Seattle Seahawks and a sprained ankle

            The premise of this blog is to talk about my dog and running, and I realize that I have done neither of those things in the past few posts.  However, I feel that to understand where Lucy, my running career, and I are today, I need to take a few bird walks.  If you are truly dedicated to hearing only about Lucy or only about running, feel free to take a break from me and the blog for a bit.  I’ll get back to it soon, I promise.

I often state the fact that everything in life happens for a reason.  Maya happened for a reason and Lucy happened for a reason.  NYC happened for a reason, and Seattle is still working its way into its reason.  But I have yet to come up with a legitimate reason for why, in November 2008, the powers that be up above decided I needed to sprain my ankle.  Maybe the reason is hidden somewhere I can’t see it.  Maybe I needed to sprain my ankle in order to avoid something else awful that may have happened to me otherwise.  Maybe I needed to sprain my ankle so that I would suck it up and put a last ditch effort into training my crazy dog.  Who knows?  But here’s the story anyways…if you by any chance deduce some sort of reason behind the struggle, please let me know.

            In the ‘08-‘09 football season, the Seattle Seahawks sucked.  This is not to say that they don’t still or haven’t since, but that season they seemed especially bad.  So bad in fact, that tickets to games could be obtained for less than $50 on craigslist.  I was never a football fan—or any pro sports fan for that matter.  I had never been to a single pro anything game, but that season my Boxcar friends and I went to at least 5 or 6 games at Qwest Field.  Part of the Boxcar clan had season tickets and set up a tailgate under the Alaskan Way Viaduct near the stadium before every game.  It was easy to grab a set of tickets off craigslist the day before the game and stumble down to the stadium early Sunday morning.  The craziness of a pro football game was new and exciting to me.  I couldn’t get enough.  I remember the pre-game tailgating to be the best part of the game, and often our group wouldn’t actually make it into the stadium until the end of the 1^st quarter, and sometimes well into the 2^nd.  I don’t need to go into the details of all of the games we went to that year.  They all kind of blend together anyways.  If you’ve ever been to a football game, you probably know.  And if you haven’t, try to make it to at least one in your lifetime.  They’re pretty fun. 

            It was at one of these Seahawks games that I sprained my ankle.  I remember it was sometime after Halloween, but sometime before mid November.  I don’t remember who tailgated with us that day.  I don’t know who the away team was.  I don’t know where our seats were.  I have no idea who won the game.  But I do remember spraining my ankle.  Clear as day. 

            I remember leaving the stadium with Sierra, her boyfriend at the time, and his best friend.  I remember walking down the street, Sierra and her boyfriend in front of me.  The best friend and I were walking next to each other, talking (about what, I don’t know).  I remember getting to the corner, stopping in the massive crowd of people waiting to cross the street.  I remember the exact corner.  I get flashbacks every time I drive by.  I remember turning to the best friend to make a comment as the light changed and the crowd walked across the street.  I remember taking a few steps forward, and then I remember being in the gutter and feeling a blinding, mind-numbing pain.  And then I don’t remember anything else until we got to the emergency room.

            You may think I’m a wuss.  I know there are things in life much more painful than spraining an ankle.  But I have never felt them before.  I never broke any bones as a child, I’ve never given birth, I’ve never even had stitches.  My worst injury as a child was in 7^th grade when I did a cartwheel on the balance beam and instead of landing on the beam, I landed flat footed on the ground that lay 4 feet below.  Instead of my knee giving way and bending forward as it should have when the full weight of my body was propelled along the length of my left leg and into my foot, my knee gave way in the opposite direction, hyperextending it.  I remember this being pretty painful, but I remember being more excited that my hot, blonde, and muscular gymnastics coach carried me like a knight in shining armor all the way through the high school to the physical therapist’s room.  I was on crutches for a weekend.  I consider myself very lucky that this is the worst thing that has ever befallen me.

            When I sprained my ankle, it was the worst pain I had ever felt.  After twisting my ankle on the curb that was obviously a little closer than I had thought it was, memory finally picks up in the hospital—apparently I was too blinded by pain and tears to remember the taxi ride we took to the hospital or how they got me into the hospital.  I know I certainly didn’t walk myself in.  I remember sitting on the x-ray table, wincing every time they touched me.  As I sat there, I’d feel fine for a minute until suddenly I’d feel a new wave of pain and the tears would start pouring again.  Sierra and her boyfriend sat there with me the whole time, trying their best to make me laugh.

            What I remember most about the whole thing though, was how weird it felt to cry like that.  I’m not a crier.  As weird as it may sound while I expose my life story to the world, I’m not someone who is particularly good at expressing vulnerable emotions.  I don’t like people feeling sorry for me.  I don’t like people knowing that I’m hurting and I certainly don’t like people seeing me cry.  I like to be viewed as a strong, independent person, and crying spoils that façade.  Before I sprained my ankle, the last time I remembered crying that hard was when my dad took me to the dog shelter to give my childhood dog away before I went to college (which is a whole other story).  Before that, I don’t remember crying that hard, ever.

            As I sat on the examining table, eyes puffy and red, bursts of tears continuing uncontrolled, I remember thinking, wow, it kind of feels good to do this.  I liked the puffy, itchy eye feeling.  It made me feel like I’d just expelled a lot of crappy things out of my body that didn’t belong.  I liked the sensation of the tears streaming down my cheeks, salty drips landing in the corners of my mouth.  I like the polka dots of dampness the tears left on my sweatshirt.  It felt like I’d just cried everything out that had been sitting in my body waiting to be cried out since I was in middle school.  The heartbreak of my first crush.  The sadness of losing a good friend.  The painful struggle of being shy and uneasy about myself in high school.  The heartbreak of my first boyfriend.  The heartbreak of all the boys that never became the person I wanted them to be.  The frustration of NYC.  The anger of my situation at my job my first two years of teaching in Brooklyn.  The fear I had of adjusting successfully in a new city.  It all came out. 

            And there it is!  I found my reason.  Maybe the powers that be up above wanted to teach me how to cry.  It was a pretty painful, forceful lesson, but it made a chip in the shield of armor I’d formed around my tear ducts.  Since then, I’ve cried quite a few more times.  This doesn’t mean I’m sadder than I used to be.  The opposite is true.  But, I’ve learned the value of a good cry.  Whether it’s over a heartfelt TV show, over a sad movie, over a heartbreak, over the loss of a family pet, or the ultimate acknowledgement of a long past disappointment, I have no problem letting myself cry now when the tears want to come.  I’m still not even close to 100% comfortable crying in public, but I’m much closer. 

            From now on I can say that spraining my ankle happened for a reason.  Spraining my ankle taught me how to enjoy a good cry.  And everyone should know how to do that.

Only an HLM will proudly photograph you
and force you to smile in your misery.

         

P.S. If by any chance you’ve noticed that purple widget up at the top of my blog on the right and haven’t clicked on it yet, please do!  I’m raising money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society as I train for my third marathon and I want to get $1000 in the bank for them by March 1^st.  Help me and donate to this great cause!

Oh those Boxcar days

            In order to help you understand my first 2 years in Seattle, I must tell you about the Boxcar (otherwise known as the Box).  The Boxcar is a bar at the base of the first hill in Magnolia, right next to the train tracks and very close to Fisherman’s Terminal.  It is inhabited by the residents of the apartment cities that populate the face of the first hill.  There are also the occasional dirty fishermen who come off the fishing boats and in for a few drinks. 

The Boxcar is not like any other bar in Seattle.  It is an entity in and of itself, mainly because of its location.  As I mentioned in my Snowmaggedon post, Magnolia is a secluded neighborhood.  There are only 3 ways in and out of the large peninsula, and most of Seattle has never been there before.  People only come to Magnolia if they know someone who lives there, and even then it’s hard to convince visitors to make the “trek.”  Living in Magnolia was like being in college, living on campus, rarely venturing out, just partying with the people you live with.  Except instead of going to school, most of us had jobs.

The Boxcar is a bar that survives on its neighborhood regulars.  No one who lives in Ballard or Queen Anne or any of the other surrounding Seattle neighborhoods would just randomly suggest to their friends, “hey, let’s go to the Boxcar tonight!” like they would with bars in other neighborhoods.  It is, pardon my French, a shithole of a bar.  Until recently, it had old carpet stained with bars stains as old as the bar.  It has a fully stocked bar and a small kitchen that produces decent enough food.  There are plenty of TV’s for sports watching, an outdoor patio with a ping pong table covered by a tarp for rainy nights, and a pool table.  There are 2 karaoke nights a week which draw pretty large crowds, a trivia night, and lesser known bands will grace the stage on Friday nights.  The bartenders are friendly, know everyone in the bar, and make their drinks consistently strong.

But the best part of the Boxcar is its patrons.  The Boxcar is full of a crazy cast of characters that is almost impossible to describe in words, and would simply take too much time to describe here.  Then there are the apartment dwellers, 20 and 30 somethings who have been going to the Boxcar for years—an interesting sort of incestuous family of the sort that you would find in a college dorm.  A bit like the cast of Friends, Seinfeld, and How I Met Your Mother combined into one.   And this is the family that I joined.

A small portion of the Boxcar family

I was like a deer caught in headlights when I started to become a regular at the Boxcar.  I never had a real college experience.  Going to college in New York is extremely different from your typical college experience.  I lived in the dorms for just a year before moving into my own apartment in Brooklyn.  From then on, I went to school for class, and spent the rest of my time out experiencing New York City.  When I got to Seattle and started experiencing this life in Magnolia, it was like I was making up for the college experience I never had.  No matter the time of day or day of the week, I knew I could always walk down the hill to the bar and find someone to hang out with. 

For at least the first year of my life in Seattle, I lived in this bar, with these friends.  There was a lot of drinking, a lot of late nights at different people’s apartments, and a lot of laughing.  I don’t think we ever stopped laughing.  And I absolutely loved it.  I hadn’t had a solid group of friends like that since high school.  And it was the first group of friends I’d made as myself.  A funny thing had happened in the last couple years I was in New York.  Despite the fact that I struggled with my job, disliked the city I was living in, and was generally discontented with life, I had developed a quiet comfort in myself.  I didn’t consider this confidence at the time, but suddenly I was a person who didn’t feel as though I needed to pretend to be anything else but me.  And these friends—these friends who were constantly surrounded by drama, but hated dramatic people—appreciated me for this.  In discussions in later years, after a few drinks when late night talks turned serious, several friends confided in me that what they found great about who I was, was that I was who I was.  I didn’t present any sort of façade when I met them.  I was simply me—you get what you see (in the metaphorical sort of way). 

I hadn’t realized that this had happened until someone told me so.  The first person who ever pointed it out to me was a guy I dated for a few months after first arriving in Seattle.  I say this lightly, as if dating guys at the time was no biggie for me—but it was.  I’d dated off and on in New York, but this was more of the Sex and the City type dating.  See a guy a couple times until it fizzles out.  Nothing serious.  Nothing deeper than scratching at the surface.  But all of a sudden I found myself in a new city, with new friends that I adored, and in a fairly serious, albeit brief, relationship.  It was this relationship, however brief, that convinced me I was a confident person.  I developed most of my new friendships with this guy at my side, this guy whore adored me enough at the time to allow others—and, to be honest, allowed myself—to see that I was worth getting to know.  In fact, he was the first person to ever mention a half marathon to me.  He was the one who planted the first seed.

This new group of friends was amazing and wonderful, and I am still friends with them to this day even if I see them a bit less often.  The only problem was that they were certainly not runners.  Running had integrated itself into my personality, and all of a sudden the people I knew would describe me as a runner.  I’d never heard that before.  But I believed it.  I woke up after full nights of drinking and went for a run.  I ran up and down the Magnolia hills.  I ran in the rain, in the wind, in the cold.  They looked at me like I was crazy.  And it was at this time that I started to realize that running had become a hugely important part of my life, whether my friends were with me or not.  And it was just at the point when I was really feeling great, running farther, running faster, running despite the fact that Lucy was my only running partner, when I tripped over a curb and sprained my ankle.  It was an 8 week setback that spring-boarded me forward into my marathon career.

I was that girl that sat in the corner and never said a word

            As I reach the Seattle part of this story, it’s been getting harder for me to sit down and write about it.  New York City is a far distant past that has faded and only exists in my memories.  But Seattle is here and Seattle is still real, although it’s not the same as it was in August of 2008.  But that’s only because I’m not the same as I was in August of 2008.  Yes, I have the same moral groundings and general personality that makes me me, but everything else has changed.  Or maybe changed isn’t the correct word here…I’ve grown.  I’ve grown into the me that I knew I was destined to be, but couldn’t figure out how to become while living in NYC.

            I was very shy as a child.  Actually…that’s kind of a lie…I was painfully shy as a child.  As an adolescent, I was very shy.  By the time I hit college, I would describe myself as simply shy.  And now, although I still think I can be reserved in certain situations, I can say that one thing I am not is shy. 

Growing up, I always knew I was shy, and I hated it.  I remember when my parents told me at the age of 12 that we were moving from Richmond, VA to Rochester, NY.  I remember thinking that I had finally started to come out of my shell a little in middle school and I was worried I was going to lose it all in the move.  I remember making a vow to myself that in New York, I would not be shy.  I wanted so badly to make friends in my new school.  I wanted so badly to fit in.  But that’s hard to do after leaving all the friends you’ve known since kindergarten.  And in the meantime, I hit my growth spurt that summer and grew about a foot taller in those few summer months, beginning my skyrocket into the 5’10” tower I am today.  So now I was in a new city, in a new school, in a new body that I didn’t quite know how to handle yet.  Everything was unfamiliar.  And the problem with trying to make yourself unshy is that right at the point when you decide that you don’t want to be shy, that’s when all those shy feelings kick in.  Your brain shuts down, you don’t know what to say, you awkwardly respond to others with one word answers, and then 5 minutes later kick yourself as you think of the perfect thing you could have said.  No one gives you lessons on how not to be shy.  At least no one gave me those lessons.  And you can’t teach yourself, because all you’ve ever known is shy—and you don’t know how to be anything else.

            The trick I’ve learned over the years, as I’ve outgrown all the shyness, is that in order to not be shy, you must become comfortable in your own skin. You must like yourself and like who you are in order to be okay with being yourself in front of the world.  You must believe that you are a person worth being and a person worth knowing.  You must believe in yourself enough that it doesn’t scare you to show yourself to the world. 

As much as I love my HLM Sierra, I used her as a crutch for my shyness throughout high school and college.  I wholeheartedly take the blame for this upon myself, because throughout our lives she has never done anything but encourage me to be the person I am.  But in my mind, she was always the prettier one, the more outspoken one, the one who had the nerve to try something new, take a risk, and say what she thought.  I admired her for that, and I followed in her footsteps, but never really tread my own path.  In those late teenage years, I needed that crutch.  I needed someone who would pull me along, force me out of my comfort zone, convince me that I had something to share with the world.  But after a while, I began to rely on this too much.  I chose not to blaze my own trail when she could blaze it for me and I could just follow closely behind.

            It wasn’t until Sierra left New York that I began to make my own footprints in the world.  Sierra left because she needed to find her own place, which forced me to finally make a path for myself.  It was during my last 2 ½ years in NYC that I found Lucy…that I started running…that I dared to make choices on my own (whether I wanted to or not). 

So my biggest fear when I began my life in Seattle was that I would fall into my old ways, fall back into step behind my closest friend.  But fate had different plans for me and placed a few roadblocks in my way to prevent this from happening.  The plan when I first got to Seattle was for me to move into Sierra’s 2^nd bedroom in her apartment, make myself comfortable there, and fall into her life.  But suddenly one week after I got to Seattle, Sierra’s slumlord showed up for the first time in 8 years claiming that dogs were not allowed in the apartment (despite the dog that had lived there for the past 5 years and the 2 dogs that had lived there previous to that).  This was 2 weeks before the end of the month, and he gave us that long to get the dog out or get ourselves out.  Of course, Lucy wasn’t going anywhere by herself, so suddenly Sierra and I were faced with the challenge of finding a new home for ourselves in about 10 days.

In the meantime, I made my first couple trips down to my new job, met my co-workers for the first time, saw my school for the first time, and saw my empty classroom for the first time.  I had been hired months before through a phone interview and had no idea what I was walking into.  And when I say empty, I mean empty.  I was panicked.  Suddenly I had to fill a classroom and make it my own.  I needed books, furniture, storage containers, organization systems.  My staff was supportive and helpful and wonderful, but I still felt like I was drowning.

Therefore my first month in Seattle was filled with apartment hunting, school set-up, moving again, and settling in again.  Lucy was frazzled and completely unsure about what was happening in her life, and this only added to the stress of that first month.  Somewhere in the midst of all of this, I forgot to be nervous about starting a brand new life.  I forgot to be worried about making new friends, building new relationships.  I forgot to be concerned with whether or not I was falling into Sierra’s world, because Sierra’s world got turned upside-down too.  She had just come out of a long relationship and now had to find a new home.

August 2008: New apartment, new lives, and the last official time I had a tan.
Welcome to Seattle!!

This means that by the time we were settled into our apartment in the secluded neighborhood of Magnolia, we were both crossing a bridge.  We both needed new friends, new relationships, and a new home.  Suddenly instead of me following closely behind as Sierra paved the way, we were stepping side-by-side into the fog cloud of the unknown.   And in a funny way, the path that was made for me after my move—the forced and sudden change to a new apartment that led to me feeling comfortable walking next to Sierra instead of behind her—was because of Lucy.  Because Lucy was not allowed in an apartment.  I try to imagine how different things would have turned out if Sierra and I had not ended up in Magnolia, and I can’t even fathom it.  So I give Lucy credit.  As usual she was there to force a change right at the time when I thought everything was ok.  And without that change, life would not be the same.

There's always another bridge to cross

            I moved a week ago.  I picked up my life and Lucy’s life and planted us down in a new neighborhood.  We have a real apartment with windows, tall ceilings, enough room to stretch our legs without bumping into each other.  With the help of my wonderful mother, who flew across the country for a week to help me settle in, this apartment has transformed from a couple lifeless rooms into a home.  My own home.  And life looks different when you have a home.  With this change in location, I am ready for other changes.  But I’m a bit nervous looking forward, because what if the changes I’m looking for never materialize?

It was just about 3 ½ years ago when I moved to Seattle.  As Sierra and I drove the very tail end of our trip, down the mountains on I90, dumping off the highway near Qwest and Safeco fields, getting onto the Alaskan Way Viaduct and driving a few exits into Fremont, I couldn’t help but be baffled by the idea of all this change.  I couldn’t stop smiling, but I also couldn’t slow my heartbeat.  New beginnings are exciting and wonderful, but they are also very scary. 

            Somewhere early in my adolescent days, I equated the idea of change to a very clear image in my brain.  This image has stuck with me always, almost as a dream does that haunts you repeatedly in your sleep.  I am walking across a rickety bridge above an abyss.  There’s no jumping down, and there’s certainly no possibility of flying upward above it all.  I can only go forward or back.  As I step onto the bridge, in front of me lays a foggy, dark, dense cloud.  I can see the next step, but nothing beyond that.  When I turn around and look back, everything appears clear as day.  I can see everything that existed behind me and everything I am leaving behind.  However, as I step forward on the bridge, the fog cloud moves forward with me, always one step ahead.  And as I move further onto the bridge, the images behind me begin to darken and blur, fading away.  Pretty soon, I’m in the middle of the bridge.  In front of me is the ever present fog cloud of the unknown, and behind me are the faded images of a past that is creeping away.  It is in the middle of the bridge that I can make a choice.  Do I step forward, taking a leap into the unknown in search of something new, or do I turn around and run back, hoping to catch the old images before they fade away completely?

            The tricky thing about this choice is that by the time you reach the middle of the bridge, the choice has already been made for you.  Too much behind you has changed and faded.  The things that comforted you before are no longer the same.  Do you really want to go backwards into a place that isn’t what you want it to be anymore?  So the only choice is to step forward.  Walk across the bridge.  Face the unknown.  Because eventually that foggy cloud begins to dissipate as you reach the other side.  It will never completely disappear.  But things become clearer after a while.  At least until you reach the next bridge. 

And there are always more bridges to cross.   Some are long, some are short, and some are easier to cross than others.  But there will always be bridges.  And that’s what makes life interesting.

In August of 2008, I began to cross one of the longest bridges I’d ever crossed, and as I crossed it, I realized something about change.  You can choose to change your life, but that’s not the hardest part.  The hard part is actually doing it.  I chose to pick up my life and transplant onto another coast.  But what it took me a little while to realize was that I couldn’t just change my location and change my life.  I couldn’t change my job and change my life.  Because the problem is that it wasn’t my life that needed changing, it was me.  Yes, moving to Seattle jump-started the change I needed to make in myself and definitely increased the likelihood of me making that change.  But moving to Seattle isn’t what changed me.  It wasn’t the bridge that changed me.  It was making the choice to walk across that bridge and continuing to the other side that changed me.  It was facing the fear of walking into the unknown with no safety net, no cushy ground to land on.  It was struggling through the emotional battlefield of making the change that changed me.  

Years later, here I stand on the other side of the bridge—on the other side of several bridges since that one.  This week I feel as though I am standing at the beginning of another abyss.  But this time I feel a little different.  I’m here and I’m finally ready to take the first step, but the bridge doesn't seem to be built yet.  And that’s ok, I can wait.  I'll just sit here and enjoy where I am in the meantime.

Snowmageddon!

            Snowmageddon 2012 has hit Seattle, and I can’t help but think about the massive snow storm that attacked Seattle my first winter here.  Today as the snow continues to fall and coat everything, I am sitting on my couch, drinking coffee, and thinking about getting a head start on my packing for my big move in a couple weeks.  3 years ago when the snowstorm hit, things were very different.  So, in honor of Snowmageddon, I am skipping ahead a few months in the story to tell the story of Snowmageddon 2008.  Don’t worry, I’ll go back and fill in the blanks later.

            When snow started falling the week before Christmas break 3 years ago, it may be a bit of an exaggeration to say this (but very close to the truth), I was happier than I could remember ever being.  Sierra and I had gotten an apartment together with Lucy and her cat Bob in the neighborhood of Magnolia in Seattle. 

Magnolia is an interesting place.  The neighborhood is a peninsula composed of 2 large hills stacked behind each other.  There are only 3 entrances into the neighborhood: 1) the Magnolia Bridge, which takes you directly to the top of the 1^st hill, 2) Fisherman’s Terminal, which takes you through a marina full of docked fishing boats to the bottom of the first hill, and 3) Dravus St., which is a small bridge at the bottom of the first hill that goes over the train tracks that divide Magnolia from the rest of the world.

If you enter Magnolia from Dravus or Fishermans Terminal, and look up the hill, there are cities of apartment complexes towards the top.  This is where Sierra and I had our apartment.  We were about 2 blocks down from the top of the hill, 4 blocks up from the bottom. 

If you were to continue traveling up this hill, you’d see more houses, less apartments—giving the neighborhood the feel of a suburb that accidently found itself marooned in the center of a large city.  Continue up and over the hill, and the houses get a bit bigger.  At the bottom of the first hill, in the valley between the two hills, you find Magnolia Village.  This 4 block radius “Village” is composed of one bar, a couple restaurants, and a few shops.

Travel through the village and start your ascent up the 2^nd hill, and you’ll notice that the houses are getting bigger and bigger.  Once you reach the crest of that hill, you are looking at mansions.  Magnolia is where rich people go to retire.  The back hill ends in a cliff that drops off into the Puget Sound.  This hill is filled with huge mansions overlooking the water.  On a clear day, you can see the entire skyline of the Olympic Mountains above the water from the oversized decks and windows of these homes.

Magnolia was a unique place for me to begin my Seattle experience.  It is removed from the rest of the city, far from highways, disconnected from the main stream of Seattle life.  Living on the face of the first hill was like being in a college dorm.  There was one bar at the bottom of the hill that many of the apartment dwellers frequented.  The more Sierra and I and our friend Cristin frequented this bar, the more we got to know the apartment residents of Magnolia, and the more we realized that we all lived, if not in the same apartment complex, then at least a block or 2 away.

By the time Snowmageddon 2008 hit that December, I had gotten to know my Magnolia crew fairly well, had found myself a boyfriend, and had sprained my ankle.  My first 4 months in Seattle were eventful to say the least.  As I said, Magnolia is already cut off from the rest of the world, but then imagine Seattle getting hit with half a foot of snow.  We were truly cut off.  There was no getting in or out of Magnolia.  Remember how I mentioned we lived 2 blocks from the top of the hill and 4 from the bottom?  This isn’t just a normal hill…I swear the roads go up at 45 degree angles.  The sidewalks are grooved so that you don’t slip backwards as you hike up them.  When the snow finally dumped there was no driving up this hill, for fear of slipping backwards (I saw few cars attempt this unsuccessfully) and no driving down the hill for fear of not being able to stop (saw this too). 

We were stranded.  Time had stopped, no one was working or even thinking about working.  So what else was there to do but hike down the hill to the bar and enjoy our temporarily suspended lives?  But remember—I had a sprained ankle, which made “hiking” not so easy.  I decided to take off the boot I’d been wearing for 6 weeks and put on a small ace bandage instead. 

I have snippets of memories during the days of this snowstorm.  Walking down the hill, beers in hand, stumbling upon sledders who told us we could sled to the bottom on their sleds as long as we could do it without spilling our beers.  Walking up the hill, completely out of breath by the time we got to the top, feeling my ankle swell with every step.  I have an image coming down the hill again of Sierra, Cristin and I—we hit an icy patch and suddenly both Cristin and Sierra are simultaneously flat on their backs on the ground—I can’t still hear the “boom, boom” of them both hitting the ground in my mind.  I remember seeing cars strewn along the hill, left abandoned after attempts at escaping.  Then there’s me crying in the middle of the grocery store because I found out I wouldn’t be making it home to New York in time for Christmas.  There’s 20 of us at one person’s apartment, cooking a huge spaghetti dinner, staring out the windows to announce that it’s “STILL SNOWING!” which made me temporarily forget that I wouldn’t be seeing my family as soon as I’d thought.  I remember laughing and smiling so much that my face hurt. 

It’s funny how snow days as “adults” (if that’s what we could have been called at the time) can be just as much, if not more, fun than snow days as kids.  I’d lived in a city where 3 feet of snow didn’t shut down school, so my first Seattle snowstorm was a wonderful surprise.  I felt like a kid again, playing with my friends in the snow.

I remember looking back at the last 4 months of my life at the time and thinking about how different my life had suddenly become—how much more full of smiles and laughter it was, how much happier I’d become in just that short amount of time.  Looking out my window at Snowmageddon today makes me think about how much has changed since that snowstorm 3 short years ago.  Today, I am not running off to the bar with friends, but sitting comfortably on my couch, snuggling with my dog.  And that’s ok.  I’ll remember that snow storm as one of the most fun experiences of my life, but life is different now.  I’m not in Magnolia anymore, and neither are a lot of those people.  We’re all still friends, but I’d like to think we’ve grown up a bit.  We’re not living that “dorm” life anymore.  And I’m ok with that.  This past Monday I turned 28, and I think it’s time that I start thinking about being an adult.  At least some of the time…

Life is full of inverse relationships

            Running is the reason for my sanity in so many ways.  The main reason though, is that running serves as a cathartic release for me at the end of each work day.  From 7:30 in the morning when I walk into my classroom until 4:00 in the afternoon when I leave, my mind has one whole and complete focus.  Work.  26 first graders.  Teach them.  Help them.  Reach them.  Wrangle them.  Assess them.  Reteach them.  Herd them to lunch.  Counsel them.  Plan for them.  Make copies for them.  Sharpen pencils for them.  Talk to their parents for them.  Care for them.  Love them.  Shuffle them onto the bus.  And then what?  Forget about them?  That is not how this job works.  My day begins with one deep breath followed by an adrenaline rush until the end of the day when I finally breathe out.  I cannot simply flip the switch off and forget about these living breathing children that are my life for so much of the day. 

            However, to be sane and to live a productive life, I must be able to forget about them.  I need to enjoy my dinner without thinking about what they are eating for dinner (or if they are even having dinner).  I need to be able to see my friends and listen to them without constantly planning quietly in my head what I will teach the next day.  I need to be able to fall asleep without thinking about what social skill Johnny needs to work on tomorrow or how I’ll help my brand new student make new friends.  I need to be able to put my students into a pocket in the back of my mind, only to be pulled out the next day.

            My first 2 years of teaching, I struggled with this.  I could not forget.  I did not know how to forget.  I brought work home every night.  It wasn’t until I found running that I finally figured out how to put it all away.  I can envision a line chart of what is happening in my brain as I run (I was a nerd and actually made this chart in Excel but stupid blogger won’t let me post excel stuff).  As the amount of miles or distance covered increases, the number of thoughts in my brain about work slowly decreases until the end of the run where work has disappeared.  Or in other non-nerdy terms: the further I get into my run, the more I forget about those 26 children.  By the end of my run, I am relaxed and thinking about my life.

            Something similar to this happened when I moved to Seattle.  Sierra, Lucy, and I drove cross-country in order to transplant my life into my new city.  We took my little Honda Civic, packed it as full as we could without completely boxing Lucy into a tiny corner in the back seat, and drove from our hometown in Rochester, NY all the way to Seattle.  My mental graph is the same here.  The distance traveled has a perfectly inverse relationship to thoughts about NYC life.

            We took 5 days to make the trip, stopping at as many sights as we could while keeping in mind the separation-anxiety-ridden dog in the car.  It is very difficult to drive from one side of the country to the other without ever leaving the dog alone in the car.  But we did it.  And by the time we reached Seattle, all the negativity that NYC had deposited in me was lifted.

            We started in Rochester, and left with smiles ready to conquer the world.

            Our first stop was my aunt and uncle’s house in Chicago.  My aunt is an animal rescuer and often has a variety of animals in and around her house.  On this particular trip, there were several baby raccoons in a large cage in the backyard, all named by my cousin after Harry Potter characters.  This was an exciting part of the trip for Lucy.  She got to jump at the caged and squawking birds in the house, making them lose a few feathers.  She got to play with the 3 (or 4?) dogs that lived there.  For me, I was still thinking about leaving a life behind.  I was excited for the future, but worried about the past.

            Our first official sight-seeing stop was Badlands National Park.  This was a good pit stop because Lucy was allowed throughout the park.  The beautiful views made my worries about leaving the only coast I’d known fade just a little.

            Next was Wall Drug.  This is a very overrated little tourist town in the middle of nowhere.  I in no way understand people who put “Wall Drug” bumper stickers on their cars.  I don’t get it.  This stop was particularly challenging with Lucy.  We took our wanderings in shifts…one person wandering through the stores and shops while the other waited in the car with Lucy.  Not super fun.  However, I bought a few early Christmas presents here, which helped to ease my fears of leaving my family behind.

            Next was Mount Rushmore.  Here, we could not go inside the gates because dogs were not allowed.  We stopped on the side of the road and gazed for a bit.  I was amazed at how small and far away they seemed up there.  I was similarly amazed by how small NYC was becoming in my mind.

            We also saw from a distance the in-progress mountain carving that will some day in the far off future be the Crazy Horse War Memorial.  Life is a work in progress, as it seems the Crazy Horse War Memorial will forever be. 

            As we traveled through the central portion of the US, we spent a few nights in cheap dog-friendly hotels found courtesy of AAA guidebooks.

            Devil’s Tower was our last big sight-seeing stop.  Although we didn’t hike any of the trails, we got pretty close to the base and took some pretty awesome pictures.  At this point in the trip, Seattle seemed to be looming just as close.

            In the boring parts of the trip, there were many of these pictures.

            And these pictures.  Luckily, this is what Lucy did the VAST majority of the trip.

            For our last leg of the trip, we took a detour off I90 to stay for a night in the middle of Wyoming at Sierra’s aunt’s summer house.  Pictures cannot even begin to show the beauty that is back-country Wyoming.  I am dying to go back.  And when I was there, I wasn’t thinking about being anywhere else.

            Lucy even loved it in Wyoming, but mainly because she got to swim—one of her most favorite activities.

            And finally, at the end of it all, we drove late into the night, stopping at a small motel in La Grande, Oregon (I only remember this name because it was such a small and funny little place).  We woke up the next morning and drove the last leg into Seattle.

            As we came down from the mountains on I90 (the same road we left on in New York, and the same road we took the majority of the way), thoughts of New York were gone.  Worries about leaving had abated.  It suddenly sunk in that I was home.  In a new place.   On a new coast.  In what seemed like a new world.  And I couldn’t wait to get started.

DISCLAIMER: I have nothing against cats, small dogs, or landlords...I simply find discrimination intolerable

            I just had a temporary mini meltdown.  It started after my landlord sent me an email informing me of a few dates and times for people coming to view my apartment.  In 25 days, I will be moving.  I gave my landlord my one month’s notice just before New Year’s, informing her that Lucy and I are going to try to upgrade our living style by February 1^st.  More windows, maybe more space?  Enough room for Lucy to wag her tail without it banging into something?  The idea has sounded great in theory for a couple months now, so I decided to bite the bullet and go for it.

            The mini meltdown occurred momentarily after receiving the email when it suddenly occurred to me that I am moving in 25 days.  And I have no idea where I’m moving to.  Suddenly that uneasy feeling I talked about a few posts ago exploded into anxiety.  I scoured today’s craigslist listings, called several places, and emailed a few.  It wasn’t until about 30 minutes later when I stepped away from my computer that I was finally able to calm down, refocus, and tame my beating heart.  I reassured myself that in a large city like Seattle, one usually can’t find an apartment until 15 days prior to a moving date.  I got used to this idea in New York.  I reminded myself that all of my moves have been up in the air like this—the only difference here is that in the past I had a one year lease ending that signaled finding a new place.  In this case, where I live on a month to month basis, I ended the lease.  There is no practical difference here, I think it’s just more nerve-wracking because I made the choice to move instead of my pre-determined lease.  I brought this upon myself—it was not forced upon me.

            Moving is stressful.  Moving is even more stressful when you have a large dog to think about and a fairly limited budget.  As dog-friendly as Seattle may be, most landlords are not so dog-friendly.  Especially large-dog-friendly.  I’ve been keeping an eye on craigslist ever since I decided to move, and I’ve seen some great apartments.  Every time I see a good heading and click on the link, the first thing I do is scour the words for the dreaded “no pets” clause, or “cat’s only,” or even worse “small dogs ok.”  I almost always find one of these statements, but the last one pisses me off the most.  When a landlord decrees that small dogs are ok, I can tell they are not dog owners.  The size of a small dog is very disproportionate to the size of its energy.  Do they think that a poorly trained, little yappy bit of a dog is going to do less damage to their apartment or make any less noise than a large, properly trained and mature dog?  It infuriates me.

            No, I am not a landlord.  I cannot step into the shoes of a landlord and understand all their worries.  I have no point of reference for this.  If I reach into the depths of my mind, I can pull out some sympathy for the landlord who doesn’t want pets.  It’s certainly easier not to have to deal with them.  You never know what you’re going to get, and some people are simply horrible pet owners.  I get this.  But to specify that certain pets are acceptable above others, it makes me incredibly angry.  How would having a dog like Lucy around be worse than a male cat that sprays everything in sight and claws the carpets to death?  Or a mini dog that yaps at every person that passes on the street?

            If landlords are going to accept pets, I think there should be some sort of screening process.  Meet my dog.  Talk to my current landlord.  Talk to my former roommates.  But don’t flat out tell me that my pet is not accepted because she is not a cat and weighs over 25 lbs!  This is discrimination, I tell you.  It should be unlawful.  Landlords cannot openly discriminate against the people they rent to, so why should they be able to discriminate against the pets? 

            Perhaps these are just the anxiety-ridden ramblings of a woman in the midst of a change, but it’s the principal of the thing.  Moving is hard enough…why make it harder on people who love their pets?  After all, who would ever want to say no to a face like this?