what's new.
"things you would find in your grandmother's attic" sale saturday 7:00-300 @ the skinny improv we make junk up. come buy our junk.1) Sleepless In Seattle is one of the best movies ever made hands-down ever.
2) Wearing big-girl pants to work is still a special feeling. I’m sure I’ll grow out of this eventually. Maybe.
3) School supplies are already out at wal-mart. Though this no longer affects me, it bothers me. I love crayons and notebooks and brand new pens, but c’mon…it’s JULY. let the kids enjoy sweet denial for a few more weeks.
4) Summer tastes like a Sonic Cherry Limeade. and that crunchy ice.
5) If I’m ever in a sad mood for a few days, there’s nothing like the feeling of the first time I really laugh. Thanks to mom at Target, I don’t even remember why, that feeling was back.
6) Helping throw a baby shower for my wonderful cousin and husband and future baby. Something about throwing a party for someone else gets me jazzed up, Martha Stewart style. (When Martha Stewart is jazzed there must be doilies and handmade lanterns and fancy lettuce nearby. I just know it.)
iMix:
All MJ all the time.
I’ve never been a morning person, but I think I might give it a try.
Running with the sunrise is a wonderful thing. I enjoy early morning runs, because it feels special to be out and doing something good when most everyone is still sleeping. And with those few other folks on the road, on their way to work or on the way home, there’s a certain solidarity. We know what’s up.
Because we are. Up.
Training week is off to a great start…after two days. Two one-hour days, with just the tiniest walking breaks thrown in. I can already tell that cardiovascular exercise is going to be the best cure for a broken heart. (And wine. lots and lots of wine.)
Early morning slowness also gives me a chance to notice things I haven’t before. There’s a big tree on the corner of my street that’s really lovely. And damaged. It’s one of those twisty-barked trees. I don’t know what causes this natural fluke, but it’s pretty. Like the tree was just twisted like play dough. But trees aren’t play dough, they’re hard—where wood comes from, after all—so this kind of growth must not be easy. If the tree could talk (in a woodsy, knowing, Lord Of The Rings type voice) it would probably have said “ouch” a lot, and moaned over the pain of the twisty, atypical growth it had to go through. Maybe Mr. Tree even wished he could’ve had the seemingly easier growth pattern of the smaller, prettier, simpler trees around him.
But he twisted instead. And now he’s the most interesting tree on the block.
The 14 week countdown to the Big Race has begun. 96 days and counting.
Thanks to wireless being down, I didn’t get to post all the way up to big #26 yesterday. Blog post evidence or no, I had the best birthday weekend ever. Could not have asked for more.
But today’s Monday.
I went running this afternoon, and the sky was cartoon blue. Bright and clear with puffy white clouds. Friendly sunshine, a warm breeze.
I went without my ipod because i needed to think.
A sky like that makes me feel really small, and start to think about the world and all the other people in it. Last night I finished Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, after just three days. This is a book to be devoured. Oprah’s Book Club got it right. I shouldn’t reveal more than that, but it’s worth reading. For all it implies about the future of people, and who we are at our best and our worst, the extremes of love and survival.
When I checked it out at Park Central Library last week, I sat and read for a few minutes. (Park Central Library is an interesting little people-watching joint. Do it sometime.) I was loving the book from page one. While I sat there, a little boy asked his dad if he could get a library card. The dad said yes, and the little boy did a happy dance, clutching his thin children’s book, and did a D.J. Tanner “yessss!” pump. All I could do was smile, and think, “I’m with ya kid.”
Books are that magical for me.
Even one like The Road, whose darkness overwhelms its light.
But back to running. And thinking about people.
I was thinking how we all have our good days and bad. It’s hard to remember that perspective when I get down in my own dumps, but it’s true.
We all have days where we nibble tiramisu with a spoon, or where our team starts trivia night with a first place round, or where our minds and hearts feel more open than we ever thought possible. The good days.
We also all have days where our dreams turn into nightmares, or we crouch on the floor with a kleenex pressed to our eyes, or we forget what it feels like to trust someone. The bad days.
Everyone, all of us, everybody has both kinds of days. both highs and lows, with a lot of just okay, -ish days in between.
If you stop to think about how many of either side you get, it can seem pretty random. Even a little unfair.
but i’m thinking today it all comes down to choices.
the kind you made and those that you avoided making.
sometimes the only choice you have is to realize that both kinds of days are valuable, and can teach you more about how to be a better version of yourself—if you let them. And it’s better to let them, because there are some lessons that just keep coming back until I learn them for real.
Everybody has birthdays and mondays. After 26 years I should have that much figured out.
I wish being this “grown up” meant I’d stop making mistakes. Stop avoiding tough choices. Stop hurting people, whether I mean to or not.
I’m still selfish enough to want tiramisu days every day.
But you can’t eat that every day. Not if you want to run a marathon. That’s going to take some hard days, too.
As of 5:20 p.m., central standard time, Working It Out is #99 on wordpress’ list of
Fastest Growing (English language) Blogs
check it: http://botd.wordpress.com/growing-blogs/?lang=en
um…the list probably live-updates and this won’t last forever, but I am currently tearing up with excitement. (thats “tear” like “to cry” not “tear” like “to rip”, as in “tearin’ it up” although I also feel like tearin’ it up a little.)
Beautiful June night, just listening to ADELE and writing on my back porch. Pineapple Whip and The Wire is in my future. It doesn’t get much better.
A new tiny neighbor cat is being super friendly with me, and Jenksie is consumed with jealous rage. She glares at me from within the apartment, wide-eyed with ears back. I can’t resist the new affections, though.
So tonight’s topic is a fun one. At MSA in PSD every year (wow acronyms. Missouri Scholars Academy. Personal and Social Dynamics class.), we do a Dream List with the kids, which is exactly what it sounds like. Taking a few minutes to think about nothing else but dreams and goals, both practical and outlandish. Such a great thing to do at 16 years old, right? And still good to do ten years later.
I remembered doing one sometime this winter, and I found it in my journal. I wrote it, go figure, six months ago today on New Year’s Day.
Dang. Time flies.
Thing is, I know that fall and winter weren’t the most fun months of my life. Gross understatement. But reading my journal makes me certain. Yeeesh.
This is a rare happy passage to revisit though, and it’s good enough that I don’t really feel the need to do a new list. So here goes.
January 1, 2009: the mid-MSA-year non-MSA DREAM LIST: (in no particular order, of course)
- Celebrate New Year’s Eve in Times Square
be interviewed by Terry Gross
participate in a large, public dance number
be on Jeopardy
slow dance to When A Man Loves A Woman, in a spotlight on a gym floor
own a huge personal library
dance
play piano well
keep in touch with, and frequently see, faraway friends
possess John Leonard sized vocabulary and allusion base
have a tearful reunion at an airport
be onstage at SNL
meet and befriend Tina Fey
contribute to This American Life
be a part of important change
learn another language
publish a much-loved children’s book
create catch-phrases that become part of the lexicon (Forrest Gump-like)
Go to London, Portland/Seattle, New Zealand, Africa
meet Oprah and be a Book Club author
become a confident cook
travel and write
make enough money to be able to give a shit-ton away
win a Kennedy Center Honor
Act, be funny, be part of a talented ensemble
surround myself with brilliant souls who have generous spirits
surprise myself
live abroad
live in a big city
work for Hallmark
own a well-designed comfy home and entertain there
get “discovered”
find love throughout life
make a difference for mental illness
live a life that fulfills my quirky interests, curiosity, desire to help lonely people, creative urges, and desire to learn and grow.
So see, I don’t want all that much, right?!
I’d say this is enough stuff to keep me busy for at least another ten years. You know what would be really funny is finding my list from MSA 2000. I’m sure I have it in some shoe-box of nostalgia at my parents’ house. I know a few things I’d be surprised to learn were true:
New York, India, Italy, Vietnam
skydiving
running a marathon
been in a movie
perform improv every weekend
shoot, kissed a BOY (that’s right, 16 year old me. more than one.)
This whole process may seem a little silly, but it’s so fun to do, and also valuable. After all, think South Pacific: If you don’t talk happy, and you never have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?
(another item for the list: find a purpose for all the useless showtune lyrics in my head…)
Now make your own! Bonus points for commenting with your list!!
Another thing I like a whole lot: movies.
Lately I’ve especially loved seeing oldies/goodies on the big screen for the first time: It’s a Wonderful Life, Casablanca, Wayne’s World, Big Lebowski, Singin’ in the Rain.
And now Forrest Gump. Thanks to the Palace’s summer flashback series.
It’s really like seeing these movies for the first time. All of them came out before i was old enough to see them in theaters, so I’ve only known the experience of watching them at home.
I’ve harped on this before, but it’s worth saying again. There is just something about seeing film BIG. It’s magic.
More than once I remembered how the magic of CGI was so new when FG first came out. (July 6, 1994, p.s., *cough* fourteen years ago *coughcough*)
“Look! Leuitenant Dan has no legs!”
“Oh my god they made Kennedy look like he’s talking!”
And i thought about how kids these days (kids who weren’t alive fourteen years ago *groan*) have grown up with CGI and friggen E-Trade Babies talking on TV, and it’s not really magic anymore.
sigh…
Reminds me of how my dad used to tell stories of his first black-and-white TV. A time before TV was impossible to imagine when I was a kid. And now…I’m the grownup seeing generational shifts in technology and longing, somewhat, for the innocence of the good old days.
Dad turned 62 a couple of weeks ago. (The day before Father’s Day. The Gift Fairy didn’t smile upon us with that one.)
I talked to him on the phone that day—he and mom were on their way back from vacation—and I asked him if he felt older and wiser.
“Wiser…and younger!” he said. Zing!
And it gives me hope. Old age (and nostalgia, and “kids these days”) isn’t all that bad, right? It’s all about learning lessons and feeling young at heart.
62.
26.
whichever.
Now back to the Gump for a minute more.
Get it!
It doesn’t get better than FG RUNNING, either as a cute little kid or beardy adult.
Now you wouldn’t believe me if I told you, but I could run like the wind blows. From that day on, if I was ever going somewhere, I was running!
with that i can hear his voice in my head. that Gumpian mix of intense innocence and sincerity.
(Tom Hanks is the man, isn’t he?)
Also thought a lot about his speech at the end.
…Jenny, I don’t know if Momma was right or if, if it’s Lieutenant Dan. I don’t know if we each have a destiny, or if we’re all just floating around accidental-like on a breeze, but I, I think maybe it’s both. Maybe both is happening at the same time.
For the first time that really moved me. Again, I think viewing it as adult, who has seen a healthy mix of hope and heartbreak, makes a difference.
So here I am. Feeling Older. Younger. Wiser. Simpler. all at the same time.
Woah Nelly I’ve been out of blogging practice and running practice for a bit now.
I blame the heat. I don’t want to run when it’s a zillion degrees outside, and…typing…is also hard…
I haven’t gone on a night run in a while, or any kind of run, so tonight was refreshing. Like a nighttime scene from a Disney film. Fireflies. Moonlight. Two honks from random strangers. The smell of summer (a description I can’t quite pin down…grass plus smoke plus flowers plus fresh air).
As I was struggling to survive 30 minutes, I had a brief moment of paralyzing fear (paralyzing fear moments always seem to occur when I am just far enough from home that I can’t imagine walking in either direction. I have to keep running. No choice). I’m reminded of the night before i went skydiving. I was drifting off to sleep when I had a shocking moment-of-clarity: I am going to jump out of a plane tomorrow. That rug-out-from-under feeling like when you miscalculate the number of stairs and fumble.
I am going to run FOUR HOURS. FOUR AND A HALF HOURS, to be more accurate, IF I’m lucky.
That seems impossible. But so did skydiving before I did it. When it happened it just felt free.
Back to goodness. I love running at night when the streetlights and moonlight are just right, and I can see my shadow ahead of me, cheering me on like a cartoon outline of myself. I can see why Peter Pan got all excited to have his shadow stitched back to the tips of his feet. It’s a magical feeling.
So there’s that. I’m still running. I’m getting serious now, as I sort of have to.
15 weeks from yesterday. The marathon training plan in my long distance running book is for 14 weeks. So next week. Badassery begins.
As for the second half of the blog post title, today ’tis day one of Birth Week 2009.
Yes, much like Elvis fans who commemorate the birthweek of the King, I am choosing to celebrate year 26 with a countdown week of self-love. One only turns 26 once, after all.
And this isn’t some ploy to get more gifts or cheery blog comments. It’s more about pausing to be intentional and think about my life.
The last couple of years my birthdays have become a time to appreciate the people in my life and the things I get to do, much more than the things I get to unwrap.
So that’s what’s up. Some thinking and writing about who I am, what i like, and what i want to become. All coming your way this week.
One thing I know I like is a good book, and I started one today.
My Booky Wook by Russell Brand.
fantastic.
Exactly the kind of writing I like: irreverent, articulate, genuine, hilarious. I especially like comedians’ memoirs, as they seem to almost always have dark stories to tell behind all the funniness. Oddly, it gives me hope.
Reading RB makes me lust after a British vocabulary and slang catalogue. (Insight into his personal story and intelligent writing makes me lust even more after this cheeky bad-boy character from Forgetting Sarah Marshall…)
The book starts in a surprising place—you’d think a celebrity memoir might start with the easy stuff and work up to big secrets—as RB is in rehab for sexual addiction. He talks about the need of an addict (be it drugs, alcohol, sex…food. tv. drama. sleep.) to have those freeing moments when your brain shuts off, when you can escape from life.
Running tonight I was grateful that I’ve found a freeing escape that also happens to be healthy (minus the heinous blister I’m working on inside my right foot). Running is hard, but at the moments when I feel like quitting I can stay tall, breathe deeper, and keep going. At its best, running lets me let go of myself and my life for a little while. My mind drifts, my iPod blares, my legs move, and I don’t have to worry about anything.
It’s nice.
And speaking of addictions…I want to go read more now. Love that feeling. ta-ta.
1) i miss blogging when i miss a few days.
2) iconic celebrity deaths seem to come in waves, don’t they? I mean, awards show montages are always surprisingly sad, but sometimes it feels like everybody be dyin’.
3) sprite and saltines still the best cure for the yuckies. my friend Rob says you can’t easily translate this fact into japanese. god bless america.
4) i will never again eat mall chinese food. if jenksiecat could talk, she’d tell you why.
5) the british Office is still delightful. though i LOVE michael scott, jim and pam, andy and dwight, there’s just something about David Brent’s awkwardness that never gets old. and tim canterbury (canterbury tales…) is just as cute as he can be.
6) plans made: going to london and paris in 2010! (barring any disasters, financial or otherwise) love having a far-off plan to dream about.
Dear Springfield:
I took an early Sunday morning run today. It’s pretty outside in June before 8:00 a.m. The sun’s still low, the traffic is sparse, and I can pretend for a few minutes that it’s still springtime. Lovely.
But have you by chance walked along National lately? I know you’ve been driving along it. I can tell because you’ve left ample evidence behind. But have you walked and taken notice of the litter on the sidewalks?
It’s gross.
It bugs me for a couple of reasons. First, it shows a lack of pride in ourselves. You throw your junk on the ground, and soon enough our streets are covered in junk. (Did you ever read The Lorax, people?!) A gum wrapper here, a bottle there; enough people think it’s okay to throw trash out the window and soon enough we’re swimming in it.
Second, with all the talk of going green lately, you’d think we’d all start to understand that the earth isn’t just an indifferent backdrop for our lives, but we live on the earth, with the earth, and can choose to either help or harm each other by how we live our lives.
Third, it’s just ugly, folks. Don’t make my street ugly. Are you really so lazy that you can’t wait until you get home to recycle your Vitamin Water bottle?
or your Keystone tall can in a paper sack?
your $10 phone card?
your push-up pop?
your Thickburger wrapper?
Litter’s not cool, Springfield. It’s careless, irresponsible, lazy, harmful, ugly. These aren’t words I want describing my neighbors and my neighborhood. Take your trash home.
love,
me
