all good things: people who make weeks beautiful

All Good Things is a weekly feature on the blog. It started as a one-hour Sunday night radio show on KSTO St. Olaf radio, featuring feel-good music and 10 highlights from the past week. The show, and its current written form, is brought to you by Clara, Second Set of Baby Steps creator, and my radio co-host Cassie. Sit back and enjoy!

1. Song of the week: Knock Knock by Mac Miller. J&J (the twins) were stunning this song after we dropped off the Uhaul truck today and it got stuck in our heads. It's really catchy and the video is funny and actually kind of beautifully done.

2. Car wash. It was getting really sad how dirty my car was. I've been driving past the Greenhill Car Wash on my way home from work for over a year now, but haven't got up the guts (or the $8) to try it out. Finally yesterday on my way home from work I decided I couldn't put it off any longer... And it was kind of relaxing, actually, sitting inside my car, hands off the wheel, foot off the brake, surrounded by gigantic soapy brushes. And now my car is so clean!

3. Bokwa. My roommate and I tried out this new dance fitness class at the Y on Saturday. It has a series of steps in the shapes of different letters, and a lot of room for personalization. Plus, I couldn't help smiling by the end of class. I will be trying that again.

4. Having friends you can laugh with. This one pretty much speaks for itself. To me, this is a sign of good solid friendships.

5. Humidifier. We started running the humidifier in our room while we sleep and every since I've been breathing much better. Coincidence? I think not!

6. Emails from my grandparents. They live in California and we're not in super close touch... But whenever they email me it's always good, and makes new really happy. This week it was a birthday email which is double good.

7. Eating when you're super hungry and tired. You know the feeling. Yummm. Plus, a few people made food for us this week so we don't have to worry about cooking when all our kitchen supplies are boxed up somewhere.

8. Clean sheets. I probably enjoy this a lot less often than I should, but maybe that makes it all the more satisfying...?

9. J. and I had to go get the flu and Tdap shots this week so we could kiss the baby, and if course it cost almost $100 for each of us to get both shots. J. doesn't have insurance and mine only covers Walgreens in South Dakota and Wisconsin for some reason, so the pharma tech went to great lengths to find us a discount or make my insurance cover some of it. We ended up getting a few dollars off, and especially right now while we're moving every little bit counts. It just meant a lot for a person to make such an effort to help somebody else, even someone he had never seen before and may never see again.


10. Feeling at home. Today my two roommates and I had a bunch of friends over and moved all our stuff (almost) to a new house in a new neighborhood. And already I feel more comfortable and happy here. :)

We had a good crew of helpers today, which made the whole project that much easier and more bearable.

Thanks everyone for making this week beautiful!


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Thanks for joining us this Sunday night! Stick with the Baby Steps on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/TheBabyStepsSaga for updates on new posts and other stuff about new adulthood. Come back next Sunday night for a reminder of 10 good things that haven't happened yet, and on Wednesday night for a more in-depth reflection on post-grad life. Until then, be kind to each other, and find a reason to smile.

posted from Bloggeroid

elements

I am feeling pretty all-American this week. Friday afternoon I went to a baseball game, courtesy of work. I spent yesterday at the beach with the fam, and today is Father's Day. We're not planning on grilling, and we're not beer-drinkers, but we ARE ice cream people. So to Woodside Creamery it is.

Yesterday I also got stung by a bee (my worst fear) on the inside of my right wrist (most tender spot ever). It's not as stiff or swollen or red as it was yesterday, but now it itches like the dickens.

The cool part about this is how resilient our bodies are. Bee-stings irritate our skin, and even inside our skin, because they have poison in them. They are strategically designed to protect the hive, kamikaze-style, by doing damage to intruders who are often much larger than the bees themselves. I am fortunately not allergic to stings, but that tiny stinger embedded in my wrist laid out my dominant arm for an entire day. The inside of my wrist hurt. I imagined the bones and muscles screaming against the venom, and felt my body rushing to the aid of the injured limb.

But today, I woke up to find the sting pinched up zit-style. Overnight, while I slept, my body collected the venom and pushed it toward the injury site. "Thanks for coming, see you never!" my immune system calls out after it. And I've been awed once again, as I am continually since the extraction of my wisdom teeth: Every morning I wake up and feel more normal, feel my body rushing to get the evidence of trauma cleared up and back to business. I'm sure I've shared this before, but my grandfather the doctor once comforted me by saying, "Our bodies are pretty amazing. They can mostly take care of themselves... It's just sometimes they need a little help."

That being said, I've been looking forward to going to the beach all week. I always feel cleaner after a run-in with salt water. I always feel fresher and haler and tougher. Maybe because my mom always said salt water (and kisses) have healing powers. I wholeheartedly believe that, and will testify in an exhilarated heartbeat to the truth in that statement. And in spite of bee stings and bird poop (yes, I got hit with that shit yesterday too) and humblingly huge waves, I do feel healed and re-energized.

Speaking of humblingly huge waves, and of being re-energized, and Father's Day, my dad always says the beach is where he feels most alive. He pines for it 12 months out of the year. He makes career decisions based on proximity to the ocean. This year, he even suggested we take a family trip down to Rehoboth in Februrary. His eyes light up any time he has the chance to tell stories about a half-century's worth of trips to beaches around the world. Even though a lot of them are sobering testament to the dark side of water and its overwhelming power.

Yesterday he brought up a conversation he'd had with someone about the duality of every element, the constructive and destructive powers held by water and fire specifically, but by all the elements. "It says something about us, which element we identify with," he said. "I definitely identify with water." We both turned silently to watch the uncharacteristically huge waves crashing on top of each other and across each other and in quick succession, and the dwindling number of beachgoers who dared to face them or ride them in. My brother joined us a moment later, having fought his way back to the foaming shallows, warning that the undertow was getting stronger.

While I let the salt water soothe my sting and buff my tiredness away with every crashing wave, the lifeguards had a busy day dragging bold swimmers back to shore against the stubborn sucking tide. Fewer and fewer bodysurfers dared catch these waves as the afternoon wore on and I, a strong swimmer with strokes built in ocean waves, feared the currents I knew I couldn't fight. I went out once but stayed in knee-depth water after I had to tumble into shore on a big wave since I couldn't face the drag otherwise. This roiling sea, like the floods of Hurricane Irene back in August, perfectly pared the element's soothing qualities against its disturbing ones. We regard both sides of that divide with awe: It cleans and it drowns. Same with the other classical elements: we have campfires and forest fires; windchimes and tornadoes; gardens and earthquakes.

There is also duality in deadlines. The limitations they impose help us to get things done, keep us moving forward; but they also cause stress and, sometimes, bring good things to an end.

I created this blog in May of 2011 and promised to update it a few times a week for the first year after college graduation. That year is over. So do I stop writing in the name of discipline?

In the past year, I have wrestled publicly with moving, at least twice; looking for jobs, twice; starting new jobs; dating; getting over; missing people and places; traveling; making new friends, and taking old friendships into a new context; being robbed; car trouble; money trouble; medical trouble; church; and perhaps a thousand other things. I have written about these things in part to process them, to figure out life as I now live it, to separate the things I know how to deal with from the things I don't even know how to begin to deal with.

But more importantly, I have written a post-grad blog to maintain connections with those scattered souls who are doing the same things as I am doing, or variations of the same things, at least. I hope to put words to our common struggles and victories, to remind my peers and myself that we are not alone. I have continued to post these past few weeks because little has changed: our post-grad experience has not ended. We continue to face unfamiliar situations, and we continue to take in new things we need to figure out. We continue to be hit with the duality of elements, we continue to rejoice and to mourn, and life goes on.

I could pose the same question about life as I did about reading a couple of posts ago: is it better as an individual or a shared experience? But it would be futile. Life is a shared experience.

A lot of us are facing a second round of changes, as service corps placements wrap up, leases run out, grad school approaches, knots get tied (this summer brings a hearty round of weddings for Class of 2011 grads). Is this our third set of baby steps? Maybe we are starting to walk more confidently, to take longer strides. But in my opinion it's still nice to fall into step with someone else. And as long as it is mutually helpful and joyful for me to share my footfalls, I don't see how I can quit. Writing is my sanity.

Over the next few weeks I'm hoping to make some changes to the blog, the way it looks, the features and labels and organization... I'm thinking about making a Facebook page. I might try to write shorter/more on-the-fly posts, and I'm trying to figure out blogger for mobile, which so far proves pretty un-user-friendly. I want to stay true to the core spirit of the blog, but to grow it up a little to match the steps we've taken since graduation. Some things will definitely change. But don't worry -- I'll keep you posted.