on luck and unluck

I'm not sure if this is bragging or not - it doesn't feel like it, because it's just a fact of my life: I am very lucky. I win things all the time, get upgraded to first class regularly, have never met a giveaway I haven't won...

OK it might be bragging. But it's not an exaggerated brag, at least.

However, at times, I have tried to decide if I also go through periods of unluck. I'm not sure if I've found a pattern yet, but this weekend, it felt a little bit like an apocalypse of my life.

I was not fully honest yesterday, by omission. I didn't explain that the reason why I was standing on our kitchen counter was because our house has rats. Yes. Our sweet little VaHi abode is infested. Like they're owning us.

So I was standing on the counter in an effort to escape the rats in our kitchen.

And I obviously didn't share this because rats are disgusting, and by the transitive property, I didn't want you to think I'm disgusting.

So, rats are unlucky. Breaking my foot because of the rats? Pretty unlucky. And then, on yesterday's rainy Monday morning, I woke up to find that the rats were no longer contained to the communal living spaces in our home, but - oh yes - were in my room. Not only that, but it turns out that their *entryway* into our house is via my bedroom.

Rats. in. my. room.

I obviously cried.

And then I scooted out of our house ASAP, only to find that my beloved Jeep had died. Seven years of uninterrupted love, service and devotion from the Liberty, and it decides to let me down when I'm running from the rats. When I called Progressive to come fix it, she said "Progressive roadside service, are you in a safe place?" and I debated saying no. Though that would have been hard to explain since the next question was, "Are you at home?"

So that's kind of a lot of unluck for one 48 hour span. I'm hoping that will be all of the woes for a while.

The good news was that because I was carless, I got to spend the day working from San Fransisco Coffee, sipping lattes and enjoying life among the work from homers. Not a bad way to spend a rainy Monday! It also makes my "lame" foot breaking story a little bit funnier. Who needs water skiing when you're running from human-sized rats.

(That was an exaggeration. They're not human sized. More like bear sized.)

risky counters

This is how the weekend was supposed to go down:

An Atlanta reunion with Katie G., Emily and Katie Z.

But instead, this is how it went down:

Broken foot. Womp womp. (I meant it literally when I said "went down.")

I broke it Thursday night, which led to a slightly less exciting weekend than we had planned. I jumped off of our kitchen counter and managed to land just wrong enough to break my 5th metatarsal. The biggest issue, at this point, is that the story is pretty lame. I need to make something up about surfing, or skiing or skydiving - or something that makes it sound thrilling.

I thought six weeks of just biking and swimming was hard, so now I'm in for a real challenge of doing absolutely nothing for six to eight weeks. It's going to be mentally trying, but I'm going to try to follow the rules this time around. No point in delaying the healing, here.

And, luckily, Katie and Emily still came to my rescue and took me out of the house for a few hours of Highland loving Saturday afternoon.

I hope your weekend was slightly less risky, and stuck to your plan more than mine did! Be careful out there, my friends!

eating meat? // local eats

Going vegan hasn't exactly produced the results I'd hoped for. And for weeks, I've been "about to quit". Though I can't bring myself to give up on the dream just yet.

However, when I do get back on the meat, cheese and eggs bandwagon, I am undoubtedly going to be using Real Time Farms. It allows you to track everything you're eating - whether in a restaurant or at your house - back to a farm. Guaranteeing you're finding antibiotic-free meat and produce.

Through crowd sourcing, it generates a mapped food guide. It just launched this summer, so there are still quite a few gaps. You should submit your favorite restaurants. I obviously submitted a few million.

This means I can finally get an answer to my question as to how one local restaurant can't stock avocado because it's not grown anywhere nearby, and another local restaurant, just up the road, has a surplus. Who's defining local, here? And can't we just all agree on avocados for all?

Happy Friday farming to ya!

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oh bother

When my brothers joined me at IU, I was plagued with worry.

What if they don't go to class? What if they party too much? What if they pick the wrong major, don't get an internship, don't like it, don't  like their professors...?

And, unfortunately, this is a life approach I adopted long ago (I think around the age of three). Duke summed it up once when he said: Telling you not to worry is like telling a normal person not to breathe.

About a year and a half ago, I reached my low point with worry. I was stuck in an ongoing cycle, where I was completely consumed with what ifs. I couldn't break free of it.

But then, a few months later, I experienced a pretty bad break up, at which point ev.ery.thi.ng I had worried about came true. Everthing and more, in fact.

And guess what?

I'm still here! It was hard. Really hard. But when what feels like your worst nightmare of worries comes true, it becomes a whole lot easier to stress less, and really believe that God won't give you more than you can handle.

Oh, and guess what else?

Worrying about all of those things didn't keep them from happening. And it didn't make it easier when they did.

I know it's hard to break free of it when you're a chronic worrier. Sometimes, I think of the words of my 6th grade teacher, Mrs. Plantan. When I was stressing too much about an upcoming test, she said, Whitney, draw a dot on this piece of paper. And I drew the dot. Then she said, This piece of paper is your life. And this test doesn't even represent that dot. In fact, all of the tests in 6th grade combined don't make up that whole dot.

And she was right. I don't remember the score I got on that test, or even what the subject was. But I do remember the lesson on perspective she gave me, which seems a whole lot more important now.

That's all :)

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