Relaxations and Realizations

Can anyone really be blamed for being disillusioned with the different diary sites? First I lost everything my FOD had in the first attack, and it will most likely never be recovered. I did have all the entries backed up, but my notes are lost. Then the weird stuff going on here at Bloop. And while I was in Colorado, FOD was hacked into again, and for now everything since July has been lost on most, if not all, diaries. This includes the painstaking reconstruction process that I had begun to fix my FOD. So the question has been now what? The diaries are an outlet for me, even though I don’t use them nearly as much as I used to. I need to though, it’s good for me.

Anyway, on to better things…Colorado…Breckenridge was amazing! It was everything that I had been told it would be and then some. On the 5th we started with the Purdue football home opener, which was a resounding 51-0 ass whipping of Syracuse. It was easily one of the hottest football games I have ever been to, and I‘m sure the heat was getting to a lot of people around us. We stayed hydrated the best we could, and aside from a slight headache I was fine. We left straight to the airport, and our first flight was very rough. But we got through it okay and got in to Denver late at night, where Travis’s parents picked us up. It was a bit over an hour to go to Breckenridge, with a stop for some snacks on the way. So we got in very late and pretty much crashed for the night.

Monday we did some of the things that would be closed for the season. One was the Human Maze, which was a lot of fun even though it left me quite breathless after I was done. I usually don’t run too much, especially not that hard – and with the altitude it made it a bit worse. So I was huffing and puffing pretty hard for a while but it was still loads of fun. We took a chair lift up onto one of the peaks where we had a spectacular view of the entire town. I will post some pics later when I get them in, either from Travis’s mom’s digital camera or when I get my film developed. The view was simply breathtaking, it had been so long since I had been in the mountains that I had forgotten how beautiful they are.

In typical me fashion I wanted to do everything and anything all in one day, lol. So I was slightly upset that we didn’t do more that first day, but I also know that a lot of it was also getting used to being there. Just me not knowing how to relax still, I guess. But after that I was pretty good the rest of the trip about finding a balance between activities and down time.

Let’s see….I know we took advantage of the hot tub that came with the condo, using it four times or so. I know it really helped me with my recent back and leg pain, and it was wonderful on my feet after all the walking we did. It also helped Travis a lot with his knee and foot pain as well. That ranks up there in terms of relaxing things we did. Am trying to remember the order for everything we did, but it’s all one big happy blur….

See, where we were was technically South Park!! It was so cool to go out to Hoosier Pass and see the signs for “South Park!” Okay so that’s my dorky moment for this entry….Anyway, we went to Rocky Mountain National Park one day, where we got even more amazing mountain views. It was a ways of a drive but it was certainly well worth it. About halfway through we stopped at the visitor’s center and from there we took a trail up the side of a mountain that took us to an altitude of 12,000 feet. I thought I wouldn’t make it on the way up, but I did and I felt so proud of myself afterward! We did stop quite a few times, lol. That was probably the most rewarding part of the visit to the park.

We got to go into Denver to see the Rockies play the Giants; we had gotten the tickets six months earlier in the hopes that Barry Bonds would be close to homerun #700 by then. And we ended up with a legitimate shot as he was at 698 going into the game we went to. Unfortunately, he didn’t go deep and there went our hopes and dreams of easy money, lol. But the game was still fun, my Giants won, and I love Coors Field.

We did a lot more sightseeing on the rest of our trip…the tour into the gold mine and the panning for gold (too bad we didn’t find enough to quit our jobs!)…there was the canal walk in Breckenridge…the history museum…outlet shopping in nearby Silverthorne…shopping in the touristy shops in Breckenridge….the independent film festival, where we caught four absolutely wonderful comedy shorts….and just genuinely enjoyed not being at work, which as we all know was the best thing 🙂

The weather could not have been much more perfect, as we only had one day of rain on the whole trip, and that was a day we were mostly just relaxing anyway.

We of course enjoyed our sports, as we went to a sports bar to watch the Colts play the Patriots and then the next night watched the delayed ‘Canes home opener in their last minute win against the ‘Noles.

Then there was the food! I can’t remember the last time I ate so much good food in a row! I can’t even pick a favorite…there was the pulled pork and cornbread at Kenosha Steakhouse, the best burger I have ever had at Breckenridge Brewery (and some damn good microbrew called Avalanche), a fabulous Mexican place called Mi Casa, seafood at Bubba Gump’s, a huge breakfast in Claimjumpers, the massive amount of pasta at Old Chicago (and 110 beer choices) – I could name most meals here! I swear even the Subway we had one night was better up there, haha. And they love to fill your plate, so of course you’re always full. You almost don’t need more than two meals, even though I preferred to have something small in the morning to hold me till lunch so my blood sugar doesn’t plummet.

Saturday we spent back in Denver; we went to stay with relatives of Travis because we had to leave the condo in the morning to have it ready for the people taking it the following week. And even though we attempted to pack both a mountain and the hot tub into our luggage, we failed 🙁 In Denver, we did a lot of driving around but it seemed like we hit a snag with anything we did. For instance, the Denver mint is only open to select non-profit groups, and as a private citizen you can only go in with congressional sponsorship. WTF? That would have been so cool! Free samples – or swim in the coin bins – anyone?….Or the things we chose to do were closed (or closing too soon), too expensive, and we certainly didn’t want to pay a fortune to park.

Ironically I had brochures at home about things to do in Denver, but neither one of us had anticipated we’d have so much time to explore the city. The last thing we had decided on was going to Six Flags (bonus we had buy one get one free admission) but by then we didn’t know about lines and closing times. So we ended up just going to the mall and other nearby shops. All was not wasted though as I had two very productive things….one, I found my wedding shoes for super cheap! And second, I have been hunting for “the dress” on eBay, and was lucky to have found it in one Denver shop! I tried on so many that I think I was annoying Travis a bit, or at least tiring him out, but massive props and gratitude to him for putting up with me 🙂 I didn’t get it then because I didn’t want Travis to know which one it was, because I wanted to keep looking afterwardjust in case I found one even nicer, and plus it was more than I’ve seen on eBay. But at least I know now that the size I had considered is the one I need and it fits perfectly! A few others were gorgeous, but this one is perfect!!!! It’s informal because of the Vegas plan, but I don’t want anything with a huge train and what not; this is exactly what I want – very classy and pretty, just sexy enough, and with few frills. And although it is rare for me to say this, but I look damn good in it ;p

Saturday was very important because Friday night we had a really bitter argument, stemming from a conversation a few days earlier: since I have noticed that Travis has been even more stressed over all the planning than I have, I brought up the idea of delaying things a bit to give us more time, to which he had responded with (paraphrasing here) “I know it’s what I need to do so we need to go ahead with it”. And I misunderstood that to mean that there was a sense of force behind that. And I brought it up and that’s what caused the argument. And it led to more discussion about things from the past. I know both of us struggle with faith questions at times, and that we both still have to fight our individual dark times that we were so wrapped up in when we first met. But I also know that we have done so much for one another in just a little over two years (five months of friendship before we started dating)…

I know there are many things that I need to let go of in order to make a certain degree of peace within myself, and it is something I try to do every day. Some things are just too fresh, even the ones that happened years before Travis came along; some are a decade old, some are even older. I think of some of the darkest times, and when the fears of ever going back to that come back up I know it’s not easy to remain focused on the present. It’s like I am overwhelmed by these fears, overwhelmed by thoughts that the happiness I have found in him will be taken away, and I have to learn not to let them paralyze me now. I realize how easily things could be another way and it throws me into a blinding panic. It’s not easy, that’s for sure, but I know I let go a bit more every day. I’m certainly not giving up, even though on some days it may seem easier to do so. It’s the two path theory Travis mentioned to me, the easy one, where we just continue on dark, empty lives, or the hard one, where we may fight and bicker, but find the light and the happiness and calm from one another in the end. And that is the path that I am choosing to take. Because once again I have come too damn far for anything else to happen at this point. I owe it to both of us to fight as hard as I need to. And I don’t know how I can possibly be thankful enough to God for bringing us both as far as we have come now.