tenacity

Success! We have managed to trim corners and implement the ridiculous strategy of wearing extra layers to the airport, thus paring our pack weights to 1-1.5 pounds below the requirement. I left a buffer in case the luggage scale I bought isn't accurate. We are also stuffing underwear in our coat pockets, which sounds ridiculous, but I don't care. I'm not above such trickery if it keeps me from having to stand around a baggage carousel stressing out about what time the rental car place closes. I have a picture of the final gear, but I'm saving it for a packing post, which will happen we return unless by some miracle I am more prepared than I think Tuesday morning (fat chance). It's likely to bore the pants off most of you, but fellow packing crazies might find it useful. If all of my efforts are for naught and we get foiled in some other way (full overhead bins, a cranky airline agent who disagrees with my interpretation of top/bottom of the bag, etc.), I'm sure you will hear about it! For now, I leave you with this:

when you travel, there
should be no wrong or right way,
only this or that

picture: wet, moss-covered boulder near the top of Pico de Papagaio, Ilha Grande, Brazil, September 2012, digital 

Moving on up

Another year, another apartment. That's right: for the third year in a row, we are moving during the holiday season. On Friday, we will move from the 2nd floor to the 4th floor of our current building. Yes, another intrabuilding move! which makes 2 in 5 years. Clearly we do not like change and will try our damnedest to stay as close to "home" as possible.

I've been toying with the idea of doing one of those "year in review" posts, which I imagine is just a sneaky way to avoid the pile of empty boxes in the corner. Real time update: I tried to write the review, but I got as far as April before I realized I do not have the blogging stamina for that kind of exercise. I got about 5 hours of sleep thanks to the combination of an enjoyable New Year's Eve party, an exercise-hungry dog, and off-leash hours that end at 9am. I can't muster the energy needed for such an excavation, but I can give you a few highlights.

1. I already revealed this, but it counts as a huge adjustment, so let's say it again: we got a dog! a young, energetic, cat-crazed tank of a dog that has introduced major amounts of guilt and joy into life.

2. I survived the first semester of my mental health counseling master's program. There's no accompanying picture because you can't capture the insanity wrapped up in such an endeavor. Let's just say the workload was WAY more intense than I expected, and the class participation proved to be exhausting, but ultimately gratifying.

3. We ran two half marathons. The Annapolis half in May with my mom and the Hamptons half in September with a couple of friends from Brooklyn. Running over huge bridges is one of my favorite things to do, and the half marathon is a great distance.

4. We ran the Philadelphia Marathon for the 3rd year in a row. I won't share our actual time because pace is a touchy subject in my book, but I will say that since our first marathon we have shaved off over an hour from our total finish time. I still can't believe we run marathons because at one point in my life I expected to be relegated to the world of biking and swimming forever. The picture is near the halfway point of the race, at which point I always wonder why in the world we decided to run the whole distance.

5. I went to what I like to call "banjo camp" at Warren Wilson College, which is near Asheville, NC. It was a week of musical highs and introverted lows because of the cafeteria style eating arrangements and the social atmosphere. At every single meal, I forced myself to sit with new people or to find people that I'd already met. This may sound like nothing to some of you, but for me it was a collossal effort, which proved to be totally worth it because I made some great friends. I also got a chance to visit an old friend that I hadn't seen in almost 7 years by taking a circuitious route to VA beach on my way down to the mountains of NC. It was worth every extra mile.

6. Charrow took me to see Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers at Town Hall in NYC. It was one of the best concerts I've ever attended. It fell on the heels of reading Steve Martin's autobiography, so I felt like we were BFF's for the whole show.

7. I turned 33, and I realized that I should only plan nature-based events for my birthday. Charrow traipsed around Manhattan with me like the supportive and good-natured person that she is, but I had a lackluster day that left me feeling aggravated, overfed, and exhausted. Next year: a hike!

8. I spent an inordinate amount of time posting pictures to Instagram, which is something I resisted for a loooong time. There are way too many pet pictures and mr. Pear cameos, but I don't care because it makes me happy.

9. We took a short, but fun-filled trip to visit friends in PA that involved chickens, friendly neighbors, and many, many walks in the woods with the dogs.

10. I became an aunt! And then promptly had absolutely no time to visit my new niece, but I stalk her on the internets, and I try not to think about how I'm not around to make sure her first word is "poop."



11. I stopped procrastinating. Who knew that was even possible? But I managed to work on every assignment I had throughout the week instead of pulling all-nighters or waiting until the absolute last minute. It was a strange and liberating experience, and I realized that I don't need the pressure of timing to do well.

It's not comprehensive by a long shot, but those are the events of 2013 that stick out in my addled mind. Now it's time to get lost in the box menagerie for awhile.

5 on 5 saturday edition

How about 5 on 6 (pick up sticks) this week? I'm still doing a terrible job of keeping life from seeping into my commitments, but instead of waiting a week and getting it exactly right, I'm going to allow myself a little imperfection and do things* a day late.

#1 Farmers. I have a sensitive stomach. It actually seems to be getting worse, but one of the things I can do to combat the reign of pain that my intestines have undertaken is to eat fresh food. Without farmers (and a whole host of other people down the production line), I would have to suffer through the processed, pre-packaged misery that a lot of people in this country call dinner.

#2 Bees. This dovetails with number one because without bees around to pollinate what the farmers are growing, there would be far fewer options in my fruit and veggie arsenal. We went to the Bee-Day festival at the brooklyn botanic gardens last weekend, and it was both informative and depressing to learn about how insanely awesome bees are and how we're losing 30% of the bee population every year.

#3 Cows. Apparently it's mother nature week. I feel strange saying I'm grateful for cows because if I was truly grateful, wouldn't I stop eating them? I don't know. For what it's worth, I feel pretty indebted to these lumbering beasts for everything that they provide. I'm trying my best to only eat or drink products from happy cows, and when I do sit down to a dinner that involves beef, I take a moment to say thank you to the animal that lost it's life. Even writing that seems ridiculous (the cow doesn't want my thanks, it's want to stand in a field and eat grass), but that's where I'm at with my part-time vegetarianism.

#4 Detail oriented people. Last week I took several rolls of film to the developer. I set the rolls of film on the counter, and I said "these (clearly segregated rolls) need to be cross-processed and these (clearly segregated rolls) are regular/normal process." The woman working the desk picked up the film, set it on a different counter and said, "okay, I'll write this up and we'll have it by X day." In my haste to get back to Brooklyn and start painting, I didn't stick around while she wrote up the ticket. A few hours later, I got a phone call asking for verification on which rolls of film I wanted cross-processed. She had written up the order in the exact OPPOSITE way from what I requested. Thankfully someone in the darkroom noticed that the request to cross-process negative 35mm film seemed odd (you usually process slide film, not negative film). The mistake wasn't picked up soon enough to save one roll of film, but the rest of the order was salvaged. In an effort to sugar coat her mistake, the woman kept telling me that the cross-processed 35mm film would look "artsy and funky" when it was printed. Thanks but no thanks. If I wanted artsy and unpredictable, I would have asked for it. So to all the detail oriented people who are good at their jobs: thank you. (my apologies for basically double posting this story. clearly i'm still upset about it!)

#5 My mom's horse, Singer. My mom is a perfectionistic workaholic (sorry mom, it's true). Ever since she purchased Singer, she has been slowly but surely waking up to the fact there aren't an infinite number of tomorrows to save for when the work is done. In her line of business (as is true with just about anything), the work will never be done. There will always be one more graph line to plot, one more briefing to polish, and one more unbalanced supervisor expecting more, more, more. But Singer is forcing my mom to sever the corporate umbilical cord for at least a few hours every week. She goes to visit him after work; she volunteers with the therapy riding lessons that her horse participates in; she has her own lessons twice a week. It's pretty amazing how this animal is changing her routine, and I can't tell you how happy I am that my mom is finally doing something for herself.

*in case you're new to these here awkward lands, every Friday I post a list of 5 things that I'm grateful for (hence the "5 on 5" series title)