How Does My Garden Grow?

Blossoms on the Roma tomato plant

So now that Simon and I are staying in one place for a while, we figured we would try our hand at growing some stuff in the little garden plots that had been growing nothing but weeds at our rental house.  Of course it was daunting from the get-go, and I haven't always had the best luck when it comes to keeping plants alive.  Dogs, on the other hand, I seem to have no problem with keeping alive.  Kinda strange when you think about it, but maybe you gardeners can sympathize with my plight of buying one of those basil plants from the grocery store, bringing it home, watering it, giving it sun, and having it die after a few short weeks of life.  Granted, I know that I should have repotted it, as every instruction that ever comes with any of those plants will tell you.  I just didn't want to go through the hassle of buying an entire bag of potting soil for the purpose of repotting one tiny little plant.  I thought maybe they could survive on good vibes and wishful thinking.  So I didn't repot them.  And they always died.  And I was always discouraged.  Even though I knew deep down that it was my fault entirely that the plant didn't survive.  Basil is ridiculous easy to grow if you give it enough soil to root, even here in Arizona.

Surprise ground cover vine that sprouted recently. The blooms open early in the morning and close up shortly after sunrise

Growing plants in Northern Arizona is very different from growing plants in Minnesota.  I think it's the elevation, the late freezes, and the dry air.  And the lack of rain.  And the brutal sunshine.  I guess there are a whole lot of factors going on around here that complicate the gardening process for someone so used to a completely different climate.  And given that I wasn't an accomplished gardener before, the challenges presented here in Arizona have been difficult to overcome.

Sphinx moth perusing one of our flowering bushes

When I owned my little house in Minnesota, the yard came with some day lilies and some hastas.  Having no clue whatsoever what either of these plants were when they started to sprout up in the spring, I sprayed them with Roundup thinking that they were weeds.  And I didn't just spray them, I doused them.  I drowned them in enough herbicide to probably wipe out a 40 acre field.  Okay, so that's an exaggeration, but I'm a little disturbed at how much herbicide I used that day.  And yet, they survived.  The weeds all died, but the hastas and day lilies remained.  It wasn't until a friend of mine came over and told me what was growing in my yard that I began to appreciate their beauty, their taking up of a spot that I didn't have to mow (I loathed mowing my lawn) and their hardiness.  I literally did nothing to those plants (outside of the Roundup) and they flourished.  A friend of mine gave me some leftover annuals from her garden, so I stuck them in the ground, gave them a little water, and they grew like crazy.  And that's how it is in Minnesota…things just seem to grow with minimal effort, at least that was my experience.  Perhaps I just had the luck of growing plants that are basically kill-proof.

One of the annual plants that survived

And then I moved to Arizona and got it into my head that if I could grow plants in Minnesota with minimal effort, then it stood to reason that I could also grow plants here in Flagstaff.  After spending over $100 on plants and potting compost, I figured it was a small price to pay in the event that it was a total bust and everything died.  And everything did almost die.  I had it in my head that perhaps the green-thumb I so envied in my Grandma Ellringer might possibly be genetic, and that maybe if I wished the plants well enough and gave them a little bit of water once a day, that they would just grow on their own.  Ha.  I ended up having to resort to Miracle Grow just to save the majority of them, and even after that there were two casualties.  Although, given that I started out with 3 tomato plants (cherry, san marzano, and roma), 1 jalapeño plant, 1 basil plant, 1 rosemary plant, 2 peonies, 1 bush, 5 ground cover vine things, and 12 individual annuals, two casualties doesn't really seem like that many.

Cherry tomatoes growing! They're going to be yellow and oval shaped when ripe.

Once I figured out that I needed to water them twice a day, and that I needed to water them a lot, they started to grow like crazy.  Well, some of them did.  The roma and cherry tomato plants are out of control.  Both of them have a bunch of little tomatoes on them.  I realize now that I planted them much too close together.  I've never grown tomatoes before, so I had no idea that they would get so massive.  They're literally blocking out the sun for the jalapeño and the san marzano plants.  The jalapeño plant has always been sickly looking.  It's got a bunch of blossoms on it, but it's still pretty much the same size as it was when I brought it home from the store, and the leaves are all brown along the edges.  Maybe that's just what they look like…I don't know.  I'm too lazy to do much research...and I wonder why my garden almost died…hahaha!

Another one of the annuals

The annuals are doing better.  They're so pretty.  I don't remember the name of them, but they're all different colors and on the days that I'm not sleeping all day to prepare for a night shift, I actually get to see them and enjoy them.  They add a nice pop of color to the yard. They close up nice and tight the minute any shade hits them though, so my viewing time is very limited.  The peonies are doing all right.  In the little bit of research that I did on peonies, I'm not expecting any blooms this year.  And it stands to reason that there might not be any blooms next year either.  But I hope there are.  Peonies remind me of my Grandma Ellringer, who I miss dearly, so I'm really hoping that the peonies produce some blooms for me.

Female humming bird on our feeder

The bushes and the ground cover…meh…they don't excite me much.  I just wanted something to fill in the space in the yard.  What our yard could really use is a big tree in the front, but I'm not about to take on the task of paying for and keeping alive a tree.  I could see that being a disaster.  Although, I was at Walmart the other day (I hate Walmart, but oddly enough, I couldn't find a watering can anywhere else in town), and they had Japanese Maple trees, which were growing all over the place in California when Simon and I were out there.  They're such beautiful trees, but I question their ability to actually grow here in Flagstaff, as I've never seen a single one here.  And given that they were selling them at Walmart, I highly doubt they put a whole lot of thought into what plants are regionally sound to grow in our climate.  I asked Simon if we could get one to have as an indoor plant.  He said no.  Typical…haha.  So no Japanese Maple for me.  We do have a bush that came with the house, and it's got these really pretty little purple flowers on it.  It's been a haven for honey bees during the day and sphinx moths during the evening.  It's so fun to watch the little buggers flit from blossom to blossom.  Our little pollinators.  :)

So yeah…all in all, the gardening is actually going quite well.  I haven't used the Miracle Grow in a few weeks, and the plants continue to get bigger and bigger, to get more and more blooms.  It's kinda cool to see results from a project that I knew little to nothing about before beginning.  I'm glad it's turned out as well as it has, and I'm really looking forward to eating some homegrown tomatoes in the next month or two!  Maybe next year I'll be a little more ambitious and actually do some research, and take on growing some different plants.

Cherry tomato blooms

    

        

Out With the Bad Air…In With the Good Air...

A buddy and I were recently airing our grievances about the time-suck machine that is Facebook.  We both agreed that we spend far too much time on it, and given that amount of time, we spend far too much of it irritated at what other people are posting.  Earlier this year, he went so far as to keep off Facebook for an entire month, and was quite pleased to see his productivity at work increase, he spent more time with his little ones in the evening, and he just felt better about life in general.  He's actually contemplating deleting his Facebook account entirely.  I'd be lying if I said the thought hadn't crossed my mind a time or two in the last month or so.

It's funny how communication has changed since Facebook, and admittedly, the internet in general.  I don't know that there's any social media site that has had the impact on our day-to-day lives that Facebook has.  Odds are pretty decent that if you can't reach someone by phone, text, or email, you can reach them on Facebook.  I don't know why this is.  Is there a disconnect?  Are people more comfortable conversing through the anonymity that Facebook provides, even if the person they are conversing with is a close friend or family member?  It's weird.  When you really stop to think about the number of people with whom you used to talk on a regular basis, whose friendship has now been transferred to the confines of Facebook, it gets a little sad.

What I've noticed in the last few years is how much stress Facebook has added to my life.  And it wasn't something that I was even aware of for a very long time.  In the last month or so, I've noticed how irritated I get when I go on Facebook.  Facebook used to be a place where I kept up with the goings on of my friends and family back home while I was on the road travel nursing.  It was great for that.  Even though I would be sad that I was missing out on a friend's BBQ or a camping trip, I still felt somewhat connected to them through photos and comments that they would post.  Through added features, I could follow some of my favorite musicians, intellectuals, artists, and stores.  I could "like" things, and they would show up on a list for me so I could go back and look at them later.  It was fun to see how much I could expand my world through a computer screen.  Until it wasn't.

Like anyone else, there are things that define me or things in which I take a personal interest.  I've been an atheist for years, but only recently have I been able to connect with other atheists…both in my personal circle and further out.  I had been following a few science intellectuals for a while, which I enjoyed.  But more often than not, I found that a lot of posts by fellow atheists didn't do much more than bash Christianity and organized religion as a whole.  It got tiring, it got irritating, it became maddening, seeing all these posts about clergy who had raped children, female circumcision, oppression, abuse, and murder all committed in the name of religion.  I would see these articles every day, and it made me angry.  It made me want to lash out at everyone who aligned themselves with any sort of organized religion.  Until I took a step back and realized that not every Christian is like that (of course, I already knew that, but it's hard to keep perspective when emotionally charged).  Admittedly, I posted some unkind things towards Christianity that were probably very hurtful to the majority of Christians I know, who also happen to be very good people.  And truly, that wasn't my intent.  I think there was a part of me that wanted to understand why people would take the Bible verbatim, why they would align themselves with a text that is brutal, violent, and very unkind to women.  I wanted to know how they got past the more disturbing tales in the Bible, yet still believed in it.  I don't think I'll ever understand it, and that's okay.  Live and let live.  I personally don't think I'm any more right or wrong than anyone else.  If you're okay with me being atheist, I'm okay with you being Christian, so long as it's not hurting anyone.  Although one's definition of what's hurtful or not is left wide open to interpretation.  I'm choosing to leave the conversation for the time being.

And then there is the political crap.  And I say crap intentionally because that's what it is.  One side is complaining about the liberal agenda, one side is complaining about the conservative agenda, when in fact, they both have an agenda…let's not kid ourselves about that one.  I've gotten suckered into many a conversation either defending my post or attacking another.  It's exhausting, and really, we're lucky if we know even 10% of what our government is actually doing, so what's the point in arguing about it?  I don't like seeing political posts, and for the most part, and they're all fluff and guesswork and fear-based diatribe.  It's like arguing about the existence of unicorns or sasquatches.  Nobody really knows, so they just pick a side and go with it.  And argue loudly about it.  I'm sick of posts that are hateful to our President.  As if any of these complainers could handle being in his shoes for an entire day.  If you really stop to think about it, being President of The United States has got to be one of the most thankless, yet still prestigious, jobs ever.  No matter what you do, what you wear, where you go, who you talk to, what you order at Chipotle, you're always pissing someone off.  You know what?  I like Obama.  I wouldn't mind meeting the man someday and shaking his hand.  Do I like everything about him?  Probably not, but I don't know him either.  He seems like a nice enough person, and seems to have good intentions.  Same with George W. Bush…he seemed nice enough.  I actually felt kind of bad for him being strapped to 9/11 so early on in his presidency.  I can't imagine having to deal with a situation like that.  The decisions he made in that instance, good, bad or otherwise, followed him throughout his entire time in office.  I thought that maybe he tried a little too hard to appeal to the least common denominator and maybe didn't make himself look too intelligent, but I think he actually is an intelligent person.  I don't think you can get to be President of the United States by being an idiot.  

I've come to the conclusion that Facebook has become, for some people, a platform to complain and start fights about anything and everything (myself included).  And that makes me sad, because I really used to enjoy coming on Facebook.  So, I'm doing something about it.  I'm unsubscribing from pages that get me emotionally charged.  I'm deleting or hiding friends and family members who post articles, videos, and comments that are offensive, unnecessary, or conspirational in nature.  And I will likewise hold myself to those same standards.  Maybe that's burying my head in the sand, but I just don't want to see it anymore.  I want Facebook to be fun for me again, not just a platform to attack people and spread negativity.  I saw a poster recently regarding conversation etiquette that advised people to consider three things before speaking: 1. Is is true? 2. Is it necessary? 3. Is it kind?  These three things can be applied to internet postings as well.  I find that a lot of negative and emotionally charged posts wouldn't make it past #1.  Even less would make it past #2.  And as for #3?  If you really feel the need to say something unkind to someone, don't be such a coward about it and say it to their face.  Don't hide behind your computer screen and attack them from your keyboard.

A friend of mine recently wondered aloud what Facebook would be like if we all just posted our own posts for one year…no reposting of articles, nothing taken from other peoples pages or sites…just pure originality.  I think it would be a very different Facebook.  I'm going to try that…for a month.  I can't commit to anything for a year, are you kidding me??        

I'm doing an experiment today.  I've gone on Facebook once this morning, and I'm going to stay off of it until tomorrow morning (well, outside of posting this on Facebook…hahaha!).  I know it's going to be hard, because when I honestly think about how often I go on there, how often that little red number shows up on my phone and I have a peek just to see what new notification I have (odds are it's one of those stupid game requests…stop sending me those!  I don't play games on Facebook! But it's all right if you do…).  Well, maybe hard isn't the right word, since checking Facebook has become almost as commonplace as going to the bathroom.  I even check Facebook sometimes when I'm in the bathroom…hahaha!  To be fair, I've read through all the bathroom readers that we have, so I'm currently lacking in reading material.  At least that's my current excuse.  I'm sure I could come up with others to rationalize my bathroom Facebooking.  But not today!!  Today, the phone will stay out of the bathroom.  I will set it aside on its little charger and just let it be.

I want to start blogging again (I have about 5 that are unfinished), to get back to my pile of scrapbooking mess that I've been turning a blind eye to for the last 8 months (years behind…years), to get outside and run around, to walk my little dog, to call a friend or two whom I haven't spoken to in months, to dig around in my garden (our tomatoes are growing!!), to get out on my bike.  Facebook, in one way or another, takes away from all those things.  Because I've allowed it to.  And I'm not going to anymore.  I feel better already.  :)

The Temperature is Rising...

"Wait for the monsoons," they said.  "It'll cool down," they said.  Well…I have.  And it didn't.  And here I sit, naked at my desk chair, sweating and angry.  I've been sweating since 8:30 since morning, and it's left me quite cranky.

Air conditioning isn't a thing here in Flagstaff.  I don't know why, but it isn't.  And it's hot here.  High 80's/low 90's is hot and I don't care if it's a "dry" heat…it's still hot.  I've been told to go spend a day in Phoenix, that upon my return to Flagstaff, I'll appreciate the weather here.  And yes, it's hot in Phoenix. But that doesn't mean that it's not hot here.  It's all relative to where you are.  If I could bottle up the Phoenix environment and bust it out every time I started getting hot and cranky in Flagstaff, then yes, I probably would appreciate 90 degrees as opposed to 110.  But I'm incapable of differentiating when I'm still sweating whilst lying in my skivvies in front of two fans running at high speed.

I'm a hot sleeper…alway have been, most likely always will be.  I'm one of those crazy people who sleeps with the windows open almost right up until the first snows hit the ground.  Even in the winter, I sleep with a light blanket, and sometimes just a sheet.  We keep our furnace set around 62 degrees in winter, mostly because we're cheap and know that putting on more clothes is free, but partly because I don't like feeling overheated, not even a little bit.  Simon is the opposite.  He sleeps swaddled under a blanket even in the summertime.  Most of the time, I can't even see his face because he covers up his head.  The funny thing is, for someone who feels so cold while sleeping, he dumps heat like a furnace.  I can't even sleep next to him most of the time.

I also have the misfortune of owning pugs…pugs who have less heat tolerance than I do, who pant at a constant starting at 60 degrees, and who can't stand to be more than 5 feet away from me at any given moment.  So, not only am I hot and sweaty, but I've got two dogs who are hot and sweaty, panting in my face, stinking up my air and driving me nuts with the noise.  Granted, I've made my bed with these dogs and so I have to lie in it, but the combination of my crankiness and their panting does not make for a good outcome.  I find myself moving from room to room to avoid them, only to have them frantically pace after me to see where I'm going.  Which just exacerbates the heavy breathing and the panting.

It's gotten to the point that I make up excuses to go places just so I can be in air conditioning.  Our trips to the movie theater increase in the summer, I find random reasons to go to Target, and my desire to cook at home is non-existent.  Well, I have very little desire to cook at home to begin with, but the idea of heating up the house by turning on the stove is repulsive.  I even look forward to going to work, knowing that for 12 straight hours, I get to be cold.

We have a running joke in our house…"Simon said no." That's my response to just about anything when Simon thinks that an idea I have isn't really all that great.  And 90% of the time, he's usually right.  I'm one of those people who thinks that there's got be a way to buy something to make inconvenient situations convenient.  Simon is one of those people who tries to make do with what he has until it has been proven otherwise.  So you can see the struggle we sometimes have when faced with adversity, whether it be a legit adversity or not.  I wanted an air conditioner in May.  Simon said no, that we have enough fans and that we can leave the windows open at night and close them up during the day to keep the house cool.  So that worked for May.  I wanted an air conditioner in June, Simon gave me the same response.  And for the most part, it worked.  It's now July, the rainy season is here, and it's not cooling down like everyone promised it would.  I remember going through this last year as well…the constant sweating, the crankiness, the inability to sleep…it's all so familiar.  However, I made the proclamation just a few minutes ago, that I am buying an air conditioner on Monday.  I don't yet know what kind, but it's happening.  For the sake of all involved, if I have to spend very many more days like this, it's going to get really ugly.

On the plus side, I figured out how to make my favorite iced coffee drink from my favorite coffee drink here in town.  I randomly asked them the other day if the iced mocha was made with milk or half and half, or a combination of the two, and was slightly disgusted to be informed that the drink is made with ONLY half and half.  And I've been drinking 16oz cups of these things, multiple times a week.  No wonder I can't lose an inch these days!  So with Simon's newest interest in cold brew, I found a way to make my favorite iced drink using milk…I can barely tell the difference.  And I'm happy again.  And I hear thunder…bring it!!  

So There's This Guy...

You know, back when I met Simon, back in August of 2006, if you would have told me that I would one day be celebrating his 35th birthday with him while living together in Flagstaff, Arizona, I would have laughed.  It's crazy to think how long ago 2006 really was, when sometimes it feels like it was just yesterday.

Simon and I at a St. Paul Saints game

I met Simon in mid-August of 2006 when I was doing a travel assignment at a hospital in St. Paul, MN.  It was my third travel assignment, my first two having been in the Phoenix metro.  I was excited to be back in Minnesota for the end of summer and into the fall, my favorite time of year.  I had rented a cute little studio apartment in the heart of downtown St. Paul in an old renovated building.  It was a pretty sweet apartment…it had terra cotta floors, which were beautiful, a tiny little bathroom, a cute little kitchen equipped almost entirely from IKEA, a fireplace, and a Murphy bed that pulled out into the middle of the small living area.  It was the perfect little space for the pugs and I to spend our first three months living in the Twin Cities.  We went for walks everyday, sometimes to the state capitol building which was only a 10 minute walk away.  Sometimes on my days off I would wander the skyway system, just to see where I would end up.  I went to the Science Museum, I ate at little sidewalk cafes, I went to a Wild game at the Pepsi Center.  I really enjoyed myself there.

Simon and I in the Japanese Garden in Golden Gate Park

I had been working at the hospital for about 2 weeks when I had my first interaction with Simon.  I should probably explain something about this hospital real quick before I get too far into the story.  This hospital is a union hospital, and it was one of their first times hiring travel nurses for their general care floors (I believe they had been using travel nurses in their ICUs for quite some time).  I and several other travel nurses had been hired to staff up the hospital in preparation for the roll-out of their new computer charting system, which was to be implemented in the spring.  Computer charting roll-outs can be pretty intense, and they require a lot of classes which take nurses off their units to learn and practice the new system.  Hiring temporary staff fills the holes left by staff members who are attending classes.  Coincidentally, the computer charting roll-out was set to happen about a month before the current union contract was due to be renewed, which is a very stressful time for the hospital and its staff.  In the past, there have been strikes, there have been firings, there have been hurt feelings…you get the idea.  In the event of an imminent strike, a hospital will typically hire a bunch of travel nurses to fill the spots left vacant by the nurses who are on strike until a resolution can be met and the regular nurses will return to work.  So you can about imagine the response I got when I showed up at this hospital, to interact with a staff that hadn't been prepared ahead of time for my arrival.  They were suspicious of me and my fellow travel nurses.  They were under the impression that we were in place to learn their system and their hospital so that when they went on strike in June (our presence basically confirmed to them that a strike was coming), there would already be several nurses there who were familiar with how things went.  This was my first experience at a union hospital, and I was very taken aback by the outward and blatant hostility.  Even after explaining over and over again that I was there to assist with the computer charting roll-out, I was still met with suspicion.  There were some nurses who didn't even bother to learn my name…I was just "the traveler" to them for the entire 10 months I was there.  One of the other travel nurses actually got called a "Scab" to her face, which is the name given by union workers to the non-union workers who step in for them in the event of a strike.  It wasn't quite the situation that I had been anticipating walking into when I took the assignment, but I dealt with it and I explained myself to anyone who would listen.  I feel that the hospital really dropped the ball on that one…I shouldn't have been the one explaining to them why I was there.

Anyway, so there's that.  So my first shift with Simon I was doing a 12-hour shift from 7pm to 7am.  He was going to come in at 11pm to work the last 8 hours of the shift with me as the charge nurse for the Orthopedic unit.  Oh, another tidbit about this hospital…the travel nurses were always paired up with a charge nurse for our shifts…we were not allowed to sign off orders, nor were we allowed to take verbal orders from doctors or enter orders into the DOS based computer system that they already had in place…we were not to be trusted to act independently.  Essentially, my role as an RN had been reduced to the role of something far less, having taken away a significant portion of what differentiates an RN from an LPN or a nursing assistant.  Personally, it was a bit of a waste of my license, when they could have filled my position with an LPN and saved themselves some money.  But I digress.  So there I was, working on the Ortho unit awaiting the arrival of my babysitter for the rest of my shift.  There were a few middle-aged ladies on the unit who were all atwitter at the idea of me working with Simon.  Having never laid eyes on the guy, I asked them what the big deal was.  They could hardly contain themselves.  "He has the most gorgeous eyes."  "He's so dreamy!!" were a couple of the comments I actually remember…the rest were something along those lines.  I just had to laugh.  Who was this dude?  And honestly, like any other woman with a pulse, I can appreciate a good looking man.  So, like the other nurses, I waited with anticipation for Simon's arrival.

Simon and I at the Bubble Room on Captiva Island, FL

Around 10:45 he rolled onto the unit in what I can only describe as a harried pace.  If you've never seen Simon at work, you have no idea how fast that man can walk.  He can walk faster than I can jog.  I don't know how he does it, but he does.  So he blows onto the unit like he got thrown there by a tornado.  The giddy nurses attempted to introduce him to me.  He took one look at me, instantly looked away, and ducked into the locker room without so much as a hello.  Whatever good looks he may have possessed at that moment were instantly negated by what was perceived by me to be a really shitty attitude.  Our first night working together it was just Simon, me, and 12 patients.  I think he maybe said 5 whole sentences to me, all of them patient related.  It was really awkward.  It's hard to work a night shift when you're working it with someone intent on saying absolutely nothing to you.  I depend on my coworkers at night to keep me awake, as those hours from 2-5am when all the patients are sleeping are the hardest to keep one's eyes open.  I got through it.  And after that I dreaded being floated to the Ortho unit because I knew that he was always charge nurse, and being the inept travel nurse, I would be doomed to be assigned to be his partner.

Simon and I at Gooseberry Falls, North Shore, MN

I don't know how long it took for him to finally open up to me, despite me trying every single night to get at least something out of him.  I literally tried everything.  Asked him what kind of music he liked, where he liked to eat, what he liked to do, what part of town he lived in.  All innocuous questions and innocent attempts at getting to know this stranger I had to interact with and spend multiple nights a week with.  Almost every attempt at conversation was shot down by curt responses and a lack of interest.  I can honestly say that up until meeting Simon, I don't think I'd ever met anyone more disinterested in being friendly.  Of course, it turns out that there was more to the story than what I was perceiving, but I didn't know that at the time.  I just thought he was an angry man.  An angry man who ate really weird food.  I was always trying to get a look at all the weird stuff he brought in these tiny little plastic containers.  Food unidentifiable by sight or smell.  Not surprisingly, he didn't want to talk about what he was eating either.  

Getting ready to go to the Keane concert in St. Paul

So it went on like that for a few months.  I renewed my contract for another 7 months because I just wasn't ready to leave Minnesota yet, and truth be told, I was really enjoying living in the big city.  By the time December rolled around (5 months after I had started at the hospital), Simon was finally able to make some small talk.  We talked about music, we talked about our families, we talked about places we'd traveled…we finally talked about some of that weird food he was always eating.  It also turns out that Simon and I were assigned to have our computer classes at the same place on the same day.  We were in different classrooms, but we saw each other on our breaks.  It was on one of these breaks that he gave me a CD of some of his favorite songs.  Random.  It had really good music on it and to this day it's still one of my favorite music compilations by him.  Now, having grown up in the generation of the mix-tape, I couldn't help but wonder if there was something else behind this CD, as traditionally you only give a mix tape to someone in whom you show an interest romantically.  Turns out he made CD compilations for just about anyone, but it was a thought that lodged itself in the back of my head nonetheless.  We had become friendly enough for me to know that he had a girlfriend anyway, so I didn't let myself think too much about it.  But of course, I wondered.

Simon and I on Madelaine Island in Wisconsin

Which then brought us to March, when I noticed that his MySpace status has been changed from 'in a relationship' to 'single.'  Yes, this was back during the time when everyone was using MySpace.  I think Facebook might still have only been available to kids with an active college email account, but I don't know for sure.  In any case, more people I knew were using MySpace than Facebook.  So his status changed.  And coincidentally, I had just broken up with a guy that I had been casually dating on my volleyball team.  And then, Simon would randomly call me asking me to hang out with him and his friends at an Irish pub in St. Paul.  Or just to see what I was doing.  Or to go out for breakfast in the morning after working all night.  Of course, knowing that he was newly single after being in a relationship for an indeterminate amount of time, I didn't think it appropriate to think too much into this newfound interest he was suddenly showing in me.  We were friends.  Pretty much all his friends were girls, so I didn't think too much of it.

Simon and I at Franko and Andrea's wedding

And then came the day that my family was in town to attend the court session for my little brother's minor consumption…which I had nothing to do with, despite what my dad initially thought.  It just so happened that my little brother got caught drinking in the same county where I happened to be living…it's a big county, and I didn't even know he had been in town.  I was supposed to work at 11pm that night, but I had my whole day free and met my family for lunch after the court hearing.  We went to some Italian place in St. Paul kind of near the airport.  I had myself a big plate of pasta and a big glass of wine.  After lunch, my family went home and I called Simon with the giggles.  He told me I should call out sick to work that night.  With a courage driven by wine, I told him that I would only call out if he agreed to hang out with me that evening.  He agreed, so I called out.  We met up that evening at the Happy Gnome in St. Paul, which is still one of my favorite places to have some eats and a drink.  Over glasses of Rogue Dead Guy ale (my suggestion, as I told him the story of how my friend Pritish somehow managed to have a keg of it sent all the way from Oregon to Minnesota for one of his parties) we hung out chatting for several hours.  Two glasses in we were pretty buzzed, and neither of us okay to drive.  So we sat there a while longer, just talking, laughing, and making fun of the bartender who described himself as a huge fan of the TV show Scrubs.  After we sobered up, we headed to my place to watch the movie Sideways, which Simon had never seen.  After the movie he gave me a big hug and left.  I was somewhat confused.  Did he hug all his gal pals like that?  I had no idea, and despite being really into him, I was determined to keep things friendly because nothing is more awkward than interpreting someone's friendliness for intimacy.  And he was a good friend.  He was fun to hang out with, he was super goofy, he had a great sense of humor…all good qualities to have in a friend.  I told myself that if we never became anything more than friends, I'd be okay with that.  And I was.

Still one of my favorites of us…in LaCrosse, Wisconsin

The next night, we were hanging out with his friends Erin and Rita.  We were driving around St. Paul with nothing to do other than blast Weezer tunes and sing along at the top of our lungs.  It was like being back in high school, and it was so much fun.  Simon and I were in the back seat together when he texted me asking if I'd like to watch a movie again that night.  So there we were, texting each other in the back seat of Rita's car, thinking we were being so clever.  I'm pretty sure Erin and Rita knew what we were doing the entire time.  So once again, Simon and I went to my place to watch a movie.  We watched Grumpy Old Men, another favorite of mine given to me by my cousin Keri when I started travel nursing.  She said that whenever she was homesick, she would watch Grumpy Old Men and it would transport her right back to Minnesota.  It's a great movie for that, and one of the best Minnesota movies out there.  Fargo is a close second, although it's not exactly a "warm fuzzies" kind of flick.  Anyway, it was between Grumpy Old Men and Grumpier Old Men that Simon put his arm around me, snuggled in closer and we shared our first kiss.  I knew then that I had exited the friend-zone.  And the rest, as they say, is history.

Simon and I at Horseshoe Bend, Page, AZ

So here we are.  Living in Flagstaff, AZ, our first permanent residence since becoming a couple.  We've traveled for work all over the country, living in places that our personal travels might never have taken us.  We've made friends all over the country and we have favorite restaurants in some of the strangest places.  He's introduced me to kayaking, paddle boarding, mountain biking, and thinking outside the box when it comes to eating.  I'm sure I've introduced him to a few things as well…craft beers, pugs, road trips, and Jeeps.  And through it all, we've done it side by side, spending almost every waking minute together.  People think we're crazy, spending so much time together.  They don't know how we do it, how we don't get sick of each other.  And the truth is, we don't get sick of each other.  If it weren't for work, we'd spend even more time together, and I'm confident that our relationship wouldn't change in the slightest.  Shouldn't the person you spend your life with be the person you'd love to hang out with all day every day?  Not that we have to do everything together…we have our own friends and our own interests, and we're content with giving each other some space when needed.  But yeah, he's the first person I think about when I wake up in the morning, and the last person I think of when I go to bed at night.  He's my best friend.

So here we are, he at 35 and me nearly there.  At 27 years old when we started dating, 35 wasn't even on our radar.  It was so far away.  And still, here we are.  I can't wait to see what the next few years bring, what the next few decades bring.  Looking forward to them with open arms and a happy heart.  Happy birthday to my favorite person in the world.  :)

Simon and I near Fort Myers Beach, FL

         



  

If Given the Opportunity...

I would like to meet the man who came up with the brilliant idea that is the glass shower, and punch him in the balls.  Repeatedly.  So hard and so fast, that they travel all the way up his throat at which point he chokes to death on them.  Honestly.  What idiot thought that was a good idea?  And the reason I am assuming that the inventor was a man is because no woman would voluntarily want to add more work to her cleaning repertoire.  She just wouldn't.  This is purely the invention of a man who didn't think for one minute about the poor woman who was going to be forced to stand there for an hour with the glass door closed, breathing in the fumes, scrubbing furiously until her fingers are red, her eyes burning from the chemicals, and her patience just thin enough to consider murder an appropriate decompression therapy after the trauma obtained while scrubbing said shower.  I'm sure all he thought about was how sexy she was going to look showering off afterwards.  Well I've got news for him…no woman who spends the better part of her morning scrubbing a shower wants anything to do with anything he might have thought up while watching her shower through that pristine glass…which is, as she washes, collecting more soap scum to be scrubbed off at a later date.

I just spent the last 2 hours cleaning our bathrooms…one hour of which was spent solely in the the glass shower.  I have decided that I will never do it again.  Not that it won't ever be cleaned again, but next time I will be paying someone else to do it.  I don't care what people think about that or how much it costs…I literally cannot even look at that glass torture chamber without wanting to take a sledgehammer to each pane of its transparent evil.  And you know the worst part?  After I'm done, and the glass is sparkling, the spots that I missed become painfully obvious, mocking me, revealing to everyone that even though I was in there scrubbing non-stop for a full freaking hour, I didn't do a good enough job.  Glass Shower: 1, Stefanie: 0.  Well screw you, glass shower.  I'm going to use the other shower.  The one with the bathtub and the curtain.  The curtain that when soiled, either gets tossed in the washer or tossed in the garbage…win-win for me as I'd much rather do laundry or drop $5 at Target on a new curtain than scrub soap scum off of glass.

And one of the most infuriating things about cleaning the bathroom?  The dog hair.  Hands down, almost as frustrating as scrubbing the glass, although not quite.  The dog hair is ubiquitous in our house, apparently, and appears to be attracted to clean surfaces more so than any other surface (outside of the comforter that Grandma E and I made out of corduroy…the dog dog hair, sadly, will most likely never be fully removed from that thing).  I wanted to punch through the wall every time I swept a surface with a clean rag, only to see a spattering of dog hair left in its wake.

And then there's the toilet…ah that bloody, bastardly toilet.  I hate that thing.  After scrubbing the pee drops and the poop splatters from its gleaming porcelain surface, I'm contemplating just going to the bathroom out in the woods.  Heck, if it's good enough for those morons lighting the woods behind our house on fire (repeatedly), then it's good enough for me.  I think I can even manage to poop in the woods without lighting them on fire, which makes me better than them by leaps and bounds.

I have to wonder what Simon was thinking from his post in the kitchen, listening to me swear a blue streak as I got cleaning stuff in my eye, I repeatedly dropped the scrub brush, the cleaning bucket tipped over, the dog hair…that damn dog hair.

It's no secret that I hate cleaning…there's a reason I do it so infrequently.  Ask anyone who's lived with me.  My poor college roommates…although, to be fair, I don't think any of us outside of Naomi were actually clean people.  I would say that I'm tidy…I will pick up after myself…if only that were enough.  Simon is the first man I've lived with who actually cleans, which is more than I can say for the other idiots I'd managed to date throughout the years.  Either they expected me to be their little June Cleaver (ha…weren't they disappointed…they should have known that no self-respecting June Cleaver would have the mouth of a sailor), or they were just as content as I was to look the other way when mold started growing under the shampoo bottles.  Simon vacuums every few days, which I appreciate, as I still don't know how to use the Dyson.  I am a failure as a housewife, but I think he probably knew that going into it and decided to be okay with it.

I'm still irritated that I spent 2 hours in the bathroom and I myself am dirtier than when I began.  Gross.  I'm trying really hard not to think about the time that I temporarily lost my balance and my face fell against the side of the toilet.  And now that the shower is clean, I don't want to use it because that means I'll have to clean it again.  But I do need to get this Soft Scrub off the bottoms of my feet, my arms, out of my hair, etc before it burns my skin away.  Nothing like chemical burns as proof of a morning spent scrubbing the bathroom.      

The Post That Should Have Been...

Going "down the stairs" in Sedona

So last week I went mountain biking for the very first time…and I loved it.  I have to admit, I was very skeptical about it, as physical activities and my physical limitations do not typically jive.  Case in point, I struggle a lot with cross-country skiing.  I don't hate it, per se, but I don't much care for it.  For two winters now I have tried my hand at cross-country skiing, and I was mediocre at best.  And who wouldn't be, their first time trying out an activity that they've never done before?  For some reason I have this delusional idea that there is some sort of physical activity out there that I will somehow take to like a prodigy.  I'm still trying to find that activity…I'm thinking that it probably doesn't exist.  Hahaha! But I keep looking, and I keep having expectations.

So, given the struggles that I had with cross-country skiing, I had my doubts about my ability to mountain bike.  Turns out, they were mostly unfounded.  For someone who is afraid to ride a bike up a curb, I barreled up rocky paths with some deeply buried courage that hasn't been accessed in quite a long time.  I'm a chicken heart, you see.  Put me in any situation, and I'll give you several different ways in which you could be mangled or killed while doing it.  I don't know where this comes from, I don't know why I do it, but there it is just the same.  I'm afraid of a lot of things.  And even though there were times while mountain biking on rocky paths that I thought I was going to go tumbling over the edge, a stream of expletives exiting my mouth, I hung on, hunkered down, and just went for it.  I can see why so many people here in Flagstaff are mountain bikers…it's a pretty phenomenal rush, and this is one of the perfect places in the country to do it.

I think another reason I felt safe mountain biking is because I know how to ride a bike.  I've been riding a bike for as long as I can remember.  In fact, I remember one of my very first bikes…it was blue with a white basket and it had those hard rubber tires…you know the ones, the ones that don't have any air in them.  That was the first bike that I can remember.  My next bike was a really old-school Schwinn, I think one that had been passed down from person to person before landing on me.  It had cushy tires, dark blue paint, and I had put a bunch of those beaded things on the spokes to make it look more girly.  I loved that bike.  I thought I was really fast on that bike (I probably wasn't).  It's funny, there's a hill of sorts near where I grew up, and I remember walking down it with my bike when I was little because I thought that it was too steep.  I go back there now, and it's barely a hill.  I had myself almost convinced that they must have graded the road and straightened out the hill sometime ago, because there's no logical reason that I should have been afraid of it.  But that's how it is with childhood…things that seem big and scary just get small and inconsequential as you grow up.  After a few mountain bikes to get me through my teenage years and college, I bought my first real bike after graduating from nursing school. It was a Trek mountain bike, and it had front shocks and I bought it at a bike store because I didn't know where else people bought nice bikes.  It was my first big purchase to congratulate myself for making it through 4 years of college and actually finishing with a degree.  Funny that I bought a mountain bike and never once took it off-road in the time that I had it.  I just felt comfortable on those fatty tires, I guess.  I ended up selling my Trek while on an assignment in Colorado.  I put that money towards my fixed-gear road bike, which was the only bike I had up until last month when I bought not one, but two mountain bikes.  I know…typical Stefanie…buying in multiples once again.

Me with my new bike, on Bell Rock Pathway

I posted a picture of Mountain bike #1 in my last blog, my Cannondale 6, and it was such a pretty bike…flat black, nothing flashy, very under the radar as far as looks were concerned.  Nice and light, front shocks, disc brakes…everything I was looking for in something that I had no intention of riding on pavement.  And it performed better than I ever could have expected during my first ride in Sedona.  It hopped over rocks, scurried down paths, and climbed uphill like a beast.  It was so much fun, and I was eagerly looking forward to the next time that I got to take it out on the trails.  My butt had to recover first…you can't ride 3 hours on rough trails and not have a serious case of biker butt.

Unfortunately, the post that was meant to sing the praises of my newfound sport are to be short-lived.  My pretty little Cannondale 6 was stolen during a recent trip to Phoenix to try out some of the trails down there.  Simon and I had our bikes locked to the bike carrier on the back of the Jeep, and during the night some neanderthals with a set of bolt cutters made quick work of our bike lock and cable and off they went with our bikes.  I was devastated.  Simon was pissed.  And you know, by the end of the day, I wasn't upset about the money, heck, I almost wasn't even that upset about the bike…I hadn't had the thing long enough to get attached to it.  What was most upsetting was how losing our bikes ruined our trip.  We had planned a four-day trip to Phoenix to go mountain biking, stay in a cute hotel in a pretty centralized location to everything that we wanted to do, to meet up with a friend at the Botanical Gardens, to go see The Grand Budapest Hotel in a movie theater that serves you food and beer from your seat, and to hang out with the few family members that I have down in the Valley.  Waking up that first morning and realizing that our bikes were gone ruined everything.  It was so disheartening and frustrating that we just couldn't find the energy to be excited about anything else that we had planned.  And you know, Phoenix has very few redeeming qualities as it is…it's unbearably hot, the drivers are a-holes, the traffic is atrocious, the people are selfish and rude…Phoenix has very few things going for it.  We are continuously just on the cusp of writing that entire city off entirely.  I think this may have tipped the scales.  My family is the only thing that will pull me down there in the future.  And maybe some of the micro-breweries…maybe.  You can bet that I will be bringing no possessions whatsoever.  They can't steal what I don't have.

This is the fourth time I've had something significant stolen from me, and it's been a different situation every time.  And each time it happens, I lose a little more faith in humanity over it.  It chaps my hide that there are people out there who are resourceful, confident, and ballsy enough to go out there and get what they want, but unfortunately they don't use those attributes for anything positive.  They steal; they feel entitled to take what isn't theirs just because they can.  They do it with no thought whatsoever as to how it's going to affect the person they're stealing from.  It's a complete lack of empathy and a total disregard for their fellow human beings.  And that's what bothers me the most.  I can buy a new bike.  No problem.  Bikes are a dime a dozen…in fact, I've already contacted a few people on Craigslist this morning who are selling pretty decent bikes.  I could have a bike by the end of today if I really wanted one.  But what I won't have by the end of today is a feeling of trust and respect for those around me.  After the bikes were stolen and reported missing, Simon and I took a walk around the park near our hotel, and every single biker that went by me got the once-over.  Were they on my bike?  Had they seen my bike?  Were they riding a stolen bike?  And I hate that.  I hate feeling suspicious of people.  It's an uneasy, stressful feeling, and I wish that I could just trust people not to do shitty things.  But I can't.  And I'm sure this won't be the last time that I get stolen from, because unfortunately, this entire world is crawling with human vermin awaiting their next opportunity to take what isn't theirs.  I did find it ironic, however, that after 8 years of criss-crossing the country for travel jobs, this is the first time we've ever had anything stolen from us.  That's a pretty good record, I guess.      

And you know, I know that there are more good people in the world in than bad…there have to be or society would just collapse.  I take comfort in the fact that last night I slept in a comfortable bed with Simon and my pugs, in a nice house that we can easily afford, in a town that we love.  We woke up this morning and had a great breakfast, good conversation, and have the leisure time to work on our projects.  For the most part, we have a very good, very happy life.  How happy is the life of the person who stole our bikes?  I'm guessing not very.  Doing bad things to people does not make a good case for happiness…it might provide a sense of accomplishment, but it's not happiness.  So at the end of the day, he might have my bike, but I have my happiness, and that's bigger than a bike ever could be.

So I hope he enjoys what little delight he gets out of my bike, whatever he happens to do with it.  Personally, I hope he crashes while riding it and snaps his f*cking neck (and dies, of course, because I don't want my taxes going towards the treatment and rehabilitation of someone who possesses such disregard for other people…I would have to assume that someone who steals bikes also does not have insurance), but that's just the vindictive side of me hoping for some sort of retribution for the ruination of what was supposed a fun few days spent doing things I like with people I care about.  I also had visions of spending 2 minutes alone in a room with him…with my pink "Girls Rule" T-ball bat (purchased in Phoenix 8 years ago, ironically, because there were some men at the time who just couldn't seem to stay out of women's apartments…admittedly, a gun would have been a better choice, but I didn't have to use the bat, so I wouldn't have had to use the gun either).  I think 2 minutes would be an adequate amount of time for me to drive home what I really think about him and who he is and how he makes people feel when he steals from them.  Our justice system is so flawed that the criminals are the ones who are protected, and the rest of us suffer for it.  It's complete and utter BS.  

It's kinda funny…being atheist and all, I told Simon that I can't even take comfort in the end-of-days judgement that might cast the bike-stealer into that alleged lake of fire for all of eternity, because I don't believe in that.  And even if I did, a case can be made that all of god's children end up in heaven one way or another…and that's not a satisfactory ending for me either.  I do believe in a very rational form of karma, and believe that if you are a person who does bad things to people, eventually you're going to do a bad thing to the wrong person, and things are not going to end well.  Of course, I'll never hear or know about this, but I know that that's usually how it goes.  He'll get his, one way or another, he will.  And whether or not he's thinking about all the bikes he's stolen and all the people he's hurt along the way, well, that's his problem.  I've already moved on from it.

So yeah, a post that was supposed to be gushing with excitement and delight was tainted by one person's poor choice and lack of respect for people and property.  Sucky.  Fortunately for us, last night we had the pleasure of hanging out with my brother Chris and my nephew Jett, and we got to enjoy a fantastically prepared meal by my cousin Jenny and her boyfriend Scott.  Those two always feed us so well.  Oh, and I got to pet a baby horse that was only a week old…he was so incredibly soft and cute.  Nothing brightens one's mood like a baby animal, if only for a little while.        

Bits and Bobs and Things From My Brain

So I haven't written in a while.  Truth be told, I have several blogs that are just hanging out in the drafts section of the interwebs, waiting for me to find the time and creativity to finish them.  Or at least work on them a little bit.  Time and creativity for writing are hard to come by…I find either I'm lacking in one or both of those aspects, and I have enough respect for myself and my readers to post something that has been well thought out and creatively edited.  Yes, even the posts about poop.  I currently have an idea of a post dedicated entirely to poop, but I've thus far held back on working on it because the subject matter is relatively off-putting.  Throwing a little poop talk around here and there is somewhat amusing…an entire diatribe devoted to it?  Maybe not so much.  So here's some random tidbits because I have a little bit of time, and a little bit of creativity.

Last night I made my first vegetarian casserole using tofu.  Don't get all excited/concerned, I'm not going vegetarian…I could never give up bacon…a life without bacon is a life not worth living.  Okay, so maybe that's a little dramatic, but I do love bacon.  I could probably be vegetarian if I was allowed to have bacon.  I wonder what they would call that…baco-vegetarianism?  I have to think that of all the meats that cause vegetarians to stray to the dark side, bacon has got to be at or near the top of the list.  The casserole actually turned out quite good (would have been better with some bacon in it, but I digress).  I even invited one of my vegetarian friends and her boyfriend over, and at the end of the meal she asked for the recipe so she must have enjoyed it.  I have to admit, for something vegetarian and also incorporating tofu, it was quite good.  I had to doctor the recipe a bit, of course, since I can never follow a recipe in its entirety, and I'm proud to say that the doctoring actually turned out for the better this time.  This is not always the case, and many a fit has been thrown in the kitchen when a recipe doesn't turn out. A fit is also thrown after Simon reminds me that I didn't follow the recipe, and that maybe I should have.  Thank goodness for take-out.  To be entirely truthful, I did have a veggie pizza on hand in the freezer in the event that the veggie casserole didn't work out.  It's always good to have a back-up plan.

Mayhem at the Color Vibe

So I just signed up for 2 foot races here in northern Arizona in the coming months.  The first race will be a 10k run down in Cottonwood.  I suppose it should be mildly concerning that I'm thinking more about what I'm going to wear rather than the fact that I haven't actually run consistently since my half marathon at the end of February.  I won't have the full benefit of running at a lower elevation for this one either.  Cottonwood is at about the 5,000 foot range, which is lower than Flagstaff, but still pretty high.  I also hear there's a beast of a hill at mile 4…hills and I do not get along, so we'll see how this one goes.  We all know I have no shame in walking, so there's that.  The other race I signed up for is the Color Vibe, and that will be taking place in Flagstaff at the beginning of May.  It's a 5k, so I should have a little easier time with it, but I'll be at 7,000 feet this time, so I won't have any advantages whatsoever.  I've always been curious about these color runs, and it seems like a decent amount of my friends have done one.  They never seem to do a second one though…I wonder if that's because you're inhaling colored cornstarch the entire time and then proceed to cough it up for days afterward.  That's what I've heard anyway…I'm sure I'll dictate a full report when it's finished.  Although with the way I've been blogging lately, you're not likely to see commentary on it until sometime in September, if ever.

Ellen and I after finishing the Enchanted 10k at Disneyworld

Still sticking with the running talk, I still have plans to join some running clubs.  There are three out here that hold some interest for me.  One is the Northern Arizona Trail Runners Association, and they seem to do most of their runs on the trails near Flagstaff and Sedona.  Most of them are around 5 miles, give or take a few.  It appears that all ages and abilities are welcome.  They run on Saturday mornings though, and given the fact that I pretty much work every Friday night, it hasn't yet worked out for me to join them.  I'm tentatively off work tonight (I'm on call), but I checked their website, and as luck would have it, there doesn't appear to be a run scheduled for the morning.  Doh!  The other group is the Flagstaff Trail Divas, and they are a group of women who get together on Thursday evenings to run.  Since they started back up again this spring, I haven't had a free Thursday evening to join them.  But one of these weeks I will.  Hopefully.  They also seem to welcome all ages and abilities, and their runs are around the 5 mile mark as well.  Both of the aforementioned groups do pretty much all their running on trails, which is a really neat way to get out and run.  It's so much more interesting and interactive than just running on the pavement.  The last of the running clubs is a fee-based running club, and they seem to focus more on conditioning and training.  They do organized runs as well, but I think they would be good for me given the fact that when I run, I get stuck in a rhythm and don't vary from it.  Which is all well and good, but it's a terrible way to elevate my running fitness, should I choose to do so.  The last group also trains with professional athletes and former, current, and prospective Olympians.  I kind of want to join the group just to say that I train with Olympic athletes…hahaha!

So now that Simon and I are no longer travel nursing, or driving across the country, I feel that I can safely come out and say that during my 8 years of travel nursing, I didn't get a single speeding ticket while traveling to or from an assignment (there was that one speeding ticket that I got in Scottsdale, AZ during my very first assignment, but I'm choosing not to count that one).  That's a lot of miles logged in a lot of years, and I can safely say that I rarely, if ever, drove the speed limit while going from one assignment to another.  Even with the trailer.  And a red vehicle.  After moving to Arizona, I was pulled over three times…one for speeding, one for making an inappropriate right turn, and the other for running a stop sign.  I got out of all three tickets, which is unheard of for me because I was never the girl who got out of tickets.  Ever.  Even if I cried.  I was once cited for 5 things at a single pull-over…I think the cop felt bad for me since it wasn't my vehicle and there was no way I could have known about 3 of the 5 things I was cited for, but not bad enough to not give me a ticket for one of the indiscretions.  I suppose I should consider myself lucky that he only chose one citation, not a very expensive one at that.  So…back to my Arizona pull-overs.  I honestly think that having the Minnesota plates and Minnesota driver's license had a lot to do with me getting out of the first and the last pull-over…I was able to claim ignorance, even though I'd lived in Arizona long enough to be anything but ignorant about what I was doing when I was pulled over.  The pull-over for the inappropriate right was the funniest one.  I was pulling out of a bar, being the sober cab that I was that night, and instead of pulling into the closest lane when I turned, I pulled into the far one, anticipating a left turn up ahead.  I do this all the time…we all do this all the time.  But because I was pulling out of a bar known to be frequented by alcoholics and rowdy college kids, I got pulled over.  And then there I was, doing a sobriety test.  While my friends and Simon sat in the Jeep watching.  The interesting thing about the whole situation, was that I recognized the cop from the hospital, as he had been there a few weeks prior to pick up an unruly patient to take to jail.  I didn't mention this to him, as I didn't want to appear that I was trying to get out of a ticket by revealing our past interaction, but in speaking with a cop friend of mine afterwards, he told me that I should always mention that I'm a nurse.  Solidarity in working with the public (not always at their finest) and whatnot.  I'll have to keep that in mind for next time.  Hopefully there isn't a next time.

Little Beezer mugging for the camera

In rather morbid train of thought, Brie is getting up there in age and I've been kind of joking around as to what I'm going to do with her when she passes.  Simon thinks we should bury her out in the woods behind our house.  Which I would be okay with, I guess.  I worry that something will try and dig her up, but I guess if she's dead and her body will contribute to the survival of some other animal (aka, the natural process of things), then I guess I can be all right with that.  My ideas are somewhat less traditional.  I've tossed around the idea of getting her stuffed, turning her into a handbag, or making her into a rug.  Simon is disturbed by all of these.  My friend Adam is the only one so far who seems to share my morbid sense of humor, and thinks that the rug is the best option.  I tend to agree.  I could put the rug under my desk and rest my feet on it while I blog.  Simon actually had the idea that we could mix her ashes into some paint and make a painting.  I think that's a lot less morbid than the rug idea, but still very meaningful.  Simon's sister Abby also suggested the idea of making a paver stone for the garden and incorporating the ashes into the mix for that.  Both very good, and very non-disturbing ideas.  Not that Brie is anywhere near passing at this exact moment, but she's elderly and fragile and I don't think it'll take a whole heck of a lot to tip the scales to the negative.  The vet we go to actually refers to her as her favorite UTI-prone pug, since we are in there every couple months for antibiotics.  But she's holding steady for the time being.  I actually have her on a new supplement that has glucosamine and turmeric in it, and she's doing a little better.  Gives her a little more control of that hind end.  She still wanders around like a drunk though.

Basically what the new bike looks like.  I like the flat black paint.

In other news not related to running, death, or poop, I recently purchased a new-to-me mountain bike.  That I haven't ridden yet.  But I will.  Someday.  It's a Cannondale Six, which doesn't mean a whole lot me, but it seems like a nice bike…I got it for about half retail price on Craigslist and it appears to have been scarcely ridden.  I've been learning all kinds of new mountain bike terminology lately, and I've been told that this bike is referred to as a "hard-tail," meaning that it only only has shocks on the front fork.  Simon's bike is a "full suspension," which means that he has shocks of some description on the front and the back.  Generally a full suspension makes for a smoother ride, and absorbs a decent amount of the impact when riding over boulders and such.  Full suspensions seem to run at almost double the price of hard tails, but you can find good used ones at relatively reasonable prices if you're willing to put in the time and effort to look for them.  I originally wanted a full suspension bike, but then realized that I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in riding over boulders.  In fact, I think riding down a dirt road sounds right up my alley…hahaha!  So yeah, here I am with my mountain bike that has yet to be ridden.  I hope it starts to get a little nicer outside so I can actually get out and use it.  In another bout of crazy thinking, I've decided that I want to find myself a fixed-gear mountain bike.  I've determined that they don't exist in stock form (at least not that I've found in my limited Googling), so I have to find a bike that I like, and turn it into a fixed-gear myself.  I think we can all agree on the likeliness of that happening…which is not very.  The problem with finding a mountain bike with a fixed gear is that most mountain bikers like the ability to coast while aggressively riding downhill.  I don't even like to aggressively go downhill on my road bike on a smooth surface…I can't imagine that feeling would change while riding over rocks, tree roots, and other random obstacles.  There are a lot of dirt roads and trails here in Flagstaff that I think would be perfect for fixed-gear riding.  I really enjoy riding fixed-gear…the ability to control my speed using my legs instead of the brakes is actually really cool, and it challenges me and makes me think more while I'm riding.

Love peonies…Grandma always had the light pink ones

So yeah, I guess you could say that I'm embracing life here in Flagstaff pretty well.  I enjoy the scenery, the outdoor offerings, the food, my job, and the people.  I also like that when it's snowy and cold here in the winter, I can drive 2 hours south and be in balmy Phoenix weather.  Can't beat that!  People ask me when I'm going to start traveling again, as if staying here is only a temporary option (and also the subject of one of my works-in-process on my Life At the Bedside blog).  I don't really know, to be honest.  I really like it here, and I'm really liking the idea of staying put for a while.  I'm actually planning on visiting the local garden shops to see about putting in some flowers and plants this spring.  There are about 4 flower beds here at our rental place, and as far as I can discern there are only plants in 1 of them.  And they've been very poorly maintained at that.  I bought a few mums on clearance from the grocery store and plan on putting those out as soon as the threat of frost is mostly gone…it still gets pretty cold here at night…and it just snowed again the other day.  I also just found out from a friend of mine that peonies do, in fact, grow in northern Arizona, so I was really stoked about that and have plans to buy some starter bushes and plant them in June.  Peonies are the flowers that remind me most of my Grandma Ellringer, who I still miss dearly and think about all the time.  It would be cool to have a few plants right outside the window to remind me of her.  And who knows…maybe I inherited her green thumb…someone in the family hopefully did!

So that's pretty much it for now.  I'll get working on my in-process blogs one of these days.  It's just so much more fun to sit and type out whatever happens to be going through my head at the time.  Until we meet again.  :)