Remember flirty old security guard?  He stopped me on my bicycle again this week and gave me a good laugh.

Security Guard:  You’re late for the olympics!

Me:  Yeah, well I missed my flight to Beijing.

Security Guard:  So you came to work instead?!?!?!

It was the first of the month, so I woke up to my alarm and shouted RABBITS! to an empty bedroom.  I heard the weatherman predict a hot sunny day, and I smiled.  I moved quickly through my morning routine and hopped on my bike to pedal to work. 

My celly rang as I shuffled up to my office.  It was MF calling to say good morning and to plan our date for that evening.  I wished him a good day and went about my business.  It was a typical happy morning.

After a half day of work, I headed back home via the W&OD and that’s when things started to take a turn. 

Where the trail passes through the golf course in Herndon, I missed getting hit by a golf cart by about six inches.  The guy didn’t stop before crossing between greens. 

Once in town, and on the the neighborhood streets, some clown in a Jetta passed me dangerously close in a 25 MPH zone and shouted at me for being in the road. 

Then I hit the post office to buy stamps.  I was the only customer in the place, but the FOUR postal clerks refused to acknowledge me until they were finished cracking jokes about “fitting the package in the slot.” 

Next I went to Safeway to pick up groceries for the weekend, including a couple goodies that I knew would make MF happy: fancy creamer for his coffee and seedless jelly for breakfast. 

Janice, the professional cashier, bagged my groceries like a crazy person, refusing to bag my cold items together, and then tying each bag carefully in a double knot (why?).

It was all just too comical.  I couldn’t believe my bizarre afternoon.  I didn’t have a single normal experience anywhere I went.  I wondered… WTF about my RABBITS! I am supposed to be having good luck in the new month!

I went home and settled into the couch to wait for MF.  I couldn’t wait to tell him about my crazy afternoon and get a big ole’ hug and just have a nice relaxing evening with him.  And that’s exactly why when I picked up my phone at 5:15 I was shocked to get my heart broken.

Yes he did it over the phone.  I don’t think I can come over tonight.  I am having a hard time.  I don’t  know how to move things forward with you.  I can’t love you the way you need to be loved.  Then I don’t want to be in a relationship.  Yes, he used every cliche in the book.  At first I was like, oh I am glad you’re talking to me about this, we can work on this together babe… until I realized he wasn’t even asking for help.  He was breaking up with me!  I don’t remember anything after he said I’m not in love with you anymore.  I slammed down the phone.

I mean, universe, could my luck be any more awful?!

So Saturday, I was with Pia pulling into the parking lot at Safeway.  She’s been awesome at checking in, distracting me, keeping me company, keeping the chit chat going when all I can otherwise think about is my own hurt.  The first spot in the row was open, AND I could do the pull-though into the next spot so I’d be facing out.  I announced, “Sweet!  I got a close spot AND the pull-through!”  I love it when that happens.  

Pia reasoned, “Well there’s your RABBITS!  It is good luck to get a spot like this on a busy Saturday.”

Bright spot in a bad weekend?  I guess I should take the little things as they come.  I was just wishing my good luck had been a little bit bigger.

Then this morning, four black crows perched on the roof of Starbucks and caw-ed to me as I walked out the door into the empty lot.  Those harbingers of doom were speaking directly to me, warning me of impending death.  That’s pretty much what crows do, if you didn’t already know.  Metaphorically I hope, of course.  The death of my relationship?  The death of my heart?  I can deal with that - things will feel worse before they feel better.  But I don’t know how much more I can take right now.  I hope those crows had the wrong girl.

*************************************************************************

BTW Let me tell you how I realize I am lucky every month, though, whether or not I remember to say RABBITS!.  I have awesome friends and family who are there for me and who remind me that I am loved, even when one man tells me that I am not.

I find myself suddenly single on this Friday night. 

Yes, I am surprised too.

I am OK.  So disappointed… but OK.  

And funny… I don’t feel like I’ve lost the love of my life.   Someone I love(d) and trust(ed), yes.   Someone I had great passion with.  Someone safe and comfortable.

Hindsight is sooo revealing, isn’t it?

I might be more let down about having to deal with the sketchy dating scene again.  Or maybe I am just feeling mean enough to say something cruel like that right now.  I don’t know.

I learned things from this relationship, but I hope he didn’t.  I’m still pissed enough right now that I hope he just keeps making the same mistakes for the rest of his unhappy life.

We arrived just in time for the Wednesday night cask-tapping.  We hadn’t even known about it.  That bar is a regular date spot of ours, but on this Wednesday night, our meeting spot and meeting time happened to coincide with a special event.

“ASK ABOUT THE CASK” begged the printed signs displayed on the bar.  So… we asked about THE CASK and learned that last night was the first (of many, they hope) Wednesday feature cask nights at the bar.  Lucky us, being there by coincidence for such a unique event.

The beer man had come from the brewery with a small “cask.”  It looked like a tiny metal keg to me, but what do I know.  If the kegs from my college days were the Ford F350, then this cask was the Mini-Cooper.  It gets propped on its side at an angle and you don’t tap it with the typical Co2 or nitrogen used on kegerators or bar taps. 

Would this be like the time in college when we suffered through the dregs of flat beer from the bottom of an old keg so as not to let any precious Beast go to waste?  No, and I’ll explain…

“Number one, I always practice safe casking,” announced the beer man at 6pm, as he removed his tidy sportcoat, perhaps expecting a potential mess.  He counted down “3-2-1″ and hammered a small tap into the cask using a large wooden mallet.  As he poured the first pint of Clipper City Hop 3, he announced, “This is literally fresh beer!” 

By “fresh beer,” he explained that he was referring to the unique fermentation process.  The beer was sealed into the cask while it was still fermenting.  It was a “living beer,” rather than the finished product we normally drink from a bottle or keg.   Living beer - that sounds creepy.  Like the beer man might tap the cask and suddenly The Blob emerges to engulf the bar.

We happily tasted a pint.  “That’s fantastic,” declared MF, normally not a fan of hoppy beers.  I just knew I liked it.  Nope, I don’t know exctly why… but I liked it!

Visually, the beer never settled.  It had a murky appearance.  The bubbles that settled on the top of the pour didn’t have the look of a typical foam.  They just looked like perfect layer of big clear fizz.  The beer man explained that we were witnessing the natural action of cascading bubbles.   And this was also the reason they didn’t need a tap.  The beer just naturally had the suds.

To compare, the cascading bubbles we’re accustomed to seeing in a pint of Guinness is actually an artificial process that Guiness invented.  Or when kegs of Bud pull from the nitrous or Co2, that’s an imitation of the natural bubble action you see in cask beer. 

So last night’s event was planned to be the first of many Wednesday night cask beer samplings.  It was kinda fun, plus we had a great meal at the bar and could walk home after,  so of course we’ll pick another Wednesday to return.

Today, at work, I was required to make up an answer for two security questions.  They will be asked in case I ever forget my password to the corporate encryption software.  The questions were:

What is the name of your favorite celebrity?

What is the name of your favorite athlete or sports team?

A tech support guy was walking me through it all over the phone, so when we got to that screen, I laughed and said, “Let’s skip the security questions.  I can’t answer these.”

“I’m sorry but they’re not optional.”

“But I don’t have a favorite celebrity or sports star.”

“Can you make one up?”

“Even if I make one up, I will never remember it a month from now, because I don’t care enough about celebrities and sports teams to remember a “favorite” from one day to the next.”  I shared with him my thoughts about this sad metaphor for today’s pop-culture-obsessed society.  And the fact that the company expects me to remember such trivial information for such an important password.  And that this is something I will have to remember for the duration of my employment here.

“I agree with you on that.  So, can you just make something up like… let’s see… what’s your Mom’s name or your Dad’s name?” 

“Good idea.  So where do I override the security questions so I will be asked ‘What’s your mother’s name’ and ‘What’s your father’s name?’”

“Oh that’s not quite what I meant.  We can’t actually override the questions.  But you could say that your favorite celebrity is your mom and your favorite sports star is your dad.”  He explained that his favorite athlete is his daughter because he loves to watch her play soccer.  And that his favorite celebrity is his dad, because his dad is his biggest hero.  World’s sweetest tech support guy, ever.

“OK.” So I typed ‘mom’ and ‘dad’ respectively. 

Error.

“That’s not enough characters.  Can you make up something else?  Or use their real names?  If their real names are spelled with seven characters or greater.“

“Sheesh!”

Sometimes on a laid back sunny weekend, we walk to a neighborhood field to toss the frisbee. 

I love playing outside, and while I’m not *great* at any lawn games, I just have so much fun.  Croquet, bocce, horseshoes, cornhole.  I think there are ways other people become more skilled at those games, but folks like me can still have a good time even if we totally suck at them. 

But frisbee… it kinda takes two people, ya know?  It just doesn’t work if even one or both people suck at frisbee.  So when MF and I go out to play, I try really hard to have good aim.  I start out all serious and agile and I even look like I know what I am doing.

But every time we play, at some point, I just deteriorate into a little puppy dog playing fetch.  I get all “YAY! FRISBEE!!!  YIPPPEEE!!” and I sort of forget to throw with my wrist and pretty soon I am all hips and skips and rolling in a fit of laughter in the grass.  “WHEEEEE!!”

Saturday I threw that frisbee over the fence and onto the deck of an abandoned swimming pool… THREE times… and not on purpose!  I was laughing too hard to climb so MF had to leap the fence to retrieve it each time.   It’s like the more I tried not to let that frisbee veer off course, the worse it curved.

I had been wondering why the dog didn’t once make a run for the frisbee while we played.  Doesn’t he like to fetch?  Now I understand.  It was me.  He just never knows where whatever I throw is gonna end up!

Tales From the Trail, Vol. 5 aka A Tip for the Single Ladies

I got hit on post-run this morning looking like this!  Ba ha ha.  I was stretching my hammies at MM 24 when he approached.  I was soaked and shiny with sweat.  My hair, my skin, my clothes were just glistening.  No makeup and I was flushed.  I probably stunk.

sweat 'n freckles

I swear I only show you guys the really attractive pictures of me.

I pretended like I wasn’t being picked up but I rather enjoyed an easy conversation with a friendly stranger on a beautiful morning.  He peppered me with questions.  I conversed politely and with a smile but I did not reciprocate the interest.

My point of writing this is to let that ladies know what a great place the trail is to potentially meet men.  Believe me, we are waaaay outnumbered by the opposite sex out there in the mornings.  I am certain that if I were on the market, this is exactly where I would want to pick up a guy.  Here’s why:

o  You already know one interest you have in common!
o  It’s evident that he is fit and healthy - or at least getting there.
o  At that early hour in the morning it’s a sign that he’s probably got a job that he’s headed to post-workout.
o  That early in the morning is also a sign he is motivated to wake up and work out.
o As evidenced by my photo, no need to primp and groom to meet men this way.  Just roll out of bed, brush teeth, and go.

But if I ever find myself looking for love again, fair warning: MM 24 is my turf.  LOL!

I was 15 or 16 and working as a cashier at Genovese.  I had a crush on the guy who collected the shopping carts from the King Kullen parking lot next door.  Sometimes we called him Kevin and other days we called him Cartman.  Kevin was his real name.  Cartman was the name we gave him behind his back.  I ate TCBY or Subway for lunch during my weekend shifts. 

Other than oglinig Cartman and the occasional Oreo Shiver on my lunch break, my memories of that job were all bad.  And I worked there twice!  The first time I was fired because my drawer was regularly short.  I am not bad at making change, and I certainly was not stealing, so I never figured that out.  I do know that I was soon offered my job back… and I promptly quit it when I learned I’d been hired down for a way cooler job down at the beach shop.

So one afternoon at Genovese, I was working the register with the cigarettes behind it.  A woman and her grown daughter walked up and the mother asked me for a carton of Marlboros.  I put a carton of Marlboro Lights down on the counter.

“No, I said Marlboros.”

I must have rolled my eyes as I put the wrong carton back because when I turned back around with the Marlboros, the daughter leaned over the couonter and said to me, “If you roll your eyes at my mother again, I will jump across that counter and beat you.”

I completed that transation in silence.

I almost forgot about that until last week when my mom and dad and I drove a ways to Candelero’s in Manchester for lunch.  In a nearly-empty restaurant, we were directed to a table directly under a fan.  A surly young bus-girl walked over with some water and, knowing there were plenty of other tables, my mom asked her in her cutest, friendliest, sweetest, smiliest way “is it OK if we move to another table a little further away from the fan?”

The surly bus-girl looked sideways at my mom, lifted an eyebrow, curled her lip and rolled her eyes.  And at that moment, I knew I wanted to lunge across the the table and knock her out.  Nobody treats my mom like that, especially when she is being so nice and friendly. 

My mom, thank goodness, hadn’t seen the dirty look, but my dad and I sure didn’t miss it.  She still hadn’t acknowledged my mother’s request, and we were all still standing there, so I repeated my mom’s question, “Is it OK if we move to another table?”  Before surly bus-girl could get any grouchier, a server intervened and said “sure, no problem.”

Once we sat down at the new table, surly bus-girl brought our waters over.  My mom, totally sweet and nice all over again, was like “oh, this is much better, thanks!!!!”  And the brat just smirked at her.  Wow, I was fuming. 

And then I remembered there was probably a day when a woman about my age was telling the story of the bratty teenage cashier down at Genovese, and I realized that is one of those life lessons that finally came full circle.

Most Monday mornings are tinged with resentment.  Especially so on the Monday morning after a week-long vacation.  But instead my week started off with a funny little compliment.  Sometimes all it takes is a little kindness from a stranger.

So I’d already gotten off the W&OD and stopped my bike at the gate to badge in to the parking lot at work.  I rolled up there in my littlest spandex tank top and bike shorts.  Hey - just trying to keep cool on a day when it’s already 79 degrees at 6am.  The security guard, a friendly and heavily-accented old man, emerged from the booth.  He’s there every morning, whether I bike or drive, but we usually only nod a hello.  This time he stopped me.

SG: “Good morning”

CH: “Good morning”

“How far do you come?”

“Oh, it’s a little over 6 and a half miles to get here.”

“Why do you you do that?  Your body is so good.”

“Oh, um, thanks!?”

“You don’t have any soft spot.  You don’t have to do that.”

“Well it’s good for my heart too, you know.”

He just shook his head — like he was diasppointed with me for exercising off all my “soft spot” — but I knew he was also paying me a compliment, albeit in a manner only a funny old foreign man can get away with.

He doesn’t know that all the soft spots on this 34-year-old body are held in by my spandex bike shorts, but I wasn’t gonna argue with him!  I just rode away smiling.

I made a new friend while I was in Vermont. 

Feisty, my fox friend.

He’s one of two baby gray foxes that live out behind my parents’ house.  They hide out back in the stone wall with the mama fox and then come out to play in the grass and nap in the sun.

One evening, I wondered if I should try to get closer and get some better photos.  I dragged a lawn chair out there and sat waiting for some action.   That’s about all the excitement there is up on a mountaintop in rural Vermont!  Feisty (I named him that myself) eventually woke up from his nap to find me hovering there with a camera.  Instead of darting away, he became curious.  Lil’ Feisty turned and started walking towards me. 

Feisty approaching

He got so close I had to start backing off.  If a baby fox gets touched by a human, his mother will reject him.

He retrieved a mouse or some other treat his mama had killed earlier and left out there for him, and dragged it into the shade under the trailer to eat it. 

Feisty having dinner

I didn’t try to rassle him for his dinner, so I think it was at that moment we became bonded for life.  The rest of the evening, Feisty either tried to follow me around out back or he played peek-a-boo with me from up on the stone wall. 

Feisty playing peek-a-boo

My mom says he is still out there every evening waiting for me to come back.  Wouldn’t it be funny to try this approach to making a new human friend?