Pieces of Peace

Everyone has marks on their soul. Some marks are thumbprints - a light, loving impression. Some are jagged rents that blow a hole through your middle, scattering the edges of your being until you can't imagine how you'll ever track down the pieces. We all want to find what will truly heal us. Not the flimsy strips of plastic that can't quite grip the edges, but something that allows the fragmented shards to knit together again until the scars are only faint lines of light.

So start looking. But while you search, remember that you are already whole, you are already perfect, and it doesn't matter where you look - if you're seeking, you will find it.

200 Mile Burn

Running always sounded like a dreadful idea. I wouldn't even run to catch a bus, because buses are notorious for being repetitive and you know what's even worse than riding the bus? Running to catch one. The only time I even considered running in my former life was when trying to escape a gang of raccoons. (Roving gangs of raccoons are a more common city occurrence than you might expect.) This isn't the first time I've been wrong about some belief I've cuddled stubbornly close to my heart for no reason at all.

Ragnar

The righteous Honey Badgers of van one: Zach, me, Kelsey, Nicole, Sara, and Drea. 

What I've learned since agreeing to run Ragnar - a 200-mile relay from Los Angeles to San Diego - is that running burns off the crazy. This is helpful, because it takes a vast plentitude of crazy to agree to spend 37 hours in a van with eleven other people in order to run an insane number of miles in Darwinian conditions meant to pick off the weak and cranky.

But wholeheartedly embracing the crazy is my default strategy. So I signed up, trained to run farther than I've ever run in my life, slathered gold puffy paint in the shape of hissing honey badgers onto t-shirts, and climbed in the van that would be our collective home for the weekend.

Climbing out of said van after it broke down at 12:30 at night in order to hitchhike to the point where I would start running many miles down a dark freeway, I might have briefly reconsidered my default strategy. But once I decided to stop worrying and just go, I tore down the dirt hill of our doom, waved my hands at the sky to stop the wind, jumped in a random van (LIKE A BOSS), and all the anxiety about stalled behemoths and dark, desolate runs melted away.

Clambering into an unknown van with a bunch of strange men and a cooler of beer at midnight and praying you get where you need to go is not something you do in real life. But in running life, you hop in, find that every last person in that random van is either snoring or genial - especially when you tell them your team name is Mr Bear and the Honey Badgers over a blare of Irish music - and they offer you a beer before dropping you off exactly where you need to be.

I'd been awake for nineteen hours and I was facing what the Ragnar bible had labeled my hardest run. I'd already run twice - once in the blazing sun up a beast of a hill, a run the powers-that-be had labeled my easiest. My smug, sea-breeze washed jogs had not prepared me for a heat index of a hundred and fuck. But after I handed off food, water, and a sweatshirt to our stranded runner and he slapped the team bracelet on my wrist, I took off.

As I settled into my stride, I realized that just because someone labels something easy, doesn't mean it is. Just because someone tells you something is hard, doesn't mean it will be hard for you. And never underestimate the power of endorphins to flood your over-worked system with peace.

Alone on an empty stretch of road with nothing but quietly chirping insects and velvety dark shadows opening to the brighter dark of a sky dotted with stars, I remembered why motion is always better than sitting still. Moving forward - even if you don't know where you're going and it's so dark you can't see more than a few feet in front of you - always feels better than sitting, unsure and anxious, in the back of a broken van. Moving your feet across miles of road cycles all the anxiety and exhaustion and madly spinning thoughts out of your mind and body and into the quiet ether.

beach wheels

Cartwheels on the beach at mile who-the-hell-knows. 

Ragnar was my own personal Everest. When you aren't getting much sleep but you are doing weird amounts of physical exercise with zero personal space (even if it means you get to spend the weekend petting the heads of awesome people), the situation has a way of turning up the flame on the usually still pool of your insecurities until the water bubbles over.

The patterings of my own mind are always my worst enemy, and boy did it kick my ass during the last eight hours of our journey. But I came away knowing that if I run for long enough, the inside of my brain shuts down.

And when you find yourself holding it together (mostly) while surrounded by people who are also holding it together - even though they're exhausted and dealing with setbacks like delayed flights, injuries, longer-than-expected runs and vans that aren't doing their job - and everyone's working as a loving and respectful team and still managing to be mothereffing delights, you know you've done something right with your life.

Waiting for our final three runners, we sat by the water in downtown San Diego as the sun set over the harbor. When we saw their three dancing headlamps in the distance, we started screaming like loons. As they passed, we joined up behind them to run across the finish line together.

It was the first time I felt like a real runner.

I want to qualify this, because I believe that if you run, you are a runner. It doesn't matter if you run around the block or you run Badwater. If you tie on your shoes and start moving your feet, you are a runner. Just as it doesn't matter if you write on cocktail napkins or head the New York Times bestseller list. If you put words to paper with the intent of telling a story or sharing a truth, you are a writer. That said, crossing the finish line with ten friends after covering 200 miles with our own 22 feet, I felt like a real runner. And I felt like the meaning of the word "empowered" finally dropped from my head and settled into my bones.

Because if we can run from LA to San Diego, what else can we do?

Befriending the Swamp Monsters

My father was a world class emotional represser. And if anyone deserves the comfort of a little repression, he did. He spent his childhood with a dying mother and an abusive alcoholic for a stepfather. I don't even remember most of what he shared with me, because when he spoke of a formative moment of unimaginable violence stemming from what I hope was a broken soul rather than actual evil, the restaurant started spinning and my ears filled with a dull roar and I stopped tasting my strawberry parfait. And that was just hearing about it, half a century after it happened. Because I physically couldn't process such a thing, I remember looking down at my glass dish and thinking, "Way to take the edge off dessert, Dad."

If it took me thirty years to realize I needed to deal with my feelings even without any abuse or tragedy to manage, maybe it's no wonder he hit seventy without letting go of what had been lurking in his body. Instead, he coped the best way he knew how. He leaned on his intellect and stifled his emotions and bought himself an escape, eventually managing to get his younger brother and sister out too.

Last weekend, I was talking to a friend who postulated that each generation heals something, making things a little easier for their children. My dad made a giant leap in just one. We were secure and loved and supported. We vacationed on pretty lakes and were given every opportunity we wanted - and some we weren't so sure about. I slogged my way through piano lessons and happily danced my way through multiple pairs of ballet shoes. I was encouraged to attend any college I wanted and study whatever my little heart desired while I was there. My dad - with the help of my mom - managed to give us everything he never had.

But I believe the emotions my father buried ended up killing him.

When he landed in the hospital last September, he was fully expected to recover. But after lying in a hospital bed in pain for months engulfed by everything he'd spent seventy years avoiding, he wanted nothing more than his next out. But instead of leaving a small mining town in Pennsylvania for California, he had to leave his body for whatever comes after. So he did.

Yes, he left me with a bit of a mess to clean up - no will and no secondary health insurance makes for a bit of a temporary nightmare. But in every real way, he did extraordinarily well by us. And he left me with the knowledge of what I want to give my children: a deep understanding that emotions are nothing to fear.

I was 32 years old before I was able to say "I am mad right now." I was so lost on the spectrum of emotion that I didn't know how to identify something as basic as anger. My feelings were ancient hieroglyphs and my Rosetta stone was smashed. 

But I'm slowly learning that a brief bout of insecurity doesn't need to feel like a swamp monster crawling out of my rib cage. I don't need to try to trap the monster and beat him with a stick so he can't smear pond scum all over my well-ordered life. I just need to notice that he's there, and maybe give him a high five for calling the insecurity - something every person on the planet feels occasionally - to my attention so I can do something about it. Like go find a hug. The swamp monster would give me a hug himself, but he doesn't want to get sludge on my sweater.

I'm learning that the hard feelings are simply another facet in my ability to love and feel joy and cry when someone puts just the right words to music. Sometimes dealing with the rough stuff is cathartic and sometimes it feels like sliding face first down the cheese grater of life without anesthetic. But every time I dig up another feeling and release it into the ether, my life gets a little better.

I like to think I'm learning something I can pass on to my children, that the work I'm doing now to understand my own emotional landscape will heal one more layer of a family history. Because when you allow the pain, you create more room for love.

Ricochet

For months, my life has felt like a puzzle that's been dumped into a blender and switched on without the top so all the pieces fly up in a whirling frenzy and splatter on the ceiling. Some land on the floor, others fly out the open window, and some just disintegrate into ash. Now that I'm settled in one place after ten months of moving constantly, I've spent the past few weeks trying to gather everything into one place. All the cardboard pieces are finally in one room, but I still don't have any idea how to put everything together so it forms a coherent picture.

The Year I Formed All The Good Habits Only To Systematically Dismantle Them 

You know what you're not doing when you're living in a hotel and waiting for your dad to die? You're not drinking a lot of green juice. You're not going for a run every day. You're sucking up McDonald's, because it's the only place that's open and you know what tastes good bathed in the fluorescent lighting of the intensive care unit? French fries and coke.

Moving to Costa Rica for a month last summer put a few dents in my smug little  routines. Moving to Amsterdam for a month poked more holes.  By the time my father had his accident and the hurricane hit Staten Island while my mother was heading into the hospital to have a needle stuck in her brain, things started to unravel. If you've ever talked on the phone with your dad when he made no sense and then called your mom to find out that she wasn't making any sense either, especially if you do this while you're waiting in line to volunteer after a rather intense weather situation that caused actual death only a few miles away from you, you might be tempted to abandon a few well-intentioned life choices. Because you know what tastes good with hurricanes and hospitals? Vodka.

Now I'm trying to claw my way back to a stable life and stable routines and caring for myself in a way that makes me a good human being instead of a sugar-fueled werewolf. And all the stuff that couldn't catch me as I moved between countries and states and cities has finally landed on my head with an audible whoomph. Making salted caramel ice cream and white wine once again sound like a really good idea.

I'm trying to rewrite my story so my life begins to take the shape I want, rather than ricocheting off randomly erected barriers. There is a lot of possibility in that. But it's also tough - it requires battling the demons of depression and isolation and the sweet siren call of a warm chocolate chip cookie. It's a crash course in being kind to myself as I stagger around on wobbly little colt legs, learning what my life looks like now.

Stop Talking To Rocks

Let's take a painfully overused metaphor and hit it with a dead Shetland pony, shall we? Say life is a river. You have two choices: Flow gracefully around the boulders and keep moving merrily downstream. Or get caught in front of a rock until you've created a stagnant cesspool of slimy moss and broken twigs, trapping innocent carp until they're ready to sue you for emotional damage. I guess I have a thing for cesspools. Not only do I stop and make everything slimy, I clamber onto the biggest boulder and have an in-depth and often rambling conversation with it. So now I'm not only stalled, I'm not even in the river any more.

Stop talking to boulders, Amber.

Failed relationships are boulders. How the bastards at the SF parking department held my car hostage again is a boulder. How I don't know how to start something so I'll just think about not starting until despair sets in. Boulders, boulders, boulders.

I'm getting better about moving past them. One of the benefits of 2012: The Year Where a Lot of Shit Happened, is that I concretely demonstrated my ability to step up. Because when life decides to kick you in the ass, you rise to the challenge. You have no choice. So you rally, you throw down, and you cope. Since life has become gentler and I again have the luxury of over-thinking and being a pussy about minor inconveniences, I can at least recall a time when I threw down and coped. There's comfort in this.

On Sunday, I'm moving back to Los Angeles. I hadn't even officially started the hunt - my LA vs SF pros and cons list only had three things on it - when a perfect apartment in Santa Monica fell from the sky (Facebook) and landed in my lap. It has lots of warm LA light, hardwood floors, and my bedroom window faces the sunset. I can step out the door, walk four blocks, and land on the beach.

That's what my bedroom window looks like. Shut up. You'd be smug too.

Before I decided where to land, I dated like a fiend. Because online dating is one of the few institutions that allows pictures of shirtless and disturbingly shiny men to land in your inbox on a regular basis. Sandwiched between the oily abs and incomprehensible grammar are men who send haikus about Duct Apes, change your car battery when it dies, and sound remarkably like Alan Alda while they're saying amusing things to you. It's fun. Except when you realize that you're meeting a whole string of awesome possibilities and you just signed a lease six hours south.

For a few weeks, I felt torn. Awesome men in San Francisco versus awesome apartment in LA. Through all my solo traveling last year, I realized that people are more important to me than places. Love is more important than locale. But I've also learned that I need to give myself what I need because that's the only way I can fully show up for the people in my life.

DAMN YOU, WORLD, AND YOUR PLETHORA OF OPTIONS.

I'm really into this whole "Follow your own inner guidance" thing, the one so encouraged by therapists and earth mothers and people who throw around the word goddess a little too freely for my tastes. Turns out, anxiety and insecurity yell a whole lot louder than "inner guidance." So I spent the month of January practicing hearing the things in my head that aren't screaming at me. I did this by chanting the little phrase that popped into my head the day three things happened: I accepted the apartment in LA, met one amazing guy, then somehow managed to meet another amazing guy. After a day of questioning all my life choices, I banged my head on the steering wheel and this shook loose:

"Trust in the flow of your life."

So I whispered it to myself over and over and over with what might be defined as rising hysteria, stopping only to be glad I was in my car and not on public transportation because I sounded like a crazy person. I am a crazy person but that's no excuse for sounding like one.

What do you do about options? You stop beating your head against some obstacle that you won't even remember once you've moved past it. You guide yourself down the river, but allow the uncertainty to swing you toward something that might be even better than what you hoped for. As much as I love San Francisco, LA is right for me at this point in my life. I was happy and healthy and creative and there was regular goddamn sunshine. All I wanted as I crawled through the last few months of 2012 was a little place by the beach where I could put down roots, maybe not forever but certainly for now. And it climbed into my lap and started purring. Yes, I want to find

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my lobster. But the only way to do that is to continue living the life that's best for me. Because the story is always unfolding - and the more rocks I flow past, the faster it unfurls.

Dating Manifesto

I've had first dates at police stations. Flying over the California coast in a red two-seater plane. In a food court with a guy who claimed to be related to the Vegas mafia. At ice rinks where we tottered around like baby giraffes. That's the fun part. The feelings that come after - insecurity, panic, self-flagellation for perceived infractions, staring at your phone and feeling unloved - are not. Unresolved feelings make dating a minefield of melodrama. I'm done. In my effort to make "I'm done" less histrionic pronouncement and more fact, I've made a list. Because lists succor the soul and if you're in the dating trenches, your soul deserves some succoring.

Establish reasonable goals. For years, my dating goal was "Have boyfriend yesterday." If that's not a foolproof way to fail, I don't know what is. I'm not Calvin and I don't have a time traveling cardboard box and so there's zero chance I'll suddenly be in a relationship that started last November. Achievable goals with simple steps honestly never occurred to me until my dating coach brought it up over burrito carcasses. (I don't know why, I'm fanatic about goals everywhere else. Maybe my brain was incinerated by Ashton Kutcher movies where he's the hot instigator of unlikely romantic scenarios.) So my new goal is "Go on second date with dude I really like." Pretty sure that's an achievement badge I can unlock.

Your life is not a Nora Ephron movie. I mean, it might be. There's probably a lot more Nora Ephron potential to my life than I've allowed myself so far. But that potential can't unfold if I'm constantly jumping ahead in the plot. No planning my City Hall wedding to a guy I met twelve minutes ago. All this does is tangle me up in a pressure cooker of expectations.

Sit on your hands.  The proper ratio of texting when dating is 1:1. Not 1:17. Because 1) You look crazy and needy when you do that. Even if you are crazy and needy, you don't need to look crazy and needy. 2) You feel awful when you have three unanswered texts hanging in the ether. Dating is hard enough without giving yourself more ways to feel bad.

No one else can make you feel secure and loved. I was beating myself up for some (probably imagined) breach of the dating code and staring at my phone, waiting for the text that would prove I didn't have anything to worry about. Then it occurred to me that this guy - amazing though he may be - doesn't have the power to absolve me. Only I have that. So I looked at the sad, broken place that felt like I had irrevocably blown it, realized my "I'VE DESTROYED THINGS FOREVER" story wasn't helping, and forgave myself. He texted five minutes later. Thanks for that speedy confirmation of my theory, world.

Anything substantive should be said in person. I'm terrible at this. I hide behind emails and text messages because that's what emails and text messages are for. But I'm practicing communicating. Talking to someone before sleeping with them to make sure we're on the same page, at least in this moment. Laying out what I want and what I'm looking for and knowing that it's okay if that's not what they want right now.

Once you've broken up, there's nothing more that needs to be said. So stop it with the explanatory/secretly-hoping-for-reconciliation-and-more-attention emails, lady. (I'm not proud of this tendency. I cringe every time I think of the needy post-breakup emails I've sent in my day. Which is reason enough to stop for always.)

He's dessert, not the main course. A guy should be the baklava of my life, not the falafel. Yes, dating is a crucial step toward finding your lobster, but never at the expense of things that make you happy.

Do what makes me feel good. Yes, the other person is important but until you've established some semblance of a healthy relationship, your first priority is always yourself. If the way it's going doesn't feel good, get out. If you like someone, but he doesn't want what you want, set him loose. If you're feeling anxious, do something that nurtures you. Exercise or creativity is best, especially if either include glitter. It's time well spent, whatever happens with Dude Du Jour. Bonus: When you're excited about your life and doing the things that support it, you automatically become 57% more attractive.

Be kind to yourself. This includes knowing what you want and settling for nothing less. Making yourself comfortable and happy. If your perfectionist brain is poking you about something you did and telling you it messed everything up, step the fuck back. Did you do what felt right to you in the moment? Did you do it with love, for him and yourself? Did you communicate and behave in a way that feels healthy to you? If the answers are yes, you get to feel good about it, no matter what the outcome. If the answers are no, you still get to be kind to yourself. By looking for the source of the behavior - maybe it's being clingy or insecure or doing things because you need or want the attention* - you can heal the place that needs healing. When I behave strangely, it's because something is off internally and only I can shift it.

* All will absolutely happen if you try to date the month after your father dies.

Don't try to date the month your father dies. Just don't.

You want someone who values you. Your time and attention are precious and if he doesn't appreciate it or make an effort, send him on his merry way.

Self-worth is the key, always. Do whatever it takes to get and keep that self-worth. Lots of the bullshit that comes with dating disintegrates when you feel good about yourself and what you have to offer.

Too soon to tell. I jump to conclusions when I'm feeling antsy, based on my often wildly inaccurate interpretations. In the very early stages, it's almost always too soon to tell. That said...

Trust your intuition. That's why you have it. Your trust in yourself and your judgment is one of your most valuable resources. Dating is an amazing place to hone your internal guidance.

It doesn't have to be a game. I don't like games. I lose games. In my family, I lose everything from Pounce to Scrabble and usually by a very large margin. I don't particularly care, because winning isn't the point. Spending time with people I love is the point. But with the dating game, if I don't win, I don't get anyone to love. That sucks. So I'm reinventing the premise. It's not a game. If it was, the only competitor would be myself. As long as I handle this situation better than I handled the one last month, I'm winning.

Treat it lightly. You're dating. This is supposed to be fun. Ease up, honey.

Don't waste your time. Especially on the jerks of the world when there are so many men (men not boys, and this has nothing to do with age) who will value you and your attention the way it deserves to be valued.

Trust in the flow of my life. If the timing of my life makes me bonk my head against the steering wheel in frustration, continue on the path that feels best and trust that it will sort itself out. The universe has a wicked sense of humor but it's never wrong. Just because it doesn't look the way you thought it would doesn't mean it isn't exactly what it should be.

Shifting Years

Last year, I traveled thousands of miles to realize that it doesn't really matter where you are - your capacity for happiness doesn't change, whether you're on a beach in Central America or in the house where you grew up. I watched the wind of my first hurricane whip past the second floor of my friend's house on Staten Island, bending towering trees in half, like they were genuflecting to the eye of the storm. I had my first panic attack in the parking lot of a hospital. I handed out thousands of dollars in cash. I went soaring over the jungles of Costa Rica. I got kissed on a bridge in Amsterdam. I watched both my parents become incapacitated and unable to communicate. One recovered, one didn't. I learned that seven almonds buy you a lot of attention from a squirrel. I lay by the side of the highway next to the Intensive Care Unit, tears running from the corners of my eyes and into the grass.

Driving away.

"Driving away."

Driving away from the hospital after saying goodbye.

Last year, I watched New York marathon runners jogging from the Staten Island ferry to Rockaway beach with supplies on their backs. I learned that when the power is out for a week, it's not the electricity you miss, it's the heat. I roamed the streets of Manhattan the way I did in college, music pouring through my headphones to create a soundtrack to a city that seemed to expand and contract around me, as my own feelings ebbed and flowed. It was hard to be so far away from my family during that month as my dad was failing and my mom had a concussion from hitting her head on the kitchen floor, but it patched over the gaping hole I felt had been kicked in my chest. Taking that time allowed me be who I needed to be during the last week we spent with my dad. There's still some guilt there, but I'm learning to trust in my own instincts, to know that I can balance my own needs with those of my loved ones.

At the same moment.

"At the same moment."

On the Staten Island ferry.

Last year, the furrow between my brows - the one that appears when I'm confused or in pain - became permanent. The ridges smooth out when I relax, but they're always visible now, something that would have horrified my younger self and occasionally still does. That furrow is the physical legacy of my 35th year and my father's death.

Other things are less visible.

Last year, I learned to sit on my hands when what I really want to do is yell and scream and react. I learned to be kinder to people who lash out, because it stems from their own pain and they're only really hurting themselves. You're allowed to feel your feelings, but when you use them as a whiplash to sting others in a desperate bid to make yourself feel better 1) it doesn't work and 2) now everyone's mad at you. I learned that being kind to yourself means making healthy choices and other people don't have to like those choices. I learned that the journey toward death - even when it's painful and hard and you begin to think that no hell devised by even the fiercest of religions could be as bad as this - can be full of grace. Even joy. Certainly love.

If I could grow wings, I would.

"If I could grow wings, I would."

The world is a beautiful place, and I saw more of it. Autumn leaves on Staten Island, canals in Holland, fireflies in Central America. I met and reconnected with amazing people. It was a year of adventure and stuck-ness and great change. It was a year where I further cemented my faith in myself and in the world around me. It was a year where the roots in my heart grew and extended down through my legs and my feet and into the center of the world. I feel like you can't face death with a loved one without your roots both growing deeper and also disconnecting you from what you previously knew. But where you feel untethered, there are always people to catch you, to be the rubber bumper as your heavy ball hurtles toward the pins. People - friends, hospital workers, folks on Twitter - helped guide my family and me as we picked and spun our way down the lane from my father's accident to his death.

The second half of 2012 was tough for me. But there was a lot of grace and magic in it too. I'm learning not to be frightened by the tough stuff. Because it opens the door to so many good things. Love. Relief. Growth. Change. Pattern busting. Sinking fully into each good moment - the ones with bikes and color and grace - because they're worth so much more when what surrounds them is hard. Parties glow with brighter light, tea with friends takes on new weight, and the words that flow through your headphones and into your brain assume fresh meaning. But I got what I needed from 2012. I think the best you can hope for from a year is to love yourself and the world better than you did when it started.

Sidewalk in front of my old apartment in San Francisco.

"Sidewalk in front of my old apartment in San Francisco."

I couldn't have possibly imagined what 2012 held for me back in January. So I'm letting go of the need to know what this coming year will hold. I want to find an easier forward motion because I tend to go full-throttle and then slam the brakes on myself, which makes for a rather lurching existence. I want more stability and creation and giving. I want to be a better person, a better friend, a better daughter and sister.

Beyond that, who knows? Some things will be good, some bad, some painful, some joyful. But whatever it holds, there will be love and there will be grace and there will be discovery. Before my father died, my brother grabbed his shoulder and said, “I’m excited for you, dad. You’re about to go on an adventure.”

I think that's what 2013 holds for all of us. So I'm excited. We're about to go on an adventure.

Live-Tweeting My Father's Death

We got a call last Wednesday night. My father was in the ICU and wasn't expected to last much longer. We should get there as soon as possible. So the next morning, my brother, my mom and I drove seven hours south to Bishop, California. Walking into a hospital room where your formerly bright and vibrant father is lying in pain, attached to coldly beeping machines is...hard. Because I feel more grounded when I write down my thoughts, I started putting them on Twitter. Turns out, Twitter is a perfect medium for recording your last five days with your father. 140 characters allows you to record one thought, without being intimidated by acres of blank space waiting to be filled with something that's supposed to be properly dignified and profound, when all you have is the fact that you just spilled coffee all over the brand-new floor of the three-week old hospital.

Turns out, 140 characters also captures a whole lot of love.

Love for and from my father, love from Twitter, love for the rest of our family. I honestly feel that onslaught of love and support from those lovely souls on the internet helped me open up so that I was better able to love my father. It was a circular triptych of emotion that carried me through those five days in Bishop as my father slipped further and further away.

In a strange way, I want to go back to that time in Bishop - as hard as it was. Because I've never felt more loved or more loving in my life. I'm glad I was able to share that with my father, in our last few days together. So here are the tweets. Raw, unedited, and all in one place so I can visit it any time I want to feel that love again.

Live-Tweeting My Father's Death

Today needs a superhero cape. I will make one out of a red blanket - extra powers and extra fleeciness.

So basically everything about tonight is heartbreaking. Except my brother's rat dance. That's still pretty awesome.

Medical directive overturned by unanimous family consent. Morphine at the ready. All right, Great Beyond. Let's get this party started.

Dad calmed down when I sat down and held his hand. He even smiled when Matthew did a little jig. All is peaceful as we wait.

Hour nine of the Death Vigil and we've started making water balloons out of surgical gloves.

My brother took it upon himself to fill out the whiteboard in dad's hospital room. He graciously offered the social worker the role of Dr. Fuzzy.

Walking into the closed hospital through the ER, a male nurse I've never seen before says, "Oh, you must be Mr Adrian's daughter." Infamous?

Now that the drugs have stopped and people aren't prodding him every hour, Dad's sense of humor is coming back. His puns: as bad as ever.

My one rant: Absurd that we have the death penalty but we can't help along someone we love who desperately wants out of a broken body.

Calling the funeral director from my Dad's hospital room while he snores peacefully feels oh-so-wrong. And yet...here we are.

Um, so I guess I'm live tweeting my Dad's death? I just find it strangely comforting. Heart, mysterious ways, etc.

My dad wanted a hug - was super distressed when he couldn't lift his arms to hug me back. Heart, meet new crack.

Hard to see my vibrant, joking, super-smart Dad like this. But it's also okay. He's still that guy and he's still in there. Somewhere.

Learning - slowly, slowly - to open up and love when I feel scared, rather than curl up like a threatened porcupine.

Always figured I'd be spoon-feeding a petulant infant before spoon-feeding my Dad. Life enjoys tossing my plans up in the air like confetti.

Bishop is tiny town with Old West-style store fronts and snow-capped mountain ranges. There are worse places to take your last breath.

Throwing paper airplanes over dad's bed and into the hall. Almost hit a nurse.

Singing Beethoven's Fifth and dancing around the bed Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion-style. I should drink less coffee.

My brother grabbed my mom's romance novel and started giving it a dramatic reenactment. Solid gold.

Dad always made the Thanksgiving turkey. Brined in booze and stuffed with cornbread and fresh herbs. I never got the recipe. Damn it.

Emotionally manipulative country song about fathers playing. The world really wants me to break down in this coffee shop.

Brother: "Hey! Instead of going to the mortuary, let's go to the taxidermist!" Mom: "YOU ARE NOT GOING TO TAXIDERMY YOUR FATHER."

Ten minutes later: "How much does taxidermy cost?" "NO."

Matthew told dad that he saw a cow this morning. Dad mooed.

Dad's singing. So...the morphine works.

Never in my life have I wanted a tattoo. But I woke up at my father's bed side thinking that if I ever got one, it would say "Yes."

"I'm excited for you, Dad. You're about to go on an adventure." Boom. My brother nails it.

The wind is picking up and leaves are scattering. This autumn has been full of storms - and another one is coming.

My brother and I both want to try Dad's sweet morphine drip. Sadly, this is not hospital-approved procedure.

Boat wars and roof-top sleepovers and bacon: Love hearing from middle and high school friends with memories of my dad.

This is a weirdly happy time.

"Isn't it great having a dad like me?" "Yeah, Dad. It is."

Playing dad's favorite songs on my laptop. Like to think the morphine haze makes it sound like John Coltrane playing Carnegie Hall.

When the nurses come in to reposition him, the whole family scuttles down the hall to escape the yells of pain. #cowards

Dad's getting delusional. Thinks he needs to get up and get dressed. Keep telling him it's his day off, he can just relax and hang with us.

"You have such a nice family.""It's our family, Dad." "But you have so many great people w you." I like to think he's talking about Twitter.

"We're lucky." "Yeah, we are." "In so many ways." I've never seen my Dad cry before.

Dad loves Calvin and Hobbes. So I read him this.

Pro tip: When you're on your death bed, you get anything you want.

At the JC Penny on Main St buying clean clothes because I didn't have time to do laundry between New York and Death Watch 2012.

Waiting for your Dad's body to disintegrate around him is harder work than you might think. I'm exhausted.

Dad keeps turning to me and saying, "Let's go." You can go any time you want, Dad. You just have to leave your body behind.

Work to be done. Hard to live in a hotel indefinitely. Dad may need us to leave in order to let himself go. Still, a bitch of a decision.

"A house came out of the sky and surrounded our house. How is that possible? It doesn't make sense." "It doesn't have to make sense, Dad."

Dad read The Hobbit to me when I was 3 years old. Mom thought he was crazy. Years later, though I never read it myself, I knew the story.

Dad always called me super kid. Like I was the superhero of children. That was the last thing he called me.

Hard to walk out the hospital door, knowing he's still alive. And knowing that's probably the last time I'll ever see him.

Everything feels surreal. The colors are too bright, sounds are a roar, and everyone keeps wishing me a good day.

My dad's things are strewn all over the living room, waiting for sorting and Goodwill. Time to hide out in another part of the house.

On the up side, now I have a Kindle and my brother's girlfriend has a car.

I always wondered what to do when someone was having a rough time. Wondered if words and thoughts were enough. Yes. More than enough.

I just opened the microwave and found the popcorn I was making when we got the call from the hospital.

Whenever I feel sad about someone - missing my dad or a friend or an ex - I focus on how much I love them. Works every time.

---

As of tonight, November 21st, the evening of Thanksgiving, my dad was still alive. Part of me is heartbroken not to be there with him when he passes, but the rest of me knows we did the right thing - for us and for him.

And I truly believe that you can express love to someone whether you're standing there holding their hand or halfway across the globe. Or separated by whatever stands between us and those we loved who have gone on. Love knows no boundaries.

---

{Edit} Dad passed away on Friday night. I got the news while drinking pumpkin bourbon milkshakes with Drea and Amy and they graciously led me into another room and let me blubber all over them and it was exactly what I needed. Thanks, guys.

As a longtime family friend later texted me, Dad would've thought the pumpkin bourbon milkshake a perfect accompaniment to his passing. He was fond of going all out, especially where fattening beverages are concerned.

Rest in peace, Dad. We love you.

Sometimes Life Looks Like a Hospital Bed and a Broken Clock

When someone you love is in the hospital, you have to reorganize your entire life. In a very physically defined way, because you cancel plans and uproot yourself to drive six hours south to a live in a different house while you deal with things like paperwork and doctors and emotions. But your life also reorganizes itself in an intangible way. You sit in a room and stare at piles of incomprehensible paper until someone notices that the clock on the wall is broken. That time, for all intents and purposes, has stopped. That the person in the bed staring at the clock, unable to move, unable to leave, must be in some motionless hell. You feel like it's your job to fix it, so you stare at it, wondering what you need to do and postulating theories about what has to happen. Until your brother stands up, gently lifts the clock off the wall, and pokes the battery more firmly into place. And time starts again.

It's intangible because something in your life has shifted. You know things aren't quite right. The person you knew isn't quite that person any more. But also they are. But they aren't. Because they aren't eating and the pain meds are doing strange things to their speech patterns and you don't know when they'll get better or if they even want to. Even as you go about your daily life, what your daily life has become, a small corner of your brain understands that something has changed. So you do serious mental and spiritual acrobatics until the world shifts again. Because this is what's happening now. So this is what's right.

Dear Amsterdam

I'll miss plowing through you on my bike like I'm on a mission to careen past every idly pedaling Dutch person on a cell phone which, let's be real, I totally am. I'll miss your bridges strung with lights and your soft, flaky croissants that make your American counterparts curl up in mortification. I'll miss your medieval castles and taking trains the wrong way through Holland and getting away with having the wrong ticket because everyone in your country, from policemen to train ticket collectors to grocery clerks, is just really really nice. I'll miss riding home late at night, when your streets are dark and empty of people but still full of sedate brick buildings that have been standing watch over nighttime pedestrians for the last three hundred years. I'll miss drinking coffee in the sun by a canal. I'll miss eating lunch on the balcony and wandering through stores marveling at the intersection between foreign and familiar. I'll miss your black licorice and the three story windmill that pointed my way home. I'll miss the friends I made, the people I met, and the cats I yelled at for sticking their fuzzy snouts in the butter.

I'll even miss the Red Light District, which totally skeeved me out until I started wondering about the underwear-clad girls posing in those red lit windows. What are their lives like? Why are they there? I wanted to ask them about their stories, what kind of love they have in their lives, and what they think about all this. But I didn't, because how do you ask something like that?

Living in Costa Rica and Amsterdam for the summer taught me that when I travel, I want to have a specific creative project. Specific to the place and specific to my interests - something to frame my time there and give it more of a purpose. To come home from wherever I was for a month and be able to hold or watch or read this thing I made. A creative souvenir that takes the feelings I had and amazing things I saw and molds them into something I can share.

I wish I figured this out three months ago, but that's why you live, right? To figure out the things you wish you could apply retroactively to the rest of your life. But you can't, so you just keep trekking out into the world and hope to whatever sky-dwelling deity you prefer that you remember what you figured out for next time.

For Tea to Turn You Into Rip Van Winkle, Steep Me In Hot Water

Wrenching me out of sleep these days requires a seven-foot goblin stumping into the room and setting the bed on fire. Even then I'd just blearily open one eye, ask if the goblin wanted to cuddle and, when he glared at me in disdain, roll over and fall back asleep. I'm tired, is what I'm saying. Ever since I got back from Amsterdam I've been climbing into bed at 8:30 and passing out like I'd just tossed back a horse tranquilizer with a shot of rum and a dash of chamomile. My champion sleeper status has been cruelly stunted by age. Add that to jetlag and a lot of late nights before I left Holland and I'm more than happy to sign over the majority of my evening to snoring.

After all the moving around I've done this summer - Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe, Costa Rica, San Francisco, Portland, Amsterdam - I would be perfectly happy never to move again. So, naturally, I flew home last Wednesday and turned around on Thursday morning and climbed into a car to drive six hours into California's gold country for my cousin's wedding. Because that's the way the world works. It was three days of family, pools, rope swings, emus and serve-yourself bars. I woke up from my naps in the hammock to let my brother pour me a whisky and ginger and then wandered across the grass to feed the emu. It was quite a party. Especially for the emu.

Emu not shown.

I've been sleeping and detoxing from all the European cheese and bread and beer and my brain is fuzzy and I've been avoiding blogging because blogging when your brain doesn't work is an exercise in mediocrity. BUT SOMETIMES YOU JUST HAVE TO DIVE INTO MEDIOCRITY AND LOVE IT.

HI, MEDIOCRITY! WE MEET AGAIN. You look pretty today. Are you using a new shampoo?

For my next adventure, I'm going to New York for a month in the fall. I'll be working, visiting friends, wandering the streets, and generally reacquainting myself with one of my favorite cities. For now, I'm embracing California and friends and as much sleep as humanly possible before the goblin lights another match.

At Least Now I Know The Dutch Word For Chicken

Figuring out which soup is chicken in a Dutch supermarket when you're feverish is a daunting task. I could have asked someone, but simply forcing one foot to step in front of the other in a vaguely normal fashion felt like summiting Kilimanjaro without a sherpa or even a water bottle. Conquering my squeamish belief that it's rude to walk up to someone in a foreign country and assume they speak my language was really too much to ask on the day that the insides of my stomach made an abrupt and brutal reappearance. I insist on being a pansy about this, even though everyone in Amsterdam does speak my language - even the yoga classes are conducted half in Dutch, half in English. I should probably just get over myself. But conquering deeply entrenched beliefs and getting over oneself are definitely too much to ask when the only thing between you and what feels like death is a mug of chicken soup. All of this to say, would a convincing graphic of a plump and obvious chicken be too much to ask, Dutch soup makers?

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Panda by Brian Andreas. Because he does things like that.

Traveling by yourself to random countries for months at a time can get lonely. I'm pretty good at being alone. I'm even reasonably good at being lonely. But at some point, being good at something stops being a good reason to do it. So you start dating instead.

There was the Italian man who wore his hat through dinner. There was the man who somehow found me on a random bridge after I'd manage to miss the very obvious landmark at which we were supposed to meet. Two days in a row. I missed it twice. Despite having been there many times before. My brain is missing the GPS component that comes standard in most models.

But the true winner in my own personal Dating Olympics was the guy who went to the police station with me instead of to the museum. Because my purse had been stolen on my way to meet him. HI. I JUST MET YOU. HELP ME FIGURE OUT ALL MY SHIT.

When we got to the police station - after I almost started crying into the iPad he very nicely let me use to skype the credit card companies, credit card companies that really really do not want to send replacement cards to the Netherlands - we learned that the efficient and genial Dutch cops had already nabbed the guy. They returned a very strange selection of items - my credit cards and my makeup and my umbrella. But not my purse or my sweater or the keys to my bike lock. But they were very apologetic about making us wait a whole fifteen minutes and told us about how they found the thief sitting in bushes (really) and so the cops crept around the building and hopped out from behind it to wave a cheery five fingered hello before tackling the guy.

If you have to sit in a police station and give a police report, you may as well do it in Amsterdam. Thanks for getting my debit card and my lip gloss back, guys.

On our second date, we did that whole nice dinner, night stroll along the Amsterdam canals thing. This would have been the best date in the world, were I not starting to feel queasy. I thought I was just low energy, maybe an adrenaline let-down from the whole purse thing. It wasn't until I was pedaling home like a 93-year-old grandmother instead of zipping around as many Dutch people on cell phones as possible that I realized I'd contracted the flu. Stopping on the side of the road and reintroducing myself to my lamb entree confirmed it.

First date, purse gone. Second date, flu. Third date...accidental arson? Horsemen of the apocalypse? Dinner theater?

Life Seen From a Bicycle

July in Amsterdam is remarkably similar to July in San Francisco. Gray and drizzly for a week and then the sun comes out one afternoon and everyone goes insane. Parks are clogged and any chair sitting on a sidewalk or along a canal is occupied by someone lifting their face to the sky and looking pleased with life. My apartment for the month comes equipped with a balcony, naughty felines (ask me how many times I've walked into the kitchen to discover a certain cat licking the butter) (TOO MANY TIMES IS HOW MANY), and a bicycle. The bicycle is tall and black and slightly rusty - it looks like something from the Sears Roebuck catalog, circa 1954 - and when I climb on, my posture is forced into corseted Edwardian perfection. When I ride it, I feel like the Wicked Witch of the West in her Kansas incarnation. This pleases me.

Since the sun was out yesterday and I feel slightly more sure of my ability to find the apartment again after I leave it, I cycled into the center of the city to sit along a canal and eat fries. Being a total cliche also pleases me.

My first time on a bike in Amsterdam was petrifying. I was compelled to climb on it after a week of procrastination because I was meeting someone in the center of the city and my bus card was out of money and the only place to refill it was closed on Sunday. Already late, I gamely hopped on. After pedaling an entire two blocks without dying, I started to enjoy myself. Not just because everything was all Dutch and sunny and picturesque, but because I was paying attention to all that bright, pretty Dutchness.

How often do you really pay attention in your every day life? It's so easy to go on automatic when you know where you're going and what you're going to do when you get there and understand all the rules of the system in which you're operating.

I had no idea what I was doing on a bike in Amsterdam. Yes, I know how to ride a bike and I had a city map in my bag, but I didn't know the streets or the road rules or the language, something that might prove handy if someone needed to yell, say, "WATCH OUT FOR THE BUS!" at me. So I went into hyper focus mode. And realized that a lot of life passes me by when I'm not truly paying attention to what's right in front of me.

Cycling past Centraal Station on my way home was oddly calming. My brain is usually concentrated on seventeen different things and at least thirteen of them are worries. Six consistent worries, four variable worries, and three new worries I've invented just for the occasion. But as I pedaled past the train station in the great salmon stream of Dutch cyclists, dodging taxis and tourists and the occasional rogue fish, all my worries and thoughts disappeared into a soundless tunnel and my brain filled instead with "Oh shit, oh shit, oh god, here we go, I'm going to die, we're all going to die, MOTHER OF GOD, WHO DECIDED THIS WAS LEGAL?"

Then I passed the station, filled my lungs with air, and concentrated on finding the giant windmill that points my way home. No, that wasn't a lazy Dutch metaphor. There really is a giant windmill in my neighborhood. The windmill serves beer.

I'd like to say that I'm going to take my first Dutch cycling experience and use it to stop regularly tuning out the world by sticking my headphones in my ears and watching the pictures in my head rather than the road in front of me, but that's absolutely not going to happen. Instead, I'll simply try to notice when my attention is focused entirely on what I'm doing. Because that is peace - and even grace. Something I never thought I'd find on a bike in Amsterdam. Certainly not when I misjudged an angle and almost barreled over an elderly man from Bristol. Sorry, dude. Enjoy your stay.

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Given my totally justified fear of bicycle-related death, taking this picture was probably a dumb idea.

How I Accidentally Ended Up in Amsterdam

If you're wondering about the likelihood of ending up in Amsterdam by accident, let me say that if it was possible to take a wrong turn somewhere in Northern California and end up in the Netherlands, I would've done it. I wasn't planning to go to Amsterdam. Yet here I am. Because life enjoys veering seven degrees to the left and often the thing you didn't plan turns out much better than anything you would've planned and that's saying something because you consider yourself a rather impeccable planner, even though it sounds suspiciously like boasting when typed out like this. YES, I'M A TOTAL BRAGGART. IT'S FINE.

Before I left for Costa Rica, I mentioned Amsterdam in a post. Because it was the first city that occurred to me when I needed a random location to end a sentence. Ten minutes later, I got an email from Nicolien saying that she had an apartment in Amsterdam and she was going to Serbia for a month and would I like to come to Holland and watch her cats while she was gone? WHY, YES. YES, I WOULD LIKE TO LIVE IN YOUR AMSTERDAM APARTMENT WITH YOUR CATS.

If you've ever wondered if a blog can wield some serious juju, let me assure you that it can. Make a joke about Amsterdam, end up living there for a month. I think we should all try to maximize whatever wordpress magic lives here. Ahem.

I WOULD LIKE AN APARTMENT IN NEW YORK THIS FALL, TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS, AND A STUFFED PANDA. I MEAN, A REAL PANDA WOULD BE AWESOME BUT I BET THOSE THINGS EAT A LOT AND FEEDING BAMBOO TO A GIANT BEAR EVERY DAY SOUNDS LIKE A HASSLE.

Now it's your turn! What would you like the blog genie to bring you? Leave it in the comments. May I suggest using the caps lock key? Everything works better in caps lock.

(I'll keep you posted on whether or not the universe coughs up any pandas or New York apartments.)

So I'm in Amsterdam for a month, staying in a lovely little apartment with two cats.

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Amstercat

My first full day here, Nicolien and her husband took me around the city. We walked past canals and wolfed down a huge pot of cheese fondue and I drank more beer in a day than I've had in the past year. It's a beautiful city, especially in the rare July sun. Every so often, we'd pass a building that pitched forward, as if it was straining to catch up with time. But they never fall, the houses just hover a few feet in front of their neighbors, like they can't wait to find out what's next. I know how they feel.

I'm Not Even Sure What I'm Writing Right Now

Being nomadic means most people start conversations by asking where you are or where you've just been. Being nomadic for longer than six weeks means you probably can't answer them correctly on the first try. Especially when you run into someone on the street in San Francisco, someone you'd only expect to see in LA and suddenly you're not sure what year it is, let alone what city you're in. Then you almost get stuck in an unlocked bathroom because the workings of doorknobs have ceased making sense. This is when you start to wonder if the life of an exhausted nomad is for you. I've been moving around a lot, is what I'm saying. I got home from Costa Rica last week. Where home is the Bay Area because my mom is nice about letting her 30-something daughter use her house as storage for her extra clothes. I went straight to a wedding where Carl the Balloon Donkey led the conga line and the bride went crowd surfing. Now I'm in San Francisco before I leave again on Thursday. I'm legitimately concerned that I'll accidentally try to pack for a month in Amsterdam when I'm really going to Portland for a weekend.

My family has been remarkably genial about shuttling me back and forth to the airport. There's something comforting about bookending month-long stays in a foreign country with family members. Especially because they're biologically required to love you even when you're jet-lagged and cranky.

There Should Probably Be a Segue Here. There's Not.

Yesterday, Bob and I launched one of my favorite pet projects, Random Love Punches. I'm staying with Becca for a few days and when I showed her the site, she said, "I like it, but I want the mean version." In two hours, we had its evil twin up and running and I'm pretty sure I like it better than the original for sheer clicking entertainment.

As exhausted and confused as I've let myself become, I'm loving this homeless thing. I love testing new beds and seeing random airports, some of which should not be called airports so much as cement benches alarmingly close to a runway with one plane that looks less flight-worthy than a 1992 Chevrolet minivan. I love being in different places and doing and creating fun things on the fly. I love eating fried cheese and fried plantains and wondering how my laptop got so filthy.

In the midst of trying to track where I am and where I'm going and when I'm going to carve out enough time to work, I don't want to lose sight of the fact that this is exactly the life I wanted for myself. I'm living it. So I'm trying to remind myself daily to stop and look around. To enjoy it, instead of constantly looking toward the next thing.

It's sunny in San Francisco today. Searching for my third cup of coffee this morning, I remembered how charmed I am by this city. My last day in Costa Rica, I went out to dinner with some friends and we ordered fish and watched the sun set over the ocean. I sat in the audience at the wedding of one of my favorite couples, listening to their vows and thinking, That's the kind of relationship I want one day. I ended up on a friend's couch at exactly the right time for her to have a genius idea that we were perfectly prepared to implement so that the love punches could go all Gretchen Weiners on the internet's ass. Today, we're going to a museum and tomorrow there will be margaritas and fireworks.

So many good things are happening every day and there are so many good things to look forward to. Dear self: Savor it.

Green Insects and Great Expectations

Hey, guess what! Traveling does not, in fact, turn you into a completely different person. If I thought I was going to go to Costa Rica and do anything but talk about bugs on Twitter, I was fooling myself. Isn't it a rule that you're not allowed to go to a foreign country for a month without something momentous happening? A life-changing event? An epiphany? A bestseller? A nice summer fling? Instead, I've spent most of my time becoming that much more cemented in who I already am.

Who I am really likes quesadillas and will always choose a nap over a fling.

None of this should surprise me even a little bit. And yet it does. Women are a mystery! Even to themselves! DON'T FEEL BAD, MEN. WE DON'T UNDERSTAND US EITHER.

I've had some feelings about my expectations, because I have feelings about everything and because expectations are a specific brand of human folly that really enjoys poking our tender bits with the sharpened tines of its cantankerous little folly fork. Ouch. Stop that, folly fork.

But your life is going to do what it does, no matter how many trips you go on, dates you set up, projects you do. Your life will always just be what it is, regardless of your expectations.

So I'm finally starting to shift out of poking range so I have space to enjoy the small things. Because the small bits are always the best part. And goodness, there's a wealth of happy-making in Costa Rica.

Ceasing Cyclical Self-Reflection In Favor of Small Bits of Awesome.

Or, Things I Really Like Here.

Walking down to the beach just to watch red and purple crabs scuttle frantically away from my clomping feet.

Sitting on the roof with the surfers and egging on prodigious thunder storms.

Swatting at my hair like it's developing a sentient personality, one that quivers eagerly at the thought of hastening my demise. I'm not convinced this is just my imagination. The humidity has not been kind.

Walking down dirt roads through the jungle to take a yoga class or buy more mangos.

Walking home in the hot sun and being offered a lift on what looks like a go-cart on steroids. I sit on the front and cling for dear life as we jolt down hills.

Propping my feet on the deck railing as I work on my laptop. If I lift my eyes four inches above the screen, I can see the ocean.

This Guy

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Et tu, Jiminy Cricket? 

He dropped unceremoniously into my lap one day and then spent a reasonable portion of the night hanging out on my laptop. The next evening, I had a one-night stand with a lightning bug. The night after that, I learned to shut my door as soon as it got dark.

The Coffee and Where I Get To Drink the Coffee

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Dogs That Show Up While I'm Drinking Coffee, and Wander From Table to Table In Search of Hands to Pet Them. Their Success Rate is Impressive.

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Especially this one. I MEAN, LOOK AT HIM. 

I was tempted to take him home with me - he didn't have a collar and his ribs were alarmingly prominent - but then I remembered that not all dogs have collars around here and sometimes people carry machetes and I don't want to end up on the wrong end of a scythe because I blithely kidnapped some dude's adorable dog. And customs would probably have a fit.

Black Sand Beaches and White Sand Beaches and Yes, I Got Called Racist By Two Different People The Last Time I Mentioned What I Still Insist Are Racially Inconclusive Beaches

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I went running today - at noon which, by the way, is a really stupid time to run in Costa Rica - and as my feet hit the sand on what must be one of the most beautiful beaches in the world, I realized that maybe my life doesn't need to change. Maybe I don't need any major epiphanies. Maybe I'm fine just the way I am.

Which is its own sort of epiphany, I guess. So never mind.

Life on the Mountain Top

My mom likes to tell the story* of how she forgot to latch the front door one day when I was a baby. She got in the shower and I made my break for freedom. When she got out, the door was wide open and I was nowhere to be found. She raced out of the house, towel flapping, to find me half a block away, waddling straight down the middle of the street in my diaper, trailed by a nice lady in a car who wanted to make sure I got back where I belonged. Thanks, nice lady. BUT I BELONG ON THE ROAD, YO.

* I like to say this is proof of my adventurous spirit, but it's probably just proof that people should lock their doors around me.

My adventures of the past few years have been of the smaller, more internal variety. I won't say I've forgotten how, but I will say that I got thrown for a loop my first week in Costa Rica. There were a lot of emotions and most of them were confusing. I'm-never-going-home-again giddiness! Send-me-back-to-my-friends-right-now loneliness! Quesadillas-for-breakfast glee! Where-the-effing-hell-are-all-the-vegetables discontent! Why-am-I-having-any-negative-emotions-at-all-because-I'm-in-Costa-Rica self hatred! OH-MY-GOD-LOOK-AT-THE-VIEW-THAT-COMES-WITH-MY-BACON mania! Many of these emotions happened within a few minutes of each other and, goodness, that gets exhausting.

But emotions don't get left at the airport and insomnia will happen when you drink six cups of coffee a day because surprise! COFFEE IN COSTA RICA IS REALLY, REALLY GOOD.

Also, There's This

beach

I like it when the sand reflects the sky. It does that really well here. Good job, beach.

Even if I have to be glued to my laptop, even if I have more emotions than I prefer, even if I'm not exploring as much as I'd like, I'm still here. And that's what counts.

Sticking Out Like a Sore Turkey Vulture

I should be able to speak Spanish. At least enough to ask for avocado and use basic, if improperly conjugated, verbs. But all five years of Spanish yielded was the ability to translate what people are saying twenty minutes after they've said it. When I was lost the other day,  a lovely lady on a motorbike rode up and said "Quieres cambiar?" I smiled uncertainly until she drove away. Three minutes after she left, the slowly-churning cogs clicked into place. "WAIT, YES! I DO WANT A RIDE! SI! SI! Shit." I trudged on and cursed my youthful self for sleeping peacefully through fifth period.

At customs, I greeted the official looking dude behind the counter with a cheery "Hola!" He looked surprised and said, "You speak Spanish!" With an exclamation point, as though my hello was so fluent-sounding that he just assumed, and was excited by the prospect. I felt like I was betraying his punctuation when I admitted "Nope. That's all I've got." After changing a few dollars into colones, I tried to thank the guy behind the counter in Italian, French, and English. Basically, every language I have any familiarity with except Spanish.

Linguistic and navigational mishaps aside, I love it here. My office is a balcony that overlooks the ocean and a jungle full of howler monkeys. I eat mangos for breakfast and make coffee with the Costa Rican equivalent of the french press, which is basically a sock hanging from a mini wooden scaffold. You pour hot water into the sock and it drips coffee into your mug. The beaches are full of perfect shells and it's so humid the bananas sweat, which is gross, but not as gross as the "Don't put it in the toilet unless you've eaten it first" rule. Don't ask.

I love the details of new countries, details you only really become familiar with if you stop moving long enough to see them. Or if you're someone other than me, someone who lives in a place for eight months and when asked if you ever use the hot tub in the backyard doesn't say, "There's a hot tub?"

All The Minutiae That Has Entertained Me Thusfar

Blonde hair is unusual here. People straight up stare. It's not unpleasant, they just gaze at me in gentle confusion, the way you might look at a penguin waddling down Madison Avenue.

Last night I saw my first firefly. I was charmed. Less charming are the seven billion other insects, each of which has personally welcomed me to the country. They find my legs quite tasty and thank me for bringing them along.

A team of abandoned monkeys lives on the hillside where I'm staying. They used to serve as guard animals with a ferocious pitbull until their owner decided that was a stupid idea. They attack the sweet Husky that lives here by barking at it and throwing sticks. If you've never seen a monkey bark at a dog before, I highly recommend it.

mangos

Mango peels go here. I've been advised not to throw them near the house, lest the howler monkeys come say hello at 4 a.m. 

Fresh vegetables are hard to come by. Beans and cheese and rice and tortillas are not. If you eat in a restaurant, the salad options are green, chicken, and fish.

Very few people have washers and dryers. Most clean their clothes by hand on one of those ridged boards you see in pioneer movies. I now know my answer to the "Would you rather pay fifteen dollars to do one load of laundry or spend most of your time being grungy?" question.

Dogs are everywhere and none of them are on leashes. They're all friendly and come running up if you so much as glance their way. If you pet them and tell them what a nice dog they are, they'll walk along the beach with you for awhile before wandering off to sniff an abandoned surf board.

Strange birds populate the trees by the beach. They're black and rather formidable, like a cross between a turkey and a vulture. I'm all proud of my description, but they're probably called turkey vultures. Of the genus younotascleverasyouthinkus. 

turkey vultures

My knowledge of ornithology is limited to peacocks and chicken sandwiches at Popeye's.

Why Pandas Shouldn't Be Allowed To Drive. In Costa Rica Or Anywhere Else.

The first thing I did in Costa Rica was almost kill a local. This isn't the kind of thing you put on your itinerary. Red-eye from San Francisco to Miami. Drink ridiculous amounts of coffee. Fly from Miami to San Jose. Wave driver's license and credit card and get handed a car. Almost kill someone. Drive through the jungle like Indiana Jones. Eat burrito.

When you're on the wrong end of a 24 hour journey, the first thing you should do when you step off the plane and into a foreign country is drive across half of it. Sure, you don't understand the signs or the rules or the etiquette or the traffic patterns. Sure, the stick shift bears only the slightest resemblance to your stick shift at home. Sure, you're trying to avoid mowing down the family that appears to be walking in the center of the road while also listening to what the tiny voice in the GPS is telling you.

All this to say, I don't know exactly what happened as I tried to merge onto the highway in Central America, I just know there was a lot of honking.

Sometimes you have to barrel forward even though you know you're doing it wrong. Doing it wrong is better than sitting there paralyzed. So barrel forward I did.

Driving in Costa Rica is like playing a video game, something I could say with more authority if I'd ever actually played a video game. You never know what's coming next: Dogs darting out in front of you, chickens pecking at intersections, entire families strolling down the center of the road, mountain paths so bumpy you feel like your teeth are going to fly out of your head.

I was in the car a solid hour before I saw my first traffic light. I'm not saying there weren't any traffic lights, I'm just saying I didn't see them. Fires were burning on the side of the road and the rooster to person ratio seemed heavily in favor of the roosters. Signs made no sense so I just gripped the wheel and hoped everyone would emerge unscathed.

The one sign I did understand was Fiesta de Pollo. I figured it out even before seeing the juicy birds turning on their spits, an accomplishment of which I am very proud. If I didn't have to drive all the way across Costa Rica before dark, I absolutely would have stopped for a chicken party.

Occasional gripping terror aside, driving from San Jose through...wherever it was and toward...wherever I was going (getting GPS was a good move for me) was well worth it. The road curved through mountain ranges under a deep blue sky and I forgot to roll up the windows before getting on the highway, so my hair was blowing cinematically in the wind. Until two minutes later, when it went from cinematic to rat's nest. But it was a spectacular two minutes.

Then the GPS started merrily chirping about falling rocks and dangerous bridges. Really? Is this something I should actually worry about or is it more an FYI? BE MORE SPECIFIC, TINY WOMAN IN MY GPS. Turns out, the falling rocks weren't my problem.

June is the rainy season in Costa Rica and torrential downpours start about 2 p.m. and keep a nice, cheerful pace throughout the afternoon. As I was parading through one of the villages, a kid right in front of me hit a wet patch and his motorbike slid out from under him.

This isn't something I'm proud of, but I probably shouldn't have been driving. I was exhausted. I was nodding off. I had to pull over a few times and rest just so I could keep going. I probably should've given up and found an alternative to a six hour drive at the end of a 24 hour travel day, but I was so tired I couldn't think to do anything but stay on my previously plotted course. So when I saw that kid go down, I thanked whatever power helps me out when shit gets bad that I was awake at that moment.

I slammed on my brakes and realized in a weirdly calm manner that the brakes on the car I was driving weren't nearly as responsive as the brakes I'm used to. He was on the ground and his bike was on the ground and I was almost on top of him and I still wasn't stopping, so I angled the car to head into a ditch. The brakes finally did their job as I skidded perpendicular to his head. Not to mention way closer than either of us enjoyed.

When I jumped out to see if he was hurt, he just stared at me in confusion.

It took me a few seconds to realize I'd spoken to him in English. I might have managed, "Are you okay?" in Spanish if I wasn't so exhausted and had, like, twenty minutes to prepare. Unfortunately, the nature of accidents is that you don't have twenty minutes to prepare. But he got to his feet - he had tied plastic bags to his shoes to keep them from getting wet - and walked his bike to the side of the road where people without cars and with local language skills were waiting.

Once my heart stopped racing, I followed the GPS through valleys and over jungle dense mountain tops where I finally found Nosara, a town that is - apparently - known for making tourists want to cry. I did not cry. I did curse the sky a few times and perform a lot of three-point turns and gingerly feel my molars for cracks after jolting down the bumpiest roads my skull had ever encountered.

When I finally found the place, I face planted on the bed and woke up ten hours later to find howler monkeys, mangos, and a view of the ocean.

IMG_3701

Ocean. Bonus: Zero death. 

Colorblind Clown Flies to Central America

I'm sitting in the Miami airport wearing the most ridiculous outfit. Every time I catch sight of myself in a reflective surface - of which airports have a regrettable number - I have to shake my head and wonder who decided it would be a good idea to let me dress myself. Pink cartoon shirt, pink sandals, fluffy yellow skirt, and obnoxious rainbow disco ball ring that I bought for Vegas and now refuse to take off. All of which lends credence to my brother's unflattering but entirely accurate assertion that I dress like a colorblind clown. After my brother and his girlfriend dropped me off at the airport, my fluffy yellow skirt and I discovered the flight was delayed. So I did a little work and entertained myself on g-chat with a friend who rode his motorcycle through South America a few years back. He told me what to order for breakfast in Costa Rica and I dutifully made notes on my phone as autocorrect inquired whether I really meant Sally Lizard instead of salsa lizano. No, iPhone. But I appreciate both your understanding of my character and your disinclination to learn Spanish.

Maybe I'm easily impressed but it still amazes me that you can sit in an airport and talk to a friend - and know that when you get where you're going, thousands of miles away, you can talk to the same friend the same way.

Nicole and I recently marveled at how you can just show up at the airport with your little bag and someone will take you to Paris. Or Turkey. Or Antarctica. Yes, you need money, but it's literally that easy. Show up, get maneuvered thousands of miles across the world and end up in the exact location you want. No more do we have to acquire a covered wagon and oxen and scale cliffs and ford rushing streams and hope to god nobody gets lost or dies along the way.

I am truly, astonishingly grateful. Not just to live in a time where all this is possible, but also that I'm able to take advantage if it, albeit in my limping so-where-exactly-is-money-coming-from-next-month kind of way. Money always appears, even when I don't yet know exactly how it will happen. If I want this life, this is part of it. For now. Soon, maybe even very soon, that will change.

This morning, we drank orange juice and flew straight into a sunrise. It made any momentary worry worth it. Because if that's not a miracle, I don't know what is.