Ooof, I just looked at this post. It’s really long.  Here’s the thumbnail version:  I stayed in a cabin on the beach. There happened to be cockroaches in the cabin. I did not like it AT ALL, but in the end, I forgive the beach. Oh yes, I forgive the beach.

Here I am, on a Wednesday, as usual, ready to sit down and write about my latest life revelation… kidding. Yes, I have had several, and the only people more tired of that than me is probably you.  So! Instead! I also just remembered that this time about ten days ago, I was on my seventeen billionth drink of the day, right in front of my mother, because I had slept outside on the beach all night in intermittent rain. And got eaten by mosquitoes and, I’m certain, no less than 400 other kinds of sand-dwelling bugs throughout the night.

So let me back up. A couple weeks ago, my mother and I took a trip to the Virgin Islands. It’s no secret around here that I have a slight addiction and it’s sort of my Life List to get everyone I know and love down there with me at some point in my life, both individually and as one huge-ass group. But, in all the times I’ve visited over the years, my mother has never been along for the ride. The furthest into the Caribbean we’ve gone together was the Bahamas, and that happened to be during spring break (I was already past the “spring break! wooo!” age)  and I was pretty sure at that point my mother thought every beach bar was only about getting drunk and seeing who could dance on the bar first.  (Okay, so she isn’t too far off on that one.)

Nonetheless, we finally got to take our trip a couple weeks ago, and as part of my wanting to try to pack multiple experiences into eight days, I asked her if she’d be up for staying in a beach cabin for a night or two. She was.  I went to every length I could to tell her how this “cabin” would be: real beds, refrigerator, electricity, no A/C, screens, slight breeze, steps from the beach, etc.  Very basic, but livable, especially for just a couple days.  She, surprisingly, was up for it.

We arrived on the island at about noon, dropped our things in our beach cabin, and went out to explore (read: immediately find all of my favorite bartenders and friends).  We then came back to the cabin, showered, changed, and went to the barbecue at the beach bar just steps from where our cabin was.  It’s a heck of a set up, right?  There is never a moment wherein I forget just how blessed I am to experience these things.  And while we’re at it, if you’ve never attended a traditional Caribbean beach bar-type barbecue, get that on your Life List as soon as possible. Unless you hate amazing food. And people. And laughter. And music. And pretty much all good things in this world. Do it, immediately.

After we were stuffed full with fish, ribs, chicken, and seven million traditional side dishes, we slowly shuffled our way back to our cabin, still hearing the music of the barbecue along with the soft waves on the beach in the background. It couldn’t have been more perfect sleeping conditions, and with just 3 hours of sleep the night before, I could not wait to sleep. I unlock the cabin door, step inside, flip on the light, walk about two steps to put my bottled water in the fridge, look down at one of the beds, and see the biggest @#$%! cockroach I have ever seen in my life.  Okay, deep breath. Don’t make mom panic.  “Um, what is that?” I ask, hoping I am hallucinating.

I can handle a lot of things, I KNOW bugs and critters come with the territory in the tropics. It’s a fact of life. Geckos, mosquitoes, sand fleas, and yes, even cockroaches happen. That’s how it is.  But, Lord help me, I cannot bear the thought of sleeping among cockroaches. So I breathe deeper.

“It’s definitely a cockroach,” my mom says, and so I freak out a little, try to kill it, of course miss and don’t kill it at all, and now it’s under the bed.  Okay, well it can run away. It will go out. There’s just one.

Except, no.

There’s not just one. I go over to my bag, to pull out my clothes, and there’s more.  THERE’S LIKE FIVE MORE.  And if I were the kind of person that used expletives on her blog, this is where you’d see a lot of EXPLETIVES ON THIS BLOG.  I couldn’t take it, people.  And although she was much more calm than me, my mother couldn’t take it either.  Then, I remembered!  This wasn’t my first time in a beach cabin, and I knew just what to do!  Several years ago I stayed in a beach cabin with friends while on a trip to Hawaii. Hawaii, also the tropics, also no stranger to the cockroach. And, yes, they were in the cabin.  Our solution? Sleep with the lights on. Cockroaches scatter when exposed to light. They do not like it. And in Hawaii, that solution worked.

So then that was going to be our solution here, too. We would just keep the light on.  Okay, fine. So we clean out every last corner of our bags, shake out every piece of clothing, reseal it all, and get ready for bed.  Just as we think we’ll maybe get some sleep tonight, THE [EXPLETIVE] POWER GOES OUT. ON THE WHOLE [EXPLETIVE] ISLAND.

Seriously? Yes, seriously.

By some miracle of intelligence, I had brought flashlights on this little adventure, so I got them out immediately, in the dark, feeling like things were crawling on me the entire time, and there my mom and I sat, staring at each other, sitting on the ends of our beds, flashlights in hand, wondering what we were going to do next.  By this time, the music has ended. People are stumbling to their beds, and on and island of only a few hundred people, and at past 10:00 p.m., we were out of luck.  There was going to be no one to help us figure out what do to. We had to be our own heroes. And so we sat.

I knew, because of past experiences with power outages on this island, that not only was this the usual, but the idea of the power coming back on that night was a pipe dream. Yes, there are some generators, but not here and certainly not on order at 10:00 p.m. for two women who are gagging themselves over the sight of some measly bugs.  And yes, I know some people would have just gotten over it, but I couldn’t, we couldn’t. I knew just how many cockroaches I’d seen, and that thought wasn’t going to leave my mind that night, or ever.

Finally my mom looks at me, stands up, and says “Get your sheet and pillow, we’re going to the beach.” The thought had crossed my mind, sure. My first instinct was to get the heck out of there. But I knew what waited in the sand, too. All those other creatures I’d mentioned, the sand fleas, the MOSQUITOES, they were all out there waiting, too.  But, what choice did we have?  I couldn’t stay up through another night, and I’d sooner die than sleep in pool of cockroaches, and so we sprayed ourselves down in bug spray, wrapped ourselves in our sheets like burritos, and tried to sleep on two chaise lounge chairs just a few feet from the ocean.

It sounds kind of nice, right? Kind of fun, adventurous even, right? And I guess it was. I mean, there were some light intermittent rain storms, and yes, there were bugs, and that beach was desserted as I often find myself wishing every beach were.  The only light were two or three mast lights reflecting in the bay, and the bright, bright moon when a rain cloud wasn’t blocking it. It was nice. But it was also pretty rough, and unplanned, and would have been a lot better had I had a really strong drink before heading out there.

We made it through the night though, and as usual, I ended up with all the mosquito bites and again only about 3 hours of sleep.  A little later in the morning, we walked down the beach, and my favorite beach bartender and friend put his arm around me and said “You look like you had a rough night.” I looked up at him and said “cockroaches” which is how just ten days ago at this time, I was on my seventeen billionth drink of the day, right in front of my mother, because I’d slept outside on the beach all night in intermittent rain.

We moved into a real room, sans bugs, the following night.  I do not blame the island, nor the cabin owners, nor the people that have stayed there cockroach-free in the past. I only blame myself, my wimpy, wimpy self.

The End.  THE [EXPELTIVE] END.

I have probably become far too philosophical for my own good around here lately. It’s like once a week I have these deep thoughts that have to be purged and so I do and then I think wow, how can a person not look crazy after all of that? And anyone who’s kept up is probably thinking the same thing. Working, then not working, then working again, then not so much working. Happy, then not happy, then happy again, and then still happy but also thinking way too hard and so then sort of unhappy. Oh, poor me, with the luxury of worrying about happiness. I know.

But of course life hasn’t stopped amidst all of this, and if I took the time to write out in detail everything that’s going on, it still wouldn’t really matter because crazy things happening and major life challenges just don’t take a break. I mean, I’m talking long-lost relatives calling out of no where craziness. I’m talking weird, weird news and phone calls. It’s weird, y’all, and I still don’t have a permanent job/career move happening, so everything else feels pretty unsettled. Except for the fact that I am still overwhelmed daily by just how OKAY I feel about everything, it’s hard to express that without sounding like a crazy person. Like someone who’s living in a fantasy and has lost her mind completely and who’s going to end up in a bad, bad situation.

And while those thoughts cross my mind, I just don’t think it’s going to get that bad. I can’t explain things like this, and I guess who can? But when you say it out loud, to people who don’t seem to understand quitting a job and losing income and pretty much putting everything you’ve worked hard to have in 16 years in jeopardy, then yeah it does sound pretty crazy.  But you know what? I am healthy, my family is healthy, I play Scrabble with my grandmother and I do her chores so she doesn’t have to, I spend time with family and my adorable nephew, I have hikes and long dinners with friends, people to support me, and over all life isn’t just good it is damn good. It’s like hitting a jackpot, except that jackpot is filled with everything except money.

It’s a roller coaster, pretty much daily, because I know that this can’t go on forever. And I know that while there is every possibility of a very good road, there is also the same possibility of a very bad road. I guess the only thing I know for sure is that the difference between those roads is, apparently, faith and paying attention.  Everything I’m doing or have done has probably not been the right thing. I get that. It’s been risky and stupid and, in a lot of opinions, crazy. I could very well be (for lack of a more intelligent phrase) screwing myself for the rest of my life. It’s true.  But right now, looking around me, looking at the immediate minutes and hours and days ahead, I don’t feel screwed at all.

I just feel lucky.

Since the weekend, I’ve been pretty vocal on Twitter about the flooding in Nashville.  I’m going to assume you’ve heard about it by now, although I talked to a friend just yesterday who hadn’t, so I know it’s possible.  For me, though, this hits close to home. Along with having friends in Nashville—friends who are safe, thankfully—I simply love that town.

Today I’ve reposted below a post from about a year ago when I was in Nashville to run the Country Music Marathon. I took a lot of photos that trip, and although the post is long, it conveys my genuine thrill and appreciation for the city.  A good part of the post focuses on my visit to the Grand Ole Opry, which looked like this when I was there:

And yesterday morning, looked like this:

It just makes my heart sink.

And yes, I know there are other things going on in the world, in our country. I know this.  And I know if any city can come together and recover, it’s Nashville.

In the coming days and weeks, there will be a lot of ways to help. I hope if you can help, you will.  It’s a special place, people.  And you can see a little of why I think so, below.

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Nashville: The other parts not about the running

Lest anyone believe that my trip to Tennessee was all about running and emotions and accomplishment, I’d like to point out that I came away with about 40 race day photos, and about 240 from the rest of the trip. Or there’s the fact that nearly two weeks later I’m still talking about food, like okra.  Man, okra is good stuff.

Anyway, I did some walking around Nashville, and some touristy stuff.  Oh, and let’s just face it, I love the touristy stuff.  My last trip to Nashville was all business (and by that I mean I immediately got high on sweet tea and didn’t take a lot of pictures) so it was nice to do some lookin’ this time around.

There was food, like the Pancake Pantry:

And mark my words right now, I think my grandmother’s twin was our waitress.  I don’t know where she came from, but she was the sweetest woman and I felt like maybe if I dripped something on my chin while eating she would have come over, spit on a napkin, and wiped my face for me.

Or maybe I just love her because she brought me sweet potato pancakes:

I restrained myself from eating all five the day before a marathon, but my lands, I could have.

We also drove the race course, as I mentioned in my race report, and my favorite thing about that had to have been how bright GREEN the entire city was. I was so happy to be in the midst of springtime at a moment when it was actually snowing here in the Rockies.

And then of course I had to hang out the car window and get all kinds of other photos, only some of which actually came out.

The day after the marathon was a bit of a different story.  I wanted to keep moving, but I was slow. Very, very slow.  While my friends went museum-ing, I did my own walking tour. Slowly.

But that’s probably also what allowed me to notice things I otherwise may not have noticed, like this:

I love Dolly. LOVE her.  As in I dressed as her for Halloween twice as a kid. There are three people on this Earth wherein my knees would go weak upon seeing, and she’s one of them.  She’s a genius, and hilarious.

And then of course I had to do some window shoppin’:

And some bar hoppin’:

And some star gazin’:

And some… okay, never mind, that’s getting old.

But I’m not gonna lie, I loved it.  I really do love country music. I love other music, too, of course but country music is good stuff. Let me know if you want to argue with me about that. Pack a lunch.

Maybe it’s just because I was moving so slowly, but there just seemed to be a little bit of charm around every corner.

And then we went to lunch.  At the Loveless Cafe. Can you say fried food?

Which is where the okra came in.  And the sweet tea.

…of which I had gallons.   Normally, I’d have limited myself a bit, but that’s the beauty of the day after a marathon: all the fried food you want. Sorry, that’s just how I see things.

Just a couple more stops.  Hold on, we can make it.  We can do it together! Someone sing Kum Ba Yah already.

Last month marked my fourth anniversary for this site, and I would have celebrated somehow but I was busy traveling between some of the most extreme conditions imagineable throughout the month of January.

For instance, Iowa:

In Iowa I helped on the farm. You know, with the hay and the animals:

It was so cold and snowy. Also? It was so cold.

And by “helped on the farm” I mean was driven around in a warm car and looked at pretty farm scenes with animals. And then we went to lunch.

Later in the month, I got to warm up a little, as I’m sure you might remember. There was no farm, and no animals.

Well, that’s not entirely true. There are some animals.

And they, if possible, moved slower than me.

So what I’m really saying is that January went really fast, and, well, February is, too and if I don’t hurry up and find something to do to celebrate that four years we’ll be at five years.

Which is where I must ask you, Internet, what should I do to celebrate? Write a revealing post?  Give something away? Redesign the blog a little? (This may just be already in progress.) Maybe go for a midnight run and take pictures? I don’t know, help me!

I’m being simple-minded here, I’m sure. I know. It’s just that I’ve had this cold and you would not believe the amount of…. nevermind,  it wasn’t okay to share more than that four years ago and it’s still not okay now. But my head is clouded, and I need help.

Now here’s a pretty beach:

Thank you, and The End.

It was my full intention, laptop in hand (read: carry-on) as I boarded the plane, to keep up with blog posting while I was away last week. And I did do that. For one day. Thank you. That was Friday the 22nd, and oh, look here we are over a week later and I am finally finding it in me to catch up. And if this were Twitter, I would end that statement with a hashtag something like #geewherehaveweheardthisbefore, because we most definitely have heard this before.

It’s just that I have such an easy tiiimmme unplugging, you know?  Yeah, I know, your heart breaks for me. Moving right along.  Because this trip, though somewhat planned, turned out to be even so much more than I knew. And I want to retell it. In parts.  You’re welcome.

The Point of the Trip

Now then, the point of the trip itself: Operation Sneak Onto An Island. I actually didn’t call it that, but I should have, because that’s what I had to do. And the whole point of that was that two friends of mine, I’d call them island friends, although they live stateside most of the time like me, you, and the rest of us that freeze several months out of the year. But I met my friends on the island, and therefore they are island friends. And they were having an anniversary celebration, complete with a vow renewal ceremony. Because they were married there, and they wanted to celebrate there, ten years later. (And those last several sentences, and likely those that follow, would give my college English professors a heart attack.)

My friends, the ones having an anniversary, were celebrating on Friday the 22nd, and they invited me months and months ago, when I was still employed and restricted from vacation time (ah, those were the days!), and basically had zero hope of being able to attend. It was a sad thing when I had to turn down that invite. But! Then I quit my job, and became a full-time, temporary loafer, so no longer was I tied down.  Combine that with an unheard of low fare alert I received just a few weeks before the actual date of the event and a couple of other veerrrryy generous friends who allow me to bunk with them more often than I deserve, and the surprise covert operation was a done deal.

Keeping this secret was so difficult for me. It meant not saying anything on my blog, and therefore Twitter, or Facebook or to any mutual friends (minus a few in on the covert operation). A little reaffirmed fact about me: I can keep a “bad” secret with me until death, but ask me to keep a fun secret and I am impossible. But when I got to show up and surprise my friends, and then be a part of their celebration, it was worth it.

It was the home of these same friends I brought my friends down to stay in back in October for my 30th birthday, you might remember, and well, just like the island itself, it can be a magical place.

It was a beautiful celebration in a beautiful place, and I’m certainly better for having been part of it, not to mention friends with all these wonderful people whom I met completely by timing and chance.

Speaking of Timing and Chance

Here’s where the story gets even more interesting.

I arrived on the island the night before my friends’ celebration, which meant that all of the 21st I was either in an airport or on a plane. Somewhere between 10 and a billion hours of voluntary torture is what it takes to get down to the Caribbean from the Western U.S., and my lands as worth it as it is, it kicks your ass. There is no other way to put that, it just plain kicks your ass. And because of my secret, I couldn’t complain about any of it on the Internet. I know, right?!

On the last leg of my trip, in the Miami airport (which, in my opinion, has not moved out of the category of AWFUL in over a decade) I collapsed on a vinyl chair and drank what was probably my fiftieth caffeinated beverage of the day. A couple sat down next to me along with another man, and before long I saw that they were smart, because they were drinking beer. We started chatting, and I’d noticed the girl had a long garment bag with her, which could only mean one thing: Island Wedding.

Soon we found out we were not only on the same flight but sitting in the same row on the plane, where I did join in the beer drinking after all. We talked about the islands, about weddings, about love, about life. It was great. And I only had one beer, so I know it really must have all been real.

I also know it was real because at this point, I know that’s just how things happen in the islands. It just is. Whether you’re there, on your way, or somewhere in between, when that place is involved I’m telling you, good things and good people just come into the picture. I can’t explain it, I don’t necessarily want to, but I know it’s true. So when the happy couple, who I’d learned were actually eloping, asked me to take photos of their wedding, I was not entirely surprised. Shocked? Yes. Intimidated? Yes. Questioning their sobriety? Yes.

Long story short, though, they were sober, I was sober, and I went out two days later and photographed their very beautiful, very quiet, very perfect island wedding ceremony. We sailed to a small island, just the couple, the captain and his first mate, and me.  It was a beautiful day, and I was grateful for the invite.  And that day, I also got to put “Photographer” in the field for occupation on a customs form, which was a highlight I won’t soon forget.

Serendipitous, I tell you.

Stranded in the Islands

Three days later, after beaching and hiking and generally finding absolutely nothing to complain about all day every day, it was time for my quick trip to end.  I woke up at five in the morning, my friend (bless her!) drove me across the island, I caught a ferry, caught a taxi, went through customs, and ended up in the airport. Kids, it is a long day just getting to the airport, and you’re not even on the plane yet.

I’ve tried various ways of explaining this next part, but I can’t seem to do it better than I did in the emails I sent to a couple friends when they asked, paraphrased, HOW THE HELL DO YOU GET STUCK IN THE TROPICS? My response, below:

The plane I was supposed to leave on broke, something about a cooling fan, so they couldn’t go anywhere (fine by me, the pilot says no and I’m totally cool with that, right?) but the thing is, to even get to the airport I have to take a car ride across the island, then a ferry, then a taxi from the dock to the airport, and then deal with customs, which is fake as compared to most customs, but nonetheless, customs, and then sit in an airport with, literally, no PA system (at least one that can be heard). IF YOU CAN IMAGINE.

So, when someone says the flight’s not leaving and they’ll either book you on a later one (maybe) or one the following day it’s like, um, NO, because what you went through just to get there (not to mention packing up the flip-flops and breaking out the parka) is just not worth going all the way back for 12 hours. So, since I was going to be coming back anyway, I demanded it be at least a 48-hour extension.  And by “demanded” I mean spoke very kindly, smiled, and observed all cultural and customary manners. Ha.

And that’s how I got to spend a couple more days “stranded” in the Caribbean. I was staying with friends, so they gladly took me back in. Which is something I will never figure out as long as I live, how I got friends such as these. Crazy. Serendipitous. All of it.

The End.

Until next month.

I know Christmas and holiday times bring out a lot of optimism and wonderment in people (except when you’re at the mall. So help you if you are at the mall), but I tend to be like that a lot of the time. It is kind of how I’ve lived so far, thinking “what if?” and then, more often than not, actually seeing things fall into place. I’m doing a lot of that today, because I just cannot see any other way. If the whole world doesn’t know by now, not to say that the whole world cares, I’ve been out of a regular gig (JOB) for over six weeks now.

Although this was all my choice, it’s not without it’s moments of panic. Planning and reassurance aside, sometimes it’s all I can do to keep myself from FREAKING OUT. I mean the kind of freaking out only reserved for emergencies, but in my mind, there’s a really thin line between EMERGENCY and CALM DOWN, STUPID, it’s all going to work out. I live on that line a lot.

But I think I also picked the best time of year to live on that line, because everyone around me is a little more optimistic and reassured, too. Even if I am in a panic and flailing around in the streets come January 2nd, right now I’m okay.

In my world, it’s Christmas! No need to panic, for there are cookies and snowmen and lights!

(The above three photos taken at the Bellagio Hotel, Las Vegas earlier this month. The majority of the display is created from flowers and live plants. It is phenomenal, if you ask me.)

And there are also baked goods galore around here, as I’m sure there are where ever you are, too. My plan: eat them all. Yes, I know. But in all practicality there is a chance I will have to live outdoors soon and I’m thinking I’m going to need the extra layers of warmth. And, man, Key Lime Cookies can provide that layer, let me assure you!

Alright, truth be told, I really don’t think I’m going to be living on the street. That is the optimistic part of me, the part of me that knows it’s going to work out. And by “it” I mean a lot of things. Number one being my immediate future. In spite of how crazy it sounds.

In the mean time, I cannot help but party a little.

There’s nothing like a pile of dirty dishes and a tub full of empty wine bottles to make you feel like it’s all going to work out, right?

So that’s why I can easily think of a What If list. In spite of it sounding stupid and crazy and being within moments of a freak out, I still feel so close to that What If that I can almost touch it.

I hope your holiday, whatever it may be, is full of optimism and dirty dishes. And maybe some cookies and wine.

(sorry for the tiny photos)

Oh, yeah. Never mind. I remember now.

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Also, just a note to the person who’s started stealing the photos from this blog: We caught you. Again. Yes, again. And we’ve contacted you, and you’ve taken down the photos you stole, and now you’re being investigated for possibly trying to sell those photos, along with others you’ve stolen. And you’re probably being sued by, like, five people. So stop it.

A note to anyone else looking to steal photos from this blog: They are mine, I took them, I posted them. Don’t steal them, or I will find you. And trust me, I have way too much time on my hands these days to go easy on you.

I know this for sure: once I start cleaning my house, I cannot stop. There is something to this whole “get your house in order” thing, I will tell you that.  Yesterday I was stuck inside a tangled web of computer/electronic/whydowehavethiscrap wires for two hours. Although everything was up and running afterward (success!) it still looks as messy as it ever did, and annoys me as much as it did before.  Moral of the story: don’t rearrange your office, no good can come of it.

I have to say, I do like this “work at home” thing. Or, in my case, “get ready to work at home” thing. It’s relaxing, it makes me like my home, and I get to sit inside and look directly out a window instead of at a cube wall. Win, no?

The thing is, I need practice. I am so easily distracted, so ready to dream off to some other place, that I cannot be trusted.

As good as the view from home is, I think of other things. Views out of other places and other windows, or lack of windows, as the case may be:

Out other front doors. Or lack of doors, as the case may be:

I realize this doesn’t deserve any sympathy, and I’m not looking for it.  But at the same time, I have to wonder: am I ever going to be good at sitting still and concentrating for any length of time?

I’m going to go with NO.

I know too much. I’ve seen too much. It’s hopeless.

I’m forever distracted.

What a shame.