Category Archives: living

On the Road Trip to Albuquerque, Excitedly

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We set off to spend a weekend geeking out over “Breaking Bad” in Albuquerque, the trip we’d planned on our first date. This was officially our tenth date, but it was so much more than that. It’s been so much more than that.

If you’ve never seen it, “Breaking Bad” is a show on AMC about a high school chemistry teacher who starts cooking meth because he’s been diagnosed with cancer and he wants to provide for his family. It’s an incredibly well-done show. It really asks a lot of “what if” questions that you’d never think to ask yourself and brings morality into focus. It’s well-written and it pulls at my heart in ways I never thought television could. (But then again, I cry at Google commercials, so it’s a given that I’m going to cry at this.)

I-25 to Albuquerque

I was so excited to spend a weekend away. I’ve been under a lot of stress lately, with work and the impending home purchase, so the promise of a relaxing weekend (three whole days off!) was almost more than I could bear. Matt and I have been communicating constantly since we met, but our dates are relegated to the weekends due to our jobs and the distance between us, so the thought of spending 72 hours with him was both thrilling and nerve-wracking.

We stayed at the Hotel Parq Central in Albuquerque (great AAA rate!). It was lovely – the hotel used to be a hospital, but was redone a few years ago. It’s clean, bright, and gorgeous. The hot tub is open 24 hours a day! We made sure to get as much hot tub time as possible in. The first night, they had a party at the rooftop bar, which got to be annoying. The guy working the front desk said that one guest had called to complain, saying that he would come down in his underwear and start yelling. That thought made me laugh.  Our room was a corner room in a separate building, so we had tons of windows and a huge bathroom.

But seriously, who throws a Halloween party on November 2nd? Albuquerque does. Apparently, they don’t let go of Halloween there – we were at a diner on Saturday and the waitress asked us if we had enjoyed Halloween. Very strange.

Saturday morning, we started our adventure. Matt was adorable and made us the sweetest map ever – he pinned all of the filming locations that we wanted to visit (I found the locations on a blog and sent him the link) and then added pictures and the physical addresses of each.

The first stop was the Crossroads Motel, which actually wasn’t on our map. We happened to drive by it on our first night in Albuquerque. (Oh, there was also an incident in which we attempted to get slices of pizza and were treated horribly by the manager after waiting more than 20 minutes only to be asked “Are you waiting for something?” by the girl who took our order. When we finally got a refund, the man snapped “I’m not refunding the Dr. Pepper!” Jeez, dude, chill. I didn’t ask for that. At that point, I just wanted like $5 in cash and I wanted to bail.)

We were standing in the parking lot of the motel when a man approached us, opened his wallet, and said, “DEA, what are you doing here?” Of course, he wasn’t from the DEA, but he was at the motel with his wife doing the same thing we were doing – taking pictures of filming locations. They were from Albuquerque, so we traded maps and chatted for a few minutes before moving on to the next stop: Jesse and Jane’s apartments.

One of the main characters is named Jesse Pinkman. He’s a small-time meth cook before he joins Walter White (the chemistry teacher) and their business expands. I love him, and one of my favorite story lines of the show is his star-crossed love affair with a recovering addict named Jane. They live side-by-side in a duplex, they fall in love, then (spoiler alert) she dies. It’s sad. But it’s beautiful. They are adorable together.

I knew that this was going to be my favorite spot, and it absolutely was. This was the site where I felt the most connected, not necessarily to the show, but to all of the emotions that I felt while watching it and all of the emotions that I felt while standing there with Matt. (We have some adorable couple pictures all over this property that you’ll see once they’re edited and ready for viewing.)

Jesse Pinkman's apartment, Breaking Bad, Jane Margolis,

(Jesse ends a lot of his sentences in the word “bitch.” It’s his way of emphasizing something. When I originally posted these, I posted them with the caption, “Jesse Pinkman’s apartment, bitch!” just because it felt like the right thing to do.)

Jesse Pinkman, apartment, Breaking Bad, Jane Margolis,

When we got to Walter’s house, we walked around the block, holding hands and chatting. (The curbs are seriously high in that neighborhood. I would destroy Simon. I’m very glad I don’t live there – I was driving Matt’s car, and when I parked, I purposefully parked about a foot off the curb so I wouldn’t take any chances of hitting the curb with his car!)

It was surreal.

There’s a scene in the show where the teacher, Walt, gets angry and throws a pizza on his roof, so apparently at one point, the family who lives in the house had to put out a sign that said “Please don’t throw pizzas on our roof.” Imagine going outside every day and having to get pizzas off your roof. I bet they clog the gutters and get annoying pretty quickly. (Still not the worst thing that could happen to your house after it’s been used as a filming location, though.)

Walter White's house, Breaking Bad, meth, Albuquerque

This is us posing in front of Walter’s house, but you can’t tell.

Hank and Marie (the chemistry teacher’s DEA agent brother-in-law and his wife) live in this insanely gorgeous neighborhood. Better than their house was the park nearby – we got out and hiked around and I got to climb on some rocks!

We also got to go to the Chicken Man’s restaurant! (In the show, there’s a super awesome meth dealer named Gus who owns a chain of chicken restaurants, so I call him the Chicken Man. In real life, the chicken restaurant is a real restaurant. We went and I got a soda.) It was amazing. We also went to the Octopus car wash – I’ll post pictures as soon as I get them from Matt.

Leaving was such sweet sorrow. We woke up, fully intending to go take more pictures near this gorgeous wooded area we’d seen the day before, but ran out of time and instead headed to Santa Fe. We had lunch there, walked around the Cathedral, stopped at Trader Joe’s (wine! chocolate covered cherries! chocolate covered pretzels! tea! pumpkin yogurt!) then headed back to Denver so that I could be home at a reasonable hour to be ready for work today.

On the whole, I would not return to Albuquerque willingly, unless you promised me that we could stop at Olo Yogurt Bar – where I had red velvet frozen yogurt topped with strawberries, mangoes, kiwi, gummy bears, and chocolate sprinkles. The city itself is stuck in the past – they have Furr’s cafes and lots of old neon. We didn’t really see much revitalization, but the neighborhoods that we found ourselves in were absolutely lovely. So perhaps there’s still a bunch of Albuquerque that we’re missing.

The hotel was amazing. The continental breakfast was Matt’s least favorite part, but I found it to be par for the course (they had me at Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Earl Grey tea). The shampoo was his favorite part. My favorite part? Hot tub. Sheets. Quarantine signs when you wanted privacy (a nod to the hotel’s beginnings as a hospital). We laughed when they talked about the “nurse’s quarters” because the building had a smokestack next to it…obviously not nurse’s quarters.

It was the best tenth date ever.

Denver, Albuquerque, I-25

 

I’ll post more pictures soon!

And note to everyone: VOTE! Tomorrow is election day and if you want the right to bitch for the next four years, you absolutely must vote tomorrow so you can at least say you did your part.

obama 2012, i voted, sticker, colorado,

I, of course, voted for Obama last week. Here’s hoping I won’t have to spend the next four years bitching. (According to Nate Silver’s newest forecast, I should breathe easy because it looks like Obama’s going to take the election easily. You can find Nate Silver and his election forecast on the Five Thirty Eight blog at http://www.nytimes.com.)

Nate Silver election forecast

But seriously – I care more about you voting than who you vote for. (I mean, that’s totally a lie, but I will find it even harder to respect you if you don’t vote than if you voted for someone I think you should in no way logically support.)

On Education, Gratefully

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My word for 2012 has been “gratitude.” I have tried to be more mindful of the wonderful blessings in my life and express gratitude in all areas of my life. First things first: I have improved dramatically at writing and remembering to send Thank-You notes. I think that may be the only real deliverable; the rest of my gratitude practice has been solely in my own mind and heart.

As I’ve been crawling, inching, barely progressing on the series Breaking Bad, I’ve been reflecting on my own life, my own decision-making rationale, my gifts and support systems. Of course, the onslaught of gratitude and related emotions has been a refreshing reminder of how beautifully hopeful and heartbreaking life can be.

But the greatest gift I’ve ever been given was my education. From the age of three, I was enrolled in private, Catholic schools. While I realize that Catholic schools are a hot-mess of crazy (this is true), I also realize how valuable the emphasis on education is. I remember begging my parents – pleading my case every single year – to let me go to public schools. They didn’t.

I went to a Christian Brothers high school, but my real luck came from the Jesuit university I attended. The Jesuits are noted for their commitment to the education of the whole person. If there’s one thing I took away from my college experience, it was “solidarity.” While Loyola may not be known for their commitment to the betterment of Rogers Park (I think it’s a no-win situation, as far as land ownership goes, but on the plus side, the Loyola stop is in pretty good condition. and there used to be a Dunkin Donuts!), they’ve always emphasized service-learning and commitment to communities of all kinds, more than just their own student body.

My professors there were not all devout Christians, but they were all devout scholars and educators (give or take a few). One of my favorite professors was a women’s studies professor who taught some of my feminist theory classes. She was a devout Catholic, but freely admitted that as a woman, she had problems with some of the catechism. I so adored her commitment to her faith but her willingness to question it and call attention to its hypocrisies and flaws. It allowed me to see the Catholic faith in a new light, and for that, I will be forever grateful.

While attending Loyola, I lived in one of the most racially diverse neighborhoods in the city of Chicago, which is already a wonderful blend of everywhere. But that’s not the point, even though I will carry pieces of Rogers Park in my heart forever. The point is that my educational experiences have left me a more rounded, grounded, rational human being. I’ve traveled to Europe for a forensic trip because I was lucky enough to have the most badass forensic teacher (we had one of the only forensic science classes in the country at the time) ever. Loyola prepared me to open my heart and mind to the conditions in the townships in South Africa.

All of this education has left me curious, well-informed (mostly), and most importantly, someone who cares about the well-being of all human beings (solidarity, solidarity, solidarity, and so on).

Regardless of your religious views (trust me, I have plenty of opinions and don’t ever get me started about the current Pope), this article should give you hope for the future and hope that educations such as mine will continue to cultivate a love of learning in young minds everywhere:

By Carl Bunderson

Denver, Colo., Oct 16, 2012 / 03:03 am (CNA).- Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School based in Denver, Colo., has nearly doubled its enrollment in just one year by introducing a classical curriculum.

“This is something people want, and they’ve wanted it for a long time, and now it’s available,” principal Rosemary Anderson told CNA Oct. 10.

Our Lady of Lourdes is a pre-kindergarten through eighth grade school. The parish’s pastor, Monsignor Peter Quang Nguyen, had helped turn around a number of schools in the Archdiocese of Denver which had been in danger of closing. He was assigned to Lourdes five years ago.

When Msgr. Quang hired Anderson to be principal in 2010, the school was in “quite a bit of debt” and had only 104 students enrolled. That figure is 180 today.

The school’s capacity is 235 and Anderson believes that by the next school year, “we’ll have to start wait-listing kids.”

“The biggest problem when I came on was that everyone thought the school was going under. The attitude has changed…Now people know this place will be there, and their kids are getting a phenomenal education, and parents don’t have to worry that it will close in a few years.”

“I’m very grateful for Monsignor Quang’s support. None of this would have happened if he wasn’t completely on board,” she added. “We were right in this together.”

Anderson noted that classical education is meant to help students learn how to think, rather than merely teaching them “subjects.” The program at Lourdes school was inspired by 20th century author Dorothy Sayers’ essay “The Lost Tools of Learning,” and the work of Laura Berquist, who was involved in the founding of Thomas Aquinas College – a Catholic university in southern Calif. which uses the classical model.

“She’s a huge influence,” Anderson said, “she founded a homeschooling curriculum called ‘Mother of Divine Grace’ and is brilliant in the ways of classical education.”

The foundation of classical education is a set of three methods of learning subjects, called the trivium, which is made up of grammar, logic, and rhetoric.

Lourdes school will focus on the grammar and logic phases, and will introduce the eighth graders to rhetoric.

The trivium “happens pretty naturally” using the classical curriculum, and ideas of grammar and logic and integrated into the subjects taught to students: “it flows naturally from the way teachers are teaching,” Anderson expressed.

This year saw the hiring of five new teachers, in a faculty of 15 total. And out of those five, four have either had a classical education or taught in a classical school,  Anderson reported. “I brought in people who know what the vision is…they’re confident in how to teach” classically.

Anderson noted that the school drew in numerous students who had previously been schooled at home. Several homeschooling parents enrolled their children as this type of education wasn’t available before. “Now they know there’s something that will sync up with what they’ve taught” their children.

Several non-Catholic families have also come to Lourdes just for the classical education, Anderson said. She expects that group to grow as well, “because it’s a great education.”

Parents at the school are very invested in the classical model, which she “welcomes completely.” She pointed to the Catholic teaching that parents are the primary educators of their children, and that “we’re just here to help them.”

Anderson was encouraged to differentiate her school, and with the “support and knowledge”of Bishop James D. Conley – former apostolic administrator of the archdiocese – chose to follow this approach to education as a way of imparting to students the art of learning.

“The classical approach is Catholic, through and through,” said Anderson. While “other schools are doing great things,” “no other Catholic schools in the diocese are doing this yet.”

The school’s re-organization will be a three-year process. The first year, which is occurring presently, involves a re-vamp of the English department and the introduction of Latin classes.

Latin was introduced in place of Spanish because of its importance as the basis of all Romance languages. Students “logically process things better when they know Latin,” said Anderson. She pointed to high school freshmen who “test into honors French, without having had any French before, just by knowing the root language.”

Latin is important for the grammar stage of the trivium because its nouns decline, or change their ending according to function they are performing in a sentence. This helps students to better understand how languages work, and it is coupled with the memorization of poetry.

The second year of the school’s rehabilitation will consist of a renewal of science and social studies.

“We’re not necessarily changing the material we’re teaching, but how it’s given to the kids, which is a step away from dependency on textbooks,” said Anderson.

Students will be reading more primary sources for history, and in English classes, reading historical novels to tie-in with their history classes.

“All the classes are very intertwined. What they’re reading in English should correspond to what they’re learning in history, and in history should be able to carry over to the virtues they’re learning about in religion, so it’s all very integrated.”

Morgan McGinn is in her second year at the school, and teaches second grade. She discussed how the move to classical education has changed her teaching style.

“I have to read and discover knowledge on my own before I can share it with my kids…It’s definitely changed my teaching; I can’t just look at a book anymore and read the lesson, and be prepared for the next day.”

“I’ve had to almost flip everything I know about education upside-down to teach classically,” she said.

Her students are now “required to think more,” rather than having “the information they need to know fed to them.”

The holistic approach of classical education, meant to build up the whole person, translates to an emphasis on the fine arts. “We already had a great performing arts and speech department here…so that was already very integrated,” said Anderson.

The school’s music and performing arts teacher, Patricia Seeber, is a veteran of the school, having taught there for 13 years.

“The feel where we’re at spiritually with the kids, that we’re making that the most important part of the day, has shifted for the better,” she said.

“It just feels like they’re really responding to it in a great way.”

In keeping with the introduction of Latin into the curriculum, Seeber has added Latin hymns among the songs prayed at the school’s bi-weekly Masses.

“We raised the bar I think a step or two higher than a lot of schools do, and the kids really rise to the occasion.”

Lourdes’ classical education is meant to help the students realize their full potential “spiritually, intellectually and socially,” and help draw them to God through the true, the good, and the beautiful.

The parish’s maintenance director, Bryan Heier, reflected on Anderson’s leadership at the school, saying “with enrollment as high as it is so quickly, she’s doing something right.”

On Life, Progressively

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Apparently, adulthood happens all at once.

This week we entered into contract to purchase a house. This means that I may soon own land. (Scary thought, right?) Five hours prior to submitting the offer, I was apathetic about purchasing a home. I looked at the first one on our tour and inwardly sighed at the lack of emotion I felt. But at the second one, I knew.

Within reach, reasonable, adequately outfitted, and bearing the charm of a time since past, the house is the perfect blend of what Mike and I both need. Bedrooms with no shared walls. 2 bathrooms. New appliances in the kitchen. A washer and a dryer! A basement. A garage. A yard. Chill backyard space. We’re thrilled, but cautious. There is much that could go wrong yet. But until then, I’m dreaming of a hammock and Mike is planning his zen garden and we are content.

Amid that excitement, I will also be enduring my first root canal tomorrow. Joy. I broke a tooth many years ago and it’s been annoying me ever since. I went, they poked around, they proclaimed “Root canal!” and scheduled me. They’re concerned that it has a crack in it, which would mean that I’m in trouble….

The guy I’ve been seeing offered to drive down and take care of me, but I imagine I’ll be in a hellish mood, and I’m not entirely sure I’m prepared for him to see that. I’m on a pedestal now, and grumpy Katie is certain to change that. You don’t come back from grumpy Katie. You’re forever altered. I don’t want that. Not yet.

On Being a Twenty-Something, Defensively

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I’ve had a blog since I was fifteen. I wrote posts on MySpace, I posted to (and obsessed over) my LiveJournal account, and finally, when I went away to college, I got a Blogspot to document adventures for my family. Three (give or take a few) iterations later, you have the present form of the same thing: a place on the internet to write about my life.

There is something so entirely humbling about reading back to a post that I wrote when I was little.

Stuff like:

“I stood there, in the company of many, but I knew so few.”

and

“I smiled, trying not to make eye contact. I’m sure my dejected look detracted from my approachability.”

or

“The drive home, in the cool night air, windows down, music up, was immense. No other cars on the road, just me and the night, speeding slowly home. I set the cruise control, just for fun, so that I could just be in the night. I was sixteen again, fresh with ideas, taking the turn to the song, letting the music take me elsewhere.
The lights in Denver have begun their countdown, a simple way of informing pedestrians of their impending restriction, and at night, the countdown simply hits zero and reverts back to the little light man walking. I found myself timing it so that as I drove, I’d be crossing the intersection as the change occurred, the ultimate end leading back to the same beginning.
There is nothing better than the promise of summer, no matter what life is holding for you at the moment, standing outside in the night and smelling the air will change your life. Floral scents intermingle with the city’s hot fresh air and the animals of the night seem to be more alive.
We saw a skunk mosey past, on his way somewhere fast. As I drove away into the night, rolling down the windows, I passed the skunk again, still running, still on the street, getting somewhere.
We’re all getting somewhere, even if we have no idea where we are.”

These posts become a place for me to mark my growth. They remind me that I’ve always been some things, and they reinforce that I’ve always been others. Sometimes I am struck by how insightful Past-Me is, and others, I cringe at her insecurity and wish her all the self-assurance in the world.

I’ve been reading posts about my generation. We’re the Millenials, the ones who are supported by their parents, who have no work ethic, who are vapid and shallow and marked by their sense of entitlement. All of those authors are so wrong.

Yes, we’re wallowing, wandering, lost, and afraid. (And yes, some of us are total dicks. But your generation had some not-so-pleasant people in it too, admit it.) What we were raised to see as our future is crumbling in front of us, as though arriving at the desert mirage to find more and more of same, too-hot sand. We’re thirsty. As I’ve said before, we’re the Next Lost Generation. We have no idea what to expect, because the expectations change daily.

Struggling to find the balance between youth and maturity is a difficult one, particularly when any move toward “grown-up” is criticized, and movements to remain “youthful” are equally stigmatized by both my peers and my age-superiors. What I find interesting is that many of these authors criticizing the Millenials are Millenials themselves.

I work three jobs and don’t get financial support (except health insurance premium – Mom, you’re the best), and I make it work. I have work ethic, drive, desire, and passion to create a sustainable and secure future for myself. I happen to enjoy a few gin & tonics and some dancing. So be it. Yeah, I get frustrated at my peers. I find people with no drive infuriating and weak. I am prone to the occasional meltdown of desperate wallowing.

But I’m also not wallowing for the sake of wallowing. This life is a journey. Right now, the age-superiors are controlling a large stake of this world that we live in. It’s hard to get past the entry-level job, it’s hard to ascertain whether or not our place is as adult-equal or child-mentee. It’s difficult. It’s like being seventeen again, being all lost and insecure and afraid.

The reason that there are so many twenty-somethings actively writing about their lives is because they’re finding an outlet.The internet has opened lines of communication that hardly existed twenty years ago, and has fostered equal parts community and isolation by “social networks.” Growing up with access to technology will change – has already changed – a lot of the ways that people example typical milestones. There’s a lot more comparison, more evaluation, but also less of each.

Pressure on young adults to be “perfect” is a very real thing. They want to succeed, and want to be able to do that, but are often so coddled and cared for that they lack the tools with which to do so. Or, alternately, they want to succeed but instead of being coddled and cared for, they’re tough enough to make it on their own but are constantly fighting external circumstances. It’s life, just like you lived it, just like your kids will live it. It’s just always a bit different.

Yeah, some of those blogs are insipid as all hell. Some are lame. Others are personal. Each blog inhabits its own space. It is exactly what it is. And I’ll tell you something that I always tell people: If you don’t like it, don’t read it.  (For those of you who think the Millenials are strange, you should delve into the world of middle-aged bloggers, some who are fascinating, wonderful creatures and others who are like reading something reminiscent of listening to nails along a mile-long chalkboard. The grass is always greener, dear Baby Boomers.)

My blog marks my growth from adolescent to young adult and beyond. I’m humbled by, grateful for, astonished by, embarrassed about, aware of, and immensely proud of everything, even the parts I hate. This blog, while both public-facing and well-trafficked, is an account of growth and the stages that mark a life. My life. It is meant to be self-pitying and triumphant in equal measures.

When I look back on my posts, I am able to mark the moments at which I grew and changed. I am able to see how my opinions and tastes have changed and grown. And I am  content to see how the journey has progressed thus far, and excited about the glorious future that awaits.

So, remember: If you don’t like it, don’t read it. Problem solved.

The Crow, Contentedly

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I watched “The Crow” last night, at the recommendation of a friend. Oh man, so amazing. I can’t believe that I’d never seen it before. This morning, googling around, I realized that the actor Brandon Lee had been killed while filming this movie. (I have faint recollections of reading this before…)

And yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, or five times more? Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless…

The quote above is the quote on Lee’s tombstone, from the Paul Bowles book Sheltering Sky. 

Life is a beautiful and strange place, even though it’s so hard to step back and look at it as though it’s not yours. There are only feelings and the thoughts of moving forward, the hope of a bright future just beyond reach in the distance. There are the moments of disbelief as you look at the present and realize that in some strange way, fate must be smiling on you. You cross your fingers and squeeze your eyes shut and hope that whatever you do is the right decision.

I’m reminded that life can take turns you never expected, and that sometimes, it might be best to follow them wherever they may lead. When I die, I want to have lived a full life, the kind of life that leaves beautiful memories instead of “what ifs.” I don’t want to die, not yet, but if I were to go at any point, I’d wish to leave a legacy of joy behind. Joy and hilariously awkward stories, mostly.

 

On Las Vegas

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I won’t lie, I was apprehensive because this was our first “Cousins Trip.” I have known these people my entire life, but hanging out with them has been relegated to family events, not adventures.

And this was most certainly an adventure. There was a lot to fit into three days, and since it was Ginger’s and my first time, I didn’t expect to do much more than the typical touristy stuff.

Oh man, my feet are sore. I wanted so badly to wear heels (who wouldn’t?), but due to the broken toe, it appears that any closed-toe shoes are impossible. (I still haven’t heard the final read on the toe x-rays taken last week, but regardless of the doctor’s decision, the pain is way too real to ignore – which I thought I would be able to do for beauty.) We walked and walked and walked. We saw so much more than I thought possible.

There was pool time, eating time, show time, sleep time, alone time…all in all, it was a really great vacation with some really great people.

On the way home, there was a girl traveling alone to spend the summer with her dad. Her mom was trying to hold in tears at the gate as she said good bye and her little sister ran up to give her one last hug. I saw the girl try and be brave with a “Don’t cry, Mom, it’s only two months.” But as soon as she was headed down the jetway, there were tears welling up in her eyes.

A woman a few years older than me was standing right by the girl and asked her if she wanted to sit together. They ended up talking for the entire flight. I think it was incredibly selfless and sweet of that woman to spend some time making a girl feel a little bit more comfortable and a lot less scared.

Quickly, some pictures:

Beetle at the airport, DIA

(This Beetle is on display in the Denver Airport. It was hand-beaded by several families over the course of many weeks. It’s beautiful!)

(The security guard after the Blue Man show. He was pretty much amazing, and I told him so.)

(I liked this flower.)

(my grumpy face. By the time we got to the airport, I was exhausted and more than ready to be home. Finding out that our flight was delayed was more than frustrating.)

Wynn, Las Vegas

(The Wynn, Las Vegas)

Black cat

(I’ve never left Carlos alone for very long. Three days was the longest. I was nervous, especially since he got out and ran to hide in the basement during our 5:00 am departure on Sunday morning. We got back to a very grumpy Carlos, although I was thrilled that he was very much alive. He had taken his collar off somewhere along the way and i still haven’t managed to find it. – old picture)

(The Las Vegas Strip)

(Sorry Ginger, the eyes looked so creepy when I tried to fix them!! I still think we both look beautiful!)

(Caesar’s Palace)

(Mike and I thought it’d be fun to wear hats. It wasn’t.)

(I touched a Blue Man!! Better yet, my favorite Blue Man! Something about his eyeballs was super cool.)

(And of course, there was pool time. Mike said he felt like Jason Segel in Forgetting Sarah Marshall because of the fruit we started collecting. It was cute.)

And now, I’m off to work! I am so late, so I expect to be there quite a bit later than usual tonight. I have a giant project that absolutely must be completed by tomorrow night  I am hoping that I can overcome the exhaustion and rock today.

On Cookie Monster and Cringing

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Cookie Monster Birthday Cake

I think this was Mike’s birthday cake?  If you don’t mind my saying so, we were just adorable.

I love that in most pictures, I’m either moving or talking. Apparently my inability to sit still isn’t new (and neither is my love of cake).

I love finding old pictures. This one was pinned to my wall in my room at my mom’s house.

I love that my room at her house is a frozen snapshot of my adolescence. Not quite frozen anymore, as it would later become the repository for all of my collegiate possessions and thus everything has commingled into a massive reminder of everything that is my past. Schoolbooks, shoes, pictures, artwork, dresses (oh, my dresses – they are all so amazing.)

There are posters on the wall. There are pictures of me and my friends, doing whatever it was that we thought worth photographing at those ages. I’ll pick one up and cringe at how silly I look, but they’re a nice reminder of how much I’ve grown and changed. They also remind me how grateful I am that I was so invested in my adolescence. We were so engaged in shedding our youth and so determined to don our adult selves, but we never lost sight of our enjoyment of everything “teenage.” We were silly and serious, immature while maturing. Honestly, it was rough, but it was beautiful.

I was talking to mom the other night about those rough years. She told me that her mantra during that time was This too shall pass, which makes me wince with regret and a touch of shame. She was quick to reassure me that it wasn’t all bad. (Great, just what everyone wants to hear. “It wasn’t ALL bad.”)

I was telling her about the mother and daughter that I saw checking into the hotel in New York. The daughter had the matronly look of a teenager who developed young but hasn’t yet grown into her body and the mother just looked frazzled. They were at the counter, asking the concierge a question, and I heard the daughter say, “I told you so!” to her mother in front of the concierge.

I cringed for both the mother and the daughter. That daughter will one day realize that being right isn’t always the most important thing (not always, but most of the time, right?). Also, the daughter will learn that double-checking is something all adults do, although I was recently informed by a co-worker that I’ll grow out of my habit of obsessively double-checking everything. That came as a relief. Double-checking is so necessary but so annoying.

I apologized to my mom for basically all of my youth. In retrospect, I was a holy terror at certain moments and perfectly angelic at others, but I’m comforted by the knowledge that all of that is normal in the progression from infant to adult – the progression that is never easy and comes with no instruction manuals.

My relationship with my mother is a strong and honest one. I don’t lie to her (I try not to lie in general, but I’m particularly frank with her), and she doesn’t lie to me. I know that anything I do, she’ll support, and she’s always been available to listen. She doesn’t always like it, but she’ll listen. And I appreciate that. It’s the sort of unconditional love that makes me proud to be part of the family. They’re all very good at the unconditional love thing.

She admitted to me that she understands a lot of what was going on back then was caused by my dad, which I don’t deny. His approach to parenting a teenager may not have the best. (By “may not have been the best,” I mean “definitely wasn’t the best.”) It caused a lot of anguish for me and created a terrible emotional firestorm that, when combined with teenage hormones, was bound to create a series of terribly unfortunate and chaotic events. You’ll do well to note that since I was able to remove myself from the situation and embrace my independence, there has been a drastic increase in all things positive.

Growing up involves a lot of growing pains. Those precious babies do grow into perfect monsters and then pass into tentative adulthood. It’s never peaceful. Even after they leave the nest, there’s a lot of growing left to do. By that point, you can only hope that they have the tools necessary to deal with the hellish nature of adulthood and the grace to accept responsibility for all that they are and do. A sense of humor never hurts, either.

katie and katie

(see? I told you 17 was rough.)

On Death, Eventually

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I fear greatly the answers to the questions surrounding death. It pains me to think too much about any of it. Rather than the belief in something after, I believe solely in attempting to make the best of these precious earth-bound moments. And yet, usually catching me entirely unaware, the thoughts creep back into my brain. What lies after? How can we succinctly tie our own spiritualities with the scientific, with the known, with the cold reality of it all?

I remember the immensity that was the moment – that singular moment – when we put down our beloved golden retriever. His head coming to rest for the last time on my shoe. My jerky response as I stood, smashing into the paper towel dispenser. The nurse (nurse? vet tech? lady in scrubs?) attempting to comfort me and me pushing her away because the tears were coming too fast and I couldn’t wait to break away and be alone, where no one would see me crying. I realize that this is in no way comparable to the deaths of those humans we come to love so much, but then again, I think perhaps that even those mammalian deaths hold the keys to true humanity. The singularity that ties us all together: love.

No matter how it happens, death holds some sort of quiet whisper, a moment in which time stops rushing and instead, lingers for the exhale. It’s not something that will ever leave you. (I do not speak as one wizened by so many experiences, thankfully, although the few that I have had with death have been personally profound.)

I was reading in the bathtub (now that I’m taking baths again, my reading material has multiplied immensely) and I found myself falling in love with the protagonist of the book I’d just started – it’s been languishing in one of my book suitcases (yes, I have those) for ages and I’ve just now gotten around to picking it up. She embodies, for the moment, everything I find wonderful: strength, intelligence, determination, the juxtaposition of masculine and feminine, beauty, courage. And yet, I found myself terrified that she’d die before the end of the book. In that moment, I was certain of her death. I flipped to the last page (a terrible habit, but one I take great comfort in – I even do it with romance novels, and you know from the third page how those are going to end) and sure enough, she dies. It’s a beautiful death, really, her soul personified by birds. But now I’m happier to read about her life. I can take comfort in the fact that I already know how she dies, yet I’ve not at all ruined the book for myself.

This is the point of all of this, I guess: even though you can not know the exactness of your own death, you know that at a certain point, it must come. I look at those yellow feline eyes that I love so much and realize that I can’t keep them forever. I push away the melancholy thoughts, realizing that loving him now is so much better than focusing on the pain I’ll feel when he’s gone. I circle back, from time to time, working myself up thinking about the emptiness that the deaths of those I love will leave. I think it stems from the knowledge that one day, I will be without my mother. In my attempts to soothe myself, I have begun to steel myself against the void I know will exist. Void is inadequate. It will be like a roaring vacuum. It will pull at the edges of my soul.

But it is natural. (I remember this book they got us to teach us about death. I’ll never forget how incredibly mystified I was when I read it. I hated the book and yet something drew me to it. It calmly taught children that everything must die, and yet it horrified me. I hated connecting dead leaves to people. Something resonated somewhere deep inside of me. I often think of that book and wonder what it would be like to read it again now. I wonder if it’s in a box somewhere in a basement.)

Death and taxes, they say. But they’re not wrong. To know the eventuality of it before it happens is to hope that one will be able to fully embrace everything that is life knowing the finality of it all. The chance to struggle and create, to learn and understand, to think, to feel, to be, to love passionately and freely is a gift. Those moments are the footprints we leave behind. To love deeply and live fully are my only goals. If at my funeral, people don’t laugh and tell horrifyingly embarrassing yet endearing stories, I will be incredibly bummed.  Life is a wild adventure. It’s beautiful and bittersweet.

Either way, it is certain. It’s comforting, in a way, to know that everyone has to do it. Someone’s doing it right now. Someone did it yesterday and someone will do it tomorrow. We are all born and we will all die, but what we do in between belongs solely to us. That’s the best part.

On the Celebration of Life

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It’s days like Saturday that make me realize that the human capacity for emotion is much deeper than we could possibly even realize. Necessities like food, water, and shelter are nothing without love.

Brian and I are standing by his golf clubs. I’m asking what the difference between a wood and an iron is. He tells me that woods are made out of wood. Then he pulls out a club. “So that’s an iron?” I ask. (The club is not made of wood.) No, he tells me, it’s a wood. We laugh. I understand the difference now. If you can imagine that it might be made of wood, it’s a wood, even if it’s made of metal. Irons are more like fireplace instruments. Heavier. Deadlier.

Brian is fiddling with the cover. “Grandpa never had the right covers for his clubs,” he says. And that’s when I feel it. His loss is so palpable in that moment. The fact that everything Brian knows and loves about golf, he got from Marshall. The fact that Marshall and Brian used to go golfing and then go get lunch. It was his childhood. He and his grandpa were inseparable, even at the end.

I don’t know how to say I’m sorry. I do know how to learn about something that they both loved, so I ask more golf questions.

“I’m only telling you this because I know you’ll appreciate it,” said Juanita, leaning into me. She introduces me as her adopted granddaughter. I am so happy in that moment. She didn’t want them to bring that picture, she says, but she’s glad they did because it’s one of her favorites. She tells me that on their wedding day 63 years ago, there’s a picture of him looking at her exactly the same way. My eyes were on her sweater, rhinestones at the wrists. I didn’t dare look up. My eyes were already full. She tells me that even though he was a quiet man, he always reminded her that he loved her. “And he really did love me,” she says. I smile. I mean, I really smile. My heart is full of love and a little bit of hurt – the pull of the sadness of a great loss.

(I couldn’t get a picture of the picture without the glare! I’m sorry for the poor quality!)

The speeches are beautiful. There is nothing better than honest memories. Laughter fills the space. When one of my cousins gets up to say something, I feel my eyes start to fill up again. Even though this is sort of the worst part of life, the saying goodbye, it’s also the best. It reminds you how much love you have surrounding you. It reminds you how much every single person can mean to you, how much they can impact you.

My adopted grandparents. My other grandparents. My spare grandparents. My not grandparents. We never could figure out just what to call them. So we threw terms out and tried them on. They mean just as much to me as my actual grandparents. And I mean just as much to them as their grandchildren. Mom tells me that when I was little, we were leaving Grandma Mary’s house and I asked her, “Who are those people?” They’ve been a part of my life since I was little, since before I could figure out how they fit into the scheme of things.

And I’m so grateful for that.

Marshall was a wonderful father, a wonderful husband, and a wonderful grandfather. I am so happy that I got to be a part of it. And I promise to help take good care of Juanita.