Weekly New's, Week 6
So, my big new weekly thing was that I went to the trampoline place (House of Air) that I heard about a while ago and have been wanting to go to ever since. It's down by Chrissy Field, so it was a bit of a hike (but not ridiculous) to get over there, and at $16 for an hour it was also not cheap but not ridiculous. It wasn't as huge and trampoline-filled as I expected (I don't know what I expected, exactly), but the trampolines were somehow... more fun than I expected? I know that that doesn't make sense. They were designed to make them super bouncy. I succeeded in doing a front flip once (and then hit my forehead the next time and decided to stop before I broke my neck) and then mostly just did a lot of spinning and jumping jacks and sitting bounces and literally jumping off the walls and stuff. It was an incredible workout; my friends and I were all dripping sweat by the end. I don't know that I'd want to go again for a long while, but it was certainly a fabulous way to spend a Sunday afternoon!
In fact, this whole weekend was really awesome. I've been feeling a little empty lately, which has been frustrating in that I haven't felt justified at all in my melancholia, and this weekend was a really nice reminder that I could be utterly content in my daily life, if I just give my life half a chance. Basically, I just did the things that I should be doing every weekend, and it made everything better. I stayed active; I spent time outside; I had good conversations with people I care about. Nothing really earth-shattering, but it was just so nice. I think that the real game-changer was that I started out my Saturday morning with a late-morning yoga class that I've been to before and know that I really like, but never manage to actually get to. It was just so nice to have time to eat breakfast, drink my coffee, and then start the weekend with some focused "me time." After that I went and walked dogs at the pound, went on a hike with a friend, and then returned home for a phone call with a friend from college followed by ice cream with another good friend. Today I woke up early to go on a short bike ride with a friend (we plotted out my route to school so I can start bike commuting a couple of times a week! So excited!), then another friend came over for tea and to help me put together a playlist of 90's music for an upcoming birthday party. After that, I went to House of Air, then went home to shower and eat dinner before reconvening with my House of Air friends for a movie at their apartment. Such a perfect, relaxed weekend... and so attainable for every other weekend! I just need to be mindful to make my weekends what I want them to be.
Other stuff:
- I saw Michelle Rhee speak on Tuesday night. My parents had a pair of tickets to a lecture series that they ended up unable to use, so I got to go instead. I could write pages on this. The woman is fascinating. She is clearly incredibly smart, articulate, and charismatic, which explains her outrageously fast rise to power based on virtually no experience or evidence that she knew what she was doing. Her speech was clearly catered to her audience and bore little resemblance to her actually policies. I agreed with most of what she said, and if I didn't know what I do about her actual experiences with the DC school system, I would have thought that we believed in most of the same educational policies (which we don't). It was an enlightening evening.
- I'm going to make it through April by an uncomfortably small financial margin. I've crunched the numbers a million different times in a million different ways, and that's the consistent, unfortunate conclusion. There's nobody but myself to blame. I budgeted incorrectly and lived outside of my means. I guess that 27 is as good an age to learn this lesson as any. I have now made myself a strict weekly and monthly budget and am tracking my purchases for the first time in my life. Eventually I'm going to have to get my parents involved too, as I want their advice and help in making sure that this doesn't happen again, but I'm putting off that conversation because I know they're going to freak out :(
- My friend's mom has ovarian cancer. They only discovered it a month ago, and surgery wasn't able to get it all (it's spread to her diaphragm and liver). My friend is slowly having to come to terms with the fact that, while there is still reason to be hopeful and optimistic, statistically speaking her mother is probably going to die within the next five years. On top of feeling absolutely awful for her, this has really hit me in the gut and brought into sharp focus the reality that a) my parents are mortal, and b) they're getting older, and eventually they will die. I am so not ready for this.