My poetry kids have been working on writing more positive poems the last couple of weeks. We started out with odes because they tend to be a fun and easy way to be positive. I did my own ode to them last week. It's a rough draft. It's not perfect--but it was fun to write with them.

An Ode to the Purple Generation

I am a Millennial

My favorite thing about my generation is our ability to throw a party for anything. 

Graduation party

Promotion party

Game of Thrones party

That’s also tied into my least favorite thing about my generation:

The gender reveal party

As if having us attend a housewarming party, an engagement party, a bridal shower, a bachelorette party, another bridal shower, a couples shower, a wedding, a baby shower, anad a diaper keg weren’t enough, we now have to come see you bust a pinata, pop a balloon, cut a cake, or I don’t know dye your chest hair to show us if your baby is blue or pink. 

Let alone the small detail that this person hasn’t even taken their first breath yet. 

We’ve been dubbed, with a negative connotation, the Me Generation. 

Selfish, maybe, but really we’ve given voice to the individual. 

To me. 

We celebrate and throw parties for the I. 

We demand raises that reflect the amount of student debt

Student debt

Student debt

We took on to be the best individual. 

I work with middle schoolers

Pioneers of the new Generation Z

A generation so fresh it hasn’t yet been given it’s derogatory Me Generation-like name. 

My favorite part about Generation Z is how purple they are. 

Maybe it’s all the Mountain Dew their Gen Xer parents drank before their conception combined with our belief in Me, that one person can change the world, but Generation Z has given us a we. 

Greta Thunberg, one child, speaks for our whole planet. 

Students assemble for the me’s and we’s who want to be safe at schools, Walmarts, and concerts

Maybe they aren’t handing out participation trophies any more and these kids are better at spitting on a split knee and getting back in the fight. 

These kids are finding who they are, their ME, at a time when I was signed up for basketball and advanced math because my mommy did it for me. 

They are boys, girls, transgender, gender fluid, bisexual, gay, lesibian, straight, pansexual: one who isn’t limited to sexual choice with regard to gender identity.

One who isn’t limited

Pink and blue bleed together into so many shades of purple and they are limitless

More Millennials’ babies make their way into the world 

And a new generation is close to sprouting

I hope they take the Me from us and the Us from you and keep giving a big eff off to their parents’ gender reveal parties and paint our world purple.

I've always been a very, what I call, proud crier. Especially when it comes to women. To me, there is something about a strong women accomplishing something incredible that just makes me cry. I cried when Shalane Flanagan won the 2008 Olympic bronze medal and for the 2019 US Women's National Soccer team: women making their dreams come true. I've cried watching girls I babysat graduate, and I've proud cried almost every time students I coach read their poems for audiences. I cry learning about women who fought for the rights we have today.

But no one on this earth makes me proud cry like Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I see that tiny woman take her seat in the Supreme Court or work out with her trainer or hear that she's on the mend from another sickness because she's a billion years old, and it's instant tears. Jared and I went to a documentary about her last year, and I had silent fat ones rolling down my cheeks the whole time. We watched her biopic On the Basis of Sex last night and at the end, they have audio of RBG and show her walking, and I just lost it. She's incredible for many ways: she took both her first year classes and her husband's second year classes at Harvard Law while raising a toddler and caring for a husband with cancer, she pioneered the fight against sex discrimination, and was nominated to the Supreme Court at near unanimous a vote of 98-2. While she has fought for years for changing laws to reflect a more progressive America in regards to equality, when she was elected to the Supreme Court she was first considered a very moderate justice. However, over the last decade, she has been pushed further and further left as more conservative justices have joined the bench. It's incredible to hear her speak. To see the voice of progress to vehemently upheld in that teeny tiny body. She's my hero.

I recently listened to a podcast about moral licensing. Moral licensing, in short, is when someone does a good deed and then subsequently does bad deeds or more good deeds because of that first one. Some examples the podcast guy used where: Bringing Jackie Robinson into the Major Leagues, one good thing beget other good things as the Major Leagues became integrated. However, he also said social psychologists have studied that people, say who voted for Barak Obama, will then feel justified that they are not a racist (because they voted for a black president) but will then harbor very prejudice notions and subconsciously act on them: i.e. I cannot be racist because I voted a black man president.

The podcaster then took a look into countries that have had female leaders and found that many countries who'd had a female head of state or country had been one and dones: one female leader, then back to male leadership in the next elections. According to Pew Research there have been at least 13 women elected to head office around the world that have lasted less than a year in the top job. Critics and opponents tie what they perceive to be downfalls in their female leaders' abilities to her sex. But some countries haven't one and done. And it's not always the western countries one would assume. As of 2016 according to Time Magazine, both Pakistan and India have had a woman head their countries more than once. As we all are probably too much aware, in the US, the land we like to think of as free and brave, where we have equality and justice for all, has never had a woman president.

All in all, I think moral licensing is partially how we get a president like Trump after a president like Obama. We take one step forward and celebrate the election of the first black president. We praise our progress. Then we take a leap back and elect someone who calls refugees of color "animals." But we aren't a racist country because we've had a black president. I don't think we can actually say we've made progress until the election of a person of color, the election of a woman, the election of a member of the LGBTQ community is no longer cause for celebration. Progress is when those things are normal. People like Ruth Bader Ginsburg have fought and fought not only for our country, but for us as individuals. It's cause for pride and celebration, sure, but it's been almost 100 years since women gained the right to vote. RBG has been fighting this fight her whole career and we still can't look at ourselves today and feel that equality is a normal way of life. I, obviously, feel that the best leader should lead, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, religion, all of the things, but come on, America. To apply the sentiment Martin Luther King Jr.'s words, I hope for a day when all of us are judged by the content of our character rather than the physical pieces that make us. I hope for a day when, for me, every time a woman has to fight I'm not brought to tears for her bravery, but instead I feel angry because that is not the world we live in anymore.

As mentioned in my last post, when I started this blog, I wanted to have a space that talked about how to navigate tough stuff. So, I'm going to be reallllllly honest here. One of my big tenants to life is, or maybe used to be, "it's not about where you are or what you're doing, it's about who you're with." This is why, I tell myself, I stayed in Omaha for so long. I didn't love the city. I loved living near my family and friends. I didn't love my job. I loved the people I got to see at the gym every day.

When I decided to leave Omaha, I was doing it on my terms. I sold all of my stuff in preparation to buy a camper and travel the US or move with Yadi Doggie to Europe. When I met Jared and he convinced me we could do the van thing together, I put my plans on hold. I had to get on his timeline. When we came out to Steamboat last summer and my aunt and uncle were telling us how short on staff the town was for winter, and Jared started talking about how it was always his dream to work on a ski mountain. I said we should do it. If it was my dream to live in a van and in Europe some day, why wouldn't we do his dream, too?

We came out to Steamboat for what we'd planned would be a ski season. Steamboat is the best place in the world in the summer. However, winter is long. It's better than winter in Nebraska, but it's still winter. Jared got to spend over 150 days on his skis this winter--he lived his dream. However, you don't make a whole lot of money working on a ski mountain and ski towns are expensive. After the ski season, Jared found another dream job working for Moots, a titanium bike frame company here in Steamboat. When I talk about his job, you'd assume I'm really proud of him and happy for him, and I am--Moots is like the Cadillac of all bike companies, he's made friends to ride with, he has a cool job in one of the coolest industries.

I am happy and proud, however, I'm also insanely jealous. Since we'd only planned to be here for 6-9 months, I hadn't worked hard to make it home. I didn't want to get too involved in the community because I thought I was leaving. I don't miss Omaha, but I miss being involved in people and organizations I care about. On the flip side, because I don't have friends here, I spend almost all of my free time in the mountains with my dogs and have time to write every day. In Omaha, where I had things to do, I was always moving from one thing to the next.

So, I'm asking myself what the answer is. Do I push myself to become involved in more things, change my mindset about being here and invest? Or do I continue to be more reclusive--write and run all the trails I can? The answer is probably somewhere in the middle. I like to proclaim myself founder of the No New Friends Club (because I have the best friends already and so many of them to keep me busy, why would I need more?!), but no new friends in Steamboat means no friends for any kind of daily interaction.

The biggest thing I'm realizing is that I have to make myself happy. Somedays I sit here and feel sorry for myself that I let someone else derailed my original plans. I REALLY don't want to resent Jared for going for cool things. I'd rather be with him on this sidetrack adventure than alone, right? As stupid as it sounds, throwing myself into the good things about living here and doing everything I can to not think about what I gave up, helps my attitude. I don't regret leaving Omaha and home is where Yadi is, so I can make it anywhere if he's around. If I come out of living in Steamboat with a published novel, a fourth Run Rabbit Run, and maybe a new friend or two, it'll have been time well spent. Jared has found the potential for a few of his dreams here. I need to shift my shorts sights on the things I can accomplish here and long sights to those other things I can't.

Abba and me climbing a mountain

In college--like for real a while ago, I'm older than old balls now (I'm 30!!)--I wanted to start a blog that talked about the hard and weird and awkward. If you are out engaging with the world, then you probably encounter diversity every day. And it's often hard and weird and awkward to navigate that diversity. I think diversity is good for us, because it should make us examine our beliefs and opinions and either make us stronger in our convictions or make us open our minds up a bit to other possibilities.

With the trend some people are subscribing to of sharing every political or propaganda post they see and posting every time they fart, I've tried to keep myself as far away from Facebook as possible. However, every once in a while I get sucked in. I very firmly believe that if someone is saying bigoted things and you keep quiet, you are just as bad as the person being an asshole. That often makes for uncomfortable confrontations.

For me, it's far easier to get upset over something that is hurtfully directed at people I care about rather than myself. My only "marginalized" status is that of a woman. While I will fight every chance I get for a woman's rights, I've never had to choose. I have been put in uncomfortable situations work-wise and had to fight a man off after saying no, but ultimately, I've lived a life fairly free of bullying.

A "friend" on Facebook has started a crusade on the trans/gender fluid/gender dysphoric community. As I said, I don't get on Facebook often, and this person posts every time she farts, so her posts are frequent, but I saw the first comments a few months ago and didn't say anything. The second time I didn't say anything. The third time, I had to engage. I turned to modern science and the things I've learned from trainings I've taken for work with my LGBTQ+ students. She turned to the Bible and Bible YouTube videos. I do not think Facebook is the place to have these kinds of conversations, but I live 10 hours away so a conversation over coffee wasn't an option. Literally nothing got accomplished by my actions other than me unfriending her. Sometimes, you can know your stuff, have the research and the science to back you, and yet, you will never win the argument with a person  who's only source of knowledge comes from one source.

And the worst part is, she could say the same about me. She told me "science changes like the wind" and that the only thing that has lasted is the word of God. As much as I can't wrap my head around it, that's her reality. What's even more annoying about the whole interaction, was that I couldn't stop thinking about it. I felt uncomfortable confronting her. I felt so incredibly sad that there are people who feel differently than I do on this topic. I was a thousand percent sure I was the "right" person in the debate. I wanted other people to back me up in my comments and "like" what I was saying. I wanted to "win" the argument. Yet I really knew there was no "winning" because neither of us would change our minds.

So, how do we deal with these kinds of interactions? The kind part of me says that we agree to disagree and continue living our lives avoiding all conversation of such a subject. The idealist part of me says that we keep having the conversations and in the best kind of world, the person I was talking to would try to go out and have conversations with people of the LGBTQ+ community and broaden her world view and I would go with her to her church to broaden mine. In a Trumpian world, we turn things into "us" and "them" and divide ourselves clearly and distinctly from "those people" and "the other." I want to believe that having conversations with people who think differently from me is healthy for me. I want to believe it makes me grow, learn, and fortify my own beliefs or consider others.

As much as I thought I could offer great mounds of advice about navigating uncomfortable situations when I started this blog, I don't think I have an answer on this one. I do think if you believe strongly about something, you should always speak up. I also think it's OK to limit your contact with people who continuously make you feel uncomfortable or attacked or bullied. The world is full of different points of view--that's what makes it interesting, it's also why they say "two heads are better than one."  Don't be afraid to be one of those heads that are thinking and speaking and changing.

Yadi and I have a vow: to go on as many adventures as humanly possible, have a snuggle every day, and always come back. The last part meaning if I go on vacation and he stays with family or if I go to work, I will always come home. His side of that part of the promise is to always come when I call but sometimes he's not as good as he should be at that.

Yadi paddle boarding in Routt
National Forest

Traveling with a dog is not always the easiest thing. Sometimes he gets carsick. Sometimes he won't eat or drink very much on the road. While he's good about not barking when we leave him in the van or at home, there's no leaving him alone in a hotel room or another strange place because he'll cry for hours. It's always in the back of my mind that someone will break a window in the van if they see him, but we'd never leave him without the vent fan regulating the van's temperature. 

Yadi riding in my lap. Abba in the
doggie slot between seats. 

Even still, traveling with my dog is the greatest thing. He never has any idea where we're going, but damn he's pumped to be along for the ride. My most favorite thing in the van is that his favorite riding spot is in my lap so he can watch the journey. He's way too big to be a lap dog, but we make it work. 

One of the most disappointing things about traveling with a dog is that most national parks don't allow dogs. In many of them, it makes sense. They're crowded. Trails are narrow. There's wildlife. People don't bring adequate water and supplies for themselves let alone for their animals. In short, humans are just not always very conscientious of others, their surroundings, or their charges (I say charges because I've witnessed many people not pay attention to their children's actions either). The good part is that most national parks are surrounded by national forests and other public lands.

Poor altitude sick nugget

We learned about this rule at Yadi's first national park: Grand Teton in Wyoming last summer. It kind of worked out because the hike we wanted to do can be accessed from the western side of the Tetons (not part of the park), and we will get to do it this fall. We did a shorter hike, and Yadi had altitude sickness so he didn't want to go out anyway. We shifted our plans to hit Yellowstone the next day--more of a driving national park--so that Yaddles could continue sleeping. 

Working out with the Tetons in view
at our free site in Bridger-Teton
National Forest

Free campsite somewhere near Monument Valley
at a site called Mexican Hat for the rock formation

This spring we made another big van trip right after taking in a foster dog, Abba--named for Jared's love of music and because she's always making noises. We've since become foster fails and she's officially taken the vow with us, but that's something for another post maybe. We traveled through Utah spending most of our time on Bureau of Land Management land (BLM land) and state parks, then we traveled on to the south rim of the Grand Canyon, and back through Utah BLM lands. While we were spending time near Moab, we drove through Arches National Park at sunset. In the Grand Canyon, we stayed in Kaibab National Forest--dirt road access off the main road in the national park. We got to experience the park in a way most people probably don't. I had no idea there was a forest surrounding the Grand Canyon. There's a lookout tower where we watched the sunrise over the Grand Canyon. And we only spoke to one other person. The Grand Canyon does allow dogs on trails above the rim. They also have a kennel where we could take the dogs to stay while Jared and I went for a day hike down into the canyon. We dropped them off at 7:30 am open time and picked them up at 4:30 pm making the most of our day with a long hike, grocery stop, and shower.

All of us at the south rim
of the Grand Canyon

Yadi and Abba hiking Red
Canyon near Panguitch, Utah

Bryce has a similar policy: dogs above rim on limited section of the rim trail. But there were so many people at Bryce! We pretty much wandered the dogs-allowed section of trail and headed out. The BLM land trails of Grand Staircase-Escalante and the Red Canyon near Panguitch, Utah provided miles and miles of trails with minimal foot traffic. Also, Panguitch has the cutest theater in the world where we watched Endgame. 

Wild horses somewhere between
Mexican Hat and Monument
Valley near the Utah/Arizona boarder

Where I'm from there's not a lot of public land. I've always thought of Nebraska as being this wide open country, but it's not from a freedom standpoint. Nebraska has a landscape interrupted by fences and property lines. It's beautiful, in it's own way, but heading west gives open spaces a new meaning. It's not be wide open fields where you can see for miles. It's land with trails and adventure open to everyone. I don't think I really understood how much space is out there with free camping and quiet. We've even stumbled upon wild horses on a run. No fences. This is what all of those dumb songs I had to sing in grade school music class were about: public lands are your land and my land. This land really is made for you and me. 

Overlooking the canyon at
Dead Horse Point State
Park near Moab

There's a reason national parks are incredible. They encompass as much of the cool things going on in the area as they can and show it off. However, you can often see parts of the same wonders for free, with your dogs, in the areas around them. We'll always have a national parks pass hanging in the window of the van. We plan on visiting the backside of Grand Teton in Driggs, Idaho this fall and taking that aforementioned hike, then heading up to Glacier and Banff Nationals Parks, but you can bet the park time will be shorter on our trip and the unmanned wilderness time abundant. 

So...It's been a minute since I wrote anything on here. Almost a year and a half to be exact. It's not that I haven't been writing (albeit, I haven't been writing enough), it's that I A. have been frustrated with different elements of the world around me and haven't had the heart to deal with anything non-fiction and B. I've been busy! My life has been a whirlwind of action this last year and a half. I've been beaten around by change and self-discovery: basically, I came to terms with myself that I wasn't living the life I wanted to live. I'd bought a house in a city I swore I'd leave a soon as I graduated college. I was working over time hours at a job that had nothing to do with my degrees, for a boss who made an ever growing pit of dread in my stomach. I loved the people I'd surrounded myself with, but I was living a life that was passively accumulated rather than the life I wanted to create for myself.

I wanted to live in a van and travel and volunteer and give Yadi the adventure life we both deserve. I also knew there was no way I could do it because of my limited knowledge of vehicles and limited building skills. I gave up on that idea and set sights on another dream I've had my whole life: living abroad. I sold my house and everything I couldn't fit in my Jeep.

Then I met Jared late in 2017. He started coming to my classes at Pinnacle when I was in my ultimate hole of fed-up-ness. I wasn't looking to meet someone, but rarely say no to a running buddy, and on our first run I told him I wanted to live in a van. He took off with the idea.

"I know how we can do The Van Thing," he said to me.

I was pissed. Who was this "we" he was talking about?

"You need me," he said. "You can't do it without me--you'll see." Jared's mom and step dad own a remodeling company. He had access to their tools and more importantly to their knowledge.

In the beginning of February 2018 my friend Aaron and I went on a trip to Costa Rica to volunteer at an animal rescue center. We met so many incredible people from all over the world. They were all young and traveling as much as they could. We both had a little come to Jesus moment with ourselves out there. Aaron worked his butt off building habitats for animals and realized he wants to work more with his hands and get out of the city. When we got home to Omaha, he started looking for Nebraska acreages where he can build a home. I told all of our new friends how I wanted to live in a van. And, rather than look at me like I was crazy, they were all pumped for me. I was surrounded by people who understood my need to roam. They also helped me realize I had someone else at home who got it too.


Jared and I bought our van on April 27th, 2018 after only 6 months of knowing each other. We were then broke so we couldn't start any projects until the end of May, but we did decide that if we were going to live in a 70 square foot van together, we should probably make sure we could live in an 800 square foot apartment together first. So, we sold everything Jared owned, too. We named the van Dracula (because Dracula the Vamper in which we go Vamping).


We lost track of how many hours we spent on the van this summer. I know it was over 50 on insulation alone. Those first 50 hours were awful, for me. I look back on the journal one of my clients encouraged me to write as we started The Van Thing, and even though I was working on my dream, I hated it. There are some very annoyed and dark thoughts in there. Mostly I didn't feel like Jared and I were in it together. He loved working on the van. He found it therapeutic. I am not a stranger to hard work and getting dirty, but I broke drill bits and felt dumb all of the time. Jared's stepdad would tell me to do a project one way, then 30 minutes later Jared would check in on me and offer "a better way" to do what I was doing. Then an hour later his mom would offer "the right way" to do it. No one was wrong. They were all trying to help, and they're all far superior in their knowledge of these kinds of things than me.

Jared's biggest fear was that we'd get the walls up and be done with the van and driving down the road and insulation would start squeaking inside the walls. My biggest fear was that one of us would annoy the other to the point of driving us all off a cliff. "I have Yadi to live for," I told him. "I guess it'll be you."

Once the insulation, vent fan, and subfloor were done, things went crazy fast, because we could actually see progress. Jared got the walls up in a weekend, and I could seal them with no guidance. The mailman gave us a stove and Jared and Gary (Jared's stepdad) custom built all of our cabinets. I enjoyed painting, and it was something I could do in the parking lot of our apartment so I wasn't dependent on others' time.

We took our tester trip at the end of August 2018. We went to Steamboat Springs, CO to run a 50k for my birthday, then to Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone National Park. We had most things done--everything we could afford to do at this point. Missing were a toilet, cubby holes for our clothes and the slide out for our "garage."

Our bed sits 40 inches high. Underneath is the "garage" where we store our bikes, tools, outdoor kitchen and grill, dog food, yoga mats, backpacks, Camelbaks, extra water, and other "nonessential" things. Currently, our next project is to build a slide out tray that all of that stuff sits on so that we don't have to crawl around in there to access these things. We'll just be able to slide out the tray and grab what we need.

We have a full sized bed, extra long as Jared is 6' 3". Next to the bed is a wall of cubby holes for our clothes, then also an area for dirty clothes and one for towels. We have a sink for doing dishes. A gas stove and oven. We have lights and power strips hooked up to a charging system that connects to the solar panels we install on the roof. We use a Yeti cooler rather than a fridge for power purposes and because fridges are temperamental about sitting even. We have cabinets for food that doesn't need to be cool. We have a bench that sits behind the driver seat that now houses the toilet and all of our cleaning supplies. The toilet has been an incredible addition. We had no idea what we were missing that first trip. Our first trip we roughed it. It felt more like true camping: poop in a hole and bury it. Now we feel like we're truly cruising in our home.

So, we had the van! We spent our whole summer--the best time of year--sweaty and dirty working on the van. We spent all of our money on the van. We put in our notice to leave our apartment. My dreams were coming true!

Then my aunt and uncle in Steamboat told us how short the mountain was on staff for this year. It had always been Jared's dream to work on a ski mountain. Steamboat is the number 3 ski mountain in the USA. It's an awesome town. The best place in the world...in the summer. I don't enjoy skiing. I don't really care if I ever see another snowy winter. But my aunt and uncle also needed help in their business. And it was Jared's dream, so we said what the heck, we're leaving our jobs anyway, why not  go to Steamboat before we van it. So here we are :)

If you want to check out Jared's thoughts on things, here is an article he wrote about #vanlife for Omaha Magazine.

2018. Here we are: a new year. My goal this year is to write. I'm afraid I'm losing my writing practice as a ramp up my German practice. The only thing I've written lately has been with my poetry kids. And that's me writing poetry, so it really, really hasn't been good writing. With the internet as my witness, my goal is to write every day. Even if it's only for five minutes.

I know I need to write more on what the last year has taught me, but I'm not sure I'm in a place to do so yet. 2017 was exhausting in good and bad ways. For today, I'm going to highlight the goods in regards to my last year's resolution: run 3 50ks and in at least one national park. I ran 3 50ks: Stillwater, OK, Devil's Lake, WI, and Steamboat Springs, CO. And ran in Route, Rocky, Black Hills, Willamette, and Umpqua National Forests. And I hit five (Indian Cave, Ponca, Mahoney, Platte River,  and Niobrara) Nebraska State Parks. And Yadi Man got to visit three new states and THE MOUNTAINS. He loved it and is a natural little mountain goat.

Mahoney State Park

Fort Calhoun, Nebraska

Carol Joy Holling Camp, Ashland, Nebraska

Neale Woods, Omaha, Nebraska

Downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota

Bluff Creek Trail, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Palo Duro Canyon, Canyon, Texas

Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge, Oklahoma

Garmin Marathon Kansas City, Missouri

Niobrara State Park, Nebraska

Black Hills National Forest, South Dakota

Horse Thief Lake, South Dakota

Devil's Lake, Wisconsin

Indian Cave State Park, Nebraska

Platte River State Park, Nebraska

North Table Mountain, Colorado

Genesee Park, Colorado

Windy Mountain, Colorado

Hmmm...a trail I forgot near Steamboat Springs, CO 

Continental Divide 50K Steamboat Springs, CO

Willamette National Forest, Oregon

Umpqua National Forest, Oregon

Humbug State Park, Oregon

Portland, Oregon

Fort Lauderdale Beach, Florida

Ponca State Park, Nebraska

When I look at all of these pictures of the things I got to do, places to go, friends I visited, miles flown/driven/ran, I feel like 2017 was maybe not so much a bad/hard/tiring year I've chalked it up in my mind to have been, but a transition year setting me up for where I want to go/see/what I want to do next. Today I am incredibly thankful to my body that is willing and able to do the things I love most, to having a stable job that allowed me to explore, and to everyone who's on this journey with me. And to Yads. Always that dude.