One of the best ways, I’ve found, to become intimate with a new place is to attend a festival. Any festival. Food festivals, naturally, rank #1 on my list of the most desirable festivals to seek, but art, I’d have to say, ranks a close second.
Call me crazy, but I have the sneaking suspicion that someone leaked amniotic fluids on my office chair.
Why do I think someone leaked amniotic fluids on my office chair?
It could be because I’m a woman with a surprisingly astute feminine intuition about maternity related body juices.
But probably not. You all know how I feel about babies.
Or it could be because, through years of diligently studying the field detective tactics of one Horatio Cain and his partner, Eric Who-Cares-What-My-Last-Name-Is-Have-You-Seen-My-Ass-In-Magic-Mike? on CSI Miami, I’ve honed my forensic skills to a startling level of hyper sensitivity.
But probably not. Most of the time, I have the awareness level of a sloth toked out of its mind while drooling over Johnny in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Is it just me, or does it not even really feel like the Fourth of July?
I mean — it’s the 4th. Of July. Literally. But does it feel like a holiday? Probably not, if you’re not in the U.S. And probably not if, like me, you are in the U.S. but aren’t planning any grilling/feasting/playing-with-explosives-while-consuming-large-quantities-of-fermented-beverages activities.
Fireworks make me nervous.
They’ve always made me nervous. Even as a kid. So while I won’t hesitate to rappel waterfalls in Costa Rica or jump from a Cessna Caravan soaring high above the Hawaiian Islands, the thought of setting off Black Cats and Roman Candles and spinners and even “harmless” sparklers and those little popping sperm-like things you throw on the ground that explode with a mini-fierce CRACK that really probably aren’t harmless at all because seriously — what’s “harmless” about exploding sperm? — the thought of all that makes me twitchy and paranoid and inclined to repeatedly shout things like, “Be careful!” and, “Run!” and, “I once heard about a kid who lost his entire hand from an errant Black Cat — his hand!” and other general phrases that make people who are actually enjoying the dangerous, drunken festivities want to tie my leg to a rocket bomb and set it alight, just to see what happens.
Take my word for it — there’s nothing fun about exploding sperm.
So.
Today, I’ was feeling fat.
I know women can relate. And guys, don’t tell me you’ve never left your pants unbuttoned under a baggy t-shirt.
So for dinner, I did something I’ve never done before.
I made a smoothie.
So there I was, all motivated to start writing at night and knocking out posts, and then Wednesday happened.
On Wednesday night, I had my book club meeting. Remember that?
So I went to this book club meeting at this great local Indian restaurant (because sometimes I like to pretend to be all edumucated and worldly, when really the reach of my intellectual knowledge hit a brick wall in 2007 when I graduated from college, and Indian food makes me break out in a sweat-stache).
The truth is, I’m not as smart as I’d like to be.
See that? That’s a Barbara Taylor Bradford novel in the foreground. It was mindless. And awful. And didn’t even have any good sex scenes. But I picked it up on the bookstore on a whim because I had a gift card and it looked like an easy summer read and apparently I have zero respect for the world of literature. Please don’t show this to my book club. Also, I haven’t read the Ron Paul book yet. It’s my attempt at trying to become more politically astute. But so far it’s been a very good paper weight. Also, I have very crooked ears. My wonky glasses don’t lie.
Where was I?
Oh, yes. Book club meeting. After the meeting, I followed my friend Ava to her apartment so I could pick up the Hunger Games book she’d borrowed from me and The Game of Thrones I’d intended to borrow from her.
And that’s when my would-be predictable week of takeout and Dawson’s Creek turned… not so predictable.
In her parking lot, there were lights. And confusion. And stunned onlookers holding kids and puppies and, if they were lucky, the other precious things they could grab as they fled. If they weren’t, they held only the plastic grocery bags they’d carried home, only to find that home was no longer there.
Now. I want you to imagine for a second that you live on the far side (thank God) of the 3rd floor of a building that suddenly looks, for all intents and purposes, like the shriveled ass end of a used cigarette butt — all necrotic and charred and this was its good side — the back was far worse.
I also want you to imagine that your significant other is deployed, and you have no way of reaching him save through the Red Cross who, judging by the seedy motel in a questionable side of town they offered to put you up in, may not be the most reliable avenue for getting things done.
But hey. You’re grateful for the toothbrush.
And also, imagine for a second, that you’re pregnant. (This is where it might start to get tricky for the guys. But you can do it — connect with your feminine side and imagine that womb with its resident parasite, dependent on you for its very survival. Okay, wait. That’s even hard for me, and I’m a chick.) But anyway, you’re pregnant. For the first time ever. You feel nauseated and bloated, head filled with questions about feeding and sleeping and how to raise decent little humans.
Yep, plural. Because you’re having twins.
But wait, there’s more.
A friend of yours, whose husband is also deployed and who also is pregnant, is scheduled to arrive at the local airport in T-minus 15 minutes. Just 15 minutes after you realize you may have just lost all of your worldly possessions. She’d been having baby stuff shipped to your apartment for the past few months and was planning on living with you until she found a place nearby for her family.
Imagine all of that.
Now.
What’s the first thing you would do?
Ava, who had reached the scene a few minutes before I, in her state of semi-shock and baby brain and sheer exhaustion at the thought of hassles that might lie ahead, knew exactly what she wanted to do.
I was told by an officer that she’d gone inside with the Fire Chief and that I should “stand by.”
Stand by? You took my pregnant friend inside her smoke-filled apartment? Did you notice that unmistakable pregnancy indicator known as a belly before you let her in? And did I mention she’s pregnant?
She came out a few minutes later, a look of relief on her face, hugging tightly to her chest not photo albums or her laptop or legal documents, but books.
Two of them.
Hunger Games, and The Game of Thrones.
“I got the books!” she yelled across the lot.
I laughed. It’s all you can really do in a situation like this. Thankfully, the firemen were willing to escort me back in where, with the help of an industrial sized fan and their skilled use of a flashlight, I was able to navigate the eerie haze to rescue her laptop, hard drive, some important files, and stuff my purse full of her underwear.
Hey.
It turns out you never know what you’ll deem important in life until you’re faced with the pressure of time, limited arms, and the option to choose.
The front.
The back. (Photo by Ava)
Ava, cute firemen, and reporter butt. What? A girl can look…
I picked Stefanie up from the airport while Ava got examined by the paramedics and spoke with the Red Cross, and now I have displaced roommates.
Two of them.
Five, if you count the babies.
And for 2 nights, I made them all sleep in 1 bed. But now we have another, and each our own room, and I’m actually thinking this roommate thing is kind of fun.
Loneliness, it turns out, is like sensory deprivation —
You don’t fully comprehend what you’re missing until you miss it no longer.
And for me, that’s been laughter. And company. Someone with whom to share a meal and discuss the weather and debate the realisticness (yep, I’m going with that word) of the show Army Wives.
Stefanie makes a mean curry soup.
And I’ll admit — sharing my house has been an adjustment, but I’m going to miss them when they find a new place to live.
Whaddya know?
Turns out I’m not as reclusive as I thought.
There’s hope for me yet.
Yesterday I got home from work and my lawn was mowed.
Obviously, I didn’t mow it. That’s not my job.
And Justin didn’t mow it, since I’m pretty sure his superiors in Afghanistan would consider that an excessively long lunch break.
So it must have been the scrawny, bronze tanned stoner kid I hired to do it but was fairly convinced would forget, what with all of the bong-hitting hours between the time I hired him and the time he was scheduled to mow.
What he did forget, apparently, is the fact that I showed him, told him, and texted him to be careful about not cutting the dogs’ electric fence.
Yes, I electrocute my own dogs.
But it’s only because I love them.
Wouldn’t you love faces like these?
Anyway.
So I came home yesterday to fresh-cut grass and the incessant beep of the dog detainment system, indicating a cut wire.
Not surprising.
Also, I can’t find where the wire is apparently cut, since most of it is buried.
Also not surprising.
So now I feel like the helpless girl who can’t figure out how to fix a damn fence.
This is surprising.
Because normally, given enough time, I can figure things out. I can get ‘er done. But this time, I’m stumped. And frustrated. And for someone who owns canines whose progressive learning capabilities closely resemble those of the Jurassic Park velociraptors, we could be in trouble when they realize their collars no longer beep.
So.
As satisfying as it is to do things on my own, to get my hands a little dirty, to experience the stiffness and stench after a day of manual labor, I realize.
Sometimes I just want someone to do it for me.
I think I could be happy if my hands and my office always looked like this. As long as someone else is mowing my lawn.
I know they say that money can’t buy you happiness, but I think having enough money to pay people to do stuff for me would, in fact, make me very happy indeed.
At least in the sense of immediate gratification.
And there’s nothing, as far as I can tell, wrong with immediate gratification. Like a handful of Reece’s Pieces and an angst-filled episode of Dawson’s Creek. Or a cool glass of Riesling and a book on the back deck. Or a morning jaunt with some literotica and my vibrator.
What?
Just seeing if you’re still paying attention.
My point is that satisfaction earned is not necessarily better than satisfaction bought. That, in this life, some ventures are worth our time and others are not.
It’s a first-world privilege, and I’m willing to accept it.
So.
Who do I call to fix a fence?
Where’ve you been? I hear you ask.
Well.
For lack of a simple response, let’s just say I’ve been elbows-deep in plumbing fixtures, wood stain, boxed pasta meals, and the funk of my own melancholy.
I realize, as a semi-serious blogger, that I’m supposed to be meticulously recording my daily actions, organizing the resulting mixed media, and assembling it all into some witty and coherent piece of informative evidence here on this blog.
And I have been. Recording it, that is. It’s just that whole organizing and writing part that seems to petrify me into paralysis these days.
Instead, I distract myself by taking photos of my dogs, my wine, or my food (when it doesn’t happen to involve shell shaped pasta or processed cheese) and posting them on Facebook or Instagram in the vain attempt to gain some kind of social media validation that the way I’m living my life these days is, in fact, worth while.
Suffice to say, I haven’t exactly embraced the pseudo-single life.
Though it has, despite my best intentions, managed to embrace me. In a crazy, cyclic carousel of ups and downs. Motivation and melancholy. Like the San Andreas Fault, I appear to lie dormant for a time, building up my energy, storing up my drive, and then I release it all at once in this impressive display of calamitous frenzy.
Frankly, it’s exhausting.
Both physically and emotionally.
But I do have ideas.
Lots of ideas.
They’re scattered about on yellow sticky notes and inside notebooks and on pieces of scrap paper everywhere. The key, I’ve discovered, is going to be learning how to write at night, when I have the most time. When I don’t have to be to work in 45 minutes. When, unfortunately, my flow of motivational steam has been fully depressurized by the soul-sucking realities of spending my days as an almost-30-year-old assistant.
But I’ll get there.
All I ask is that you stick with me.
It’s a process, you know.
But we’ll get through it together.
In the meantime, just take a gander at how I currently spend my evenings.
I think you’ll find that a little time spent on… I don’t know… intellectual pursuits wouldn’t hurt me.
Not one little bit.
Did you know that the song, “Build Me Up, Buttercup” always puts me in a good mood?
It doesn’t matter that my allergies have practically crudded my contact lenses to my eyelids and my husband’s in Afghanistan and the dogs have been waking me up at 5:30 every morning so they can drag me 2 miles around the neighborhood.
Ultimately, it’s The Foundations — not the sunrise over the lake or the smell of my morning coffee or any amount of caffeine — who put the spring back in my step.
Which only further proves that I was born in the wrong generation.
Technology makes me nervous, and I’m pretty sure that a poppy-seed from my bagel just got stuck inside my keyboard.
That wouldn’t have happened with a typewriter.
Of course, then this whole blog thing wouldn’t be happening either, and I’d probably be haphazardly wandering the streets of Fayetteville talking to anyone who will listen about the merits of Poo-Pourri while shoving photos of family vacations in their faces.
But instead, I get to shove them in your faces, which is much more gratifying.
So.
After our first day in Colorado was spent guzzling free alcoholic beverages at the Coors brewery, we decided we needed some culture in our lives. My mother, her boyfriend Ed, Justin and I hopped on a train that speedily dropped us in the heart of downtown Denver.
(Can I just say for a second how much I love public transportation? Seriously. My dream is to live in a city with clean, efficient public transportation — where I can jet from one place to the next without worrying where to park my car, how much it’s going to cost, or whether I might lose the drag race I just accepted with a 60-year-old man. True story.
I won.)
Just one of many modes of Denver mass transit.
Anyway.
Our first stop in the Mile High city was for food.
You know my priorities.
Justin, always the advocate for anything highlighted on the Food or Travel networks, opted for Biker Jim’s Gourmet Dogs. We were searching for their street cart at the specified location, but ended up walking several city blocks to the actual restaurant when we learned it was an off-day for the food cart. Turns out this was a wise decision, since I’m pretty sure they don’t sell beer from the food cart.
But I’ve been wrong before.
The decor is minimal and industrial, but their main food is hot dogs. What do you expect?
An interesting juxtaposition of good ol’ “Amurcan” cuisine, gourmet ingredients, and several oddities you’d be more likely to find dead on the side of the road than in Manhattan’s finest establishments make up the simple menu.
Tip: The larger the selection of food on a restaurant’s menu, the crappier it will likely be. Smaller, more selective menus are generally where you’ll find the best food.
I ordered the Weiner Wellington — an insanely delicious rib eye steak brat with mushroom duxelle and grainy Dijon cream wrapped in puff pastry and drizzled with Bordelaise. I don’t know what most of that is, but I do know this: It tasted like heaven wrapped in fluffy clouds dipped in gravy.
For $8.50, this is not the most I’ve spent on a dog, believe it or not. Nor is this the widest selection of toppings I’ve seen. But it was, my friends, the tastiest.
Take one.
Take two.
Take… *burp*
Now. I honestly can’t remember what Justin and Ed ordered. It may have been the southwest buffalo. It may have been the Wild Boar. Maybe the smoked bacon Bat Dog, with avocado puree, tomato cream cheese, caramelized onion, and bacon bits. And I know the idea of the rattlesnake and pheasant dogs were at least discussed.
But I do know they were delicious.
Pretty sure this is the Bat Dog.
And… um… boar, maybe?
But they weren’t quite as good as mine.
It was the puff pastry that sealed the deal.
If this is Denver, consider me a fan.
You know how I kind of sort of have a nasty habit of starting projects and never — ever — finishing them?
Like when I declared I was going to clean out the garage or organize my office or build storage for the master closet or decorate our bedroom?
Well.
I have news.
And try not to spit out your coffee when I tell you.
Here goes.
I’m actually making progress on two of those…
Valspar’s “Gypsy Teal”
Click photo for curtain panel source.
Click above photo for duvet cover source.
DIY Chalk Paint Dresser (tutorial coming soon)
Click above photo for reading lamp source.
Click above photo for more information about light fixture.
Closet and bedroom.
Also, I baked cookies. And I only ate like six. Or seven. The rest of these puppies are going to Afghanistan. Click photo for recipe.
Yep. That’s right. You only get the crappy Instagrammed sneak peek. Because between the painting and the decorating and the domesticating and the cold I’ve somehow managed to develop, I’m too tired and full of cookie dough to give you more.
Also, I still have some finishing touches I need to complete.
By the way — those of you all caught up in these various body cleansing diets that are currently all the rage, here’s a tip: Consuming exorbitant amounts of raw cookie dough will also do the trick.
Just so you know.
I wouldn’t say I’m a beer snob, but if you stick a can of Coors Light in front of me, I’m not going to lie — I’ll ask you to bring me a glass of water instead because it tastes the same and has far fewer calories.
Unless it’s a hot summer day and I’m craving a cold light beer to get me through a project or a giant, juicy hamburger, I’m usually going to pick a darker, heavier beer.
So when Justin said he wanted to tour the Coors Brewery while we were in Colorado, I was intrigued because I hadn’t been since before I was of legal drinking age, but also secretly wishing we could have gone to some other brewery.
Turns out, though, that this one was worth the trip.
We arrived at the complex in Golden, Colorado, parked, and waited in line for about 20 minutes before getting on a tour bus. The folks at Coors run a smooth — and free — operation. My only complaint is that the outdoor waiting area wasn’t covered, hence my first high-altitude sunburn of the trip. Our tour guide was hilarious, taking us on a quick run through downtown Golden before dropping us off outside of the brewery.
Hey, red shirt guy. Get out of my shot.
Since the last time I was there, they turned the brewery part into a self-guided tour. The nice thing was that we could meander as we pleased, listening to our little self-guided tour speakers. Coors also had stations set up throughout the walk where employees could answer any questions we might have.
Of course, I don’t remember anything I heard through the speaker, so let’s just look at the pictures, shall we?
I have no idea who this woman is. But she wouldn’t move, so I took the picture anyway. She happens to be pointing to the label of what I’ve since discovered is a very awesome beer.
The infamous copper kettles. All I remember is that there were a lot of them, and you could determine the various purposes of each by looking at the size of the shaft. (Ha!) Also, the big red signs.
We’ll call this Mission Control. I’m pretty sure that guy was watching football. Or porn. Or both.
Hmm… how does one test the quality of beer?
By drinking it, I imagine.
About halfway through the tour we came upon the Fresh Beer Room, where we were able to sample exceedingly fresh Coors or Coors Light, straight from the source.
I’ll admit it was tasty, fresh as it was, but it was still just Coors.
One of the coolest parts was the packaging room. The maze of conveyor belts, gears, and complicated looking machinery had us mesmerized for several minutes. Waaaay up high in the back, we could see cans coming in. Then stuff would happen and suddenly they’d be in boxes.
Crazy.
By this point we were getting antsy and ready for the final stop of the tour — the bar.
The coolest part about the entire experience, aside from seeing that it’s actual people — not elves — who are responsible for putting beer in my fridge, was the fact that everything was free. Including 3 pints each of our choice at the end of the tour.
The Colorado Native was good, but the Batch 19 was phenomenal.
Couple of Batch 19s.
I asked the bartender how they manage to keep the locals from stopping in every day for some free beers, and he said that they don’t! Guests are limited to one visit per day, and he said there are students from the Colorado School of Mines who show up daily.
Daily.
Dude. I totally went to the wrong college.