Filling in the spaces

A few months ago, I posted about my anxiety. And then I stopped blogging. Not that the two were related, but I just could never get myself to take the time to blog. 

I’m a natural born worrier. I have worried about uncontrollable situations for as long as I can remember. It wasn’t until this summer that I found that my tendency to imagine the worst was more than just an annoying habit. Anxiety has become an entity in my life that goes with me wherever I go. Even when I’m not thinking about it, it’s always right there in the back of my mind. I constantly monitor it, judging if it’s at an acceptable level or not. I find it exhausting.

I wish I could say that after getting on medication, it all went away. I can definitely say that medication helped. Holy cow, it helped and I will always be very grateful that I made the decision to seek help. The place where I was all through August and into September was terrible. By the time I finally stopped fighting the idea of medication, I was in a dark and terrifying place. I was scared to sleep. I was scared to be in confined spaces. I was scared of passing out at any given moment. I was terrified to drive, especially on the freeway. It was awful, awful, awful.

It took a while for everything to even out. I was very grateful that I had decided to run an October half marathon. Having to do long runs each week gave me something to think about and plan for – a much needed diversion. I could also remind myself on a weekly basis with my long run that if I could run 7, 8, 9, 10 miles without passing out, that I could do the same while driving in my car. It took a few weeks, but I eventually got to a place where anxiety was in the background of everything.

I’d like to insert this quote from a Nine Inch Nail’s song:

“Then a tiny little dot caught my eye. It was just about too small to see. But I watched it way too long. It was pulling me down….I was up above it. Now I’m down in it.”

Isn’t that how it is? A tiny little dot, watched for too long, that somehow becomes all you can see. To be honest, my mom’s sale of her home and move dominated my thoughts for much of December and January. I had hoped she would sell for over 10 years (I can remember the first thing I said to my mom and dad when my dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s was – are you going to sell the house?) I tried to prepare her, pack her, convince her to move for a very, very long time. When she got the offer in November it seemed like a godsend, but the timing was awful. In the mix of all the December activities, her move was a giant arrow on the calendar with a few bullseye rings around it. On Christmas, I looked around at her house and realized how much still needed to be done. Even 10 days before the move, the house wasn’t nearly ready to be moved out of. I tried to do things to alleviate what I felt was an inevitable train wreck, but I couldn’t manage it. It wasn’t my responsibility to carry out, and though I did what I could, it was hard for me to realize my place in it or allow my brain to stop worrying about it.

On Human Rights Day I decided to drive down to see my mom’s house one last time. I had tried to be ok with saying goodbye to it the previous Thursday, but then I realized that I really wanted to see it empty. I didn’t realize how emotionally fraught I was until I found myself in a full on panic attack on the freeway on the way down. I decided that freeway driving may not be the best idea, so I took the back roads the rest of the way and talked to Amy on the phone. I was so nervous to see the house. I was nervous that the new owners would be there and I wouldn’t get to be alone. I was anxious to get it over with and be back on my way home.

When I got there, I had a pretty good experience. I took a few pictures that I really wanted to get. I walked through every single room. I walked over to the neighbor’s house and hugged her, crying and telling her how grateful I was that she had helped my mom for so long. I looked at the house in different angles. It wasn’t just that it was empty. It just looked so…alone. Left behind.

After about half an hour, I set off home. Now, I’m usually a greedy girl and stop at the gas station on my way home (there is a lovely gas station there that has a drive through!) but I was trying to hurry so I just didn’t stop. I found that my earlier panic started right back up where it left off. About 20 minutes into the drive, I pulled off the freeway again and decided to give myself a break by getting a drink. It was then that I discovered to my everlasting horror that I had left my wallet back at my mom’s house. The thought of going back to get it nearly pushed me over the edge, but panic attack or not, I turned back around. It was sort of good – I ended up seeing my mom at the house for a minute, which was good. But it sucked adding an additional hour to my drive home. The lesson I learned from this was that I can drive through multiple panic attacks for hours on end and come out of it somewhat ok. I didn’t go crazy or crash my car or even do anything remotely close to those things. It’s the small victories, right?

The best part of the whole thing is that it’s finally done. My mom is moved. I feel like she was incredibly brave to have done it. It is such a relief to have her moved to a more manageable home that’s closer to me and my sisters.

The hard part has been telling my brain that it’s over. Over the many years of waiting, I’ve worn a very deep groove of worry about her and her home. Once it was over, I found that I didn’t know what to do in its absence. The after effects of the stress were almost as bad as the stress itself – maybe worse, because now it’s hard to figure out what to do about my anxiety over my anxiety. All of the feelings came rushing back that I had dealt with last summer.

I think I’m finally on the other side of it all. I’ve learned an important lesson about how I react to stress. The fact that my anxiety goes up after the stress has gone is crappy, but something I’m glad that I’ve figured out because it sort of helps explain my reaction last summer when it all began. I’m trying to not to be hard on myself at the fact that I relapsed. I’m so very glad that I’m better equipped to deal with it this time around. But the process of finding new ways to spend the mental energy I used to spend worrying about my mom’s house has been not very fun. I’d like to start filling in the spaces with more meaningful and positive thoughts instead of turning my mental energy to even more impossible-to-control things like global warming or gang violence or Donald Trump’s presidential run. I think I’m on the right track. 

Snowshoeing at Solitude: A review of sorts

When I was a kid, I made exactly one snowman. I was approximately 3 years old at the time. Later, when I was 16, I went with my friend Cindy to a hill and attempted to snowboard.

That's all I got for winter outdoor activities, folks. I guess I've always been more of inside kind of girl.

So when I started to think about snowshoeing this year, it seemed foreign. But I've realized the past few years how much I love winter running. I'm not in the least afraid of the cold; I actually love it. I'm faster in the winter than I am in the summer, and my asthma doesn't seem to bother me as much. Plus, with my kids getting older, all they ever want to do is hang out with their friends. I'm happy to let them do that, but I'm finding that if we don't find things to actually go out and do, then we don't ever do anything together.

On Christmas Eve, we went sledding at a park near our house. It was really fun and it solidified my determination that we would soon try snowshoeing. Shane found us all boots. Then the day after Christmas, I got my very first pair of snowpants. (They are seriously so cute. I got them at Costco and I wore them for the rest of the day after I bought them.) I found a great deal on snowpants for both Shane and Thomas, and Ben already had a pair. We were ready, and all we had to do was pick a day and go.

That day finally came on Saturday. I had researched snowshoeing in Utah and found that the Silver Lake area at Solitude Ski Resort is the perfect place to snowshoe. The reason are many, but include:

• 6 miles of dedicated and groomed snowshoeing trails.
• Easy and relatively inexpensive rentals. They were very helpful, and asked us lots of questions. Thomas didn't have waterproof boots so they suggested overshoes for him. They asked which of us wanted poles (only I wanted them) as a way to save money. We were all outfitted and ready within 10 minutes of walking in to the Nordic Center.
• Free parking
• Easy to follow trails (once you realize the markings - will explain later!)
• A shuttle bus that allows you to travel between Silver Lake and the main Solitude Ski Resort.
• Color coded maps along the trails.

We got to Solitude about 12:00. We had originally planned on doing a half-day of snowshoeing, but to do that, you have to arrive after 12:30. Even so, it was still around $21 a person for the rentals and day pass. Not bad for trying out a new activity.

I kept thinking as I was getting my snowshoes on that standing up would feel like ice skating, but it didn't. There is nothing at all similar about ice skating and snowshoeing other than they both involve your feet and cold weather, ha ha.

The trail starts right outside of the Nordic Center. However, being new, we had no idea at first that we were on the cross country ski trail. We bumbled around for about 10 minutes, unsure of where we were supposed to be going until the person who helped us with our rental directed us to the trail. After that, it was super easy to follow the blue ribbons to stay on course. They were tied to trees, posts, bushes, and poles. There were other trails marked in other colors - we ended up taking blue around the lake, and then orange around another trail that took us past some lovely winter cabins. The two trails make a figure 8, and total about 1.5 miles.

The snowshoe trail is about 3 feet wide - wide enough for just a single person to snowshoe, and to pass others on the trail. By the time we started, the trail was pretty trampled, which was nice because it was less work, but kind of sad because it was fun to step on virgin snow. We each stepped a few feet off the track at some point just to make our own footsteps. It's fun to watch the snowshoes cut through the snow, and amazing to see how even though you sink a little, you still stay relatively higher than you would in regular shoes.

I used poles, and both boys used borrowed them for a time during our walk. Having poles isn't necessary in any way, but it makes it fun. I liked how they added an upper body component to the snowshoeing. (I've found this when I've used them hiking as well.) The poles were nice to have especially when going uphill. It took a little less strain off of of the legs.

Our little snowshoe adventure took us about 2 hours. We weren't trying to win any speed awards. We stopped and took pictures, laid in the snow to make snow angels, threw snowballs at trees, put snow down clothing (well, some of us), and admired the scenery. It was seriously such a gorgeous day - it was snowing just enough to be beautiful but not super cold. The wind was cold, but once you were moving, it sort of faded into the background, and was completely absent during our time on the orange Cabin trail, which is a little more sheltered.

I wore a pair of ColdGear UnderArmor tights, my snow pants, a pair of wool socks and a pair of acrylic (but my boots kept my feet so warm I would have been fine with one pair of socks), a short sleeve running shirt, a long sleeve running shirt, a running jacket, and a coat. I could have survived (and would have preferred) without my coat. I wore gloves sometimes, but other times I took them off because I was too hot or wanted to take pictures.

Once you get the rhythm down, you sort of forget you are wearing snowshoes at all. The kind I had required me to step toe-first instead of heel first, because the spikes were at the front of the snowshoes. There is a hinge that allows your hill to come up but the snowshoe to stay down.

Everyone had a great time. I would have loved to stay longer, but unknown to us until the very end, Ben had the stomach flu so he was more than ready to be done when we got back to the Nordic Center.We finished off the day by stopping at a cafe called Silver Fork Lodge for a delicious lunch.

Now for some pictures.

Not too bad for an inside girl, I'd say.


Have you ever been snowshoeing? Any advice or local trails you can recommend?

We were 465 and 7586.

When we would check out books from the library as kids, there would be envelope at the back of the book with a card in it. To check out the book, the librarian would take out the card and write the last four of your phone number on the card. There were a lot of books that had 7586 on them.

About a year ago, my mom let our old phone number go. That was weird. I always liked the little pattern that 7586 made on the phone. When it was coupled with the prefix, all the numbers in the middle two rows of the phone were used. It was strange to know that I couldn't ever call that number and have the anyone in my family answer.

This weekend, my mom moved out of her house. 465 has gone the way of 7586. The numbers still exist, of course, but have no more relevance to our family.

My dad used the chassis from an old truck of some kind to make this mailbox post.

I went there for the last time on Thursday. I helped my mom in the kitchen mostly, packing the cleaning supplies from under the sink, sweeping now-empty pantry, and other odds and ends. In the early afternoon, we sat down and ate a Jimmy John's sandwich. I made sure to sit in my old place at the table so I could look out the window at the mountain with the face in it that only Amy and I could ever see. The church that was built in 1991 sort of ruined the view. And the trees that my dad planted that just kept growing and growing.

This is what it looked like to eat dinner from my chair. Back in the day, Michele and Suzette would have occupied these two chairs. My dad would have been to my left, my mom on my right, and Amy at the other end of the table to the right of my mom.

In fourth grade, I read "Anastasia Again!" by Lois Lowry. In it, Anastasia Krupnik moves from her apartment in Cambridge to the suburbs. On moving day, everyone is sad, but especially her little brother. He says his blankie is sad to leave the apartment. As a solution, Anastasia cuts the blankie in half and folds it small and leaves it in the corner of the hutch. I always remembered this scene when I move and have made a habit of leaving little "I was here" tokens. So after lunch I took a sharpie and went on a mission. I don't know if you are supposed to do this or not, but I wrote a message on the very top shelf of my old closet. "This was Amy and Becky's room. Then it was Becky's room." I then gave the sharpie to my mom to do the same. Standing on the stepstool so she could reach the very top of her closet, she wrote "I loved this house" and signed her name. I remembered the picture I took on Christmas of what I felt like was my dad's "I was here." How long will it take the new owners to find these leftover clues?

The tree grew around the saw my dad left in the tree many years ago. Just the tip of the blade is now visible.

Before I left, I walked through every single room and remembered and remembered. I lingered in my old bedroom longest, thinking of the nights Amy and I would talk when we were little, watching the lights from the cars make a familiar track across the ceiling. I thought about the mornings when I would lay in my bed after eating breakfast and look in my closet to decide what to wear. I realized how impossible it was to remember it all. I felt that strange juxtaposition of being in a place right at that moment and knowing that very soon the moment would end and I wouldn't ever stand there again but again, being right there.

So many emotions. Not all of them good. I wish some things could have gone better in this process, but it wasn't mine to control.

I doubt I will  ever stop having dreams about this place.

Goodbye, 465.

The thing about my power bill

I like to think of myself as a pretty environmentally aware person. I listen to a lot of NPR, I don’t litter, I recycle whenever possible, I turn off the lights when I leave a room, we have a Subaru (you know, ALL the tenets of an environmentalist) (not sure why "NPR listener" makes a difference, but I'm just going with it.) (I don't, however, own a Prius.) I may not be winning a prize anytime soon, but I try and be a good steward of the resources.

Which brings me to my power bill. In an effort to get people to conserve, every other month I get an extra page in my bill. It lists my account information and shows a terribly distressing graph of three categories of neighbors:

• Energy efficient neighbors (who get a green bar! They are amazing human beings.)
• Other neighbors (who get a blue bar. Not amazing, but still…in comparison.)
•  Me. (Blackish-grey bar. Basically, a piece of shit.)

I cannot tell you how hot and bothered I get by this energy shaming. I walk around my house and look for a hidden, giant, energy-hogging appliance. I unplug chargers and electric blankets. I worry that someone is siphoning our power in a secret, government-backed project to get humans on Mars. (OK, not really on the last one…but still.) Where is this usage coming from? What is wrong with me that I can’t be the green bar person, or at least the blue bar person? Why am I the 78^th person out of 100 in my neighborhood? How does this happen?

Maybe it’s a publicity stunt. Maybe the difference between the 2^nd and 78^th person out of 100 is less than .01%. I don’t know and my power company certainly isn’t going to be telling me any time soon.

The most important fact is that I can pay my damn bill. I might not like it, but I can pay it.

I talked with Amy about it a few weeks ago. She said her bill is the same, and she finds it every bit as bewildering. Together, we made a pact not to worry about our energy-shaming bills. I vowed to her that I will always dispose of this document in the least environmentally-friendly way possible, just to be spiteful. It would be fun to say that I will roll a blunt with it; fortunately, I’m not currently doing drugs, so that won’t happen. Maybe I’ll let Ben tear it into strips and burn it with a magnifying glass. I don’t know – I’m going to have to explore ways and means. Shredding is always an option. But I’m not going to let that piece of paper bother me anymore.

I am more than that blackish-grey line, dammit.

One week later.

I look back and think of how long I've felt on edge and I wonder. The past few years have been tough. A lot of big things happened, and a lot of little things happened, and they all affected me. I've felt like a top. I spun along happily and unhappily for a long time. I've felt wobbles - spiritually, emotionally, mentally, physically, socially - that set me off. I kept trying to self correct, to get back to spinning. For the most part, I was very successful, but I still felt those wobbles deeply. I think that this summer, for whatever reason, I finally just stopped spinning. It felt like I would never spin again. I couldn't even remember how to spin, and the thought of trying to pretend to the world that I was still spinning was one of the most frightening things I've ever encountered.

A few weeks ago I met with a therapist. It was supremely unhelpful. I'm sure that he was well-qualified and probably had a lot he could have done for me, but I wasn't impressed. After 45 minutes of talking over what had gotten me into his office in the first place, he looked at me and asked, "So, what do you want to do?" To say I was let down is an understatement. Isn't that what he was supposed to tell me? I mean, I know he can't tell me what to do, but some guidance would have been helpful. Armed with a few pages of recommended self-help books, I left.

However, that hour wasn't totally unhelpful. While talking, I realized that one of the things that has always kept me spinning has been by looking for approval. I can explain this best from the perspective of my time as a gymnast. To get along during a workout, the trick was to do everything as perfect as possible in order to stay out of trouble. Very little that I did went by unnoticed: my toes weren't pointed, I bent my legs, I didn't cast all the way to handstand, I held back on a tumbling pass, I didn't complete the twist, I fell off the beam, etc. When things were bad, coaches yelled and threatened and told me to get out of their faces, only to expect me to come back a few minutes later, confessing what I did wrong, and promising to do better. When things were good, I got praise and approval. There was some in-between with some coaches or events, but mostly it was all or nothing. Good or bad. And so I got used to reaching for approval from the outward things I did, to being rewarded when I followed the rules.

Of course, real life isn't the same. I don't always get praise for doing something well, or for following the rules. Doing outward things doesn't win other's love or approval. I know that. But sometimes I forget and I revert to that person. I have a hard time letting go. I like structure and rules and when I feel like they aren't being followed, I find it hard to keep spinning. 

I know that this part of my personality has contributed to getting me to where I was last week. I'm so glad to say that I'm feeling a lot better this week. After all of my bravery, I ended up talking with my doctor on Tuesday (after a truly awful night on Monday) and I'm now taking something for my anxiety. It's helping. My days are better, and my nights are getting there. I still have a very hard time turning off my brain. But I'm not as anxious about the lack of sleep, and that helps.

We spent Sunday night in Park City. It was such a nice way to finish off the summer. Although I still felt edgy at times, I enjoyed the time away. I'll admit I was super anxious about staying in a hotel room with insomnia. But it worked out. Life is hard. It's hard to spin. It's hard to spin for yourself and for others. But it's necessary. I have people who need me, and I'm grateful they do.

Edgy.

I’ve always been sort of proud of being edgy. I like having a little bit of rebellion in my heart; not enough that it gets me in trouble, but just enough that I feel like I’m not cookie-cutter.

But lately, my edginess has nothing to do with anything that can be viewed from the inside or outside as desirable. About a month ago, I was driving to work. It was Ben’s first day of school, and I’d just dropped him off at his friend’s house to walk to school. When Thomas was in elementary, this never would have happened. He would have wanted me there, and I would have made sure I was there. But Ben is a different kid, and so I dropped him off. We had also changed his school track from our second choice to our very last choice. He couldn’t be on the one with his friends, and so we picked the bottom-run choice so he could be with the kid across the street on his track. We had gone to Snowbird for a few nights the week before – our big “vacation” for the year. It was great – we hiked for hours, rode the trams and Peruvian lifts, the mountain coaster and Alpine slide to our heart’s content. It was a fun time, but it wasn’t the vacation we are used to. No beach running, in other words. No soul-soothing ocean time. (Not that it’s necessary to have a beach to have a good vacay, but this was the first time in 6 years that we didn’t go. Sigh.) In addition, I’d had a scary little episode on Saturday where I suddenly felt light headed and dizzy – like a drop on a roller coaster, minus the roller coaster. I was fine a little while later, but I didn't like the feeling and didn't know what to make of it.

As I said, I was driving to work. I thought I was handling the stress of the day quiet well, but suddenly I wasn’t. I had a moment just after I got on the freeway where I remembered that scary, light headed feeling from Saturday. Or maybe I actually felt the same feeling. But whatever it was, the actual feeling or the memory, it terrified me. I all of a sudden couldn’t keep myself in check. I pulled over for a few minutes and then talked myself back into traffic, but it was no good. I was making terrible choices, turning the radio up and down and trying to breathe and trying desperately hard to stay in control. I finally swerved to the inside of the freeway in a very wide, safe place, far from traffic. I sat there for almost an hour, trying to pull it together, trying to get my breathing under control, trying to muster the courage to pull into traffic.

I couldn’t do it. I found myself waiting for Shane to come and get me while a very nice Laotian police officer read his emails in his patrol car behind me, waiting it out with me until I had assistance. Shane came and was able to do what I couldn’t – get out of that terrible physical place. He drove me to an Instacare so I could see a doctor. I was terrified I was having a heart attack, or that something equally bad was happening inside my body. Because, after all, I’m edgy, remember? I don’t lose control. I don’t get scared easily and I always pull back into traffic. Hell, I’m the one who would come and get someone else from their stuck place on the freeway.

The doctor appointment was a disaster. I was exhausted from my time on the freeway, and when the doctor asked me “what kind of dizziness were you feeling” I just didn’t have the mental fortitude to answer his question. Slumped on the tiny exam room table, I told him I didn’t know. He sort of looked at Shane like – what the crap? If she can’t answer, who can? – but it was true: I just didn’t know. I didn’t know how to articulate the quality of my dizziness. And why would that matter? My ideal response would have been - I’m obviously dying, you idiot, and you want to know what the dizziness was like? I hate you.

And then he proceeded to tell me it was all in my head and that I wasn’t dying and that if I didn’t like his diagnosis, I could go to the emergency room (Hello $250 copay!) or get my head scanned at a clinic downtown.

I wanted to punch him in the face.

I still want to punch him in the face. But it’s for a different reason. I didn’t want to hear that it was anxiety and that I was otherwise fine. It’s not that I wanted something to be wrong with my heart – I just didn’t want it to be my head. Because hearts can have diagnoses on them that show what is wrong and might be fixed. Or I can take a pill. Or I was hoping for something that was body-oriented, because I don’t want to be that person who, well, can’t detect the difference between a heart attack and a panic attack.

So now I’m here, a month later. I’m still panicking. It’s changed. For the past week or so I have a really hard time going to sleep. I’ll fall asleep, but immediately jerk awake. I convince myself I can’t breathe. I convince myself that the tingling in my stomach means something is terrible happening or is going to happen. It’s consuming. I worry all day that I won’t sleep, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. I take tiny little normal body sensations and make them into something direly wrong, all the while thinking – What is wrong with me? Where is my edge? Why am I suddenly terrified of feeling too full, or having heartburn or of drinking too much water? How can I run 6.5 miles with no problems and yet hyperventilate just lying in my bed?

Last night was better. Or at least an improvement over the previous nights. But I am so f-ing tired of thinking about it and worrying about it and talking about it. I was hungry and tired on my way to work, which sent me into a frenzy (but: I did make it to work. I drove safely all the way to work, talking to myself about silly and not-so-silly things, because if you are talking you are breathing somewhat normally and it’s harder to feel out of breath or light headed.)

I want my edge back. I want to fast forward my life out of this place I’m in. I have had great kindnesses – Shane is being very helpful and we’ve come up with a way for me to express my anxiety to him so I don’t feel like I don’t have anyone to talk to about it. I got an excellent book recommendation that I’m hopeful will help. I have a therapist that I’ve talked to, and can go back to if I want. I can text or call my sisters and they are helpful and loving and encouraging. I also have my doctor (who recommended the therapist) who, if I wanted her to, would give me a prescription for an antidepressant (but I want to do it on my own until I find that I can’t. That may be wise or foolish – I don’t know. But I just don’t know if I want to take one.)

I wouldn’t wish this one anyone. If you’ve experienced anxiety and panic attacks, you have my empathy. If you haven’t, I hope that you never ever do.

If you have any advice or thoughts or tricks you can give me or you can just relate, I will be ever so grateful. In case you are wondering, the book I’m reading is called When Panic Attacks by David Burns. It is really good. He encourages you to write in the book, giving little quizzes and logs for moods. He is really intelligent, and the writing is good. It sort of feels like a self-help book, but thankfully leaves out all of the encouragement to “breathe deeply” that most of the other books on anxiety that I've read lately focus on. (I’m incredibly sick and tired of trying to breathe deeply. I think I’ve forgotten how, because now when I breathe deeply I associate it with panic. Fantastic. Just what I was hoping, I assure you.)

May and June 2015: A summary

I miss doing lists. I miss blogging. I miss writing. I should be able to solve this problem on my own, since I am the one who decides how I spend my time. Anyway.

May and June were busy months. They deserve lists. Wahoo for lists!

Places we went:

• Spokane. The first weekend in May, we went back up for Bloomsday. It was such a fun mini-vacation. We ate a lot of food, laughed with our friends, ran a great race, duped a fancy restaurant into giving us a free dessert, and made great memories. I'm sure you feel like you were there from that very specific description.

• Park City. Just for one night, the Sunday to Monday of Memorial Day. It was super fast, and we spent most of the time at the pool in the rain (gotta love Memorial Day in Utah! It ALWAYS rains.) but it was fun. I might be the only person ever who takes a sandwich maker on vacation with her. It didn't do any good, since we ended up at Taco Bell for breakfast (we all love sausage AM crunchwraps, and will do crazy things to obtain them.)

Places we ate:

• Buffalo Wild Wings. I am in love with the spicy Thai sauce, and the garlic parmasan (which is bizarre, because garlic is usually my natural enemy, but this sauce is sooo delicious.) I highly recommend the Buffalitos. I don't know why it took us so long to eat there.
• The Habit. Great burgers, and the best part: they will add avocado to almost anything. Be still my avocado-loving heart.
• Costa Vida (where I somehow ended up running into Lucy. Man, I love Lucy. And even better to see her unexpectedly, across a crowded room. Yay for running into friends!) 
• La Puente.  When Shane and I were dating, I hated La Puente. It is a Mexican restaurant on State Street that has been there forever, and I was always a fan of Los Hermanos in the UC which kept me from loving La Puente. But after living on the West Side, aka the Mexican-food-deprived-side of Salt Lake County, I fully appreciated our night out at La Puente. I keep trying to get my kids to go back there, but have been unsuccessful.
• Bombay House. I love me some Indian food, but no one else does. So I have to make a special trip to 3 different restaurants typically in order to have it for myself (the kids eat one place, Shane eats at another, and I get BH.) It is worth all the effort to have the deliciousness that is Chicken Coconut Kurma. 
• Zupas. I ate here with my dear mother-in-law on one visit, and again with my bestie Melanie in a very rushed but worth it lunch one afternoon.

New Business (a veiled Mad Men reference. Mad Men ended in May, a fact that I am still mourning.)

• Shane got a new-to-him car. We sold our Xterra after 11 years and bought a Subaru Legacy. It had some problems at first. By "problems" I mean it stalled ON THE WAY HOME which resulted in two weeks of repairs, paid for by the dealership, that included dropping the trasmission, new transmission computer, and another part I can never remember but we lovingly refer to as the "flux capacitor." While it was being repaired we drove around in a brand new Impreza. I drove it as much as I possibly could, which was fun (we put over 500 miles on it. Oops, sorry Mark Miller Subaru.)
• Pebble Greybeard Lovejoy. He is a Russian Blue kitten, and he is a pain in the ass. He is Ben's cat, and he is just like Ben. He is giving our cat Bucket a nervous breakdown, because she looks like his (Siamese) mother. He jumps out at her from behind corners. He attacks her tail. He acts EXACTLY like Ben acts with his older sibling. But he is sweet, sometimes. Like last night, when he crawled up on my chest and forced his way under the blanket. I had him on my chest, and Bucket on my lap, and it was a little bit like kitty heaven. Note: I have a private name for him, that I abbreviate to MLB. It stands for "mean little bastard." I giggle every time I say it. He loves to chase toys, his tail, Bucket, feathers, and pencils. Piles of folded laundry are an obstacle course for him, and he is never as happy as when he is attacking a rolled up pair of socks. (For approximately 2 minutes of me writing this, he was purring on my lap. And now he's watching me type. Can I get an "Awww!)

• A laptop. Which sounds fancy, but it isn't. Laptops are sort of disposable now, so I didn't want anything too fancy. My old one took 300 minutes just to bring up a browser, which may have been because of the fact that most of the storage was full of pictures. I was terrified it would crash before I moved 13 years worth of pictures. It didn't. The new laptop is adequate. It has a 10 key, which was pretty much my only requirement (I don't know how people have a laptop without one.)

Media that was enjoyed

• Hozier. I love this CD album with my whole heart. I can listen to it exclusively for hours.
• Florence and the Machine - How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful. I will always get excited for new Florence music. 
• Uprooted, by Naomi Novik, a new-to-me author. I just finished it last night, but carried it around with me for 3 weeks. Thomas is also reading her Temeraire series.
• My Real Children - I haven't finished it yet, because I could renew it and not the Novik book, but I will be finishing it shortly.
• Headspace - a meditation app that I have been using regularly. It it so helpful. When Amy and I were little, we shared a room. Our closet was always, always a disaster. We kept everything there and most of it was leftover books and papers and clothes and toys and records that we didn't need anymore, but couldn't get rid of. I feel like my emotional and mental closet has been overflowing for years with hoarded emotions, thought, feelings, and experiences that I just didn't have use for, but were crowding my judgement and thought patterns. I'm cleaning out my closet. I'm figuring out how to not take everything so personally, and not get trapped in my thoughts as much. Headspace has helped with this process.

Other stuff I don't want to forget:

• Thomas finished 8th grade and Ben finished 4th.
• We fed a baby bird for a week. It was doomed from the start, and he passed away sometime before yesterday morning. Sad. But my kids were great bird daddies for a few days.
• We watched Jurassic World on Father's Day.
• My kids finished Spring soccer. Thomas hadn't played on a team since he was in first grade (which mostly consisted of him pretending to be Spiderman, or a dinosaur. My how he's grown!) and so it was kind of a big thing for him to play. Ben is obsessed with soccer, so it's just the usual for him.
• I got new running shoes. After three weeks of hating them, I found some inserts that work really well, and now I love them. 
• I started walking once a week with my neighbor friend.
• Started to clean out my mom's house. It's sort of anticlimactic, since I've obsessed over it for years. (See "Headspace" entry above. Deep breaths.) We did manage to get a lot done in a few hours, so that was nice. But there are many more hours to be spent there, sigh.
• Went fishing with the kids at Daybreak Lake. It was hotter than crap, and I missed a lot of it because I was at my mom's house, but it was something different.
• I got 70,000 steps on my Fitbit in one week. I had to try really hard to get it. I almost made it the week before, but my Fitbit died in the afternoon on Saturday. Sad.
• Threw my back out for one terrible week. I didn't mess around this time and went to the doctor right away. He gave me prednisone, which I didn't take last time because steroids make me very bitchy and mean, but it was only 6 days, and they didn't seem to affect me as much. My back quickly got back into shape. I'm so glad. I think part of the reason it got better faster was that last time, we were going through the baby thing, which complicated it immensely.
• Had the first summer without Ragnar in five years. I missed it a lot. But, the weekend of the race was really hot, so maybe I didn't miss it that much. I could have joined my employer's team - they went through runners like wildfire! - but that was that weekend that my back was injured, and I wasn't invited until mid-May. It was hard to turn it down, especially since it would have been free, but in the end, it was the right thing to not participate. 

How were your May and June?