Doggie dog dogs :)

Vintage Boxer Framed Signed O.E. LARSEN Lithograph

All I want to do right now is eat cookies. Lots and lots of cookies. I prefer that they have milk chocolate. I'm kinda off the dark chocolate train right now. I love those peanut butter blossoms with milk chocolate Hershey kisses - those are amazing. I will eat them with milk. Right now I have soy milk. I like soy milk.

Vintage Painted Ceramic Whippet Figurine

Dogs also make me very happy. I think they make other people very happy too, so I often buy vintage dog stuff for my shop. Just think of how it feels when you see a dog's smiling face pointed in your direction. There are a lot of dogs in my life. When I'm feeling sad, no one makes me happy quite like a dog. Last night it was a skittish little chihuahua wearing a bow tie and a fleece sweater watching me make cookies. Ah, bliss.

I have nothing to say. I have nothing to write about that feels right to me. My store keeps going and my life keeps going, but I don't have anything to say. I will go running tonight though. That might feel good.

It's been a while, has it not?

Room key numbers perhaps, for your fantasy bnb?

I've been gone from the blog for the worst of all reasons: I met someone. I disappeared like all those people that went before me that I judged harshly and became embittered towards. I'm on the other side. Now I understand all those lost friends, those lonely weekends when bffs found bfs. This is the reason I started to hang with couples; it kept me from suffering the ever-impending loss from coupledom with single pals.

Anyhoo, life has changed in a lot of ways, and I don't know if I'm quite ready to try to write about them. My shop remains the same. Summer was good. I have health insurance. I've continued to run, surprisingly; I went out last night, in the dark (my secret love). I felt strong. I feel like I'm getting better at it, which I attribute mostly to my genius idea to get gel inserts for my shoes (ah, bliss). I went out and did a 12K in San Francisco about a month ago, and it changed me, which is surely something that should be relegated to the marathon finishers of the world, but seriously, I feel different about physical exercise now.

The middle of the race was back and forth across the Golden Gate Bridge with a swig of Gatorade in the middle, and plenty of botched tourist selfies with runners sticking their tongues out in the background. The wind was blowing in my face and I was feeling a bit high on endorphins, and I realized that my high school swim coach, who died this year of pancreatic cancer, would be so proud of me, at thirty-one, for still doing something with my body and taking care of it. And in that moment, all those pregnant ladies and their realizations that their bodies were "magical, wonderful" things with all kinds of creative power, made sense to me. I was no longer an athlete, but I was still doing something with my body, my flawed hurting body. I wish I could bottle that feeling and those thoughts together. They were really, really important. That was the day I stopped being a former athlete, and I became an adult-who-takes-good-care-of-herself.

The plumber just left. He installed a new toilet. I asked him to leave the old one so I could do something with it. I hated to see the original 40s/50s toilet be thrown away like trash. I'll take a good picture of it and share it later. He noticed all of my paintings and asked if I was an artist. "Well, kinda, I guess, a writer, but really, not really" is what I said. So I was motivated to write a little. There ya go.

Bleh. I'm running.

Several months back, I asked my younger brother to choose something he'd love to do with me and we'd spend a weekend together. He chose a "fun run", an 11k. It's not solid - we're not signed up or anything - but now I'm committed to doing it and I'm running again. I haven't run in years, so it's pretty painful to watch (and do!). I have a running partner who is 100% positive though, so that helps. Mostly I moan and say "fuck" a lot. It's unpleasant.

The funny thing is how my body is responding. I don't wake up sore the next day. I'm tired, sure, but mostly the pain is in the doing. It hurts my heart and lungs. My throat feels likes it's closing up. It's the most asthmatic I've ever come close to feeling. I've approached wheezing on several occasions. But all-in all, it's going well. It's possible that eating afterwards helps a lot, which I haven't ever been able to do. It's also possible that insulin helps move energy to my muscles, which has also never happened before whilst running.

I'm currently drinking coffee from a Peace mug with a white dove. I brewed the coffee with Pumpkin Spice since I ran out of cinnamon. Yesterday I spilled a cup of boiling hot coffee all over my linen top only thirty minutes before work. I sat outside at Starbucks in a wet shirt looking like a reluctant wet t-shirt contest participant. Luckily I had a scarf and linen dries quickly.

I swear I'm not a hot mess.

Thrift Share Monday :)

These vintage posters are from The Nut Tree in Vacaville, California. I found them in a huge old Nabisco warehouse that has been turned into a storage facility/vintage stash open three days a week for crazies like me to dig through and find treasures like these. The owner was impressed with me that I had found them. The bottom one is in better shape than the top one. I hope someone finds them who can really appreciate them.

When I was in my early twenties, I went to Healdsburg for a weekend trip with some friends, and my friend and I went running on Saturday morning to enjoy the hills and the sunshine. I think we ended up back at the hotel like two-and-a-half hours later, after we'd taken the long way around, wanting to explore every new hill we saw. We flatland folk get really excited in the hills.

Running in hills is the the best way to increase one's cardiovascular capacity. My best running happened when I was training up in the foothills, back when I was still trying to be a badass. This is no longer the case, and I'm very content with that. I was never meant to be an endurance athlete.

Anyhoo, I've never been thrifting in these parts, and I'd love to check it out someday. Maybe next summer :)

Linking up with Apron Thrift Girl :)

Part II: Scars and Clumsiness

Define yourself radically as one beloved by God.

-Brennan Manning

So I'm lying on the canal trail, bleeding, with asphalt in my wounds and the terrible bad luck to have twisted one ankle, but fallen on the opposite side. Both sides were inoperable, and even though I lived a quarter mile away, there was no way I could get there on my own. So I figured I'd wait it out, lie on the pavement and wait for a car to drive by. I was close enough to a street lamp that I was covered in a dull yellow light.

Several minutes later, a kind, caring couple stopped in their car. They put me in their Volvo and drove me home (so close, yet so far). We'd never met, and in that delirious moment, I wasn't sure they were real (again, low blood sugar + runner's high + serious injury = delirium).

I ended up being in crutches for a week. I couldn't work because of the terrain of the job, so I lived on my couch with my legs in the air, hoping I hadn't done permanent damage that would lead to a foot amputation (I was an uninsured diabetic with a foot injury; my mind wouldn't stop swirling with worry).

When my wounds healed, which they all eventually did, I had a bright red heart-shaped scar on my knee. And for some reason, I felt like it meant something. I felt loved and protected, and today, that scar reminds me of that feeling. I don't feel foolish for running at night, or for running alone. I don't feel silly for getting hurt at the beginning of a new job. I don't feel those things, because of that little heart, reminding me that I am loved unconditionally, even radically.

Many more times in the next few years, I would experience similar reminders, none of them visible scars, but all of them tattooed on my memory forever.

Scars and clumsiness

This morning I saw this collection of photos on The Huffington Post. Scars are often jarring, disconcerting things when seen from the perspective of onlookers. But by-and-large, people seem to be proud of their scars. This surprised me; I'm not sure why (Obviously, this is not an unbiased sample, though).

I have huge scars on both knees and I don't feel entirely fond of them. They're only a reminder of my clumsiness. In my crazed long-distance running days, I fell a lot, always on asphalt. One of these injuries was particularly bad. I'd just started a new job, and the human resources manager asked me to stay after my shift to work an employment fair with her. At the time, I had even less of an ability to say "No" than I do now, so even though I was exhausted, I went.

By the time I got home, it was dark, and I had to run out my stress. There was a mile-long paved trail right by my house, lit at night, and I ran laps. By the end, I had that runner's high combined with low blood sugar and maybe some dizziness. I tripped, and fell, sprained an ankle and a foot, and busted my knee. I couldn't get up and was bleeding all over myself. It was dark outside and there was no one around.

I'll finish the story tomorrow. Oo! A cliffhanger!

Did you know I love dogs?

I saved a dog's life this week. It was a big black Labrador, late at night. He was standing in the middle of a dark street. I was also walking a black lab, which was strange, so I let them sniff eachother. Then the male dog ran into the street and got hit by a car.

I screamed. The dog walked away like nothing had happened, but the sound of the impact convinced me that he had some sort of internal injuries. I figured if I left him behind on the canal, he'd run into the street again and get killed (he insisted on running in front of the cars-so scary), so I hooked him to my leash and tried to walk the two beasts together. That lasted less than a minute, so I just hollered at him every time he went near the street and he walked home with us. It was awful. Walking one beast is enough of a job. Worrying about the other dog just made my heart race faster. I was exhausted when I got them both home in one piece.

The dog slept with me, so as only to keep him from being shot by an exasperated neighbor in the backyard after he howled with sorrow from 12 to 5am. I didn't get much sleep, between the howling, and the sleeping with a beast. But it was all worth it. In the morning, my mom called animal control and thirty minutes later, the owner was at the front door.

I know it's a simple silly story, but I felt like a hero that night, and saving a life is good for the soul.

"I'm so lost without you"

So I love Air Supply, like love them. I listened to their original Greatest Hits as I ran at night in college. I'd measure out a mile and run laps and listen to Air Supply on my Walkman. For some reason, I always ran at night. I'd get energy at dark, and then I'd hit the pavement in my dorky running shorts and ridiculously long legs. I'd always wanted to be a distance runner, so I figured I'd finally found the perfect opportunity of desperate loneliness and pitiful self-hatred. I think I alternated between that tape and James Taylor's 1985 album, "That's Why I'm Here". I never felt scared of running at night. I don't do it anymore. I fell one too many times. All of my knee scarring is from falling on asphalt, hard.

I don't always listen to music now when I go walking. Sometimes I listen to podcasts, but lately, I've been leaving my headphones at home. I like to spend the time arguing with myself. It gets out a lot of junk that I can leave behind and feel release at the end of the day, like I'm not holding onto stuff I have no business holding onto. It's become my "crazy thinking time". I do all of the crazy thinking when I can go in any and every direction without worrying that I won't be able to come back from it. I walk back in the door and it's done. Walking is my therapeutic container for the day.

My crazy then goes off into the night sky, off into the atmosphere, then gets sucked into the sun and burns up. Take that world.