grateful and 28-ful

My mom, still beautiful in her 60s, is fond of saying that having another birthday is better than the alternative. And in the weeks leading up to my 28th birthday, I would grumble and agree only begrudgingly, shocked that the gradual, stealthy approach of my late twenties has left me clinging white-knuckled to my youth as I struggle to avoid the gaping maw of the big 3-0.

But last Wednesday, the night before my birthday, I went to yoga class, and while mired in the pain of a three-minute forward fold I was reminded of the importance of being grateful. Sure, getting older is stupid and I'd rather be 21 forever (who wouldn't), but on this fucked-up journey I'm also surrounded by a whole lot of luck and a whole lot of awesome.

Why I'm grateful at 28

1. My friends know I can veer a bit toward the "not so much" side of sane, but they seem to like me anyway. I would be lost without their endless kindness, e-mails, lunch dates, travel plans, and numerous trips to Glace (pictured below).

2. My boyfriend is smart, sexy, kind and encouraging. And probably the funniest person I know - he says things that will make me laugh all over again 20 minutes after the fact (he calls it "deep comedy"). In the three years we've been together, he has changed my life for the better in so many ways.

3. My parents and my brother would probably do just about anything for me, as I would for them. I'm extremely lucky to have such a reliable source of love and security.

4. My cats, Bubba Lee Kinsey and Phoenix, literally amaze me daily. (Pictured below: I totally caught them snuggling. Bubba is the big gray tabby; Fifi is the calico.)

5. In this shit economy I have a good-enough-for-now job that allows me to write, be creative and afford my own place, which is at times claustrophobically small but where I can experience the joys of eating sandwiches in bed, leaving my Christmas tree up all year, and draining a six-pack of pumpkin beer on the porch on a weeknight.

6. I am in the best goddamn shape of my life. Not even during my days as a whiny aspiring high school sprinter have I been this ass-kickingly buff. By summer I will have a six-pack. (And this time I'm not talking beer.)

7. My godson is one hell of a little dude (and his mom is one of my favorite people as well). I can't wait to watch him grow up and introduce him to the mindfuck of Royals baseball (no, really - it will make him stronger).

8. I am healthy and I have access to clean water and food. So many people can't say the same.

9. Cheese is delicious. I am really stupidly thankful for cheese.

10. I love that my mind can still be blown. Most recently I stood in horrified awe of the bulbous, bulging starfish on the columns beneath a pier in Seattle (pictured below).

day 45: i threw away the scale

It sounds insane to admit, but since March I've let a mass-produced electronic gadget from Wal-Mart, a cursed bathroom scale with the deceptive name "Health-o-meter," largely influence my happiness and self-worth.

First thing each morning I'd step on and hold my breath, as though this might somehow cause a smaller number to appear on the counter between my big toes. And each morning was a test: anything below a certain number was acceptable; anything above and I had failed, and my day was off to a shit start.

sunset over Milford Lake

Right now it's probably important to mention that, in a coldly rational sense, I know I'm nowhere near overweight; in fact, I'm in the "healthy" body mass index range for my height and size. My appearance has always been important to me, so I've always watched my weight and have never had much of a problem with it.

But earlier this year I was rejected from every MFA program to which I applied (eight total), and I saw my already tenuous acceptance of myself as a "writer" slip further away from reality. I was appalled by how little control I had over the situation - my admittance was based largely on vague, subjective criteria, i.e., did they "like" my writing, or was I a "good fit" with their program (turns out they didn't, and I wasn't).

More or less, with my life seemingly stagnating while my friends bought houses, got married and produced offspring, I needed to have absolute control over something, and the most obvious option was my weight. I bought the fucking Health-o-meter and allowed it, from its nook by the bathroom sink, to mock me when I ate a bag of salt and vinegar chips for lunch or allowed myself guacamole at Chipotle. I worked out five days a week and weighed myself upwards of five times a day, cursing myself for gains and praising losses, and within a few months I'd dropped nearly ten pounds.

In a phrase, FUCK YEAH.

But this new measure of control carried its own self-imposed misery. Nobody set my weight loss standard; I set it for myself, which made it all the more private and unrelatable. In fact, sharing it with anyone invariably got the same response: "You're already skinny; you have nothing to worry about." But it was about more than just being skinny. It was about getting a grip.

Then last weekend I went camping at Milford State Park in the Flint Hills. Along with waiting out a torrential downpour in a little tent by the lake and biking along rows of trees and prairie grass, I also didn't worry about my weight for the first time in months. I scooped mounds of french onion dip onto potato chips; I scarfed s'mores; I chugged Miller High Life. And on the last day, when I was taking a shower along with about 15 spiders and a small toad (seriously), I caught sight of myself in the mirror - not scrutinizing as usual, just looking - and I realized, hey, I look good.

When I got home, I stared down the dreaded Health-o-meter and stepped on. Moments later I was greeted by the largest number I've seen in some time. But instead of beating myself up, I picked up the cursed gadget and tossed it unceremoniously in the garbage. This morning the trash man picked it up at the curb, and for the first time this year, a week before my 28th birthday, I left my apartment lighter.

day 44: i ran with the dogs

Lately I've been searching for a cause, something I can wholeheartedly and selflessly support. Okay, so maybe it's not entirely selfless - I am, after all, an admitted narcissist, so in a way I need volunteer work as much as volunteer work needs me. But I do need to support my cause unequivocally; as a Libra, my innate need to weigh every option dictates this.

Because I am fascinated by the critters of this world (and because going to veterinary school would cost literally more than my life is worth, which according to my own calculations is approximately the same as a bottle of mid-quality Shiraz), volunteering at an animal shelter seemed a natural choice.

And as though fated, last week my friend L. sent me an e-mail from a group of volunteers who run with dogs at The Pet Connection, a no-kill shelter in Mission, Kansas. And because a calm dog is more likely to be adopted than a rowdy, holy-shit-it's-people, I'm-gonna-lick-your-face-now dog, the volunteers perform a valuable service by wearing the dogs out.

The only catch: the runs start at 9 a.m. on Saturday mornings, a time I normally like to call "comatose." But, I have to remind myself, this isn't about you. Unlike a hungover state, which I have determined is the most self-centered state of existence possible (I need food; I need Advil; I need water; I need an intravenous saline drip), this is all about the dogs.

So I arrived at Mission Pet Connection at 9 a.m. sharp, chugging a nonfat pumpkin spice latte from Starbucks before stepping out to meet Devon, the sweet fella I'd be taking for a walk.

A mild-mannered pup who looked to be somewhere between German shepherd and corgi, Devon was eager to hit the pavement. The volunteer coordinator explained the route, and then we were off. 

Admittedly I hadn't known what to expect - I showed up with my hair down wearing jean shorts and my worn-the-fuck-out eight-year-old Chucks - but I quickly got the rhythm down and discovered that running with a dog is borderline freaking joyous. At stoplights, Devon would jump up, put his paws on my chest and lick my arm while I called him a good buddy and scratched his ears.

After spending 14 years of my life with Eddie, Jack Russell Terrier extraordinaire, I would love to have a little terrier of my own, but my small, yardless Midtown apartment and strange hours would be unfair to such a wonderful creature. Perhaps someday I will be able to afford a little house with a little yard for a little dog. 

But in the meantime, running with the dogs on Saturday mornings is a happy middle ground.

Side note: My other mega-cause is marriage equality, so hopefully I'll find a meaningful way to support that goal as well. Because goddammit, I find its detractors just infuriatingly wrong and stupid, and thusly my Libran nature is satisfied.

day 43: i joined in the great typo hunt

Depending on your position, arming hard-core grammar nerds (or "hawks" as some might call them) with sharpies, white-out and chalk and setting them loose to go typo hunting is either a blessing or a curse.

They will cross out that unnecessary apostrophe designating a restaurant's back room for "employee's only," add punctuation to the sidewalk sign reading "please come in seat yourself," and suffer an aneurysm upon encountering the phrase "your welcome." These are the people who proofread billboards, grit their teeth at misplaced modifiers, and mock you behind your back for using lazy abbreviations like "thx," "gr8" and "b4."

While visiting the Kansas City Public Library, professional typo hunters Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson talked about their cross-country road trip correcting typos everywhere from mall kiosks to the Grand Canyon to the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, at which they found both "Frances" (sic) and "Assissi" (sic) spelled incorrectly. 

this fucking sign is in the kitchen at my office.

The book that resulted from the exploits of these two mild-mannered nerds is aptly titled The Great Typo Hunt, and it's something of a call-to-arms for every armchair grammarian. 

One question I used to ask myself, and with which Deck similarly struggled while writing the book: What's the fucking point? Do sticklers really just have sticks up their asses, causing them to resist the natural forces of change?

And yes, maybe those people who get whiny about misspellings of "donut" or insist "ain't ain't a word because ain't ain't in the dictionary" (not gonna say I'm completely exempt from either category) do need to lighten up. Part of the beauty of language, after all, is that it's a living, ever-evolving beast that can accommodate advancements and changes in technology and culture. A staggering number of words exist today that were meaningless only a decade ago.

But there are certain rules that must remain static; I mean, no one argues that just because a bunch of people get it wrong, eight times eight is now going to equal 65, or that because it's tedious to learn the rules, the value of X in an equation is open to interpretation. No matter how you slice it, a complete sentence needs a subject and a verb, words have correct spellings, and the vast majority (like 99 percent) of plurals do not require apostrophes. 

These rules are important for clarity and consistency of communication, yes, but also because they're unambiguously correct. And there's something noble about fighting for what's right, even if it's as silly as preserving the integrity of the semicolon in bathroom wall graffiti (FYI, my resume could include: "Buzzard Beach bathroom graffiti editor, Oct. 2003 to July 2007").

day 42: i rediscovered frozen yogurt

Down the street from my childhood home was a fried-chicken-and-mashed-potatoes homestyle restaurant called Joe's Barn. And the name was literal - in the not-yet-suburbanized community of Stanley, Kansas, this full-service eatery had indeed been converted from a big, red barn, with the original rafters and windows still visible up top.

As a kid I was inexplicably horrified by meat - it had not yet become a moral issue, I just thought it was fucking gross - so my favorite part of the Joe's Barn experience was the self-serve frozen yogurt machine.

The pink strawberry ice cream coiled into my glass bowl like intestines (for some reason this image did not gross me out); the vanilla provided a perfect palette for rainbow sprinkles; and the twist was simply magical, because how on earth did chocolate AND vanilla come out of THE SAME spout?

I would take my ice cream back to the table and lick each bite slowly from the spoon, often going back for seconds or even thirds.

As I got older and experienced more exicitng specialty ice cream flavors and discovered the mouth orgasm of gelato, soft-serve fro-yo kind of fell off my radar until yesterday when I discovered Yogurtini.

The moment I walked into the sleek, modern, blue-and-white-tiled shop my mind was blown: bowls the size of small popcorn buckets were stacked on a table next to 15 self-serve ice cream spigots. Because I am both impulsive and lack self-restraint, I grabbed a bowl and went at it, filling it with whatever sounded good. This ended up being a mixture of red velvet, dulce de leche, and something else I added randomly because I could still see the bottom of the bowl, and that was just not gonna fly.

When I got to the toppings, my dam of self-restraint broke entirely, flooding my brain with commands beginning in "I want" and ending in "Twix, cookie dough, brownie chunks, gummy bears, sprinkles, blackberries, kiwi, chocolate sauce, marshmallow goo." I ended up with a globular, multi-colored mountain that could have been on the cover of a "what not to eat" pamphlet for diabetics.

Of course my chilly creation melted to a disgustingly sweet grayish sludge, but my friends had better luck: the tart yogurt is good with fruit and coconut, apparently, so next time I'll know to go with a plan.

day 41: I ran a 5k through the mud and muck

When I signed up for the Mud and Muck Run, I figured I’d jog my three miles and then trot across a semi-muddy finish line while some lawn sprinklers spat arcs of water over my head. I figured I’d end up relatively clean, perhaps splattered with mud from the knees down.

I did not expect to emerge from a literal three-foot-deep mud pit looking like a fucking swamp monster, and I really did not expect to stand in the sun waiting in line to hose off while the muck on my body slowly hardened to a crust, all the while digging handfuls of wet, shimmering glop out of my cleavage.

But because I spent a significant portion of my childhood ruining pairs of white dress shoes while digging mud pits with my brother and cousins in our grandmother’s back yard (one time we dug a pit nearly a foot deep and even caught some toads to put in it before our parents got wise and shut us down), I wasn’t going to turn down a socially acceptable opportunity to get good and dirty. I mean, where else can you glormp down a sidewalk covered from the neck down in stank-ass sludge and have people greet you with a nod and a smile?

The race itself took place along a pleasant, meandering and scenic course in a park on the Unity Village Campus in Lee's Summit. With steep hills and rocky pathways, parts of the trail were difficult and even strenuous, but to me that meant one thing: I was earning my frolic through the filth, as well as the vegetarian chili I was going to eat afterward (at least I would have if they hadn’t shut down the food operation while I was still in line for one of ONLY THREE hoses, ridiculous considering the hundreds of attendees).

As we neared the three-mile marker, screams that fell somewhere on the spectrum from delighted to horrified signaled the presence of the mud pit around the next turn. And as far as mud pits go, this one was totally the bully who makes fun of your sweater and gives you a swirly before stealing your pencil case and your lunch money: I was shocked to see a grinning little girl doggie-paddling in circles around the pit's edge. Holy shit, I thought, this muck is deep enough to swim in.

“Are you guys sure you wanna do this?” my friend J. asked, clearly second-guessing her commitment to completely ruining a pair of shoes.

“We pretty much have to,” I said.

We quickly discovered that standing up in the pit meant sinking ala my worst childhood quicksand nightmare, so the only way across was to swim. Some people backstroked; I scooted along on my stomach and grabbed at god-knows-what to propel myself forward –- “Was that a shoe?” I heard someone yell as I grabbed at something that wriggled as though alive.

We emerged glimmering in the midday sun, telling ourselves it was like getting a spa treatment… right?

kansas city vs. seattle

Note: I haven't been very good about updating this blog due to depression, futility, too much pinot grigio, failure, this poem by Charles Bukowski, etc. My goal going forward is four times per week.

I was nearly 25 years old before I realized Kansas City isn't all that bad: I mean, it has restaurants like Eggtc. and You Say Tomato, dive bars like Dave's Stagecoach and Chez Charlie, and plenty of trees and green space, plus a low cost of living. 

But every time I visit a place like Seattle, as I did last week, I'll be reminded that KC is, in fact, a big small town, especially when other travelers I meet say things like, "Yeah, I'm planning to visit pretty much every place but Kansas City, sorry," as though it offends me, and then, "How are Toto and Dorothy?" as though I still think it's funny after hearing it for the five-hundredth time. 

Just for the sake of competition, though, here's my snap-judgment KC vs. Seattle showdown, based solely on various initial impressions:

Round 1: SEAFOOD

Seattle:

Choose from saltwater (the Puget Sound) or freshwater (Lake Union, Lake Washington). You can get everything from dungeness crab to king salmon or tilapia to halibut. My friend I. and I had some oh-my-god smoked salmon nuggets at the Fisherman's Terminal against which I will now compare all food.

Kansas City:

There's a dirty pond around 27th and Broadway where I suspect bums jab at mutant fish with sticks.

Who has the edge: Seattle

Round 2: SAFETY

Kansas City:
Within six months of moving to 39th Street and Wyoming in 2003, I got mugged by some behemoth with a crowbar who stole my purse and my new cell phone. Also, at night I used to sit by the open window in my living room and listen to the bums sing.

Seattle:
The scariest thing that happened was when some toothless crack addict got all up in my face mumbling gibberish while I was on the phone. That is to say, kind of gross, but not scary at all. Also, as two girls walking alone at night, I. and I never once felt uncomfortable on the busy, well-lit streets.

Who has the edge: Seattle

Round 3: SCULPTURE PARKS

Seattle: 
The Olympic Sculpture park occupies a beautiful, grassy hillside overlooking one of Seattle's many glittering bodies of water. But the sculptures themselves were scarce and somewhat unassuming, aside from a shiny aluminum tree for which Charlie Brown would have no love. We did have some fun climbing on wooden replicas of a washer and dryer for photo-ops. 

 

Kansas City:
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is home to several stunning pieces I still remember vividly though I haven't seen them in over a year, including, of course, the world's largest shuttlecocks, the several haunting rows of emaciated, headless bronze figures (Standing Figures by Magdalena Abakanowicz, below), and several abstract but oddly hypnotizing Henry Moore creations.

Who has the edge: Kansas City

Round 4: PRO BASEBALL STADIUMS

Seattle: 
The home of the Mariners, Safeco Field (in the background below, as seen from the Smith Tower) is downtown within walking distance of the bars and restaurants of lively Pioneer Square. Built in 1999, it's one of only two partially-domed stadiums in the world, providing shelter from the rainy northwestern climate. The pitcher-friendly park features natural grass and is named after a Seattle-based insurance company.

Kansas City:
In the drab, ironed landscape of a Blue Springs parking lot, the Royals' Kauffman Stadium is within a five-minute drive of several sketchy barbecue joints and strip clubs. Built in 1973 and named for late owner Ewing Kauffman, the park is the sixth-oldest in the MLB and the only stadium with fountains in the outfield. 

Who has the edge: draw

Round 5: FARMERS' MARKETS

Kansas City:
The first time I went to KC's downtown City Market I was 19, and it is to date one of my favorite summer memories. I snatched up several plants that I was unable to keep alive longer than a couple months, and I bought a bunch of fresh vegetables I never cooked and some dried lavender my cat ended up eating. But the experience freed me, somehow, and let me know there was more to the city than seedy gas stations, the creepy cashier at Apple Market with the hand swollen to two times its normal size, and a whole bunch of people who just wanted to drink 40s and smoke cigarettes.

Seattle:
For all my happy City Market memories, it is absolutely dwarfed by the awesome supernova of Seattle's century-old Pike Place Market. With a street musician on each block(some good, some pretty awful) and cute dreadlocked boys (who, I realized somewhat painfully, are now much too young for me) handing out slices of fresh peaches at the many produce stands, the market has a life force all its own. The many colorful flower stands are a treat for anyone coming from the summer wasteland of the Midwest, and the Pike Place Fish Market truly lives up to its fame, with strapping young fishermen-types shouting catch phrases as they toss and wrap your order. There's also the Beecher's Handmade Cheese factory, home to mouth parties such as the world's creamiest mac-n-cheese, which the cashier informed us you can order online (note to self: hide your credit cards next time you drink) and an heirloom tomato and grilled cheese sandwich.

Who has the edge: Seattle

So far, as expected (largely because I'm notoriously self-defeating) Seattle comes out on top. But I suspect if I were to include gelato (Christopher Elbow's Glace) and happy hour prices (Buzzard Beach's 75-cent PBRs) in round two, KC would come back swinging for the fence.