Washington, D.C.

At this time tomorrow night we’ll be landing in DC.

This is our first capital V Vacation since we went to Belize last summer.  Since then it’s just been small trips to our home towns or college towns, weekends and such.  We fly out tomorrow morning and don’t come back until next Sunday.

Which means: Fourth of July in the nation’s capital.  How badass is that?  Pretty badass, if I say so myself (and I do).

For the next sixish months Wes will be working crazy hours six days a week.  Such is the life of a civil engineer, I suppose, but I don’t have to like it.  So this is our once chance to get away from the chaos that is Life.

I’ll be glad to leave behind a job where people routinely place paper towels in the toilet, refuse to flush the toilet after pooping in it and throw in the odd red marker, requiring a new fucking toilet.  My job, it sometimes feels like I’m babysitting again.  Only adults can’t be taught like children can.

Our flight tomorrow has a seven-hour layover, which sounds less than ideal to most people, but gives me a chance to spend time with cousins I hardly see.  To meet three new members of the family, who in reality aren’t that new.  My cousin got married almost a year ago, his brother had a baby over a year ago and their sister just had a new baby boy.  Even though we’ll be together next month in Idaho for a family reunion it will be nice to have a relaxed afternoon with them away from all the rest of the family who hasn’t seen them.

In other news (yes, it’s scattered, but I’m on my second glass of wine and need to go to sleep), Wes finally broke down and got an iPhone.  I think he’s in love with it and will sleep with it tonight like a kid does with Christmas presents.  Now he can download all the ridiculous games he wants to without having to ask permission.

Random thoughts and pictures to follow during the week.

Baby Steps

It’s Day 2 of Let’s Get Serious About Working Out.  (And by “let’s” I obviously mean “just me” because my boyfriend is working ridiculous hours.)  Day 2 of running at lunch!  Day 2 of fighting through the strong desire to hit the nearest pizza parlor for lunch instead of working out.

And I was excited about it until a certain girlfriend of my brother’s {ahem, ALLison, ahem} decided that she was going to run a marathon in one hour and fifty one minutes.  Now, if you’re paying attention, that’s a good forty minutes faster than I ran mine in.  To that I say: But I didn’t train!  And her boyfriend rode along side to cheer her on and take pictures!  So, really, I think that I should lose at least forty minutes of my time.  And that means we really ran it just as quickly.  So, yeah, that’s how my mind works.

All of this is important becasue she and I may be participating in a half marathon at some point in the future (unless my brother runs her off or something, but whatever, I hear she’s so cool that I may just keep her as a friend regardless of what happens between those two crazy kids).  You see, my mom is getting in shape!  She’s got a personal trainer and is going to yoga and she wants to run (/walk) a marathon.  Being the most awesome daughter that I am, agreed that if she took steps to make this a possibility then I would enter it with her.  And then ALLison decided she wanted to get in on it because, to be honest, we’re a pretty awesome family (which she totally knows, and even though she’s never met me we’re totally going to be BFFs.  Or something).

But now I’m off track.  Where was I going with this? Oh, yes, exercise.  It mostly sucks.  The work you have to do to keep looking good and feeling alive is just awful.  I can almost understand how people get caught up in quick fixes to weight loss that you find on infomercials at 2:00 am.  Almost.

I never really had to work hard to be thin, or even in shape.  I could eat whatever I wanted and do very little and I was still presentable.  Obviously life factors were part of it – things like being a waitress and walking a bazillion miles a day and then walking between classes on a huge campus and then working out on top of that (albeit intermittantly, but still).  But each move after college has left me a little more sedentary and what I once thought were just kick ass genes was really just an active life style.  So, yes, I do have to work at it.  I just don’t work at it as hard as I should.  Binge exercising is what my life is like.

And I recognize it and am taking steps (literally) to change this.  I watch family members and not-quite-who-knows-if-they-ever-will-be family members struggle with weight.  They all talk about their glory days of being fit and thin and active.  They all lament their “fat asses”.  And yet, few of them have taken those steps to turn their life healthy.

So when my parents signed up for yoga classes I was stoked that they were doing something.

Baby steps.

And when my mom mentioned that she wanted to run (/walk) a half marathon with me I was excited.  Worried that it wouldn’t pan out, but excited that she seemed to be wanting it more than she had before.  And when she signed up with a personal trainer I wanted to cry I was so excited.

In the past three(ish) months two of my dad’s coworkers have had heart attacks.  One died.  These were young(ish) men and with the history of heart disease on both sides of my family I wanted more than ever for them to take those first baby steps towards a healthier, longer life.  I want my dad around to walk me down the aisle.  I want my mom to go dress shopping with me.  I want them to meet their grandchildren (if I have any, that is).  I want them to be around a long long time.

It all starts with the first step and I’m so proud of them for taking it.  So excited for this next stage in their lives.  I’m looking forward to crossing the finish line with my mom (and ALLison, who seems to slowly be usurping my role as awesome daughter, but whatever).

My Friend List

I admit, I got sucked in by Facebook.  Look at all these old friends I thought to myself as I added friend after friend after friend.  And by friend, I mean “friend” because, let’s face it, we’re nto friends.  And having these people on my friend list does not make it so.  Sure we were close once, but good lord how many years have gone by without a word from either end.  That is not a friendship.  That’s a lapsed friendship and should never be taken up again because of course there were reasons why we stopped talking.  Right?

Every once in a while I scan through my list and start deleting people for various reasons: never liked her, couldn’t care less about his life, would never in a million years invite them over for dinner.  Yes, I accepted their requests, or they accepted mine.  But I’m sure it was done for selfish reason (on my side it was, anyway).  The vouyer in me wanted to see what their lives were like.  How they had changed since highschool.  A little bit I wanted to judge (hey, I’m not proud of it, but there it is).

Only problem is, they can judge too.  They can see into my life just as I can see into theirs.  And as the days and weeks and months passed without any sort of comment between us it just got to be this creepy thing.  Looking at other people’s lives without having any intention of being part of them.

So delete delete delete.  Not all of them at once because, whoa, that’s just too much for one day.  But, slowly, I’ll get down to only the people I’m actually friends with.

This social networking makes me dizzy.  I finally sat down to study (really study) for the GRE a couple of days ago in a coffee shop.  Surrounded by my laptop and iPhone it was practiaclly impossible to get anything done.  I kept checking twitter and facebook and e-mail and blogs.  Anything to keep me from actually doing any studying.

What is life like for highschool students?  It was hard enough to get homework done with all the usual distractions, but throw in internet (not widely used when I was in highschool) and smart phones (which every teenager and tween seems to have) and seriously, how the hell does anyone have time to learn anything?

Wow, when did I turn into a crochety old lady?  I guess when I finally make it back to school I’ll have to learn to block it all out.  Or schedule breaks to delete the non-friends I have online.

Le Tired

It is only 7:20 am and I feel like if I fell asleep right now I could probably sleep for 8 hours, wake up, and still be able to sleep well tonight.  That is how tired I feel right now.

Why is it that waking up even an hour earlier than usual can make the day seem infinitely longer?

This past weekend I was in the Bay Area and I was passed around like a hot potato.  No, that’s not true.  I actually passed myself around like [insert whatever sorority joke you'd like to here].  So many people weren’t in town when Wes and I were up there two weeks ago so I tried to fit in as much as possible in the four days, which included some time at my last company.  The breakfast on Monday morning was just what I remembered it to be and I miss it so much, and I’d add pictures but my computer is being a bitch right now and refusing to. So just take my word on how yummy the fresh fruit, waffles and quiches were.

What I also realized being back there is that the grass is always greener.  Or, at least, it seems that way.  (Not much of a) Confession: I have been idealizing my last job because my current one is so different from it in so many ways.  The truth is, things weren’t always great there and I was just as unhappy in my duties as I am here.  The thing that made that job so awesome was the people and the perks, and lot of those perks are gone, which leaves a lot of those awesome people rethinking their position.

Basically it confirmed that yeah, school is something that I want to seriously do.  Teaching is something that I want to do.  I don’t care about being able to leave my work at work any more.  I care about being challenged in my job, and hopefully challenging minds along the way.

But wait, where was I?

Oh, yes, San Francisco.  Three nights with three different people.  A drive-in movie, wedding dress shopping (for Ashley), shopping in China Town (clearly I needed three new scarves), a massage, breakfast with my cousin and his husband, dinner with a friend and her husband (plus a comfy night not sharing a bed!)  and then back to old work for some breakfast, lunch with a friend (where I got to see his wife and adorable baby) before heading to the airport.  Yes four days sounds like a loooong weekend, but with all that I crammed in there it flew by.

And now I am le tired.

And back to sharing a bed.  Which feels tinier than I think it should.  As we sat down Monday night Wes looked at me and said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I slept so fucking good last night.”  Which I completely understand because we both like to spread out and in a queen sized bed there’s not much room for two people to spread out.  Our next place better have a room big enough to hold a king sized bed and our other furniture.

A New Start

Last week, in a fit of boredom at work – boredom with my job, the “career” (if you can call it that) path and just life in general – I signed up for the GRE.

I’m going to teach! I proclaimed to everyone I told.  That was the plan after college: to become a teacher.  But then one thing led to another and the money for grad school just wasn’t coming.  Then that job in Silicon Valley happened and with it came this thought that Yeah, I could do this for the rest of my life.  I can plan meetings and order food for said meetings.  I can gossip with my coworkers and snack whenever I want and leave early and come late and drink on the patio with my boss!  I can do this.

Alas, life outside of Silicon Valley has been one big slap in the face.  Work isn’t actually like that.  Companies don’t ply you with goodies in order to keep you working all hours of the day; they don’t stock fancy coffee; they don’t buy you lunch; they certainly don’t look too nicely upon drinking on the job (not that I would call what we did up there “drinking on the job”; it was more like ending-the-day-early-to-have-a-drink-but-still-on-company-property – completely different).  In short, life outside of Silicon Valley sucks pretty bad.

And it’s occurred to me that no – hell no – I cannot do this for the rest of my life.  The work is mind-numbingly boring and the pay is atrocious.  Coworkers are a crap shoot – sometimes you get lucky and have an awesome group of work friends; and sometimes you end up with people who, well, who suck.  And when the people suck, man does it make work just about unbearable.  No amount of goodies would make what I’m doing now in any way fun.

For the past couple of months I’ve been throwing out ides of things I could do – jobs that could be careers and that would be challenging.  Challenging enough so that I wouldn’t have to depend on Wes for all my mental stimulation since he actually gets that at work and wants to just unwind when he gets home but instead has me, nipping at his heels like a little puppy.  Play with me!  Talk to me!

I toyed around with nursing school and law school and an MBA and, holy hell, what did I not think of.  Yes, I even thought of an engineering degree (We’ll solve this problem of getting transferred, I’ll just do what you do!), though I never said that one out loud.  I wasn’t gung ho on any of them.  They were just things to do to get out of what I was already doing, and that’s hardly the way to start a new career.  I let my mind drift to all the things I could do as a trophy wife, which is surely what I would become with all the moving and not having a career.  But that bored me even more.

And then one night I started a new book and the main character was an English professor and I smiled to myself as I thought, I could do that. In truth, it’s what I’ve always wanted to do: teach English literature, though to high schoolers. It was the plan throughout highschool and the plan throughout college and then one day it just wasn’t the plan.  And I’m not sure why.  Because San Francisco didn’t pan out like it was supposed to?  Because I wanted more money so my mind drifted to law school?  Because I wanted job security so I looked into nursing?  Because I wanted to be able to leave my job at my job so I just kept on doing what I was doing?  All of the above and many more reasons.

And then, the further I got away from the year I graduated the more daunting going back to school became.  So I kept on being okay with mediocrity.

So perhaps it’s a good thing that Wes got transferred down here and I started this job that I am bored to tears with.  Perhaps it was the push I needed to do something with my life.  Yeah, I know, teaching pays shit too.  But, whatever, at least I’ll be challenged and I’ll never wonder if I could have done it.

Motivation

Shortly after Pole Paddle Pedal I got a bee in my bonnet and was all set to enter some races and compete instead of just sort of finishing.  Not that just finishing is a bad thing.  But I wanted to set goals and meet them and then beat them and then set more goals.  I envisioned 5k, 10k, half marathons and full marathons; triathlons and bike races and perhaps next year go back and do Pole Paddle Pedal with maybe only three teammates and see what I was capable of.

Unfortunately it never even got to the planning stage of it as one weekend after the next filled up with activities that didn’t include me competing in any kind of race, unless Who can eat the most food and drink the most alcohol in one weekend counts as a race.  In which case, I think I came in the top three for the past three weekends.

And yes, the next several weekends are filled with various activities (hopefully one of those activities is this) so many activities that I’m tired just thinking about them all.  But, this weekend with my parents taught me something I sometimes have a hard time grasping: You don’t need to open that third bottle of wine.  I didn’t wake up hungover at all this weekend and probably could have fit in a run if it hadn’t been for all the (fun!) activities that we packed into the (too) short visit with my parents.

So what really needs to happen is that I need to not only pack workout clothes, which I usually do, I need to actually put them to use.  Which means this weekend I will spend some time doing something other than destroying my liver.

Surely this weekend will be more calm than the last three weekends because I’ve lived in San Francisco so I don’t need to be going going going all the time.  Due to an unforeseen, and unfortunately sad, changes I get to spend more time with more people – explore the old haunts of my Silicone Valley days and enjoy the company of old coworkers.  I get to spend time with the people I care about.

Visits like these are what will help me survive living in the OC.  Perhaps workign out will help, too.  You know, if I ever get around to making it consistent.