I did it

As a direct result of peer pressure/an unhealthy competitive edge/rash decision-making skills, I finally gave in. I bought a ping pong paddle.

Meet Nimatsu. He's a spinfighter.

Carrying case to come. 

And yes, the fact that this purchase felt completely justified and necessary worries me to no end. 

Summer Cookin'

Today finally feels like summer. It was in the 80s here, I wore shorts and flip flops all day long, and I passed a lemonade stand while driving. Plus, the air had the slightest hint of mowed grass and Elmer's glue sticks.

It was the perfect weather to sit on my back deck and brainstorm all of the reasons that I'm convinced my neighbors are cooking meth.

I have some really compelling evidence.

First, when I was in high school one of my friends (who has a little more drug knowledge than me) casually opened the lid of my neighbor's garbage can one day while we were walking to my house. He glanced in, chuckled, and said something about drugs. I don't know what he saw, and I don't know what drugs he was referring to, and I don't know what drug knowledge he really had, but this doesn't not support my thesis that they're cooking. (Double negative!)

Second, they are hoarders. Their whole yard looks like an untamed jungle, and I can see junk piled up in their windows. My most recent two Google searches suggest that hoarding and substance abuse might be linked. Also, my cousin's drug-busting husband says that it's common for meth cookers to be hoarders. Compelling!

Third, they have a huge white truck parked in their driveway that says "Mobile Wash" in large blue letters. But the truck almost never leaves the driveway. Breaking Bad has taught me that this must be both a traveling meth lab and a fake business through which they launder their meth money. It's the only explanation.

I suppose I should admit that my only meth knowledge comes from wikipedia and Breaking Bad.

As I become more and more convinced that they're cooking, I imagine elaborate sting operations to catch them in the act. Well, by "elaborate" I mostly mean brief, simple and ill-thought out plans. Like calling the number on the mobile wash truck and saying, "hey is this where I can buy some meth?" Or walking up to them while they're outside and saying, "you guys look like the type that could hook a girl up with some meth."

Unfortunately, neither of these plans would work because this childlike, wide-eyed sense of wonder has yet to really wear off

and, more importantly, I'm unfamiliar with the terminology. Do people still call it meth these days? Would a real user call it "glass"? Or "crystal"? Or "ice"? According to wiki these are all possibilities.

I just don't know.

Running

A week and a half ago I decided I was going to start running. Three times a week at least. I would start with two miles and work my way up. And then, soon, I would become one of those people who casually says, "Oh yeah, I did a 6-mile run last night," or "I love running--it's like a drug," or "I can't imagine not starting my day with an hour-long sprint." We hate these people. They think they're so superior to all the average lazy people. But I wanted to join their smug health-nut ranks so I could look down on all of you for "watching TV all evening," or "doing homework." I would buy brand-new neon running shoes. I would look good in running shorts. I would become a runner.

I think we all know how this ends. 

Let's begin with day one. I managed to convince myself to put on my running clothes right when I got home from work. This is key. If I put on my running clothes before thinking through the act of running then I can shame myself into actually going because it feels like complete and utter failure to change out of exercise clothes without actually exercising. So, I tied my Asics, put my running mix on shuffle, and headed up the hill. As my feet pounded the concrete to Christina Aguilera's "Come on Over," I tried every mental trick I know to make myself believe I was having fun. I tried to think about long-term goals. I tried to tell myself that this could be fun if I did it more often. I tried to think about breathing deeply. And then I tried to think about absolutely nothing. The 2.2-mile route seemed completely endless. And all the reasons that the 457 other times that I've decided to "become a runner" haven't panned out came rushing back to me. I just barely finished the run.

Days two to present: Take a wild guess. 

But I've hardly had time for running anyway because I have been devoting some really quality time to watching Dawson's Creek (90's teen dramas!), and feeding an odd obsession with Disney animated musical numbers. Like this:

See, she used her brains to conquer physical tasks and then became a master of everything because of it (obviously)! She would've killed becoming a runner. 

Cancer

Some days I am fully convinced that I have cancer.

Not that I'll feel any specific signs or symptoms of any cancers. In fact, I don't really know the signs and symptoms of different cancers. (Note to self: wiki cancers.) It's more a sense of looming disaster that I often dramatize. Like when a friend is more than 30 minutes late to something, and I start to imagine that they have been in a serious car accident. And for a full five minutes, I will think through the scenario. I get a call. My phone shows that it's the friend--I feel a quick sense of relief that they are ok. But then I answer it, and it's an unfamiliar and rushed voice on the other end, and I know immediately that something has gone wrong. There are sirens in the background, and the voice is hesitant to give specific information, but they ask for my friend's name and any medical history I can provide. I try to channel a cool-minded Grey's Anatomy character and focus on relaying information even though my hand is shaking. The voice has to get off the phone, but they say that everything will be fine, and I can meet my friend at the hospital. My arms and legs feel weightless like they belong in a different reality as I grab my keys and get into my black Jetta to drive to the hospital. (I always seem to have a black Jetta in these scenarios.) And so on. You get the idea. And usually around this time the friend shows up, and I'm disproportionately relieved to see them. And I quickly fall back into my actual reality.

And I do the same thing with cancer. I've thought through different scenarios of a doctor telling me that I have cancer. I have different reactions each time. Sometimes it's along the lines of eerie denial where the words don't stick, and I say "thank you" and slowly walk out of the room. Sometimes it's a down-to-business discussion where I matter-of-factly ask about treatment and percentages and the next step. Sometimes it's really emotional. I also imagine telling friends. I'm terrified that it would create this insurmountable divide where my friends would feel sympathetic but also really uncomfortable because they wouldn't know the right thing to say or how to act. This has weighed so heavily on my mind that I have told my friend Christie that she must treat me the same even if something crazy happens to me. It was last June. We were sitting on a bench on Put-In-Bay island in Ohio looking out onto Lake Erie, and I made her promise to be normal around me. And also to speak at my funeral. Since she is a high quality friend, she took it all in stride.

Now I'm feeling bad. Like maybe this is all coming off as really insensitive because my dramatizations are clearly heavily influenced by a cliched notion of what it is like to experience these things. And by TV. It's true that I've never actually known someone who has been seriously injured in a car accident, and I've never had cancer. And I know that this space of dramatized catastrophe is not a good place to spend all my time. And I don't. But I'm often overwhelmed knowing that at any moment life can change dramatically. It's such a common idea that it doesn't really feel like it has any weight as I type it. But I am both fascinated by and terrified of moments that you can't control that can immediately jerk you into a new reality.

At BYU I had a friend who worked at some cancer testing lab. The details seemed really unclear, and I'm not really sure how her education qualified her to work there, but she told me that on slow days she would run cancer tests on her own tissue. She said she never really truly thought that she had cancer, but she was always super relieved when the test results came back proving that she didn't.

I feel like some days I just need a full round of cancer testing to give me peace of mind.