Yesterday morning, I woke up feeling sluggish and tired and a bit down. It's not that my dreams have been bad; they have been pretty good actually. I just woke up feeling kinda.. "eh" (as the kids these days would say). So I got Tracy and Omi dropped off to where they needed to be and came home and allowed myself to take a nap. It was self indulgent and glorious!
I woke up to a friend of mine sending me a text making plans to meet for beers. This is something he and I have been wanting to do since about November, and we were finally getting it together. Yay!!! With that to look forward to, I decided to get up from my nap and get some cleaning done and practice some belly dancing.
I guess I didn't realize it, but I have been having a difficult time remembering belly dance choreography since I bonked my head over 2 years ago! Crazy! I have been able to remember my 2 burlesque routines pretty easily, but the belly dance stuff has been very difficult. There have been lots of times when I felt like I just wanted to quit because I felt like I was letting my sisters down. I kept going cause it is what Omi and I do together and I love to dance. So here we are, with a new choreo that is fast paced and lots of fun. We are trying to get it perfected so we can perform it in Salt Lake City in March. I brought out the paper, turned up the music and practiced over and over and over again. For the first time since I bonked my head, choreography started to make sense to me! Yay!!! I was getting it down and feeling comfortable, and more importantly, having tons of fun again! Yay!!!!!! By the time I was done with that, I was sweaty, stinky and so very happy!
After practicing, it was time for some sit down watch TV time with Omi. We have a guilty pleasure show we are watching on Hulu.. Jane the Virgin. It is silly and quirky..."RomCom Drama". It's fun to watch Omi get all "gooey" over the romantic stuff.
I put on real clothes last night. None of this sweat pants and tshirt stuff. *laugh* I actually blow dried my hair too and put on real shoes. That's crazy talk. I forget how good I feel when I actually get dressed in real clothes. I met my friend Dennis for beers at 10 Barrel Brewing Company. I had never been there before. It was alot bigger than I thought it was, and the beer was very yummy. The company was exceptional!
I met Dennis through the trail running community. For whatever reason, from the first time I met him, he just seemed like the kind of guy I really wanted to get to know better. We have come across each other in various aspects of running... from passing each other on a trail, working aid stations together, to exchanging stories about running and cycling. He has been a huge help to me when my long distance cycling, whether he realizes it or not. He is always a great source of information for ultra running. And he always has one of the sharpest sense of humors out there. He also tells it like it is and doesn't pull any punches when he is talking to you. He will tell you like he sees it whether it something you want to hear or not. Which is one of the things I like about him.
We had a great visit last night. We shared stories and got to know each other in a more personal level. It's nice to be able to talk about things so candidly. I am a pretty open book, but there are things I don't post about in blogs or talk about on facebook. So last night, he got to hear them. I never really think about how open I am. (Obviously, I am the queen of over sharing, but I never really think about it.) As I was talking to Dennis last night we w talked about being open, about sharing things publicly and going through them privately, and about being an introvert or extrovert. It dawned on me. I am an extrovert in about everything I do. However, I am pretty shy at a party around people I don't know. Making small talk is not my thing. It just isn't. I also tend to go straight for the jugular and tell people stuff they just don't want to know (queen of over sharing, and I refuse to be in a closet so I just tell everyone everything and they either like me or they don't). I remember that being a little bit of an issue in Belize when I met our new friends. *laugh* I told them I was bisexual (for whatever reason) and within a day or 2 my new friend came up to me and asked why I told them that. She was confused. I told her, "I just don't like being in the closet. I want people to know who I am right up front, and if they don't like it, they can ignore me." It's not always the best way to go about things, but it weeds people out pretty early on. *laugh* I'm sure there was some context to my telling them that.. it probably had to do with excessive amounts of rum. *laugh* Anyway.....
Back to being serious here. I am extroverted. I am open. Even if I don't say it publicly on a blog or on facebook, if you asked me privately, I would tell you openly and truthfully. I am also a bit of an exhibitionist. I have often wondered (privately..now publicly) if I am a bit of a narcissist. Why? Because everyone seems to think that if you take a bunch of selfies you are a narcissist. However, knowing a few evil narcissists in my life, I don't think I qualify. Thanks to dictionary.com, here is the definition of a narcissist:
Noun
1. a person who is overly self-involved, and often vain and selfish.
2. Psychoanalysis. a person who suffers from narcissism, deriving erotic gratification from admiration of his or her own physical or mental attributes.
If overly self-involved means very introspective and then sharing it publicly, then I'm guilty.
Not sure I am a narcissist. Maybe I am. Who knows. But what I do know is that there is a reason that we go through our lives and experience what we experience. We experience things in order to grow. We grow in order to help other people. It would be selfish to gain wisdom only to keep that wisdom to yourself and not share it to help other people. I'm not saying that "selfies" help other people; yes, that is purely a selfish act to see how my life unfolds in a physical manner on my face. But, the words I type, the blogs I post are thoughtfully and purposefully written. (Well unless I'm raging angry, then they are words driving from passion..and not the good kind.)
This is something that I learned or at least was given reason to think about last night. Yes, I felt a kind of kindred connection with Dennis from our first meeting. But if it had not been for all of my crazy postings on facebook or my blogs, he would not have seen the real me and decided, "hey, she is someone worth getting to know." It's more than that though. It's more than Dennis. It's lots of people in my life. They read my crazy words and stories and think, "Hey, there is a person I can talk to and relate to on some level." (Even if its on a level they didn't anticipate.)
I'm grateful for the messiness that is my life. I'm grateful for the lessons learned, the mountains climbed, the swamps I've dredged. I'm grateful that I live my life full steam ahead and I jump in with both feet. I am grateful that I say, "yes!" to life's opportunities. And I'm very grateful for my friends who love me through it all and maybe even a bit because of it all :).
After my amazing chat with Dennis, last night, I decided to head over to Humpin' Hannah's to hang out while Tracy finished up with the gang from work at the hockey game. I walked in there, and the only people there were the people that worked there. That was a bit odd. It was very quiet. I ordered more beer, sat at a table and visited with a friend on facebook until Tracy and the guys from work showed up. Hannah's used to be a regular hang out for us. We used to go there quite often with the guys that Tracy used to work with. I loved hanging out with those guys. It was always fun! We would drink and dance the night away. Man I miss those times! Last night, I drank and I danced. I ran into Minerva Jayne last night and got hugs and visited with her for a bit and even shared the dance floor with her for a song or two. I love that woman and her presence in the Treasure Valley.
As I danced last night, I had a couple of thoughts:
1) They were playing the song "Happy" and I was dancing. I was feeling genuinely happy. I usually am when I am dancing. I'm sure the beers were helping. But anyway, I was feeling happy. And the thought, "Wait, I'm still grieving, should I be dancing? Shouldn't I be a crying mess?" I mean twice that night, I visited with people I have not seen in person since Nick's death and we talked about Nick dieing and what I have been going through. I kind of felt guilty. But then I said, "I am allowed to feel happiness and celebrate life. Just because Nick died does not mean I have to curl up in a ball and die myself. That is not what Nick would want."
2) They played a Sublime song last night. Nick loved Sublime. I had a mixture of happy and sad (or introspective) thoughts while they played. I wanted to dance, but I also just wanted to think about Nick and remember him. I often wonder if Nick loved Sublime because it was "taboo" when he was a kid. See when Nick was in 3rd or 4th grade (maybe), I had decided I liked Sublime. It was NOT a group Tracy liked. Actually, I was listening to alot of music Tracy didn't like back then. (We were strictly country music people...except for on a dance floor.) But I was going through a rough spot in my life, and trying to figure out who I was. I had only listened to country because Tracy listened to country. Before Tracy came into my life, I was a disco/pop/christian rock kinda person.... NEVER country. So after years of marriage and while we were going through some marriage difficulties, I started listening to different things and Sublime was one of them.
This music had a parental advisory label on it and was not one that I would let my kids listen to. But it had a clown on the cover (scary and obnoxious, but a clown none the less). When I wasn't looking, Nick took the CD to his friends house to listen to it. I got a phone call from the friend's mom who was very irate that my son had brought over a CD with such lyrics. OMG. I was pissed. Nick wasn't allowed to listen to that music. His excuse: "It had a clown on it, I thought it would be okay." *laugh*
So last night, they sang a Sublime song, and this memory popped into my head. Nick loved Sublime, even to the day he died. But I have to wonder if it started with this time in his life......and if he thought about that memory very often.
Anyway, I had a great day yesterday and since I got home late and I was drunk, I didn't blog about it.
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