life-changing

The death of these two men and this man changed me. Or perhaps I should say the lives of these men, before they died, changed me. The realization that life is short, and the many things they did with theirs', is difficult to deal with.

We're thinking about Josh a lot tonight, but whenever I can't think of him, I can't help but remember the other two as well. I'm sad and happy at the same time.

Freedom

I'm reading this fantastic book called "The Reason for God" by Timothy Keller and have about 100 quotes I want to share...

My favorite section so far is on freedom, and is essentially an apologetic defense against the idea that Christianity limits personal growth, potential, and freedom to choose because of its constraints on a person's beliefs and daily practices. I like the section for its relevance independent of the apologetic argument though - the ideas he expresses are generally applicable without any type of religious attachment.

Essentially, we usually think of freedom as the absence of any type of confinement or constraint. He goes on to argue that confinement and constraint are actually what leads us to liberation - i.e. freedom. He gives an example of a person practicing piano for years and years, which places limitations (since the person gives up the freedom to do other things with the time spent practicing), but in doing so, unleashes an ability to be musically creative and accomplished - a freedom that very few can achieve without first placing on themselves the confinement of practicing. "You've deliberately lost your freedom to engage in some things in order to release yourself to a richer kind of freedom to accomplish other things."

He then gives discusses the way many people in our society give up their time and energy for things that don't bring freedom - in this case, still placing constraints on themselves, but not for the purposes of achieving a greater freedom. "In our society, many people have worked extremely hard to pursue careers that pay well rather than fit their talents and interests. Such careers are straitjackets that in the long run stifle and dehumanize us."

"Disciplines and constraints, then, liberate us only when they fit with the reality of our nature and capacities. A fish, because it absorbs oxygen from water rather than air, is only free if it is restricted and limited to water. If we put it out on the grass, its freedom to move and even live is not enhanced, but destroyed. The fish dies if we do not honor the reality of its nature."

"In many areas of life, freedom is not so much the absence of restrictions as finding the right ones, the liberating restrictions."

He then goes on to discuss the way relationships with others restrict us in a way that is actually freeing, just like the piano practicing...

Anyhow, really good book. I don't have the mental energy right now to do more than publish massive quotes like those above, but hopefully someone else finds it interesting too. :-)

Chips are the key to judging Ryan's honesty

So Ryan and I decided to try out this website called Sparkpeople.com. We both swore up and down that we would write down everything we ate, not leave stuff out or exagerate our way to smaller portions.....today I found out for sure that Ryan is being honest on his because 900 out of his 1400 calories consumed today were from chips. Now that's honesty.

The Good Life

I've always had this lust for doing a lot of things....you could call it a thirst for experience I suppose, except for I tend to do so much that I don't "experience" as much as I just check it off a list. That's the problem with bucket lists and to-do lists - the lists themselves become the goal rather than the things in them.

Anyhow, I'm kind of tired of things to do every weeknight, plans every weekend, project after project, and rushing to do too many things.

I think I'm moving into a phase of life where I want things to be more simple. I want to do less, but do with more intention and higher quality.

Right now I'm thinking the good life isn't so much about experiencing every lovely thing this world has to offer.

The good life is this:


And this:


And maybe a little vino on the side. :-)

That's enough for me tonight, this weekend, next month, and hopefully for many, many years to follow.

Big Decisions

Choices:

1) Go running
2) Go to Golden Spoon

Complexity:

If I go running now, Golden Spoon will be closed by the time I'm done working out. If I eat Golden Spoon now, I won't feel like going running.

Rationalizing:

Oh yeah, and it's getting cold so pretty soon Golden Spoon won't be as enjoyable. I'll want warm things pretty soon...

But running, I can do even when it's cold...

I'm kind of sore from kickboxing yesterday....

My throat is kind of dry and running might make it worse. Golden Spoon, on the other hand, would soothe it....

Decision:

Small cake batter cone please

Tomato Memories...or Crying Over Pasta Sauce

Tomatoes were on a great sale at Ralphs this week so I picked up about six pounds and set out to make a huge batch of homemade tomato sauce. I've only made it once before, but it turned out great the last time and I didn't have any leftovers so I figured I'd make a bunch and freeze it.

As I started making it, I suddenly remembered one of the reasons I didn't have any leftovers last time. About the time the sauce had been simmering for a couple of hours, Ryan's best friend Josh called out-of-the-blue. He and his then-fiance were in Orange County for some reason (they lived in Lake Elsinore) and asked if they could stop by. I threw some pasta on the stove and by the time they got there, the sauce was just finishing and they sat down and had dinner with us. If I remember right, Josh was on some low-carb thing but he ate a little of my pasta anyways just so he could try my homemade sauce! He was that kind of a guy. They ended up staying for several hours and we had a great time. It was one of those fun spontaneous evenings that you never forget.

When this memory hit me tonight, I all of a sudden felt downhearted and my mood turned into something quite melancholy...the reason being that I know this time, we won't have Josh & Lisa as spontaneous visitors. I wrote a blog post 2 years ago about the first batch of tomato sauce called "If you make it they will come;" which is rather cheesy I know, but when I found it and read the title, the realization that Josh has been gone for 3 weeks and isn't coming back made me feel very sad.

Ryan's best friend Josh passed away from sudden heart failure on September 15, just a few weeks shy of his 30th birthday and a couple months shy of his first wedding anniversary. It's been an emotionally trying few weeks and Ryan and I - especially Ryan - have found ourselves exhausted. I didn't realize that grief could be exhausting until this experience.

Josh will always live on in our hearts at the type of person who would eat my home-made pasta even if he hadn't eaten carbs for weeks, because he was more interested in the childish excitement I had over making it from scratch than he was in his diet. Josh was one of the most trustworthy men I've met and was, by far, the most loyal person I know. He has been a constant in Ryan's life for two decades and loved people in a way that not very many adults are capable of.

McGee Creek Trail - Mammoth

We took our first backpacking trip together the weekend after Labor Day

We packed about 80 pounds of gear and drove with friends 32 miles north of Bishop, CA to the McGee Creek Trailhead, which is just west of Lake Crawley, early Friday morning.

Lake McGee was about 9 miles and 2500 feet above the trailhead. Our friend Mark had great maps and was a really good guide....

Based on what others had said, we thought that there would be some difficult switchbacks where we would make the bulk of our climb, and then we would come to an open meadow, and then we would be at the lake. It felt more like horrible switchbacks, then and open meadow, then more horrible switchbacks (which was more like climbing stairs than hiking), then another meadow (are we almost there?), then more switchbacks...by the third meadow I thought I was going to die if we came upon more switchbacks. Lake McGee is just under those glaciers you can see in the back of the picture.

We got to Lake McGee just in time to set up tents, cook dinner, then go to bed. We were exhausted. We were less sore the next morning than we thought we would be, though, and so we went hiking (with no gear) above the lake to some waterfalls. It was a gorgeous sunny day, until all of a sudden some huge black clouds came rolling over the peak. We headed back to camp. Ryan & Mark got ahead of us and Melanie and I missed camp and ended up about a mile beyond our camp, probably because it had started pouring buckets of rain and we were running and not paying good enough attention. And because our husbands abandoned us knowing that we are directionally impaired. Then it started hailing; eventually we realized our error and headed back toward camp. Mark met us halfway because he was looking for us, Ryan had headed back up to the waterfalls to try and track us down.

Lake McGee. I was expecting open ground but there was granite and slate boulders ALL over the place. It looked really cool, luckily we found just enough rock-free space to set up our little tents.

We couldn't have a fire because we were above 10,000 feet, so Saturday afternoon after hiking we packed up and headed 2 miles and 1,000 feet back to a lake with no name as far as we can tell (pictured above). We set up camp there and had a great bonfire that night.

We barely finished lunch when it started raining again so we ate in our tent. It only rained for another 30 minutes, then it was gorgeous again.

Our camp

Ryan and Mark fishing (there didn't end up being any fish caught)

Hiking back down on Sunday - the hike down went tons faster than the hike up :-)

On the way back

I LOVED my new Osprey backpack from REI - couldn't have carried that much gear without it. It was so comfortable. Also our new MSR Whisperlite stove worked great.