Getting Lost in Wyoming

A few weeks after graduating college, in the summer of 2003, I was chosen to travel around the Midwest with two complete strangers to teach peace, justice, and environmental issues to youth campers.  We were called the Youth Peace Travel Team, and those two strangers became two of my dearest friends.  Mandy, Laura, and I shared and created so many fond memories together, that I could probably write a book on that summer.  I’ve been wanting to blog about my adventures as a Peace Team member for a while now, but I’ve always struggled with how to do it.  Each week was a new adventure in itself, and some of the funniest moments were just that: moments.  Not enough to be stretched out into a blog entry.

The experience is too great not to write about, so I’m going to start with a few days we spent in Wyoming.  I know, I know.  I said we traveled the Midwest, and that’s mostly true, but there was a 2-week stretch where we set out from Elgin, Illinois to spend a week in Boise, Idaho, and then drove back to Milford, Indiana.  So anyway, back to Wyoming.

Driving from Illinois to Idaho, we made a few stops with families who volunteered to host us with dinners and a place to sleep.  This was before the days of GPS or smart phones, so our only guidance between addresses was a print out of MapQuest directions and an atlas of the states.  We were unable to find our Wyoming destination due to major road construction and detours, and we weren’t able to get in touch with the host family for help.  We decided to follow the highway towards Boise and just find a motel, but the road was lacking in human settlement and dusk was quickly approaching.  We finally came across what looked to be an abandoned inn, so we decided to check it out in the hopes that someone was there. 

We were in luck.  Down the hill behind the closed up inn was the home of Dirk and Tammy, along with their kid Stephen and their two dogs.  Dirk explained to us that he owned the building and was fixing it up to use as a business someday.  He invited us to use his vast amount of land behind the inn to rest for the night, and seeing as he had a whole family, it felt safe, and we decided to stay.  A stream ran through the back of his property, and near the stream, was a campfire pit, a picnic table, and our very own port-a-potty.  We thanked him, and drove our little Toyota Echo down to the area where we would sleep under the stars.

Stephen stayed down by our campsite with his dogs milking as much attention as we would give him while his dad helped arrange our area.  I imagine the boy yearned for companionship since he was living on a piece of land in the middle of nowhere.  The poor kid looked like a mangy mountain boy, but he was sweet, if not weird, and we accepted his company. 

Before it got dark, Dirk wanted to get us a fire going to keep us warm through the night.  Instead of kindling, he doused the wood with practically a whole bottle of lighter fluid.  As we spent the next 20 minutes watching the ten foot tall fireball burn down, all us girls could think about was how the environmentally aware Peace Team just contributed a massive amount of pollution to our air.

Regardless of how the fire got started, it did keep us warm as we stayed up talking through the night.  Or maybe our warmth was mostly contributed to the alcoholic lemonade we consumed.  All I know is that we fell fast asleep warm and cozy in our sleeping bags surrounding the fire, and woke up at the butt crack of dawn freezing our asses off!  When my attempts of holding in warmth by remaining in the fetal position began to fail me, and I couldn’t force myself to sleep through the cold any longer, I peeked my head outside of my sleeping bag to discover a fine layer of frost covering our sleeping bags and pillows. 

With numb fingers, we scribbled a thank you note, haphazardly threw our damp, frozen belongings into the car and drove off with the heater on full force.  Miles down the road, and still shivering, we saw this posh looking hotel ahead of us.  We decided we would pull in and beg them to let us have a cup of coffee to warm up.  The receptionist heard our story, and let us in to the dining area free of charge and without hesitation. 

We filled our cups with steaming hot coffee, thanked the receptionist, and continued on our drive.  As we rounded the mountain away from the hotel, we could see the Grand Tetons ahead of us, with the first rays of sun shining just right upon them.  It was one of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen, and one I will never forget.  If not for getting lost and sleeping on some random piece of land in the mountains of Wyoming, we never would have been able to experience that exact moment. 

Gotta love how life works out sometimes. 

From the back of Dirk's property looking up at his inn that sits off the highway.

Mandy and me playing with Stephen and the dogs.

Laura-warm and naive to the cold that will attack her later.

This picture (taken by a disposable camera) will never do the sight justice, but it gives you an idea of what we saw      

Drink Water At Your Own Risk

“For someone with no sense of taste, you have a lot of opinions on water.”

Kevin told me that a while back, and he’s absolutely right.  As you all know, I would rather remain parched than fill up a cup with water.  But on those rare occasions that I do partake in the liquid that gives me life, I tend to be picky.  I pretty much hate the taste of bottled water, but if I have to grab a bottle to go, I usually choose Arrowhead.  Most people that drink bottled water regularly tend to despise Arrowhead, and I think it’s because it tastes like tap water—which I personally like.  Tap water is free, as tasty as water can be to me, and is better for the environment than plastic bottles.  But don’t think I just turn on the tap and start drinking.  No.  My other demand for drinking water is that it be ice cold.  I’m talking about a minimum of four ice cubes per 8 ounces of water.  If it’s warmer than that, it burns my throat.

That said, a few months ago, as I was getting out of bed, I pinched a nerve in my back.  (I guess this is the sort of stuff that happens when you’re in your 30’s.)  In any case, it hurt tremendously, and I could barely move.  Internet research said to drink tons of water throughout the day.  Fortunately, Greg was home with me, and he gladly filled my reusable purple bottle with large amounts of ice and water.

In less than an hour’s time, I had finished 66 ounces of ice-cold water. (FYI: 64 oz is the daily recommendation, so I was feeling very proud of myself.)  While finishing my last gulps, I noticed that I was getting cold, but didn’t think much of it.  When I got up to smugly show Greg my empty bottle, I began to realize that I was extremely cold.  I decided I would quickly use the restroom to pee out the toxins this water was supposedly washing out of me, and then sit myself back down on the couch under a warm blanket.  While washing my hands, I noticed that my fingernails were so purple that it almost looked like I was wearing nail polish.  Looking up at myself in the mirror, it was clear that my lips matched my nails.  That’s when my teeth began chattering uncontrollably…something I thought was only done in cartoons and the movies.

I suddenly realized that I had given myself hypothermia by drinking water!!

But don’t worry; I survived.  Greg quickly got me wrapped up in thicker blankets and immediately made me a giant cup of hot tea, which totally defrosted me by the time I finished drinking it.  For the rest of that day, I swore off stupid water and stuck with tea--which I found to be an absolutely wonderful alternative.    

While I feel I usually have to defend my motives for not drinking water, hypothermia is no joke.  I’d say I have a valid reason now.  I mean, why would I want to risk my life over something as horrible as water?  It’s not worth it when there’s perfectly good orange juice in the fridge.

Quirky Blogger

“Most bloggers are emotionally unstable and are often awkward in social situations, which is why so many of us turned to blogging in the first place.” –Jenny Lawson Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

While I don’t believe I’m emotionally unstable, I do attest to being quirky (the nice word for weird) and slightly uncomfortable in social situations; especially with people I don’t know well.  So yes, I couldn’t help but laugh and kind of relate as I read that line last night. 

I totally turned to blogging because I have stories I want to share, but I hate telling long stories in front of people.  Besides the fact that I turn beet red and start stumbling over words whenever I notice undivided attention turned on me, I also tend to get cut off every time I begin talking, and I immediately assume it’s because people aren’t interested in what I have to say (part of my very mild self-diagnosed OCD that I’ll get to soon).  When I’m in a big group of people, once I get cut off, I can usually just trail off and am luckily forgotten about.  But if I’m one-on-one and get cut off, I feel like I need to follow through with what I began, so I’ll usually just cut to the chase, leaving out all the entertaining parts and ending with a lame ass story that not even I was interested in hearing, which then leaves me blushing and ashamed that I opened my mouth again. 

Like I mentioned earlier, I’m pretty sure I have a very mild case of OCD.  If anyone else got cut off while talking, they’d brush it aside and continue on with their story or leave their tale for another day.  But not me.  I sit there thinking how dumb I was to have even started talking, and put myself down for even thinking people would want to listen to what I have to say.  I begin to wonder if others are secretly laughing at me and privately glad that I was shut up.  I seriously obsess about this for the next minute or so, completely ignoring the other conversation around me, but putting on a fake smile and nod so that I can hopefully fit in while I calm my ass down.  That’s the tip of the iceberg to my social awkwardness, and the showcase to my quirkiness.

When I was a kid, my hands always had to be equal; and a lot of the times, this equality revolved around the staircase in my house.  If my right hand lightly slapped the banister, my left hand had to slap it as well.  Sometimes, I’d even go back up the few stairs so that I could hit the banister in the approximate same place.  We also had a light switch at the top and foot of our stairs that controlled the same overhead light.  If I flipped the switch upstairs, then I had to flip it downstairs with my opposite hand.  This worked well if the light was off, because ultimately, the light would end up off again.  It led to issues when the light was on, however.  I would flip the switch off upstairs, then switch it back on downstairs, which would leave me with a sense of guilt for leaving a light on in an area I wasn’t going to be in, so I’d flip that same switch back off (with the opposite hand of course), then be left with two uncomfortable options: leave the light alone and walk away with my other hand feeling left out, or let equality prevail at the expense of running electricity.  I usually chose the latter; assuming one of my brothers would save the world’s energy problem for me.

For some reason, I grew out of that; maybe it was moving out of the house for college.  Nowadays, my OCD is mostly manifested in my placement of objects.  If an array of items is in front of me, I’ll usually line them up neat and tidy.  Everything on the desk of my classroom had a specific place that I would fix constantly throughout the day.  Just last week, as I was eating a clam dinner, Greg noticed me carefully stacking my empty shells off to the side of my plate.  After he knocked them over, I wanted to stack them back up, but instead, I stubbornly settled on making the fallen towers more spread out equally across my plate.  One of the shells that used to be on top was sadly layered by another shell, and as much as I told myself to let it go, I had to pinch it from the bottom of the plate and set it delicately on the top: it’s rightful place among it’s fellow shells.

I’ve been delighted reading the above-mentioned book, and pouring over her blog.  Jenny Lawson has not only given me the renewed energy I needed to get my own blog up and running again, but she’s validated the reasons I write, and makes me feel not so alone in my weirdness.  I actually feel pretty normal compared to her, though after this entry, many of you might disagree. 

Anyone can whistle, that's what they say--easy

I had fun at my voice lesson today.  Those are words I never thought I would say. 

For those of you who don’t know, I’m taking a beginner’s voice class at my local community college in order to satisfy my last requirement to earn my Music Supplement to my teaching credential.  Learning, and trying to master my singing voice never held a shred of interest to me.  The thought of taking a voice class seemed absolutely terrifying, so when I discovered that there was no way to get my supplement without it, I made Kevin take it with me.

I left each of the first three class sessions knowing in my heart that I would never come back.  I even thanked Kevin for trying with me, but told him I would understand if he wanted out.  I just could not see myself actually singing to my classmates at the front of the classroom, not to mention singing solo in the concert hall for three recitals.  Nope, there was no way I would do it.  That is, until I heard others sing.

Most of the students in my class could hold a decent tone; but no one was amazing.  Some people sang soft or pitchy, and others were just flat out bad.  If anything, I knew I wouldn’t be the worst singer in the class. 

A friend I met during my Peace Team adventure back in ‘03 nicknamed me “Horse Whisperer” because while goofing off and singing out of a hymnal book we’d found, she noticed that although I was whispering out my songs, I was actually singing pretty well.  I never took her compliment to heart until I entered this class.  I started thinking that maybe her words were more than just a friendly opinion, since I knew I could sing better than a handful of the kids in my class.

The first day that I bit the bullet and sang in front of my peers, I was shaking so much I thought for sure everyone could hear it in my voice.  However, I was told that I sounded good, I got some decent feedback from my teacher, and most importantly, once I was done, I felt relieved because I knew without a doubt that I would be able to handle the rest of the semester.

The class sessions have since become enjoyable for me, and I’m learning more about my voice and pushing it to places that I never thought it could go.  I’m also finding it easier and easier to sing in front of my class.  While the nerves will never dissipate completely, I don’t let them fill me with terror like they used to.  I’ve already sung successfully in one recital, and my second recital will be on Monday.  After today’s individual voice lesson, I’m feeling confident, prepared, and actually eager to sing.  Who would’ve thought? 

There Was a Time

***I wrote this very short story as a coping tool to help process my current thoughts and feelings.  Keep in mind that I never write stories.  Ever.  This one just wouldn’t leave my brain, so I quickly typed it out this morning.  Having no creative writing background, I have no intention of editing or expanding on it.  Being that it’s a form of writing, and it’s been a while since I updated my blog, I figured I’d just share it here, rather than keep it tucked away in my computer files.***    

“Gee, my husband is old,” she muttered aloud to no one in particular.

She briefly wondered when time had slipped past them, but let that thought drift as she decidedly focused on their current situation.  One of them was going to need to get a job soon.  Bills don’t pay themselves.

Why did she stop working anyway? 

Light footsteps, and hushed chattering from the other room interrupted her thoughts.  Someone else is here!  As in response to her curiosity, her grandson appeared in the doorway.

Oh, she loved her grandchildren so much!  They all turned into such wonderful young adults.  He gently gave her a kiss and took a seat to her left.  The small talk they shared brightened up her dreary afternoon.

When the conversation lulled, she took a moment to gaze off in silent reflection.  Suddenly, she remembered that she hadn’t spoken to her mother in quite some time.  She really should call her before the day ended.

Looking for the phone, she glanced to her right and noticed her husband lazily napping the day away.

Shaking her head, still searching for the phone, and musing over her husband’s sudden aging, she turned her head leftward.

Noticing a young man sitting in the worn armchair beside her, she uttered to him, "Gee, my husband is old."

Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder

…and society’s “beholders” can be pretty tough.

My eighteen-year-old cousin got Botox in her forehead.  EIGHTEEN!!!  The two, small, horizontal lines that she was looking to erase were hardly visible, yet, someone made it a point to let her know that they could see those lines and that they were unflattering.  This sickens and saddens me. 

First off, my cousin is smart and naturally gorgeous: the whole package.  I never even noticed the faint lines on her forehead; quite unlike the six, very noticeable, lines that have ran across mine since I was a child.  And secondly, how dare someone cut into her self-esteem by suggesting that her worth is in her appearance!  I am in no way upset at my cousin, but I do hold harsh feelings toward the unknown person(s) who made my little cousin feel self-conscious and subpar due to natural skin creasing! 

Society’s air brushed advertisements have already made our ideal looks unattainable.  We don’t need people we know to point out, what they see, as flaws.  My ex-boyfriend used to tell me that I needed to start wearing makeup more often, and that my jeans and t-shirt look should be varied with more skirts and blouses—and no, my hippie skirts did not count.  It begrudges me to admit it, but to this day, I do not feel pretty walking out the door without at least a little mascara on my lashes due to those past conversations.  Please do not think that I am digging for compliments, because I’m not.  I have enough confidence to know that I am, indeed, a beautiful person.  In fact, I snagged my current, handsome boyfriend wearing loose jeans, a t-shirt, and my usual “barely there” eye makeup, so I can’t be that bad.

I don’t know too many people who can truly say that they are one hundred percent satisfied with their appearance, and I don’t think that they need to be.  There is nothing wrong with striving for a healthy lifestyle or wanting to try new looks with makeup and hair.  All I’m saying is that society needs to back off of people’s natural looks.  Yeah, I’m starting to tug at the crow’s feet by my eyes, but I don’t need anyone else pointing them out for me!  I understand that my body is going to change, and I can’t say that I won’t try “age defying” creams as I get older, but at least I can be at peace knowing that my friends and family will always love me no matter how I look, because inside, I am a friendly and caring person. 

Words hurt.  Keep unkind thoughts and opinions to yourself.  Learn to love yourself more and more.

New year.  New thoughts.  New challenges.  You up for it?

Got Milk?

Living on campus while attending college forced me to overcome my shyness and opened me up to a ton of new experiences.  Dorm life, in itself, was a separate way of living that I still fondly look back on.  When I wasn’t in class, I was at the dorms either walking up and down the hall looking for friends, or sitting on my bed with the door open waiting for friends to find me.  Once a few of us would gather, we’d come up with ways to entertain ourselves.  While blaring and singing Wheatus’s rendition of “A Little Respect” at the top of our lungs (and I mean TOP OF OUR LUNGS) was a fun way to pass time, it did get tiring on the throat, and other alternatives were needed. 

One such alternative was The Gallon Milk Challenge.  I was hanging out with Delarie, Denisse, and Chrissy one day during my junior year, and somehow, the conversation turned to a fact someone had heard:  it was impossible to drink a gallon of milk in an hour.  Being the overoptimistic college students we were, we felt we could easily prove that theory wrong.  Seriously, how hard could it be to drink a gallon of milk?

We packed into my van to buy 4 gallons of milk and a jar of peanut butter to keep our quench going throughout our endeavor.  Upon returning, and clothed in comfy pajama pants (aka regular college attire), we sat circled around the peanut butter in Chrissy’s room, having a great time, and quickly downing that milk.  We were having so much fun and were so confident of our success, that we used my mini polaroid camera to take pictures of ourselves chugging our ice cold gallons.  I can’t remember how far we got, or who was able to drink the most, but after at least finishing half our gallons, we were way too full and our tummies not too happy. 

Soon enough, most (if not all) of us had to traverse across the hall to the restroom where we stood stall-to-stall puking every last bit of our milk into those toilets.  I, for one, was amused and laughing in between vomits because the milk was still cold!!  In case you’ve never had the opportunity, puking up cold liquids is actually not so horrible.

So, lesson learned, we never tried that again.  However, I can’t help but still be curious if anyone has ever been able to achieve such a feat.  If you’re up for the challenge and accomplish it, lemme know, yeah?