Over the last two weeks, I’ve had a small breakdown, decided to take a break from rowing competitively for a while, made some decisions regarding my career & business, acquired a minion, and pulled myself back from being such a friggin’ girl.

sometimes you just need someone to remind you not to be a chick.

In the course of my situational rollercoaster, I had about a week where I thought I should say yes to a possibility that was a bad idea. Then a Frenchwoman was kind enough to metaphorically smack me upside the head & remind me that just because certain situational issues had changed didn’t mean that certain personality differences had altered, so at the end of the day, I had the choice of whether I wanted to have a friend or an inevitable ex-boyfriend – given the way I presented that information, you can probably guess which I chose.

the stuff that oars contribute to.

I’m not quitting rowing. Let’s just make that clear. But I need some time, and some distance, and just… a break. I need to not care about rowing so much, and work on other aspects of my life before I think even about backing up to a stake boat again.

source

Initially, I chose to take a week off from exercise completely. What did I do with that extra time?

I slept.

Oh yah. I slept. And slept. And then, when I was done with that, I slept some friggin’ more. At one point, Jenny from Forrest Gump called & was like, “Damn girl, you got skills.”

But sleep doesn’t last forever. Much to Zoey’s disappointment, eventually you have to wake up, roll your sleep-groggy arse out of bed and see to the rest of your life.

Getting my land legs back.

I took a week off exercising completely, and then only did some light cardio last week – 45 minutes on an arc machine at heart rate is a full workout for alot of people, but for a rower that’s just enough to justify sitting (okay laying) in the dry sauna followed up by a nice long shower.

The first workout back after I’ve taken time off is usually kind of… rank. And I mean that in the odoriferous sense. Exercise really is how my body detoxes – I sweat on a ridonkculous level, and if I go more than three days without exercising in some fashion, the sweat that I throw off in that return workout really is just… well it’s noxious. After a whole week off… ugh, I don’t even want to suggest to you what those clothes smelled like when I pulled them out of my gym bag. ’twasn’t pretty, people. just. not. pretty.

It was kind of weird, not having that… routine of working out as part of my daily life. You notice odd things — this weekend I realized this was literally the first time in years that all of my workout clothes were clean & in the appropriate drawer at the same time.

I think the dogs were a little startled to have me around that much. Ernie was thrilled, but Zoey kept looking at me like, “What’s the catch?”

However, we all know that Sedentary!Claris only lasts so long, so thanks to a story involving a pair of pants that I’ll share at another time, I decided to do the San Francisco Half Marathon at the end of July — partly because I’ve lived in LA for a decade & never been to San Fran, but also because the finish line for the 1st half marathon is only about two miles from Lovely Poet & Missi’s apartment, so I won’t have far to go before I can fall over afterwards.

hustlin’ with help.

Along with smacking some sense into me so I didn’t was less likely to make stupid decisions in my romantic life, the aforementioned frenchwoman also said, “You have this competitive drive that you pour into sport, but in the long run it doesn’t gain you much for the rest of your life. I don’t understand why you don’t take that same attitude and apply it to business? Wouldn’t the results of that solve alot of other problems in your life?”

That was very hard for me to hear. Not due to an unwillingness to recognize the inherent truth therein, but because it forced me to concede the one thing none of us ever want to admit — the French were right.

So for me, this summer is also about finally getting my arse in gear & doing what I should have been doing way before now — treating my business like a career instead of a job. That means going through & redoing my contracts, finishing up the revamp of my portfolio, doing some sites for strategic purposes, & launching one of my own projects.

Truth told, it’s gonna be a whack of work.

Which is why it kinda works out that one day in a boathouse locker room whilst shooting the sh*t with a teenager while I was getting dressed, I ended up finding a minion.
If you’re a rower, that sentence is completely legal & actually did make sense. Just trust me & roll with it.

So Veni is going to come help me out this summer, and we’ll see if, between the two of us we can’t take over the world – within project scope, of course. Shouldn’t be too hard, I finally signed up for Basecamp, so once I get done with the tutorial webinar on Monday, we can totally map things out, and before you know it, domination shall be mine. Just you wait & see.

Music: Florence + the Machine (MTV Unplugged)

ShareThis

Shut it, I totally did. I had a bunch of freelance work in my queue, and I said to myself, “Self, we are going to be sane about this. We are going to sit, and work out timelines & process, and include that in estimates and establish a system for how we’re going to tackle off of this that will allow us to have sanity and get some sleep. Indeed Self, that is what we shall do.”

And, in a rare occasion of personal awesome, that’s what I did.

I know! I was so proud of me too!

…and then it all got shot to hell.

Then on a Thursday morning, I got a call from what I shall call Finance!Client

Finance!Client:	Hey, you know that two month timeline we had?
Claris:	….yes…
Finance!Client:	Well we know our old site sucks, and we’re going to a conference, so we wanted to see if we could move that up a little so we’d have the site ready for it.
Claris:	Okay… when is the conference, gentlemen?
Finance!Client:	Monday.
Claris:	I knew you were going to say that!

And yes, I actually did say that out loud. Freelancers everywhere: you’re welcome.

However, considering that the final tally for the contract will be slightly under what I make in two months worked at Museum!Co (which is no mean amount in itself, thanks be to art museums) I really couldn’t turn that one down, so away we went, and everything got thrown up in the air as I scrambled to finish the site for Finance!Client before all the other projects fell back down to hit the ground.

Which is why, as of last Wednesday, I have completed enough work that I am now caught up to… last Sunday evening. (except for Civic!Co. There I’m just kinda eff’d & will have to spend the next week & a half doing… pretty much nothing else.)

However, in the interim I had a couple thoughts that I figured I’d share with you, so here they are.

Things I would want you to know if they’d happened to me.

But they didn’t, so obviously this is all entirely hypothetical.

- you’ll get way further in your research if you wait until the end of the phrase to hit enter.
For instance, “Google table” gives completely different results than “Google tablet“, which was probably the information I was looking for anyway.
psst – suck it, Apple! I told you if you’d made the iPad Mini I’d buy it but nooo… you couldn’t give me a half-page-sized fully functioning tablet. Well Google can, so what’s up with you?

- pay attention when ordering oar handles.
Why? Because it turns out that “1″ isn’t one set, but one single grip, and a bad time to find that out is when you’re opening the envelope for the first time* as Z is taking the old grips off only to hear you go, “Stop stop! Son of a bitch, I’m an idiot!”
*because possibly I might have thought I was being smart by not opening the envelope until we did the switch, thus lessening my chances of losing anything.

Note: This would be especially bad if this was perhaps the second set of oars that I’d bought new grips for and maybe I’d correctly ordered the right quantity the first time around. Because if that had happened, and then I had still mucked up ordering the second set, that would be just… so stupid. If that had happened. Which, of course, it didn’t. But if it had, this entire story would be… less than optimal.

- don’t buy a Kindle while you’re in the middle of a work rush.
Otherwise, it will arrive on Monday, & you will walk past it for a week, still in its packaging because you just know that if you let yourself open up the box & get it sorted & put the darling red leather cover on, no actual work will get done because you’ll just start reading smutty books to decide which would be best to send to Anya* now that, thanks to the Kindle, no one will actually be able to see the content of what you’re reading.
I’m still not entirely sure how this tradition evolved to its present state over the years, but when one friend lives in LA & the other lives in Toronto, sometimes the birthday & Christmas packages become… creative.

Instead, because you know you’d fall into the Tempting Pit of Reading Awesome and are trying to be really, really good, the Kindle will sit in a box on your living room floor which you will cast long, sad looks at as you rush past from bed to boathouse or work. It will squat, sad and alone and feeling unloved as you inhabit your couch while The Daily Show & The Colbert Report marathon from your Hulu queue in an attempt to make oneself feel as though you have some semblance of an idea about what’s going on in the world as your life consists of a backlit screen and the constant clicking of mouse & keyboard until you realize that the TV is distracting, and you go into full-on Sh*t Programmers Say mode.

At this point, it’s possible that you will not only have a despondent, still-wrapped Kindle anthropomorphically emoting annoyance in the way only electronics can, but you’ll also now have two canines balefully staring at you — after all, TV they can watch with their mommy, but once you put the headphones on — well, :sigh:… it’s like you’re pretending they’re not there.

So, ya know… that might have been my life last week if I’d decided to wait until a later date to set up the Kindle. If it had happened. Which of course, it didn’t, so hey — good thing there.

do NOT start watching The Biggest Loser on Hulu.
Because, if say, you work with k-walla, who loves Jillian Michaels, & randomly turn on season 6 for background noise one afternoon while working & setting your world up for the week, you just might become a-freakin’-diccted and end up staying awake with Sachiel until 1:30am the next Sunday night to make sure that Heba & Vicky don’t win because oh my god, they’re such bitches, and Michelle rocks!
You might also already be 2 episodes into season 7, want to give Jerry a teddy bear, hope that Dan gets to stay forever, & think that Tara is the sh*t. Maybe.

Untapped potential: Jillian Michaels as a coxswain. I'm just sayin'.

…and in conclusion:

…that might be my world right about now. So – how’s y’all? What’d I miss?

Music: Simple Song – The Shins (Port of Morrow)

ShareThis

Yup. That’s the bottom of a boat. A boat that I normally row.

so… how was your Sunday?

For the record, it really wasn’t my fault.

Sunday, I was going up the marina at a good clip, about 80% pressure so a 2.04, 2.05 at a 27,28, doing what I should be doing.

All of a sudden, one minute I was at the catch, the next I was rolling sideways into the water.
(which despite what people think about California, is no small amount of cold in February)

No, I did not hit a buoy, thank you very much.

It seems that a coach from Neighbor!JuniorTeam was bowing a 2x with a high school rower, decided it was time to go in, turned around to go horizontally across the traffic pattern to head back up to their boathouse, & somehow completely missed the sight of me alone in the middle of a deserted marina going full tilt up along the approved traffic pattern.

As such, N!JT Coach started to paddle across. The result? A great moment in boat repair history wherein I came straight up and, due to my momentum, over their bow hull.

I said to Salter afterwards, “Thank god I was at the catch when it happened & my bow ball was out of the water — if I’d been at the finish, I’d have hit straight on & we’d probably be talking about replacing the back end of the boat.”

In terms of my day, I was on the 6th of 10 intervals, so I was literally smack dab in the middle of my workout when I got thrown into the water mid-stroke.

To her credit, N!JT Coach totally took responsibility for what happened, which was nice. Unfortunately, that still left me bobbing up & down in the middle of the marina with a single that might or might not be leaking, which was… not nice.

This was the point where my workout became a biathalon.

Second event: swimming.

I can get back in a MAAS or Peinert like most people breathe — I teach Sculling I, for me it’s not a big. However, the Fillipi is a far narrower shell. Add in that there was still a part of my brain looking around like a toddler woken up from a nap asking, “What… what happened? How did we get here?” I pretty much knew I wasn’t going to be able to manage a demonstration of my normally mad-ass flip test skills at that moment in time.

Thankfully, this all happened across from Lions!Boathouse – as another rowing boathouse, their dock is low enough for me to be able get in & out of my single, which the general marina boat slips are not.

So, I grabbed a rigger in one hand and started to awkwardly breaststroke my way over, tugging the single behind me. Thankfully, N!JT Coach realized that hey, this could be done better & offered to tow the boat over for me, which brings me to some very important lessons:

Things to know:
1. Bungee workouts do come in handy
2. Laziness can pay off.

Due to the fact that I travel between two boathouses and am too absent-minded to remember to bring things with me, I will often just buy duplicates & leave them in the appropriate places.
(For instance, I have three yoga mats. We can go over that another time.)

That day, my saving grace appeared in the form of the bungee that I’d left looped around the speedcoach crossbar. We were able to use that to attach my shell to their 2x and N!JT Coach & her rower towed the single over while I aquatically booked it over to the Lions!Boathouse dock, valiantly attempting to avoid swallowing marina water along the way.

Thankfully there was no one at Lions!Boathouse for me to have to explain why I was shivering my arse off on their dock as N!JT Coach brought the single most of the way, and some helpful guys in a motorboat nudged it level with the dock. Once that mischief was managed, I was able to get back in and row the 1000m or so across the marina & back to Bear!Boathouse, where Salter was unloading one of her 8+s. It would seem one crew was awesome enough to have broken a backstay and thus had earned a land workout while Salter finished on water with the lineup that hadn’t screwed their hardware.

Well okay then – I guess it was just that kind of a Sunday.

I fished out my sopping wet longsleeve (which thankfully had been under the back of my footplates & thus hadn’t floated away), threw it on the dock with a rather definitive splat!, looked at the 10 junior rowers watching me and asked, “Well ladies, on a morning like this, there’s only one thing left to decide — which one of us is going to tell Z that he has two broken boats?”

yeah…

don’t let anyone fool you kids — being a grown-up sucks.

Z came in with his varsity boats about 15 minutes later — just enough time for us to get all the boats up and out of everyone’s way & for me to strip off my sodden clothes & jump into sweats.

For the record, the habit we rowers have of buying sweatpants so they ride really low on our hips over spandex is all well fine & good until the day that you are so cold & wet that you can’t even keep your underwear — try rockin’ that look commando in a public boathouse, & you’ll be cinching the drawstring a little tighter, lemme tell ya.

And so, still cold & hoping that my pants would stay up until I could get into the shower, I went to talk to Z. Poor bastard had just barely stepped out of his launch before I said, “Hiiiiii….”

After six years, Z knows that tone of voice from me means to move forward with caution. “Hi…”

Claris: So…how was your row?

Z: Good, actually. Really good.

Claris: Okay, ’cause we broke two boats.

Z: That’s not funny.

Claris: I know, which is why I asked about the row — I figured that way we should at least start from a happy place.

:insert Z glaring at me here:

In all honesty, I was every bit as annoyed about the situation as Z, but as I told him an hour later, “I had to joke about it on the dock because if I’d expressed my actual opinion with kids around, the profanity-laden diatribe probably would have resulted in you getting some parent phone calls.”

At which point he considered that & nodded in agreement at my chosen course of action.
You’re welcome.

In thinking about it again, this is probably why they reminded us to have redundancies.

The Bear!Boathouse single will be fixed — if nothing else, the head coach of the Neighbor!JuniorTeam is actually the rigger at Bear!Boathouse.
(see: rowing & social incestuousness)

Training-wise, it means I’ll be erging mornings at least this week because I don’t have the extra two hour commute time planned to go to Beach!Boathouse & row my own single until Saturday morning.

The downside being that this Sunday is a Bay Series (i.e. scrimmage head race) and I’m going to do that. It would be the first race since Head of the American this fall – between my arm & my knee, I hadn’t done any of the previous races in the series, and it would have been nice to be able to practice higher rates on the water before the actual, ya know… piece.
I would call it a race, but I’m still at the point where I’m doing a piece rather than rowing a race, so let’s just be straight up & call a spade a spade.

Physiologically, I have learned that when you get forcibly tossed out of a boat and into cold water in the middle of a workout, you’re fine for the first couple hours. Then you get home, sleep an afternoon away and spend the next few days pretty damn sore. As you might guess, I’m totally looking forward to doing 1500m at 2k pace in a few hours this afternoon. Good times.

But the most important lesson to come out of this?

Swag will totally save your sh*t.

Truth told, I flip about once a year – every so often, the numbers don’t fall in your favor & sh*t just happens. Spend enough time out on the water alone, you just accept the realities of life and work around it.

As such, my Nalgene has long included a carabiner around the loop so that I can clip it onto the Filippi’s speedcoach crossbar, a habit that I’ve had several rowers over the years remark on the strangeness of.

Rowers are big on swag – they’ll race for shirts, you get a uni for rowing for a team… rowers love their kits. It’s a whole thing, and it’s customary to swag people when they help you out.

I am swag-less.
I didn’t row in high school or college, my first boathouse doesn’t exist, the team I ran wasn’t around long enough to have our own shiznit, and I never got kitted out when I was coaching. Basically, I have my uniform tank for Beach!Boathouse & that’s it.

However, the last time I was down at SD, Hoff reached in a box in the office & went, “Hey, look – we have stuff now! You should have one!”
This may sound odd, but before Callaghan got there, SD was not a team that had extra stuff, so having things they can afford to give away really is a step up thanks to his work.

At the time, I laughed and thanked her for my first piece of free crew crap.

But as much as I might joke about how rowers love their shiznit, ya know why my stuff wasn’t at the bottom of the marina when I got back to the dock on Sunday?

…because of my one piece of rowing swag.

Good thinking there, Hoff. Good thinking indeed.

Music: Matt Wertz – Yesterday Morning (Somedays)

ShareThis

In the process of completing a survey as part of a job bid, I finished the Self-Evaluation of Skills where I numerically rated my skills in various software products, programming languages, & miscellaneous skills. In the comments section, I put the following:

“In the survey above, the word “Writing” is spelled wrong.
(I also do proofreading.)”

I’m just sayin’.

Fear the future.

Someone marked a post on pinterest with the caption: “I want to be an Olsen”.

…I don’t know who you are, but I’m really really scared for you.

My monkey has red pants!

Let me start by saying this: I like kids. I do.

Due to the fact that I spent most of my teenage years working as what is now called an au pair* & thus have already raised someone else’s toddler, I don’t presently feel any driving urge to manufacture additional replicants. However, I do like other people’s children & honestly do enjoy interacting with them.
*back then we just called it “babysitting a lot”.

The result is that I am totally the person that stands behind parents at the grocery store & makes faces at your kids so that they laugh & clap and then when you turn around I pretend to be fully absorbed in my iPhone screen, thus causing you to wonder what on earth is wrong with your offspring that they are having spasms of joy over what appears to be nothing at all.

And then, when you turn around, I start making faces at the kids all over again. :thumbs up:

Pin It
source

That said, even I felt a little bad about this one.

I was in Target, & a very cheerful toddler stood up in the cart & began waving at me. As the housewares department normally doesn’t see that kind of enthusiasm, I happily waved back. She obliged by displaying the odd plastic green rubber… thingy that was in her hands (I have no idea what is the new…toy…thing or whatever) and said, “My toy!”

To which I said, “Your toy is very nice. What color is it?” When her face was clearly stricken at not knowing the answer, I said, “It’s green. Your toy is green.”

Toddler was rather delighted by this, and started looking for something. “Monkey!” she proudly said, thrusting out the tiny plush monkey which had been by her feet. “My monkey is green!”

“No,” I told her gently, “Red. Your monkey has red pants.”

It was at this point that her mother decided it was time to move to the next item on her list & we waved goodbye.

However, as I walked around the corner, I heard a small voice saying, “My monkey has red pants!” “Hi! My monkey has red pants!”

And, from my viewpoint, I could look down the line of aisle openings & see that my tiny new friend was indeed now riding the cart through Target, greeting every single person they passed & letting them know that her monkey has red pants.

To her mother:

I am so sorry.

I know what it’s like when I toddler grabs onto an idea & won’t let go, and I realize there’s the very real possibility that you heard about the monkey’s red pants for at least half an hour straight following our conversation, so yes. My utmost, honestly sincere apologies – I had no idea things were gonna go down like that.

Seriously. My bad.
~ Claris

Music: Howie Day – She Says (Stop All the World Now)

ShareThis

…and thus entered Ernie into our lives.
Much to Zoey‘s deep chagrin.

Also? Holy crap lookit how skinny he used to be.

As such, despite several attempts by his older sister to sell Ernie to gypsies for a quarter, Ernie survived his first year with us. And since we’d don’t know his actual birthday, it’s been decided to make Valentine’s Day his Adoptaversairy Day, so today, Ernie turns seven.

In fact, Ernie comes into his seventh year having learned many important things.

Things I Have Learned!

by Ernie.

• It’s better to poo outsidethe house. ’cause when you do that, they say, “yay, good boy Ernie!”…and when you don’t, you have to sit in the corner. :sigh:
• it takes some time to learn how, but if you’re quick, you can follow Mom everywhere & not get stepped on.
• if you want attention, it’s better to sit with all four feet on the ground, ’cause Mom says making a dog dance for treats is demeaning.
• if you are quiet & patient & okay with her always being in charge, eventually Zoey will tolerate you, and then you can sleep on the same side of the bed and she’ll let you give her kisses! (I love my big sissy!)
• Quiet Time (when mommy meditates) is the bestest!
• before I pick a fight with a bigger dog, I should check to make sure I am bigger than their head. I don’t understand why that is, by the way – I’m a scrapper from south central, yo — I can totally take them!
• turns out that when I get to eat, I’m a whole different breed of dog. Who knew?
• when Mommy teaches Sculling I & I go in the launch, I am an excellent assistant coach. Mommy showed me that someone put it on their course evaluation, so it must be true!
• we’re not supposed to attack random people, even if I think they’re shifty.Sometimes I forget this one.
• I sleep curled up by Mommy’s tummy. Zoey sleeps behind her knees. Why? because that’s the way we roll.
• Zoey gets the big couch, & I get the little couch. Unless Zoey wants the little couch. Then I go sit on Mommy’s feet.
• My first night, Mommy got me a blue Thomas the Tank Engine blankie because she wanted me to have something soft & she thought that was better than the pink Disney princess blankie. It’s a year later, and I still really like my blankie.
• when Zoey walks over & looks at you, it usually means she wants that spot, so you should move. Some people think she only does that to me, but I’ve actually seen her move humans that way. It’s amazing!
• it’s nice here. I like it.Thanks Auntie Dao.

 



Expectation vs. Reality: the Adoptaversairy Version

 

Expectation.
Now, considering the way our house is, you’d probably hear the word “Adoptaversairy” and think “Oh holy jesus, you like, put the dog in a hat, didn’t you?”

source: Huffington Post

No, indeed I did not.

 

Reality: POO. omg, people. So. Much. Poo.


Pin It


Instead, we’ve spent the last two days with a puggle whose tiny tummy was hugely upset, an event that he kicked off my walking up onto my bed and vomiting – luckily, I was awake and thus able to cry out in alarm as I quickly stripped the topsheet off before it could soak in — to be honest, the part that took the longest was convincing Zoey that no, get up for real. Dammit Zoey, this is not a drill, get off the bed!

And such has it been. But only at night.

Two nights in a row Ernie has graced the floors with unintentional cow pies, the likes of which have reminded me of why I prefer hardwood flooring (which we do not have in the bedrooms) and have caused Ernie to hide under my desk out of shame until I coaxed him out to assure the poor baby that I wasn’t mad.

However, some advice from Auntie Anya & two 1/4 tsp doses of Pepto Bismol later, we seem to be on back on the right digestive track, thank $deity.
Thus, with a (arguably) more refined sense of decorum & a markedly more stable intestinal system doth Ernie enter the age of 7. Personally, I’m just hoping that this year involves such valuable things as finally getting The Ernie Noise recorded for you guys, maybe helping Sachiel figure out how to hold a puggle, & the vague notion that Ernie will become blasé enough about his security for the separation anxiety to ease just a bit — at least enough that his sister will no longer exercise the one thing she’s found Ernie to be useful for: Getting him to do shit, as she did one night when I shut them out of my room in the hopes of being able to eat in peace, and instead started the video on my phone because I… heard something.

I know this will seem odd at the beginning, but just… hang out & wait for it. Trust me.


Happy Adoptaversairy, lil’ man. Next year though… I’m totally gonna see if Auntie Mia can find you a tiny party hat.

Music: Twenty-three – Tristan Prettyman










ShareThis

]]> http://heroineaddict.me/ernies-adoptaversairy-also-expectation-vs-reality/feed/ 3 http://heroineaddict.me/rowing-creek-letting-go-finding-flow-being-really-freakin-selfish/ http://heroineaddict.me/rowing-creek-letting-go-finding-flow-being-really-freakin-selfish/#comments Fri, 03 Feb 2012 07:29:11 +0000 claris http://heroineaddict.me/?p=1978 Bear!Boathouse sits on a finger of land that separates two bodies of water – marina & creek.

Marina is just that – it’s an open marina that you row in a counter-clockwise loop, and depending on your course it can be about 6000m, not counting inlets. You’re out there with everyone else – rowers from other boathouses, recreational motorboats, sailboats, a couple of commercial tourist fishing expedition boats, and the occasional Catalina-bound ferry. As you might guess, sometimes that makes for an adventure wrapped in chaos punctuated by many an utterance of “What the fuck?”

Creek is different. It’s an outlet of the LA river which has about 2400m of protected water between two bridges that’s two, maybe three boat lanes wide. Thanks to our location, Bear!Boathouse has a dock that lowers down directly to the water. Everyone else has to actually row out of the marina, go out around the breakwater & surf about five or six hundred meters of ocean waves to get access. As such, the course doesn’t get much play beyond some of the local Masters who know how to manage that sort of hazard and college crews who have a coach launch as safety escort.

I like rowing in the creek. Not just because the water is flat – after six years in our marina, shit water is just part of the game. No, I like creek because it helps me let go.

Truth told, I really needed that this week.

Laziest. 2k. Ever.

I did a 2k piece last weekend. I went to SD & did their Indoor Classic, and while everybody else in my heat was busting their ass racing, I just went ahead and… did a piece.

One of the Juniors described it later as “the most casual 2k ever”, and it’s true – I pretty much did the anti-2k.

I sat down, I did a nice steady state piece. I adjusted the volume on my ipod twice, I deliberately didn’t go faster than the girl who was winning the lightweight division (open & open ltwt went together) & and I really only put pressure on for the last 400m when I looked the screen & saw that Hoff (who came in 2nd in the lightweight division) was +10m up on me, which the junior rowers described as, “it literally looked like you said, ‘ehhh, screw it, I’m gonna go ahead & beat Hoff‘.”
That was actually a very accurate assessment, except that longtime readers will not be surprised to know that in my mental version of that statement, I dropped the f-bomb.

After I was done, I put my handle in place, reached back for my phone, took a picture of my screen, then cheered on the girl next to me for her last 500m & waited for everyone else to finish.

Rowers reading this story are either laughing or horrified right now. Or, as JRo said to me at work on Tuesday when she heard, “Wow. You seriously did that & still won your race? You’re kind of an asshole.”

Salter:	hahaha…what a good example you lead for the high school kids
Claris:	what? i cheered the girl next to me on – that’s totally sportsmanship!

Why did I do a piece instead of a race?

Because the problem isn’t my body, it’s my head.


For me, last weekend wasn’t about winning or busting my shit out, it was about composure. It was about rowing a piece without freaking out. Last Saturday, I pulled a 1.53.7 average split – pretty much the same time I pulled last year. The difference is that this year, it wasn’t a fight. I wasn’t hyperventilating. There were no panic attacks. Honestly, if I was anything last week, I would describe that piece as oddly detached.

I wasn’t rowing for time. I was rowing for flow.

One of the things that I’ve come to realize over the last few months is how much I’ve lost my flow.

High School Locker People: where you the shover or the shovee?

On the water, athletically, I love rowing.

Off the water… well let’s be honest, folks – the rowing community has a lot of crap.

Rowing is a small group of people to begin with, and each individual boathouse is a bit isolated from others, so oftentimes you end up in what I can only describe as high school, only nobody is ever forced to graduate, so they just sit at that maturity level. Forever.

The result? You see a lot of dumbass crap.

For people like me, who didn’t participate in high school when I was in high school, being different can make you a target. Add in that I’ve never been one to duck a punch, and you learn real fast what it means to stand alone.

But having to deal with that sort of thing, to keep taking care of yourself over & over… after a time, expending that energy takes its toll. And in the course of that, I’d lost much of what made me love my sport.

So I retreated. I purposely backed away from people & just concentrated on the rowing. Z changed the metrics of my training plan so that I couldn’t measure things the way I usually would. And while the detailed entirety of the tale will no doubt be a different blog entry at another time, for the last four months, I have simply dialed things back & worked the problem.

All of which is why, last weekend, I rowed a piece for flow. I rowed it like I was in the creek.

While the water conditions are mostly flat, unless you have very specific conditions, the split you pull in the creek isn’t really an indicator of your actual speed – since we tend to row early in the morning & later in the evening, the tide is almost always either coming in or out, so one direction your split will be really great, and the other… not so much.

If I really wanted to, I could I find those perfect conditions – as Z happily pulled out his phone on Sunday to demonstrate, there’s totally an app for that.

Do I bother? Nah.

Right now I just need to row to row. After Saturday’s 2k, I came home, went to sleep, headed over to Bear!Boathouse on Sunday and hit the creek for a 4×20′ under 155 HR where I literally spent and hour & twenty minutes just playing around with the technicality of my stroke.

The truth is that right now, I am a selfish rower.

Christmas Day, I rowed a 2x with Stesha Carle.
@Steeesh & I had known each other for a bit, but really only started talking over the last year or so, & have never actually rowed together, so when there was nobody around & neither of us had a training plan for Christmas, we decided to meander out & see what there is to see.

…and I was reminded that damn. I row selfish.



Overall, it was decent for never having rowed together. Balance was good, & as someone who normally rows a single, I was perfectly happy to let the little control freak bow so I didn’t have to steer.

There was some slight mismatch – due to yoga having allowed me to develop the ability to scrunch my body into as tiny a ball as one could be when 5’10″, I have a fair compression at the catch so my front angle is deeper, but Stesha comes off the footplates & turns around into the drive much quicker & harder than I do — which is probably why she’s got the silver medal for team USA from this year’s Worlds in Bled and I’m just mucking about in a creek on my own.

…but the thing that struck me the most about that row was the difference in how we balance.

As we would go up the slide, I could feel Stesha behind me – there were wiggles and twitches and movement from her calves and toes as she counterbalanced me.

For me, balance comes from relaxing – I tend to deliberately loosen my upper body as I go up the slide, push my shoulders away from my ears, finesse the oar handles, and allow the boat to roll around me.

Now, to be clear, neither approach is wrong. It just illustrated to me a difference in mindset.

Competitively, Stesha rows a quad, so she’s used to counterbalancing and working with other people in the boat. As much as she concentrates on her own performance, there’s always a part of her brain that also constantly adjusts what she’s doing to better mesh with her teammates.

For the most part, I row a single – because I don’t have to worry about what anyone else might do to offset my motion, my instinct is to just keep my body in line, allow the shell to go where it’s gotta go, & re-engage as I approach the front in order to allow for as little disturbance as possible.

While neither of us knew it at the time, looking back, I know now that really needed that row. For me, that row, and the lesson that I learned from it – athletically, it was a kind of blessing.

When you learn to row, you’re taught to row with others – the most common boat is the 8+. You work as a team, you compete against others for your seat. So much of what & how you do things involves other people.

Now, don’t get me wrong – I love an 8+. Rowing-wise, I was born & raised to be an engine room, and after the practice row for last year’s Crew Classic, I was the one going, “Sweeeeeeep – wait, why are we stopping? Let’s go again!”

But, much like the fact that my parents raised me in a Catholic Republican environment only to have their daughter send them a copy of Farenheit 9/11 right before the 2004 presidential election, how I was raised is not who I turned out to be.

What that row with Stesha taught me is that right now, I’m a single rower. And there’s nothing wrong with that other than that I hadn’t accepted that because what I row has changed, how I approach how I row has to change. I have to be selfish. More importantly, I have to be okay with being selfish, and doing what I need to do for me, no matter how that stacks up to what other people think or expect.

I’m just now getting to the point where I can start to put my head back in the game. Last weekend was the first time in three years where I rowed 2000 meters on something other than the paddle and didn’t feel like my heart was going to explode from neurosis.

Was I at full pressure? Hell no.
Athletically can I do better than that? Yah, I totally can.

But mentally, that was the best 2k I’ve rowed in four years.
There was no psychologically abusive coach telling me I’m not “a real athlete” because I hadn’t hit a certain split, no lung-stealing panic, no feeling that the walls were gonna close in on me. I stopped thinking about anything other than what I needed to do for me, & I did a piece. I did okay. I didn’t freak out. I was okay.
I am okay.

This weekend? Round 2.

There’s another erg sprint at Beach!Boathouse, so I’m going to build on what I did last Saturday & try it again. Based on the heat sheets, I know there’s at least one other girl who’ll probably beat me in the event, and honestly… I don’t care. All I want to do this week is to be able to go a little faster than last week & still have the same composure. To push out of my comfort zone a bit more & still be okay.

This isn’t my endgame. This is a step. This is part of my process. To get to there, I have to get through here. So if I lose on Saturday, that’s fine. Right now, I’m finding my flow.

I’m not racing to win. I’m not there yet. Today, I’m just rowing for me.

Music: Falling – Staind (Chapter V)



ShareThis

]]> http://heroineaddict.me/rowing-creek-letting-go-finding-flow-being-really-freakin-selfish/feed/ 1 http://heroineaddict.me/sht-we-say-in-la-21-jump-street-storm-troopers-on-the-highway/ http://heroineaddict.me/sht-we-say-in-la-21-jump-street-storm-troopers-on-the-highway/#comments Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:31:24 +0000 claris http://heroineaddict.me/?p=1959 I have actual content, I swear.

But before we get to the fact that Gina Curano is my new girl crush, I thought I’d share a few things with you:

sh*t people say in LA

While I have not snorted coke with Skeet Ulrich, I am verbatim guilty of the parking quotes, and yes, a couple of other things:


21 Jump Street? I am SO THERE.

Much to Sachiel‘s horror in the movie theatre lobby, I fully intend to partake of this, because unlike my erstwhile roommate, I’d already seen the trailer:


I love two things about this movie:
1. They’re not even trying to take any of it seriously.
2. The fact that every time they do promos for this movie, they’ll have to say “Oscar nominee Jonah Hill” really is just made of farcical win.

 

---



---


 

How to mess with people on the highway:


That’s right, it’s a storm trooper motorcycle suit.
I’m not even gonna comment, you just go ahead & think up your own remark for this because anything associated with this will automatically be awesome.

Other news?

• I got my arse in gear & fixed the couch, thus making the dogs very happy.
• Slowly but surely unpacking things, thus making the cardboard box recycling plant busy.
• Have been sucked in over on pinterest, thus losing hours of my life, but with some good source material.
• Now need to actually do something with said source material
• I am in a waiting mode for a few things, and it’s driving me beserk.

 

More to come:

• At one point last week, I tried to work out but was defeated by my lack of a dollar bill. I really wish I was kidding about that.
• Ya know, for a group so up on relaxation, yoga peoples need to chill the eff out.
• Haywire made my world shiny.
• There actually does come a day when you stop missing wheat. Now, if I could just give up sugar.
• When in doubt about a soup recipe, just throw it in the slow cooker for a day. It really does make everything better.
• … except cheesy cauliflower. (don’t worry, the crock pot is fine. I didn’t even try.)

 
Music: Bach, the Cello Suites – Yo-Yo Ma



Follow my blog with Bloglovin

ShareThis

]]> http://heroineaddict.me/sht-we-say-in-la-21-jump-street-storm-troopers-on-the-highway/feed/ 0 http://heroineaddict.me/princess-the-pea-why-im-healing-up-a-hurty-knee/ http://heroineaddict.me/princess-the-pea-why-im-healing-up-a-hurty-knee/#comments Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:15:59 +0000 claris http://heroineaddict.me/?p=1935 As of late, I have been athletically cranky.

Why, you might ask?

One word, people: Crosstraining. Cross. Training.
Okay, yes. I think it may be two words. shush.


Here’s the thing – when you’re a rower, you can’t just row. If you do, two things happen:

1. you get hurt because you’re overworking those muscles.
2. your brain gets bored & you burn out.

Thus, cross training. Swim, bike, run, whatever – you do something that’s not rowing.

Last May, I joined up at YAS.

YAS is exactly what its name stands for – Yoga And Spin. That’s it. That’s all they do. No upsell, no attempt to get you to do personal training or their diet program. Yoga & Spin, in one form or another. Very cut & dry.

Thus for me, as someone who used to teach spin & is already inclined to yoga, that’s pretty much perfect. And I loved it there. Loved it.

At least, it was until my right knee decided to get all… wonky-like.

Lemme ‘splain.

If you’re going to spin regularly, it’s highly advisable to get shoes & clips. This gives you a better footing on the pedal than using your regular sneakers with a basket on the pedal.

Now, when I was teaching, spin was still fairly new, and I was poor & in college, so I didn’t get clips. This time around, however, I decided to take care of business, & caught a good sale on some Sidi shoes.

At the time I didn’t know anything about spin shoes & just went with the philosophy that I wanted the lightest hardshell shoes I could find, because to me that seemed the logical choice. I later learned that I’d lucked out not only in price but also in brand since, as YAS instructors Diane & Gina said when they saw my new shines, “You got the rockstar shoes! Nice!”

However, you also have to get clips to go on the shoes before you can use them.

So, that in mind, one Saturday I stopped by MDR bike on Lincoln in Marina Del Rey & said, “Hey, I got these shoes, I need to get clips, can you help me?” And the guy in the shop said, “Sure, here you go”, installed clips & off I went.

No problem, right?

Wrong.




I have a bad feeling about this… No, seriously. There’s actual pain. It feels bad.

As time went by, I began to notice that

a) the right shoe always seemed to be loose
b) my right knee was beginning to be sore

Well… crap.

At first, we thought it was just that the bikes needed to be tightened.
(because yes, I’m a princess & pea about my equipment, so Gina & I started testing the bikes)

After the regularly scheduled maintenance at YAS came & went and I was still having problems, I was willing to admit that yes, it was somehow my shoe, & this time I headed over to Helen’s Cycle in Marina Del Rey & explained that I didn’t know what was wrong, but something was just not right.

Their shop guy was really great, and sat down to look at my shoe – took a look at the shoe, at my foot, opened everything up. In the course of this, he discovered two things:

1. the clip had been placed way too far up on my foot – basically, every time I was out of the seat, I was on my toes instead of the ball of my foot.
2. the washer on the right shoe… yeah, one of them was in backward.

Possibly the words “this is just not even an amateur screw-up” may have been used in the course of that conversation as they asked who set my shoes up originally. I’m just sayin’.

Sadly, even with the shoe fixed, my knee remained sore. Damage was done, man – every time I went to spin, my knee hurt like a bitch the next day. The incident which led to our Holiday Zombie Abandonment Poll? At the time I thought it had been from my erg, but looking back, totally because I’d been on a bike the day before.

So I took three weeks off at the end of the year, thinking I’d just give my knee time to recuperate, and the first week of January, off I went back to YAS.

…where I didn’t even make it through the warm up song.

Instead, I did something I’ve never done before in a spin class – I got off the bike, packed up, & had to leave. Waved to Gina, pointed to my knee, she was cool about it, but yah. No spin for me for a bit.

Instead, I get to work on diversifying my cross training, which isn’t really a change you want to have to figure out in your training during a month which ends in two consecutive weekends of 2k races.

The moral of the story:

When it comes to your equipment, when things don’t feel right, never be afraid to be steal a little something from the Princess & the Pea. As the freelancer without health insurance who was happy to be able to run a slow 5k last week for the first time in three months, I guarantee you – it’s worth it.

Music: Baby You’re Gonna Have to Pay – Victoria (Alcazar)




ShareThis

]]> http://heroineaddict.me/princess-the-pea-why-im-healing-up-a-hurty-knee/feed/ 1 http://heroineaddict.me/bits-bobs-boundaries-being-a-sleeper-agent-for-the-arts/ http://heroineaddict.me/bits-bobs-boundaries-being-a-sleeper-agent-for-the-arts/#comments Wed, 11 Jan 2012 17:14:18 +0000 claris http://heroineaddict.me/?p=1920 Well, we’re moved. Things thus far?

- it would seem that, according to DJT, I have an entire magical adventure within my apartment. More on that later.

- I’m pretty sure Zoey thinks we’re house sitting, as whenever we go out for a walk she tries to find the car. Sorry, ZeeZee, this is where we live now, kiddo.

- Ernie just thinks everything’s an adventure. I’m astounded at how well he’s been behaving as of late – he’s even already figured out to wait until we get down to the sidewalk & pee on the streetlight, as I don’t want him to get in the habit of just lifting leg on the stairs leading up to the building… which I suppose counts as me teaching my puggle not to piss off the neighbors.

- We had a moment to appreciate that I had one large box of clothes and seven medium boxes of books — and that’s after I’d culled the herd.

The result is that I’m torn between getting a Kindle Fire and waiting to see if they actually come out with the iPad Mini (I find the current iPads a bit too large for my taste) and possibly that would help cut down on the space taken up by my book collection.


h/t to k-walla for this one.

 



 

- thanks to her present decor involving red sheets over the windows until we figure out curtains, Sachiel‘s room looks a bit boudoir-esque. This impression would probably be greatly improved by a lack of plastic bins, but I figure hey – at least she’s got the lighting down. Gotta start somewhere.

- mostly at this point, I feel like the apartment presently resembles dominoes — if I do this, it will affect this, this & this, which is a bit overwhelming.

Because boundaries are our friend.

In the course of conversation with DJT & Math on Saturday, DJT attempted to share an aspect of the collegiate experience & I quickly interrupted to set up the new rule that, unless it was something of an AfterSchool Special nature, stories involving their sex lives were to be witheld until they’d reached the age of 26.

When DJT wanted to know why 26, I informed him that was we would call the age where they became Actual People instead of Guys I Knew When They Were in High School — the first is acceptable, the second…just kinda creepy, especially since they’re approximately a decade younger than my younger brother. Or, as I have been known to refer to it, Situational Jailbait.
A term which, at one point when I was coaching, led to me walking away from a kid as his teammates explained to him what jailbait was. Ah, the joys of educating the young…

What does it say when me as a sleeper agent wouldn’t really surprise anyone?

Pause for backstory: Math‘s new girlfriend at school is an Illustration major, a fact which he & I have made several jokes about considering my profession.

As we were cleaning out the back closet in my apartment & pulling out a drafting table, art supplies, portfolios of work & paintings, I said to DJT, “See DJT, this is what I meant when I warned Math that dating an artist meant there’d be a lot of stuff to carry around.”

DJT, with one of my paintings in hand, asked, “Well, who was he?”

“Who was who?”

“Ya know… the guy. That you dated. Whose stuff you have.”

“What… what are you talking about?”

DJT pointed to the paintings & asked, “The guy that you dated who did all this stuff.”

At which point I laughed & said, “No, DJT – I’m the artist in question here. My degree is actually in fine arts.”

“Psh. yah, right.” When he realized I wasn’t kidding, there were genuine flabs being ghasted as he cried, “No way! You couldn’t have been an art major! I thought it was like, design & business or whatever… Really? Really? Are you serious?”

“DJT, why is this so weird to you? Yes, outside of all the other stuff, I actually am an artist.”

“Because, it’s just – Okay, you just – you look really normal, that’s all. Most of the time, artists don’t look normal.”

“…thank you?”

Because you see, the truth is that, much like the Boston mob in The Departed, every year the art community takes a few of us art majors aside and says, “Okay, here’s the deal – we understand that you want to dye your hair blue and spend most of the year planning your costumes for Burning Man, but we’ve selected you for a higher cause. We need you to go infiltrate yourselves into everyday society and learn to blend with, well, the Art Muggles, whom we refer to as Auggles. Once amongst the Auggles, it’s your job to subversively promote the art community’s leftist agenda so that when The Revolution comes, we’ll be able to topple the Establishment from within.

“… also, if you get a chance while you’re there, spread around some of The Gay. Even if you’re straight, just… see what you can manage — it’s a side project we’ve been working on. Great distraction, that. Gets ‘em every time.”

But alas, now DJT knows the truth behind the mild-mannered appearance I’ve cultivated via my natural hair color and quiet, understated wallflower-ish personality.

Pity. He seems a decent fellow… I hate to kill him. Ah, well.


Music: My Body – Young the Giant



ShareThis

]]> http://heroineaddict.me/bits-bobs-boundaries-being-a-sleeper-agent-for-the-arts/feed/ 2 http://heroineaddict.me/a-tale-of-moving-house-tumblr-style/ http://heroineaddict.me/a-tale-of-moving-house-tumblr-style/#comments Wed, 04 Jan 2012 17:23:49 +0000 claris http://heroineaddict.me/?p=1884 First: let’s play a round of “Expectation vs. Reality”

Expectation:
For the record, I had plans for these last two weeks of the year. Seriously. I was going to go through, finish cleaning out my apartment, organize my electronic files, finish up some lingering projects… you know, all those things that allow one to feel like they’re starting the new year in some semblance of control over their life.

Reality:
…did I mention that I’m moving on Saturday?

But we are! The week before Christmas, Sachiel & I took the Friday beforehand to go look at a couple of possible apartments… and came away completely disheartened. Personally my favorite was the guy that was willing to rent to us and then when he found out I had two dogs, told me the rent had just increased $100/mo. Seriously, dude? I mean, I’ll pay a full deposit or a pet fee, that’s fair, but you want me to pay you $1200 more a year for the entire time I rent from you?

Yeah… we decided to pass.

source

Episode II: The Search Continues

Christmas Eve, we had one place to look at before Sachiel went to visit with Polgara’s cats for two weeks & I migrated with the puppies to the Long Beach Menagerie for a week. When we’d looked at the ad earlier in the week, I’d said to Sachiel, “I vote we just show up at the open house with the dogs and let them charm the landlord the way they do everyone else in the entire world.”




 

Sachiel was in agreement with this, so when we walked in & the property manager appeared to be a fairly normal, non-shifty lady who responded to my question about two dogs with, “Oh, I have a 13 year old Doberman, that’s fine” — I’m not gonna lie, I could have hugged her. However, this is California, and thanks to the celebrities we have laws about touching & keeping a legal safe distance from strangers, so I held back.

Instead, I offered to bring in the miscreants so Property!Manager could meet them.

On the way in, I looked at my errant canine children & said, “Okay, before we go in, both of you need to pee now or forever hold your peace. Go on, go potty.”

Ernie, always happy to show off that he’s a little boy, obligingly lifted leg & emptied the tank.

Zoey on the other hand, looked at me & was all, “I’m good dude. Totally good. Let’s do this.” Since Ernie is normally my troublemaker, I let it pass & we went in to the potential new apartment.

…where, after prancing about & initiating Property!Manager into their fan club, Zoey promptly trotted over to the smaller bedroom & hunkered down to pee on the carpet.

OMG NOOOOOOOO!!

source

Luckily after a decade of hanging out with Zoey, I know the signs & was able to rush over, pick up her troublesome ass & scoot her out the door with Sachiel before she did any major damage.

After apologizing profusely to my prospective landlord, I went outside to get napkins from my car to sponge things up. Sachiel, who’d been outside with my urinary miscreant, took the napkins inside, and I stood there with Zoey.

“Well go on then,” I told her, “you might as well pee the rest of it out & finish what you started.”

At which point she laid down on the grass as if to say, “Nah, I’m good. I just wanted to do it there.”

:sigh: Little bitch.

Thankfully, Property!Manager wasn’t offended, and let us know there’d been another dog in the apartment with the last tenant, so Zoey was probably marking territory & they’d been planning to shampoo the carpets before the new tenant moved in anyway.

She was also really nice about the fact that, in the hubub, we’d totally just left Ernie with her in the apartment off his leash.

I don’t know if the two dogs had decided to declare Opposites Day just to screw with the humans or what, but while Zoey was expressing herself, Ernie was, according to Property!Manager, “Such a good little boy — so cute and well-behaved!”

:pause:

source

Okay… okay sure. Why yes, yes, he is like that all the time, it’s great. Awesome. Totally. Right.

Luckily, Virginia, there is a New Apartment Santa Claus.

Needlees to say, we applied for the apartment then & there, and got a call the next day saying that yes, we’d been cleared & it was ours for the taking.

:fist of triumph!:


source

oh, but don’t worry – the universe continued to screw with me. because it’s fun.

For oh yea, there is joy in the land, my beloved miscreant readers – Sachiel & I went forth & offered up two cashiers’ checks to the Gods of Security Deposit & First Month’s Rent, and I left my 30 day notice letter at 1049. We got keys to the new abode, and Property!Manager promised to email us the lease because her printer had run out of ink that morning.

All was well.

Then, as we were at 1049 (where my printer lives) and I was reading the lease, I saw this:


No it is too long, let me sum up: The lease says that if the landlord gets through the condo zoning process & decides to start selling the units off as condos, they can kick us out at any time with 30 days’ notice.

…and I was like, “WHOA. What?”

source

Because no. No way. No way was I going to move into a place, thinking I’d be there for at least a year, & then get told that I’d have to move out & have only 30 days notice to find a place that would take two dogs. No.

I mean, seriously, I was trying to be like, an adult & be calm & reasonable about the whole thing, because hello we’d already put down the deposits & sh*t, so we kinda had to sign the lease & move — but that wasn’t mentioned in our tour or anything, so while I could plan contingency and all, the five year old in my brain was totally not dealing well.


source

However, Anya talked me off the ledge and I emailed Property!Manager & managed to very calmly & casually be all, “Hey – what up with that?”

…and a few hours later, I got a response from Property!Manager that no no, this was just something they have for all their properties, the owners have held the property for nine years & had no intention of selling. It seems the properties had actually been zoned for condos about five years ago, and she kept telling the owners they needed to change the language in the contracts because it keeps causing this question from new renters, etc. ::insert further annoyance with employer here::

Short version: we’re good to go.


source

You know what the hardest part of moving is? The part where you move.

…which is where we are now. Sachiel & I had two options: we could shift things over a bit at a time over the course of the month… or we could just freakin’ do it & try to get everything in by this weekend so it would all just be over.

Of course we chose the crackhead option.

Which meant we spent our New Year’s cleaning the new apartment, and in my case, packing up the old one. and yesterday, doing online traffic school, but we’ll talk about that later.

On Saturday, Math & DJT are going to come help us move the larger furniture-type things (big couch, oversized armchair, bookcase, desk & a trunk) and various other shiznit, after which Sachiel & I will no doubt have to fall over & sleep for a while.


source

Hopefully by Monday the only thing left to do will be for me to go back & clean the old place, hand over the keys, and glare ominously at Old!Landlord to remind him that he should get my deposit (and the 10 years’ interest that West Hollywood renters’ law entitles me to collect) to me quickly because let’s be honest – should the occasion require, sometimes… I’m kind of a bitch.


source

---




And after all that’s done, I just have to circle back to where we started: Expectation.

because all of those things that I was going to do over Christmas break before I knew I was moving?

Yeah. they still need to get done. But at least now that I’ve moved significantly west towards where The Things That Make Up My Life reside, I’ll have an extra hour & a half of time not spent in traffic each day to work on actually accomplishing them.

Which means I’ll probably only have 45 minutes of free productivity time because really, who are we kidding — I’m totally going to sneak in some sleep.


source

Tru fax?

Honestly, my real fear is now that we have an apartment with a garage to work in, I may come home from work one day & find that Sachiel has decided to give Ernie a makeover.

source

source

 

Good luck, little dude. Just remember – Mommy loves you.

 

Music: Jason Mraz – Sleeping to Dream – Live from Montalvo (Selections for Friends)



ShareThis

]]> http://heroineaddict.me/a-tale-of-moving-house-tumblr-style/feed/ 2