Bike stream of consciousness

When I'm on my bike the world is mine and I go and go and go and everything wizzes by in a blur of colors and the wind feels warm on my face and my helmet feels tight and makes my hairline sweat and I pump my legs hard to go faster and then I ease up to turn and I signal to the guy in the car that I am turning by lifting my left arm and pointing to the left because that is where I want to go and I make eye contact and he nods and me and I nod at him and he slows to a stop and I speed up and turn left and I give a little wave to let him know my appreciation and he smiles and I smile and I go on down the street which is now a quiet tree-lined one with lots of shade and my sunglasses catch the glint of the sunlight streaming through and I stare to the left and I stare to the right trying to look into everyone's houses because I like imagining what their lives are like and how they live and what they do everyday and I see people stoop-sitting and I see people hosing off the sides of their homes and I see kids laughing and riding tricycles and I see hopscotch and chalk drawings on the sidewalks and I look out for bunnies that run wild in the streets and the occasional squirrel that decides to risk it all and cross my path and I lift my butt up when I hit a speed bump and my bag strapped to the rack makes a loud clanking noise and I worry for one second about breaking a spoke and then my brain moves on to the sound of the breeze in the trees and how green all the plants are and I approach a stop sign and I slow down and try to gesture to the car waiting for me that he can go ahead but he refuses because he thinks I will just blow through the stop like other bikers and I really want him to go first but I don't have time for his wishy-washiness so I just blow through it and prove his theory all along and then I am so close to being home and I realize how very sweaty I am and decide the song on my ipod is all wrong for this moment and I press skip so I can find a good one and then I get stuck at the Belmont and Leavitt stop light like I always do and I finally find a song I like that fits my mood and it's that one by that band that everyone likes and I feel so generic listening to it but there is a reason it is so popular so I let it go and it makes me smile and makes me happy and that is all that matters and work is over and the sun is shining and I am pedaling faster and faster and then I turn right down a one way street to get to my alley but it's only for a little while and when a car comes toward me I feel secretly guilty and wish I had a chance to explain that I usually follow rules but it's just way faster this way and I avoid eye contact and cruise to the alley and turn down it and I watch the squirrels scurry out of the hole bitten through our garbage can and scatter when I stop my bike and I hop off and take off my helmet and let my head breathe and I open the gate and lead my bike into the yard and into the garage and I leave her there to rest until tomorrow morning when I will come again to partake of her kind assistance to get where I want to go once more.

It had to happen eventually...

I knew one day I would have to pontificate about my thoughts on a particular subject that I have not mentioned in all 5 years (give or take) that I have had this blog. But now, since it is almost over, I feel the need (after about 1/3 of a bottle of wine) to express to you my feelings about something very dear to me.

LOST.

Yes friends. That show that everyone either loves (if they watch it) or hates to hear about (if they do not watch it). I am not going to try to theorize or anything (which reminds me--I have to remember to write down my personal guess as to which theory will unfold during the season finale before Sunday, per my watching-buddies' request. Yikes! Don't forget! And yes I am that nerdy), I just want to explore my intense feelings for this mind-blowing piece of American Entertainment.

When my fiance brought home the netflix of episode 1, season 1, I was mildly annoyed. I had been hearing about this show for like 2 seasons and I just did not get it (was not enlightened yet, as I will call it now). He watched it alone due to my indifference. He promptly told me I needed to watch it. That I would effing love it (or something to that effect). I decided to give it a shot.

The first episode was so intense I think I almost threw up. I have never been so moved by a television show before. Listen, I want to be straight right off the bat here--I DO NOT get "into" TV shows. During the 6 years I was in college, I think I saw a hand-full of episodes of TV shows. I never had or wanted cable TV, I was constantly reading at coffee shops or in school. No need for mindless devotion to my weekly "show" or whatever. So I had no concept of what is it to actually care about a plot line, let alone a whole TV show. This was something different. And it terrified me.

Adam and I, along with our close friend Jon, plowed through season 1 and 2, maybe even 3. I know at least 2 New Year's Days off were spent, in their entirety, watching episode after episode in our pajamas. We only broke the cycle to go get greasy take out food and bring it back so we could continue getting our fix. I remember distinctly, after 12 straight hours of LOST viewing, rolling around on the couch, saying "It's like my crack, man. I can't get enough!" And I meant it.

Maybe it was the mystery of it all. I am, by nature, an extremely curious person. I want to know everything about everything and everyone. I ask a lot of questions. I analyze till I am blue in the face. But with LOST, I got to know nothing. Oh sure, treats were thrown at me, but ultimately, I was constantly in a state of panic and analysis about what everything meant. It was glorious.

So as I mentioned before, I have not been an avid television watcher since probably 8th grade. Even now, I watch a minimal amount of TV. LOST accounts for about 45% of my viewing time, I would say. As a result of this being typical for me, I have never really gotten attached to a show before. This is all new to me. I used to laugh at my sister or my aunt, who would tape their favorite shows and not answer their phones because "my show is on.."  I thought it was absurd. Now?

I get it.

I totally get it.

LOST is MY SHOW. I care. I watch. I sit through stupid commercials. I read up online about it. I formulate theories. I LOVE THE SHIT OUT OF THIS SHOW. Yeah man. All caps. You heard me.

I treat the show like it is a separate entity. It's so weird. Never have I had this sort of attachment to a freaking television show. And it is now coming to an end. This weekend, Sunday to be exact, LOST will air the series finale. We have all known this day is coming since around circa 2007. But to have it actually be right around the corner is really surreal to me.

I mean, now that I finally gave in to my obsession with the show, it is time to say goodbye. I have invested a good 4-5 years of time, energy, and mind-power to this show and all its many facets. As Boyz to Men once said, "It's so hard to say goodbye to yesterday." It's true. LOST is like my homey I must tip my 40oz to.

I am not sure how I will react. I am pretty sure I will cry, since I already cry every time someone even breaks a finger nail in that show. But in terms of how I will fill the void the finale will leave in my life? Who knows. I will probably just go back to watching less TV. Which is a good thing, overall.

The thing about LOST is...it is a show about people who make sense. You got to see why they are the way they are, then see them act differently, or in line with themselves, depending on the situation. And isn't that how it really is in real life? People are lonely, looking for something, have daddy issues, can't get over something. It is all universal to us all. And they act out accordingly. Or overcome their tendencies. Seeing that is hard. But exquisitely beautiful.

I guess if I had to try to put it into words...as LOST comes to an end, I realize I did fall for this show. I loved hard, fiercely, and with such a devotion that would never waiver. And I must remember, as I am a bawling baby on the couch during the finale this Sunday...

It is better to have loved and LOST than to have never loved at all.

The big -1

Yesterday, it was officially one year exactly until my wedding. We celebrated by going to a friend's birthday gathering and drinking copious amounts of margaritas. It was nice to be out and the weather was great for once and we rode bikes in a group back to our neighborhood and it was just like summer nights I remember from years past. The city was buzzing with people spilling out of various bars and restaurants, the night air was warmish, and  spirits were high. It is nights like this that I am reminded how lucky I am to be here, right now, at this particular time in my life. Knowing that things will be changing pretty significantly in the next year or so, I feel the need to embrace each moment like last night and hold it close. Snuggle it, even.

Here are some big changes coming round the bend:

I will be a married woman (I guess I call myself woman now) in exactly 364 days.
My fiance will be going back to school soon. Which means less time to spend together. Also less time to plan for our wedding.
Our best friend (my fiance's best friend of 10 years and now by proxy and because I love him, one of my best friends as well) is leaving Chicago to go to grad school at Harvard! (Yes he is very smart.) Which means a very big hole in our hearts after this summer.
Possibly we will be forced to move out of our lovely apartment if our landlord can find a buyer this summer.

There are other changes hopefully coming as well that will remain private for now. All in all, as a wise man named Bob once said, "times, they are a-changin'."

I know change is good, and I fully get that cognitively. However I tend to be the type of girl who understands things mentally yet still has very strong emotional responses to it all. That is why my mother always said I was "sensitive." A nice way of noting my emotionality...i.e. I cry. A lot. I am sure I will be just fine until all the changes start happening one by one. And then I will lose it here and there and be a blubbering mess for a day or two until the emotion has been drained out through the tears. It is fine. I can deal with it. It is a good thing that at 30 years old I finally know myself enough to realize how I might react and then prepare for it appropriately. So this will be the summer of lasts and firsts. Bring on the kleenex.

Hair Despair

Well I just realized that this will be my 102nd blog post. Boy howdy, that seems like a lot! When you think about how long I have had this little corner it does not seem that surprising I guess. But it is a little exciting. For me. And that is all that matters, when you really break it down. So HOORAY for me. And a big squishy thank you to you for reading all this silly drivel I like to share.

ANYWAY....

On to more important topics. Like my new haircut. Yeah I said it. My new haircut will be the subject of my 102nd blog post. Riveting, truly. But this is not just about my haircut. It is about every haircut I have ever had. It is about how awful one person can actually be at doing her own hair.

Our story begins circa 1987 or so. About the time I entered the 3rd grade. My mother had never done more with my limp, stringy locks than put them in a simple ponytail or if she was feeling really adventurous...two of them. I am pretty sure she is the one who passed on to me the "lack-of-skill-at-girly-things" gene that stops me from having a fashion sense, being able to wear high heels for more than an hour at a time, applying makeup properly, and of course--styling my own hair. (She also passed on her kindness, compassion, strength and ingenuity. So I made out like a bandit nonetheless.)

Around this time--3rd grade or so--young children begin to actually notice their differences and celebrate them...as cruelly as possible. So I think my mother had the best intentions when she dragged me into a salon to get my rat's nest of a mop combed out and see what we could do with it. I am sure she did not want to give those kids a reason to tease me any more then they were already planning to. My knotted greasy mess of hair certainly would not help the situation. She decided to go with what everyone at the time was doing (hey, it was the 80s after all). She got me a perm.

Now, the perm was super cute when leaving the salon. It made my fine, flat hair kinky and full, gave me the volume women dream of, and seemed relatively easy to manage--just spray and scrunch and go! However, the perm completely fell out of my hair within weeks and I was back to straight and flat once again. My mother was determined to get the perm to take. She must have taken me back to that salon every few months for at least a year. Same thing always happened--perm took hours to create, then took only hours to disappear. It was pretty amazing.

Eventually my mother grew tired of attempting to force my hair to be something it wasn't. I think it was at that point that we both just sort of gave up. I played sports and tended to keep my hair in tight ponytails anyway, or there was that great side ponytail phase everyone was into that suited me just fine through the late 80s and early 90s. It was all good. Except that I looked like a real tool through most of my formative years. But then again--who doesn't? Right? Riiiiight?

Fast forward to my later college years. I stumbled upon an amazing BFF who was not only fabulous and fun as hell, but he was also really good at hair! I could not believe my luck! If he was not cutting and dying my hair, he was experimenting and styling it so that I would look like a normal, dare I say pretty girl, all dolled up and looking good all the time. It was great! Remembering those days right now, I can honestly say with confidence that those were some of the best-looking days of my life thus far. Wow. I think I almost shed a tear. Why did I ever move away from that man?

Fast forward again, say...7 years. I am now 30 years old. I have not had my BFF stylist around in 7 years and it shows. I wander from stylist to stylist, hoping someone will finally understand my hair and help me figure out how to make it look nice on my own. Oh sure, there have been some who came close. There are always those who gave me what we both thought was the perfect cut . But once I left the salon, once my hair's fate rested in my fumbling hands...well, you know how that ends. You see, the stylist has that gene. That thing inside most women that tells them innately how to braid hair or use a curl brush properly. Me? I do not have it. AT ALL. And so I leave the salon feeling like a million bucks, go out that night and get tons of compliments, feel awesome about my hair future, and then BAM. I wake up in the morning and it's just me and the hair. On our own. Battling the war we have been fighting for years. And it gets ugly, let me assure you. With no stylist to tame it, my hair becomes a beast and refuses to do what I saw it do the day before. It is like the sad clown at the circus being left alone in the lion cage with only a squirty-flower on his lapel to assist him.

So here I am today, about 6 days into a new haircut. The first day, of course, I absolutely loved it. The shape was great, the layers made sense, I went with sweepy side bangs again (against my better judgement) and they actually looked damn cute! I was impressed. The stylist was my 4th or 5th since living in Chicago, and I was happy because she took notes and spent time listening to my hair woes. She even showed me some different ways to work with my hair and gently urge it to do what I wanted. I felt armed with new knowledge and a new sense of determination to make my hair my bitch (so to speak). And of course, the next morning, I practiced all her tricks and I took extra time to style it and I used the stupid product she convinced me to buy that was supposed to help me make this happen. But nothing changed. I am still a certifiable hair-idiot.

This makes me very sad. It does. Because I know hair is a very important part of the image you present to the world. It can make a pretty girl uglier or a plain girl stunning. It can compliment your outfit or confuse the hell out of people. It is sometimes all someone has to go on to recognize you in a crowd. So it better be an extension of you, if possible.

For me, this is just not possible...yet. I am still hoping that one day the right cut or the right length or the right products will come along and help me make up for my missing hair gene. I will figure out how to style my own hair in a way that is pleasing and looks like I meant to look good that day. People will comment on it and tell me I have never looked better. And it won't be because of the stylist's work. It will be because of me.

Trip down New-Age memory lane...

***I just updated this post because I realized that my old myspace blog story was totally cut off in posting and I somehow missed it! Ack! (Obviously the TV watching and being lazy got to me that day and made my brain dumb. Damn you picture box!) So here is the corrected version, this time not missing the last few words of every sentence. Sorry about that!

Happy Saturday!
So I was reminded by someone today that myspace.com still exists somehow. I often forget that, even though for a time myspace.com was a very significant part of my life. I go back on occasion just to see if anything interesting is going on (there's not) and to look at a few old pictures I still have on my profile.

Today, I checked out my old blog over there. Myspace gave everyone the option for a blog on their profile and I wrote a few things on mine at one point. I forgot all about that and it was fun to re-read some thoughts from that time period.

One thing I wrote in particular was about my experience going into a sensory deprivation tank. I enjoyed writing about it because it was just such a weird adventure and I loved it. I highly recommend it to anyone even remotely interested in doing it. It will really blow your mind.

So in celebration of the past and myspace.com's slow demise, and because I am being lazy this weekend and would rather sit around in my underwear watching TV instead of trying to explore a new topic, here is an old post about what sensory deprivation did for me.

So...........

I went to a place in Chicago called Space-Time-Tanks after I worked clinic at school. A friend from class had told me about it and I have always wanted to try the sensory deprivation experience, so she and I and her boyfriend all met up and went together. We walked in and the place reeked of pachuli insense. There were super old red velvet couches whose frames were made of mirrors. And a fish tank. And a guy at the desk who looked a little like a tame David Bowie from Labyrith. It was awesome already!

Sort-of-Bowie asked that we take our shoes off. Then after letting us get settled and read some of the new agey books on display in the lobby, he asked if we were ready to float. We were ready as one could be when one is going into something completely new and foreign to oneself. So we nodded and followed him into the hallway. He took us into a small room with a stand up shower and a huge container in it. He showed us how everything worked, and I stayed in that room to begin my experience.

First, you shower off completely. Then you lift open a door that is reminiscent of the outdoor cellar door at Dorothy's farm in The Wizard of Oz. Inside that door is a large square container with 10 inches of water and 800 pounds of Epsom salts dissolved in it.  The salts are not only very good for relaxing muscles (I learned that in school) but it also makes your body float effortlessly in the water. So you put in some ear plugs to avoid getting water in your ears, you make sure you dont rub your eyes or the salt will burn like a mother, and you close the door and are plunged into complete and utter darkness.

In the tank, you lose sight, sound and touch. You are weightless and can't hear anything but your own heartbeat, breath, and occasionally eyelashes when you blink. You cannot tell if you are awake or alseep. You cannot feel your limbs. You get to spend an hour in nothingness. And it was so blissful.

At first, I saw so many colors as my eyes, so used to be stimulated all day long, fired off the last remnants of colors and shapes. I watched these colors sort of melt and shimmer until they faded to the pitch black that I was actually seeing. Then my heartbeat and blinking became so loud and rythmic, and I lost myself in it. My mind chatter took a long time, but eventually faded away a bit too. It was like that inner critic that we all have moved about 10 paces away from my ear--I could still hear her, but just barely over the sound of my own breathing.

My body was not there anymore. I felt none of it. Every now and then, I wiggled a toe or finger to make sure I was still real. And then I would be comforted to know I was still truly there. It was so good to let go and not have to pay attention to this shell I am in all the time--my own skin. My mind no longer had to deal with my body. I was free to wander in my head.  

I fell asleep once--and when I woke my body jerked and splashed around. Then I looked up at the ceiling and saw images in black and white--they were almost like comic book images, but in motion. It was really intense because I was not trying to see anything, it was just appearing before my eyes that were wide open. I relished in this uncontrolled story line unfolding above me until it too faded away slowly.

I was amazed at my breathing. Deep, repetitive inhale-exhales that came from a place I rarely breath from in my daily life. I thought maybe I was experiencing being awake while breathing like we do while sleeping. Because truly, after a while I could not tell if I was awake or asleep. I began to think of my breath as sounding like a hot-air balloon, and was immediately thrown into a very vivid childhood memory of the Hot Air Balloon Races in Fresno. My mother would wake me up at 6am just to go sit on the backyard grass still moist with early morning dew, and she and I and sometimes Dad would watch the balloons pass over our house. Sometimes they were so low we could say hello to the people controlling them. It was a wild memory that made me really happy and it was so clear I felt like I was back there still, shivering in my pajamas on the back porch, my mom in her robe, and my Dad in his slippers.

So that all came from my deep breathing. A precious moment I remember like it was yesterday. As it faded, much like everything in the experience, I thought to myself, "Don't forget how beautiful that was."

Eventually I lost track of myself and my mind and was just floating freely and enjoying the new sensations. This bliss was finally interupted by a gentle rapping on my "chamber door" so to speak. I had been instructed to knock back, so I did, to signal I was aware my time was up.

I slowly came out of my dreamstate and opened the door. The lights were now deep red in the room, and I took a long hot shower in that light. Then I slowly put my clothes back on (difficult, as I was a bit uncoordinated after my weightlessness) and walked out of there feeling like I had slept for hours without really sleeping.

Now, 4 hours later, I am so sleepy and dreamy that I can barely write all this. But I wanted to try and put it into words while it was still fresh in my head.

I reccommend this to anyone who needs a break from reality for a little while. Anyone who needs to let go or brainstorm on a creative thought or figure out their life or the meaning of that life. It was pure non-existence, and I am all the better for getting the chance to experience that phenomena.