175

175 years ago, John Deere made the first steel plow.
175 months ago, I was dreading the shuttle run in PE and learning Flight of the Bumblebee on the piano for my 8th-grade talent show.
175 days ago, I was emailing my old professors to let them know I had decided to pursue a doctoral degree in speech pathology.
175 hours ago, I was mourning the conclusion of a fantastic vacation in Chicago and trying to assimilate back into normal life, with varying degrees of success.
175 minutes ago, I was eating a quesadilla and chopped veggies (celery and red bell pepper) for dinner.
175 seconds ago, I was listening to my roommate sew our Halloween costumes.

And 175 weeks ago, my life changed when I decided to start walking 5 days a week. Now, 175 weeks and 5 miles/day later, I'm still at it. I am so grateful I had the wherewithal to make that commitment and stick with it. It has literally changed my life.
Here's to another 175 weeks, well let's be honest--here's to walking 5 days a week FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE. Oy. 5 miles 5 days a week. Will it ever end??? Truthfully? I hope not.

175!

Ode to Mike

Tomorrow is my brother’s birthday. I’ve been thinking about him a lot this week as he prepares to leave his 20’s for good. Because I’m only 18 months younger than him, I will soon follow. I was always glad to be able to follow in his footsteps, grateful he led the way for me to have the courage to survive many of life’s exciting adventures with the simple reassurance, “Hey, he did this and survived. I can too.” I wanted to be like him in so many ways- academically (he was always far more academically adept than I was…), socially, artistically, intellectually, etc. etc. etc.
I won’t bore you with endless memories of talking together, playing together, being together. But rest assured, I feel lucky to have been thrown together to experience mortality. Despite his dangling my dolls from the top bunk (“She’s gonna jump, Katy! She’s gonna jump!”), hiding the last popsicle in the freezer, kicking the ladder over after he had scurried up the maple tree behind me (he could jump down, I was too scared…), sliding off the teeter totter while I was 8 feet in the air so I could plummet to an evening with a sore rear end, and countless other appropriately “big brother” behaviors, I totally love the guy.
Here’s to many more years of big-brotherness. Happy Birthday, Mike.

My kind of gaming

If you're not aware, I am an avid player of social games. By the term 'social games', I do not refer to noble pursuits such as social mingling or chilling with my chums. Oh no. "Social games" is a carefully crafted term to refer to informal experimentation designed to disrupt social norms and throw people for, what we might call, "a loop". The key to a social game is to first recognize what the "social norm" is for that situation. Then, you wreak havoc with it. I have been doing this for years.
Here are a few of my favorite social games:
Social game #1. When I lived in Washington, everyday I walked along a river trail that had the occasional bench whereupon an introspective person could sit and serenely gaze out at the water. I realized, after some observation, that there was an unspoken, but clearly shared, rule that if someone was sitting on a bench, the social norm dictated the bench was "taken" and you must move on. Even when there was easily room for three people to sit on the bench.
*cue maniacal laughter*
What happens when you sit down on a "taken" bench? What if you sit, not on the other end of the bench, but in the middle of the bench--right next to the stranger sitting there? What if you sit close enough to actually touch hips?! (I know some of your social proprieties are screaming right now...)
Now, some of these benches were actually swings, which clearly adds another element to this little game. If you decide to so rudely sit on a stranger's swinging bench, do you ask them to stop to allow you to get on? Or are you relegated to standing in front of the swing swaying back and forth to the motion before rising on your tiptoes as it swings forward under your rump and you plop into it? And once you're swinging, must you both use your feet to continue to propel the swing, or is it kosher to make the other person do all the work?

Social game #2.
When I was an undergraduate, because I didn't have a car, I relied on the trusty Spokane Transit Authority (the bus) as a mode of transportation. The busses I rode were typically rather filled with students and there was an unspoken, yet clearly shared, rule that dictated strangers did not share seats until all empty benches were gone.
*cue maniacal laughter*
What happens when you board a bus that has very few people on it and instead of sitting on an empty seat as expected, you plunk yourself down on the same seat as one of the other three passengers. Will the person actually get up and move to an empty seat? What happens if you actuall sit close enough to touch hips? What if you lean over them to get a good look out of the window?

Social game#3.
This is one my sister always wanted to try (although it admittedly would be a little more complicated...). If you were to paint a subtle-y (is that a word?) winding trail on a sidewalk, would walkers follow it subconsciously? This reminds me of something my mom actually witnessed when she was in high school away at a weeklong learning program at the University of Idaho. There was construction being done and a piece of machinery was sounding a rhythmic thump. thump. thump. thump. that could be heard from some distance. As she sat in her dorm room looking out the window, she realized that everyone she could see was walking in beat with the thumping.

There's actually a group who has made a name for themselves playing all kinds of social games. Check out their website http://www.improveverywhere.com/ They are the grandmasters of social games.

triumph and irritation

Triumph

I've conquered the mountain with my own little legs.


Irritation

I've conquered the mountain with my own little legs, but now I want to sit down in a chair and I don't have one because that's right, I'm backpacking.

allergy season

In my statistics class the other day, my teacher set a ceramic frog (toad?) on the table we all meet around for class (there are only 8 of us in the class). He proudly announced his 9-year-old daughter had painted it for him in her ceramics class. It was one of those wide-open-mouthed frogs you would use to hold a sponge or a bar of soap next to your sink. But, there it sat, stoicly and proudly on the table at the front of our class.
A few minutes later a classmate, an Asian student whose name I do not know, walked in a bit late and took his place at the table near the teacher. After a few minutes he reached out, took the frog in his hands and turned it so it was facing him which caused my teacher to abruptly stop his lecture. Without saying a word, the teacher looked at him imploringly as if to ask, "Why the heck are you touching my stuff?"
In a halting voice the student replied, “I’m allergic to the spots on your frog.”

As we all sat there puzzled, I think he realized his English lexicon was not satisfactorally explaining himself. This is what I assume he meant to say: "Excuse me, but the light is glaring off of the glazed finish on this beautiful ceramic frog and I'm finding it quite distracting. Don't mind me as I simply turn the frog around so that the light is not shining off the surface so annoyingly."

But, alas, he didn't have the words. Frankly, I like his version better. It has made me wonder what things I could say I was "allergic" to.

I'm allergic to that parking ticket, officer.
I'm allergic to hairy chests.
I'm allergic to stinky feet.
I'm allergic to mean people.

What are you allergic to?

quite the conundrum

Two pieces of advice on the topic of marriage taught at different times by my amazing former Branch President:

1. If you cannot be happily single, you cannot hope to be happily married.

2. A good and righteous marriage brings the greatest happiness you can possibly imagine.

What Katy learned from said advice:

If I cannot go from being unhappily single to happily married AND If I cannot be truly happy until I'm married

THEN

I will never be happily married.

Nice.

I'm just sayin'. ha ha!

p.s. I would feel guilty not including the fact that I absolutely adore this man! I present this conundrum, not because I think he intended for me to interpret his advice in this way, but because I find it funny. In reality, I think this Branch President has done more to put my singlehood in perspective than just about anyone I know. I got a good laugh out of these seemingly opposing pieces of advice...

horror

As I’m putting the facewash back up on the shelf, my arm brushes the handheld mirror which slides and knocks the tweezers off of the shelf and I watch, stricken and helpless, as the tweezers fall end over end and, with a gentle sploosh, into the open toilet below.