Don't think I'll do it? Tri- me!!

Well I guess it's my turn and as usual - last and late - what can I say it's the way I'm wired...sassy and bratty and comfortable in the limelight. It might have something to do with my little authority problem and not liking being told what to do. Ooo I hate that and have just enough spite to do whatever it is anyway. Either way I'm here and not square.

So what is my role and how did I get involved? Well, I'm exceptionally charming, even funnier and deceptively angelic. As soon as you think I 'wouldn't dare', is when you turn around tri-ing to find me because I'm off doing whatever it is. I'll tri almost anything once and work really hard to not say never!! I'm wildly committed to doing my best, accomplishing my goals and/or having a good laugh at my own expense. This entertaining package also comes with a propensity for being remarkably offensive and domineering while fluidly exclaiming profanities that seem out of context. I'll apologize for it but keep on saying it - F@&% is my favorite word. It makes me feel better to use it and I've enthusiastically embraced this fact. I tri to pull off being ladylike and classy but it just comes out as "GDit, who Fing farted!! Why do I even hang out with you pigs!?" See what I mean - it doesn't fly very far. Either way I will never think that farting is funny and implore crazybiach to keep her sphincter in check. As for crazybiach I've known her for almost 4 years and have shared or been the accomplice in many adventures. I am otherwise new to the world of alaskagrrrl and looking forward to this new chapter of tri-umphs. This is what CBS gets for denying me both my applications for The Amazing Race. I've always said I'd make great TV! They'll be soooorrry!!

As for the picture what can I say. I love to laugh and apparently show my nostrils. They appear more frequently in pictures than I care to share. They seem to have a mind of there own and often go nare in nare with the fluids that come shooting out as mentioned in the previous blog entry. I tend to fulfill this novelty of the pee, vomit, nare juice tri-fecta. Our "bleaders" can count on pictorial documentation of our wily ways and follies. Because if there is anything I CAN guarantee it's that I am a champ when it comes to maneuvering a camera in that "perfect storm" and will capture all ridiculousness that is sure to follow our tri, tri, tri-s.

Ready. Set. Pee...

I'm feeling like a giant r-tard just trying to sign on to this crazy blog. This is NEW FOR ME. Good work, I can cross that one off my list. Now that I'm here, I feel compelled to add a disclaimer. I will do my best to amuse and entertain but I AM NOT A LADY. I will most likely offend, disgust and/or SHOCK the said readers of this forum. I dare say it won't happen every entry, but it WILL happen. There will most likely be frequent discussion (within my own head that will trickle onto this cyber-paper) that includes a barrage of swear words, sexual innuendos and an occasional reference to vibrators and/or self-pleasuring. This is just a friendly heads up. It's just the way my sick and twisted mind processes. So if you're under 18, CLOSE THIS PAGE IMMEDIATELY. A further warning--there is a trifecta that seems to follow me everywhere: pants peeing, vomiting and blowing food/beverages out of one's nose while laughing. You will see pictures and read stories that can and will attest to this. It has nothing to do with bladder function, eating disorders or circus tricks but rather the lack of self awareness that comes with public drunkeness, a hearty dose of the inane and ridiculous, and a penchant for GOOD TIMES. This IS the Perfect Storm. The attached is a photo of one of my BFF's, Carmen, pee-pants on a recent trip to Austin, TX. As you can see, these are not the ORDINARY pee pants that one could camouflage an itty-bitty dribble with a purse or a sweat shirt around the waist. No, this was FULL-ON incontinence that resembled being shot in the crotch with a garden hose. (I must rat myself out that both friend Rebecca and I had to drop to the floor in the hotel lobby in order for this not to happen to us as well, but give us props as we risked serious carpet burns to save our capris for the next warm-weather trip. I'm pretty sure that Carm had to burn this particular pair as the ENTIRE bathroom smelled like an old-folks home for the rest of the trip despite several interventions.) I will say that the laughter that ensued before, during and after this "incident" was classic, exhausting, painful and PRICELESS. I will close this entry by saying that I hope you will see MANY, MANY more pictures of uproarious laughter, wet undergarments and ill-rehearsed stunts as we move forward with new and exciting adventures. Tri-tri-tri as we might, somebody is BOUND to pee...

It all started with a list...

If there is a characteristic hallmark of modern American culture, the drive to get it done, to make it happen, to power through—it is the “to do” list. The ongoing battle between past, present and future in everyday life all scribbled down in pencil or pen with the check marks, or lines through whole sections of our day if we’re lucky. For me it all started with one of those lists. A seemingly innocuous tabulation of the things I wanted to accomplish by the end of a short northern summer with a new man in my life: drag him up and down a few mountains, dance outside in the midnight sun, take a walk through the neighborhoods we liked the most. It was a talisman against letting another season slip by, and against him slipping through my fingers as he’d been doing since the spring arrived. Something I could throw lightly and invitingly out on the table as a way of drawing us together without the pressure he seemed to find in everything else I proposed. It didn’t work out quite as I'd hoped--a friend pointing out later that such a list equated (a whole few months of) future plans together. I might as well have asked him to marry me.

“I’m glad you know what you want.” came the reply, “But I don't. I don’t have time...there’s just too much going on.” I. Just. Don’t. Know. Oh, but he did. Wise for himself left me feeling foolish with my list still in hand. I didn’t take that too well. The story is an old one—opened the window the rest of the way and watched him fly right out of it and have more than a few bruises from running into the glass over and over after he closed it behind him. It can still ache in those places not to have had more time (...but, that cute boy is the best kind of boy/friend a grrrl could ask for, even when these days the emphasis is on "friend").

Somehow that list kept me going with my aching head and heart. I climbed the mountain, and a couple more for good measure, dragging my dog instead of a man. I danced by myself in the parking lot of a bar on the most perfect of solstice evenings (and again a month later). I walked and hiked so much it felt like the trails knew my name by my footsteps, or after I dragged the ancient bike out of the shed, could hear me coming on the squeaking old wheels, going round and round and round on my circuits. The list somehow kept me sane…as I tried to make sense of a summer unexpectedly alone. But it was more than just a salve for loss, it became hope. Hope that I could remember and pursue things I'd always wanted to accomplish and endlessly delayed (during an endlessly dysfunctional marriage). I could do them, I DID do them--with or without someone holding my hand.

New dogs still being the best known cure for old tricks, I decided I needed another list, this one for winter, knowing that in a time of darkness, I’d have to shore up against the cold and lonely days. But instead of picking only things I’d always wanted to do, like take up downhill skiing again, I found myself drawn to things that I’d never considered--real challenges. Like training for a triathlon even though I hardly ever run, bike or swim (most likely this brainwave started because I’d gone to a function for a tri-club and found it full of rather buff men, but nevertheless, a previously unexplored area of interest) . Soon, the brain was bristling with new possibilities outside the old comfort zone. What could I do or learn that I had NEVER done, or even thought of before? Water polo, or crash a wedding? Go on a blind date or get a tattoo? Furthermore, why was I most qualified to pick such a task for myself, having never even contemplated such exploits? I found myself wondering then, what would a total stranger looking at me think up for me “to do”? What kind of surprising list could be generated by people who had no investment in the outcome except for entertaining themselves with the results and watching my progress? What unexpected things would I have to try, if trying was someone else's idea of a good time?

I was quickly reaching the brilliant conclusion that this kind of list might just save my all too comfortable ass once and for all. Now, I just needed some partners in crime, some fellow Try-Babies, as we would be called...and who could be more (in)appropriate than the two crazies who have joined together with me on this site?

I am in soooooo much trouble.