So I've been pretty much working my life away on a research paper for school about how the Harry Potter series formed the morals of the Millennial Generation. Fascinating, no? I did get out and do things in September and October. Here they are for September:

September week 1: I competed in the Hy-Vee triathlon Championships. This is championships for normal people like me. You have to qualify and you then race against the best of the normal people (not pros). My dad went with me again this year and we went to a new Husker bar in Des Moines for the first Husker game of the season. The night of race day we went to the Goo Goo Dolls and Lifehouse concert in my hometown. It was awesome. Lifehouse sings the song that was the theme for the movie of The Time Traveler's Wife, my most favorite book of all time, and I seriously was shaking. I know that sounds stupid but I just love that story to no end and the song gives me goosebumps and makes me want to cry every time. I think about that story every day. It's hard for me to put into words how much I love it. Goo Goo Dolls sing one of my most favorite songs of all time as well, "Iris." I've dreamed of hearing that song live since I was in grade school watching VH1's top 20 video countdowns in the summertime. Happiness.

September Week 2: Since I had a race the weekend after my birthday, I waited to celebrate my 25th until this week. We went out to the Candle(Scandal)light Lounge, a place my friends have talked so much about but I had yet to have the pleasure of experiencing. It was everything I dreamed it would be and more. You can imagine what it's like by the name Scandalight. I also tailgated all day for the first time. I usually go to a Husker game every year, but I've never just hung out in Lincoln and tailgated all day. Best time eva! And my friend Jenny got me a super cute tank (we matched) and we got complimented left and right. I have the best friends. Good looking.

September Week 3: I started going to a new yoga class. I love it. It's the first time I've had to pay for a membership to go somewhere to work out though. Namaste.

September Week 4: I got to be support for a race! I've never got to cheer someone else on or help them run a race because I've always been the runner. Go, team, go. 

September Week 5: Oh, baby. Crossed something off of my bucket list: rode the crap out of a mechanical bull. It's time for Boots and Wangs again. My friends and I needed an excuse to wear cowgirl boots more often so we decided last year we'd start going out for wings and wearing boots because why wouldn't you? We did it at a bar (that didn't have wings, mind you) this time in Counciltuckey that had saddles to sit on at the bar. Win.

 

My cousin Josh also got married this week. I hope I'm not hated for this someday, but we're sitting there during the wedding and, of course, (well not really of course because I haven't had a date to a wedding in 2 years, but anyway) my date is sitting next to my dad. My family is sitting in the first two rows on the groom's side and during the Lord's Prayer, someone rips one. I'm fuming. I'm seriously pissed because I'm sure it's my dad. A. How rude. B. How embarrassing in front of my date. After the wedding I turn to scold my dad and everyone in my family turns to him we are all just laughing and my cousin Nicole tells us it was her three year old daughter. That Nicole felt her lift her little butt cheek and let one go. My whole family could hear it. Epic. 

And here's a picture of Tannie and me because he looks so handsome: 

And I feel everyone should see this sweet video of my cousin's son Marin: 

Moves.

I promise October is coming. And I'll be writing again. Maybe I'll even share my enthralling research paper. 

This story came out of a writing prompt and a news article I read a while back. I've posted it before, but I've wrote a little more and changed somethings. I've mostly been working on Jaisa's story but I can't let this one go. I love Jaisa and I know where her story is going so I'm running with that now, but I'm super excited to get some ideas and roll with Branko soon.

Damn! A blister the size of a peach pit splits open on my palm. I drop the shovel and stare down at the ripped flesh. It's kind of oozy. I look up, out of the hole at the night sky. The moon glows orange against the black. Wait, what? Out of a hole? Branko, what the hell are you doing in a hole? I ask myself.

     Yep, the shovel, the dirt, the digging. Digging a hole. Why am I digging a hole? 

     Dirt covers my boots and dust streaks my jeans and flannel shirt, which is ripped across the front like a werewolf clawed my chest. Blood. My side is bleeding. How am I going to get out of this hole? The sides are just taller than my head. Where is all of the dirt I got out of this bad boy? What if it caves in on me? 

     My chest tightens. Breathing hard. Eyes bouncing to the ground, underground all around me, up, up and out, only able to see sky, where is the ground? 

     I'm in the ground. 

     I grab a root and try to hoist myself up. Pulling, scrambling out, grasping for grass, lugging body out of hole. Out, out of the ground! 

     I lie on my stomach, feet dangling over the mouth of the hole, left cheek resting on the grass. Breathing, sweating, blister oozing. When I look up, holes. All I see are holes. 

     I can't see far. The tangerine moon is the only light, but I know in the blackness are more holes. Holes like the one I just crawled from. Six feet wide, six feet deep. If I reach to the right, I can stick my arm in a hole. If I reach to the left, same thing. A cloud drifts over the moon, leaving me in complete darkness. 

I wake with the sun and remember what I’m doing, the confusion of the night before lifts with the return of day. At first I how often I forget where I am scared me. Now, sometimes I think it’s a blessing to forget.

I had understood that they were going to do it. Knock me out, take part of my liver, stitch me up and wake me when it was over. I knew it would be painful. But I was supposed to get $40,000 for it. Do you know how much money that is? How much food that can buy? Heat, water, food. If I just did it, then we’d be set. With Dad dead, I’m the one to do it. I am the man. Take care of your mother he had said. I can’t make enough at the meat factory and they just laid Mom off. They probably kept me since they can pay me less. Woo for child labor.

            I just thought the liver people would snip off the part they wanted and pay me and send me home. Now, here I am with less than half a liver, digging holes for crazy people. Murders, probably. I look over at my shovel from where I’m lying in the narrow strip between two holes. Would one of these holes be my grave? What’ll happen when I get to the edge of the clearing? He’d said dig six foot by six foot spaced three feet apart until the entire field was full. The field is barely the size of a soccer pitch. What happens when I’m done?

            I stand and immediately fall back on my ass, leaning into the nearest hole, barfing. I put my fingers on the scar. How long has it been? I sit up and count the holes. Thirty-three. Thirty-three holes times one hole a day plus the three weeks (give or take) I was at the chop shop, “the hospital” where they took out sixty percent of my liver and didn’t pay me a dime or send me home. That means fifty-four days. At least. Fifty-four days I’ve been gone and Mom has been without money. Sixty-three days after my seventeenth birthday. If it really was three weeks before they brought me to the holes.

I’d gone into the surgery without Mom knowing six days after my birthday. Six days after she cried because we couldn’t afford dinner and a cake and a gift and all we had was canned corn, bread and butter and a beautiful chocolate torte without the nuts—too expensive—for my birthday.

            I grab my shovel and thrust the tip into the ground, pulling myself up on the handle, supporting myself to stand. I went to Kosovo to sell my liver piece, but I’ve no idea where I am now. I could be in any field in any country. The air is crisp, fall is coming, and it smells like dirt, soil. Holes. My gnarly, black hair flops to the top of my ears, dirt lives under my fingernails and probably in every crevice of my body and bones jut out everywhere, stretching my skin. No one back home in Serbia would recognize me now without my usual buzz cut, scrubbed raw skin and muscles. Verica. Verica would still recognize me. All she ever has to do is look in my eyes and she knows everything that’s inside me.

            I start digging.

Someone is watching. There is always someone watching. I tried to run twice and was whipped like a racehorse in a close race: swift, hard and with a mean sense of urgency. Breakfast comes when the sun looms over the trees.

I had kissed Mom goodbye when I left that last morning. “I love you,” I told her. “See you in a few days.” I told them the owners of our factory in Krusevac were sending a group to start a new factory in Aleksinac, but I really jumped a train to Pristina, Kosovo. I told her I’d be gone for two weeks.

The shovel is heavy today. The dirt is heavy today. Sometimes I think this is getting easier. Today I feel each mound of dirt weighing down all the muscles in my body. Every movement is crushing and slow, like I’m trying to move in a dream.

I didn’t tell Verica I was leaving.  I knew if I told her anything, she’d know I was lying. She’s funny like that. I may have known her longer than I’ve known anyone other than my parents, but I can’t tell if she loves me or hates me. She probably knows what I had for dinner and how many times I brush teeth every day of the week.

“Branislav Zupan, I see you waiting for me under that tree. Don’t act like I can’t walk myself home. I’m a big girl and I know you aren’t just passing by,” she used to say when I first started at the factory and she still got to go to school.

I hate when people call me by my given name—Branislav. No thank you. It’s Branko.

A worm wiggles in the shovel full of dirt I just scooped up. Actually, I notice, I cut him in half. How does that work? That you can cut a worm in half and both halves go on living?

Verica and I grew up in the same apartment building, our moms took turns watching us based on their shifts at the factory. We went to school together until I had to drop out. Right before I left to sell the piece of my liver, Verica had had to drop out too to go to work because her brother, Vuk, went to jail.

“I can’t go work there, Branko.” She cried the night before her first day while we sat on the stoop of our apartment building. The red brick building sagged with the depression of all who lived there. The outside smelled like piss and burnt cheese, but when I was with Verica all I could smell was her—sweet, sweet honey. Honey like her hair in the sun, reaching all the way down her back. Honey like the smoothness of her legs when she wore shorts or skirts that waved around her knees. Honey like the sweetness of her voice when she called through my window to come over.

I didn’t know how to respond. I knew she didn’t want to work in the factory. I didn’t want to work there either, but what choice did we have? I took her hand in mine and tried to wipe the tears from under her dark brown eyes.

She pulled her hand away and stood up, looking down the street. Away from our home, away from me. “I just want to stay in school, you know? Maybe if I can stay there, I can learn something. Something that will take me away from here.” She leaned against the railing to the apartment stairs with her back to me.

“Where else can you go? Your parents need you,” I said. I need you, I thought.

“You’re too loyal, Branko. Sometimes I wish you’d just be selfish and do something for your self. Just once. Don’t be so damn responsible.” She turned and walked up the stoop into the apartment building and away from me.

I walked her to and from the factory every day if I wasn’t working. I wonder what she thought when I didn’t show up.

The sun is up over the trees and Lugnuts lumbers over with bread. I mean breakfast. It’s always bread. Bread and water in a canteen, both of which he chucks at me like I’m waiting for a pitch. I don’t Lugnuts’s real name. He just looks like he’s a few lugnuts short of, well, anything that might work properly.

“Hey! What’s going to happen when I dig up this whole lot?” I ask, waving my hands toward the remaining empty expanse of the field. The first few days I asked question after question, always answered by the same blank stare. After a week I gave up.

Lugnuts looks at me like I asked him to find the square root of pi, shrugs and weaves his way back through the minefield of holes to the tree line.

Some other guy is the one who told me to dig that first morning I woke up out here. He had on a ski mask, black jeans and a black shirt. His voice was deep but not distinctive. He wasn’t very tall or very fat. Nothing about him could help me identify him when, if, I escape. I haven’t seen him since that first day.

I woke to someone kicking my foot. The world was spinning and the sun was so bright! How long had it been since I’d seen the sun? How long had it been since my surgery? My whole body ached. Ski Mask threw the shovel down beside me and said dig. “Dig the holes six feet around and six feet deep. Measure them one foot above your shovel height. Space them three feet apart.”

I don’t think I even responded. I just laid there, gaping at him. I touched my side, my scar from the surgery. I didn’t think I could even stand up let alone dig a freaking hole. Then crack!

Lugnuts snapped a whip at me, catching my bicep, tearing at the skin under my shirt sleeve. I stared down at my arm, unable to believe the pain and pop! He whipped me again, this time on my thigh.

“Dig or this time it’s your face,” Ski Mask told me.

I used the shovel to steady myself while standing.

“Dig,” Ski Mask said.

I plunged the tip of the shovel into the grass, using my full body weight to drive the blade down.

Ski Mask nodded and he and Lugnuts walked back into the trees.

When my parents got divorced there were so many situations where I had to make weird choices between my parents that I didn't understand or know the quite right way to deal with. I've always wanted to write about book that helps teens deal with their parent's divorce without it being incredibly boring. Jaisa, the main character of the young adult novel I'm working on is dealing with some of the problems I felt when my parents divorced.

###

            Bryce has a soccer game when I get home from practice on Tuesday. I always dread stuff like this. Do I sit with Mom or Dad today? Will Charlotte be there? Which really means, will Hunter be there? What will the other parents think about which parent I sit with? What do they think about Mom being there with her girlfriend? Should I watch one half with my dad and one with my mom or should I stay loyal to one parent? If Mom has Charlotte to sit with and Dad has no one, then I should sit with him. But what if they are both alone? What if Aunt Janice comes to watch with Dad? What will she think if I sit with Mom? It’s just a freaking soccer game, not even my soccer game, and it’s, like, the most stressful thing ever.

            I ride with my dad to the game. Since I ride with Dad and live with Dad, I can’t really ditch him to go sit with Mom. Or does that mean that I should go sit with Mom?

            “Honey, I’ve been meaning to ask you, but we’ve both been so busy, but do you, are you going to need a homecoming dress soon?” Dad asks me in the car.

            Homecoming? Shit. That’s right. “Uh, the dance is in, like, two weeks I think.” Why hasn’t Lydia been talking non-stop about it like she usually does? Oh, right. Colin. Colin and me experiencing life are her only two focuses now. I can’t believe she talked him into taking her on a tour of Forrester yesterday. She’s been there a million times and she could go to a better school for track.

            “It’s just that, I assume we need to go dress shopping and I thought maybe you could ask your mom to help out with paying for it this time,” Dad says. He looks over at me from the driver’s seat. He is frowning through his beard and his eyebrows are scrunched together.

            “Don’t worry about it, Dad,” I say with a fake smile. I hate asking for money. I know we don’t have money to throw around for silly dresses, though. Damn it. I’ll find a way to buy a dress on my own. Or maybe I just won’t go. I don’t have a date. I’m sure Garrett would go with me. I’ve kind of been avoiding him since the party. He called to see if I was OK that Sunday night after the party but, I don’t know, maybe I feel like the whole stupid night was partially his fault. With practice and the meet this past weekend, I haven’t seen him. That’s just fine. Lydia said I could just let it fizzle out if I didn’t want to see him anymore.

            “You don’t owe him anything,” she’d said when I asked her if I had to break up with him. “You weren’t official or anything, so you just kind of let it go by the wayside, fade him out.”

            I felt bad doing that, but I couldn’t lead him on. I don’t have feelings for him. I know that for sure since I didn’t want to dance with him or really hang with him at the party. I also feel a little guilty, or maybe a lot guilty, that I liked the attention, but I really can’t lead him on. I just gave short answers to texts and avoided his invites, but it seems to have worked. I haven’t heard from him for two days.

            Mom is sitting in the stands when we get to Bryce’s game. Dad, being the greatest ever, glances at me, sighs, rolls his shoulders back and marches right up to my mom and plopped his stadium seat down in the row in front of her. Gosh, I know that had to be hard for him. But how sweet that he didn’t make me do the awkward who-to-sit-by dance.

            “How was the meet this weekend, Jase?” Mom asks.

            “I won.”

            “She did awesome! Almost a course record,” Dad says, clapping me on the back.

            “Check out the photos we took that morning in class,” mom says, pulling a package out of her purse.

            Really? Not only do you miss my meet, my senior year, mind you, but you’re going to make me look at the photos you took with your new family?

            Mom rambles about still lifes and how cute Hunter had been with a non-digital camera. I nod periodically and watch Bryce. I can feel Dad watching me. At half time Bryce’s team is up 3-0.

            My phone buzzes in my hand, vibrating me back out of my zombie-I’m-pretending-to-listen-to-you mode. It’s from Lydia:      OMG. Colin gave me his number. This is it. I’m so asking him to homecoming.

      I sigh. He’s gay and in college. He doesn’t want to go to a high school dance with a girl. I type.

            “What’s wrong, babe?” Dad asks.

            “Oh, you know. Lydia thinks she can talk some dude into going to the dance with her. A dude who is in college and doesn’t like girls.”

            “Well, maybe they’d have fun. You never know unless you ask. And if he says no, what does she lose?” Dad responds.

            “He’s gay, Dad.”

            “Well, then maybe she needs to hear him say no herself. Either way, it doesn’t hurt her to put it out there.” He puts his elbows on his knees and clasps his hands together in front of him. “Better to be upfront and get it out in the open.”

            Right. Not like Mom.

My phone buzzes again. Lydia: He gave me his number. He wants me to contact him. Oh! You should go with Cooper! It will be so fun!

He still isn’t talking to me, I type back.

God. What a douche. Call him out. Give it to him.

“You have a date yet?” Dad nudges me.

I shake my head looking over at Bryce’s team on the sidelines. “I don’t know that I’ll go.”

“You have to go to homecoming! It’s your senior year!” Mom butts in.

“I don’t have a date,” I mutter.  “Or a dress.”

“The most fun I had at dances were ones when I went without at date!” Mom continues. “The ones where we just went in a big group of friends. That way you had no obligation to hanging with only one person.”

“Go figure,” Dad mutters. He looks across the field, squinting his eyes in the setting sun. “I’ve got to take Bryce some Gatorade.” He gets up and strides across the field.

I tap my foot up and down on the bench and Mom touches my knee to make me stop so I start biting my nails. She doesn’t say anything about the nail biting. Wouldn’t foot tapping be a better nervous habit? Who does Cooper think he is calling out my nervous tick?

Dad doesn’t come back to the bleachers when half time is over. He stands with another dad by one of the field’s corners.

Mom is quiet. Then all of a sudden Bryce slams a punch into the face of a kid on the other team. Holy shit. I’ve never seen Bryce act out. The boys are rolling around on the field. The coaches and refs rush to pull them apart.

“Bryce!” I yell.

Mom sits in shock and I run to my brother.

The refs beat me there and they are holding the two boys apart.

“Bryce!” I yell. “What are you doing?”

He shrugs the ref’s hands off of him. “I’m done,” he shouts at the ref. He spits on the ground and walks to the sideline where his team waits, their mouths hanging open.

“Bryce, talk to me,” I jog to keep up with him.

“Just go sit down. It’s fine.”

“No, it’s not. What got into you? What was that?”

He keeps eyes fixed on the sideline and marches forward. When he gets to his team, he rips off his shoes and shin guards and shoves them into his bag.

“Jamison, what are you doing?” his coach asks.

“I assume I’m kicked out?” he says, gathering his ball and throwing that in the bag too. “Red card?”

“Well, yeah, I guess. He did show the card.” Bryce’s coach looks just as confused as I feel.

What happened? I’ve never seen Bryce so much as glare at someone. Even all the douchebags who deserve it. I pick up his water bottle and follow after him as he stomps to the fence where Dad is waiting for us. Dad doesn’t say a word. The three of us head to the parking lot in silence.

“Bryce?” Mom’s voice breezes up from behind us.

Shit. Mom. I’d forgotten about her. Bryce is still zeroed in on the car, unfazed.

“Bryce,” she calls again.

“Hey, buddy,” I say, touching Bryce’s hand, but wham! Bryce slaps my hand away. “I can’t, Jaisa. I just can’t,” he says. He finally looks at me and his eyes are full of tears. My heart breaks and I know what happened. I nod and let him continue with Dad to the car. I turn back and tell Mom that it’s not a good time and we’ll see her soon. I hug her and leave her confused and alone.

We drive back to the apartment in silence. Bryce goes straight to his room when we get inside.

“Well, Jase, our little buddy finally lost it,” Dad says plopping down on the couch and rubbing his hand through his beard and around to the back of his neck.

“I think that kid said something about Mom,” I explain.

“Well, you know he’s not going to say anything to me.” Dad sighs and leans back, sinking into the couch. There’s grey flecks peppered into his hair. When did that happen? How did I miss it? When did my dad start looking so old?

Dad and I work on homework, him in at his desk, me in my room. When I’m done, I know Bryce has had enough time to simmer down. I knock on his door and ask to come in. I take his silence as an OK.

Bryce is lying in bed on his stomach, face toward the wall.

I close the door and slump into a beanbag on his floor. I think this is probably the last beanbag in existence. We’ve had it since I was a baby. There’s barely anything left to it, but for some reason, we brought it to the apartment with us when we moved. And here it lays.

“He called her a rug muncher,” Bryce says after a few minutes. If you wait long enough, Bryce will always come out with what is bothering him.

I shift on the beanbag, flipping onto my stomach and bunching it up underneath my chest and chin as sitting cross-legged had caused my butt to hurt.

“I know everyone makes fun of her,” he continues. “I can take it. I know what I did was stupid. I know you say in a few years it won’t matter. I know you’ll say that to real friends it doesn’t matter and that Mom is happy and we are doing just fine.”

Gosh, is that how often we’ve had this conversation?

“I could take it when he called me a ‘pussy.’ It’s a sport. Whatever.”

Dudes are so stupid.

“But when he saw he couldn’t mess with me by insulting Mom or me, Jaisa, he talked about you. He called you gay. He asked if he could come over a watch you with Mom. What the hell?” His back is still to me. God. I’m so glad he can’t see my face. My stomach drops and my right pointer finger finds it’s way to my mouth. More nail biting.

Speak, Jaisa! There has to be something you can say to that. Your sweet wouldn’t-hurt-a-bug little brother just beat the crap out of some kid because he was defending you.

“I know it was wrong,” he says, saving me from having to respond for a little while longer. “You’ve just had such a sucky time since Mikah br—” he pauses, “since you and Mikah broke up and I couldn’t take it.”

“Oh, buddy.” I scramble off the floor and sit at the edge of his twin bed. He looks huge in that thing. Bryce’s feet are about to drape over the edge. When did he get so tall? “You didn’t have to do that for me. You know I think there’s nothing wrong with being gay so that idiot kid couldn’t insult me.”

“But he did,” Bryce says. He finally turns to face me and his eyes are wet again. “He did and yeah, I love Mom. She’s gay so what? What? What is that she’s making it hard on us. We live in this shitty apartment. We have no money. She likes her new family more than us and yeah, there’s nothing wrong with Mom being gay, but you kind of checked out for, like, all of summer when Mikah broke up with you.” He sits up, his eyes locked on mine. “And you’re just coming back around. And that kid obviously meant to be mean to you so call you gay or whatever, I was going to shut him up if he was going to bad mouth you.” Bryce is almost sobbing now and my eyes are filling too. I pull him in for a hug and hold him close so he won’t see me cry.

With a big sigh, Bryce crumples into me. “You always stick up for me,” he says into my shoulder.

“Hey, I’ve got your back. You’ve got mine. I know that. Always.” I place my hands on his arms and push him away from me so that I can look at him. His eyes dart back and forth between mine. His stare is intense, begging for me to stay here with him. “I promise,” I say.

“I’m sorry I beat that kid up.” He looks down at his lap then back up at me. “No, I’m not. I’m sorry, I’m not sorry about it though.”

I laugh. “We all get pushed to the limit. I love you, buddy.” I stand up to leave.

“I love you too, Jaisa.”

When I get back to my room, I don’t know what to do or think. I can’t sit down. That kid used me to get to Bryce. I dig my running shoes out of my practice bag and throw them on. Bryce thinks I checked out and he’s worried I’ll do it again.

“See ya, love ya, bye,” I call to Dad as I head out the door. I don’t wait for him to stutter a ‘but it’s dark out.’ What else has Bryce been holding in until that lead to this snap?

Ahhhh, my brain lets out a sigh of relief as soon as my feet start moving. Short little quick steps. I’ve been playing around with changing my run cadence. I have pretty good form naturally, but I’ve been reading about how a lot of distance runners shoot for a super high turn over in their run cadence—180 beats per minute. That means that in one minute, my right foot hits the ground 90 times and my left foot 90. That’s quick. It’s supposed to help for you to strike with your mid-sole. Before I started this, I had a pretty good cadence naturally—about 84 beats per minute—but even that small change has given me something new to think about while I run. Something to focus on and shut up my mind.

It’s not Mom’s fault she’s gay. I know that. Bryce knows that. But are we bitter and mad at her about it? God. I don’t even know how to deal with all of these thoughts, how can anyone expect Bryce to? He’s only twelve.

The worst hill in Landview falls behind me like nothing. My feet carry me through Henderson Park and I just let them carry me. Not thinking where I’m going.

Should I tell Dad what happened? He’s worried. But he might not ask about it. Who am I kidding? He won’t ask about it unless he knows he has to. He likes us to find our own way. All he did when Mikah broke up with me was make me eat and let me talk if I needed to.

El Dorado’s hills slope up and down until I find myself outside of Cooper’s house.

What am I doing here?

I turn and run back down the hill away from his house.

No. No I want to talk to him. Damn it. He’s being an idiot he should talk to me. And who else is going to kind of understand?

I run back up the hill and march up his driveway, onto the porch and jab the doorbell with my pointer finger before I can chicken out.

The door opens a crack after a few moments and Cooper’s mom pokes her head out. Her makeup is washed off and she looks worried.

August--the month of my birth!

Week 1: Holy Kim back in town! Wooooooo! I missed her so much. You have no idea. My partner in crime back in action. We totally nerded out--I know you're surprised--and attended a birthday for Harry Potter. I bet you didn't know Harry turned 33 on July 31st did you? We also went to my first country bar. It was...interesting...good people watching. Kim and I went with our other girls from the workout class where I met these wonderful people, Dana, Jaclyn and Yaz. There were people young and old decked out in boots, dresses, cut off t-shirts, cowboy hats, you name it. It was the oddest mix of dress and folk I've ever seen. And so many of them knew all the steps to every dance. We stayed until the bar closed at 2 and walked outside and stood in a circle. "Well, now we can say we've done that!" Kim said. "Yeah, that was...an experience," Dana said. "We came, we saw, we laugh," I said. "We left," Yaz said. "Alone," both Jacyln and I answered. Yep that pretty much sums it up.

Week 2: Kim left on Sunday of the second week of August and we met Dana at Dario's for brunch. None of us had ever been there. I got a pear and brie crepe. Holy goodness. I love food. Not new, but I also found myself back at the country bar that I did not enjoy the week before. I went back with friends that I play volleyball with on a Wednesday night. Wednesday night and that place was more hopping than it had been the previous Saturday. People were two-stepping and swing-wing-dinging all over that dance floor. My friends Nate and Scott helped me realize what is so awful about that place--the lights are all on and the dance floor is in the middle of the bar so everyone can see you and your idiot moves. As the world's worst dancer, it's no wonder I was more into the people watching. That weekend then was the weekend of my family's annual lake party. My little brother just turned 21 and this was the first weekend for him to go out in Norfolk being of age. I was super excited to hang with him and Emily one of my best friends from high school and several friends from Omaha who came home with me. My brother's friend Max brought his wakeboard. I've been skiing since birth and have slalomed since I could balance on one leg (so I was like 3 that's right--haha jokes!) so I've never tried to wakeboard. I got up for 10 seconds and screamed like a little girl the whole time. That was new. I took my friends out to see the glory of Norfolk's night life and at the end of the night Emily and I decided we'd take them to the Depot. AKA The Underbelly of the Earth located on the corner of Where Dreams Die and Loneliness and Desperation meet. We walk up to the door and I told everyone not from Norfolk that they are not allowed to talk to anyone or touch anyone because they could get knifed. Yes. In Norfolk, Nebraska. I'm not kidding you this is a shady hangout. Of course we walk onto the dance floor and that rule was immediately broken by an accidental backing up into a crazy drunk girl. I'm also pretty sure Tanner danced with a homeless man--the like-Bern dance nonetheless. In the end we made it out alive. There's a one man band that plays at our lake party and he is pretty dang good. He was still playing when we got back to the lake at 1am so we of course proceeded to sing and dance and play his tambourines for him. Because that's what you do at 2am.

Week 3: I decided I need to have one day of the week where I don't set foot in the gym where I work. I love my job. But I think this will be really good for me. Not very exciting but I did make this new commitment to myself--to be better about me-time.

Week 4: The week before my birthday! My golden birthday at that: 25 on the 25th. My friends Jenny and Dana were both out of town and my friend Lori didn't have a babysitter and I was in training mode for a triathlon so I decided to wait to have a big going-out birthday for a couple of weeks. The weekend of my birthday I got to go to a Storm Chasers' baseball game, get a pedicure with my friend Emily, have birthday brunch with good friends and a lot of my family, play snort and have crazy good wedding cake. I also found my cupcake soulmate. I went to a wedding reception the night before my birthday in West Point, Nebraska. West Point is a small town I drive through whenever I go home to Norfolk. I've actually never stopped and gone anywhere there other than the VFW where my dearest karaoke partner Nate and I stopped on our way home to Omaha. The people of West Point will probably forever remember us by our karaoke names, Jamie and Joey. Anyway I went to a wedding reception and afterward we went to this small town bar with shuffleboard, a patio and a live band. Dive bar heaven! I won shuffleboard, danced like a fool and after midnight the band sang me Happy Birthday. Good way to start age 25.

Week 5: I turned 25! Soooooo oldballs.

When I turned 24, my hope was that people would start taking me seriously. Not that I don't think that people listen to me and value my opinion, but most of my friends and all of the people I work with know that I am young. They don't treat me like it by any means, in fact I think they often forget that I'm younger than them. But anyway, I thought that 24 sounded so much older and more credible than 23 so I thought 24 would be awesome.
It took about 6 months for me to realize a better goal would be to quit taking myself so seriously. Being young and professional is fabulous. You have all the opportunity in the world. I realized I needed to embrace that and just roll with it and have fun. I'm in my 20's! I credit this line of thought to my girlfriends Elisa, Jenny, Kerry, Kim, Dana, Jaclyn and Dalia. They taught me that it's OK to stay out too late sometimes when you have to work in the morning. That it's OK to not know what you want and be indecisive, to keep all your options open. Best of all they helped me grow by loving me just for the way I am. Even when I'm whiney and indecisive and may have stayed out too late with them the night before.
I turn 25 on the 25th of August. My golden birthday. I have three goals for year 25. I don't know if it's a good idea to set goals, but I figure why not. It'll be fun to look back a year from now and see how far I've come.

1. Have an agent for my book
2. Buy a house or condo
3. Slalom ski on my left leg--sounds minor to the other 2 but it's been a goal for a long time and I suck. My dear aunt Karla suggested we cut off my right leg and then I'll have no choice. I maybe should add a goal 4 of still having both legs at age 26.

Year 24 was great. Cheers to it only getting better in year 25!

New things for July.

Week one: I went paddle boarding.

My totally awesome and wonderful friend Jenny and I went on a bike ride with a local riding group on the Fourth of July. We started in Omaha and then had to ride over the bridge to the darkside...Council Bluffs, Iowa. Dun, dun, duunnnn. It was actually a really great ride.  Super pretty once we got out in the country. Jenny and I didn't want to go the whole 70 mile ride so we turned back after a while and then, of course, got lost on the way back to Counciltucky. We decided to stop at the fire station to ask for directions back to The Good Life because we know firemen like to help people. And I've always wanted to be saved by a man in uniform. When we found our way back over the river, we gave our friends the Storys a call to see if they were serious about their previous invite out to their lake house. Were they ever! Trish went to the store and got lunch goodies and they pulled the paddleboard out for us and we spent the day on the boat. It was one of the greatest days ever. I haven't had a day like that where I had no where to be and could just be spontaneous for so long. New life goal: be spontaneous whenever possible. 

Week 2: I competed in the Boulder 5150 triathlon. This was my first time racing in altitude. My mom drove out with me. We had a lot of fun. It's been a long time since my mom and I took a road trip together just the two of us. We went over the mountains to Steamboat where my aunt Linda, cousin Cameron and uncle Rick live and own a shoe store. The Petets are the hostsestes with the mostestes. Linda, my mom and I went tubing down the Yampa River and managed to not get stuck in A Hole, B Hole or C Hole (whirlpools where if you get stuck in them, you just swirl around and everyone eating lunch at the cafes along the river laugh at you). My uncle Rick helped me cross something off my bucket list: riding a motorcycle. He took me down the mountain to breakfast with my mom, Linda and Cameron. 

The race was tough. Like I said, it was my first time racing in altitude. There was a mountain to climb where we rode up 1300 feet in 2 miles. I wanted to kill myself biking uphill. On the way down, I thought I was going to kill myself because it was so steep and curvy! But I finished the race 24th of the 80 in my division and no one who didn't come from a mountainous state beat me. 

Week 3: I went to my first concert at Stir Concert Cove in Council Bluffs. It was all 90's bands--Fastball, Vertical Horizon, Gin Blossoms, Sugar Ray and Smashmouth. I was super excited for the first three bands but actually my favorite part ended up being Sugar Ray. I had such a blast. I went with wonderful friends and we just sang our little 90's kids' hearts out. I also went out with my little brother for the first time since he turned 21 at the end of June. It was one of the most fun nights ever! I was really nervous about it because my brother is in a frat at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and I thought I'd be hanging with just a bunch of young college kids and I'd feel old and I wouldn't fit in. I did not live a real college experience at all. I never partied. I was too mature and looking back that was really lame. I wish I had had those experiences my brother and normal college kids are having. My cousin Sydney, also newly 21, came out with us too and this night was all about family! I'm pretty sure if at the end of the night I had smoked a cigarette and said something like, "Oh, I only smoke when I drink"and I had taken some random dude home, I would have lived college in a night. We played yard games, bar crawled around downtown Lincoln, took shots, danced, talked to rando people and went out for Perkins at 2am for my first drunk food experience ever. I'm not saying these were all good things but it was fun and wonderfully freeing. Annnnnnnnddd, best part of all, we got Tannie to boobie smush!!!!

Week 4: I lived in Counciltucky (man, oh, man there's a lot of the ol' CB in this post--I should probably quit ragging on it) for a week dog sitting for my friends Dave and Michelle. I played Harry Potter Scene It for the first time. It mostly just made us want to watch the movies. What a wonderfully dorky Friday night! I also rode the longest I've ever ridden on my bike. My good friend Molly invited me to come ride with her and her husband and more triathlon friends. We left from their house in Bennington and rode from to Arlington (my first time in Arlington too) to Fremont, to Valley and home. 61.5 miles. Bam. It was fabulous. 

Week 5: I did the most epic trail run of my life so far. I felt like such a badass running through the forest. Like I was running from giant spiders and/or Voldemort. And I started barefoot running this month. Woozies. July was a good.