Tag: adulting

Shall we sleep?

Some days, without explanation or understanding, I find myself wanting just to curl up on my side, snuggle in my arms and elbows, with no sheets over me, and fall asleep with the light still on.

I think it tends to happen on nights that preceded days to which I am not exactly looking forward…, but that’s not for sure… just a guess, at this point, but a decently educated one, anyway.

Well, getting even less sleep won’t help me here, so I’ll get to sleep, instead of avoiding it, and in a way that I know I’ll be actually able to fall asleep and stay asleep comfortably (as opposed to waking up all achy after a short while, because I wasn’t actually very comfortable in that sideways ball).

God, guide my day tomorrow, please, that I live love and joy, and I be happy, healthy, holy… Amen. ❤

Post-a-day 2020

Guess(t) what!

I keep going back to how, when I was staying with a friend at her house, – yes, a house and not an apartment – she was very excited to inform me that she had guest towels now.  She was so utterly excited about that fact, likely on account of its sounding so grown-up like, that I didn’t say anything about it.  However, it seems to be that this is her first time of having guest towels, right?  Well, I have noticed in the past that one of the first things I do, whenever I move in somewhere, is prepare for the possibility of a guest or guests coming to stay with me.  This has always included having extra towels for these guests to use, and enough blankets and pillows, as well as a handful of other things I consider to be important to have available for a guest’s use.

Now, one might think that I have guests over all the time, if this is something I always seem to do.  I actually think I don’t often have guests stay over, and it has been almost never for my current place of residence this past year and a half.  However, I definitely have had people come stay with me at each of my other residences…, and plenty of those times were last-minute or spur-of-the-moment or totally unplanned sleepovers.  Because of that, I have always just made sure that I am prepared… you never know when the opportunity will arise, right?  That’s how I see it, anyway, and so I make sure that I am always prepared.

If only we could get the part of me that keeps my living space super tidy to view things that way, too, so that I just would keep my living space always tidy… Alas, it does not see things that way so far, and my clutter-y messiness wins out on a regular basis still.  I am, however, working on improvement in that area, and have improved much already in recent years.  And I have finally accepted that, well, I am messy – not dirty, but messy, untidy – with my living and working spaces.  That acknowledgement has definitely helped me to plan a little extra mental space and time to spend tidying up regularly, and so the tidiness has lasted longer and longer lately, and the messy stages shorter and shorter!

Anyway, I’m off to sleep – much still to do in the next day or so, before I head home…, and I am still very tired and sleepy after the car ride yesterday.  I went 872.0 miles, with an average of 27.9 miles per gallon through hill after hill in a lovely Jeep Compass for 13 hours and 42 minutes of drive time yesterday, going from Madison, Wisconsin, to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.  I left at 4:45 in the morning from my brother’s driveway, and arrived in my cousin’s at 20:22 (that’s 8:22pm), meaning I spent 15 hours and 37 minutes on the road, in some capacity or other.  (Though, I really enjoyed the part that involved taking fabulous photos of the Bridges of Madison County, despite the snakes everywhere!)  That’s a lot for a day, especially after having gone to bed at midnight the night before, and struggled to sleep at all due to paranoia around potential bug bites… (It turned out to have been from hiking on Friday that I got the bites, and they just didn’t show up until Saturday morning, all itchy and swollen and red, leaving me to think that something was in the bed, biting me overnight… but, we didn’t piece that together until last night, after I was long gone from the imagined bed bugs that had kept me out of restful sleep those four hours of planned sleep.)

So, anyway, I’m off to sleep now.  Goodnight, all!  😉

Post-a-day 2020

The friend drop

You know how people have a tendency to disappear for a while from a friendship, when they start dating someone?

I, myself, did it once in high school (and promptly learned that it is not worth it and that I’ll not do it again…, I had been at the other extreme the time before then, spending so much time with the friend and too little with the boyfriend, that I lost the boyfriend!), and it took a long time for me not to feel bad about it regarding the friend that I almost lost.

Anyway, so I think it happens rather regularly in people’s lives, right?

We probably all know someone or many someones who have done it.

But have you ever had two friends doe it at once, because they start dating one another?

I had that happen several years ago… I was extremely excited just these two friends from different parts of my life had met and were dating one another.

But they slowly began to disappear from my life… now, the two are married and about to have a baby, and I don’t remember the last time we talked or even messaged one another… it’s been almost as long as their relationship, really.

Slowly, but surely, they each disappeared from the friendships they had held with me, and I now feel like I barely know either one of them.

And, while I miss them, I miss them from before they got together… who they are now as a couple is a unit with which I can’t seem to connect… and so I don’t actually find myself wanting to spend any time with them nowadays… they aren’t the same individual fiends I loved having in my life… as it goes with people’s getting together, they are different from before… and I don’t exactly like them now.

I don’t dislike them, I believe… but I definitely don’t like them.

And I am still undetermined as to whether it is how they actually are now, or if it is more how they simultaneously abandoned me and our friendships… I am thinking that it is both, approximately a 60/40 split, respectively.

Anyway… odd how that came to mind tonight… hmm…

Post-a-day 2020

Wanting more

Always leave them wanting more…

That’s what I’ve heard so much in life.

Today, I heard it in my mind in the context of my departure tomorrow morning from Wisconsin… I didn’t feel ready to leave yet, everything has been going so well.

However, I saw that I would prefer leaving while the going is still good, instead of leaving when it has spoiled…

Interesting to consider…

Because, do we need to do this with all things in life, move on while we’re in the midst of awesome?

Or is it only with the things where we already know that moving on will need to happen?

I shall consider…

Post-a-day 2020

Energizer*

I was planning to get a lot done on my computer while up here… When my brother was working during the day for his job, I was going to make my job be to do a few specific things on my computer, most notably writing, and secondarily photography stuff.

I have done minimal writing, and no photography organizing while up here.

I haven’t even gone through the photos that I’ve done while up here…

I guess, I have just been busy taking advantage of being here versus anywhere else… versus home, mostly.

I have exercised with workouts and with just doing various outdoor activities, and often multiple times a day… today, I spent 18,500 steps on my hike at the park, followed by a Hard workout at the gym… when I only had 3,700 steps Tuesday evening for the day so far, it was because we had gone so hard with the outdoor activities all the long weekend long, and had genuinely had to Take A Break, and just lounge around the house for the day.

We’ve been doing a lot outside, and it has been very good for me.

At first, I was so wiped out from the combo of all my already-present life stresses and the added menstruation, I could barely do anything physical or liking to exercise… I could sit on a stationary bicycle and pedal casually, rolling out my leg muscles both before and afterward…, and that was it.

Since those first few days, however, the menstruation has finished, and the activities outdoors have exploded… energy demands have been high, and energy has been in high supply – aka it has been awesome.

Tomorrow is my last full day here, so I shall sleep now, so that I can actually get up tomorrow(!).

Goodnight, World and world at large!

*Bunny

(Think Duracell…)

P.S. That workout this afternoon was an approximate 600 calories burned, based on the fitness tracker my brother has… just for a frame of reference for these workouts that we do… hashtag not easy. 😛

Post-a-day 2020

No, thank you

I seem to do a very decent job of rejecting guys and making it abominably clear that it ain’t happenin’, and then being friends with them (or, at least, good acquaintances).

A man once invited me on a vacation.

Well, he asked me about inviting me on a vacation – ‘What if I invited you on a trip?’ kind of thing.

He, we both knew, had something specific in mind for a guaranteed part of that trip’s itinerary, no matter the destination of the trip.

I informed him clearly that, no, it wouldn’t happen – not doing it that way either, man… but thanks for asking, instead of assuming and all that jazz.

And he, naturally, was bummed, but he also got over it.

Years later, we have turned somewhat into friends.

I call him out on his bs, and never hold it against him.

He calls me on the phone, and has slowly begun talking about genuine things with me, instead of the casual, surface-level chitchat most of the world seems to be comfortable living in.

Today, we were just talking about what we were up to this evening and the past week or so, and I was sharing about my nature time here in Madison, and how, since international travel for vacation is not exactly a thing for the next while, I was considering expanding my goal of visiting Texas parks to include other parts of the country… get to know nature here, so to speak.

One of those places is Utah.

In a sneaky and, basically, magical way, Utah is pulsing with glorious natural wonders.

And I want to spend some time with at least some of them.

When I was sharing about this desire, the guy expressed his total agreement, and said that Utah is truly an amazing place for nature.

I casually asked, in a sly yet joking voice, “Do you wanna take me to Utah?”, knowing that he would remember his offer from years back, and he would know that I was making a joke about it.

He replied, with no actual hesitation, and in a voice so sober as I have only occasionally heard from him, “I would take you anywhere.”

Aww… that’s sweet of you, I told him, and we moved on along in the conversation.

It was a simple comment, and, though it could have been interpreted quite differently when not hearing it said, it was clearly a genuine compliment, both in its meaning and in the speaker’s sincerity in speaking it.

It warmed me, hearing that phrase from him this evening.

He knows that I won’t take him up on his initial offer, and so he wasn’t just saying it in hopes of getting me to go – not at all.

He was saying it, because, in a way, he meant it.

And he still wants me to agree to it, his original offer…. a fact that, in its own odd way, warms my heart ever so slightly…

Because it is nice to be wanted…, even physically and sexually…. I won’t deny that it is especially nice to be wanted by someone so entirely desirable as this guy is, either.

And, even for his little bit of genuine meaning it with his statement, it was well worth hearing him say it, and knowing that the compliment of being so desirable was still there.

Especially now, when I’ve been working so hard on my physical body, I appreciate such a compliment (especially when it is absent of the ridiculous vulgarity too many people seem to express so openly these days)… and it is especially sweet, because this guy doesn’t even know how I’ve physically improved in the past year plus, yet he still holds such an opinion of me…

Compliment, indeed, and I’ll take it! 😛

“I’d take you anywhere,” said a deep, kind, and sober voice over the phone… and, for that few seconds, she took flight in the traces of human love found in that statement, and imagined what kind of person would take her anywhere… she doesn’t really see that happening with him, but she believes that someone is out there, getting ready for her and all the absurdity and love she has to offer, and that she is seeking.

Post-a-day 2020

Nature days

I’ve been up north for over a week now, and I hadn’t even noticed it.

I had some definitely intense decompressing that happened at the start, and then have begun truly embracing the weather and the nature here in the more recent days.

I had expected to do much more sooner, but I apparently wasn’t ready for it… today, even, I finally woke up after having slept for ten hours (with bathroom breaks, as usual)… clearly, I was still struggling to catch up on my sleep.

But things in my brain have been healing, and my body is beginning to understand the healing, too.

Hopefully, it all is rolling well now – I want to enjoy my time here by doing more than just catch up on sleep, you know? 😛

On a separate note, I might have two spider bites on my back… not sure, but they seem like massive welts from a bite of some sort, but they don’t really hurt… they just sting a tad if I scratch at them.

So, I put some special stuff on them just now, and we’ll see how they are in the morning… fingers crossed that they improve dramatically overnight, and that the rest of my skin stays well and smooth.

Anyway, I’m off to sleep… here’s a small teaser from today’s afternoon activities.

Post-a-day 2020

True friends

“I only have about ten minutes, so, nothing about me – just tell me about you…”

He begins to list questions related to things and areas in my life.

“…and how is your social life? Do you even have one right now?…”

And the questions continue in a quick flood…

“…How is your body? Are you still gorgeous, or even more goddess-like now?…”

Eventually, the questions end, and he sits quietly to listen for the next ten minutes, attention focused…

…

Some friends, in even the tiniest of conversations, remind us of what true friends are… they are the ones who, when we’ve been in a tough spot, without their even seeming to try, say exactly the right thing to warm our hearts, and often thereby put us right at the edge of tears…

As I said, in taking with him, my heart felt so loved… breathing was so intensely filling and satisfying, my heart was so loved by him…

That is a sign of a true friend.

And, though we are a whole world apart from one another, I am grateful for the friendship and all of the love that has poured out and continues to pour out from and for it, like an everlasting waterfall…

Thank you, true friend, and thank you, God for the help… I needed this, and tonight especially… thank you, both and all.

Amen. 🙂 ❤

P.S. It is particularly important to me that this is a heterosexual man who expresses honestly and openly his thoughts and opinions, even with women, allowing for a spectacular and genuine friendship between the sexes… (When Harry Met Sally wins no fight here!)

Post-a-day 2020

Whew!

Man, was today a lot(!!!).

We hiked and frisbee-ed, and I photo-ed while they bouldered and swam.

There was intense thinking, visceral activity, and choo-choo breathing, along with a combination of utter terror and extreme, satisfied joy.

And I had a great time being photographer, climbing my own routes to get to the good and various photo angles.

I can hardly wait to share them, these photos… yes, this trip has been very good for me so far… 🙂

Thank you, God.

Please, continue to guide me as I release these restraints I have been carrying, and free myself of these painful fears and stresses in my life… I can do this, and I am grateful for the living opportunity that lies all around me with this present moment.

Thank you for it.

Amen.

Yeah…, today was absolutely exhausting and totally awesome… thank you… 🙂

Post-a-day 2020