28

I turned 28 this past weekend. It was a weekend filled with skydives (10 of them!), friends, food, beer, fireworks, cake, and cupcakes. I have awesome friends. They knew I'd be upset without Corey there and they did everything they could to make me still feel loved.


Sometimes I wonder if I'm where I'm supposed to be. So many of my friends are married or engaged right now. My mom had a one year old (me!) when she was 28. I'm incredibly happy, and I think that happiness is a true measure of success, so by that token, I'm in a good place. But some people don't understand the way my life's unfolded recently. Skydiving really did change everything. For the most part its been for the better (Corey). But what if those good things come at the risk of losing the other things that I've always wanted? I've always wanted to get married. Start a family. Corey doesn't want that. We talk about spending the rest of our lives together and I know I always want him there, but he doesn't want the wedding part of it. Is that ok  with me? Can I give that up if it means being with someone I love? I think so. That's where I'm headed right now. Why give up someone, something that you have and that is great for something that you don't know? For something that you've always thought you've wanted, but never experienced? How do you know what the answer is? I don't think you do. I don't think you ever can. So I take it day by day and see how it plays out. I'm happy now, why change that?

28

I turned 28 this past weekend. It was a weekend filled with skydives (10 of them!), friends, food, beer, fireworks, cake, and cupcakes. I have awesome friends. They knew I'd be upset without Corey there and they did everything they could to make me still feel loved.


Sometimes I wonder if I'm where I'm supposed to be. So many of my friends are married or engaged right now. My mom had a one year old (me!) when she was 28. I'm incredibly happy, and I think that happiness is a true measure of success, so by that token, I'm in a good place. But some people don't understand the way my life's unfolded recently. Skydiving really did change everything. For the most part its been for the better (Corey). But what if those good things come at the risk of losing the other things that I've always wanted? I've always wanted to get married. Start a family. Corey doesn't want that. We talk about spending the rest of our lives together and I know I always want him there, but he doesn't want the wedding part of it. Is that ok  with me? Can I give that up if it means being with someone I love? I think so. That's where I'm headed right now. Why give up someone, something that you have and that is great for something that you don't know? For something that you've always thought you've wanted, but never experienced? How do you know what the answer is? I don't think you do. I don't think you ever can. So I take it day by day and see how it plays out. I'm happy now, why change that?

Single for the Summer

Although that blog post may SEEM exciting, its really not. Corey leave for Afghanistan tomorrow, and I'm scared. I'm scared of being alone, of living alone, of raising our dog alone, of going to Orange every weekend alone, and of getting fat while he's gone.

OK, so I'm really sad about all of them, except the last. That one really does scare me. Corey makes me eat healthy and as much as I pretend I don't like it, I really do. I like being healthy and feeling healthy and looking good (pardon the self lust).

But I'll miss him. 4 months is a long time. And he's a contractor, so good things will come of this, for both of us, but I'd still rather have him here with me.

Artwork?

I've sent this to a few people and no one seems quite as fascinated by it as I do. I just love the way that things can be represented graphically in so many different ways. Maybe its the artsy part of me, I don't know. But I want this mounted and hung on my wall. The DC one, the NYC one, the New Orleans one....

They can be found here.

I ride my Bicycle

Last year when C and I got this handsome devil:

we came up with a game plan. Since Spek was still only 4 months old and needed to go outside...a LOT...we agreed that C would do the middle-of-the-night walkings, while I would do the mid-day walkings. It made sense. Although I didn't drive to work and C did, C worked 30 miles and about 40 minutes away, so it was just unreasonable for him to do it. I work about 1.2 miles away. And there isn't an easy way to get to/from other than walking. I don't live OR work near a metro, and there are no bus lines that go conveniently from Georgetown to the part of Rossyln where we live. I love walking, don't get me wrong, but its still at least a 20 minute walk, and when you factor in time to change before and after the walk (I sweat at the first sign of physical activity. Even when I'm in great shape. Always have, always will), it would leave me barely 10 minutes to spend some quality time with pup during my lunch break, before I had to head back to work. That just wasn't enough play/pee/exercise time for a little puppy in the middle of the day. Putting him back in his cage when I had to leave broke my heart (note: it still does). 

So we (I) decided that I should get a bike to make the trip quicker. C has a bike that I could have used, but my short legs (I'm 4'-11") could barely reach the pedals when I was on it. Not fun. I knew I didn't want to spend a ton of money, it was just a short commute after all, but I didn't want something that would fall apart on me after my 10th ride. So I looked and I looked until I found a sweet deal on this little thing:

A Schwinn Frontier GS. It was a 2009 model, so it was on sale, and a Labor Day sale made it even cheaper. And? It came in an XS frame size. Perfect!

So my trips with pup became longer, we were able to play more, he could eat a bit of food, take a longer walk, and just spend more time together. Just the 2 of us. 

When winter came, I stopped riding. Mainly because I'm a huge cold wuss, but also because he just didn't NEED a mid-day walk anymore. Our mid-day walks became less pee-centered and more "Mommy I don't want to go inside yet. I'll lay on the ground and you'll have to drag me inside because I won't go. I won't." See also:

 

But now that the weather is nicer, and my walks TO work just make me sweaty, I figure its time to break out old Schwinny and start riding again. I won't be going home to pup at lunch still, but if I work through lunch I can leave earlier and spend more time after work with him anyway. Its a good trade off. 

Planes!

I've always wanted to fly. When I was in high school I dreamed of going to the Air Force, becoming a pilot. But when I was told that my eyesight was too poor and I'd never have a chance of flying, I gave up on the dream. Perhaps I shouldn't have let it drop so fast, but there were other things that I could do, other things that interested me, and I pursued them instead (hello AREs, have I told you how much I hate you lately?).

But my love of aviation and all things planes never died. One of my favorite parts of living in DC is the proximity to Regan National Airport. From my office window, I can watch planes on their final descent, flying along the Potomac, making that final sharp bank to the right to land at DCA. And when I discovered Gravelly Point Park, I fell in love. When planes are landing to the south, you can sit literally right beneath them as the fly overhead- so close that you feel the rotors off the wings, you hear the rush of air go by you, you hear the roar of the massive engines. It makes my heart race just thinking about it. You can walk, run, bike, jog, take the metro out to Gravelly Point. But my favorite is biking in the spring. You follow the Mt. Vernon trail right along the river, watching as planes pass you the entire length of the trail, culminating in the views you get when you reach the Point.

Here are a few videos from C's iPhone from a few weekends ago. Sorry they're sideways, I'm not tech-savvy enough to figure out how to turn them.

Weird childhood habits revisited

I have a candy dish at my desk at work. I hardly ever have to fill it because everyone else brings the candy in. And then I get the thanks and praise from everyone for having candy at my desk all the time. Its a win-win.

Today I was opening a Dove dark chocolate (is there any other kind?!?) egg and was suddenly reminded of when I was a kid- 7, 8, 9 maybe? Ok, probably like 10-14 - and I used to keep candy wrappers. Not all of them, just the foil ones. I would unwrap candy oh-so-carefully and then press the foil flat in a book for a few days, or I would methodically straighten the creases out using my finger nails. And darned it if I scratched a hole in one and the past 10 minutes were wasted. No holey-foil for my crafts. Throw it over, open a new one and start again (it was a good way to claim that I wasn't eating it because I wanted to, I was eating it because I had to). And when I had compiled enough wrappers, I'd find something creative to do with them. Usually it involved gluing them to the inside of a box. Checkerboard patterns, random arrangements, trying to line up the labels on the foil, sometimes only using the shiny silver insides...always something different. The outside would be a generic kid's Ked's box, but open it up and it was like a surprise of shininess. I was so proud of myself- of my creativity, my OCD neatness of every little piece of foil. I think at some point in my life I had a "foil box" for every holiday. Red and green at Christmas. Pink, blue, and green pastels at easter. Random ugly assortments at Halloween. Red, white and pink for Valentine's Day.

I was lame.

What the hell was I supposed to do with these things? I couldn't put anything in the boxes, because anything I put in them would scratch the foil. I would put the box tops on my shelves in my room, but eventually they'd just collect dust and I'd be disappointed and they'd get tossed. Or replaced with new ones. Eventually I grew out of this (my younger sister pointed out how lame I was). But it was fond memory that I just recalled. One of those memories that brings you back to childhood. When everything was easy and you didn't have a care in the world.

Oops

I need to blog more. There is so much to write about- studying for the ARE's, getting ready for Corey's deployment (do you call it that when he's a contractor and not military?), raising Spek, spring in DC....

Maybe I'll see you back here more often. I hope so.