Austin City Limits 2010

Normally I would talk about the three days of the festival and the amazing bands I saw there (p.s. check out GIVERS as my top up and coming band pick) and talk about how fantastic Muse, LCD Soundsystem, Pete Yorn, Flaming Lips, Foals, etc. were and how rad it was to be there for free as a volunteer.

But instead I want to talk about what today was like after three days straight of ten hour outdoor days. My coworkers were both amused by my red sunburned nose and confused by my stamina. They all assured me they were too old for a three day festival. And for the first time in my 5 straight years of 3-day or more festivals (Lollapalooza, ACL, SXSW, etc), I thought maybe I was too. On Saturday night during Muse I noticed that somewhere during the day I hadn't only gotten a sunburn but a throat ache too. On Sunday I packed DayQuil and Kleenex in my bag with me just in case. I found myself that night, during The National, just feeling sleepy. It was 8 o'clock.

Today I went to work with sore legs and a deep concern that I might soon "age out" of festivals. I find myself more ornery at the teenagers I see at these things. On Sunday, while waiting for Yeasayer to start, one of them spilled water all the way down my back. I shoved him in a rare display of pure aggression. He said, "my friend made me do it!" Nice, bro. Nice.

That said, I still LOVE L.O.V.E. music festivals. I'm sure that as long as I physically can I will continue to go. It's like a little utopian city where high fives are free and it's acceptable to wander barefoot with a beer at 1 in the afternoon. A place where you can just stumble between genres, from Broken Bells to The xx to Monsters of Folk, without walking even a half mile. I want to live there. I just want all the kids to leave and for there to be nap villas. Make it happen, science.

coaching in luxury

I need help. Someone has to show me how to spoil myself. Seriously. I have this painfully midwestern sense of farm wife practicality. Observe.

Things I have never done:

1) gotten a manicure

2) gotten a pedicure

3) gotten a massage

4) gotten a facial/spa treatment of any kind

5) had my hair professionally dyed or highlighted

6) had anything professionally waxed

7) ordered lobster or duck or steak in a restaurant

8) owned a car less than five years old (my current is over 10)

9) paid for a music festival (i always volunteer so i can go for free)

10) bought anything I couldn't pay for all at once

Yes. This may be fiscally responsible. I imagine my parents would read this and feel proud that they had raised such a practical daughter. I have savings. I shop carefully and consciously. It's all very reasonable. And boring.

Lately, I've been thinking about how I'm getting older and this window for frivolousness is closing. There is a certain class of things that you can discount as foolishness that comes with your "twenties." It's not uncommon to hear older people say, "oh yeah when I was in my twenties..." as if that was the time when anything was excusable. I'm not saying I haven't done my share of careless things, but I am saying I haven't done enough. And I need help. Soon.

swimming sacred

The older I get, the more I believe in spirituality. And not spirituality as anything organized. And how the lack of organization is okay. For me. My parents were raised in differing faiths and both moved away from practice as they got older. So when they had me and time came for a religious decision they decided not to decide. They left God up to me. And, when I was growing up in a primarily Christian, often Catholic area, this felt frustrating. It didn't seem okay to be a misfit, at least not in this arena. I didn't know what I was and that was more troubling than I think my parents expected it to be.

It seems odd now to think about being distraught over a lack of religious alignment. Most of my friends now don't attend any kind of worship service. But, when you're a kid, and all of your friends are getting dressed up and going off to some big building every weekend it's easy to feel left out. Now, most of these same friends that were shuffling off to a church while I was playing in my backyard, have since told me about the conflict they felt when they left their faith. Since I technically never "left" anything I feel like I can't exactly relate. Sure we're both in the same place now, but our paths were different. I never had to go through the turmoil of leaving something that was a big part of my life. I never questioned God because I never devoted a lot of time, at least once a week, to thinking about Him. He was there, He wasn't there...it didn't really affect my day to day.

I guess I'm still a little ambivalent. But what I do feel, beyond God, is a sense of spirituality. I felt it today when I was going for a 9 am swim at Barton Springs. The Sunday morning crowd at Barton Springs is a religious bunch. They do their laps and dangle their toes and there's a huge sense of fellowship. I lay in the sun and it was quiet and honest and peaceful. It felt sacred. And it wasn't about God, at least not directly. It was about the letting go and the acceptance or faith that everything was good.

I've realized, thanks in some sense to my family, that my relationship with something bigger than myself can be just that, my relationship. And while sometimes it's easy to feel that left out feeling when people talk about their religion, I remind myself that not being in their specific faith doesn't take anything away from mine. I actually sometimes feel lucky to have found my spirituality in a way that was organic, a way that made sense for me, instead of struggling to squeeze parts of myself into something that didn't exactly fit. Now, I can be in religious service every day. In swimming, in working in the yard, in cooking, in listening to music, and in my moments of true connection with friends and family. It's pretty miraculous. And okay. And good.

babies

When I was a kid I used to alternate sleeping with my stuffed animals so one wouldn't feel unloved. As I got older my attention turned to cats and dogs. I preferred my pets shy and would seek to draw them out with gentle pets and my best attempt at a calm presence. When I hit my teens I became everybody's confidant. I didn't date, but I became the go to person when everyone else that was dating wanted to discuss it. These days my mothering comes out more pronounced through my job and personal life. I put probably far too much effort into making coworkers feel appreciated through birthdays and special emails. With Zach, I not only make dinner and clean house, but find myself watching over him to make sure he's taking care of himself. For someone who still feels a little squeamish about babies, I have a palpably strong maternal instinct.

A lot of this came from having a sick parent. The kind of sick that could come on unexpectedly. Before much was known about how diet affected diabetes, my dad struggled keeping his blood sugar under control. By the time I was nine or ten I became adept at sensing when he was slipping into an insulin reaction. His movements would become slow, his speech less focused, and he'd seem almost drunk. I'd spring up to get something sugary and then monitor him until his regular self would return. I can't even describe the combination of relief and pride when I'd "fix" him.

In the past few years I've noticed the long term effects this nervous vigilance has had on my relationships.

-I want to help everyone all the time, whether they know they need help or not.

-Drunk people freak me out. They are unpredictable and exhibit all the same symptoms my dad did when he needed sugar.

-I am hypersensitive to people's moods and changes in personality. I adopt the role of peacemaker most often just to get the uncomfortable feeling their imbalance causes me to go away.

I know adults aren't babies, but I also know they can be just as fragile. There have been at least a dozen times where I could have lost my dad. The multiple car accidents he had and 911 emergencies that have resulted from his diabetes have made me very aware of how health problems can create life or death situations. All of this never made me think "I want to be a doctor;" I still can't give blood without passing out. I guess the one thing it did do was subconsciously make me designate myself as responsible for everyone in the room. This, my friends, is the reason "Rachel hates fun" came about. If I'm around people that are losing control I spring into vigilance. This cancels out any chance of me having too much of my own fun. The plus side is that as I've gotten older I've been in this scenario less and less and it's allowed me to feel more comfortable letting go.

My friends are having babies right now and I'm excited for them. I think, sometime in the next few years, I might do that too. But I know that, unless I can temper my watchfulness, my child will have absolutely no fun and all the same cautiousness that I struggle with now. So I'm trying to chill out and recognize that people can take care of themselves. Or, if they're not, they won't automatically end up in the hospital. I'm working to not always adopt the role of the most "mature" person in the room and giving myself a pass on taking control of every uncertain moment. It's surprisingly liberating to let things happen good or bad and feel yourself still in one piece. And it's even better when, after passing on an opportunity to be the responsible one, the people around you not only come out okay, but thrive in ways you didn't even imagine possible.

Time may change me / But you can't trace time

New living space, new job...what is it, 2008? In two weeks my Americorps service will be up AND I'll be starting a new job with United Way. They hired me to work 30/hours a week plus benefits to be a Community Impact Specialist. It's going to be quite different from my work with 1 Hour for Kids and Youth Program Quality. No more mentoring and afterschool programs. I feel really strongly about the work I've been doing this past year and it's going to be hard to shift my focus, but what I'm going to be doing desperately needs to be done to support the structure of the organization. So I'm finding peace in the fact that my work will continue to aid what I was doing before, even if a little indirectly.

The other change that's coming August 1st is a move to a new place. It will be the same zip code and same neighborhood, but a duplex with a yard for Annabel. We put in our application plus deposit yesterday and we're hoping that everything plays out smoothly. I'm super excited to get out of this crowded, bug-invested apartment complex after two years of basically wanting to be ANYWHERE else.

So on to my seventh rented space and umpteenth job since college. I'm hoping these ones stick.

being cool with it

I woke up at 4:45 am this morning and I'm being cool with it. Like, "oh this is fine. maybe i'll watch a movie" cool with it. Not acknowledging that it's more like, "I can't fall back asleep because my lease is up on August 1st and I don't have a place to live." Not, "I don't want to figure out how many days that actually is, because that will be even more frightening."

Zach and I saw this place last week that was beautiful. It was a two-story, brand new appliances, wood floor, 2.5 bathrooms, bay windows, gorgeous duplex castle for $800/month that (wahwah) doesn't have a yard for Anna. Zach had to remind me, "isn't the yard the reason we decided to look at duplexes?" and oh yeah, it is.

Okay. I think I'm going to try and sleep for an hour.

the thing is it's not like i set out to find my 9 year relationship.

i think that's what people forget. zach just hasn't allowed me to fall out of love with him. it makes him quite impressive. i'm not sure many guys have that kind of stamina.

i felt philosophical today and was talking to my new bestie, alix (shout out!) about (what do girls talk about?): relationships. when you fall in love at 19 and then cultivate that for 9 years, each day is a surprise. there was nothing about the first three even four years that said FOREVER to me. it was simple, i was in love with zach and each day i kept loving him. nine years later and it still, luckily, feels relatively simple. i love him. he makes each day a little special for me. it's rarely big gestures. zach's not a big gesture guy. it's him saying a sentence that i never expected to hear or doing some kind of crazy dance in the living room that makes me think that no one else in the world has ever done that dance. a lot of the time i take all of this 9 yearishness for granted. i think, "zach never does dishes, i bet there's a guy out there that does dishes." i bet i could find that too. if dishes were the most important thing in my life (or even in the top 20) i'd be miserable. but i'm not.

on valentines day in year two of our relationship part of my present was "monster mad libs." he got me mad libs. no reason. it's not like we had some sort of "mad lib" joke that made them significant, he just saw them and in a panic added them to his purchase. it was ridiculous and i thought, "any other guy would have more sense than to do this." turns out thats one of my fav. zach stories and maybe it took me too many years to realize this, but i fundamentally don't want "any other guy." i can't handle it. the idea of a remotely traditional guy grosses. me. out. i'm too sensitive to that feeling of, "oh. you're doing THAT thing. that thing that you probably saw on Dr. Phil or read in some magazine or heard from some friend or saw in some movie."

i've always felt different about everything as it relates to "love" and "romance." i just can't fit in to anything i feel like i'm "supposed" to fit into. i never thought about what would happen at my wedding, felt totally terrified of my first kiss, and didn't really even "date" before I met zach. i'm awkward. i'm too self-aware to let anybody do anything remotely traditional with me without acknowledging that it's typical and that i realize that it's typical out loud. so how does this work? the first week zach and i were dating i went to kiss him and after three seconds he pulled back and loudly said, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" and then laughed at how funny he was. and i thought it was hilarious too. and i still do.