Hey, 2019.

I'm back,
And I'm back with a vengeance.

After nearly four years of having no computer, I'm back at it (thanks for the Christmas present, dad!).
I'm pretty stoked for 2019.
I have some big plans in the works, if the universe decides to work in my favor.
If not, I'll roll with it.

Life has been good to me the past couple of months.

I'll keep ya posted here, if you so incline to catch up.

5 Years.

I've started listening to a lot of podcasts within the past 6-7 months.  It's been great.  I have always loved NPR and the concept of talk radio in general.  I recently started listening to Invisibilia, and it's helped me to ponder my own feelings and emotions.  Why do we feel the way we feel, or lackthereof?  What is going on in this brain of mine that causes me hurt, happiness, love, grief, pain, resolution? 

 I have been single more or less for almost 2 years, and I like to think I have learned a lot, but seriously, have I really?   Because then there are nights like the other night, where I just cry.  For something I lost over 5 years ago. 

 I had a dream that I was with someone I had loved so much, years ago.  The kind of love you don't think you'll ever find again.  We kissed, I knew in my dream it had been a long time, and there was this electrical feeling.  If you follow Invisibilia, they talk about emotions that other cultures have that we don't, and this one is 'Liget', an emotion an anthropologist found in a tiny village in the Phillipines. Limited by the English language, it more or less means "a high voltage running through the course of your body".  It's intense, overpowering, and something that you can feel when you're deeply hurt, or when you have adrenaline running through your body, or when you're in love.  I realized in this dream (I have some vivid, deep dreams) that I hadn't felt like that since him.  It felt like 'Liget' , and it also felt like home.  I woke up and felt a void that I hadn't felt in a long time.  A hollowness, an emptiness.   

 Because the past two years, I have run into a lot of dead ends.  I have made a lot of mistakes.  I have cried over guys that were unworthy of my tears, fell for guys unworthy of my feelings, and felt nothing at all about guys I thought deserved some of my time.  And I'm almost 30!  According to 16 year old me, I should be married with 2+ kids right now, owning a home (that's another sob story) and....Just not alone in a 335 square foot studio apartment with a 12 year old dog as my companion. Yet, here I am.     I revived this blog to try  to make sense of where I'm at now, and come to peace that I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be.  I also want to share some stories about being almost 30, single, and actively dating in a city deemed 'Menver'.  More like "Men-Child-ver", amIRite?   

 Thanks for reading.

Onward, 2017.

Maybe I'm back, maybe I'm not.

I have decided after a long hiatus to try to start blogging again.  It used to be such a creative outlet for me.  It was therapeutic.  I want to tell stories again, and be completely blunt and real in the process.

However, I am 350 days and counting away from hitting 30 years old.  Is it appropriate for me to be blogging still?  When I was 26, I started dating a guy who was terrible for me.  It lasted a year and a half, because let's be real, I'm in my 20's and still learning.  Said guy: Let's call him Chicken for anonymity purposes.

Whenever Chicken and I would argue, which was more than a couple ever should (warning sign), he would find reasons to degrade me.  One was this blog.  Whenever we argued, homeboy would say, "Why don't you go home and blog about it, loser?".  He would constantly refer to my blog as something that was dumb, and degrade something that was me in my most vulnerable state, that I happened to be proud of.  Chicken apologized multiple times for bringing down my blog.  He would send a text a few days later saying, "For the record, I love reading your blog, please don't stop writing because of what I said."  But, he kept bringing it up.  And naturally, I got a complex. 

Here I am now, nearing the big 3-0 and I have so many stories to tell.  I have been out of said relationship for almost two years.  Those two years, I learned a lot about myself.  Most important: I think I'm a pretty cool chick.  I think I have amazing, hilarious, heartbreaking stories to tell.  I get told that a lot, too.  

My goal is to showcase a story or two a couple of times a week.  Something I think I've become a quasi-professional of is online dating.    I have had so many first dates that equated to nothing but a great story, and so many dating experiences that turned into an "I don't want a relationship" talk.  Many friends and coworkers I know enjoy these stories.  I end a lot of these stories by saying "Nobody could make these stories up" because seriously, nobody could.

So that is what I will try to do.

Stay tuned, only if you want.

Thankful and Grateful. Hut Trip 2016.

I'm alive and well!
This is actually a very resounding, significant statement given last weekend's adventure.

1

But first thing's first. It's been over a year since I've written.  I wish I could say there was a hiatus because I've been out on crazy adventures. The truth is, I've simply been coming to peace with being by myself. It's been surprisingly lovely. I live alone and I come home to a dog that's super excited to see me. Sometimes, he decides to ingest my essential oils. Most of the time I love seeing him.  My home has become my peaceful space. It's nice to be content. Plus, I have a no pants rule in my tiny studio. Good thing I'm the only one frequenting the place.

I have been on a few adventures. Not nearly as many as I would have liked to this year, but a couple panned out to be more than I had bargained for. Last weekend was one for the books (or the blog).

Since my last update, my best friend growing up, Nichole, moved to Colorado. It's been glorious. I love having her less than two miles away from me, always. It's so nice. Nichole naturally makes friends exponentially faster than I do, and was invited on a hut trip (I'll explain logistics in a minute) back in March with a group of 15 people. She promised me if there was an opening, she'd let me know. So fast forward to the beginning of October, and I was in. I was so stoked.

The logistics: What is a Hut Trip? This link describes it perfectly. It also happens to be based on the Fowler-Hilliard Hut, my accommodations for last weekend. Check it out, and you'll be SO Colorado.   https://peaksandpassports.com/2013/08/05/so-whats-a-hut-trip/

In my own words though, a hut trip is a "Colorado thing", where we get crazy and reckless, hike to a remote location, and therein lies a hut. A lot of these huts were built around World War Two, for the army to practice sneaking up on soldiers at a high altitude. The huts are pretty awesome though. Although our hut didn't have running water, a legitimate bathroom or electricity besides light, it accommodates 15 people, had a huge kitchen and wonderful wood stove that kept us warm. It had an enormous bunk room that we avoided at all cost because it was so cold, we trudged the mattresses to the wood stove. But it was beautiful.  The path there was not.


I was nervously anticipating this trek for at least a week. I had snowshoed once in my life (a short hike to Saint Mary's Glacier) and had never used my backpack for a righteous purpose. I felt like I wasn't ready,  but at the same time, as ready as I would ever be.  This is meaning I was terrified.

These are my snowshoes (lent to me by my kind, amazing coworker Kate) and my 65L Osprey pack, filled to basically the brim with the necessities: 36 tortillas, one pound of cheese, 3 liters of red wine,  two books, soup, and layers on layers.   Spoiler alert: Never read those books.


On the Friday of departure, I woke up at 6:05am (which is way before I wake up for work) anticipating a long day of snowshoeing.  Let's be real.  I was anticipating 5 miles in, about a mile of strenuous (but worth it!!) steep incline to the beautiful hut in the middle of the wilderness.  Here's what followed.

Our drive to the trailhead was relatively uneventful.  Caitlin, a friend of mine whom I had met through Nichole caravanned us, and Hallie and I were passengers.  Hallie instantly became a soul sister of mine - both her and Caitlin were the two best friends I could have on this trip.  The road trip consisted of some really depressingly placed songs on satellite radio, one that sticks out is 'Iris' by the Goo Goo Dolls. We skipped over these, but looking back were they ominous?  Maybe.

We get to the trailhead and strap in our snowshoes.  We're ready for adventure.  It's 10:30am.  Surely we are getting to the hut by nightfall.  This actually isn't even a question, more of a statement at this point.

We begin trekking.  At this point, there is six of us (I'll call us the OG 6):  Carissa, Eric, Leo, me, Caitlin, and Hallie. We are going at a decent speed.  Decent for them, stealthy and aggressive for me but I keep up.
About 3 or 3.5 miles in, we see the trail markers we had been looking for.  It tells us to take a sharp left turn....Into about 3 feet of snow, freshly lying upon a creek. We all immediately acknowledge that this is the steep incline we have all been waiting for, and in the end, it'll all be worth it, right guys?
We decide to attempt this steep incline.  In 3 feet of snow.  In snow shoes.  Basically long story short, we are unsuccessful, a couple of snowshoes lost and all.  So, we all reconvene at the trail marker.  A couple of us want to keep going and persevere.  Most of us just want to give up and drink in Leadville for the night.

At this time, snowmobilers pass us.  They tell us, basically like angels in a dream "The hut is near!  Take this path...Straight ahead, and then take a left. it's the long way, but it will only take you another hour and a half...Two hours TOPS!"  A cat/groomer came and offered to take our packs to the point where we would have to take a left.  Miracle!  We took it as a wonderful sign.  We would make it to the hut right around nightfall....... Or would we?

We start trekking.  And the trekkers I started with were not trekking lightly, but I certainly was.  I slowed down to the pace of a snail.  I got to the point where 10 steps at a time was a victory.  Turns out that can happen when you're close to 12,000 feet above sea level.  So I'm taking my sweet time, and it's okay...Because the hut is only an hour and a half, two hours tops away, right?!  It wasn't.  I became so slow, and so tearful, and confused, because my blood sugar was probably extremely low.  I began looking for places to crawl and sleep under.  Then I sluggishly remembered I didn't have my backpack on, so therefore no sleeping bag.  This reinitiated the panic, which led to me yelling for help to no avail, which led to me calling 911 to no avail, since I didn't have service clearly.  I should also add a black crow flew over me.  I felt absolutely no relief when that happened.

Probably less than an hour into this point, I heard help.  Two voices behind me.  I remembered that there were a few hikers that had started later on the trek were probably on our route as well.  I didn't know their names, but asked if they had food.  And thank the lord, that Cliff Bar probably saved my life.  Lia and Eric came to my rescue.  They were a part of my group yet I had not met them yet.  They came to me, asked my name, knew I was a part of their group, fed me, and not even joking....They changed my socks.  Took off my current boots and socks and helped get me into a dry pair.  My real guardian angels.  I got up, Lia took my snowshoes, and we trekked on.  We trekked with the belief that the hut was just around the corner (it wasn't, I ended up having to put the snowshoes back on).

We kept on going.  I remember telling Lia "I don't think I can do this, I'm too tired and too out of shape." -- this girl told me that's not an option, and that we were all going to get through it together.  I love her for that.  So we went.  Having renewed energy (thanks  Cliff Bar!) gave me a new perspective and I knew I could keep going.  We eventually caught up to our crew.  Our crew was lost.  But we had a GPS, and we were all together at this point.  I want to say it was 3 hours later of blazing new trails, but we finally made sight of the hut  and we all made it there.  ALIVE.  IN ONE PIECE.





We made it there.  Commence a sense of triumph, and gratefulness for being alive, and just  a sense of community.  It was beautiful.   For over 24 hours, we communed, drank our weight in wine, made dinner for one another, and really just appreciated being alive in this world.

On Sunday when we left, a few of us opted to call (one person had service) a snowmobile company down at the trailhead to come get us.  That was and adventure in and of itself.  So thankful for Novaguides for getting us out of 2-3 feet of fresh snow on our way out of the Fowler-Hilliard Hut.


WE ARE ALIVE YOU GUYS!!!! LIFE IS LOVELY.

A Best Friend and Peace Tonight

Apparently, a Friday night is the ideal night for me to reflect.
I'm on the couch lying next to my snoring, 10-year old vizsla....I started a Lifetime movie and quickly abandoned it.  I have been so bad the past couple of years with actually being able to sit through an entire movie.  I feel like my patience is so challenged by watching a movie.  And going to the movie theaters....If you know me well enough, forget it.  The movie theater terrifies me in an unusually justified way.

That was a real tangent.  I think the point of the tangent was...Is this really what I do on a Friday night? Yes.  The ritual of putting on my pajamas, snuggling up next to my dog, and just relaxing is my ideal Friday night.  This surely means I must be getting old.

The past few weeks have been a roller coaster, I feel.  And contrary to popular belief, roller coasters are not fun 100% of the time.  They're unpredictable, bumpy at times, and there's occasionally that little bit of hope that it'll all be over soon and that pit in your stomach will go away.

But overall, I've been "me".  I've been listening to music that makes me happy.
I've been meditating - which is weird and so awkward for me, the girl who can't sit still for a movie, but it is something I'm trying to force my mind to adapt to.
My mind?  Being mindful, restful, and relaxed?  No way.
 Yeah, it's not that way at all right now.  But I hope that someday it will be.


I believe firmly that there is some kind of synchronicity that makes this crazy, roller coaster-esque world go 'round.  It can be really horrible, bittersweet sometimes.  But at the same time, life happens the way it's supposed to. Whether we like it or not.

For instance:

This is my best friend (in school) Nichole and I. We have been through a lot together ... We beat Pokemon on gameboy together, got our hair braided together, hung at the beach in Jamaica, we also volunteered at the public library in high school.

Next week, Nichole and I are spending time together and having a girl's weekend that involves staying at a crazy Airbnb, drinking beer, listening to bluegrass, mountains, and hopefully skiing. It's been so long since we have spent a weekend together. I am so stoked. Yes, life sucks sometimes... But then the timing works so that you get to spend some quality time with your very, very best friend, and it passes. Life goes on, and life goes on with people who mean the most, and those you love the most.



On that note, my favorite band came out with a new song today.  I highly recommend it. It's magical.

I wish you well.

http://youtu.be/bxmei0F7Vms

She lives above the motor line,

She's staring out those deep brown pearly eyes...

She'll cast your spell she'll hold you well,

Do you remember, well? Do you remember well, do you remember well?

And she calls the circle.  And she sets the tone

And she lights the candles that burn on.

Staring out on towards the sun,

She says what new day has come.

What a thing to have a star,

A wishing well,

I wish you well, I wish you well.

And she thanks the sky. And she walks the earth, and the tears that fall they're beautiful.

And she says my people, and she says my tribe. And she says , all good lovers- peace tonight.

To the broken hearted , to the burdened too, to everyone, peace tonight.

Peace tonight.

Things I Have Learned in 2015.

Hi.

I realize I haven't posted in well over a year and a half.

That's okay, though.  And there's no day like today to start over again, right?

Over the last year and a half, I learned so much more about myself.

And that's all that matters.....Right?

I learned to love in an unhealthy way.  That was sad, but at least now I can say I did it and be done with that chapter.

I love Elephant Revival.

I learned that I love bluegrass - to the point that it just resonates in my soul.  It even resonates in the freezing cold......

I learned that I truly love camping.  I learned that I can pitch a tent all by myself.  I learned that I am probably the best 'camp' cook around - that is, if there is a stove available. 

 I've learned that showering is overrated - In Telluride, I lived for 4+ days without a shower or a conventional bathroom - port-a-potties for the win.

Speaking of Telluride, I experienced heaven on earth in June of 2015.  In case you are wondering, Heaven on earth is located in Telluride, Colorado.  My breath was taken away to a trance it never has been in as I was driving into Telluride.  First of all, we were stuck in traffic so it was easy to lose my breath out of impatience - But the scenery, and a few cars in front of me a couple doing yoga in the stand-still highway traffic, all of that was just beautiful to me.  More like breathtaking rather than out-of-breath.  Words cannot describe the peace and happiness I felt in that town.  And the music?  It's just my happy place.  I can't even explain it.  You absolutely cannot frown when you're listening to Leftover Salmon, The Punch Brothers, Yonder Mountain String Band, Greensky Bluegrass, Trampled By Turtles, Sam Bush Band, etc etc.  I have decided that although there has got to be more to it, bluegrass is a key to exaltation in life.  

I learned that my family is wonderful - And no matter how near or far, they will always be my 'rock' as a whole.  My sister is my best friend and knows me better than I know myself.  She also is my biggest fan, and roots for me when I'm up and keeps me motivated when I am down.  

I learned that most friends are temporary - and that hurts. But I think that the best friends are the ones who may get frustrated with you, but won't give up on you - no matter what.  Friends are people who can understand you're in a crisis.  Friends love you unconditionally.  Unfortunately, there aren't many of them.

I have learned that dogs can become your best friends forever -  Even if they are an ex-boyfriend's, or a puppy that you helped grow for a few weeks -  They are forever.  Those dogs will always be part of the "loves of my life" category.

I will always be Mom for Cooper...I love that pup more than life.

14ers man....

I have learned that being 14,000+ above sea level is a hard-earned honor.

I learned mostly that things you wish could stay gold.....

Well, they don't.

"But just as the moon it shines straight,

So dawn goes down today

No gold can stay"

 "But there is only forward, no other way

Tomorrow was your hope at the end of the day

And gold turns gray."

Amy's Own Sausage Apple Stuffing

I know I suck at keeping a blog, but this Thanksgiving was the first time I cooked dishes on my own and I loved it.  Also, this is the first time I've combined multiple recipes on the web to make my own, original recipe.  Just wanted to write it down for myself, and also for anyone else who's interested!

Amy's Sausage and Apple Stuffing

(Because it was that good)

Ingredients:

• 1 loaf sour dough bread, cubed (about 10 cups)
• 2 medium apples, peeled, cored and chopped
• 1 lb Mild Italian Sausage, casing removed
• 1 medium yellow onion, chopped
• 1/2 cup pecans, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic
• 2 ribs of celery, chopped
• 3 tablespoons fresh sage, finely chopped and divided
• 1 tablespoon fresh rosemary, finely chopped
• 1 teaspoon fresh thyme, chopped
• 1 cup white cooking wine
• Garlic Salt and Pepper to taste
• 2 cups chicken stock/broth
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°F. Place cubed sourdough on 2 baking sheets. Bake 10-15 minutes, stirring bread occasionally until toasted, but not browned. Place toasted bread cubes into extra large bowl, add cranberries and apples. Set aside.

Butter 9x13-inch casserole dish. Set aside.

In large skillet over medium heat, cook sausage using spatula to break it up as it cooks. Add 1 1/2 tablespoons of fresh herbs. Cook through, but do not brown. Remove sausage from skillet using slotted spoon and add it to bowl with bread cubes. Leave 2 tablespoons of sausage drippings in the pan (drain any extra) and add onions and celery. Cook until translucent; add pecans, herbs, garlic and apples to skillet. Cook 3-5 minutes stirring frequently. Pour skillet mixture into bowl with bread cubes.

Add wine to skillet and scrape browned bits from bottom of pan as it cooks. Add butter and chicken stock. Bring to boil for 3 minutes, remove from heat and pour over bread cubes in bowl. Add eggs. Toss gently until combined and pour into prepared baking dishes.

Cover with foil and bake 40 minutes. Remove foil and bake 15 minutes more.  Done!