Don't Fear The Reaper

Eschatology \es-kə-ˈtä-lə-jē\  noun:
A part of theology, physics, philosophy, and futurology concerned with what are believed to be the final events of history, the ultimate destiny of humanity — commonly referred to as the "end of the world."

Alright.

So according to the Mesoamerican long count calendar and New Age beliefs about galactic alignment, 2012 is up for the Year-Most-Likely-To-Explode Award. A lot of these beliefs can't pin point an exact day, they just allude to our current general solar year. However, the Mayan Calendar highlights tomorrow, December 21st, 2012 as the end-all be-all apocalyptic grand finale.


If it ends or if it doesn't end,
I'm musically prepared.

I've made my Grooveshark playlist:

R.E.M. - It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
U2 - Until The End Of The World
Blue Oyster Cult - Don't Fear The Reaper
Europe - The Final Countdown
Elvis Costello - Waiting For The End Of The World
Tam Impala - Apocalypse Dreams
Richard Barone - Don't Open 'Til Doomsday
The Cure - End Of The World
Muse - Apocalypse Please
Smashing Pumpkins - Doomsday Clock
Alkaline Trio - Armageddon
The Strokes - The End Has No End
Nelly Furtado - End Of The World
Julie London - Fly Me To The Moon
Country Joe And The Fish - I Feel Like I'm Fixin To Die
Nancy Sinatra - End Of The World
Southern Culture On The Skids - Make Mayan A Hawaiian

Just in case the world does suddenly come to a screeching halt tomorrow, at least I can say I ended it doing my favorite holiday activities:

Crafting

Drinking Christmas Juice

Baking cookies with my baby girl:

 And then watching her play in the snow:

And Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without our annual gingerbread house construction:

So in case the world does decide to shit the bed tomorrow, at least I'll die happy with my family and a glass of alcoholic goodness in my hand.

Cheers!

Mountains and Ghosties and Cookies... Oh My! (Estes Park, CO)

I sat on my couch a few days ago, drinking my coffee, and reading some of my old posts about traveling. It made me miss the days when I just picked up whenever I wanted and took off. Which I did. A lot. I can't necessarily pack a small bag and take a 10 hour road trip anymore, but who's to say I can't pack up my daughter, some spare diapers, toys, sippies, and snacks and take some day trips?

I was feeling antsy pantsy for an adventure, just on a smaller scale and within an hour or so from home. So... Estes Park was the place to be! The drive up the mountains, with all it's twists and turns along the Big Thompson River, is one of the most beautiful drives I've ever taken in my life. I say that very confidently. There is absolutely nothing like driving up a mountain.

And of course I made a playlist:

Heartless Bastards - The Mountain

Semisonic - Across The Great Divide

The Butthole Surfers - Pepper

Jane's Addiction - Mountain Song

Ozzy Osbourne - Rocky Mountain Way

Led Zeppelin - Misty Mountain Hop

Yonder Mountain String Band - 40 Miles From Denver

John Denver - Rocky Mountain High

Johnny Cash - Your Wild Colorado

Townes Van Zandt - Colorado Girl

Chevy Chase - Colorado

There is a break in the mountain tops right as you pull into the 7,500 foot high valley of Estes Park and the view coming around the corner is enough to knock you off your feet. 

Our first stop was the Aerial Tramway. This was my view stepping off the bottom platform into our little red hanging bucket which was about to send me up Prospect Mountain by these 2 tiny wires. I was a bit nervous and just wanted to be at the top already.

And once you got up there!... The View!!!

The View!!

THE VIEW!!!

You could even see glimpses of the Olympus Dam

If you bribed them with peanuts, the chipmunks would walk up to you and take their lunch right from your hand!

This made Kalynn wild with excitement, "Chip and Dale, Mommy!! I see 'em!!"

Coming back down the mountain was just as shady as going up, honestly. An experience to remember for sure.

This is Kalynn's "Red Rum" finger...

And speaking of red rum... Of course we had to make a stop at the historic Stanley Hotel.

The Stanley was built in 1909 by Freelan Oscar Stanley (of Stanley Steamers) and catered to all the rich and famous Hollywood personalities from way back when. But it's mainly best known for the inspiration behind the fictional Overlook Hotel in Steven King's novel The Shining. The Stanley Hotel is supposedly one of Colorado's most haunted places and has been on multiple television shows promoting it's unexplainable Ballroom phenomenas. I've never taken any of the "ghost tours" nor have I stayed there overnight, but it's on my Colorado Bucket List and I plan on it someday soon!

This is the view of the waterfall and restaurant out the back window.

Of course I had to sneak upstairs and get a picture of room 217!

I packed a picnic lunch for us right before we left the house, so we sat on the front lawns, ate our sandwiches and enjoyed a panoramic view of the Rocky Mountains. Our yogurt was mysteriously missing from the cooler, so I'm assuming one of the ghosties must be a fan of Yoplait.

When I was a kid visiting The Stanley, I remember walking off the grounds and down the dirt road a ways to see the fictional pet cemetery which was made after Steven King's novel Pet Cemetery became a movie. I was please to see that it was still there after all these years! It was a bit more run down than I remember, and it's not something most people probably know about, so it was kind of cool to sneak around the side, down the "staff only" driveway and go check it out.

After our time at The Stanley, we headed downtown to the local shops and ran into a playground which sat directly on the ledge of the Big Thompson River!

Clearly, you can't go to Estes without stopping at the homemade fudge shop.

Our last stop before heading home was a little picnic table at the end of Elkhorn Ave perfect for eating cookies.

The red rock mountains with the sunset's orange color beaming off of them was the perfect view for our ride home.

Kalynn and I had such a fun day, I think we have many more mini trips to plan in our future!

We Didn't Start The Fire (High Park Fire Update)

Remember this passed weekend when I took this picture from our trip to the local fire house?

Well here we are 2 days later. I took this picture from the corner of Drake Rd and Taft Hill Road right up the street from our house here in Fort Collins.

This is what our sunset looked like from the apartment. I snapped this picture about 7pm last night.

This wildfire is the 2nd biggest fire in Colorado history. I've personally never seen anything like it in my life. The smoke plumes are as far as 30,000 feet in the air and can be seen all the way in North Dakota. It has taken 37,000 acres so far and according to the sheriff's press conference, it's currently 0% contained. Flame heights have been reported at crowning up to 300 ft and are moving at 1-2 miles per hour. This extreme aggressive growth in engulfment has led to multiple evacuations, but hasn't included our side of town. We are, however, experiencing floating ash and a very thick layer of smoke that is sort of hovering above this gorgeous town of mine. Our entire county is on high alert for air quality and some homes last night were evacuated to the Cache Le Poudre Middle School (which was evacuated shortly after due to smoke).

So far, there are 400 ground firefighters, and a small army of air resources trying to calm this guy down. Another fire in New Mexico is stretching our go-to water resources pretty thin . Although we can see a constant stream of helicopters going back and forth, the 2 UH-60 Black Hawk copters ordered in by the Colorado National Guard haven't arrived yet.

CNN is reporting this was started by lightening Saturday morning at 6am and with an additional lighting storm on it's way to the same area this afternoon, things aren't looking up. Because of the extreme dry winter this past year, everything up here is adding more fuel. There is no rain in the forecast any time soon and our high temperatures that have been reaching close to 100 degrees aren't helping. The front range driving winds aren't favorable either.

We appreciate all of your concerns and thoughts and I promise we're all ok! We're getting the hell out of Dodge for the day and heading to the town of Loveland for some sight seeing and clean air breathing!

 I even made a playlist to listen to while we drive! (Of course I did)

The Talking Heads - Burning Down the House

Billy Joel - We Didn't Start The Fire

The Cure - Burn

Midnight Oil - Beds are Burning

Johnny Cash - Ring of Fire

The Clash - London's Burning

James Taylor - Fire and Rain

The Ohio Players - Fire

David Bowie - Slow Burn

Madonna - Burning Up

Harry Nilsson - Jump into the Fire

Ben Harper - Burn One Down

Bruce Springsteen - I'm on Fire

Elvis - Burning Love 

Nine Inch Nails - Burn

John Parr - St. Elmo's Fire

Sinead O'Connor - Fire on Babylon

The Jesus and Mary Chain - Catch Fire

Jerry Lee Lewis - Great Balls of Fire

Bauhaus - Burning From the Inside

(When life hands you lemons, make a playlist!!)

Cinco De Mayo AKA: SUPER MOON NIGHT!

First thing's first: I've got a couple of guest posts lined up for the week we move, but have room for a few more so if you're interested let me know fairly soon!

So today is the fifth of vodka. I mean May, sorry, the fifth of May.

I'm listening to my Cinco de Mayo playlist on Grooveshark, (Viva Las Vegas is Spanish, correct?) packing, eating a turkey sandwich, and debating if I have enough energy to make these little individual seven layer dip cups I saw on Pinterest.

But mainly I'm just trying to bide my time until tonight's "Super Moon." Tonight's moon is 14% bigger and 30% brighter than any other full moon of the year because it's 31,000 miles closer than normal. Anyone that knows me (either personally, through my blog, Facebook, Instagram or whatever) knows about my romance with the Moon. Tonight we're going to rendezvous. It's expected the Moon will even outshine the meteor shower from the remnants of Halley's Comet. As it should. Nobody puts Baby in the corner. 

So look up around 8:30 Pacific Time, because the Moon is making quite a bit of effort to put on a good show for us, the least we can do is show it some appreciation. Everybody needs a little recognition and love every now and again. It's what makes the universe go 'round. 

#PhotoADayMay #bird

“Outlaws, like lovers, poets, and tubercular composers who cough blood onto piano keys, do their finest work in the slippery rays of the moon.” 

― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

Poop Just Got Real

Holy balls you guys.

This last 2 days has shot my stress level higher than a Marley ancestor.

I had convinced myself that nothing was going to go right. That I was going to be found hiding in the corner of my bathroom, curled up into a ball, rocking back and forth with "Thanks for your interest in our apartment complex but unfortunately..." letters piled high, credit card statements plugging up the toilet, and an empty pan of brownies trying to calm me down.

I
was
freaking
out.

Those of you who have moved out of state know what I'm talking about here. It's a nightmare. You can't see the housing you're applying for in person, you can't interview with potential employers unless they're willing to Skype or go strictly off your resume, and the process of leaving everything you've come to know as your life is enough all by itself to drive you into a hole.

But here's the flip side:

We've been accepted. We have a place. It's a really super nice apartment. With a detached garage. And a fire place. And Kalynn has a separate bathroom that she can destroy all by her tiny half-ass-potty-trained self. And Guacamole has a patio all to herself that she can be lazy all over. And my life saving Dad and Stepmother (who live one town over) checked it out to rid me from fear of giant cockroaches and/or college students.  Yes. We've been accepted.

I've also booked the moving truck and our plane tickets. We have 11 days left. 11 days to sell, donate, trash and pack. Add daily toddler activities, a sick hive covered puppy dog, switching all utilities over to the new place, cleaning like crazy to get our deposit back, changing our addresses with everybody, and a giant pile of dishes to all of that. 11 days. It's a finely tuned balancing act.

I'm not hitting the ground running today like I had promised myself I would last night after a few glasses of wine. I'm hitting the ground sort of dragging my feet over to the couch and slamming cups of coffee. But as soon as I'm done? Yes. The running.

My last Grooveshark playlist:

Thursday - Asobi Seksu 

Thursday - Morphine

Thursday The 12th - Charlie Hunter 

Thursday's Child - Eartha Kitt 

Thursday's Child - David Bowie

(Thursday) Here's Why I Did Not Go To Work Today - Harry Nilsson 

Sweet Thursday –Matt Costa 

Jersey Thursday – Donovan

Suite Thursday - Duke Ellington

And my #PhotoADayMay #SomethingYouWoreToday

(The Police pajamas and my white sweater slipper boots)

Hope everyone gets everything done today they need to! Myself included!

Free OC Fun: The Fullerton Arboretum and Botanical Gardens

Have any of you Orange County and/or L.A. locals taken your kids to the Fullerton Arboretum? Because you should. It's 26 free acres of gorgeous backdrop to let your kids feed some ducks, run around like crazy people, scream, and melt down. Plus you can get some really pretty pictures out of it. There are tons of garden paths, orange trees, animals, and cultivated woodlands to explore.
We took Kalynn last summer and I highly recommend it for something to do that costs little to no money except maybe gas and a picnic lunch.

P.S. For you Kansas folk, there is the Overland Park Arboretum just as gorgeous and free too!

Grooveshark Playlist for Wednesday:

Wednesday – Tori Amos
Ash Wednesday – Elvis Perkins
Wednesday Week – The Undertones
Wednesday Week - Elvis Costello
The Jet Set – Wednesday Girl
We the People - Half  Of  Wednesday
Wednesday – Drive-By Truckers
The Crash Kings – It’s only wednesday
Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting – Charles Mingus
John Frusciante – Wednesday’s Song
(April) Spring, Summer, And Wednesdays - Status Quo
Wednesday Morning, 3AM – Simon and Garfunkel
Wednesday Night Waltz - Chet Atkins

And the #PhotoADayMay #Skyline