“I had to sit down and read this a couple of times, because my first reaction was anger, tinged with a bit of confused disappointment. Then I remembered who you are, and realized that this probably warranted closer examination.”So, thanks for hearing me out, and understanding that I wasn’t just going off of the deep end.
I want to thank those who came forward to me and had
open discussions, either agreeing with my thoughts, or contradicting them.
It was enjoyable to have the discussion, whether over e-mail or over
coffee, and very informative to talk to everyone and share perspectives.
It's definitely a sore spot for many, and our experiences are
individual and unique - no one can claim to know exactly what it feels like to
walk another's path.
Moving on!...
So, it is basically impossible for me to write blogs when I
am visiting with people, and that’s all I’ve been doing lately, so, I would
apologize for the delay between entries, but I’ve been having too much fun.
This past week I was at National Field Archery Association
(NFAA) Nationals. It was a ton of fun,
in a masochistic way.
Our schedules were, every day:
-
Wake up at 4:30 AM
-
Breakfast by 5:30 AM
-
Leave house at 6:00
AM
-
Drive to range, get
there by 6:45 AM
-
Practice 7-7:45 AM
-
Begin archery,
archery from 8:00 – 2:30 PM
-
Walk around and
gather the people (a.k.a. herding cats) and put equipment away and drink
alcohol 2:30 PM – 3:30 PM
-
Find sustenance for
our cells 3:30 PM – 4:30
-
Go to Wegman’s 4:30
– 5:30 PM
-
Be back at the house
so Larry can go to bed by 6:30 PM
-
Log in and work for
a few hours, then go to bed early.
Every day for a week.
It was glorious.
But by the third morning of
waking up at 4:30 AM, I was grumpy. By
the end each day, we’ve walked for 8 hour straight, in a forest whilst carrying
20 – 30 lbs of equipment in the summer heat.
It’s very exhausting. But we got
to see friends from around the country, and make new friends.
Side note, “Ghosts” from the BD
soundtrack just came on Pandora. Don’t. It will put you in a mood.
Met lots of cool people, shot
with some people I’ll know forever. (I shot with two miners... like actual miners...) Really, really, to my heart awesome
times.
A guy I was shooting with brought a sandwich for me! He loves me.
The best ice cream place! Teaberry ice cream!!
One evening, I was particularly
spent, and just wanted to take a shower and sit in bed with a hoodie over my
head and watch Breaking Dawn 1&2. Well, Sue was bored, because Larry
went to bed at 6, so she comes into my bedroom, and sits on the bed and tries
watching it with me. But she kept asking all history, and then kept
asking what was going to happen. “So wait, now the wolves are going to
kill the baby?!” “They are going to kill Bella.” “No no no no,
wait…” OMG. I. CAN’T. I told her I
wasn’t going to explain the previous 5 movies to her, and I wasn’t going to
tell her everything that was about to happen. She got mad and left.
Bye Felicia.
Another evening, Larry wanted to go back to the range after Wegman’s
because he wanted to work out some problem with his bow. Sue and I were zero percent interested in
going back to the range, so we started heading back to our house. (BTW, we did Air
B&B for the week – it was awesome!
You should let me send you an invite so that I get a referral credit for
when you are traveling next.)
Behind Wegman’s is a creek which looks beautiful and very inviting, and every day I crossed the bridge, and wondered if anyone would care if I just parked and jumped in. When we crossed the bridge after Larry went back to the range, I noticed that there were folks floating down the creek in tubes. I said, “I want to go tubing!!” Alas, due to our strict schedule, tubing was not a likely possibility.
However, 15 minutes or so later, when we were almost back at
our house, there were two guys carrying tubes walking down the road towards the
creek that runs by our house. So, I
pulled up next to them, and said, “Hello.
We are not from the area, and I see all of these people going tubing…
how do we go tubing?... Is there someplace we can go… or….” And so this guy says, “Oh… well, I have two
more tubes up at my house… do you want to come with?” So I said, “Sure!” And told him to get in my
car.
So we go to this guy’s house (we’ll refer to him as Brandon,
and his friend as John.) and let it be noted that I was not going to go inside,
except that Sue then said, “I have to pee, where’s your bathroom?” SUE!!!!
TVW.
So now we are in this total stranger’s house, waiting for
the neighbor to call us back. We needed
to use the neighbor’s air compressor to inflate the other two tubes, and so we
had to wait for him to finish whatever it was he was working on before we could
go over.
While we were waiting, Brandon
was being very adorable, apologizing for the wait, and offering us beer, as if
we were the ones who were being inconvenienced.
While we were waiting, Brandon said, “Do you want to see something neat?”
And brought us into his living room, which housed a giant tank, which housed a
crocodile.
A crocodile.
An actual baby crocodile.
I am allergic to three things: Sharks, alligators, and
crocodiles.
UPDATE: Kate just sent me an urgent e-mail:
UPDATE: Kate just sent me an urgent e-mail:
"You are allergic to 4 things. You forgot bears."
So I said to Brandon, “Umm… that’s… you should not have this
crocodile… that’s not a thing… that’s not…good…” And then he showed us the special gloves that
they have to use to handle the crocodile, since “she’s not very friendly, doesn’t
much like to be handled.” I told him, “Yeah,
that’s because it’s a crocodile.” Then,
he finally said that it’s not his crocodile; it’s his roommate’s, and that
roommate is moving out in a few days. I
said, “Whew, because I’m trying to gauge your crazy, and it was not looking
good.” He said he knows it’s crazy to
have a crocodile – it’s not his. I told
him that it’s not cool to have a demon dinosaur in your house. It will eat you in your sleep.
Anyway, finally we got the tubes inflated and then walked to
the creek and hopped in, and it was amazing and beautiful. It was the perfect day for it – the weather
was beautiful. Some folks passed us in
kayaks, and said to Sue and me, “Why are you in jeans?!” And Sue told them that it was an impulse
decision, and we didn’t have other clothes! (We just went exactly how we were
dressed for archery that day.)
After about an hour, when we got to the swimming hole where we hopped out of the creek, Brandon climbed up a rock cliff area and jumped into the water, so, naturally, I yelled at him to get back here and show me how to do that. So, I went and jumped off the cliff, too. It was lots of fun, except that when I was climbing out of the water, I fell (of course) and smashed my hand on a sharp rock in the water, and was bleeding everywhere. Fortunately, it was not the hand I hold the bow with, (a.k.a. “my bow hand,”) so it wasn’t a big deal over the following days – I just wrapped my hand and it didn’t affect my shooting.
Then we had quite the hike back to Brandon’s house, which
was a lovely walk through a cemetery and other people’s lawns. (The neighbors didn’t care – they waved.) It was a very wonderful and memorable
experience. Brandon and John invited us
to go home and change and come back for burgers and beer that night, however,
we were already out past curfew, and we had to do laundry. Brandon offered that we could use his washing
machine, but alas, we had the curfew. ;-) The rest of this story can be summed up in
some Taylor Swift songs, so I’ll leave that to the imagination.
I shot the best I have ever shot during the competition, and
I beat a lot of the guys. Next year’s
Nationals are taking place in Darrington, Washington, so I am looking forward
to that. I was going to quit after this
year’s Nationals*, but when they mentioned that next year’s Nationals are in a
state I love, now I have to wait until next year to quit*.
*I’m basically kidding – I say I am quitting every other
week. It’s a running joke amongst
archers.
What is your passion?
Do you have a hobby? Besides
things like your family and your job, what is it that you are passionate about?
Yesterday, I went for coffee with one of my friends, and I said
that I have a question for him, and jokingly, he said, “Is it ‘what is the
meaning of life?’” And I said, “Oh no, I already know that.” And he asked what it is. I told him, “I can’t tell you. That’s part of the deal – once you figure it
out, you can’t tell anyone. Everyone has
to discover it on their own.” It’s like
Fight Club. Once you know about it, you
can’t talk about it.
Is that a question you struggle with? Do you feel incomplete? Maybe we should have coffee and talk. Text me!
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