On urban hunting....

I'm a bargain hunter. I love shopping around for the best deal, whether it's groceries or a new dress or a flight. I just love it! I'm not sure where the thrill lies in bargain hunting, but it's something of a stress release for me. I have no idea why.

That said, I draw the line at garage sales. I've always hated them. I hate going to them. I hate having them. There's little that's enjoyable about it for me. Growing up, my family hosted more than a few garage sales and we'd end up hocking vegetables from our giant garden during the summer. It turned into quite the adventure getting everything together for those Saturday mornings. It was just exhausting.

Several years ago, I lived with a girl friend of mine who was known for her abilities to garage sale and dumpster dive and wind up with the most amazing stuff you can possibly imagine. She managed - ONE TIME - to sucker me into garage saling with her and I wound up with one of my favorite kitchen items ever. I got my roasting pan. It looks exactly like my dad's but is slightly smaller (as I was cooking only for me at the time and didn't need to roast a 15 pound bird). I love that thing and I still have it...and I use it relatively frequently. It's kind of the reason I love throwing dinner parties. When else do I get to roast a turkey or prime rib? I'm certainly not going to do it just for myself! It makes me want to do a prime rib and have a party right now, actually.

Not so many years ago, when my parents were moving into their new house, they had yet another garage sale. The only good thing about parents having a garage sale is that I can get stuff for free. So I went over to peruse the goods and was shocked to find they were selling my dad's marble rolling pin. WTF?! Why would someone ever get rid of something so amazing and perfect? I took it. It's still amazing, but my dogs, for reasons I cannot understand, managed to gnaw up one of the handles and scar the marble a little. Stupid animals.

Those two garage sale finds are cornerstones for my holiday cooking now. How else would I roll out pie crusts and THE perfect sugar cookies? How else would I gather drippings for what can only be the greatest gravy ever made?

So yes, I hate garage sales and I don't see myself going to another one any time soon...but those were some pretty awesome steals!

On a life of simplicity....

The idea of living a simple life is incredibly appealing to me (hmm...I initially typed "appalling" rather than "appealing"...my subconscious is getting the best of me today). My brother lives this way. Basically everything he owns, aside from his car and record credenza, fits in a hockey bag. It's pretty remarkable. There's a reason he can up and move to another city or country just about any time he wants to.
 

I have an astounding collection of "stuff" that I'm trying to weed my way through. I just don't need most of it. My collection of Christmas crap alone is unimaginable. I'm looking forward to digging all the Christmas stuff out this year for one over-arching reason: whatever I don't put up or out is going straight to the Goodwill. I have high hopes that I'll be able to lighten my load significantly.
 

I still believe that "stuff" regenerates every time I take a load of things to the Goodwill. About once a month, I'll take a trunk full of things to donate and when I come back home, it seems my house and garage haven't gotten any less cluttered. It's a very strange phenomenon. There's always something else to straighten or shred or throw away or give away or clean or sell. It's a never-ending process.
 

I live in a very dichotomous world when it comes to this. I love having "stuff" and "things," but every time I think about moving, I wish I had about a third of the things I have. I hate packing and moving. It would be so much easier if I could just throw all my stuff in a hockey bag, jump in the car, and peace out. Alas...it would take a team of movers (and friends) to get my crap packed up. Sigh.
 

So yes, living the simple life sounds like a pretty good idea to me. Now to clean out the sheds...

On the choices we make....

I was recently asked, "What's the most difficult decision you've ever had to make?" I think it's safe to say I know the answer to that question, but am not willing to elaborate on it. Maybe not ever.
 

So instead, I'll talk about A difficult decision, rather than THE difficult decision. I promise, it pales in comparison.
 

I made a choice when I was a senior in high school that might be the only thing I've ever regretted. I try not to live a life of regrets. There's nothing I can do to change the past, so there's little point in dwelling on it. But this one tends to haunt me from time to time. And it's really not even that big of a deal.
 

I chose to sing in a band rather than be a cheerleader my senior year. I desperately wish I wouldn't have made that choice. Yes, I loved singing with that band and I learned a lot, musically and personally, by being with those people, but cheerleading? That was, by definition, who I was. I fought long and hard to get to that point and I was told by my coach that there'd be no voting, no nothing...her decision to have me as captain was final and certain.
 

Having to tell her that I wouldn't be part of the squad was one of the hardest conversations I've ever had. I wrote a formal letter and sat down to talk with her. Even at 17 years old, I knew it was going to be difficult and I tried to go about it the best way I knew how. It was incredibly painful.
 

Watching some of my closest friends cheer at every football and basketball game sometimes became too much and I'd leave games early (sometimes in tears). I missed out on a lot that year. A LOT. I tried to make it up to myself by coaching a junior high squad for two years after high school and that, in and of itself, was incredibly rewarding. I still get to see and talk to some of those girls and it's fun to hear their stories and versions of stories from when we worked together. But even working with them made it hard not to be a part of "my" squad.
 

Yes, it's probably a very silly thing to have a regret over, but I do. I don't think about it often, but when I see my box of high school memorabilia (which contains a pair of contraband poms), I get a bit wistful. Not the way I'm wistful when I see another box in my storage shed, but wistful, nonetheless.

On a circle in life...

For the last several months, I've had to learn what it means to be alone. I've spent a significant amount of time alone recently. Sometimes that's good, sometimes it's bad. For a long time, I've thought that "being alone" was kind of a bad thing, like something was wrong if I was alone (or if anyone was, for that matter), but what I'm coming to realize is that being alone is kind of refreshing. Almost necessary.

I'm not prone to spending time alone. I like being around people. I like noise. I like distractions. So in the last few months, this being alone thing has taken it's toll on me. I don't have people calling me up very frequently to hang out with me or just to talk. So I find myself spending a lot of time working out and watching TV...and more recently, I've been going to the local brewery and reading for hours on end. I was never one to really go out by myself...seeing movies alone or going to dinner by myself or taking me out for a drink just seemed awkward. Now I relish in it. About a month ago, I took myself to see a movie because a) I could and b) I wanted to see if I could really do it. Turns out, it was actually a lot of fun! I spend a ton of time with my dogs...we wrestle and go for walks to the park and play outside. They are guaranteed happiness.

So while I've found ways to enjoy being alone, I also miss NOT being alone. It's nice to have someone around to talk to or hang out with or have adventures with. It's nice to having someone to go to the movies with and make dinner reservations for.

I think there's an interesting cyclical balance that's struck between solitude and companionship. Being alone teaches me that I need to be around people, while being around people shows me that alone-time is good and sometimes necessary.

On playing by the numbers....

I'm not a huge fan of numbers. I deal much better in letters and words. They make much more sense to me. I think that's because I was born largely without a left brain. Despite my unending love of words, there is a singular number that has held a very special place in my heart for more than half my life.

42

I love that number. It has a funny backstory in my life and it also seems that whenever I see the number 42 crop up in life, something good happens. Several months ago, I went to one of my favorite burger places and my order number was 42. That was a damn good day. It's hard to have a bad day when you get to have an amazing burger followed by an even more amazing massage. Then, two weeks later, I went back with one of my best friends to the same burger place and our order number was, you guessed it, 42. Again, it was a magical day! The 42nd day of 2012 also happened to be a really good day for me. And every 42 days, I get to have a manicure (and several additional times in between).

Generally speaking, 42 just makes for a good number for me. It also makes me curious...what will my 42nd birthday hold? What other instances of 42 come up in my life that I don't recognize or just completely miss?

And if you can guess where my original love of the number 42 actually comes from, bonus points to you!

On knowing my pain....

In the grand scheme of things, I'm pretty lucky when it comes to injuries. I've never broken a bone (that I know of...I might have broken a toe before, but it didn't hurt enough to go have it checked out) despite cheerleading and skiing basically my entire life. But there are two injuries I have had that make me cringe just to think about. Because they HURT.

The first was when I was in grade 8 and got into a pretty nasty car accident at church. My friend was pulling her parents van around to the front door, something the regularly let her do. It was a small church with an even smaller parking lot, so this wasn't a big deal. Until that day. She slammed on the gas thinking it was the brake and rammed us head on into a light pole. I bashed my head into the dash board and my glasses shattered. I ended up in the ER with probably a reasonably-sized concussion. I don't think I've had a headache that bad ever since and that includes the time I had to get a CT because my doc thought I might have a tumor and/or  aneurysm (I didn't). The worst of it all was that the accident happened the day before end-of-year finals at school and I forgot almost everything I'd studied in the previous weeks. It was horrible. I barely passed most of my finals that year despite being granted a significant amount of mercy from my teachers.

Then when I was probably in grade 10 or something, I was horsing around on our trampoline with my brother and damn near snapped my femur. Now, I realize it takes quite a bit to do that, but I came very close that summer. He and I used to play this game where one of us would sit in the center of the trampoline while the other would run around and the sitter would try to grab the runner's ankles and trip them. It was actually quite a lot of fun! Except for this one day when we failed to put the mats around the edges. I dodged my brother and in the process, my right leg fell through a set of bars and springs and I tumbled over the edge, leg still stuck in the bars. By the time I was able to right myself (with a little help from my brother), I had already developed a black, green, and purple bruise the size of a volleyball on my thigh. My mom, not knowing what had just happened and reacting solely to my banshee screams, told me to "walk it off." Then she saw that I couldn't exactly walk. That one...well that hurt for a while. Which made cheerleading practice that summer quite challenging.

I'm telling you, both of those injuries hurt way worse than either of the times I stepped on rusty nails.

On the road less traveled....

Running has quickly become something I love. I left my office the other day and walked out into a beautiful day with a slight breeze and actually whined to myself..."UhhhhhhhUH! It would be PERFECT to run tonight!" but I didn't get to (because I was taking a gun class which was equally as fun and empowering as any run I've done recently). I love the feeling I get when I complete a run, knowing that I frickin' did it. It's been a long time coming, this running thing. And each day, I get closer and closer to being okay with calling myself "a runner"...I think I'll do that when I finally hit 5 miles.

When I go for runs outside, I start and end at my house. I run through a great park in my neighborhood and sometimes wander through the neighborhoods themselves. There are gorgeous trees and a pretty creek to run next to...being in nature feels good! There's a more ghetto side of the trail I run and I only really do that with a friend because the one time I ran it alone, it was a bit sketchy. And by "a bit" I mean "almost entirely riddled with sketch characters."

It's interesting to me, the metaphor of running away from and toward my house. I feel like that's something I'm kind of experiencing right now. I'm in a state of heightened emotions and running has given me the opportunity to get some of that out of me. It also allows me an hour or so to just be with my thoughts (and my music) and really evaluate and take stock of things. I guess I'm not entirely sure what I'm running away from, or even toward. At a base level, I'm running toward 13.1 miles. I want to hit that goal so badly I can taste it. Running is allowing me the chance to see how capable I really am. I've given up on dreams of running several times in the past and now? Now I just go for it. I want to be the person that puts her mind to something and does it...and does it well.

Sometimes, running away from and toward things can be terrifying. What's behind me is comfortable and easy; what's in front of me is somewhat unknown and will probably be at least a little challenging. What's an adventure without a little challenge though, right? It means letting go of what I've known for so long and being brave enough to trust myself in the future.