It's been awhile, I know. I've got many things in my life making my life very rich, and updating diaryland sometimes goes by the wayside.
I wanted to send a happy head's up to nick in the bay area because he's a super cool guy who deserves only the best in life. I met Nick when I was training for the AIDS Ride and he was a training ride leader. He was also a dedicated volunteer on Tuesday night volunteer nights. Those people didn't know it then, but I was in the middle of a little crisis and the AIDS Ride made everything better. Nick showed me how to ride a bike for ten hours at a stretch, he showed me how to be tolerant of irritating drama queens and he was just an all around nice guy. There are actually one other person in San Francisco with the same name as him, and they are both listed in the phone book. My nick is such a great person and has so many friends that the other nick is very polite when you mistakenly call him and he says "I think you're looking for the other nick." Because he knows nick too, or at least about him. Probably because he gets so darn many of those calls. Anyway, nick is a great guy. shout out to nick. raising the nick roof.
We went to Oklahoma and ran twenty miles in one day. I actually was feeling pretty pooped and probably only ran 18.75 miles, because I had to walk the last few hills. Whoever tells you that Oklahoma is flat has never tried to run 20 miles there. Anyway, I felt crummy that day because I was coming down with this rotten cold, which I still suffer from. ICK. Then we went to the tribal complex and ate mountains of fry bread and I danced and danced even though I felt awful. My legs hurt, my feet hurt, my nose was stuffy, but when I was dancing it all went away. I had a great time.
In Apache dancing the women dance around the perimeter of the dancegrounds, lined up. I was dancing behind my cousin, and her mom was in front of her. She turned around and looked at me and then told my cousin to fix her top so that the top button was attached. It was so hot that night that it felt too stuffy to have the dresses all buttoned up so we both had them slightly open. I was totally busted and had to snap the last snap on my top so that I wasn't "advertising myself to the world." heeee. Apparently since I am married now I have to make sure my dress is all buttoned up. These silly apache rules- it helps me to appreciate what other people have to go through (like persephonee!) I also got all worked up because I wasn't wearing a belt and I was supposed to be wearing a belt to I would have something to attach my knife to. Which is silly, because you can't really travel with gigantic apache knives anyway, so I would have been wearing a very lonely belt. Oh, and if you're dancing with a shawl you have to make sure it covers your shoulders. Good thing it was too hot to wear a shawl, because mine is slippery polyester and always finds its way down to my arms and off the shoulders. not very convenient. At least that part is only for show.
Sweets seemed to have a good time too. He sat on the ground because my dad FORGOT our chairs, and he just sat and watched the dancing the second night. The first night he was socializing with all the relatives on the side of the dancegrounds while I was dancing away. wheee! So we ate a LOT of boiled meat and aforementioned fry bread and debated the proper pronounciation of various apache words and met tons of people and hugged tons of old people and apparently everyone in Oklahoma is my cousin.
Sweets is taking an entymology class and has the assignment of collecting 74 different types of bugs, so he was out with his bug net in the fields of oklahoma (where the wind goes rushing downs the plains) catching all sorts of ugly things. One of my cousins brought him a cicada in a cute little cicada cage, which he promptly euthanized and added to his collection. Then that giant bug had to travel all over with us for the rest of the trip. they are uuuugly suckers, those cicadas. blech.
So it was a good weekend, bugs and all. So nice to be with family. Now back to the grind.