Day 243 - Ten Things in These Foolish Things

1. Today is the laaaassst day of August. Feels like it flew right by. Like, wasn’t it just last week when I went to Vegas? What happened? It was a weird month. I’m not sad it’s over. I love the fresh turn of a calendar, and I can’t wait to tear this page out.

2. I’ve been attending Meetup.com groups. Last weekend I joined a hiking group in the area that met over a the nearby park. I took Martini to daycare for the day and I’m so glad I did because the leader of this group told us that it would take us an hour to do this particular hike and I knew that pace was going to be MUCH faster than what I normally do with Martini. She’s so freaking tiny and I let her stop and sniff. This guy took us waaaay off the normal trail that I do with Martini, into rocky areas and over rocks and even into the creek! It was actually great exercise, but there’s no way Martini could have come on that hike, so I’m glad I took her to daycare. Afterwards we went to this amazing French bakery and did a little breakfast together. It was really good for my soul and I enjoyed being around people! I loved it so much I decided to join more groups.

3. Today I went to another Meetup.com event in another part of town. It was held at a suuuuper cool coffee spot I’ve never been to and I will definitely be going back. The meeting purpose was “productivity”, and the leader instructed everyone to bring their own calendars/planners and we’d work on our planning and productivity! I figured there’d be a bunch of Type A personalities, and I was mostly right. The leader was a handsome-ish man, around my age, very fit, very personable - and he’d gotten there earlier than me (I got there 30 minutes early to make sure I knew where the eff I was going!). I introduced myself and then went and grabbed a chai tea latte and sat down. I could tell this leader guy was going through some stuff as soon as we started chatting. Maybe he’s recovering from something? But other people started showing up, and they were cool but pretty geeky like me. We all had our notes and we did this goal-setting exercise as part of a presentation the leader guy gave. I liked it because I love a good planner (mine’s on my ipad). But my favorite part was when we all finished up and then most of us stuck around to grab tacos from the food truck and chat. The leader kept talking about how he’s single but too scared to approach all the “cute girls”, and I started taking a look around the coffee place and noticed that everyone there was attractive and interesting-looking. I made a lot of mental notes. There seemed to be a lot of dudes there worth talking to. Ha! Then back at my table, I found out that one of the women in the group is a Rover.com dog sitter, and she lives near me, so I might just have found another sitter for Martini! So all around success.

4. Tomorrow is Labor Day! I still need to get a couple of work things out tonight so that my graphic designer in Brazil can work on them tomorrow. He’s three hours ahead of me, so I need to send this stuff out tonight (at least one brief - I’ve already sent one of three out). Other than that, I’m not doing any work tomorrow. I’d asked if I could have some feedback from Head Cat on a project by EOD on Friday. That mofo sent his response at 8:15 pm MY time on Friday night. And yes, we are in different time zones, but it was after the close of business his time as well (6:15 pm his time). It was a three page document full of changes on something he’d told me he had pretty much finalized and wouldn’t want to change much. I saw the email on Saturday morning and just decided that it would have to be a Tuesday issue. I haven’t responded. Nor will I until Tuesday. Fuck it.

5. Taylor and Travis got engaged! Are you excited? I honestly am. It’s so nice to have a break in all of this chaotic negative political energy and have something sweet, romantic, happy, silly, and loving to focus on. Finally, we are hopefully going to have an American royal wedding! This is such a real-life fairy tale and it feels joyous and sticky sweet and I love it so much. Do you remember, back in the OD days…maybe I never wrote about this specifically, but I developed wedding products for a very large corporation. And I worked with the Conde Nast publishers on a line of products for BRIDES magazine (the print magazine since gone out of business, as many magazines have, but you can still see the digital version here: brides.com). This company sent me all over the world to develop wedding favors, invitations, accessories (some super beautiful hair clips and things), candles…oh, you name it. It was a super cool job. I need to get that kind of mojo back. This wedding is inspirational to me!

6. Thinking about engagements and weddings actually has me thinking about my two past engagements, and in particular, the one with SexyPants because that one was supposed to be my fairytale. My thoughts even had me going back and looking at pictures of my engagement ring. Oh, I loved that ring. Though not even close in size, Taylor’s ring reminds me of the beautiful cushion cut solitaire diamond that I had. I loved thinking about that wedding, planning it, going to venues, the meal planning and cake tastings. The whole thing. Weddings are wonderful. I guess it’s the marriage that’s the hard part, ha. But breaking the engagement is also hard. Both times were excruciating. Regardless, I’d still love to have a wedding. But would I love to have a marriage? Eh. Who knows.

7. In other social media news, the world seems to be rooting for Trump’s death, aren’t they? And Trump is defiant. Yet, he’s got that chronic veinous insufficiency thing. Don’t you think it’s only a matter of time? I’ve read some things that say he may have to have an amputation. I’m guessing he’s on a bunch of blood thinners, but he keeps swelling up like a balloon. Wonder if he’s getting clots. I laughed when I read a comment on social media after Trump finally appeared this week after being out of the public eye all week: “Clots and prayers!” Ha. Perfect. I mean, the dude just sent out emails to his MAGAts asking for donations because he “wants to go to heaven”. What do you think that means?

8. 75 Hard continues. I’m on Day 14. Two weeks in!! Going well, though I admit my workouts over this weekend haven’t been “hard” by any means. They’ve been walks, but every step counts. I also ate two breakfast tacos at the cool coffee spot this morning, but that just means that I had to adjust the rest of the day. I didn’t eat any dinner tonight and that was actually because I’d filled up earlier in the day. The Sydney Cummings workouts are super hard because she doesn’t allow enough rest time in between her sets. I’m finding that if I try to keep up with her every move, I could probably easily injure myself, so I’m being super careful, but I’m also noticing results!

9. And speaking of my walks, sometimes I just take Martini on a walk around the neighborhood…and sometimes I even do those walks solo, depending on Martini’s mood, ha. Sometimes, Martini just doesn’t want to gogogo on my long walks, and that’s fine. She can stay at home, then. But I’ve noticed something recently in my neighborhood. There’s an apartment complex around the corner from me that I believe has been built for lower income tenants. There’s nothing wrong with that, though there was recently a shooting there where someont died. But now I believe that there are homeless people living in the woods (that are connected to the property where live), and there are a bunch of people now living three different ways over in that area that’s just a block-ish over from me…and a part of my regular walk: (1) the low income housing, (2) in the woods, and (3) in various truck cabins, RVs and even their cars that park along the street. There’s one RV in particular that I know someone is living in for sure because I’ve seen the dude trying to work on his broken-down car that’s connected to the RV. There are people coming and going in and out of the woods (SCARY!), and lately, when I walk around that area, it smells like someone is down by the creek burning rubber tires or something! It always smells like burning chemicals. It’s such a fucking bummer because walking around the block is the easiest way to get a good walk in my neighborhood, but I’m clearly going to have to drive over to the park more often now. I just don’t feel like being scared every day on my walk. And at least in the park, I know it’s protected and there are always people around.

10. Sometimes I’ll also drive to the shopping district closeby to walk Martini. That way I KNOW I’ll be walking in the light (even if it’s dark outside, all the retail and dining establishments have their lights on and people alllll around). It’s just so much safer than taking the dumb risk of being jumped, but it bums me out that I have to take soooooo many precautions and it’s a pain in the ass to have to GET IN THE CAR and DRIVE somewhere because of the fact that I’m a single female walking alone with her teeny, tiny dog. Dumb. Sad. Bummer.

11. I’m losing steam with this entry.

12. I need to tell you about my shopping trip yesterday, but I’m running out of steam.

13. I love you. I’ll be back soon.

xox,
GS