I went to the mall and I didn't die!!!!

I forgot to mention that earlier this week, or I guess last weekend, I did have time to hang out with a friend from my new local. Ann and I went shopping at the cherry creek mall. I am not much of a shopper, in fact most of the time I hate shopping. (All of you can wonder what Joey and I have in common now). However Ann managed to not only help me find some really cute clothes but I also had a blast and "gulp" found that I actually enjoyed the mall for more than it's air conditioning. We now have a pact that I will save a little money each month and then devote that to financing a wardrobe that is not 5 years out of date and does not consist of things that I have worn since I was about 15. I think it will be fun and then Ann and I will get to hang out more often besides when we are at races. :) I have to admit I originally agreed to do this whole shopping adventure for Joey's sake because he often has to shake his head when he sees what I am wearing. It's kind of an "oh, dear. Poor dumb kid" head shake. Saying both that he thinks I am completely backwards fashion-wise but that he still loves me regardless. Thanks to Ann however this will cease to be the case after awhile. :) We had an awesome time. I very proudly hung up my new clothes in the closet and have enjoyed wearing them around Joe. He likes the jeans that make my butt look good. ( Dad, please ignore that last comment) Give Ann a year to work with me and people won't recognize me on the street. It's about time I grew up a little clothes wise anyways. No more wearing flip flops in the middle of the winter, although I have refused to throw away my sweat pants despite Joey's reaction to them. I just agreed to not wear them out of the house anymore. :) And absolutely no one is going to come near my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle t-shirt. So next time you see Miss. Ann please give her a thank you and hug for helping this little Country girl make the transfer from college bum who gets dressed in the dark to someone who seems to have a grasp on what's up with looking good.

The conversion

Okay, I had my whiny moment earlier this week and now I am back to my typical optimistic self. In case you missed out on my whimpering here's the short version: "Boo hoo I live in the big bad city. I'm a scared", yadda yadda complain complain... Right now I am in a better mind frame. I know I'll be okay. I just have to give it some time and realize that regardless of who you are it takes a while to adjust to a new place. I went exploring for a couple of hours on Sunday and found that I live near a lake, a couple of parks and a creek. I feel better about the whole thing now that I have mapped out a running territory. Groovy.

The apartment looks like an apartment now. We have a floor. Well, half a floor but there is hope for a whole floor later tonight after the remained of our stuff is cleared away and properly stowed. Right now I am doing load after load of laundry and then hanging it all. (Those who know me well understand just what type of torture that is. Laundry is my nemesis. I don't mind the washing part, it's the putting away part that isn't much fun. Plus Joe's pants are about as long as I am tall.. ha ha) Other than that I have found a Duvet cover I like so I am off to give away money in order to take it home with me. I feel very domestic these days... interesting. Not completely bothersome but a change from normal. Oh my bachelorhood, it seems to be ending. I don't think I am allowed to call it my bachelorhood, but I'm not sure what the female version is. Bacheloretthood? I feel like Hugh Hefner converting into Martha Stewart. Well a very busty, and younger version of Hugh. Okay, Hugh is not a good example because I was never that exciting. Martha isn't ideal either because I am not that crafty. So scratch all of that nonsense. I feel like...... some one madly in love who has made the very strange self discovery that even though they hate laundry with a passion they some how enjoy folding their significant other's t-shirts. Maybe I should just stop trying to explain this sensation because it is making me come off as creepy and transgendered. Not really the vibe I am going for.

In other news that is much easier to explain, Nikki arrives tomorrow night! I am very excited to have her here. Her flight arrives rather late so we will probably just head to bed when we get home but the rest of the weekend will be spent hanging out and talking for hours on end about random things in our lives. It's an enjoyable way to spend a couple of days. If you met my sister you would understand just how cool she is. How she is related to a creature like me I do not know. Out of the three sisters Nikki got the looks and the brains. Cora got the maternal nature and the home maker. I took the remainder which seems to be the sarcasm and the goofy charm. I'm not sure those are good things but as long as I keep Joey away from my sister's he won't realize what he is missing out on. :) Shhh.....

Alright off to the cleaning/putting stuff away/trying not to curl up in bed with a book. .. mmmm bed... mmmm... reading.... mmmmm..napping the day away.....

No. I am not engaged. My puzzle ring has switched hands and everyone can go on with their lives. Although the sheer amount of friends, exs and other people who saw the picture and freaked out was pretty funny. I didn't even think about it until I got a call from joey a week later saying that everyone was asking him about it. Then we finally got the internet hooked up again today and wow... my inbox had at least 7 messages from people wondering what was going on. Trust me, if I ever get engaged people will not find out via my blog. (at least I hope most of you will find out in person or at least through a phone call, if you do find out first from my blog you have my permission to call me and tell me I'm lame.) The picture was really just to show you the size of the massive bug. Isn't it huge? Yeah.. I'm taking the picture down, but it was a big bug. I thought it was cool. Lesson learned. I'll start being more careful about what I post.

Right now I am sitting in the new apartment. In truth I am ridiculously lonely. It has been a good five years since I have moved to a town where I hardly know a soul. Not a fun feeling. It's kind of one of those moments where you say in your head, "Hey today's a nice day I should call someone and go do something." and then you realize that you have no one to go do anything with. Nor do you know where to go to do things. Or how to find basic things like grocery stores, libraries or places to meet people. It's hard. For once I wish I had school to go to because then I would at least know where to go to find people my age. Blah. Okay, maybe I am not in the best of moods today. Tomorrow will be better. I'll feel a little less lost. Maybe I'll get up the nerve to leave the apartment and see just how turned around I can get in Denver. If you see me driving around in circles please be kind enough to yell out directions. If you know anyone who wants to be my friend and lives in the same zip code, please give them my number.

Salida puts stuff in the water

First thing first, congrats are in order for one Mr. Bob Pinkerton. Way to take 1st place! Thata boy!!! We are all very proud of you. I think Joey might explode because of all the pride. Ha ha.. I don't know when I've seen him grin like he did after got the news. It was cute, and touching all at the same time. Speaking of Joey, and it seems like I rarely do anything else, we spent the weekend together in Salida for the last race of July. As you can see from the photo, Joey put a lot of effort in which made him sleepy.

While he was off racing and focusing on being the rough and tough cyclist man, I was being my normal slightly weird self and climbing trees. The tree was GINORMOUS! For example here is a photo of me in the tree.... And here is a photo of Joey from my view up in the tree.... Joey looks tiny.

We also found a very large bug.. I think it was a June beetle but I am not sure. You have to wonder what exactly it is that is in the water down there to make things grow like this. :)

THERE WAS A PICTURE OF A LARGE BUG HERE. IT LOOKED LIKE THIS:


Other than that Joey and I went hiking together, and tried to take a photo where we were both in the same shot. That way we'll have a total of 4 together or something lame like that. It didn't really work, but it's kind of artsy. I call it, "We both only have one eye, but together we have two." I'm kidding. Breathe people. It's okay. I'm not that sappy. Yet.

We also got to see my parents and some family friends, although for some reason I completely spaced taking pictures with them. :( No bueno. It was a great weekend. I like weekends like that. I do not like the moving that has taken part for the beginning of this week. Joey and I were up till 1 am last night moving stuff. My back went out at some point so I got to hobble around like an old man, and Joey was up waaay past his bed time for a 6:30am alarm clock. YAWN.. but there is still more moving to do today so off I go. (on the bright side, the new apartment is wonderful and we got to sleep there last night... on a mattress, on the floor....but still... progress has been made. Mauh ha ha!!! )

So long Dr. T

Tomorrow is my last official appointment with Dr. T. No more spinal traction for me. YAY! I have been going for a year and in a way I think I am almost a little sad to say good bye. Yes, it has helped me more than I would like to admit and yes, I have hated going. The important part right now is that I have completed my program just in time to move. Go me! If you are bored you can read about my experiences with all of it. If not then you can wander off to your life, which is probably a lot more exciting then this. :)

5. Traction and Dr. T
I have spinal sclerosis. It is a hard word to spell, but a fun one to say. It sounds a lot more intense than it actually is. When I was told that I had this I was confused. I did not know what that word meant. Everything I knew about it dealt with old people. Old people had this, which meant I could not. I was 22. In fact the reason I was even diagnosed with this was because I went mountain biking the weekend before and went flying over my handle bars which pretty much tore my arm out of the socket. Old people do not mountain bike and take diggers over their handle bars…which logically meant I was safe, he was wrong and he should ask for a refund from his medical school. I had this set pretty firmly in my mind until I got to my car. I opened the door and sat in the driver’s seat, and started crying like a complete wimp. I didn’t want to be old with spinal sclerosis. I am very active and this would mess with my Mojo. I went home. I looked it up on the internet and oh… it made more sense. It wasn’t the end of the world. It just meant that while spines are supposed to go straight up and down mine had decided to be artistic and do the shimmy around my thoracic and lumbar regions. Aka, it was not straight; it curved out to the side. I could deal with a spine that wanted to express itself. The next day I was supposed to go back to the doctor. I went, and we did X-rays. I still didn’t know if I believed him so I left my belly button ring in so I could tell if he was switching out my healthy 22 year old spine x-rays for that of an old person. No such luck, not only was there the blaring whiteness that was my belly button ring proving that it was indeed my spine, but I got yelled at for not taking it out. Bummer. Sigh. Okay, okay it was my spine now how do I fix this? Dr. T was more than willing to tell me exactly what I needed to do and how he was going to help me get there. This man sells chiropractic work like some men sell cars. He talks fast, wears tacky brightly colored polo-shirts and smiles while asking about your family but he moves on to the next person before you can answer. He is also religious. In the office there is Christian music playing non-stop. I am not religious and I have nothing against religious music. I even own some that I listen to on my 8 hour drive home to see my family. But this was not even music you would listen to if you were desperate 6 hours in on an 8 hour car ride. The solution to spinal sclerosis is traction and adjustments three times a week for a year. From my experience I have determined that traction means they strap you down, with weights attached to your head and force you to listen to bad Christian music. You cannot look around at the other people who are in equally ridiculous positions, some drooling and more than one making the snorting, sucking sound as they try and swallow with their heads tilted back all the way. It is funny but you can’t really laugh because you might choke on the spit that is accumulating in your own throat. When you are taken out of this particular traction you have red marks on your head and you have to try and act dignified knowing that all of the people around you just heard you making the snorting, sucking sounds when you were trying to swallow. Next you move on to standing traction. This is much more exciting because you can look around and people are doing different things which are entertaining. However it is a lot more dangerous. A couple weeks into my traction experience I thought I was doing pretty well, I had mastered the swallowing part of the neck traction and I was getting fairly good at the standing traction, meaning I no longer broke out into a sweat when I was doing it. I was talking to a man in his early 40’s that was standing next to me. It was involuntary communication because he was doing traction for one side of his body, and I was doing it for the other side so here we were strapped in, staring at each other. After about two minutes of awkward silence we started talking, I can’t remember what about. Something to deal with farms. I grew up on one and he was working on one now... I knew this because he was wearing a red shirt and overalls. We were talking for awhile when I suddenly woke up on the ground. I was being held up by straps, two people I didn’t know and some stranger in front of me was saying “woo-ie I didn’t know I person could go out like that, we was in the middle of talking and suddenly she went white as a sheet and BAM!, ha ha ha.” He has a huge grin on his face. I had a lot of things I wanted to say in order to remove that shit eating grin but at the moment I needed to lie down. I was led over to a table, and the doc whizzes by asking if I am okay. Apparently this happens all the time to light weight females. I think I missed that in the opening presentation. Traction: may cause head injury while fixing your spine. I waited a week before going back, and then I only went grudgingly. I still go to traction, not as often as I am supposed to but my car salesman of a doctor tells me that this will cure all my ills. This is my new elixir. It will make my ovaries happy and my immune system invincible. My spine will be straight as an arrow and I won’t have any problems when I am an old person. I go and the bad Christian music continues to play, but now I bring head phones which I jam into my ears while glaring around the room daring any farmer to laugh at me.

SIDE NOTE: I am not sure it really was a cure all elixir but it did help me out a bit. The migraines I have had since I was a teen are gone and I can run again. So really, it was worth it. ( I think) Oh yeah, and the passing out part never went away. In fact I passed out yesterday. Really, it wasn't passing out, I just wanted a closer look at their carpet. That's all.

Home sweet home

Break out the champaign, and bring in the clowns. We have an apartment! Move in date is set for next Monday. Joe and I will be residing in a nice two bedroom, two bath apartment. It has a full kitchen and a balcony off the front which means it will be facing west for those beautiful sunsets in the evenings. In the master bedroom there is a large walk in closet (so that Joey can fit his truck load of clothes) and the master bath has a HUGE tub which makes me a very happy girl. I just need a beach ball and some floaty wings and I am all set, well and maybe a rubber ducky. "Rubber ducky, you're the one, you make bath time oh so fun..." sorry. Back to describing the dwelling. We are planning on setting the second bedroom up as a guest room/computer room. It is going to be entertaining trying to cram all of the stuff we both own into one place. I am planning on throwing away half of my stuff cause really, it's just random junk. Next week is going to be a lot of work. But we can handle it because we're the tough, big, strong, moving types. Quit laughing at us. Really. We are good. The apartment complex is spiffy too. (Yes, I just used the word spiffy. Wanna fight 'bout it? )There is a pool and hot tub downstairs, and a gym. Pretty much everything we need and in a location that is right next to a bike/running path. Score. I believe my sister Nikki will be the first guest because she was not wise enough to consider that I'll probably make her help me set things up. Aka: My sister Nikki is coming to town on the 6th of Aug. I am excited to make her work for me, I mean see her and spend some quality time catching up. Lol. The comical part of this whole moving in together business is that for the first month we will hardly see each other. I am going out of town the first weekend and then Joey had one, possibly two business trips towards the end of the month. :( Sad panda. As soon as things get kind of arranged in a house like manner people can come over and check it out. Unless you want to fall victim to the moving crew. (Trust me, you don't. Run while you still can. If Joey or I call you in the next week, don't answer!!!!)

So that's the exciting news for today. As gun shy as I am at the moment about living with significant others I can hardly wait for this. I can honestly not imagine my life without Joey in it. Strange how that stuff falls into place sometimes. You just never know what is going to happen next. Well, except for right now. I know that next I am headed off to Dr. T's and then to run errands for the rest of the day. :) Yes, I know, I am smart ass. But I enjoy it so much.

Ps. I'll put pictures up as soon as I can.

Drake is the Bombdiggiety

Whew... weekends are supposed to be for relaxing, and yet I seem to look forward to the work week so that I get a chance to breathe again. This weekend was kicked off with finding an apartment! YES!!!! It is a very nice place, and I'll give you more details later. Today we have to turn in applications and all of that jazz. This happy news was followed up by an alarm clock going off at 5 am Saturday morning. I don't know about you, but for some reason that just seems wrong to me. You are supposed to sleep in on Saturday but noooo... 5 am we are rolling out of bed and crawling towards the shower. We had a race to marshal at the top of Mt. Evans. Aren't we cute in our matching little orange vests? Awwww.... That's the Christmas card right there. 6:15 am...finally coffee! I can stop growling in response to everything Joey says and start to form sentences. That is a pleasant change. By 7 am we were at the top of the mountain. There wasn't much to do but set up and drink a lot of water so that we didn't pass out due to the change in elevation. It was a little cold, but that was mainly the wind. I wore flip flops because I am just that cool and I decided that I would control the weather and make it not rain/snow that day. Lucky for me that plan worked. About an hour and a half to two hours in we start to see the first racers. Wow. That is all I have to say to those guys. That was a hard race. I was dead impressed. I would not want to do that. I would not want to wish that on my worst enemy, and yet here these guys are doing this by choice. I question their sanity as much as I applaud their strength. :) I mean that in the nicest way possible. So we spent the day at the top of the world, or at least at 14,240 ft. My face became nice and crispy. I did not know that your lips could actually blister from sunburn. Sexy...



We did have a little company up there at the top though. Check out the mountain goat/sheep. They were pretty cute. I oohed and awed like a girl is supposed to and then ran and got my camera. By 3 pm we were finally making our own descent down the mountain. Picking up road signs along the way and making faces at the tourist which were allowed to come up the mountain before the race even ended. Finally we got home around 4 pm, at which point we crawled back into bed and passed out cold for the next two hours. I am not sure why it was so exhausting to stand around all day but I was dead to the world. Joey and I curled up with some quesadillas for dinner and watched a movie. Sunday morning we headed off to Joey's race in Boulder. It was killer since the temp was 103* outside at the start and as soon as it was over we headed back to my house to begin the YARDWORK.. insert dramatic music here. It took us a couple hours with the use of Drake's phenomenal weed whacker. Drake, I will forever be in your debt. Next time you need help with something let me know. So the result of hard labor ended us with something that resembles a yard. Sweet! My landlord will be happy and I am sure that the neighbors are thrilled. Now if we can just keep it kind of neat for another week, I am set and I am forever done with Campo Ct. ( this is where the band breaks in and the parade starts). As for right now I am off to buy renters insurance and then head off to lunch with my boss. Blackman out.