2014 in Six Words

I think I’ll take a quick minute to fill you in on what I’ve been up to for the last year or so.

2014 was a pretty great year. 

Winter highlights:

I got out of town twice.  The first trip was to Arizona to watch my dad participate in Colorado Rockies Fantasy Camp.  It’s always so much fun to watch him play baseball, to enjoy the awesome weather, and to meet some of the old players.  Would you guess that Ryan Spillbourghs, (read that, Noey’s pretend Rockies Boyfriend after Matt Holliday) is actually kind of shy? 

Ellie and I watching a game

Dad in catching the game

shade, a book and a dirty monkey=heaven

The second trip was Mexico, baby!  I try to go once a year, and it used to be a “Girls Trip” but this time my dad wanted to crash and so we decided to let him.  Even though I was 35 years old, he was still Protective Dad and didn’t want to let me run on the beach by myself (I was regretting deciding to let him join us on our trip) but, the compromise was that he would either workout in the workout room with me or go for a run on the beach with me, and that ended up being one of the biggest highlights of the vacation for me.  I wasn’t much of an athlete until about oh, four years ago (ok, still not an athlete, just pretend like I am with a 45 minute run 5 days a week), and he was not in the best of shape for most of my adult life, but started working out regularly about two years ago, so if you had told me five years ago that the highlight of my Mexico vacation would be working out with my dad, I think I would have fallen over laughing at how preposterous that was for both of us.

Spring/Summer:

If I had any spare time in the spring or summer of 2014, it was either spent watching the Rockies lose, or in the yard at the Pinkhouse.

Rockies game with one of my favorite parts of 2014, my new friend Mary Kate.  She's ducking down in this photo.  In real life she's 6'1" of awesomeness.

Literally a $hit-ton.  Free compost.

Let’s talk about the part of that last sentence that’s more fun than sad.  I completely re-landscaped my front and back yards.  We’re talkin’, I completely tilled up all of the weeds and grass, laid sod and a sprinkler system, and xerescaped the front so that it’s now xeric flowering plants.  I did it all by myself.  Not really.  I had lots of help from my Mom, both in the design department and in practical help.  My brother pretty much did the sprinkler and sod, and then random friends (even my baby sister who never likes to help came more than one day and participated!) helped out both in practical ways (tilling, digging, laying out sod) and just in encouragement (stopping by with me filthy from head to toe and enjoying turkey burgers and beer post-workday).  It was such a huge project though, that it had already snowed once before I got the final tarp with the materials moved from the front of my house.  In my vanity I have to admit that my favorite part of the Pinkhouse’s makeover was the makeover to my bod- everyone was asking what I was doing to get the muscle tone in my arms.  I told them manual labor (hauling gravel around is heav-y!).

Before.  Weeds.

After.  Gabe watering the sod.

Fall/Winter:

In September I half-ass quit smoking.  It was just time to say goodbye, I had decided.  But I kept smoking every four or five days.  You know, just for fun and to make myself completely crazy.  I quit for real in November (as in, I haven’t had a cigarette since November…*sigh*).  I miss it.  It was one of my favorite things, like one of my best friends.  It was surprisingly linked to comfort in grief.  I find that since I’m not taking that few minutes for myself, especially at the end of the day, I’m not talking to Sawan like I used to.  I miss that, too.  I would always talk to him with the last cigarette of the day.  But, I don’t know, maybe it was time to say goodbye to that as well.

Also in November, I met a man.  Well, I meet lots of men, but this seems remarkable because I found one that for now I want to spend quite a bit of quality time with.

And that pretty much hits the major points.  My year in a nutshell.  I could have done it in fewer words:  Mexico, Baseball, Yard, Quit Smoking, Dating. 

Ta-Da!  Not a bad list of words right there.

Now that I’ve caught you up on what’s been going on in my life in 6 words, I’m not really sure what I’m going to write about next….