This week last year I posted 3 goals for age 25. I turned 26 on Monday and I have to report that I only completed one of them. I may have set the bar a little high with the combination of them. Waaaahh, waaaahh, wahh, I know. Whiney, excuses. Whatevs. Goals for year 25 were as follows:

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.

1. I did not find an agent for my book. I did, however, finish my Masters of Fine Arts degree at Antioch University Los Angeles. My last year of my Masters included a 25 page research paper on the way JK Rowling's Harry Potter series has helped Generation Y become a more tolerant and accepting people than past generations, over 150 pages of fiction written of my second novel, a complete revision of my first novel, 40 books read and annotated, and a developed online creative writing class that I will teach for my University in October.
Goal one for age 26: Finish and revise my second novel. Find agent. Now that school is over, there's nothing to get in the way. 

2. I bought a house. I nailed this goal. The first year of homeownership may have also gotten in the way of goal 1. My 4 bedroom, 2 bath house is fully painted, decorated, and unpacked. One bedroom has been turned into a walk-in closet and all of my old crappy wood furniture has been painted and distressed to look super coolio and vintage. I have a garden with more tomatoes than I can eat. I planted a tree and it's still alive. I'm a real person with things. 
Goal two for age 26: Get myself a sweetie dog. This is may be cheating because this goal is already in the works. Well, maybe no, because last year buying a house was already in the works when I set that goal. More to come on my addition to the family. Please don't fear for my dog because of the prior tree comment. 

3. I didn't even try to slalom on my left leg. I did get to go home and ski plenty this summer. I'm so happy this boy I found myself is in to going to the lake. He learned how to slalom ski by dropping one ski. I'm so proud. Any whosies, each time we skied I had friends home too and didn't want to take time from them (and John) learning because I would have surely face planted several times trying to get up on my left leg and taken up valuable lake time. Maybe this weekend I'll have a chance to give it a whirl. 
On a side note, with John's help, I completed a life goal last week. It's been a dream of mine to ride  my bike from Omaha (where I live now) to Norfolk (where I'm from). It's about 110 miles. John just got his bike in January. I told him my dream and that all I wanted for my 26th birthday was to tackle this goal. There's restaurant we've been wanting to eat at a few miles Norfolk and we decided to stop there and have our wonderful, lifesaving friend, Kim, pick us up there so we didn't go the full 110 miles. It was 100 degrees. It was windy. It was hilly. We got to the restaurant and it was closed. We walked 4 doors down to the bar, where the bartender  told us no other restaurants in the small town were open for lunch. She then made us frozen pizza. We did it. We rode all that way in the heat and wind and hills and that was the best dang frozen pizza I have ever scarfed down. 

The start. Look smiles. 

We stopped in Tekamah and had snacks

Not sure what the locals having breakfast
thought about us. 

And doughnuts in West Point
No longer smiling, but the doughnut
helped, as did John yelling Cumeeeeiing!
when we reach Cuming County. 

The end. Shell shocked. Summer Shandy revival.

I also took several Cat Selfies. Not a life goal, but I feel they need to be shared with the world.

 

 

On my 26th birthday, instead of going to the DMV and renewing my license (and risking paying a fee or having to take the test again), I decided to bake cookies. I then proceeded to eat cookie dough for lunch. The next day I made it in and out of the DMV with no fee or test in less than 20 minutes. I hope this is a sign of good things to come for year 26. 

1. Novel
2. Big Sweetie Dog
3. This year I did my first half Ironman, in 2 weeks I'll do my first ultra marathon--a 50 mile trail run in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Goal 3 of age 26 is to not hate myself for signing up for this race. I'd like to think I have a goal of finishing it as well. 

Dream big, friends. 

Happy Monday! Here is an excerpt from the novel I'm working on. This scene is basically a dating fear--boyfriends' moms. Most are fine and normal. Moms are people just like anyone else. However, just like all people, some are awkward. Jaisa's ex-boyfriend's mom would definitely be one of the latter. It also includes two of my favorite things about high school: basketball and puff paint. 

I’m not so sure Mikah’s family loved me. He’s an only child and his dad drives a truck so he’s gone all the time and Mikah’s mom is hard to talk to. Like really hard. Once I rode with her to one Mikah’s away basketball games. Never did it again.

She picked me up. “Hi, Mrs. Craven. Thank you so much for picking me up,” I said, putting my seatbelt on.

“Hi, Jes-uh.” Mikah and I had been dating for two years at this point. Granted, this was only, like, the fifth time his mom and I’d talked, but she had been watching me run and hearing people scream my name at meets for two years, she should know how to pronounce it. Jay-suh. It’s not that hard.

Mikah had suggested I ride with her. I thought it would be a good idea. Help make me part of the family. Mikah had fit right in with my family the moment we started dating. Why wasn’t I a part of his? My family's really important to me and so was Mikah. I wanted both important pieces to know each other. Not the story on his side.

Riding with his mom, two blocks from my house: “Mikah said Louisville is pretty good this year,” I had said, trying to start a conversation. I looked down at my black shirt covered in puff paint. Some of the other girlfriends and I made the shirts the week before. Sideline Sweeties scrawled across the front and Craven 11 decorated the back. I picked at some of the puff paint.

She didn’t respond.

Ten blocks from my house we passed a new Scooter’s that was being built on one of Landview’s main streets. “I’m excited for the new coffee place. Do you like Scooter’s?”

“I just drink what we have at work.”

“I’m not a big coffee person, but when Mom and I go to Omaha to go clothes shopping she always gets a skinny vanilla latte and I get a green apple Italian soda. We’ll be heading to Omaha next weekend to get my Winter Royalty dress.”

Nothing.

A mile from my house: “So how is work?” I ask.

“It’s work.”

“I don’t quite know. Mikah said you do finances for Super 8?”

“Yes, he’s right I do.”

Two miles from my house. We were finally on the highway. “What do you do with the finances?” I asked.

“I do the hotel’s bills.”

Eight miles from home: “So, do you like going to basketball, cross country or track better?” I asked.

“Oh, they’re all the same,” she said.

“But don’t you like being outside for track?”

“Not when it rains.”

“So basketball.”

“They all have hard bleacher seating and it’s all the same parents.”

“Bleacher butt does suck.”

She didn’t respond. Ten miles from home I gave up and stared out the window for the next fifty miles. The ride home was just as eventful. When we first started dating, Mikah had been similar to his mom. I had to prompt questions. The more he started hanging out with my family, though, the more he got in on our conversation starters. At dinner, Dad, Mom (before she left), Bryce and I all go around the table and say our lows and highs of the day. After Mikah had eaten supper with us a few times, he and I started doing that on the phone at night. Toward the end he started to forget to ask. Maybe I should have seen the break up coming. 

     Have you ever watched a chick flick and thought, there's no way that would ever happen to me? I hate to be a Debbie Downer, but it probably never will. Because chick flicks aren't real life. When I was in junior high health class the teacher used to talk about how chick flicks and chick lit were basically like a female version of porn--that these things were as unrealistic as the women and situations that were in adult movies and Playboy. I wouldn't go that far, but I'd definitely agree that they make us want things that are usually a long shot. We want the bad boy to love us enough to become "good". We want the guy who always, always knows the right thing to say. We want Prince Charming. We want the captain of the football team to fall for the girl with braces and acne. But how often do those things happen?
     I'm dating a guy who loves chick flicks. I could've guessed this before we ever started dating. At first this made me roll my eyes. He's not romantic. He's definitely a realist, but clearly, I'm so much more worldly and immune to the poor message chick flicks are sending to women like me. Right? Wrong. At then end of my eye roll, I realized I do the same thing with words. I love love songs. Love them. I went to see OneRepublic last week and, seriously, every song just made me weak in the knees. I've said so many times that my dream would be to have someone love me so much that they could put it into a song. Delusional. About as dumb as a 100 year old vampire falling in love with a 17 year old girl.
     Since the chances of Ryan Tedder falling in love with me are about as likely as me entering the magical world of Narnia, I've been trying to look more for the beautiful ways we show each other that we love one another in the real world this week. Love is moving across the country with your fiancee and jumping off into the unknown together. It's a big kiss after achieving something amazing. It's knowing what annoys the crap out of your partner and making them laugh before they freak out.
     In writing, stories have to be dramatic. They have to have huge stakes to keep you reading. It'd be cool to have someone be able to put their love into words for me. But it's way better having someone know I need lots of hugs and that I like to have every hour of the day planned out and not mind me being half of the time. That's real life. Don't waste your time dreaming of Prince Charming or the bad boy turned good. Dream of the one you aren't afraid to dance in front of or sing at the top of your lungs with. Dream of the one who will love you so much you start to love the braces and acne or love handles or weird bangs or whatever it is you have trouble loving about yourself.