Monthly Archives: November 2009

Drawing

My sister is going to kill me for posting this. Sorry L, but this made me laugh so hard, I could hardly control myself.

Our nephew gave R a drawing over the holiday weekend. It was quite elaborate and detailed.

The more you analyzed it, the more you saw.

For instance, did you see the guy coming up the stairs holding not one, but two guns? He was packing some heat, yo.

Or how about the man with the machete chopping off someone’s head? I think that was supposed to be me. Okay, W, I get the point. Next time I won’t make you sit through old home movies of me.

But honestly, how can you not admire the imagination? Talk about a 7-yr old boy through and through. I loved it.

Pouting with a firm grip.

On our way home from the cafe/bar, we listened to the disheartening KSU loss against Nebraska. It takes about 25 minutes to get home, and I spent 24 of those minutes looking at R’s pouty face in silence.


But I must say, look at that firm grip on the wheel. From a girl who vacillates between a very formal ten & two position to using barely a hangnail to steer, I was impressed by his steadfastness.

Maturing…at least physically.

Something is in the air.

R and I went to a wedding Saturday night and I actually threw on a skirt and heels, something I feel I haven’t done in a while. And normally, I feel insta-sexy with this particular shoes-skirt combo. I do up my eyes, throw on some clear lip gloss and be bop my way to the car. But last night, I felt almost… needy. And asked R repeatedly if he thought I looked good.

He assured me that yes I did, while also throwing in a few “for a 50 yr-old” cracks at which I laughed, but also quietly noted that there’s always truth in jokes.

When the usher asked me which side and I replied “Bride”, he escorted us to row after row of giggly just-graduated-from-college friends of E. Glossy hair, manicured fingernails, shaved legs – you know.. above and beyond. What show-offs.

This was the first time that I’ve felt… older. Not old. But just older. The fact that I’d resolved to let my hair grow out naturally, gray roots and all, did not help. When you see the pictures, you’ll say, “Oh Carrie, you aren’t graying!”. But I assure you, that is purely positioning of the head. Right now it is only about an inch out, leaving it mountain snow cap. I am going pre-maturely gray.

This has resulted in mixed reactions. A girl at work almost begged me to dye my hair back while R said he thought it was cool I was embracing my natural self.

And I believed I had come to terms with it as well.

…Until I was literally surrounded by those girls…flicking their beautiful silky mahogany hair about (almost no blondes at the wedding, which I figured was the cosmos laughing at me).

Can you believe I was grieving over this tiny aspect? But there you have it. The first baby step in watching my body mature. I always tell myself, in nervous situations, to really stop and feel that moment. Because it’s probably the most raw and pure emotion you can feel, never lessening.

Hopefully in 20 years, I’ll have become used to the changing of myself. Because I sure am uncomfortable now. Everyone was at some point.

For that reason, I was really looking forward to a glass of white at the reception to calm me down. When R went up to order it, the bartender whispered very slowly, “We…cannot..serve…alcohol..tonight.” A dry reception. Oh you cosmos!

Afterwards, we went down to our favorite place on Dickson St: a coffee bar/bar. There’s something comfortably appealing about a coffee shop that also serves wine.

We managed to catch the last half of the KSU game and while watching, decided to order an appetizer. I was waffling between Queso and Lox.

But there was still an air of self-doubt lingering from the reception, so I asked R to take an “unposed” photo. Which is really a posed photo of me trying to act like I didn’t know he was taking it. Nevermind, it gets complicated.

The wine-stained upper lip, the yellow teeth – fine. But what the heck is that???

I zoomed in.

Uh hell no.

We’re ordering salads, dear.


And tomorrow we’re going to the gym. I’m taking control of my self-image, starting…. right after Thanksgiving.

Look, a girl’s gotta have her pumpkin pie first.

Goals

Sunday would have been the perfect day to sit by an open window and knit during the afternoon hours. It was rainy, yet not too cool. I had good view of our backyard pasture, and the neighbors must have been all on vacation. Silence is so rare. I cherished it.

I’ve got several goals swirling around in my head for the year to come. But one of them I’m getting started sooner than the rest.

Since I cannot seem to get past the casting stage of knitting, I’ve decided to take a class. Sorry in advance for everyone’s birthday next year. I’ll give you three guesses as to what you’ll be receiving.

When the Cat’s Away…

R has a business trip in KC next week, so he wanted to drive up earlier to stay with a friend.

One problem.

We’re a one car family and I’ve had an antique shopping day planned with a couple girls from work for about a month now.

Solution? He took the bus. It left at midnight and arrived around 5am. R didn’t get a lot of sleep, between a man grabbing his shoulder in the dark and asking loudly “Where are we?” and watching the guy stumble to the front of the bus and getting off right before an exit on the highway to thinking about the KC bus station and hoping his friend, B, makes word on his promise to pick him up.

The KCMO bus station is not exactly in the best area of town and B has a tendency to get worked up about things.


So Little Miss Carolyn took off early Saturday morning for a full day of antiques. On the original email, it said “this is not for wimps.” And man, was she right. I was exhausted by the end of day.

 


We stopped at two Amish stores for breakfast and lunch.

D I V I N E — Fresh made donuts and a roast beef sandwich, respectively.

My bread never ever turns out this good. I ate it up, literally (and I guess figuratively too.)

We attacked a lady and her 4 month old English Sheep Dog as they exited the beauty parlor. I think I may have found my new favorite breed. I could’ve scooped him up and took him home with me right then and there.

He would’ve liked the Dorm, right?
Antiquing was a success. Found three more of my Butterprint Pyrex dishes for twenty bucks total. Easily saved ten dollars. R mentioned not too long ago that he read the new Pyrex refrigerator dishes are having issues exploding in the oven. And since living sans microwave, it was crucial that I find the older versions to be able to reheat foods. Right. Right?

I debated about mixing different styles of Pyrex, which I normally would not be opposed to doing. In fact, I kinda like that look better…not so mitchy-matchy. But we’ve talked of the idea of exposing the dishes (plates/cups etc) in our future kitchen, and so in that case, I prefer having similar colors, but different textures. That way it doesn’t overwhelm the eye (or at least my eye) but it still creates some interest.
Was that straight up HGTV or what.
Believe it or not, I felt like I had been too practical in my finds and had to get something tasty just for myself.

What’s better than snuggling up to a 1932 journal filled with outings, bridge parties, and trips to California?
Well, I guess one thing.
Snuggling my feet under someone’s legs with a 1932 journal.

Tortoise and the Hare meets Hoosiers

It was almost one in the morning on Friday night when I heard the snickering outside our dorm window. J & T had arrived.

Finally.

R & I had decided to camp out in the living room and let our guests sleep in the loft bed. Aren’t we nice. They would’ve probably been more comfortable on the couch.

But maybe that was a tactic to sabotage them. No one will ever know…and I’ll never admit it.

More snickering. We opened the door and let them in. “T was laughing at your bikes!!” yells J as they roll in their seriously serious mountain bikes. Freshly bought a month earlier at an actual bike store. No joke. Those bikes were… serious.

And we instantly had bike envy.

I rubbed my eyes and with a knee-jerk reaction, barked at them “We got them on Craigslist for 30 bucks. Leave them alone! I mean it!”

Welcome to Arkansas. Where the moment guests walk through the door, a fight breaks out. Anyone else want to visit?
Don’t you listen to them, cheap Walmart Craiglist bikes. You are special.

At first, it had nothing to do with how well made the bikes were. T was really worried that our bikes would fall apart while on a trail and we’d have to get them surgically removed from you-know-where.

The danger awaiting us is really what kept me up most of Friday night. Maybe that was their sabatoge. Okay, I get it now.

For a girl who shares a mid-90s car with her husband, lives in a pseudo dorm room, and buys most of her clothes on Goodwill Dollar days (can I not even pay full price at the goodwill??), a name brand bike should have been the least of her worries.

And it was. That is, until morning hit.

I woke up before the alarm went off and hurridly ran to wake up everyone else. We had bikes to fix, breakfast to eat, and other mandatory race items to buy!

J had an extra bike seat and T insisted R use it. He was afraid we’d never be able to have kids with the seat Walmart provided. I was right on T’s heels also insisting a better seat, but now it was only partly for safety reasons and mostly to fit in with this illusive bike crowd.

Maybe if we have a better seat, they won’t notice the huge ROADMASTER decal on the side.

When we arrived at the starting point, I made R put the bikes in the transition station for us without me. Man, this was going to my head! I had better get focused, I thought.

Okay. Let’s review how R and I trained for this event. Well, we paid our entrance fees a few months in advance. Then we waited until something nagged at the back of our heads that something was coming up. It felt like that something was something we should be training for. But what was it exactly? Oh, right, right. A little race with J & T where mid-way I’m sure we’ll stop for a picnic of cheese and wine.

That was it: a steady regimine of complete denial. Along with a few vitamins thrown in for good measure.

We had absolutely no clue. But it was too late now, the show was about to begin.

The first thing we had to do was plot out the checkpoints. We were given coordinates and, by using a UTM reader & topography map, created a general outline of the route.

Just this caused me to drink half my water and lie on the ground. What had I gotten myself into.

Once we compared notes, the four of us took off. We were separate teams but hung out with each other until slow-poke Carrie pulled her team back.

The weather: it. was. gorgeous. And I’m glad it was this way, otherwise, I don’t know if we’d have very fond memories. Not that threatening to get a divorce on a canoe as well as almost throwing up a chimichanga at a mystery event were really fond memories…. but at least it was nice out. We can always say we had that.

This is how the race was described:
  • hike/trek 8 miles
  • water activity
  • bike 20 miles
  • perfect for a first time racer!

This is how it really went:

  • Run until your sides hurt
  • Lift 1000 lbs
  • Get lost
  • Get back on track
  • Run until your sides hurt
  • Canoe across a lake until your arms hurt
  • Get divorced
  • Turn circles back to land because you can’t make the canoe go straight for one measly second
  • Jump onto a bike
  • Ride until your legs hurt
  • Eat a chimichanga and start to heave
  • Apologize to person who made chimichanga saying that if you hadn’t been in this race, you could’ve positively pounded those down.
  • Ride until your legs hurt.
  • Play putt-putt and get a hole in two.
  • Cry.
  • Ride until your legs hurt.
  • Finish.
  • Get remarried.

Sprinkle in a few curse words & tumbles on the bike and there you have it. Sound like fun?

But there’s more than that. Here’s what happened.

Slow poke Carrie kept her team back. So J & T went ahead of us. …and ahead of us. …and ahead of us… leaving me the only person to watch R trip on every frigging tree root on the trail. I was tired, people. And everything was ticking me off, especially tripping on tree roots.

Poor R.

J & T were so far ahead of us, though, that when R and I reached the canoes we asked where team number 27 was, and he looked at us pityingly (side note: did he know what bikes we rode? was that why he looked at us that way?) and said, “Oh, yeah. They’ve been out on the water already for 20 minutes.”

I could’ve sworn he called me a slow poke as we picked up our canoe. Whatever.

So we climbed into the boat and I knew this was really going to test us. We had once gone on a date way back when, where we took a canoe out onto a lake … and almost broke up then. And that was during the first phase of dating, where nothing made you mad about the other person.

Now we were paddling with 6 years worth. It was… interesting, to say the least. (In my defense, when R told his coworkers about the race, one of them mentioned that canoeing is the single hardest thing to do with a spouse… this was before R said anything about our short-lived divorce. So there.)

We kept our position out on the lake, which at this point was 7th-ish. There were two other co-ed teams ahead of us, including our friends.

Next came the bikes. I purposely slowed us down until we could transition onto them without anyone in the area.

No, not really. But I wanted to. Let’s just say, I was happy to put on a helmet and cover up my beaming red face. Darn you, T. Get out of my head!

We rode up and down some major hills until finally finding the street of our next checkpoint, which happened to be in a neighborhood. This was the chimichanga event, and so we had to park our bikes. Guess who parked theirs behind a car on the street. Look, I’m not proud of it.

We walked across the lawn and asked the now irritating question, “How far ahead is team #27?”

“They haven’t come yet.”

Shut the front door, I thought. Or maybe I said it out loud. At this point, I was saying a lot of things out loud.

“You are kidding.”

“No, we’re not. You’re team #3.”

After I downed the chimichanga, we jumped back onto our bikes and took off. As we turned the corner, guess who came around in their gleaming, sparkly, seriously serious bikes? J & T. That’s right, folks: eat. our. dust.

I raised my arm and yelled, “Go craigslist walmart bikes!” and off we went.

After a few more checkpoints and spots on the trail where I know R was silently thanking T for the seat change, we saw the finish line.

Oh, the glorious glorious finish line. After 4.25 hours, I was ready to sit down and have a beer. Not a chimichanga though.

Unbelievably, we stayed in third for the rest of the way and ended up winning first in the co-ed division.

I’ve never won anything, let alone a race…so this was exciting for us (me). Our bikes did it. They did it. It was a classic underdog fable.

But I still wheeled them to a discreet location immediately after dismounting.

Afterwards, we drove a short ways to Eureka Springs and, on the way, called random places to stay. Everything was full because of a folk music festival going on, so we booked the first thing that had a jacuzzi and/or hot tub.

Should it have been awkward to share a place that housed a jacuzzi (for two) in the middle of the living room?

Because it wasn’t.

It was even less awkward that all four of us got into the two-person jacuzzi and sipped champagne.

And less awkward still when after J & I climbed out to lay on the couch and watch National Lampoon’s Vacation (and quickly falling asleep), to hear R & T clink champagne glasses while toasting our future families.

It was awesome. We had such a nice night.

trying to get the shot of a lifetime

The next day.

Ouch.

Every fiber of my being was sore and what way to really understand this pain?

Why, by visiting the Christ of the Ozarks.

Such a fun weekend… I can say this now, because the pain has gone away and I am encouraged to actually train for the next one.

We’ve already got plans for a sequel.

And R has plans for a new partner.

Pre-Adventure

We were laughing and giggling… obviously having no clue what we were getting ourselves into.

R felt like a ballerina in his new long-sleeved synthetic shirt; a mandated item to enter the race.

While I ran around taking more photos of things that make me smile in the dorm. Like a sexy photo of two legs dangling out of a claw foot tub. Some people have asked if those are my legs. So I pull up my pants to let them figure it out.


“Nope, it’s not you”, they always say. “Hers are shaved.”

And my little matchbox holder. The only suitable place I could think of was by the toilet.


More of our adventure race to come….

Artificial Moonlight


Sometimes when I walk into the living room at night, I like to pretend that the light streaming in is from a clear, bright moon…. shining over the acres surrounding our future home. It helps me keep focused on our dreams. No commercial-yellow communal-area apartment light in that dream. Only the moon and me.

Same Smile

Continuing on from the last post… let’s visit a photo taken during my 14th year of life. Different year, same smile.

Oh, the love one feels at that tender age. Or it might’ve been just emotional residue from all of the Harlequin romance novels I was gobbling up that summer.

My mom and friend, V, headed to a conference at our local church where, ahem, HE was speaking. The infamous HE. HE ruled my universe and basketball highlights. sigh, oh.. HE.

Anyway, afterwards, HE sat down to write autographs for everyone. So I stood (im)patiently in line, ready to deliver the one-liner that would bring HIM down to HIS knees and propose.

But as I shuffled my way to the front of the line, and before I could get a word out edgewise, my mom decided to take matters in her own hands.

“Oh Jared! Why don’t you stand up with Carolyn and pretend you’re going to prom together!”

I. was. mortified.

(and happy)

She managed to break the awkward stare I leveled at HIM as HE waited for me to speak and create a joking atmosphere. Making fun of the fact that I really was pretending we were at prom, made it seem like I wasn’t in fact thinking that very thing. She was always cooler than me, that mom.

But then. Then! Years later in college…. I had been dragging around this darn photo for 7 years, pulling it out from under my bed when someone felt down in the dumps and needed to compare themselves to a lowlier being.

But one day, I noticed a path had been made through the 5 tons of dirty laundry on my bedroom floor. Who had been in here? What would they have possibly wanted?

Later that evening, in walks one of my roommates. A, who was dating someone on the college team that HE started to help manage. She hopped down the stairs and casually handed the photo over.

HE had signed it! And he even wrote my name on it!

Two thoughts ran through my mind:
1) I love you, A.
2) Did she mention that I look different than that 14 yr old in the photo? That I grew into my nose? That I got a cuter hair cut? That I… That I….

And right back into a 14 year old, I turned… With that same huge goofy grin.

Walking a Tight Rope

Or logs in this case.

Yesterday was yet another beautiful day in the neighborhood. We stepped outside and immediately decided to go for a hike. Nearby, even closer then our favorite state park, is a sliver of national forest. One that we had yet to explore.

So we packed up some snacks and headed out.

I like charting unfamiliar territory. That is, until we get to a spring that must be navigated by wobbly tree limbs.

Okay, so the fall down was not far. But it was too close to the beginning of our trek to justify continuing on with wet shoes & socks if I did fall.

R went first. He put his arms out and one. two. was across.

Hmph.

I can do that, I thought competitively.

But I didn’t realize I’d have to dance my way across in order to do so. Those limbs were out to get me.

(un)Luckily, R managed to catch the pas de deux with me & nature.

It quickly evolved into a dance off and thank goodness, too, because I always end up having to dance the boy part. Like when I was 8 and my mom & aunt made my cousin and me reenact the last dance scene from Dirty Dancing.

um, awkward. especially the hand down the armpit part.

I’m gonna win, you darn logs.
But first I need to stretch.
Lean, two, three, four..
and the other leg, two, three, four.

You want somma this?
How about some line dancing!
Even with one arm behind my back, I gotchew.

What did you say down there?
Speak up my man, because you ain’t seen nothing yet.

That’s right. I’m Michael Flately..
about to Riverdance yo ass!

I’ve had about enough of your lip.
This calls for some third position plie action.

Oh, no you di’int
just call your friend over to block my way.
(Lots of pushing and huffing
ensues for about 25 minutes)

But in the end, I won.
I also wore the same smile
as when I graduated Kindergarten.

And now I’m sore.