I Love People and Places!

I am ridiculously excited for the next few weeks. My family is coming up to Seattle this next week and will be here Friday through Thursday. We're going to hang out and drive around the state and see beautiful things and generally be goofy in that uniquely Galvan way - I love that my whole family is kooky and we enjoy the same things and the same music. We actually like each other. Then Thursday night they're driving me to the airport where I will take off for Burbank to visit my favorite Casey who is interning at the Disney animation studio. She's actually THERE! Inside the building! Making things and meeting people! She's talked to Glen Keane. GLEN KEANE! If you liked Ariel, the Beast, Aladdin, Pocahontas, or Tarzan, then you like Glen Keane. I'm going to visit her and tour around then we're going to DISNEYLAND!!! I haven't been to the Motherland for two years - far too long for one such as myself. Then, unfortunately, I'll have to work for a few weeks, but Labor Day weekend I'm flying to Denver to see Kara for CraftFest2010!!!! We apparently stole the idea from Kara's mother and her college friend. In order to maintain our awesomeness, we want to get together, ideally annually, to craft and hang out (and eat...and drink...) and just generally be the super sweet people we are - but together. In the same state. ROCK!!!

I also just plain love the actual travel process (except the packing). I'm sure that if I had a job where it was a part of my regular life, the shine would wear off, but there's something so....comforting? to me about travel. I don't know. On the one hand travel seems like it should be stressful, but I haven't really had many bad experiences. I tend to feel peaceful and happy (and, let's face it, grown up) when I travel because I'm doing something fun and going someplace great to see people that I love. I also like sitting in airports and people-watching, reading books, getting a drink at the airport bar, knitting, occasionally even talking to random strangers (interesting note: it's the knitting that starts most conversations). When I went to Italy and took trips from there to Sweden and Spain I somehow grew this fondness for airports and it's stuck with me. I feel so free and calm and ready-to-go when I get through security and am walking through the terminal.

I'M EXCITEEEEEEEED!!!!!

Dreams, Demons and String Cheese

I am often a restless sleeper and have trouble falling/staying asleep. I deal. Last night, however, was a crazy jam session of exhaustion and insanity. After an unusually long bout of tossing and turning I fell asleep, perhaps around 11:30 or 12....only to be suddenly wide awake, heart pounding, fully of nervy, awful energy and a dire certainty that if I didn't GET UP AND MOVE THIS INSTANT I would most likely throw up and very possibly die. My body somehow decided that wandering over and over in a tight little circle in the middle of my bedroom, very seriously counting each step under my breath would make me feel better (like counting sheep?) I made it to about 100 and wanted to keep going but thought I should try to do something less crazy. I was extremely hungry so I stood in front of my refrigerator in the dark at 2AM eating whatever was available (mostly string cheese - pulling the cheese apart was soothing even though I was doing it extremely fast and ate maybe 3 or 4 of them in under 5 minutes). I got back in bed and read for another hour and a half before (still not tired) I forced myself to turn off the light. When I finally got to sleep I kept waking up from terrible dreams. One was a recurring dream-within-a-dream: I'd hear something in my room and wake up to find that a demon had me by the ankles and was dragging me from my bed into darkness. The only way I could get away was by gnawing through his wrists until his hands came off, but he just kept coming back. It sounds funny, but it was awful - I could FEEL it. Within this dream I knew I was dreaming and was terrified that when I woke up it would turn out that I had really been biting my own wrists and I would have hurt myself, but I also couldn't stop because if the demon was real I HAD to get away from him, I couldn't risk it. I had this dream several times within my dream but finally "woke up" and my sister was there. After I told her what happened she took me to a bar to distract me, but someone was having a baby. Apparently no one had cars and we couldn't call an ambulance, so everyone was trying to MacGyver a car out of our available resources.

At least the ending was funny.

I am currently so exhausted that I feel ill. Two minutes of "thorough" internet research led me to the fact that panic attacks can indeed happen while you're sleeping. They wake you up and don't last more than a few minutes, but it can take a long time to settle down and sleep again. Awesome. Though instant, internet-based self-diagnosis is, of course, shoddy at best, it certainly felt like what you'd call a panic attack. I think I've had maybe one or two others in my life: one in the months before I made the decision to move to Seattle and the other in the spring of my junior year of college, neither of which were very pleasant periods for me. Am I stressed out about something and don't even know it? Or maybe my body just felt like being a bitch for no reason. When I get into bed this evening I better sleep the hell out of the night or I am going to be pissed.

They liiiiive!!!

I have not yet killed my little plants! They live! They grow! Some may even be close to thriving! (Although I can't be sure - my idea of thriving is very limited considering I find it miraculous when something I tend doesn't die straight off). I ate a leaf off of my lettuce yesterday - very lettucy! I also bought some more planters because the chard and basil finally look big enough to re-pot and I need to thin out the carrots and give the tomatoes a lot of space to grow. Whether or not my tomatoes actually produce quantities of fruit is almost secondary to the pure nostalgia of the plant. We grew tomatoes in our backyard when I was a kid and I remember helping Mom and Dad in the back yard. I loved it when Dad would pull off the tomato hornworms and let us hold them [Note: I always thought Mom and Dad just called them tomato hornworms because they didn't know what they really were - turns out everyone calls them that. I'm sorry I didn't fully credit your intelligence!]. They were huge and very soft and kind of friendly and goofy looking in a terrifying way.

Your soul is miiiine! ...To SNUGGLE!

The SMELL of tomato plants, though, that just kills me. It's such a wonderful, deep, fresh alive smell. It smells like summer and home and my family and the backyard and sun and happiness. I love watering my new tomato plants because if I even touch the leaves the smell lingers on my hands for a while.

I am very proud of myself. I like playing in the dirt!

Races and Ritters

I ran my race! I am not dead! I suppose I didn't really think I'd fail, considering I actually made an effort to train and I'd run 10 miles the previous weekend without a crisis, but it's still a major accomplishment for me of the couch-and-tv-and-food-are-my-best-friends lifestyle. 2 hours, 22 minutes and 27 seconds. If only I'd run five seconds faster, it would have been all 2s! O, wild calamity! I had a BLAST doing it. I was so jazzed at the end I yelled, "Let's do it again RIGHT NOW!" but that was just the insanity talking.

I done runned the hell out of that race!

I ran the whole way, only walking long enough to take the water they hand you along the course and drink it without throwing it in my own face and the weather was perfect. It's so much easier to run when people hand you drinks and Gu and cheer for you the entire time. I kept what I thought was a pace I could maintain the whole time, then two miles from the end realized I had SO much energy left that I basically sprinted the final mile which felt good, but oddly disappointing. Maybe part of me wanted to have a sweaty, collapsing, "I beat you, Death, I beat you! I surviiiiived!" kind of finish, but I will accept sprinting. Also, I got to litter indiscriminately (done with your water? Toss the cup on the ground! They'll rake it up for you!), AND I got to run through a tunnel and on the freeway! How often do us regular folk get to run on the FREEWAY!?

The rest of Saturday was a lot of lying down, Saturday night/Sunday afternoon I sang my final two concerts of the season then went to our end-of-season party where I had the most delicious pineapple infused vodka in existence and sat around being goofy with my fellow altos.

Sunday night Joanna took me to a Josh Ritter concert - LIFE-CHANGING AMOUNTS OF JOY!!! He was the single happiest, bounciest human being I have ever encountered. His bass player has an amazing handlebar mustache. Their music filled me with wonder and energy and joy. I smiled so much it hurt. I crippled myself for him - I was in sharp, physical pain from the kneecaps down, but it doesn't matter. If you have the chance to see him in concert, GO, for the love of God, GO!

Gogogogogo!!!