Sunshine and Tacos 4.24.19-4.30.19

24

I love flowers.

            I mean, most people do, I’m sure. I love getting random flowers from family, friends, strangers. Whether they’re just roadside daisies or a dozen roses, I will treasure them. I’ll probably put their petals in a book with a little note about who they were from/where I found them.

            I’ll also send flowers willy nilly to people. I enjoy picking them out (particularly if they’re in town and I can go, literally, smell the roses) and being able to say that I care about someone. They’re perfect. I love them.

            Today is my dad’s birthday, so I obviously sent him flowers, right? I picked out a boyish balloon and bold colors (he’s a big fan of bright red and yellow shirts, so those flowers were bright red and yellow too) and had them delivered right after he got back from the casino. He was just so cute.

            He also was sure to send flowers to my mom and sister on their birthdays (and let me tell ya, April is the month to be born in this family…so, naturally, I was born in May) and I got to go pick them up for him. He thanked me, of course, but the truth is, I would have taken any excuse to go to the flower shop.

            What’s the moral to my rambling? There isn’t one. I’m just ready for spring and wanted to talk about flowers. My mom got one for me to attempt to keep alive, and since my cat already ate most of the leaves, I decided to bring it to work. I think I’ll call her Clarise. And since I already managed to lose the handy little card with what kind of flower Clarise is/how to keep her alive, all that I can tell you is that she’s pink. And not dead yet.

25

The weather is nice.

            And I know that most of you have probably already enjoyed a healthy, warm and growing Spring, but here in Minnesota, it is still snowing/cold/miserable. But this week for the first time since October, the weather has been in the 60s and my legs have been touched by sunshine.

            Even when we of the northern tribe spend a lot of our winters outside, we still don’t get any sun (except for the little wind-burned patches of our faces). So the second that thermometer creeps above forty degrees, I’m sprawled out on the ice/snow/grass/road like a big, pasty star fish.

            I think that’s why Spring is my favorite season. You never appreciate warm weather half so well as that first sun shiny Spring day. It’s a change for the better, a step toward Summer, and I just to run around in it like a crazy person.

            So, after work, I did exactly that. I took my Gimmer for a walk around town, stripped down to my tank top and rolled up my work pant into some semblance of shorts, and positively frolicked. I even sweated a little bit, just standing there!

            Anyway. That was a spectacular Thursday. I considered grabbing a cocktail, but that would mean going inside and I wasn’t having any of that. So instead, I took the Gimmer home and laid in the hammock until the sunshine wandered behind my aspen trees. That’s all it takes. Immediately chilly, we found our way inside for some supper, a bloody Mary, and a night of reading.

26

Today is Friday, and after I worked, I cleaned.

            Now, cleaning might not sound like much fun for a Friday night. I mean, who enjoys dishes, laundry, vacuums and mops? What sane person would rather clean her house on a Friday night than go out for drinks with friends or, well, literally anything else??

            *slowly raises hand

            I mean, I don’t have a lot on my plate at this very second. I need to design my book’s cover, but I’m already underway and that seems like a tomorrow problem. My manuscript is in my betas’ capable hands and I’ve finished up the work day. So, I finally get to take a little time to fix up the homeplace, get some good cooking done, and pamper the Gimmer (to his horror, this means nails trimmed, haircuts, and baths.)

            So, this Friday, I stayed in, washed a thousand million zillion tons of laundry (even folded it!) did a week’s worth of dishes (ah, the perks of living alone) and vacuumed eight new cats out of my original cat, and devoured some fantastic homemade mango salsa and chicken. All of which was accompanied by Star Trek (ah, Discovery, how I love you) and later, an audio book. There’s nothing m ore peaceful for me to do with my evening than play a good video game while listening to a book tape. I absolutely love it. And, in the strangest way, I remember certain places in the video game where a character in the book died, or did something remarkable. I’m confusing my brain with fantasy and I love it.

            Anyway, there isn’t much more to tell about this Friday. When I think about it, it was a really good one. And there’s nothing quite so relieving as waking up on Saturday morning and not being hungover.

27

Despite it being Saturday, I woke up and was immediately ambitious.

            First things first, take care of the Gimmer and the Nymmer. Walk, food, water and treats. A few cuddles. Then I was out the door for a run.

            Feeling particularly energetic, I decided to skip a week ahead in my training schedule. There’s a 10k in June that I’m hoping to join (and a 5k, if I fail) and I really wanted to see if I could maybe take bigger runs earlier this season than last one (which took me months before I managed to jog an uninterrupted 5k). Anyway, with the soundtrack for Game of Thrones pounding in my ears, I charged forth.

            And I made it. I don’t know how, but I made it. And it was fun. I managed to stop thinking about how much I didn’t want to be running and instead focused on crafting characters in my brain. Something about mindless exercise really gets my creative juices flowing. And when I really get into the story, it’s like time evaporates and I forget that I’m even working.

            After the run, it was into the shower then out on the town. Well, I say out on the town, but I was helping TayTay move (for the four-hundredth time, but who’s counting? 😉). It was a bittersweet kind of thing, since I was excited to see her and devastated to be helping her go. But she’s on to bigger and better things and what kind of best friend would I be if I held her back!?

            Still, I miss the blonde unicorn.

            After the move, it was time for a beer then a quick horseback ride before I cleaned myself up (again) and was off to a birthday party. It was a full, active day and I can already tell that I’m going to be SO STIFF tomorrow.

28

SO STIFF.

            Seriously, why did I do all of the things in one day? I’ve had opportunities to go horseback riding and running for weeks now. Why did I have to do everything YESTERDAY?

            Oh, and I did quite a lot of yoga, which left everything from my hips up in a stiff, oddly floppy state. I feel like it’s all I can do to point myself in a direction and flop that way.

            But it doesn’t matter how much pain I’m physically in, because by this evening, I’m going to be in too much emotional pain for it to matter. Ladies and germs, tonight the Night King brings his dead army to the walls of Winterfell. And I’m more nervous for it than I have any right to be. I mean, I’m not the one being attacked. Right?

            Right, HBO?

            So, filled with excess anxiety, I decided a hike was in order. I got my gimpy, floppy body going in the direction of the forest, threw my mini  guitar across my back, and made my flippety floppety way into the trees.

            I also grabbed about four Trulys, because I also wanted to giggle at nothing with the squirrels.

            After ingesting said Trulys, I made my way home, tossed Gimmer into the house, then slapped on my running shoes and took off. Because I was giggley-buzzed and it was either a run or a nap, and since I was worried about the lives of all my Winterfell humans, napping seemed out of the question. I made it about halfway before I realized my mistake. I was already broken. Running just made all my muscles shatter and die.

29

I can’t even.

            I can’t even life today.

            That was the best Game of Thrones episode I’ve ever seen, and I’m including the time Dany did all the cool things with her dragons. I just don’t even know what to say, except thanks HBO. Now the whole world knows why we love Fantasy.

            I’m also broken.

            I can’t really walk in a straight line, I’m so stiff. Everything hurts. Just crossing my legs seems like agony, so might as well work on my posture and sit like a human being. Except that kind of hurts to and when I just reached for a pencil, it fell from my lifeless fingers like a stick off a dead friggin tree.

            Okay. That’s quite enough whining. Let’s whine about something else.

            PEOPLE NEED TO STOP TALKING ABOUT ENDGAME. Seriously, at this point, if I see a capital “A”, I run the other way. I want everything to be fresh and new and exciting. And if another spoiler comes floating past my face, I’m gonna throw a fit that would do young Sansa Stark proud.

            Anyway. I think I’m going to have some Chinese food and watch the Hobbit. Comfort food for the mind, body and soul. I might even pick at the guitar for a bit. There’s nothing quite like reacquainting one’s self with an instrument, old songs finding their way to familiar fingers.

 

30

I keep a journal in the form of a dictionary.

            And it’s not even a journal, not in the traditional sense. When I graduated from High School, one of my friends gave me this huge dictionary. I love books, and even the dictionary finds a place of honor in my home. I enjoy taking the time to look up words, rather than just tapping them into le Google. Plus, when I’m actually paging through the dictionary, I always find some gold nuggets of words, strange little things that no one would probably every use. That I probably would never use.

            But maybe that’s why they’re so fun to know.

            Anyway, this dictionary is something of a journal for me. When I find little things, cute little flowers or maybe a scrap of paper with a note, I tuck it away in the pages of the dictionary. The fun thing is that, since this is a dictionary, I always ‘file’ the item under its name, or perhaps the name of the person who gave it to me, or where I found it or what I was feeling when I saw it. I’ve been doing this for some ten years now, and this dictionary is filled with sweet memories.

            There are petals from flowers my father has given me, notes from friends who I have not seen in months. I have snippets of my childhood dogger’s fur, an ivy leaf TayTay sent me from England. I have invitations to weddings, love notes and four-leaf clovers. I have a lock of sheep’s wool I found caught in a barbed wire fence on a lonely path in Ireland, and bits that I had forgotten existed altogether.

            The dictionary is huge. There are more words than I could ever know, more places than I could ever dream existed. But by the end of my life, I hope to have every page tucked full of memories. That’s all for this week, folks.

Peace,

Kristen