Eleven-sixteen

I walk to work. It’s only about 15 minutes, and yes, good exercise! fresh air! watch birds fly around and stuff! But mostly when I walk, I worry. I can’t help it! I’m not much of a worrier, but when I’m walking to or from work, something about the crispy air and the silence and my heart beating a little faster (I walk super fast for no reason) makes me want to bring my problems to the surface and…well, just think about them. That’s all. Most are problems I can’t actually solve, but I still feel productive thinking about them since I’m walking, moving, going somewhere.

This is the Pacific Northwest, so a lot of times there’s an angry little grey cloud above my walk to and from work, making sure it shares its rain with me. Rude! So I put my hood up and my head down and stare at the scenery of ground as I worry. I’ll head down the stairs of my work to go home for lunch, making sure I don’t get hit by a texting golf cart driver. Dan-ger-ous. I pass the shriveled worms that have died not so far from where they were squiggling around this morning (reminder to self: life is short. Also, don’t sun yourself on a sidewalk). The grass is wet and squeaky, and walking on the piles of crumpled leaf bits are more like sloshing on oatmeal. I walk through the stadium’s ocean of gravelly tailgater heaven full of moss, leaves, puddles, paint lines, bottle caps, and colorful glass shards that will never amount to anything like pretty sea glass because they’re hanging out in a jagged place like this.

I cross the street and I’m in my neighborhood of college kids, bikes, and crumpled plastic jello shot cups. I pass a couple of leaf tornadoes and because of this crazy November wind I also get pelted by acorns. I was pretty much reliving the Storm Chasers episode I had watched last night, where they finally chase down a good tornado and get pelted with huge hail stones (I may or may not have just described every Storm Chasers episode). Also, do you know how randomly funny it is to be walking along, minding your own business (read: worrying), and all of a sudden you get an acorn to your face?

And then I’m not worrying anymore. For each little atom I just sloughed off the soles of my cute work heels, a tiny unit of worry has left me. (I wanted to say a tiny bit of worry lifted off my soul, but then I realized that matched with shoe sole, and that is just TOO ridiculous.)

And then I’m home, Rory the pom bouncing and spinning around, telling me helloomgimissedyousomuch in her own style and giving me a look of “you are my whole world.” (She doesn’t get out much.)

Eleven-eleven

So we’re at a cute little cafe, Erik and I, ordering our favorite lemon and raspberry crepes—giant circles of sweet, crispy wonders…how can a circle taste so amazing?—and next to us is a sleepy, salt-and-pepper-haired guy having nose issues. It sounds like he tried the brain flossing trick for the first time and got the spaghetti noodle stuck halfway in his nose, and is now attempting to snort it back through. He also really wants to make sure he reminds everyone about this nose problem every few seconds, because that’s probably the friendly way of saying hello in his alternate universe.

This goes on the entire time we’re ordering, and I’m relieved to get our stuff and find a table. Where does Brain Flosser choose to sit, amongst all the empty tables? Right next to us and our feast, of course! He plays it low-key for a few minutes, and I text Erik under the table, “If he snorts while we eat, I will cut him.” I like to pretend to be tough and violent because hey, I have to compensate for my small size somehow.

As we start eating, right on cue, Noodle Nose starts snorting. About every 5 seconds, that’s how frequent it was. Believe it. And then Erik and I are snorting too, from stifling our laughter, and it turns into a whole snorting fiesta.

So, if you have nose problems, don’t go to cafes and snort it all out.

Right afterward, we headed to the grocery store next door for dinner fixins later. In the canned bean aisle, we met another person seemingly from an alternate universe. Looking back, I probably should’ve gotten an autograph or something, I mean, a whole ‘nother universe!

So we’re looking at some cans of beans, because ranch style or baked is a pretty serious decision for Erik, and this mod-clothed girl with thick black glasses decides she wants some beans too. She isn’t paying attention and bumps her cart into me a little bit and all I could think of to say was “Oh” and move down the aisle, because I don’t have a ready response for people who hit me with shopping carts. Erik’s still contemplating beans, but notices she wants to get past him in the narrow aisle so he moves forward, pressed up to the cans, to let her by. But of course she’s from a different universe so she stays right behind him to ponder her bean purchase, because that’s how things work, right?

She stood there trapping Erik for a good 3 or 4 minutes, and then DIDN’T BUY ANY CANNED BEANS.

Have you ever met a confused soul from an alternate universe?

Oh, the hacking!

Every once in a while, Rory the pom gets a hairball. Like a cat. But it takes a while to show up…in the mean time, my apartment is filled with every HARGHH, HUURRRH, and CAACK you can imagine. This is her in action:

She’s allowed on the couch because there’s no hairball yet. When it’s time, oh, you’ll know. It gets real quiet, the birds kinda stop chirping…then she HARGHs and HURHs from her diaphragm this time, like she took singing lessons, and you pray you get her outside before the CAACK.

The last hairball, as soon as I heard the warning sounds, I grabbed her and carried her like a football while I made the mad dash to the front door. Here’s what some unfortunate apartment neighbor walking by saw: a front door flying open with a girl rushing out, holding a little yellow dog. She hoists the dog up and leans its head over the second-story balcony. It pukes into the bushes below. They go back inside. The door closes quietly.

That was probably the most random thing they saw that day.

I tried to get an a) clear and b) well-lit picture of her cutely napping, and these were the next five pictures:

Finally sleeping peacefully.

Umm, do you really need to take pictures of me now?

None of the face, please.

I think a HARGH is coming on...

CAACK!

Fin.

Angry Yoga

Yoga makes me mad.

Oh I know, it’s supposed to be peaceful and all.

I decided to start my morning “right,” so I put on my super cute yoga pants and unwrapped a yoga DVD. Yeah, after about 6 mountain pose, forward bend, standing lunge, downward facing dog, plank, knees chest chin pose, cobra, downward dog, standing lunge, mountain pose, NOW DO IT WITH THE LEFT SIDE entire sun salutations, I was so BORED.

Then the DVD lady said in her ultra soothing voice “Aaaand oooone more tiiime, sun salutation.” And then I yelled at her. I felt pretty bad. Here she was, just this peaceful little person telling me which pose to do and how to breathe. But honestly, I was getting pretty danged fed up with saluting the sun.

I’m a ridiculously calm person, but this is what yoga does to me.

Fog

My wake-up routine has been the same all summer: practice my Whac-a-Mole skills with my alarm clock, finally slither out of bed, say hi to Rory the pom when she licks my leg once (she'll always give you a kiss on the leg when she walks past you, and it's always just one), open the blinds and the window, and take in the sunlight and bird songs for a minute or two (really, how bad can a day ever get when you start it off like Cinderella?).

Not today.
After Whac-a-Moling, slithering, and getting a kiss from Rory the pom, I realized my room wasn't very bright. I got my hopes up, thinking I set my alarm for an earlier hour than needed, but nope! I opened my window and surprise! Fog.

Granted, it's just a dang cloud, but seeing autumn's first fog roll in made me warmer inside than any bright summer morning. At the end of every season, you're always tired of it and excited for the next. In winter, you're ready for greenery and a little color. In spring, you're tired of the rain and want summer to hurry so you can do outdoorsy stuff. Once summer ends, you're all melted from the heat and welcome the crisp autumn mornings. And then you look forward to hot chocolate and holidays.

But autumn is genuinely my favorite time of the year. Stupidly, it's back to 84 degrees and sunny here in Eugene, but autumn is coming and thanks to one low, lazy cloud, I'm getting out my fall clothes! Is it too early to buy mini pumpkins??

Old Books

So I have this thing for old books.

Really old books. I’m generally drawn to old things, just because who knows where they’ve been. Sometimes if the bus gets me to work a little early, I’ll walk down the street past all the trendy little downtown boutiques and check out the antique mall. Old stuff is just more exciting.

It is kinda goofy though, since even new items have some unknown history to ‘em. This plastic cup I’m drinking out of? It’s from China. China! That makes the idea of souvenirs even goofier. “Wow, you got this shot glass in Montana? Coool!” Yeah, and your random tank top is from HONDURAS.

So, old books. That’s what I collect. Because they’re old and they smell dang good. (If you’ve never smelled a book from the 19th century, then do yourself a favor and go smell one.) So I found one from 1902 on college algebra at Salvation Army, and I picked it up because even though I generally get books that I’ll actually want to (carefully) read, this one just looked so old.

Bought for simply aesthetic purposes. Brought it home, looked through a few pages, and came across this in the very back:

"When this you see -- remember me." Theo M. Keppel, March 15, 1918, Jackson, Tenn.

How can you not be instantly charmed? 1918! So I've always loved this book because of the little things written in it, and the other day I decided to Google these folks. The only thing I found for Mr. Remember Me Theo was a Tennessee listing at Ancestry.com, but it didn't have any info. Miss Mary Glenn Lloyd, who was clearly bored...

...was successfully googled (I am the first to google these folks!). Her college yearbook picture, along with an excerpt (I guess the yearbook was theater-themed; the professors were the "directors" and such):

That's HER. Isn't that weird?? I totally have her autograph!...like, 20 of them. Some of them left-handed. Like I said, she must have been BORED. I mean, it was college algebra class after all.

Anyway, it just goes to show the crazy things you can find by taking the time to search: a picture of a random person who wrote in the back of a random old thrift store textbook in 1918.