One of the few places of solace right now is an escape to the beach. I can actually clear my head there. And recently, given all the childcare my household has tackled for my brother and his wife, these moments of quiet and natural ocean sounds are healing. Since Covid is still problematic and my county is still high on the list, it’s one of the places open air enough to enjoy with a friend or my boyfriend at a personable distance. J and I took off Friday to have a beach day and enjoy Lunar New Year. We got to the beach mid afternoon. It was breezy and cool, being the middle of February and all. The waves almost had a milky feel in reflecting the overcast but sunny sky.
There were very few people at the strip of coastline we set up at, but a few people walked the edge of the water so we were much higher up out of the path. A little dog, maybe 8 pounds, comes running in a serpentine “do I, do I not?” style up to us and goes and licks J’s hand. He runs back to his mom and daughter family duo, then comes back to J. Of course, my reaction is, “Yay, dog! Cute dog!” His Mom and Sister come closer to us but keep a safe distance. The Mom compliments J. She says it’s the first time in 5+ years that Brody has felt comfortable and safe approaching a male. J is a large guy. He looks like he could be a football player. 5’10”, solidly built, and probably even more gigantic to this little dog who has feared men most of his life yet out of the blue decides to do something brave and trust this one. He comes back again, gives him another love lick, and J gives him his hand to sniff and slowly and cautiously moves to pet him and Brody complies. My heart swells at the joy of this moment. I think, in my head, “That’s right Brody, you trust him and so do I. He’s a good man, and now man’s best friend approved.”
J is actually a self-confessed cat person, but he and I are both allergic (me, nearly deathly). He has always joked about tiny and small dogs being borderline annoying and yappy. It was a relief to see how he warmed up to this little fella. After Brody and his family left, he confided to me that if he were to be a dog owner in the future he’d want a cute little lap dog like that over a big dog. I was once again taken back at this confession. “The kind you make fun of for being yappy or foo-foo?!” I exclaimed. “Yeah,” he said. I shot back a sly smile and told him I would have never guessed. I told him one day if we got a dog as a married couple, a tiny cute lap dog, we might just have to honor him with the name Brody. He smiled and told me he’d like that.
Category Archives: boyfriend
Race Day, Debriefing, and Vacay
The days leading up to the event and shortly after were a blur. After spending a whole year with a team planning up a one day event, I can only imagine the race day as something along the lines of a wedding day. After months and months of laying everything out, the actual day is overwhelming and wonderful and a lot.
This is my second year on the planning team but the first I’ve made it to the event (thanks, stomach flu) so it was amazing to see it all in person. I helped with publicity so my task was done before event day so I had the chance to be a volunteer and enjoy the event as an attendee after that. My mom volunteered with me to be race course monitors during the actual race. I cheered the 10k crowd on as they ran and was pleasantly surprised at how kind runners are. Many thanked me for volunteering or took time to say Hi to me or Thanks. There were so many people, and I can only hope that through runners, attendees, and everyone else present that we raised a lot of awareness and funds for foster kids in my county. We had a pinwheel garden that had over 1,000 pin wheels in it representing every child in the foster system. It was probably the biggest visual impact we had and new this year.
One of the sweetest surprises of the day was a phone call from my boyfriend. I was a major grump after trying to find parking again post course monitoring and practically yelled at him for asking me if I wanted a starbucks. I scratched my head at that thought since he doesn’t live that far away but it was totally out of his way to get me coffee (but Lord knows I needed it). It turns out, he was super sneaky and signed up for the race and walked/ran it without my knowledge! I was greeted by a java chip light and his smiling face with a race medal around his neck. ❤
This weekend we did our debriefing where we discuss how to make next year even better. It was from 8am-5pm and really did take that long to go over all the bits and pieces. A lot of the team was there and we really have bonded over this event. Our hearts our unified in benefitting foster kids and the rest is history. I will never take a non-profit event for granted after knowing personally how much has to happen behind the scenes.
I’m glad our 2017 planning year is officially done until 2018 planning starts back up in August. That means being able to sleep in again on Saturdays which I could use. Ahhh.
I’ve taken one vacation day this year so far and I realized next month is a halfway marker for the year. I was definitely feeling a little work and home life (renter) burn-out and it happened to work out that one of my best friends and I worked out an 4 day lake getaway. I’m looking forward to some R&R and best friend time with one of my favorite people in the world. 🙂
Words that Sting and Mall Therapy
There are few things that can sting my heart so badly but attack my mental capacity or pressure me about wedding plans and unfortunately you have me in a bad spot.
My practice of marking things to spam has helped me greatly but admittedly, I am still shaking off these words.
You see, my parents had a family friend stay with them and in the course of us interacting while they were here, she spoke few things to me and the few that she did were obsessed with me being married.
I was there the night she and her son arrived. She found a moment and called me to sit down at the table and asked me, “So do you have any good news?”
I may not always pick up on social cues but I definitely knew where this question was directed. However, not wanting to cause a scene and having something exciting to share, I proceeded. “Yes actually! I got a raise and title promotion at work! I’m now the media director at my company.”
Her response? A scoff and half-hearted muttered “Oh.” And that was the end of that. No more questions, no more conversation.
The next evening I was hanging out with them again and my brother, his wife, and baby were also there. We were sitting on the floor watching Kai crawl [a new and still cutely awkward crawl!] around. She asks me, “When is the big day?” Half shocked, half speechless, I asked her what big day. She told me, “Oh you know.” I told her flat out I didn’t. That’s when instead of dropping it, she decided to respond with. “Look at your brother. He’s already married and has a baby.”
Ouch. Instead of taking my chance to stop the convo, you end it with comparing my achievements (or lack thereof in her book) to my brother’s.
It hurts because everywhere I turn people are ASKING me that question. And while I know many of them are just genuinely curious, it’s really hard on my emotions. And when I keep it short they always ask me if my boyfriend has sat down with me and discussed it and how far we’ve worked on getting to that point. That part is complicated. Would I like to be married soonish? Uh…why do you think it hurts so much? But is that even practical right now? Not even. And even though I have no hard or jealous feelings towards my brother and his little family, the fact that he has one has made it OPEN SEASON for people who know my family. It’s like Nate is A, therefore I am B.
All that to say, still sore and wounded, I turned to my favorite pastime for therapy – shopping. I went straight to the mall after work, partly to make a return, and mostly to get lost in the noise.
The Laura of two years ago would have scavenged the racks looking for every deal in existence. The Laura of two years ago would have tried on anything relatively in her size and bought half of it. But I’m not her, and that surprised me in a very nice way. I had a mental list of shops I wanted to go to and once I got to the mall I didn’t feel the need to go into most of them. I mostly browsed and breathed in the bustle and the diverse languages and sounds and smells [because PTL I can smell right now!]. I got the most satisfaction going into Sephora and sniffing all the perfumes I hadn’t been able to before. I bought one shirt, one necklace, and ate a comforting bowl of poke salad and my heart was content in that.
Quarter-Lifer Musings 