cold cave confetti
IMPULSIVE AND REGRETTABLE
Sometimes I wonder if I should be allowed around people. I am working on a small project that involves some not-very-well-known-to-me coworkers. One of them was the only other person with me in a conference room (curse of the Prompt People!) while we waited for our team meeting to start.
New Coworker: Have you been outside?
Me, unable to resist: You mean, ever?
NC: No…I meant, like, today.
I did apologize for being a jerk but if you’re just going to set them up how can I not knock them down? I should remember to ask him about BOFA, ligma, the Pairov principle, etc.
A SQUARE STATE
We took a spontaneous “oh no school’s about to start” weekend trip to Denver. It was a Friday (evening arrival) to a Monday (evening departure) and we had a kick-ass enormous apartment-size suite in a downtown Hyatt. Immediately we noticed that downtown Denver is sort of dead and creepy and sad, but to be fair it was the weekend! The Loop isn’t exactly bustling on a weekend either.
Except then we got to Monday morning, and downtown Denver looked about as full as the Loop on a weekend. Excuse me, Denver! There’s no one here!
(Side note: because of a weird coincidence we, Chicagoans, went to Denver the same weekend as the Chicago Bears did to play a preseason game against the Broncos. After a long day of hiking [on which, see more below], I had assumed we could get some snacks, stretch out in the hotel, and watch this preseason football-like substance on the television. But! This hotel had no local channels, and because that game was not nationally aired, we were out of luck! I was pretty irate. The stupid game is right down the street! There were still sideline tickets available! But it’s not on my TV because I’m in a hotel. OKAY THEN.)
Anyway, you know I love Chicago. I do. But. When you discover a rather-late-in-life love of hiking, and you go to one of the Square States out West, and you realize that you can drive 30 minutes in any direction out of Denver and hike your fool head off? It may come to your attention that Chicago, for all its charms, positively sucks at providing hiking opportunities. There’s Starved Rock, I guess, and Wisconsin (although you have to go relatively deep into it to find any…terrain). In Denver we did what would probably be considered (by Colorado residents) little baby nothing hikes, the sort of hikes you would take your grandma on (things like Three Sisters and Red Rocks), but there were CRAGGY OUTCROPS and ELK and SHEEP and we flatlanders were astounded. We were like, “Our MINDS are BLOWN.” Please say that in a very northern-England Mel-B-after-every-single-act-on-America’s-Got-Talent accent. That is how blown our minds were.
(By the way, my kid and I have a brief comedy routine where we pretend to be Mel B reacting to a worm out on the sidewalk after a rain. WOT is that WORM doing THERE I cannot BELIEVE this it’s absolutely bloody ASTOUNDING okay maybe you have to be there.)
The jaunt to Mount Evans does not really count as a hike, as it’s mostly a drive, but that is where we all learned that I am not my best self at 14,000 feet. It’s a cool drive and a recommend it, you go up and up and up through very nice forest and hairpin turns (complete with an unsettling amount of roadside memorials to dead motorcyclists) and there are lots of places to turn off and take pictures and poke about, and then you get above the treeline and there is a tundra and a small lake that is like an INSTANT FLASHBACK TO ICELAND and the temperature bottoms out and it’s kind of intense. We all took turns feeling oogy which I guess was fairly efficient and family-oriented of us. At one point I stayed in the car and worked on not vomiting while LT and the kid scampered about on a rock pile and saw some small mammals. Marmots? I want to say marmots but it’s possible I just like the word.
Once you can’t drive anymore, you can hike about another 30 minutes to the actual summit, but warning: it is windy as shit and freezing cold (we were not dressed for mountaineering) and your teen will be like LET’S DO IT and you will be like no thanks. Plus all that “hey I am Reasonably Fit” feeling that you had all weekend—hiking up inclines and taking 30,000 steps per day per your Fitbit and so forth—will evaporate at that altitude, where you can’t go 5 steps without feeling like you’re in the last stages of congestive heart failure. We went a small ways up but then turned around and came back down and back to the car, and I felt a tiny bit of shame when a rather-pregnant woman passed me on the way but only a tiny bit.
Also, a lot of people at this up-in-sky bad-for-your-health mountain had brought their dogs and is that a good idea? Maybe all Colorado dogs are altitude-acclimated but dogs are so accommodating. I worry that a dog would be all OH YAY WOW YES THIS IS GREAT THE ALTITUDE IS NO TROUBLE AT ALL until it flops over dead of a pulmonary embolism.
I WILL NOW SHARE A METHOD FOR FALLING ASLEEP
You count backwards, but this part is important: you visualize the numbers clicking backward like on one of those mechanical “digital” clocks. Like this! The one in my mind is either olive green or Harvest Gold, just like the kitchen appliances of my childhood.
You imagine the numbers flipping down from 9999. After they flip they gently dissolve into dust (but you can still see the shapes of the numbers), and then you imagine taking a lovely silver-plated cocaine straw (may I suggest?) and you snort up the numbers, gently, slowly. The mental you sits back, exhales, and watches the next set of numbers click over. It’s time for 9998.
It’s a super-’70s slightly-druggy guided meditation, with built in deep-breathing cues, and you are welcome to share it.
—mimi smartypants is looking for ski bunnies for hitting the slopes of time and space and relaxation.