Fear of a Female Planet

On March 17, 2009 I met Nick at a St. Patrick's Day karaoke:



Of course I was dating someone else at the time, but we became good friends...







We bonded over cheating exes, made each other music mixes, and when Justin and I broke up (August 12, 2009) Nick waited all of a week to tell me he liked me. We had The Talk on September 7, 2009 (Labor Day) and decided to go on a date. Our first date was September 12, 2009 at Osteria Papavero, followed by a play at the Bartell, and drinks at Natt Spiel.

Last night we went to dinner at Osteria Papavero and had dessert and drinks at Graze, where we celebrated our first anniversary.

Since then we have traveled to the Northeast twice, Yellowstone, Joshua Tree, all over Wisconsin, down to Chicago, and up to the Upper Penninsula. I've met all of his family, celebrated holidays with them, and we've moved in together.

We complement each other, support each other, are devoted to each other, and see a future together. It's been a wonderful two years :)

Coincidentally, we were scheduled to drive back East during and through the path of Hurricane Irene, with some quick visits along the way... with other meteorologists.


We left at 3PM last Saturday, drove through the night, hitting the worst weather between Syracuse and Albany, where we stopped to visit our first meteorologist at SUNY-Albany around 9AM. They like to find the tallest building to observe things from...



We left around noon, and drove through the Berkshires, where weather went from Hurricane to calm by the mile and we saw dozens of utility vehicles out. After a quick visit with my old college roommate, his wife, and new daughter we got to Boston around 6PM on Sunday. We grabbed dinner with Steve and stayed with Dan, a meteorology grad student at MIT.

The next morning was beautiful - not a cloud in the sky. We headed up to Portsmouth for dinner with my friend Katie and her boyfriend Eric. Neither of us had been there before and it was lovely.



I had checked that morning with my dad and we could get to his house in Vermont. We arrived around 10PM and went straight to bed. The next morning the first thing my dad says to me is that he's going to the hospital. He caught a nasty cold when my sister, niece, and grand-niece were there a few days earlier and it developed into an infection. In the light of day the road to his house looked like this:





Luckily a neighbor had flattened it out some with his backhoe. Vermonters.



We drove back from the hospital via Bethel, passing the Camp Brook road, which leads to Brookfield, a town that is being airlifted supplies since it is now cut off:



Back at my dad's we grilled some brats, played some horseshoes and backgammon, and chased the chickens around:





We left on Wednesday to hike Mount Mansfield...

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Next up: The Trail Goes Where?

We left off when we finally reached an area flat enough to camp on. Luckily, it was an unofficial backcountry site with a bear pole and everything.

It was a beautiful morning:



We had come down this slope the night before:



And the Hellroaring Creek was just as impressive the next morning:



Nick checked out the water situation:



Him looking up at me:



Despite the steep, rocky slope it was our best spot for water, so we filtered a bunch.



And washed a few things, including ourselves:





Then we got back to the camp to find a visitor!



He was panting, the poor thing...



We spent the day hiking parallel to the Hellroaring creek, going through wildflower filled meadows and shady wooded spots:



And a mudslide:



For lunch we stopped at an illegal backcountry site overlooking the creek:



Where Will and Jason flipped a coin for he last chicken, salsa, and cheese wrap from the day before. You find ways to entertain yourself...



I found a nice little perch to watch them skip stones:





And have our second animal spotting of the day - a Marmot! He was rather fascinated by our stone skipping:



So I decided to try it too:



After that we left the Beartooth Wilderness:



And entered back into the Park (a note, never, ever did we see signs when we entered Montana or returned to Wyoming - apparently park boundaries are more important than state ones!). The sign had seen better days...



We continued along the creek for the rest of the afternoon:



In the distance you can see the Buffalo Plateau that we hiked two days earlier:



We crossed over Hellroaring to get to our campsite for the evening, which was off of a little spur and right on Coyote Creek:



The site was beautiful - in a meadow with a shaded brook on one side and a hillside on the other, with lots of ground squirrels in between.



In fact, I'm pretty sure one of those ground squirrels took my comb!



I had had it out because I did a creekside hair "washing"



I had to change pants because I got waste water from cleaning my food bowl on my hiking pants (which means I could no longer keep them in the tent). Luckily I had brought my running pants as an underlayer - see my gear post about that!)



There were lots of butterflies:



That night we ATE ALL OF THE THINGS, so we didn't have to carry them the next, our final, day.



We were pretty darn hungry. In fact, I can't tell you how long it takes you to recover the calorie loss that happens on these trips. There is just no way you can eat enough calories to recover what you burn. Your body is building so much muscle, it's not just the cardio.

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Next Up: Back to civilization :(

So, due to park closures (a late Spring made many rivers unfordable, especially in the four corners of the park - where most of the cool long backcountry trips were located - and the Grizzly attack) we came up with a clever idea for a 3 night/4 day trip with the help of Ranger Kevin at Canyon Village. Mind you, I've never done more than 1 night without resupplying (at Joshua Tree water constraints made this necessary, even though we technically slept in the backcountry three nights in a row) and the boys had never done more than 2 nights, so this was a big deal for all of us.

Here's Nick's description of the trip with our map: " Our trip began just off the road (marked by the thick red line) near the "Floating Island Lake" text. Our first day we hiked across the Yellowstone River, then took a right on Coyote Creek Trail, and then another right on Buffalo Plateau Trail. From there we hiked up along that trail to our first campsite, at the end of the 0.7 mile spur. The next day we hiked back out to Buffalo Plateau Trail and continued north to the Poacher's Trail, which we took west, until we met up with the trail marked "97," where we took a right up to the trail marked "36". We actually never even saw the turnoff for the trail marked "288." We made our camp on the second night just on the west side of Hellroaring Creek. The next day we continued on trail 36 to trail marked "91" and turned left and continued on that trail all the way until we were inside the national park again. Then we took a left across the first bridge, and another left after that to head to our campsite on the third night, which is the one at the end of the spur in the center of this picture right on the Wyoming/Montana border. The last day we followed the creek on the east side until it cut back over to meet up with Coyote Creek Trail (where we turned off the first day), and then we just took the same we took on day one back to the car."



In this post I will only deal with Day One...

Before!



I believe this was taken from Garnet Hill, at the very beginning of the hike. In the distance is Buffalo Plateau, which, after a quick 500 ft. descent, we would spend the rest of the day climbing. It doesn't look like much, but it was a 2,600 ft. elevation ascent that we did in 4 1/2 hours (leaving the parking lot around 4:30PM and getting to our backcountry site around 9PM)



At the bottom of the first descent was this suspension bridge over the Yellowstone River. It made me feel a little queasy in the middle!



The entire trip required quite a bit of routefinding skills, at least at this point we had signs and a clear trail:



Just after we turned off for the Plateau we saw a family of Pronghorn!



I'm not going to lie - hiking this Plateau was probably the hardest thing I've ever done physically - the elevation change, lack of breaks, and weight of my pack made it physically difficult and trailing behind the boys was psychologically difficult. At least the view made it all worth it:





The one time we stopped and actually took our packs off:



Nick set up a group shot:



Group shot!



Then Nick and Steve threw around a frisbee:



As we neared the campsite it level out some, but we had to cross some streams, which with top heavy packs can be rather scary:



It was still a little light out when we got to the campsite:



But got dark quickly:



The site was still quite hilly with lots of downed trees, so finding a flat area 100 ft from the bear pole proved difficult. We ended up next to a small brook (taken the next morning):

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Next up: Poacher's Trail

So, where did we leave off? Oh yeah, the awful mosquitos, which 100% deet only served to prevent them from biting you... or I should say, some of us:



And we had come out of one overnight backcountry hike, saw some geysers and then headed back in to another... at dusk. With a storm approaching...



But still, we were in good spirits:



We only had about a 3 mile hike in to the campsite, however, so we just booked it and prayed the storm held off. It was also prime bear country - the ecotone between meadow and forest. At dusk. We made sure to talk loudly about how tasty we would be to the bears, especially when hiking around blind turns.



We got the campsite in the nick of time. The sun was going down and just as we set up the tents and got the bear bags up it started to hail. We enjoyed a beautiful lightening storm and slept poorly since we erected the tents hastily and therefore on a slope. The next morning this was the view out of the tent.



And the slope we were on:



I had gotten up a little earlier to use the little girl's room and this was the Cascade Lake Meadow at dawn:





I was up before the boys and I saw some people fishing on the lake, so I deemed it safe enough to take a little solo hike around Cascade Lake:





I spotted this little guy:



And then this one, who clearly knew how to get a better view:



Nick came down to look for me:



Next up: Observation Peak...

So, we ended up leaving around 3AM (Jason wanted to see a band at Summerfest in Milwaukee). Yoshimi was not pleased that Nick would be leaving her:



We got to the Badlands around 2PM:



Set up our tents:



We wanted to do some serious hiking because we had all been to the Badlands but not really "in" them, but apparently there is only one semi-long trail there:



Throughout the whole hike there was a storm in the distance, which made for great scenery:







Lucky me :)



Then we had some "dinner" and enjoyed quite a storm throughout the night:



We left the next day for Cody to pick up Steve and then on to Yellowstone. We hit some road construction on the way that did some damage to the van.



Next up... Yellowstone!

Jason just emailed us some of his photos from the trip - ( here are some of my favorites: )

In other news, Nick posted the pictures we took on our Valentine's Day celebration:

"Curvy" can mean a lot of different things to different people. To me it means that my body literally has curves: a rear end that isn't flat, hips, a bust, and a waist that is thinner and therefore accentuates these things. Sometimes I envy the skinny girls whose thighs don't seem to touch or the girls with perky little B cups who can go without a bra, but overall I'm happy with my curves and can tell they are attractive to other people.

As far as accentuating curves, this outfit probably does it the most, being that it is the tightest and shortest that I have. Fashion magazines always tell curvy girls to accentuate their curves with wrap dresses - these people clearly don't have curves, because I have found exactly one wrap dress in my life that doesn't make it look like my boobs are in a sling.

And this is it:



They also tell you to wear v-necks. I don't know about you, but I rarely wear a v-neck when I will be working in an office. This weekend I heard about a case of a woman who was allegedly fired for being too hot - in particular, her turtlenecks were distracting. First of all, it just goes to show that if you are curvy, just wearing fitted clothing can be flattering. Secondly, society blames women for attracting too much attention by simply wearing clothing that fits. Little Emily and I had a similar discussion about how her employer (a family owned greenhouse) tried to suggest that her company t-shirt didn't fit. Emily is a skinny girl with DD's. The shirt fit her fine, anything else would have looked like a sack on her - she was not about to wear something baggy just because it stretched a little over her chest.

Today's outfit:


Dress: American Apparel
Boots: Ariat from The Shoe Box
Necklace: Three strands of amber, bought at Wiscon two years ago
Ring: Art Gecko
Earrings: Amber double drop, unsure of where I acquired them (I buy a lot of amber)
Watch: Toyko Bay

This is one of my favorite summer outfits - perfect for sitting on the Terrace and soaking up the sun. I used to have some nice leather sandals that I wore with it, but they fell apart walking home in a rain storm last year. Now I either wear flip flops, black heels, or my boots - depending on the situation. I bought these boots after Justin and I broke up - as many of you have heard: "There's nothing like a new pair of shoes to ease a breakup because, unlike men, you never get sick of looking down at them and have no problem telling them you love them." Of course, now Nick gets scared anytime I go shoe shopping :)

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Reflections:

1. I realized that in general I already dress to accentuate the positives rather than hide the negatives - these were all outfits I wear all the time. I used to hide my figure more, especially with clothes that were too baggy. Losing weight after the divorce helped me get excited about clothing again and when I realized the weight was staying off my wardrobe really transformed. Now I don't buy things a little too big to hide under or grow into and I'm not afraid of short skirts, tight clothing, or very feminine things.

2. I realized that, to me, accentuating my legs means short skirts and heels. This isn't necessarily appropriate for all situations (work, teaching, everyday) and I'm interested in figuring out what would accentuate my legs without being too "fun." Certainly, any clothing that fits is good and, being petite, I have to almost always get my pants hemmed. I have also gotten used to wearing heels with pants, which makes my legs look longer. Otherwise, I'm not sure, and still thinking about it...

3. I realized that I have no interest in dying my hair again. I liked it better when there was more natural variation and gray in it.

4. I realized I do a lot more skin care than I thought I did. Perhaps it's because I like any sort of pampering in the bathroom - any excuse to just chill out for a while, like putting a face mask on and reading a magazine for ten minutes, sounds good to me. On the other hand, my skin is one of the only things that makes me feel my age (stupid dark spot). I guess if that's the only thing that makes me feel my age, I should count myself lucky though. And I do love my freckles :)

5. Again and again it comes down to wearing things that fit.

TAG, you're it!

Day Two was legs. I used to think that as a short girl (5' 3") I couldn't have nice legs, but after numerous compliments on them the past couple years and being more comfortable in heels (which really do make your legs look better) I realized that I do, in fact, have nice legs (I'm sure the running habit, frisbee games, strength training, and yoga don't hurt). Today I debated between skinny jeans and a skirt or dress, but since I was going to be working at the office I thought heels and a dress was more appropriate than heels and jeans so I went with this.

BUT, I biked in to the gym at 7 AM in a downpour and got really sick around 4 PM, so it was a long day. Luckily, I recovered after lying down for a bit and grabbing dinner with Nick and was able to enjoy some pitchers of beer at the Dane with teammates (frisbee was canceled due to the rain :( )

So this picture was when I got home, but pre-bath time, Calvin decided to help:



Yes, I did plan on biking home in this dress - I am wearing bike shorts underneath - but since Nick and I walked halfway up State st. anyway, I decided to leave my bike at the gym. The only thing I don't bike in is long flowy skirts.



Dress: Thrift Store
Shoes: Thrift Store
Necklace: alineskirt
Watch: Tokyo Bay from Pop Deluxe
Ring: Art Gecko - the first post-wedding band ring I bought, so it holds a special place in my heart

I don't think this is necessarily the best outfit for showing off my legs (in fact several people asked me if I was going on a date based on the cleavage I was showing), but my miniskirts were a bit too short for work attire :)

Which of course, led me to go look at some Facebook pics... ( See MORE... )

Going through all of those, I realize that I treat showing off my legs as "for fun" - I wonder what it would be like to treat it differently...

Tomorrow: Eyes!