it together after hearing my mother's reaction. because my brain still stubbornly insisted, nothing is wrong with my sister.  oh, the power of denial.

in the months since that first phone call, a lot has changed for my family. but a lot more has changed for niki. i will never understand how she's been able to deal with all of this without the least bit of bitterness or anger. sure, she's had bad days here and there, but she's never dwelt on it or lingered on the question why did this have to happen to me?  if anything, her reaction has been more like, let's get this over with because i am really busy and all these appointments are eating into the time i want to spend letting my dog lick me in the face.  after we hung up the phone from telling my parents that day, niki told me she'd asked her doctor if she was going to die.  we didn't know yet what stage the cancer was in, how aggressive it may or may not be, or what kind of treatment she'd be looking at, but once she heard the news that no, she was not going to die, i think she made up her mind then and there that she was just not going to let this be that big of a deal.  even sitting in chemo class with her, i'm raising my hand and asking questions and taking notes and writing down things to research, and niki is busy being worried about the girl across the table from us, who looks like she is about 6 months pregnant.  so many people have it worse than me, she says.  and that is just like her, to think about everyone else.

there are days when my brain still refuses to acknowledge all of this.  looking back at the last year, and how niki has faced it all with humor and grace (yes, i just used the word grace to describe my sister.  it probably won't ever happen again.), it makes me wonder how she's done it all.  i've been there as much as i can - gone to appointments, held her hand during not-so-pleasant medical procedures, bathed her stupid hedgehog because her doctor told her not to touch it during chemo - but i can't go through this with her.  i can't understand how she feels or what's going on in her head (not that i could do that on a normal day), and i've struggled with that.  but niki being niki, she doesn't really give me much of a chance to worry about that.  she's busy getting on with her life, and with this surgery down and only her reconstruction left to go, she's well on her way to proving me right - nothing is wrong with my sister.  only it's not denial anymore.  it's just the way things are.

mid year's resolutions

so, let's skip the part where i come up with a bunch of lame excuses for why i haven't posted in two years. let's just say i've been really busy doing a whole lot of that "life" thing and let it go at that.

i've had a lot of time to spend with my thoughts lately (and really, i'm never sure if that's a good thing or not), and although i know we've already passed the mid way mark this year, i have my own little mental tradition of checking in with myself around the end of summer to see how i'm doing in terms of keeping my new year's resolutions going. considering that i can't even remember what i resolved to do this year, i'm going to go ahead and call the 2014 lindsey improvement project kind of a wash, but it doesn't really need to be january for me to work on cleaning up my act. so, thanks to some serious time logged in planes, trains and automobiles lately, i've had lots of time to think about what it is i'd like to work towards before 2014 slips right out of my hands (just like every year before it has).

so. first and foremost, i resolve to spend less time with my phone and more time with the people in front of me. i resolve to not measure my worth in likes, follows or retweets, and i resolve to invest more in personal connections than in those offered by the lure of social media. the friends and family in my life are there because they are invested in me, and i owe it to them and to myself to not spend the precious time we have together distracted by the seductive glow of my smartphone.

i resolve to say "no" with reckless abandon and to learn to be selective with what i give my "yes" to. life may be long but it's entirely too short to spend it doing things i feel obligated to do, rather than the things that are actually important to me. i resolve to remember that my time is just as important and valuable as everyone else's and that at the ripe old age of 34, i should finally learn to start treating it that way.

i resolve to work on filtering out all the noise around me and tune in on the music life can make when you're really listening. i also resolve to stop agreeing with the voice in my head when it tells me that my words don't have much weight or that what i have to say doesn't really matter, and i resolve to tell that voice exactly where it can go the next time it tries to convince me not to try something because i might fail. my mom taught me to never tell anyone to shut up, but i think in this case she'd probably tell me to say it a little bit louder.

i resolve to submit to my wanderlust and my curiosity until i end up in the poor house or an early grave. whichever comes first. i'll be broke and/or i'll be dead, but either way when the time comes for my life to flash before my eyes, it'll be a damn good show. maybe even with fireworks. but not clowns. no one likes clowns.

lastly and perhaps most importantly, i resolve to find the gift in every day. i resolve to take an extra minute to be grateful every time i wake up and have a whole new chance to get it all right, and i resolve to work on being ok with the fact that i probably never will. sometimes life gets messy. sometimes it really hurts. but i spend a lot of time trying to avoid the bad, and because of that, i probably miss out on a lot of the good, so - i resolve to learn to appreciate the sour for the way it makes the sweet taste even better. oh, and i also resolve to be more resolute about my resolutions.

new shoes, new challenge, new river

so, i'm on day 15 of my self-imposed "run every day for 30 days" challenge, and i have to say, week one was fine. in fact, it was great. i didn't log any super long distances, but i wanted to start small and build up. last sunday i did a 9 mile run, and let me tell you, there is nothing like a 9 mile run to let you know that you need a new damn pair of shoes. my ankle was bothering me anyway, but i'm entirely too stubborn to let something like my physical well being to come between me and my goals, so i bandaged it up and pressed on. somewhere around the middle of the 14th street bridge, my ankle had just about had it with me and i contemplated stopping and turning around to head back home. but, oddly enough, as soon as i did stop, it hurt even more than when i was running (which then prompted me to lose myself in the thought of how much of my life that applies to - the idea that i keep running because it hurts too much to stop - but that is an entirely different blog post), so after a little come to jesus talk with myself and about another half a mile, it was pretty much smooth sailing. or i guess running. whatever. but between my ankle acting up and the general shape of my poor feet, it's pretty obvious that it's new shoe time. my next paycheck cannot come fast enough.

some of my friends are a little worried that i'm not taking any rest days, and i'm sure it would behoove me to listen to them, but since i never really listen to anyone anyway, i probably won't. the only break i have on my horizon (before the end of the month, of course) is a weekend of rock climbing in west virginia, which i'll be doing this weekend. i've never been rock climbing before, and i'll admit i'm slightly terrified by the whole idea of it, but pretty excited to be trying something totally new. the most experience i have with rock climbing is the rock wall at the gym i worked at in high school that was about 6 feet tall and my job was to supervise kids on it, not climb it myself, so this will all be totally new to me. i'm also looking forward to spending the weekend in new river gorge national park - if it's as beautiful as it looks in pictures, i will be one happy lady. it's a 5 and a half hour drive from dc, but i adore road trips and i plan to make stops at the diner on 81 with a giant hot dog eating t-rex out front, and at stonewall jackson's grave sight in lexington, va. AND i also get to cross the new river gorge bridge, which was at one point the world's longest steel single-span arch bridge. now it is apparently in the #3 spot for that title, but that doesn't stop me from geeking out about it any less. climbing rocks and doing yoga (it's a weekend retreat type of thing - yoga in the mornings and evenings, climbing all day, sitting around a campfire at night) may not sound like much of a break from running every day, but i'm sure my knees and ankles will appreciate a 2 day break from being impacted over and over with the dc city sidewalks.

so...3 more runs until my 2 day "break." i thought this would get easier as the days went by, but my body keeps wanting to remind me that it is not 21 anymore and it begrudges me for asking it to do anything other than sleep and eat. just wait til i get it strapped into climbing equipment and ask it to dangle from the side of a 20 foot wall of solid rock. i should probably prepare another come to jesus talk for that...

thirteen. point. one.

i will be the first to admit that i can get a little obsessive compulsive sometimes. i mean, yes, i color code my closet and all my shoes are in clear plastic boxes that are clearly labeled, but that's ORGANIZATION, not OCD. generally, my OCD tends to pop up when i set a goal for myself, because as much as i hate to let other people down, it really kills me when i let mySELF down, so i will do pretty much whatever it takes to get myself to the finish line. in this case, i mean that literally, because my dumb ass signed up for another half marathon. about a week ago, i realized that i'm about a month out from having to run 13.1 miles all in one fell swoop, and i am nowhere near being ready. i run pretty consistantly anyway, but it's one thing to run 3 or 5 miles, and something totally different to run 13. last year my knees were in a full on attack against the rest of my body right about the time i hit mile 10, and although i did a decent amount of training, i wanted to be better prepared this year, especially since a) my knees REALLY HURT for about 4 days after the race and that can't be good and b) i decided i want to shave 6 minutes off my total run time this year and finish in 2 hours. i am not very good at math but that pretty much means maintaining a 9 minute mile for 13 miles. i decided i would challenge myself to run every day - with 3 miles being my minimum - for the next 30 days to help me get ready. i'm only 8 days in, but have kept up with it so far (this is where the OCD part comes in since i'm sometimes sneaking in 2 workouts a day - and god help you if you come between me and my schedule while i'm on this kick - and am excited about using my "staycation" days this week to log an 8 or 9 mile run), so fingers crossed that i can keep it up for another 3 weeks. the upside to this is that i sleep like the freakin dead at night. the downside is that i CANNOT get enough to eat. try being ladylike and delicate when all you want to do is put all of whatever is on your plate in your stomach, IMMEDIATELY. but now i can be one of those jackholes who says stuff like, "oh i'm carb loading because i'm training for a race."

thankfully, the race is in philly which means awesome scenery and my friend shannon taking me out for nachos afterwards (HELLO, i do not eat cheesesteak!!), and i'm hoping that the adrenaline rush of actually racing other people and not just taking my sweet time like i normally do will help motivate me to my 2 hour goal. and if that doesn't do it, there is always the fact that i'll be able to make fun of my sister for having completed 5 full marathons and still finishing a solid half hour behind me in a half. muwahaha and HA.

growing up in louisiana, we ate a lot of watermelon in the summer. i have some really wonderful memories of having a backyard full of family, my dad manning the grill, my cousins and i running back and forth between the pool and the pond, and only stopping long enough to grab a slice of watermelon before running off again. but for all that watermelon eating, i never really thought you could eat it any way but the way my mom served it. which was sliced up and in a bowl. so when a friend came over recently for a cookout with a tray full of watermelon and feta kebobs, it kind of blew my mind. i love watermelon. i love feta. but together? questionable. in the spirit of trying anything once as long as it is not on my "i will not eat that" list, i figured i'd give it a shot, and at the very least i could smile and nod while i was feeding the rest of it to the dog under the table. um. i am pretty sure i ended up eating the entire tray, and i was rather unapologetic about it. poor lincoln did not even get a crumb.

so when i recently found myself craving watermelon again, i made salad with it, and tossed in chopped mint, red onion, crumbled feta, mixed greens, and topped it off with balsamic vinegar and olive oil. hello, heaven? it's lindsey. where have you been all my life?? needless to say, i have been eating watermelon salad for lunch and dinner for the last two days, and since i still haven't made a dent in the watermelon, i think it's safe to say this will be the case for at least a few more days. which is fine with me. had my mom sprung this on me when i was 6 or 7, there's no doubt in my mind i would have turned my nose up and gone back to playing mermaids in the pool with my cousin, but as i've gotten older i've been surprised at how much i love foods that i had previously turned down on the basis that it was a weird color, or a funny shape, or i didn't like the name of it. can one grow out of being a picky eater? considering the fact that my mom probably spent an extra 5 hours a week trying to cater to my particular palette when i was a kid, i should probably not let on that i have expanded my horizons lest she write me out of the family will out of sheer aggravation.

outside of the peach/goat cheese/almond salad that i have already been eating all summer, the watermelon/feta/mint salad might be my new favorite thing. which is a good thing, since i have enough to eat it every day for the next two weeks.

that's MS. mayor to you

if i had to venture a guess, i would say there are currently about (or at least) 50 pairs of shoes in my closet. i mean, i am no imelda marcos, but i am aware of the fact that my collection of footwear is pretty much on the border between what is considered acceptable insanity and full on being the mayor of crazytown. what is most ridiculous about this collection is the fact that of my 50 or so pairs of shoes, there are at least ten that i have never worn, probably 30 that i have worn one time, and another ten that i have worn so many times i have to have the caps on the heels replaced on a regular basis. i realize that this makes little to no sense whatsoever (which is probably what puts me so close to the mayor of crazytown end of things), but for the most part, i literally have no defense against a pair of heels. none. (unless, of course, their offensive tactic is that they are out of my price range)

enter my newest addition to the collection. seriously, i have NO IDEA where i am ever going to wear these shoes. they are NEON yellow and not so easy to walk in. they are also COMPLETELY RIDICULOUS. but perhaps that is why i am so in love with them. it makes me happy just to open my closet and see them (which i can even do in the dark, because they are so neon they practically glow) sitting there, waiting patiently for me to take them for a spin. i have serious doubts about my ability to walk more than a block in them, and seeing as how i live in dc and not tokyo, i am sure i will probably get a few strange looks from bewildered midwestern tourists on the metro. but i suppose that when one steps out in a pair of heel-less platform wedges, there is a certain amount of "LOOK HOW BEAUTIFULLY RIDICULOUS MY SHOES ARE!!!" going through one's head anyway.

i am pretty sure this purchase has pushed me into crazytown. but as long as i'm here and since i get to be the mayor, at least i can vow to clean up the streets a little and do something about the public school system. bonus that i get to do it all in the most un-sensible shoes ever known to my closet.

color me happy

last night i did something i haven't done since college. and no, it wasn't drink jungle juice out of a 24 gallon barrel that is lined with a trash bag. last night i found myself standing in front of an empty canvas, with a paintbrush in my hand, and an unlimited amount of colors to chose from. totally unbeknownst to me (i was instructed to wear sensible shoes (BORING!) and something i wouldn't mind getting messy), i was surprised with a trip to art jamz, and i have to say as soon as i walked in the door, my smile hit one ear and then the other, and it did not go away for the rest of the night. the concept is very simple and actually pretty cool: just a big art studio - a room lined with canvases on easel stands, a bar on one end (for what they call "liquid inspiration"), an endless supply of acrylic paint, and pretty much any kind of brush you could possibly think to need. they crank the music, keep the drinks flowing, and just let you have at your canvas. it's kind of intimidating to be face to face with what seems like a LOT of empty space and to challenge yourself to create something out of nothing. and it's SO fascinating to me to watch the different way people approach it...some people sketch first in pencil, or try to plan out a design, or manage to not get a single drop of paint on them, and some people (ahem, ME) pretty much start throwing paint down before they even have their smock properly tied and leave with paint in their ears. (i know, how did it even GET there??) it has literally been YEARS since i've painted anything other than a bathroom or bedroom wall, but as soon as i got started, it was like it had been no time at all. it's pretty easy to zone out and forget there is anything else even going on around you (well, except when they started playing that kanye song that i needed to dance around to), and two hours flew by in a matter of minutes. not that i created any sort of masterpiece by any means, but i was pretty excited about my finished painting and it was a really fun and unexpected way to spend a wednesday night. and to think i was going to just stay at home and watch the new cheerleading moms reality show on tlc. i'm thinking next time i go, i may have to get some friends together, get a little sauced, and see who can paint the most life-like self portrait. and by "self portrait," i mean "something that looks even remotely like a human being."

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.

virginia is for winos

once again i found myself out in the hills of virginia this weekend, indulging myself in two of my favorite activities: drinking wine and spending time with my best good friends. i l-o-v-e being within an hour of so many fantastic wineries, and apparently, so do my friends, because this has become a montly activity with us, especially now that the weather is warmer. we've tried a handful of vineyards but this time decided to go back to one we've already tried (that i discovered, thank you very much), called notavita, a winery that specializes in pairing wine with music (it's run by a husband/wife team that both have music backgrounds and clearly a love of all things vino). the first time i went a few months ago, we were blown away by the view (the tasting room overlooks a small lake with some rolling hills in the background), the sweet love story that started the vineyard to begin with, and the fact that we could bring all the food we wanted, and sit at a gorgeous table in front of a floor to ceiling picture window and drink wine all day long. in case you were wondering, THIS IS WHAT LIFE IS ABOUT. couple this with the fact that the wines are actually really good, and you have a sunday (or monday in this case) afternoon made in heaven.

despite the hour one must spend in the car to get there (and really, what's an hour to three girls who haven't seen each other since the day before??), it is well worth the trip, and i have been promised that next time we will go to hillsborough, which we had to pass on the way to notavita and i think my mouth may have fallen open at how lovely and quaint it was. there are literally DOZENS of wineries we passed on the way out there and back and i think i have set myself a new goal for the summer to get to as many of them as i can. and i like setting goals i can knock out pretty easily. especially goals that involve good wine and good friends.

random encounters with strange men (with cellos)

one of my favorite things to do is peruse the local venue calendars, pick a totally random act, and go check out a show. sometimes it's a hit, sometimes it's a miss, but this week i felt like i won the lottery when i decided to get a ticket to see cellist ben sollee at u st music hall. since the cello is one of my favorite instruments, and since he was playing u st music hall (this is not the type of venue to book a classical cello act), i figured i was in for something that would definitely make me glad i left the house on a rainy wednesday night.

aside from the fantastic show he put on, the guy rode over 300 miles on his bike to get to dc from new york. like a bike that you pedal. with your feet. in between songs he talked about the reason why he had chosen to get to so many of his shows this way, and he surprisingly said it had nothing to do with being "green" or sustainability. he actually said he did it as a way to make himself slow down and (literally) enjoy the ride he was on. in a world where artists do a show in LA one day and new york the next, it was pretty interesting to hear that kind of perspective (because certainly, you are booking fewer shows when it takes you three days to get there). also, the things this guy can do with a cello left me at a loss for words - he played a totally solo set (except for one song where he brought up a girl who somehow could imitate the sound of a trumpet which sounds bizarre but was the damn coolest thing i've seen in a long time), and since i'm the mayor of munchkinland and can't ever see over the people in front of me, there were times where i could have sworn there were 2 or 3 other instruments up there with him. so not only does mr. sollee have a new fan, but this new fan has a new appreciation for the range of sound the cello can produce.

so. check him out. thank me later. and my fingers are crossed that my next random musical encounter is just as sweet.

new day, new art

i have officially decided that with every trip home, i will not come back without a new work of art. this is a tradition i look forward to continuing! (even though i had to stand next to the creepy gold mime guy for at least ten minutes while i decided which one i wanted from the artist)

just like starting over

ok, i have clearly forgotten that i even HAVE a blog. i guess this is what happens when no one reads it, and/or you don't take the time to actually write in it. so i am going to pretend that this whole thing is new to me, that anyone is interested in what i have to say, and try and dedicate a little more time and find some inspiration to pour into writing.


so it's been almost a year since my last entry. amazing how quickly it has gone by - although i have sworn to more than one person that 2011 went by faster than any other year in my life. i don't know how that happened. but here i am, another year older, only slightly wiser, and in reflecting on the last year, i should probably spend some time figuring out what i took away from it and what i learned. it was extremely challenging at times but also incredibly rewarding, and i can only hope that as i am getting older that i'm actually learning from my mistakes and not just repeating the same ones over and over again. or at the very least, i hope to make better mistakes in the future than i've made in the past. and i could probably also stand to not be as hard on myself for some of the mistakes that i have made...luckily i have some amazing friends who are not afraid to tell me when i have lost my mind and need to check myself, and who will also show up to trapeze shows in full support of what most people would probably tell me i am entirely too old to be doing. they will also sometimes let me drag them to random concerts they don't want to go to (since i lost my partner in crime to the city of new orleans), indulge me in taking care of my dog so i can take random trips whenever i feel like it (which is not as often as my wanderlust would like), are completely tolerant of my reaction to seeing kermit the frog on tv, and are overall just about the most supportive, completely wonderful group of people a girl could ask to surround herself with.


so. here's to more creative writing in the coming weeks and months, more time spent exploring the things i'm passionate about (drinking wine on my patio with my girlfriends totally counts as something i'm passionate about, right?), and to enjoying the journey life is taking me on. i haven't figured out what the destination is yet, and i don't always appreciate the ride as much as i probably should, but, like the words i saw spray painted on the wall of a cathedral last time i was in italy said...give more than you get and you will be blessed. and i think remembering how blessed i am is a pretty decent goal to start my new blog off with.

new year, in the middle of the year

wow, it has been a long time since i've written on this thing. usually i would write something that would no doubt be laced with smart mouth comments and sarcasm, but my mom read my blog the other day and told me i need to clean up my language. and as usual, she is probably right. luckily for my mother, i seem to have woken up on the emotional side of the bed today (and seriously, you should have SEEN the way my dog was sleeping - diagonally and stretched out from one side of the bed to the other - so i had no choice in the matter of what side of the bed to wake up on) and for once in my life i don't really have anything very sassy to say. except now i am admitting to the entire interwebs (and all 2 people who read this) that i have a soul, and i'm not entirely comfortable with other people knowing that.

so we have entered the 8th month of the year (how this happened so quickly is beyond me), and it recently occurred to me that while i have kept up with most of my new year's resolutions, it might be time to start a new tradition and make myself a mid year resolution. i don't see why january gets to be the only time of the year that we resolve to be better people. maybe we should make a new resolution every month, who knows, maybe we would all be slightly less grumpy and wary of one another. people might even smile more. we could start a revolution. a non violent one, of course, since that would probably defeat the purpose.

i just got back from a wonderful, week long trip down to barbados, and since i had so much time to lay around on sandy beaches and think about the way my life is going now and the direction that i want my life to go in for the future, i think i may have settled on resolving to be more mindful. i have been told by many, many people that i can tend to be a little overly sarcastic sometimes (and that is me putting it nicely), and in my realm of experience, if more than two or three people tell you something about yourself, chances are high that there is some truth in what they are telling you (even if you don't want to hear it). and i suppose that while i think i am being funny and harmless, not everyone may agree with me, and i have lost track of the amount of times i've apologized for something i said, only to turn around and say something equally as sarcastic five minutes later. and i have too many amazing relationships in my life to treat them as anything other than gifts. so, there you go, internet. not only do i have a soul, but i want to work on improving it. next thing you know, i'm going to be telling my sister i miss her or something.

and there you go, mom. an entire blog post where i did not call one single person an a-hole. even i didn't think i could do it.

serenity now...

i am generally a pretty happy person. ok, ok, sometimes i can be overly sarcastic and people take that the wrong way (NIKI), and i may have a teeeeeny tiny attitude problem left over from my childhood, but otherwise i am pretty much a ray of sunshine on any given day. EXCEPT TODAY. and i will tell you why (because i am totally inclined to tell anyone who will listen when someone has PISSED ME OFF). i want to go see a show. it is sold out. i can't find a ticket for less than TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS. really? and this isn't even a ticket "dealer" this is a ticket for sale by the owner of said ticket who paid about $50 at maximum for this ticket and is now trying to turn around and sell it to me at 3 times it's face value (is my math right? it's probably not. whatever. the guy is a JERK!). the online ticket dealers want 3 times THAT much. remember when you used to be able to go see a band you really wanted to see and the ticket was about $20 and you didn't end up paying $50 for it after all the service fees and the show didn't sell out in 45 seconds (thank you, interwebs)? yeah. ME NEITHER. i remember once when i was a kid and we wanted to get tickets to see garth brooks (go ahead and laugh, I DARE YOU!). don't you know we had to get in the car and DRIVE down to the local ticketmaster outlet at the dillard's about 20 miles away from our house and wait in A LINE and hope and pray that they didn't sell out before we got up to the counter (they did). now thanks to the wonders of the world wide webs, every show i want to see sells out in about 5 minutes, and ticketmaster kicks you off the site if you don't buy the tickets that you DO manage to hold fast enough, leaving you at the mercy of some soul-less a-hole who thinks it's perfectly within reason to charge you $200 for a $50 ticket. way to suck the fun out it for everyone. last time this happened, i had to hop on a bus to philly and catch the show i wanted to see there, but this time around, it's the philly show i can't even get into. perhaps this is god's way of telling me i need to spend my concert-going funds on seeing bands i've never heard of before. honestly. i would probably be in better company anyway, seeing a local band in a local venue, seeing as how none of the people in THAT crowd are dumb enough to shell out $200 bucks so some buffoon can buy 4 new games for his xbox. all i'm saying is that if i had an extra ticket or two to a show that i knew people were clamoring to go to, i would sell them for exactly what i paid for them. one because i know how frustrating it is to really want to see a show and not be able to afford to go (hello, lady gaga, i am talking to YOU), and two because that money would go to ME and not the ARTIST, and i kind of think it's BS to make money that way. but that's just me.

ok. deep breath. i'm done.

making it happen...FOR REAL

apparently it has just occured to me that i am in my 30s and single. instead of doing the whole "woe is me" thing, i literally woke up one morning earlier this year and thought to myself: "self! do you KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS??!?! i can do WHATEVER I WANT TO DO. WHENEVER I WANT TO DO IT." this has resulted in a lot of traveling (cross country road trip, a few days in los angeles, a weekend in new york), a lot of concert/show tickets (including tickets purchased to a cirque du soleil show that is not taking place until 2012), some really ridiculous shoes that are incredibly painful to wear but delightful to look at, and finally, FINALLY, the ten week flying trapeze workshop i've been wanting to take for over a year now. ten weeks, two hours at a time, culminating in a student performance in late june, and I CAN NOT WAIT. i took one class last year on my birthday and as a gift to myself this year (and geez, there have been a LOT of those lately), i figured i would splurge and learn how to do this FOR REALS. so my class started last week, and i can already do this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpA8NBI3Vxs

which i managed to nail twice in a row. obviously, that video is not me, but you get the point. what i'm saying is I CAN DO THAT. it's the easiest trick in the book (literally. i've seen the book. it only gets harder from there), but you have to start somewhere i suppose. so my class is on monday nights and by tuesday i was feeling a little sore but fine, but oh my god, wednesday rolled around and my body was like WTF, A-HOLE?!?!?! i think my earlobes were sore. this is probably also because they have us climbing up silk ropes in between flying (god i love saying that), and the instructors make it look like it couldn't possibly be any easier to wrap your feet in silk fabric and then pull yourself up this rope in a graceful and beautiful way...but in reality my arm and leg muscles were in full on revolt against me - which made me realize that it is going to be a long time before i am running away with any circuses. i did manage to make it about halfway up the rope on my 4th or 5th try, but i'm pretty sure it was because of the repeated attempts at doing this that my body decided to punish me for later in the week.

my second class is tonight and i need to figure out what trick i want to learn for the showcase in june. next up for me is learning a set split which is basically asking for me to hurt myself. let's see how THAT goes.

let the music play...

one of my new year's resolutions this year was to see more live music - i am lucky enough to live in a city that has a lot of music venues and have felt like i never fully took advantage of that. so, this past weekend, i caught a wye oak show friday night at the black cat, and then saw grace potter and the nocturnals at the 9:30 club the following night. wye oak was sort of an "on a whim" thing, i picked up a free download card at starbucks (which is also how i found out about the civil wars, who i am now obsessed with) and liked the song enough to download a couple more on itunes. so i had heard a little of their music, but not much, and they kicked ass live, so i was really glad i'd seen on facebook that they were playing in dc and scored tickets before they sold out. i've been listening to grace potter for a while now, and i'd seen them once before and knew it would be a good show...and my god, they did not dissapoint me. grace's voice and her presence on stage are both pretty overwhelming and i don't know about you, but for me there is just something about that feeling i get when the lights go down and the band comes out...everything else in the world ceases to be important. when you can feel the music hit you in that space between your heart and your throat...that is the good stuff and i clearly need to have that in my life more often. they played a song she'd written about her grandmother before she died, and having just gone through that last year, i will admit i got a little choked up. it does amaze me how much of the human experience is universal - we all experience different forms of love and loss - but how people can get up on a stage and open up their lives to a room full of complete strangers is just beyond me. i am certainly thankful for it, though. in a way it kind of makes you feel less alone in whatever you're dealing with...because no doubt, someone else has experienced something similar and had the wherewithall to write it down and put some music behind it. and i can't even begin to imagine what it feels like to have that room full of strangers singing the words to your heartache or your happiness, because they know exactly what you mean.

anyway, the point of all of this is that i got to see some awesome shows this weekend and i'm already looking forward to the next one. if only all of my new year's resolutions were this easy (or this enjoyable)...