Meter maid.

I never cease to be amazed at how fucking stupidly people park at parking meters.  I mean, there's a graphic right on the meter showing how to park and apparently drivers are blind.  Scary.  Really though, at the rate with which I see people painfully misparked at a meter, it's as though it's everyone's first time.  There is not only a picture on the meter showing how to correctly park, but there are usually other cars parked correctly in the general vicinity of the grossly out-of-place car.  

Take note:  Front bumper aligned with the meter.  Pay the meter.   
Difficult stuff for some to grasp I know, but WTF? 

Third time's a charm?

Admittedly I'm a bit overwhelmed with other projects in my life and I forgot to write again.  Perhaps I'll just round it out with another forgotten day and three strikes I'm out!  

The legend of the Puffy Puppy.

For those of you that don't already know, I have the greatest couch in the world.  Doubt me?  Then you haven't seen it, or sat on it, or slept on it.  I purchased this wonderful couch over ten years ago when I only had a crappy futon functioning as a couch and had too many people over, too many times and realized I needed a real couch.  Little did I know that I would buy practically the biggest couch that was in the entire store.  I couldn't help myself.  As my brother and I sat on the floor model and looked at each other from nearly ten feet away, we both knew.  

It was one of the first times I had a few friends over to enjoy this enormous beauty of a piece of furniture that someone said, "It's like a puffy puppy!"  She was right, it was very soft, puffy and puppy like.  Since that fateful night, my couch has been known as the Puffy Puppy.  It was also decided at some point that the Puffy Puppy eats farts and requires a certain dose of them.  Thankfully, everyone I know has obliged.  The Puppy will not starve!

Now, being a barber without borders, I have spent a lot of time away from Colorado.  The Puffy Puppy has never spent time away from Colorado, so for years it sat at my mom's house, getting farted on there.  My mom is gassy, as is my entire family, so I know the Puppy ate well there also.  

Last year when I decided to stay in Denver and my mother decided to leave Denver, I knew it was time to take the Puffy Puppy back into my own possession.  It was a bit of an arduous task getting that thing out of my mother's basement, but alas, it's out.  Looking for an apartment that can fit the Puppy was the other arduous task.  I'm not made of money, so I'm not able to get an enormous place, but I'm sitting comfortably on the Puppy as I write this, so all is well.  

The Puffy Puppy is the best couch a girl could ask for.  I have resisted selling it all these years as I've traveled because I knew that someday I would regret selling it.  I have slept probably the total of one year's worth of nights on the Puppy.  I have had many a friend over, eventually giving into its powers of relaxation and staying the night.  My friend Cassie even called it an abyss.  She's right.  I have nursed the flu on the Puppy.  I have smoked pounds of weed on the Puppy.  I have had killer make out sessions on the Puppy.  I have laughed, I have cried, I have eaten and I have cursed sports teams, all on the Puffiest of Puppies.  Though I would not consider the Puffy Puppy a rescue animal, it has certainly rescued me.   

Blondes have more dumb.

Clearly I am not a creature of habit since I totally, completely and entirely spaced out writing a post yesterday.  It's been nearly eighty days and it still hasn't sunk in.  Bah!  I remembered today in like the afternoon that I forgot to write yesterday.  So this is the first of two posts today to make up for my expertise at spacing out. 

Home improvement.

I'm really glad that I rent and anything that goes wrong is for someone else to fix.  

Look at me!

Do not be fooled people!  That photo is actually me, enjoying the snow and cold!  It is not an impostor(as if that's actually possible).  Today was a big day for me.  I intentionally played outside in the snow.  You see, I have come to this conclusion: I must not allow myself to believe that I hate winter.  I  must find reasons to enjoy it and to sort of "want" it.  I even spent $200 on pants and gloves today so that I could be fully geared up and not allow the cold to touch me.  Yes, I am a gear snob. 

Sledding today was AWESOME!  The hill was huge, and kept me plenty warm walking up it many times in order to slide down it.  It snowed the entire time and I'm pretty sure I have a bruise on my ass.  I laughed so hard that I cried.  They were not tears of sadness of being stuck smack in the middle of winter, they were tears of the cold and snow stinging my eyes as I barreled down the hill and tried my best to steer clear of kids whilst whooping aloud out of sheer joy. 

Maybe I can do this, people can change!  

Is it July yet?
      

Adjusting the thermostat.

I've been to one of the world's smallest and certainly obscure countries, Bahrain.  A tiny island in the Persian Gulf, Bahrain is one of the first places in the Middle East where oil was discovered, ushering in a new era for our planet.  I went there in 2006 to visit a friend I had made during my first trip to Egypt.  Other than that, I would probably have no idea where it is or that it's even a country.  It came up on New Year's day, my trip to Bahrain.  These last few days I have been thinking about Bahrain quite a lot.

I thought of Bahrain on New Year's because I got caught in a snow pellet blizzard while riding my bike to the lightrail station with my friend Lesley.  It was a baptism of sorts since it was the first time I've been subjected to such harsh weather conditions in years.  We eventually made it to Golden, got in the car and b-lined it for the Indian Hot Springs.  We sat in those hot caves until we literally could not stand it anymore.  The water, the steam, the heat, it was a real treat on a shit winter day.  We knew it would be an injustice to not stay as long as physically possible since it was so blessedly hot in those pools and so freakin' cold outside.  We had to stay until it was dangerous to our health.

As we soaked in the hot mineral waters, I told Lesley a story about Bahrain that was the opposite of what we were doing.  I was in Bahrain in August, one of the hottest months of the year in one of the hottest locations on the planet.  The daytime temperatures hovered around 125°F and lowered to around 100°F at night.  Being an island in a shallow body of water, the humidity averaged 95%.  It was oppressively brutal.  I could walk around outside for about ten or fifteen minutes before having to dip into a store or restaurant for a few minutes so that I was not overcome with heatstroke.

  

I found myself terribly bored during my time in Bahrain and had to find anything to do to pass the long, hot desert days.  I followed the Arab schedule of sleeping during the day and staying up very late at night.  My little hotel was on the edge of the main souq of Manama, the capital of this wee country.  In order to beat the heat, I would walk through the souq at about 2am when almost everything was closed, and make my way to the Dairy Queen on the other side of the sprawling market.  Open 24 hours a day, this was my sanctuary.  

Dairy Queen was air conditioned to about 60°F and it felt like the arctic in there compared to the thick heat of the outdoors.  I would order a big Oreo blizzard and sit there and eat it.  Then I remained in the Dairy Queen, belly full of cold ice cream, until my teeth started to chatter and I could no longer take the overly air conditioned confines.  That's when it felt really good to go outside where it was 100°F.  I had to do anything to make the Gulf heat seem desirable and my late night trips to Dairy Queen were the ticket.  It worked, for about thirty minutes, but any reprieve was welcome in that extreme heat. 

Dreaming of the desert on another cold and snowy Denver day.

Weeds grow in the garden make pot pie.

I could literally write a novel about my relationship with marijuana.  It's one of the longest and healthiest relationships of my life.  It began when I was 16, but before I buzzed my head.  I go on the weed, and I go off of the weed in my life.  I've smoked in many countries, many cities, many houses, cars, and more nature scenes than anyone can imagine.  It's put me to sleep and it's kept me awake; it's dulled my dreams as I sleep and amplified them when I'm awake.  Weed has calmed me down and sped me up.  It has expanded my consciousness.  I've smoked it in joints, pipes, bongs, apples.  I've eaten it in chocolate, honey, candy, and cookies.  And it's all basically been illegal to some degree, until now.

Weed, for me, and virtually every user out there, is not some grip-me-with-addiction substance.  It's herb.  And now it's legal in Colorado, what a huge step.  I don't know if I'd ever consciously considered the actual legalization of marijuana anywhere in the United States, let alone my home state.  Rocky Mountain High, Colorado.  I remember when Denver was the first city to legalize less than an ounce of marijuana for people over 21.  Naturally the Mile High City would be first in line to do so in United States and it began something that is becoming more and more accepted; the legalization of pot.  It's sort of surreal, but then again I've been stoned a few times since the new year when it was "for sale" official, soooooo, yeah.  

Every now and then I get sentimental about weed and all the awesome stuff we've done together.  These past few days it's been sort of in everyone's face here in Colorado so I've been thinking about it a little more and realizing what a huge horizon we've finally come to as a people to legalize a fantastic and useful plant here in Colorado that causes so much violence because it's widely illegal the world over.  Other than that, folks are just want to get stoned and live their lives accordingly.  Why all the violence?  

One more reason Colorado will always be at the top of my favorite places on Planet Earth: bringing legalized weed to the USA.  I hope my years of smoking weed here somehow contributed.

Ocean ID.

Tonight as my brother and I had our weekly ice cream and Hulu binge, we decided that of all the creatures in the ocean, I am the sleeper shark.  You may think I'm joking, but it's true, there is actually a sleeper shark.  We were watching Blue Planet and when a pod of killer whales hunted and killed a baby grey whale, its body sunk to the ocean floor where the sleeper shark got to pig out on it.  So perhaps I'm a bottom feeding, slow moving sleeper shark, but at least I wait for the feast!

Hot and cold.

Headed to the hot springs to soak in the new year.

Adios 2013.

I was like, "I should wax sentimental about 2013 on my blog".  Then I was like, "naaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!".  I've written enough about this year that I don't need a night cap on it.  Get outta here 2013, you're old news.