B.A. Matador

I believe in things just coming together...
I believe in timing...
I believe in fate...

I believe that somehow, someway, in my struggle to stay awake on this long, long shift I volunteered for, it was just meant for me to stumble across this website, MatadorU travel writer's course, while I was just, simply looking for a travel quote. 

My friend and fellow blogger, Lynn sent me this article earlier in the evening.

Via email at 0029 hours this early morning, I responded to my admissions counselor about changing my major to a B.A. in  Business Marketing.

My co-worker, Kelli, was visting with me last night remniscing about her college-aged daughter's travels as a missinoary, blogging, writing, and photographing hospice patients and school children in Ethiopia.  "Kelli, if I could do it all over again, I'd be a travel writer."  I said those actual word less than 8 hours ago.

This is not a co-incidence.  This is another message from the Universe. 

Bucket list:  #46 and #54, I'm coming for you.

We will meet soon.

X.O. ~ Lo

Why Georgia Why?

Four more exits to my apartment but
I am tempted to keep the car in drive
and leave it all behind

Cause I wonder sometimes
about the outcome
of a still verdictless life

Am I living it right?
Am I living it right?
Am I living it right?
Why, why Georgia, why?

I rent a room and I fill the spaces with
wood in places to make it feel like home
but all I feel's alone
It might be a quarter life crisis
or just the stirring in my soul

Either way, I wonder sometimes
about the outcome
of a still verdictless life

Am I living it right?
Am I living it right?
Am I living it right?
Why, why Georgia, why?

So what, so I've got a smile on me
but it's hiding the quiet superstitions in my head
Don't believe me
Don't believe me
When I say I've got it down

Everybody is just a stranger but
that's the danger in going my own way
I guess it's the price I have to pay
still "Everything happens for a reason"
is no reason not to ask myself

If I'm living it right
Am I living it right?
Why, tell me why
Why, why Georgia why?


~ John Mayer 

fly.

this is on order

this has been read top to bottom

the thought of doing that as a living, and living here gives me butterflies like it's a new crush

something else gets my blood pumping too (public relations, writing, photos, telling stories that are unheard and need to be told) having one of these and one of these would definitely help

(epiphany!) even better...I'm already an enrolled, paying student and all I have to do is change my major
I've been a paying, enrolled Psychology student for 18 months and I haven't cracked the books or completed a course.  Why? I'm just not damn interested in psychology anymore.

but marketing, PR, journalism...that would get me out of bed in the morning, and that hasn't happened in a long while now

a new career
a new challenge
a new set of wings

it's so clear now

over the course of the last two years, my unassuming Jiminy has said more than once "spread your wings and fly"

sometimes I take things literally

all of this reminds me of these birds and this walkway that I had the good fortune to encounter earlier this year





He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying. ~Friedrich Nietzsche

I've been standing and walking, have just taken up running and climbing, and there is always, always room to dance...flying is next, it's part of my "just around the corner"

Free Fallin'

This song...an open road...an open itinerary...a warm breeze...great company...moonlight or a sunset...

It's not too much for a girl to ask, is it?

I wanna free fall, out into nothin'

Gonna leave this, world for a while

day of prayer

Once again, I found myself stumbled upon an adventure. I had plans to go to Yeti Indian Restaurant in Glen Ellen, just outside of Sonoma.  Of three routes, I inadvertently landed upon the one that went through and up the hills of Santa Rosa.  A road that was not unfamiliar to me, but one that I didn't remember until I was a few miles into it.  Full of twists and hair pin turns, one way roads & one lane bridges, all of it covered by a canopy of trees.  The higher up we got, the bigger the trees, Redwoods to be exact.  It smelled incredible.  

A couple of wrong turns, but I eventually found the restarurant tucked back into an old wooden building off of Highway 12.  Just enough shade to make for a comfortable lunch, still enough warmth to make it a perfect Summer day in Northern California.  The outside patio had 5 tables above which there were Tibetan Prayer Flags draped across the outside patio area.

As I sat there under those flags, eating lunch catching up on life and love with my aunt and uncle, I received two requests.  One for my dear, sweet girl Catie who was not doing well, admitted into the ICU and struggling with the disease that had been trying to define her for so many years now.  The other from a friend and colleague from another city, "to my Police family, pray for us this week, as we go to Washington DC for the National Law Enforcement Memorial Service, you know what this means to us, it will be tough."

They say that the purpose of the prayer flags is that they will carry your prayers with the wind. They are meant to be strung on a windy day and are not taken down until they are to be retired.  They weather the elements, they get worn, and like life, they are here and then they are gone.  The old are not replaced entirely by the new, they are strung up next to each other until one is retired and the other takes it place.  They are meant to promote peace, compassion, strength, and wisdom.  While I don't subscribe to the mantras that they are founded on, I do believe in symbolism.  I believe in the message and reminder that of what they stand for. I believe in prayer.  I believe that while we cannot always see it working the way that we think want it to, while our prayers sometimes seem to feel like they fall on deaf ears, the power of prayer is not always in the end result.  It's in the process of being humble to pray, to have faith, to receive peace, and wisdom.  I believe that prayer changes us from the inside out.

it is well with my soul (my picture perfect weekend)

And so...it was that time again. Time to go a little North & then a little East. It was time to take a roadtrip. A long and overdue one to the mountains, where the air is cleaner, the trees are taller, the friends are more like family, and I can just be me. Clumsy, carefree, passionate, confused, heartbroken, happy, sad, hungry, tired, beautifully messily me. Few places in this world exist where that can happen. I treasure the places where that exists.

 Into the car I went...riding gear, snacks, CDs, a few changes of clothes, a good book, a head that needed some clearing and the sunroof back was just the way to get rid of all those thoughts that haunt me and do me no good. I always do my best thinking in the car. It is my refuge. It is one of those safe places that I cherish. It's just mine, I decide where we go together, it has always kept me safe, & it keeps my secrets too.

(He's not cheap, but he's dependable, and worth every dollar..& arm & leg! ouch!)

(the gear I packed: how dirty girls get it done)

(I arrived just in time for dinner and to make some of my new favorite Vegan Blueberry Lemon Chia Seed muffins for breakfast for the next few days)

(and then after a long drive and some dinner, the brightest full moon of the year wished us all a good night)

When we awoke, Sunday had come upon us......75* of sunny Sunday blissfulness. Waffles on the back porch turned into beers on the back porch before the crack of noon. We had a goal. Drink, talk, tan, do nothing else.

.....Shock Top (well the bottom of my bottle that is.  Which simply did not do...it was quickly replaced)

.....THE lawn.  I love this lawn.  The end.  You will soon know why.

.....the Couple I <3. I think this picture says it all. Gary & Patti met in wildland fire academy 20+ years ago. Much to the disdain of her nerves, he likes to clean up the property on the weekends. Her inner firefighter cannot be contained. He came up from the burn and grabbed an extinguisher, she followed (in flip flops) with a hose. I grabbed my phone/camera, cause calling for resources and documentation is what I do. I love this new picture of them. It about sums it up. I love their relationship. It gives me hope.

You can only drink so much before you get hungry, and there was pesto to be made. Two drunk women, one incorrigible food processor, and handful of ingredients = perfection. Recipes? Naw. Not this girl. Here's the cooking rule: find good ingredients that stand on their own, match them with ones that you like equally as much, put them together and see what happens. You can't go too horribly wrong. Oh, also...never trust a woman who cannot cook. You'll thank me for this later in life sometime. Trust me. Also trust me when I tell you that this roasted garlic pesto cheese bread can and will some day make for world peace. It.is.that.GOOD!!!

After we soaked up some booze with some bread, it was time for a ride. The dirty girl gear didn't make it in the back of the car for nothing!

I am merely a guest on the trails, which leaves me behind following and eating dust. I'll do it any day. I love to ride, I forget and then I always remember once I get back on my bike.

I risk loosing my phone/camera on rides for pictures like these alone. It was every bit as peaceful as it looks.

feels like home

it rained buckets...then it cleared up
my hair stuck to my back in the humidty...i just pulled it up
the bugs loved me...i put on off
i wandered around a beautiful mess of a cemetary and could have stayed for hours
sat at the bar at Paula Deens, party of one, and talked to my dinner mates about travels far and wide
wandered down the sreeet close to midnight and found a new love in coconut gellato
it was Savannah and I loved it
as all things South, I suspected I would
there's a part of me that I think must have lived there in another life
it doesn't feel like a foreign place
it feels like home

May 5, 2011

Driving down a frontage road in between Big Spring, TX and Colorado City, TX, I was belting out this tune while peeling and orange with the windows down and the sunroof back. That's was Cinco De Mayo my lil' American style.

I thank god for my life
And for the stars and stripes
May freedom forever fly
Let it ring.
Salute the ones who died
The ones that give their lives so we
Dont have to sacrifice
All the things we love.

~ Zac Brown Band

my soundtrack...

It's 10 to 4 in the morning.
I'm wide awake.
I'm home alone watching the Grammys.
One of my all time favorites, The Dave Matthews Band is serenading me...
"You and me together, we could do anything, baby..."
I can't wait for Summer and the concerts it's going to bring.
I've been home for less than a month and I have an itch to go somewhere new and see something beautiful.
I love 4ams like these...<3

Madonna moment

I'm restless. I hate sounding like a 10 year old with no imaginiation, but I'm bored. I can't pinpoint it, but there's something else in life that I was meant to do...or be. Maybe the problem is that my imaginiation is always running wild. I have more to say, but not right now. I'm gonna make this my living post. I'll just keep coming back and adding more as it comes to me.

I keep getting this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that I just want to run away. I don't even know where I want to go. I just want to go out >there<. As vague as >there< might be.

Maybe, just maybe, its this introspective graveyard shift that I've been on for far too long that is making me think too much. Can you ever reallly think too much? I guess so.

I'm gonna call this a "Madonna" moment. I feel the need to reinvent myself. *sigh*

Rooooooooaaaaaaadtrip!!!

Need I say more? Serenity here I come! Just as I'm typing this I hear the mailman dropping new music my mailbox out front. Ooohhh, music gods you've shone down on me with new roadtrip tunes. Piling up on my kitchen table are all my hobbies packed neatly in their own cases and they're all going with me. Camera and all my lenses, makeup by the lb, scrapbooking supplies en masse, and the 60 lbs of riding gear out in the garage that could use a dusting off. Lord, oh, Lord, it pays to have friends in wooded, secluded, retreatful places.

Life is a highway

Yesterday was a fabulous day! Not to be undone by the backwoods Deliverace tour of the Santa Rosa Hills and Bennett Valley or the 6-hour-side-of-the-2-lane-highway occupation somewhere in Napa and Marin counties, I started my afternoon in St. Helena in the drizziling grey afternoon and ended atop the 11-story Macy's in Union Square on a beautiful mid 60's breezeless night. It was literally a jump in the car and go! kind of day. I haven't really had a day that was free of an agenda in a long time. I feel like I'm always on a deadline to get somewhere. Oh, wait, I am.

My navigator and good friend, Kelly, kept me company all along the way, sang with me, talked a mess about the fool-acting people we both know, caught me up on her life, listened to my rants and raves, and just shared a great adventure with me. Blindly following my trusty GPS along the highways and backroads of Northern California proved to be an beautiful, unseen adventure that has literally been just in my backyard all this time. Somewhere on the way to visit my Aunt at Casa Whitaker atop the Santa Rosa Hills, we followed the purple line of my Garmin Nuvi and ended up smack dab in the middle of the mother of all closed road detours. About 15 hair-pin twisted miles prior to that point, we found ourselves on a 1-lane bridge in the misty fog covered trees. You don't have to be an avid sci-fi movie fan to appreciate the beauty and mysticalness (yeah, I don't think that's a word either) of blakets of fog. It's really a beautiful thing.




Looking up through the sunroof at the canopy of trees.

Even though I struggled to keep my eyes open on the drive home, I was really happy with my carefree, adventurous day. It was good for my psyche and my soul. I think I could use more of those. I'll have to put those up near the top of my agenda from here on out. "Life is a highway, I wanna ride it all night long...yeah, yeah, yeah."

Snow 'n flip-flops

Typical girl road trip “necessities” for 48 hours: 1 Aero bed, 2 pillows, 1 blanket, 1 expandable case of makeup that weighs approximately 12 1/2 pounds, 1 pair of camel colored Kuggs (Knock-off Uggs), 1 pair of brown boots, tennis shoes, 22 makeup brushes, 6 pairs of earrings, 3 necklaces, 4 bracelets, 3 long sleeved shirts, 7 short sleeved shirts, 2 hoodies, zebra print pajama bottoms, 1 pair of jeans, 1 pair of sweats, 1 pair of brown corduroys, 2 scarves, 1 baseball cap, 1 zip up sweater, 1 jacket, 4 pairs of socks, 1 laptop, 1 digital camera with all the lenses and filters, 3 Netflix movies, 1 scrapbook project to share with fellow scrapper, 1 apple, 1 banana, and 5 oranges. Options. Give a woman options and you’ll keep her happy.

Lauren road trip necessities: Music.

~ P!nk, Hinder, James Otto, Colbie Callait, Shakira, & Muddy Waters. Daily servings from all the major music food groups. A little bit country, a little bit rock and roll, with enough blues, spice, and Bubbly to keep things interesting.


So far today, safe trip, good scenery, good friends…great day off.

Quote of the night:
Gary (mid-story): “We were drinking one night…was it a holiday?” (ponders the thought, looks up, scratches his chin).
Patti: “No. There was no occasion, Gary. It was Summer and you had a porch.”

Today, I took myself on a 4-hour road trip to visit the Robinsons up in Susanville. I have to admit I wasn’t overly thrilled at the thought of driving in the rain, and possibly the snow, for 4-hours by myself but I had already planned on being gone for my weekend and I was expected.

~Just outside of Red Bluff

My GPS was steering me towards all kinds of routes as I drove north up I-5, but I took the “pretty” one on good advice. Glad I did, because it was absolutely beautiful! I gotta get out and get my drive on more often!



I was mesmerized by the greenery as I turned out of Red
Bluff onto I-36 and then I was captivated by white snow as the elevation got higher. Every time I passed one of those big, yellow “Watch For Snow” signs, I chuckled to myself. I am! I am! I swear I am! Minus the windy, rain-slicked, winding road bordered by 4 foot snow banks on both sides, I was watching the snow all around me like a kid glued to cartoons on a Saturday morning. I must have stopped about a half a dozen times to take pictures. This is the most snow I’ve seen in my 27 years. Really, truly, it is. It’s strange (and sad) for me to hear myself admit that considering how often I take flight and travel. I figured I would have spent at least a little time in the snow by now during one of those adventures, right?



~ Mill Creek, CA

I am not a snow person, but it’s not like that on purpose. I can count the number of times I’ve been in the snow in my lifetime on one hand. The last time I was “in” the snow, it was April or May of 2005 and I was:
1) in the snow
2) in the Swiss Alps
3) in flip-flops.
Yes, you read me right. Flip flops. The only thing that could have been more obvious was a blinking fluorescent sign around my neck with an arrow pointing down at my next to naked feet: “Tourist, tourist! Look, it’s an American tourist!” You see, I am never prepared to be in the snow. Ever. I don’t live close enough to snow to have snow clothing. I mean, it’s a cold day in Vacaville if it hits below freezing at 4am on a mid-January night. It just doesn’t ever get that cold where I frequent.


~ Lake Almanor just outside of Chester, CA

Really though, I could be a snow person. I think I want to be a snow person on occasion. I live pretty damn close to Tahoe, so I could have snow gear - really I probably should have snow gear, but I don’t. My family was never an adventurous one while we were growing up. We didn’t really go anywhere on vacation. I can only think of a couple trips that we ever took as a family. One summer when I was about twelve maybe, we went to Hearst Castle and the Monterey Bay Aquarium and it was miserable the entire time. Imagine a two-tone brown Ford Aerostar van circa 1989 filled with the sounds of childhood misery, bickering, and the non-stop nagging of 3 siblings, 1 cousin, and 2 parents. Needless to say, we never bundled up as a family and headed towards the powder to revel in a full day of cold, wet, miserable non-stop nagging and bickering. Still, as close as we were to the snow growing up, I should have made at least one snow angel as a kid even if I had to sit in that brown van to make the trip.

Note to self: when you have some, take your kids to the snow while they’re still kids. Just make sure they’re not in flip-flops.