And an elephant—for protection.

Yesterday I tramped up and down 14th Street poking through furniture shops until I found the perfect vanity stool. I probably looked a little pathetic carrying it all the way to St. Thomas circle, but I'm so happy I found it. I bought a few records (one is a folk album produced by Arthur Garfunkel—we'll see how that turns out) and a few pieces of costume jewelry before Sarah and Chelsie picked me up and we went properly shopping.

Once we made it home and unloaded our treasures, Chelsie made us absolutely-last-minute hair appointments and we had to run right back out the door again. We ran into the salon, breathless, and the woman behind the desk was very impressed that we made it just 2 minutes before they locked the front door.

It was gray and cold and damp, but it was a perfect weekend in every way.

Early this morning I felt compelled to ask Hilary Funk for life advice. Honestly the woman should be my life coach.

She's given me an exercise: Go a few days letting things that happen, just happen.

Well there's an idea.

Don't assign value to them or create a grand narrative.

But I assign a value to everything.

Notice how we don't have to have input all the time, that sometimes laying off makes our lives more peaceful and (yes) gratifying. Not everything has more meaning than we want it to.

Let's just introduce the elephant in the room, shall we?

I think entirely too much about everything. Everything. Absolutely, positively, everything.

Shocking, I know.

In every quiet moment—walking home, riding the train, curled up in bed, washing dishes—I am reflecting on something, assigning value to every turn of phrase, weighing possible outcomes. Everything has a meaning. Right? Wrong.

I need to learn how to relax.

And that, dear readers, is how I spent an hour this morning reflecting on how I should stop being so pensive all the time.

Astra inclinant, non necessitant.

Tonight I told my spin instructor that I'd taken Dayquil a few hours earlier and asked if that might present a problem in the class. He said it shouldn't cause any trouble but that I should listen to my body—which I took to mean that I should slow down or take off gear if I felt off.

It sounded like quality advice, but sadly I don't listen to my body... because my body is lazy. It tells me to slow down or take off gear when I know I can handle more, harder, faster. I focus on the music, the motivation from the instructor, and I don't listen to my legs telling me they're tired. If I listened to them, I'd stay home and eat M&Ms in a bubble bath, watching Donwton Abbey.

So as usual, I find this almost perfectly relates to how I live my life.

It's as though I walk around constantly seeking metaphors—bear with me.

If I failed to note it sooner (and I doubt I have), I move through each day with a series of detailed lists and absolutely cannot sleep in for the life of me. I want a personal laminator and Kate Spade day planner for my birthday. I don't listen to that part of my brain that tells me to coast through life. That part of my brain wants to move to St. Thomas and live on tequila. That part of my brain wants to leave my office every day after lunch and walk through museums.

I remind myself frequently that what I'm doing is worth the reward. In the gym, it's fitness; in work, it's success; in relationships, it's joy.

All that to say: laziness isn't bliss. So don't touch that gear.

Am Probably Too Fond of Throwing Things Away

Every time I move, I use it as an excuse to re-organize my whole life. I edit my vast collection of products, give books to friends, and toss out half-burned candles and bits of colored paper I thought I'd use in art projects. I don't move unhandled projects or paperwork. I donate clothes.

I strive to live with less. Something I heard frequently as I prepared to hike the Appalachian Trail was that people are often astonished by how little they actually need.

I rolled my antique champagne glasses in yesterday's Post and gently stacked my favorite novels into a box. I dismantled my curtain rods and made a list of utility companies to call. It took three car trips to carry everything from Alexandria to Eastern Market. Anything more than that I would have set on fire.

Lost in the tedium of it all, I forgot to remember that Tabitha and Sarah, two girls who have been my friends since almost the very day I moved to DC, are leaving. My life is going to be quite different now.

My new room mates are fantastic, but I can't escape noticing that most of the girl friends I've made since moving here have since moved away. Perhaps that's just the transient nature of DC—very few people are actually from here, especially those in politics, and many don't stay for more than a few years.

Today I arrived to my office almost an hour earlier than usual, latte from Pound in hand, after a brisk 4 block walk from one door to the other.

There is absolutely nothing about my life right now that I'm not wholly and completely thrilled about.

Friday night my firm had our annual holiday party and everyone took turns saying a few words about the year. Being the horrifyingly awful public speaker that I am, I said something about being fond of every single person in the room. I failed to say that every day I feel like the luckiest girl in the world. I didn't mention that when I moved to DC, I had a limited idea of what sort of job I wanted and never dreamed I would love my work this much.

I'm approaching the new year having accomplished more in the last twelve months than I ever dreamed possible.

Our row house is solid and charming, full of mismatched fixtures and drafty windows. Tune Inn is barely a full block from my front door and some of the bartenders already know I take a gin and soda.

I'm in love.

I'm Laying On a Table, Mike

Two years ago I took a friend by the hand, looked her in the eye and said, "I think you should prepare yourself for the possibility that Justin might not make it."

I felt unspeakably cruel.

I regretted it immediately even though I knew it needed to be said. Treatments had been exhausted and options had run out—he was at home, resting comfortably, and my friend believed he was simply gaining strength so he could return for more chemo. She is a perpetual optimist—naive, as well—and sometimes I ache to be that sort of person.

I'm the cruel one, if that's what that means. I'm the realist. I see everything coming—and I knew the time had come to stop pretending and begin mentally preparing for the worst.

Few know this about me, but my first job after college was editing obituaries. No, it was not the most sunny job I've ever had, but it taught me more about communicating with and relating to people than I learned in four years of college.

But it was because of that job that I discovered, alone at my desk, that a friend of mine had passed away. I clicked on a Word document from a funeral home expecting a brief biography and survivor list for a cherished grandfather—not the swiftly written announcement of death for a beloved 20-something I'd never seen without a smile.

I was laying on top of a picnic table in a red sundress drinking a stella when I last saw him. "What are you doing, Fifield?" "I'm laying on a table, Mike." "Well you look good." When I sat up on my elbows he was walking away so I just shouted that I'd see him later.

Nobody took me by the hand and gave me the news slowly.

I've never been afforded the courtesy of finding out bad news in a controlled sort of way.

But I suppose if you want people to treat you like a delicate little tea cup, you have to act like one.

Somebody that you used to know.

I only have 2 more weeks of commuting back and forth from Alexandria until I can move into our lovely row house in Eastern Market.

I've been commuting this way for just under a year and never really minded so much until now. It seems the universe has decided it will make me feel each one of these remaining days as painfully and frustratingly as possible. The trains will be delayed, the gym bags will feel heavier and heavier, the happy hours will be harder to resist. It will rain when I'm wearing suede pumps.

Example: today I forgot to bring a shirt for the gym. In two weeks, I won't even have to pack a gym bag because I will just go home to change in the first place; but since I haven't moved yet it means I either have to borrow a shirt from my friend or will have to skip spin. And I do not skip spin.

Strangely, most everything that I love in this city is in a 6 block radius of my new house—yes, I have made a collection of favorite places—my bookstore, coffee shop, gym, church, brunch spot, and office are all right here. Marines run through the neighborhood like sweating American Apollos. Bartenders know my name and drink. This is my neighborhood—Del Ray, I am so over you.

This morning I stood on the platform with all the other sleepy hill staffers and Pentagon types, wearing my coke bottle reading glasses, buried in a complex novel. I stopped to put on my pearl studs and adjust my skirt and knew I was being watched by the man standing beside me. We stand beside each other almost every day with a regularity that is almost depressing—our morning routines are so buttoned down. We stand at the same spot because we both get off at L'Enfant and know exactly what car we should enter if we don't want to fight a current of people to make our transfer.

He'll probably wonder where I've gone in a few weeks.

Yes, these are the things that go through my head.

Wintering

I can't remember when I first started trying to find a city, but it was at some point in college. I hated Atlanta, felt out of place in New Orleans, and found nothing attractive about New York—every city was fun to visit, perhaps, but never enough to move. And as much as I love traveling to foreign countries and experiencing local cultures I'd never said "oh, I want to live here" or felt a sort of cosmic tug at my heartstrings.

The first time I came to DC I had a sort of ineffable sensation that I'd just arrived home. Everything fit.

I know, I know, we're all supposed to haaaate DC because it's sooo establishment and beltway and corrupt and blah blah blah—no. I love DC. I walk these streets and I feel alive and part of something bigger than myself. I adore our idiosyncrasies and even our flaws—watching CSPAN in bars, complaining about the metro, rolling our eyes about how hill interns dress inappropriately, brazenly jogging in congressional campaign t-shirts. After years of feeling like I was perpetually trying to change myself to suit my setting and my friends, I finally found them—my happy family of wonks. A whole small town of them.

My liberal college friends are quietly (and some not so quietly) unfriending me on Facebook. Most of my friends are here now. Many of us communicate almost exclusively by cutting each other off mid-sentence as if we're constantly practicing for our debut on Hardball. There is something thrilling about knowing I can have endless conversations about tax reform or congressional races and nobody will be bored to tears or confused. And we drink a lot.

So then I landed in St. Thomas.

I've been to places like this before. It was a sort of mix between Guyana and Puerto Rico but not anything like either. We got out on the tarmac and piled into a doorless jeep with two locals and sped off. I felt it again. It was that same feeling I had when I first came to DC… and it made no sense. Sure, it's paradise, but why would I want to live here? I love my city. I love my life and my friends and my adult milkshakes at Ted's Bulletin and spin classes with gossipy hill staffers. I don't want to get skin cancer or look like leather when I'm 40. I like having wifi and access to 5 Starbucks in a mile radius. I like seasons.

Nevertheless, I can't change that I had that same sort of clairvoyant feeling that I'm going to live there one day. The astonishing bit is that I felt it as we were driving past roadside chickens and rundown buildings—before Virgin Gorda and beachside bars, before snorkeling or taking a ferry to another island and drinking too much—I felt it from the start. I'm only writing this now so I can look back and know I was right.

I'm not one for major plans. My theory is that if I'm constantly aiming to improve my narrative, my life will be amazing. So far, I've been totally right. But if I had to have a plan, I'd say it's to work in DC for another few years and then move to a place where I can work in a bikini.

Because winter.

I'm Surrounded

Making plans to return home for Christmas involves finally tying up loose ends I left in Montgomery years ago.

There is a steamer trunk in Rosemary's attic, a bookshelf of books at Robin & Joe's, and I left my grandmother's writing desk with a friend I've since cut out of my life like a cancer. I thought I had coordinated for someone to pick up the desk and move it after I moved (I don't know how many of you have been suddenly hired to work on-location for political campaigns, but you just sort of throw things in your car and go), but apparently it was left behind.

There was also a mobile of origami goldfish my Nana made for me, an antique terrarium, a purple lamp I'm fond of, a green clock I adore, and a few paintings and mirrors. I'm almost certain those things have been trashed, but really all I want is the desk.

Since my attempt to reach her was unsuccessful, I reached out to a friend and asked if he would inquire about it. He too has cut contact. I asked another friend... she too would prefer not to have to speak to her if it could be avoided.

This is a girl I tried countless times to pull from the ashes. Some people go through life in perpetual need of being rescued.

But this girl is a toxic vortex. The narrative of her life is riddled with self-inflicted bullet holes and countless burned bridges, but she always manages to consider herself a victim.

I've thought long and hard about all the good choices I've made in my life that have put me where I am. I made bad choices, too—and I paid for them in spades.

But the most important choice I made was to stop surrounding myself with bad influences. Where I used to gravitate toward and attempt to fix, I now I step away from those who are complacent, complaining, self-important, life-long victims.

Surround yourself with people who make you want to be better. People who are creative, motivating, joyful, and—most importantly—who hold you accountable when you're being less than you should be.

Everything after that is cake.

The War On Christmas... Tree... Sellers.

I was going to write a blog post about Christmas Trees and this new 15 cent tax tree sellers are now burdened with. I was going to write about it because I have a bit of firsthand experience in the industry and I thought my insights would prove helpful. Then I started crying at my desk.

Like most people, my best childhood memories are related to Christmas-time and the holidays, but my childhood was a little unique.

Unlike most kids, I was the daughter of nursery owners—the kind with plants, not babies—and our house was actually on the same property with the greenhouses, gardens, and tree beds. My childhood was awesome. I was homeschooled so I spent a lot of time outside, helping clear weeds from flats of pansies or rake a never-ending torrent of leaves that fell from the hickory trees.

Every December, my dad would take a big, white work truck and drive up to Tennessee to buy Christmas trees—live ones. That was my parents' deal: they hated the very idea of cutting down a beautiful tree just to decorate a home for a month. They had to be living trees with burlap-covered bulbs of soil at the base. They were more expensive but, my mom argued, they didn't lose needles, they didn't dry out, and they could be planted in a yard after Christmas was over. My grandmother's property is lined with just such trees.

When I was 11, I drove up to Tennessee with my dad. This meant that my mom put my Precious Moments sleeping bag and a few puffy, pink pillows in the truck and filled the passenger side door storage with notebooks and school work. We woke up while it was still dark and my mom filled two Stanley thermoses with the kind of coffee that, after years of cultivating snobbery, I'd never dream of drinking.

I failed to mention this sooner: we were poor.

I don't know if my mother intended for my brothers and I to be as painfully aware of it as we were, because it helped structure my financial ideology, but we certainly never forgot it. I did schoolwork alongside my mom as she sent out invoices and handled the accounting. When I went to college and got my first phone it took me a week to stop answering it "Hickory Grove Nursery, how can I help you?" as I'd done my whole life. In that office I got to hear it all—what customers hadn't paid, who my dad hadn't billed, how much money was in each account. I learned to hear the fear in my mom's voice when things weren't good. It sounded like a slow moving panic attack—the words sort of caught at the back of her throat as if she was always just about to cry.

During the winter months, when people don't really care about how their gardens look, things were hard. Christmas Tree sales mattered—a lot.

Confession: this is making me cry at my desk just writing it.

Anyway, back to the trip.

I was thrilled. My dad and I listened to the radio and blew the horn at anyone who gave us The Universal Truck Horn Blowing Signal that all children gleefully make on car trips. It took forever. Even back then when gas was somewhere around a dollar, my mom had carefully calculated the cost of gas and marked stations on the map (this is the age before GPS and cell phones). We had packed food for the trip, but my dad bought us honey buns.

Sometime around noon we pulled up to a wholesaler and I waited in the truck while my dad handled the sale. The truck began to shake as young men started loading trees into the bed, so I got out to help (the trees were about a foot taller than me, but I was tough).

"Leave that, Lyndsey, get back in the truck" my dad said as I started to pick up my first tree. "This is all we're getting."

I balked at the almost-empty truck bed. I was a kid and I didn't understand a lot of things, but I knew this was bad.

While my mom wore her financial burdens on her face, my dad never seemed scared or upset in the slightest. Back then I thought it was just his way of keeping calm under pressure, but looking back I see it as arrogance—he knew if things got too tough, his parents would bail the business out of trouble; my mother, on the other hand, would have rather eaten glass.

I ate the rest of my honey bun as we pulled the truck out of the driveway. I thought we were heading home until we pulled into another, bigger wholesaler. I was horrified to see workers filling up the rest of the truck bed with cut trees. Not my parents. Not at our nursery. Cut trees were for those over-priced, roadside stands.

The drive home took even longer—and it didn't just feel that way, my dad had to drive more slowly to keep the wind from bruising the trees. We didn't have any insightful conversations—I didn't ask why he bought cut trees. I knew. Live trees were simply too expensive and cut trees were within their budget.

So now I'm reflecting on this new tax.

I know it's not much.

I've written about the tanning tax and other seemingly innocuous taxes and I haven't gotten emotional. But now I'm thinking about small business owners (read: families) stretching their dollars as far as possible, using cheaper supplies and products just to stay afloat. I am thinking of pre-teen girls reading Nancy Drew, bringing home Christmas trees with their dads.

And I'm angry.

When you're happy like a fool, let it take you over.

I'm counting down to our trip to St. Thomas. I really hope the weather in DC is miserable and cold that week so we can send dozens of twitpics of us laying on the beach in the sun and make everyone back home so jealous.

I've been reflecting lately on how I got to this wonderful point in my life and how everything truly happened for a reason.

If I hadn't dated the wrong person, I wouldn't have met a dear friend—if I hadn't made that dear friend, I wouldn't have been able to get started in DC.

If I hadn't gotten into a car wreck I wouldn't have figured out that a car is a huge burden in DC and living without one is a weight off my chest.

I have been blessed daily since I've come here and I can't get over it sometimes. Something in the DC water just makes me thrive. I am healthier than I've been since high school, I am almost totally debt-free, and I have friends I adore. I am a total workaholic but I love everything I'm doing so it hardly feels like working—my firm is incredible and I feel overwhelmingly lucky to work with each and every person there.

And life is about to get even better. I am moving to the Hill in January and I will live with three new lovely girls (confession: I will miss Tabitha and Sarah terribly) in a darling old row house inches from my office and my gym and (most importantly) my coffee shop.

I know this isn't my usual deeply pensive blog post...

I have to admit that I've been putting all of my blogging energy into my (anonymous) fitness blog where I ramble on evangelically about spin classes and my amazing gym (I can seriously never move—it's like my church). Monday we're launching Politicalistas (I'm the managing editor) so that will probably also take a good chunk of my blogging bandwidth.

But this blog will always have my heart.

Posture

Today I rode my bicycle to the metro, locked it up, and took the train to the Hill for church with Chelsie.

Nothing really seemed too out of the ordinary with the day aside from increased policemen and police cars. I don't know why, but I couldn't help but walk slowly. I usually walk quickly and with a purpose, but today I just couldn't.

I got a latte from Pound (it was perfect) and waited for Chelsie. I walked down to Barrack's Row. I went to my office to change shoes for church (I've taken to leaving all my heels at the office and wearing flats on the train) and fix my hair from the bicycle ride. I felt everything. It was palpable. We were all walking around—people with babies and Hill guys running with their dogs, and maybe I was just imagining it, but I felt it in the air and I think everyone else could too. My barista, the Steelers fans waiting outside Pourhouse before it even opened, the bums. We were all in a fog. We weren't quite there.

We all have unique remembrances, but today means something to everyone.

PS: Someone in Dover really, really likes to see if I've updated. I'm flattered.