Tag: sister-wife

¡Pura Vida!

You may recall that, back in September, I vacated Durham for a week in Costa Rica with my super-friend Shiv (a.k.a. my sister-wife). You’re most likely saying to yourself, “Well, that must’ve been pretty dope,” and if so, YOU ARE A GENIUS AND TOTALLY CORRECT.

Evidence:

  • We stayed at the base of a volcano for a coupla/three nights.
¿See it over there? ¡That’s Arenal!
  • We went to a hot spring spa and sat in 100-degree waterfalls that came off that volcano.
  • There was a parrot named Estefanía who lived at/around our hotel, and
she would harass the workers until they gave her bananas
or “bañañas” as Shiv and I took to calling them for no good reason.
  • All breakfasts included fried plantains. All breakfasts everywhere should include fried plantains.
  • We ziplined over the jungle.
Seriously. Will you look at that.
Shiv=badass (She kept wanting to go upside-down and stuff, and the guides were like, “OK, crazy lady.”)
  • We went on a gorgeous hike.
What.

Also,

  • We met a baby sloth named Cheu, and
he did ET-phone-home finger with Shiv.
He also slothfully scratched his armpit for a long time. It was adorable.
  • We had two fantastic beach days.
Here I’m doing the Handstand Everywhere You Go requisite for people who do CrossFit. (I’m both proud of and embarrassed by this photo because, hey, that’s a pretty good handstand but, Jesús, you could land planes on my thighs.)

(I know. I need to cut that shit out.)

My favorite picture of the trip: Shiv en la bahía.

The only obstacles we had to overcome, other than the torrential rains for the first few days, were the incorrigible scavenger animals. To wit, the raccoons and coatis:

But also one morning, a band of capuchin monkeys terrorized/delighted (tomato/tomahto) the restaurant where we had our breakfast. I had wondered why the waitstaff didn’t put boxes of sugar packets on the tables — you had to ask for them — but it’s because the capuchins are junkie-monkeys. They will run through the restaurant, snatch the sugar packets right off your table (sometimes the whole box), and

scamper up the trees to get their fix.

The funniest part was that if they happened in their caper to grab any packets of artificial sweetener, they would throw them on the ground. (“Pump that garbage in another monkey’s face,” said the capuchins.)

[Side note: I told my 10-year-old niece this story, and she wrote the following poem.

Monkeys Don’t Like Splenda

I was sitting in the restaurant, (I was on vacation,)
I was taking lots of pictures I would send to my relations.
I got a big white envelope; it didn’t say the sender,
All it said upon its face was; MONKEYS DON’T LIKE SPLENDA.

I sat eating bananas, pondering those words,
I was in Costa Rica, but it did seem quite absurd.
Maybe they were picky eaters, or didn’t like the food,
Either way, this or that, I thought it was just rude.

I asked the waitress, bout the note, the manager’s the sender,
Each table gets one, and it’s true, that MONKEYS DON’T LIKE SPLENDA.

Then a monkey raced down and grabbed the sugar packets, 
Dumped the Splenda, dumped the box, and just made quite a racket.
I learned a quite good lesson; that healthy isn’t ALWAYS good,
Cause if monkeys don’t like Splenda, I don’t think that I should! 

I’m not biased or anything, but I’m pretty sure my niece is a genius?

End side note.]

Shiv and I sat on the beach late in the afternoon of our last day. Pieces of the navy blue mountains across the bay, which itself turned slowly from aqua to slate, chipped off and floated skyward. A lone trawler chugged its way toward the open Pacific. The branches of the guayaba tree stirred above us, and every time we stood up to leave, the yaw-kish of the waves hitting the beach lulled us back to our chairs,

while the sun became an ever-tinier pink sliver and disappeared.

The common Costa Rican expression pura vida means a lot of things, including hello and goodbye. If you say it about a person, it means s/he’s good people. But it also translates loosely as “Life is good”.

Which, in Costa Rica, it certainly was.

Pura vida.

Ruby, Are You Contemplating Going Out Somewhere?

I don’t know shit about makeup. My daily face ritual is

a little dab of this

and…

Actually, no ‘and’. That’s it: Bonne Bell Dr. Pepper LipSmacker chapstick.

On school picture day, I’ll powder my T-zone because otherwise it looks like you could wax a car with my forehead. And about two or three times a month, on a weekend night when shit gets crazy, my tube of Great Lash gets busted out.

But some of the bitches I run with, they know makeup. I kept badgering them to teach me, and — squeaky wheel/grease — they got me a gift card to Sephora for my birthday and took me on a field trip to spend it!

It was so fun! And informative! I mean, I still don’t really get it. One of them would pick up a cask of green eye shadow and rub it on the inside of my arm. The inside of my arm. How does? — Anyway, they’d all lean in, and say in concert, “Oh, no.”

I’d squint at it and say, “No? Not good?”

They’d say, “No, not good.”

Then another of them would slather a different product on my inner forearm — one that looked to me exactly the same as the first — and they’d go, “Oooooooh. Yeah.”

And I’d go, “Yeah?”

And they’d go, “Yeah.”

And then they would teach me how to apply the stuff.

Here’s my sister-wife paintin me up like a Jezebel.

Anyhow, last week, at age 37, I bought my first-ever eye liner (a purple one by Dior that cost thirty dollars — what?!) and my first-ever rouge — wait, they don’t call it that, do they? — blush (Dabby dabby dabby on your cheek, aaaaaaand make a C around your eye… that’s what I remember from what they taught me anyway).

They told me to buy cheapo mascara — done — because I have good lashes already, and Kate M. tried to get me to throw out my powder compact and get a new one. She was like, “How old is it? More than six months?”

And I said, “Sure. It’s probably two or three years old, but I’ve only used it, like, eight times.”

She was all, “Older than six months! Throw it out! Bacteria! Breakouts! Disease and putrescence! Your face will rot off!” She didn’t really say all that, but she was quite emphatic. I wrested it from her talons and shoved it back in my purse.

(If I die of meningitis of the face, Kate, you can say I told you so.)

Anyway, I should’ve taken a Before picture. Alas, I didn’t think to. However, here’s an After shot (of me making a face like a total goober!).

I’m also real greazy because I had gone straight from the gym, but ignore that, and pay attention to the eye shadow, eye liner, mascara, blush, and lip gloss. I am wearing makeup!!!

Thanks, Kate, Mayg, Shiv, and Hammer! I love you guys!

The Foster Chronicles: Tulip, Week 22

Day 1

My arms are sore. The day prior, five friends and I flipped a giant tractor tire a mile. (It’s a workout created by my sister-wife. She dubs it “the enTIRE mile”.) Upshot is my forearms are Meredith Baxter Burny, and correcting Tulip on our walk is a chore. I decide that, instead of physical corrections, I’ll use mind control. I say, “Tulip!” real short and concentrate real hard on being the boss of her, and wonder of wonders, she drops back six inches letting the leash go slack.

I have to do a lot of mind control, probably about as often as I’d been doing tugs on her collar, but my forearms are saved.

Day 2

I spend most of the day crying. Emotional upheaval, probably not helped by the fact that I’m not sleeping enough. I’ve been walking the dogs between 9:00 and 10:00pm to beat the heat, but when I get home, I’m wound up and don’t go to bed until midnight. Tonight I skip the dog-walk so that I can get to bed at a reasonable hour. Lights out at 10:37pm.

My brain wakes me up at 4:15am. Stupid brain.

[My friend asks, “Aren’t you scared to walk that late at night?” Um, I’m walking 190 pounds of pit bull. Nope, not scared.]

Day 3 

More mind control. I think it’s working. I have to choke up less on the leash when we go by the house with three big Rottweilers in the yard. At home, I look online at Rottweiler rescues. I need to stop; I have a problem.

Tulip has 120 Facebook friends. No adoption prospects.

Day 4 

On our late night walk, the pack gets agitated. I look around to find a loose or stray dog (it’s too dark to see if it’s wearing tags) about 20 yards away. Redford lunges, and when he can’t get at the stray, he redirects on Violet and Tulip. Tulip snaps back. I’m able to separate the dogs and hustle away from the strange dog. People pooh-pooh pinch collars—they say they’re cruel or whatever—but those things are the only reason none of us has to go to the ER.

Day 5

I have scheduled a walk with the adoptive “father” (he’s only 22!) of Tucker, the boy dog that was confiscated with Tulip. In the pictures, Tucker and Tulip look alike, though he’s clearly mixed with something other than pit bull. It’s possible Tulip is his mom or sister. I’m hoping she remembers him and they have a grand ol’ time together.

We arrive at Duke’s east campus. Tucker walks up with his person. Tulip is excited. She tenses up. She sniffs at Tucker. He hesitates. She says not-nice things to him.

(sigh)

We walk anyway. It’s fine. But damn.

Day 6

I go on a tubing trip down the Dan River that lasts three hours longer than I expect. Tulip is in the crate for almost eleven hours. When I get home, she has jumped around in there and managed to slide it across the room, but she’s otherwise OK. I’m too tired to take the dogs for a walk.

Day 7 

Tulip is CRAZY. Between the long stint in the crate and not being walked since Friday night, she has a lot of stored-up wiggles. She gets them out by running laps through the house and tossing her deer antler to herself and then chasing after it.

We go on an extra-long walk. I use a combination of physical corrections and mind control.

Tulip’s always real interested in whether I’m going to eat that.

The Foster Chronicles: Tulip, Week 23

A Clean & Jerk Parable

One of my bits when I hosted the Monti StorySLAM on Tuesday (oh yeah, I hosted the Monti StorySLAM again last week) was that Coach Dave kept harassing me about signing up for an Olympic weightlifting meet, and you could all go ahead and wipe that skeptical look off your faces because that didn’t mean this fatty would be trying out for the Olympics. It simply meant a competition of three attempts each at the two Olympic lifts: snatch and clean & jerk.

I hemmed and hawed and made excuses about not having lifting shoes. Then my birthday rolled around, and my family got me

Pendlay Do-wins! Lollipop laces provided by my sister-wife. (Photo by Coach Dave.)

So then I dug my newly-clad heels in about the world’s least flattering garment, the singlet. (Just google ‘singlet’; focus on the athletic ones, not the sparkly ones you see at Pride parades.) Well, then this gym in Cary scheduled a “developmental meet”, which means yes on shoes, not necessarily on singlet.

I still hesitated, but Coach Dave, he’s a wily bastard, and he knows me. He said, “It’ll give you something to blog about.”

I guess some people, when they sign up for a competition, follow some sort of plan to prepare. I went strict on the Pretend It’s Not Happening program. Coach Dave watched some lifts, Coach Phil at CrossFit RTP helped me work on my snatch for an hour and a half [insert punch line] last week, and my buddy Liz gave me some pointers and wrote me out an extensive list of tips on yellow legal paper. Other than that, I just kept CrossFittin’ and whistlin’.

Meanwhile, my support team was rallying. My dad was thinking about driving down the mountain for the meet. My friends were conspiring about a banner. My sister was going to bring her kids. But on Thursday, when I realized I was starting to hyperventilate a little bit about the whole situation, I sent out the following email:

So, with going to Boone last weekend, the stray pit being put to sleep, the StorySLAM, and getting a foster dog, it’s just all too much. I’m still going to go and participate in the meet this weekend, but I’ve decided that no fucks shall be given by me that day. Therefore, I would not mind if you saved—nay, I would encourage you to save—your fucks for giving to some other event which might require given-fucks.

I adore you all,
ame

And that worked. I did not give a fuck. Until Saturday when I walked into the place. It was so quiet in there, and there were people in chairs watching, and the women in the first session (tall, skinny ones; itty-bitty ones; really fit ones) were putting up some big numbers on the board. Like, way more than I could. I mean, I knew calling what I was doing “competing” was fallacious, but I didn’t want to look like a charity case.

At that point, I got all weepy, and poor Coach Phil had to shush me and tell me it was gonna be OK.

The situation was bad. Earlier in the week, I would’ve been satisfied to hit a Personal Record at the meet. Now I had a new goal: not to shit myself on the platform.

I weighed in, 77.2 kg (170 lbs), and rolled around on a foam roll for a while. Coach Phil helped me warm up. My cheering squad did not heed my emailed advice.

Get it? teAMY… Team Amy, but combined. There are multiple advanced degrees in this picture.

Snatches first. There was one woman in my session whose three lifts were all smaller than my opener, so she went. Then I was up. I hit my opener at 33 kg (72.6 lbs) and my second lift at 36 kg (79.2), but I missed my third. I can’t even remember what it was…37? I got it overhead but crumpled underneath.

Several more women (all of them at least 20 pounds lighter than me) went, lifting enormous amounts of weight over their heads.

After that came the clean & jerk. I hit them all: 42 kg (92.4 lbs), 46 kg (101.2 lbs), and 49 kg (107.8 lbs). (Phil had wanted me to do 51 kg (112.2 lbs) because it would’ve been slightly above my PR, and I should’ve listened to him. Those clean & jerks didn’t feel very hard.) Most importantly, I did not shit myself.

Again, the real weightlifters came next and lifted some real weight.

The organizers totaled everything and called up the winners by weight class. As I was the only competitor in the Over 75 kg group,

I won first place in my weight class. (Photo by sister-wife.) 

The lesson, children, is this: Sometimes it pays to be the fatty.

[Ed. note: I feel a follow-up post bubbling in my Broca’s area. But for now, to bed!, for I rise before daybreak.]