so last sunday I ran my first ever 10K.  It took me like 1 hour 15 minutes.  I’m not fast.  I’m a pokey little puppy, but hey, I enjoy it.  also far warning that i’m going to be writing about running a lot. deal with it!

I public transporationed it for the race for a couple of reasons.  first this race has really limited parking so that would be a pain and indie had soccer that morning.

pre race smiley selfie.  it was a little chilly that morning.  i’m glad I layered up.

pre race selfie #2.  game face on!

so this race is fun because it’s the only time pedestrians are allowed on the freemont bridge.  and for whatever reason, even though Portland is a city full of bridges, this makes everyone really excited and stop to take pictures (myself included).

view from the bridge.

and then sometimes there’s a train mid race. I appreciated the break.

post race beers!  this race began and ended at the widmer brewery and included beers!  yay! nothing like post race beer at 10 in the morning!

and finally a guy in a poncho was the lead singer of this band.  of course he was in a poncho.

all in all it was a good race.  I am starting to feel prepared for that half marathon in july.

on vacation I went surfing and by that I mean a very gracious man named david suffered through 2 hours of teaching me how to “surf” which mainly consisted of me doing a fantastic job falling in the water and covering my face to prevent injury and was the best ever.

here’s my best story about surfing so you don’t have to suffer through the rest of the post if you’re just here for my amazing comedy writing (eric says that i’m two steps removed from actually being funny, which makes me funny.  what that means is that i think i’m funny, but i’m actually not, but the amount of funny that i think i am makes me funny again.  you can agree or disagree, i don’t care because i think i’m hilarious!)

anyways, surfing story.  About an hour and a half in, David was like “oh hey, look to your left, there’s a seal out here swimming with us.  he’s out here every day about this time.  it’s awesome.”

now, most people might react by being like “that’s so awesome that a seal is out here.” a wavey gravey person might be like “how awesome of that seal to choose to spend it’s time with us.”

crazy insane people who are scared of the ocean, but didn’t tell their surf instructor because they didn’t want to seem like a crazy do this.  Smile as genuinely as possible and say “wow, that’s awesome” but on the inside they’re thinking this: OH SHIT! THERE ARE ANIMALS IN THIS WATER. I HAVE BEEN SWIMMING WITH FISH AND ANIMALS THIS ENTIRE TIME! I HAVE MANAGED TO BLOCK THAT OUT FOR 1.5 HOURS NOW, BUT I CAN’T DENY IT NOW, THERE ARE MOTHER FUCKING ANIMALS IN THIS WATER. AND IT’S A SEAL AND IF I LEARNED ANYTHING FROM SHARK WEEK IT’S THAT WHEN THERE IS A SEAL AROUND, THERE ARE ALWAYS GREAT WHITES ON THE LOOK OUT TO TOY WITH THEM AND EAT THEM IMMEDIATELY. I AM GOING TO DIE. THIS IS HOW I DIE. PLEASE DON’T LET ME START MY PERIOD NOW BECAUSE I’M PRETTY SURE SHARKS ARE LIKE BEARS AND KNOW AND IF I DIE BECAUSE OF MY PERIOD I’M GOING TO BE SO PISSED.”  I then proceeded to surf into shore and continue to surf for the next half hour and not get eaten by a shark or get my period (until Saturday afternoon because of course i’m running my first 10K on sunday so why not haunt me body! whew, sorry for that overshare!).

things to note about me going surfing

1. i am sooooooooooooooo afraid of natural bodies of water, especially the ocean.  actually i’m kind of afraid of pools at night too.  those lights make them spooky! i’m mainly scared of lakes because i’m afraid of finding dead bodies.  and rivers i’m not actually that scared of except being in boats because of the time that we went down the rapids in the river next our childhood home and capsized and i lost one of my favourite shoes. i used to hold onto hope that Robert and Reba might find it washed up by their farm that was down the river a bit. i was a strange child.

2. i am not athletically inclined at all!

3. i am a severe perfectionist who usually cannot deal with messing up

here’s a bulleted list of my surfing experience:

• it was a ton of fun
• i wiped out constantly!
• i laughed and smiled for the entire two hours
• i did not actually injure myself
• i did not freak out about being in the ocean, well except the story above, but i kept it all inside and that’s an accomplishment
• i am still waiting to get full function of my arms back
• i drank a lot of salt water.  i’m trying not to think about how much fish pee i drank.
• i will definitely be surfing again

we took indie to Disneyland this past week and boy did we have fun.  half way through the first day we had this conversation as we were just wandering around trying to figure out Disneyland

eric: I just can’t figure out if everyone else knows what they’re doing and we just suck at this kind of thing or if everyone is just as confused and just standing in lines…

me: I think we just suck at this kind of thing.  also, Disneyland was probably not the place for me to be like “oh hey, on this vacation, I’m not going to over plan and we’re just going to show up and let life happen…”

eric: yeah, probably Disneyland was not the place to do that

so we did what I always do at Disney parks, we found the Dumbo ride and rode.  true story from my childhood: I made my dear sweet mother ride the dumbo ride over and over and over again at Disneyland and I rode nothing else.  I’m pretty sure she didn’t either.  I probably owe her a decent Disney vacation.

Good news, on day two, we got our act together and hit up some rides at California Adventures.  But we did do some other things at Disneyland the first day.  We attempted to see Mickey Mouse and get a picture because Indie loves him.  I walked that child all the way through Mickey’s house and stood in line for him to decide nope, today was not the day he would be having his picture taken with Mickey.  Such my child. Also, his favourite thing at Disney were the random ducks wandering around.  So we could have just gone to a park in Portland and fed bread to ducks.

okay random series of pictures.  I didn’t categorize by event, day, etc.  it’ll be a fun adventure for you, you’ll just never know the exciting turn that will happen next!  kind of like what happens when you don’t plan for Disney… all the sudden you’re like where the hell are we?  is that sky real or is it such a perfect blue that it’s so confusing to see against this cartoony landscape?  (true story, both Eric and I questioned the realness of the sky in Mickey’s toon town).

so we cleaned up indie from this ice cream adventure with a napkin soaked in diet coke.  parenting win!

this is the only picture of indie I got with the infamous mouse.  I was like that’s it, you’re going to sit here in your stroller by this statue and I’m taking a picture!  I know what my parents felt like when they took pictures of me with my head in the bushes because I was “shy.”  Another parenting win.

this is how responsible mothers dress to take their children to Disneyland.  what did you expect?  I didn’t even plan on what we were going to do once we got there. Yet another parenting win.

teaching the importance of taking selfies.  this was on my fave ride ever, dumbo!  Definite parenting win.

the carousel.  we got on this ride but never actually got to ride it because they suddenly needed to shut it down. suspicious… mainly because on a bench behind us was a bag when we got on and the girl running the ride was like “is that yours?” and we’re like “no” and she was like “don’t touch it” and came back to look at it again and then they were like ride shut down.  so we think they were treating it like a bomb threat and since we’re paranoid, we of course started seeing unattended bags everywhere and were like let’s go… clearly sane and for sure a parenting win.  it’s always a good idea to plant the idea of paranoia in your four year because just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you (my parents taught me that.  retro parenting win).

on Mickey’s big ferris wheel.  OMG he LOVED it!  He told me and the adorable Japanese tourists that had the extreme pleasure of being in the same cart as us not to worry because if we fell in the water, daddy would save us all.  he also saw the roller coaster and informed me that he really wanted to go on the coaster, especially the one that went upside down.  and upon me telling him that he wasn’t big enough yet, he informed me that he would like to be bigger.  this is a big step for him since he has been insisting that he would like to stay smaller for a couple of months now.

the bear, his spirit animal according to the spirit cave at Disney.

the view from our patio on the 17th floor.  Eric was like no thank you.  Indie and I went out to play for about 10 minutes.  I told Indie to be careful because we were really high up and he needed to stay back from the fence.  he told me not to worry, if he fell, I could just catch him with a fishing pole and reel him back up.  I think he needs to watch fewer cartoons….

family selfie!

family selfie again!  there you go mom, two family portraits to choose from! and yes, indie and I got ears.  we occasionally wear them and are mickey mouse and Minnie mouse.

on the humpback whale for the ill fated carousel ride.  he was just happy to get to sit on the whale.

and this was the last picture I took that day.  indie was like, look I stand on Mickey!

all in all, we managed to survive. and not have too many griswald-esque moments, but we’re probably not the people to ask about tips and tricks for Disney.

so i’m going surfing in april in so cal when we take the bear to disneyland.  so i decided to research some oregon coast surfing spots because i’ve determined i will instantly love surfing, be awesome at it, and of course, my fear of being in the ocean will be gone!  so i’m reading through the spots and the hazards.  i’m just not sure that crowded beach on nice days should be listed as a hazard when you have sharks listed as hazards.  i’m just saying that a few extra people is not really as hazardous as the earth’s ultimate predator.  so i’m going to go ahead and choose the crowded spot over the shark invested water spot. totally worth it.

we picked indie up from preschool the other day and his teacher was all: did you guys move?  he’s been telling us about his new house.

and we’re all: no, we moved here in november and he still calls it our new house.

and she’s like: oh, well he told me that you lived in a bus and i was all well, it is portland and i was envisioning this really awesome bus.

and we’re like: yeah, it’s not completely out of the question that he might live in a bus at some point.

such a little liar! or creative and imaginative.  potato, potato.  (it’s spelled the same, you have to do the different pronunciations in your head when you’re reading this)

Just a perfect day

You made me forget myself

I thought I was someone else

Someone good

-lou reed

kind of the understatement of the day.  i don’t write about it much.  i really mostly only talk to eric about how much i love music, unless i’m a little or a lot drunk and then i’ll go on and on.  (sorry friends!).

but there’s nothing better than finding an song, album, or band that just perfectly fits the current happenings in my life or that makes me feel a level of nostalgia for places i’ve been, places i’ll go, people i’ve met, people i have yet to meet, and a person i was or am or will be.

we’re always talking about how we need to hang more art work in our house.  we’ve been saying this for forever.  we didn’t hang any art work in our house that we actually owned, but now we’ve found some pretty sweet pieces for our new house.

in my search for an actual stuffed jackalope, i this amazing drawing done by Janis Fowler.  She’s an artist from Austin, TX.  this is a hipster jackalope.  he’s smoking a cigarette and has a nose ring.  i love him.  we’re hanging him in the dining room.  also i took the picture by pbr for good hipster measure and because i was drinking a pbr.

then today we were doing a little vintage/thrift shop exploring, which is actually quite humorous because i have a little ocd when it comes to germs especially with used things.  but don’t worry i wore skinny jeans and tucked them into boots so that my pants wouldn’t touch the ground in the stores (uck) and i brought hand sanitizer. anyways, we found this gem.  i think it speaks for itself.

yeah, that’s a mother fucking unicorn shellacked on a decorative piece of wood.  it will probably go in the bathroom or over my side of the bed because i love unicorns.

check out janis fowler’s other work at www.etsy.com/shop/creativescratchings

i’ve been thinking and investigating actually getting into taxidermy.  i’m not sure it’s the right hobby for me.  mostly i just want to decorate the dead stuffed animals after someone else has stuffed them.  hm, i just need a partner in crime it seems.

so this is a thought i had about gearing up to try taxidermy: i thought well maybe i could do a practice run on like a fake animal.  but then i thought how absurd that i would buy a fake already stuffed animal to tear apart just to restuff.  how redundant.

here’s your obligatory new years post.  so last year i didn’t do new years resolutions and i don’t intend to do them this year either.  instead here’s a list of things i intend to keep doing.

1. i intend to keep dressing in questionable ways.  whether that be slightly slutty for a mother of an almost 4 year old (i will obtain milf status, although i did get hit on my some early college/possibly high school boys about a month ago so that might already put me there, or cougar status, not sure) or if it means wearing ridiculous things like coyote ears and fur head wraps with ears and shirts with cats wearing top hats and bow ties.

2. i intend to keep listening to a lot of alt folk and 80s inspired electronic-esque rock.  get excited eric!

3. i intend to keep posting a large amount of annoying shit on facebook.   if you hate it go ahead and filter me out or unfriend (defriend?) me.   eric and i consider ourselves on permanent vacation in portland and will be posting pictures like we’re on vacation. don’t you know that this is where young people come to retire?  don’t hate us for enjoying retirement bitches.

4. i intend to keep thinking that my kid is more stylish than your kid, because he is.  he’s like a baby super model.  He can even rock rain boots like a boss.

5. i intend to keep consuming large amounts of bacon, whiskey, and meat.

6. i intend to keep using mason jars instead of proper glasses.

so there you go.  i will continue annoying you with questionable life choices throughout 2013.