on the road again

From exit 312 in Nebraska, I report that my sister and I are making our way across the country in a little grey Saturn. It's packed with my life belongings. We just stopped at a Dollar Store for sunglasses and cds (broken lighter means no ipod). The selections? Dance party, Johnny Cash and Best of blue grass. Beach Boys were a close second.

Iowa or bust!

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Last night in Denver

Well, the bags are packed. My walls are bare. I made the rounds to say Goodbye to friends. I did my favorite runs. I ate at my favorite restaurants. I picked up my sister from the airport, who kindly came to take part in Road Trip II (woo!). Off to sleep I go, the fountain trickling in the background, for one last night in Denver. New, exciting adventures begin tomorrow.

Good night, Denver.

Boulder

In Boulder for dinner. So far a shoeless hippie is softly playing guitar on the park bench, I heard someone say "Wow, I think it's fate that brought us together tonight" and even the squirrels are super skinny. Oh, Boulder, you hyper-fit, hippie-town, you!

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Wash park workout

Choose your own adventure! This is a post about running. If don't give two hoots about running, choose "back browser." If you're peeing-your-pants excited to hear about my workout this morning, scroll down.

This morning Alex and I met at the track at 7 and found it locked. Thankfully, she knows and has a GPS watch, so we knew we could do the same workout on the pavement loop in the park. Not exactly ticking off each flat 400, but we would know each mile and our pace. So! We picked up another runner friend who we happened to pass on our warmup, and the three of us did a killer workout:

2 x 2 mile

warm up
2 mile - 13:19 (6:45, 6:34)
2 mile - 13:22 (6:42, 6:40)
warm down

Felt great. I'm pleased. And probably going to be sore tomorrow.

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I watched some friends run a half marathon at 6 a.m. on Sunday morning in snow-turned-rain. Impressive!


This is the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs.


Talking the talk and walking the walk. I'm not sure if you can tell, but there is a sign on the truck that says "Two women in a truck" and has flowers in the back of a baby blue truck. Indeed, there are two women in this baby blue truck with flowers in the back. I snapped the photo at a red light.


It's been quite rainy and the worms have been out in full force. Here's one crossing a major traverse on the sidewalk.

A life size rock garden for people to play/relax in. The rake to make soothing patterns is a garden rake.


Um, this is adorable.


Flowers I received in celebration of my graduation from law and graduate school. Capecodchica, J.D., M.A.

Graduation Day

Graduation day doesn't feel so great. It feels like I wish I knew I had passing grades in my classes, like I have a huge amount of debt, like I have no job, like I still can't sleep at night, and like I'm the only single person on earth.

Rememory

Here I sit, one week after I finished my last law school exam. I left it shaking so hard that my fingers dialed "Mo" instead of "Mom." Convinced I failed and just so disappointed that yet again I felt unprepared for the questions I was pressed to answer, I sobbed to my poor mom over the phone. I'm sure she's had many sleepless nights worrying about me these past few years. I've since calmed down a bit, or maybe I just succumbed to helpless apathy. Anything is possible at this school, with these professors (or so it seems), so I know I won't fall asleep easily until I see passing grades posted online.

I've spent the week feeling a new kind of antsy insecurity. What am I supposed to be doing now, now that I've committed to giving myself two weeks off from the job search and I literally have nothing to do. What are all the other people doing on a trail run at 10 a.m. on a Monday? Why is there traffic at approximately 11:30 a.m.? Who are all these people having white wine spritzers with a 2:30 p.m. lunch? After told firmly by a friend, "You're being too hard on yourself. Give yourself a break." I think I am finally starting to unwind. I know it'll take me months to fully unwind. My goal: to have someone tell me (as they used to!) that I'm really laid back. Can you imagine?

Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.
I plan my days around a run. I stop at the grocery store almost every day to get ingredients for a meal I decide to make an hour before I get hungry. I sit in my chair and listen to my favorite news radio show every afternoon at 2 p.m. It took me a good six days before I even wanted - or had the attention span - to read the newspaper. I go for walks listening to my "quiet" mix every evening. I sneak a beer into the park to enjoy while watching the sunset. I watch the whole sunset.

I think it will take me a long time to find myself and to gain back my confidence and energy. I don't just feel burned out, I feel beat up. I feel like I lost myself somewhere in the last there years. I forgot simple things, like that I am not a boring person and I can laugh. Fortunately, human coping mechanisms are amazing. I'll get back to the point where I believe other people when they tell me I am smart. I already find that I've forgotten just how miserable I have felt because my coping mechanisms tend to block out the horrible and only remember the good. In eager anticipation of wakeless nights, I suppress all traumatic rememory and welcome any healing retelling of the story of Who I Am.*

* "Rememory" is a term that Toni Morrison made up in her book, Beloved. It is a kind of psychic haunting in which the specifics of a traumatic incident are told and retold, even as the teller tries to block their full emergence into the conscious mind. Through compulsive repetition, one's narrative is constantly being both torn apart and reconstituted. Memories are constantly being both exhumed and buried, and the mind of the storyteller is both imprisoned and set free in the act of retelling. Rememory is both a reconciliation and a vexation, both a healing and a wounding. Read the book or see more here.

Garden of the Gods

This morning I drove down to Colorado Springs (about 1 1/2 hours south of Denver) to do a trail run at Garden of the Gods. When I arrived in CoSp, it was foggy, grey, and 41 degrees. I had been expecting 70s and sunny, as the news told me! I got another cup of coffee and a paper and waited it out until the fog burned off. Then I got my 70s and sunny weather.

Garden of the Gods is a park with red, blue, purple, and white ancient sediments of sandstones, conglomerates and limestone that were deposited horizontally, but now tilt vertically after being faulted by the same forces that caused Pikes Peak mountain. You can see many fossils in the rock: marine forms, plant fossils, and some dinosaur fossils. Some of the strange rock formations are up to several hundred feet long and the tallest is 320 feet high. Check out them rocks:




The trail run I did ended up being 1 hour 20 minutes of running around the park, not including time stopped to snap some photos, read the map, and wait for horseback riders to pass. I had a great time! Running was a really fun way to see the park and to get on some trails that were fantastic and empty. It seemed like most people drove the road loop around the rock formations, getting out of their car at numerous parking lots. These photos are just the scenic trial. Enjoy!

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A tea candle whose flame escapes the lens.


These are weird red rock formations just west of Denver right along the front range.


I'm jealous of how much this cat can stretch: teach me your ways, master.


This is a goodbye photo of the girls at breakfast before we all part ways - sadly, not just for summer, but for indefinite.

I believe this is the first time I've ever seen silver-lined roses, which Gracie got for her 30th birthday.


A Greek-like structure, a sage of a tree coming alive for yet another spring, and a park bench underneath it. I like Cheesman Park.


Oh, and what a fresh blood orange it was!

Beauty

Oh my gosh, this is just the most mesmerizing, calming piece of art --

Thought of You.

Music: The Weepies, The World Spins Madly On

Disturbing

Reports are that 50 women are raped each hour in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Cali

I love Cali. No, no, not that Cali (been there, done that). I love this CALI.

And once it's all over (in two days!), I will be like this. Sort of, anyway. Maybe I'll be a less crude, more mature, girl version of it. In any event, it's keeping me amused during the studying. I really like the dance moves around 2:10. And, props to Bruno for working "snuggie" into the lyrics. My new goal: work "snuggie" into Evidence final exam.

No fight left

I am having such a hard time just finishing it up. Every day drags on, my studying is ever-more passive, and I'm sleeping (well, trying, anyway) more to avoid studying. It's not that I don't care. Believe me, I care. I care a whole lot whether I pass my last exam. I am even motivated to study. I understand it's my job and that's what should fill my day. I've cleared my schedule more than it has been since my bike trip. It seems I lack focus and, specifically, I just lack the energy to fight hard. The night before my exam a few days ago, I went for a walk and got ice cream. No studying. No dire need to sleep a lot. No extra tabbing or printed outline. No driving to school for silence and assured internet. I just don't have the energy for it anymore.

Back to my three days of studying. The exam is Thursday morning. After that, freedom/anxiety -- until grades come out.

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I was on a bridge in beautiful Vail.


I love these flowers.


I was trying to catch the coffee-cream swirl. I think I see my reflection in the glass, unless the coffee swirl mimicked me!


Wa, wa waaa. I got a ticket because I didn't renew my license (because I didn't register my new address, so my renewal sticker went to my old address).


I have been cooking/eating at home a lot. Here's a photo of my dinner the other day.


This is the mess from our study session the other night.


I was sweltering the other day so I thought I'd check the weather. Wowzers, no wonder I was hot!

No wonder

No wonder I'm stinking hot. It's 85.1 degrees outside.

Ah, spring swells into summer.

Joan Didion's essay, "On Self Respect", is an excellent read.

You can find it here.

Some nibbles to entice you:

"The dismal fact is that self-respect has nothing to do with the approval of others – who we are, after all, deceived easily enough; has nothing to do with reputation, which, as Rhett Butler told Scarlett O’Hara, is something people with courage can do without."

"In brief, people with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of mortal nerve; they display what was once called character, a quality which, although approved in the abstract, sometimes loses ground to other, more instantly negotiable virtues."

"To have that sense of one’s intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference."

"To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves – there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect."

repeat miles

Picture this:

6 a.m.
South High School, new track.

Jog there and chat during a few warm up laps.
1 mile - 6:41
(600 jog)
1 mile - 6:40
(600 jog)
1 mile - 6:38
(600 jog)
1 mile - 6:43
Jog back to school gym.

Great 8 mile workout!

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project365

I made pizza with some friends on Sunday night.


I had a busy Monday with missed phone calls, voice messages, text messages and e-mails.


And this, my friends, is what keeps me awake at night.


The view from my school.


My friends from college were in town for a wedding we went to in Vail. This is one of them sleeping in my closet.


A beautiful sunset in Vail.



The wedding in Vail was incredibly beautiful with the snowy mountain backdrop. Poor thing, though, it was about 20 degrees and snowing (yet somehow sunny, too).