Amber L. Carter's Blog, page 87

Sometimes when I'm going up a hill, I picture my pal Karah yelling "Pump it! PUMP IT!" and then I laugh so hard I have to stop. So there's also that.

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So, I've been starting to get a little pissed about the whole biking thing. I promised myself that when I moved up here for the summer that I'd start riding my bike again (I also made the mistake of telling myself that I'd do it every day. Nope. Not gonna). And I was excited about it, especially when I would think back to the bike riding days of yore - like when I was a kid, tooling around my neighborhood with my bike gang friends, or when I lived up here last time and regularly smoked my 11-year-old brother on the hills (I was a 21-year-old beating an 11-year-old on a bike. At the time it seemed really awesome. Now it just sounds really mean...but whatever, he was fast).

I already knew I was out of shape. Okay, body? I got it. My days went from chasing 3-year-olds around all day to sitting at a computer for 10 hours straight, and I didn't crank up the cardio to make up for it. But this shit is ridiculous. It should not be this fucking hard to bike 10 measly miles*. There are two things that have been contributing to both my pain and frustration: A., it's nearly impossible to find any road or trail in this forest that does not contain at least two mega hills, and B. the mountain bike makes everything seem twice as hard (I used the roadie the first two weeks, and then, wanting something that was easier to handle on the gravel and trails, I switched to the mountain bike) - flat stretches, hills, etc (and yes, I know how to shift gears. It's not helping).

When I run, I love hills. I can do hill sprints all day, because I love the way it makes my quads feel, I love the idea of just pushing harder and harder to the top, and I love that crashing feeling when you finally make it and start to speed down to the bottom. But on the bike, it's just different. My legs are so wimpy on that thing that it seriously angers me. The good thing about that is that it's righteous anger, the kind that's going to make me keep going instead of stop. I'm gonna conquer that fucking bike and my quad muscles if it's the last thing I do.

But! So after being super irritated after my ride yesterday, this morning I tried to decide if I wanted to get back on the bike again today or take a break and go running instead. As I got ready to shower, I glanced in the mirror, and there it was...the moment that changed everything. After only two weeks of biking, my ass looks aaaaa-mazing. I'm totally for serious - that part of my body has never really been a sore spot for me (thaaaat would be my stomach), but due to genetics, I know that I have a propensity for developing a flat butt as I get older. And I don't want it to be flat. I want it to be firm, rounded, shapely, awesome. And for the first time ever, I kind of just stood there and I stared at it in the mirror for about five minutes. It's not even remotely flat anymore. It now has this curve to it that I've never seen before, even when I was doing daily squats and lunges and stunts back in my cheerleading days.

So whatever, bike. We're gonna become friends, whether you like it or not. I'm gonna ride you almost every day, and you're gonna start to like it. And my legs are gonna start to like it (but not too much...I don't want to develop those huge muscular thunder thighs that you see on girl swimmers or college volleyball players), and then I'm gonna start to like it, and then we're all gonna hang out together, all the time, and people are gonna be like, "Hey look, there goes that girl Amber on her bike again! Wow...her ass looks amazing."

Cause it does.

Like, really a lot.


*And no, my dear biking friends, I do not want your advice or helpful tips on this. I know that it brings some of you great joy to tell your more-inexperienced fellow cyclists how it should be done, and while I know it usually comes from a good place, unsolicited advice is #2 on my list of things that piss me off. I'm using this post merely as a forum to express my frustration. If I want tips, I'll ask for them from you, and if you ignore this and say something resembling unsolicited advice in the comment section, I'll yell at you in front of everyone.

Sometimes when I'm going up a hill, I picture my pal Karah yelling "Pump it! PUMP IT!" and then I laugh so hard I have to stop. So there's also that.

[image error]
So, I've been starting to get a little pissed about the whole biking thing. I promised myself that when I moved up here for the summer that I'd start riding my bike again (I also made the mistake of telling myself that I'd do it every day. Nope. Not gonna). And I was excited about it, especially when I would think back to the bike riding days of yore - like when I was a kid, tooling around my neighborhood with my bike gang friends, or when I lived up here last time and regularly smoked my 11-year-old brother on the hills (I was a 21-year-old beating an 11-year-old on a bike. At the time it seemed really awesome. Now it just sounds really mean...but whatever, he was fast).

I already knew I was out of shape. Okay, body? I got it. My days went from chasing 3-year-olds around all day to sitting at a computer for 10 hours straight, and I didn't crank up the cardio to make up for it. But this shit is ridiculous. It should not be this fucking hard to bike 10 measly miles*. There are two things that have been contributing to both my pain and frustration: A., it's nearly impossible to find any road or trail in this forest that does not contain at least two mega hills, and B. the mountain bike makes everything seem twice as hard (I used the roadie the first two weeks, and then, wanting something that was easier to handle on the gravel and trails, I switched to the mountain bike) - flat stretches, hills, etc (and yes, I know how to shift gears. It's not helping).

When I run, I love hills. I can do hill sprints all day, because I love the way it makes my quads feel, I love the idea of just pushing harder and harder to the top, and I love that crashing feeling when you finally make it and start to speed down to the bottom. But on the bike, it's just different. My legs are so wimpy on that thing that it seriously angers me. The good thing about that is that it's righteous anger, the kind that's going to make me keep going instead of stop. I'm gonna conquer that fucking bike and my quad muscles if it's the last thing I do.

But! So after being super irritated after my ride yesterday, this morning I tried to decide if I wanted to get back on the bike again today or take a break and go running instead. As I got ready to shower, I glanced in the mirror, and there it was...the moment that changed everything. After only two weeks of biking, my ass looks aaaaa-mazing. I'm totally for serious - that part of my body has never really been a sore spot for me (thaaaat would be my stomach), but due to genetics, I know that I have a propensity for developing a flat butt as I get older. And I don't want it to be flat. I want it to be firm, rounded, shapely, awesome. And for the first time ever, I kind of just stood there and I stared at it in the mirror for about five minutes. It's not even remotely flat anymore. It now has this curve to it that I've never seen before, even when I was doing daily squats and lunges and stunts back in my cheerleading days.

So whatever, bike. We're gonna become friends, whether you like it or not. I'm gonna ride you almost every day, and you're gonna start to like it. And my legs are gonna start to like it (but not too much...I don't want to develop those huge muscular thunder thighs that you see on girl swimmers or college volleyball players), and then I'm gonna start to like it, and then we're all gonna hang out together, all the time, and people are gonna be like, "Hey look, there goes that girl Amber on her bike again! Wow...her ass looks amazing."

Cause it does.

Like, really a lot.


*And no, my dear biking friends, I do not want your advice or helpful tips on this. I know that it brings some of you great joy to tell your more-inexperienced fellow cyclists how it should be done, and while I know it usually comes from a good place, unsolicited advice is #2 on my list of things that piss me off. I'm using this post merely as a forum to express my frustration. If I want tips, I'll ask for them from you, and if you ignore this and say something resembling unsolicited advice in the comment section, I'll yell at you in front of everyone.

Coffee and whales. And the words just flow.

For about a year now, I've been getting more and more into meditation and making it a regular practice. And yes, it hasn't gone unnoticed that everything I have previously scoffed at - cycling, meditation, social media - has now become a happy part of my life (even though it still makes me inwardly cringe to use the words "social media" in any type of reference). Sometimes I worry that this means I've become lame. And then I realize how happy I've been lately, and I tell that part of my brain to just shut the hell up about it.

So anyway. I've been meditating. A lot. Like exercise, there's a glaring difference in how I feel when I do it and when I don't. When I don't, I feel impatient, quick to anger, overly snarky, and oddly, really bored and unfocused. When I do, I feel centered, focused, opened up, hopeful, and...happy. Really, really happy. Not that fake, sugar-coated happy that people try to affect when they're trying not to think about or show how unhappy they really are (which I recognize easily, since I've done it a lot myself)...but that perfect, peaceful, jazz-hands-on-the-inside happy.

This is some hard shit, though, meditating. I started practicing it way back in the spring of last year, and then would drop it and pick it back up again about every other week. Then, late this winter, I decided to really try to make it a regular practice. I thought it was going really well because I would sit there, get quiet for a little while, and then suddenly I would either remember something important or get this great idea and I'd be up like a lightening-bolt, inspired and focused and back at work.

Now, though, I'm learning that that's the very habit I'm trying to overcome by meditating. It's my subconscious trying to prevent me from sinking deeper from the surface worries, thoughts, and ideas I've got running around in my brain, so that I don't risk the chance of coming across something that might make me uncomfortable or alter my finely-tuned and long-held perceptions (thus making a lot of work for my inner mind to rearrange and reinforce new habits, thoughts, and ideas).

So now I'm a lot like Dumbledore and his Pensieve....when those initial thoughts and ideas come up, I imagine myself drawing them out of my brain and onto a notebook for future reference until they're all collected, and then I concentrate on sinking down further. Sometimes, though, I don't know what's harder...suffering through that prodding gateway, or knowing that it - the subconcious, the ego, whatever you want to call it - is right in that, if I continue, I am going to come across something that's going to make me uncomfortable. Something that will force me to examine and investigate those things called feelings and try to figure out a way to rearrange them and myself now that light has been shed.

And has been uncomfortable, but it's also been pretty life-changing, when it happens. One thing I've learned to do is, when you're done with that part and your mind starts to get quiet, something that helps focus you is (as Jack Canfield calls it) "trying to tune into what your higher self is trying to tell you." And yes, the "higher self" thing is a little touchy-feely to me, but the idea of it I really like. I think we all have this vision or memory of who we are or who we can be when we're at our ultimate best (for me, it was the summer of when I was 21 and living and working at Riverside, right before the time of Hayward/Holiday Chick), and I like holding that up as an example of who I want to strive to be, every single day. And when I do that - when I try to "tune" in - it draws my attention to either the things that are holding me back from that or the things that could propel me closer to it. Sometimes, it's both.

You know those patterns that make you unhappy, and you try and try to figure out why you do what you do over and over when you already know it's bad for you? I feel like that with money, and have for a long time. The best way to describe it is that I don't feel like I'm in control of my money...I feel like, most of the time, it controls me, or that there's never enough, or that when I finally get enough, I end up losing it either through bad choices or bad luck. Then, during meditation this weekend, I was sinking down when I suddenly had a memory come up: I was in the 4th grade, sitting in the living room, and my dad was going over the phone bill and yelling at me. It was the time of Alyssa Milano's hotline, and I was a sucker for all things Alyssa Milano (she had dark hair like me and wore it in a french braid and she was 13, a real teenager...what more could I have possibly asked for in a hero!). Henceforth, I had run up a total of about $40 in hotline charges (which would be, like, $100 today). As punishment, my dad told me to hand over my birthday savings. It had been a banner birthday that year, and I had a pickle jar stuffed full of dollar bills. My stomach fell and then flipped with regret and disappointment as I watched myself hand the pickle jar to my dad. All that money, gone, and I would never see it again, all because I had been dumb enough to call that stupid hotline.

And I realized, during that meditational memory, that that was the first time I felt like money - what I had and what I lost - wasn't within my control. I also realized that, since then, there's been a glaring pattern of the exact same thoughts and actions. Whenever I make money, I fully expect that something is going to happen to take it all away, that I won't be able to hold on to it or choose what is done with it, so I either spend it as fast as I can or I inadvertently make choices that force me to part with it. But now that I know where that pattern comes from, I'm more equipped to change it.

Pretty radical stuff, huh?

But the thing I wanted to write about is this: For months now, when I try to picture my higher self and what that would really look like, the same things come back to me...coffee and whales. It's the weirdest thing, and I don't really fully understand what it means yet. But when I see those visions of myself, it always has something to do with coffee farms and whales. I've been interested in sustainable development and Fair Trade as it relates to coffee farming for a really long time, but I didn't even give a crap about whales until about a year ago. I know the two aren't related in the sense that they come together - I'm not being called to teach whales how to coffee farm or anything like that - but there's something about the two that my mind keeps trying to tell me. My heart sings when I think about whales (I don't know what it is. It's really, really weird, especially since, like I said, I could've cared less about them a year ago...but now it's like, if I want to feel happy or peaceful or in wonder and I need a quick fix, I think about whales and suddenly I'm like a 7 year old girl, plastering posters of horses and kittens all over her bedroom walls), and learning, talking, and thinking about Fair Trade coffee farms gets me really excited for some reason. Not as excited as the thought of Garrett Hedlund seducing me in the world of TRON, but it's up there.

So I guess this means I'm becoming a hippie, you guys.

Oh! And the other thing? I started to do this thing where I do a short meditation/visualization before I write every day, and honestly? It's like magic. I'm totally serious: The words just flow, and when I look back on them the next day with fresh eyes, they're good words. It's incredible and ridiculous and it kind of scares me a little, but I'm just gonna go with it.

Hopefully I'm not just actually going crazy, being up here in the woods. Let's all cross our fingers over that one.

This is so me today. Oh, and yesterday, too...

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The thinking person's guide to relief org donations.

Last night my beloved Minneapolis and my former neighborhood of North was hit hard by a tornado. Today people are mobilized to help in any way they can, and I thought this might be a good time to share some of the information that I've gained over the last year concerning relief organizations and efforts.

First, the Red Cross - whether local, national, or international - is an incredible organization that does it all, and is often the first on the ground. However, as they are the most prominent and automatic-go-to when people want to contribute to disaster relief, they tend to shadow other organizations who are just as worthy but not as prominently known.

The Salvation Army is second on my list for organizations I would trumpet (get it? I said trumpet when talking about the Salvation Army. If you don't know much about them then you won't get that joke) when it comes to disaster relief. They typically have an army of passionate, enthusiastic, and helpful volunteers who will be there, day and night, to help. They also tend to fill the needs that others miss - handing out meals at all hours, providing children with books and notebooks and toys to give them a sense of comfort in upheaval, etc. They are excellent, and are often overlooked.

Habitat For Humanity: Okay. The misinformation out there is that Habitat For Humanity will help people rebuild their homes after natural disasters. This is not true. Habitat does not build houses for free, nor will they donate crews to just help you rebuild your house. They do have crews of volunteers that will help with clean-up, etc, but this is largely out of the volunteers own volition and/or mobilization of a local, engaged chapters. Habitat For Humanity will only build houses that the homeowner has signed a mortgage for (albeit an amazingly reasonable mortgage). It goes against their charter to "give" houses or rebuilding labor/material for free.

The local chapters of Habitat For Humanity are worthy organizations, and will definitely be trying to help people get back on their feet and they will be there long after other organizations have moved onto other projects. However, if you'd like to contribute to them, please send your money directly to the local chapter of the community affected. If you send the money to Habitat For Humanity International, that local chapter will not see those funds (in fact, each local chapter is required to give a portion of their income to Corporate, but cannot receive funds back from Corporate). These stipulations are in their charter, and regardless of how much scrutiny they got and credibility Habitat For Humanity lost during Katrina, they have no interest in changing this policy (background information: When Katrina happened, thousands of people donated money to Habitat For Humanity International, thinking that it was the most efficient and centralized place to donate funds to ensure that homes would be rebuilt. HFH In'tl did nothing to dissuade people from doing this, and it only came out after that, due to the stipulations in their charter, they can't give funds to local chapters, ...so basically New Orleans saw none of that money. Hence why the rebuild has been so slow, and why Brad Pitt started his own - very excellent - home rebuild program. The CEO told the Disaster Corps this lovely "here's where the money went" story during training, framing it as a "woe is us, all these people donated all this money to us because they didn't know any better and we couldn't give it to the local chapters!" - charming, right? So give that money to the local chapters - they'll funnel towards disaster relief training and efforts, home rebuilds or new homes for eligible families, and training crews of volunteers in a wide variety of skills.

Also, please consider donating to your local shelters - both for people and animals. These are often overlooked in favor of relief organizations, and they do so much good to help save and shelter humans and animals that have lost their homes. Local food shelves are also incredible places that will be feeling a burden after local disasters, and rarely see generous donations unless it's during an organized food drive.

If anyone else knows of other organizations that play a integral role in relief and rebuild after natural disasters, please send them up in the comments!

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EDIT:

Also, if you're interested in donating manpower and elbow grease, please call organizations to see if they need help first. Often, and especially during the first few days after a natural disaster, they're overwhelmed with volunteers that they cannot effectively or safely manage. I know it makes you sad that you can't help, but if they tell you to stay home, the best way to help them is to stay home.

Other fun ideas gathered on the internets today:

1) If your yard has an overwhelming amount of tree debris that you have no idea how you're going to clean up...post that shit up on Craigslist as kindling and firewood, free to whomever can come and pick it up from your yard. I'm totally serious about this - Memorial weekend is coming up, which means that tons of people are going to want firewood for their campfires, and you're saving them money on bundles of firewood while also saving you time and clean-up headache. It will also ensure that that wood doesn't just end up in a landfill somewhere.

2) I hope your home didn't sustain damage, but if it did and you need to renovate, the Green Institute's The ReUse Center is a fantastic resource both for utilizing your old doors, tiles, house structures, etc, and for finding a fantastic deal on renovation materials. Door handles, tiles, countertops, trim...that place is a wonderland for the sharp-eyed renovator, project-builder, and prop master.

3) Groucho Sports Supply has sent out a challenge to fellow small business owners to match us in a $250 donation to the TC Red Cross. Individuals and large businesses are welcome to jump in, too. Stuff like this is just one of the many reasons why I'm so proud to be a part of Groucho.

A 5K is 3.2 miles of misery.

Last night was super fun: My parents took my brother and I to this place in Cable called the River Creek Eatery, which is fantastic. This is the kind of place that I could only dream about when I used to live here. The place itself looks amazing, it's got great beer (New Glarus Moon Man, you are my new favorite) and the pizza was astounding. Also? The joint was bustling with attractive men. There was some type of bike event happening - I should know these things, now that I run a cycling apparel company, but when you're stuck in the woods for three weeks straight... - and I even saw a guy wearing an ARTCRANK t-shirt that the volunteers in MSP received for helping out (mine got ruined when I tried to light a match and the lit head of the match flew off. You're all lucky I'm alive today). I was going to walk up to him and talk to him about it, but he was eating and I felt like that would be weird and I was already getting enough looks for wearing my "Legalize Gay" t-shirt (which I'm wearing every single time I go into Cable and Hayward. Fuck those fools who don't like it).

After dinner the fam and I went back home to have a bonfire and watch the season finale of SNL. Swear to God, my mom was more excited about SNL than Dan and I were, which was pretty adorable, I have to say. I also found out last night that she really likes Duffy and Adele. How cool is that? My mom's cool. Probably cooler than your mom, I bet.

This morning my dreams came true and my mom made breakfast for all of us (ask Katy, Melissa, Ang, or Erica - my mom's breakfasts are kind of legendary), and then we planned to go into Cable to do the 5K.

I was kind of excited about this because it was for a good cause, and I felt like there might be a lot of people there. I'm starting to crave social interaction, you guys. And by that I mean, social interaction outside of my family. I called Dave on the phone today about some Groucho stuff, and I tried to prolong the conversation waaaay longer than necessary ("So...what are you doing next weekend?") just because it felt so good to talk to someone who wasn't related to me. And the fact that River Creek was super packed with a bunch of attractive men made me think that maybe Cable had changed...maybe there were actually other people my age now. Maybe it will be easier to find peers here now that I'm 32 instead of 21.

Nope.
The 5K? NOT FUN. And I was WALKING. I was happy to spend that time with my parents, but when your parents are smoking you at speed-walking...that's kind of embarrassing. And my dad would not stop racing me...even when I would just get even with him in pace, he'd speed a little bit up so I looked like the slow loser of the pack.

So finally it was over. To reward myself for doing a 5K, I decided to go on an 22-mile bike ride with Dan (he opted out of the 5K because it would interfere with his video game time). I had high hopes for this bike ride. Dreams of cresting the (many) hills in victory, coasting down the subsequent slopes while the wind rushed through my helmet...yeah, so there's this hill that will now be known as Megadeath Mountain. And it broke me. I made it all the way to the top, but was pretty sure I was going to die when I finally did. So instead we did a 7 mile bike ride and called it good.

Tomorrow my parents are leaving on a trip to Lake Geneva until Thursday, which means that Dan and I will be hanging out by ourselves. Which is weird - he's 21 and I'm 32, and it still kind of feels like we're 15 and get to pretend to be adults now that our parents are gone. We'll probably drink some beer. Watch some late-night TV. Maybe invite some friends over for a rager. Y'know. Cool stuff like that.

Holiday Chick is now on Smashwords!!

And to celebrate, I'm giving all of you, dear readers, a special discount.

Go to Smashwords and enter in the coupon code PB25U for some buckage off. This special coupon is only valid for one week - ending on May 5, 2011 - and then after that it goes back to the ball-busting price of $2.99.

So go get your eBook, read it, and then tell everyone you know about it so they'll get it, read it, and tell everyone they know about it, too.

This is what business manuals usually call a "strategy." At An Amber-Colored Life, this is what we call "do something so people will talk all the time about how great you are."

It's just what I live my life by.

Magical Summer. Mine. Not yours, since I won't be around for much of it to make it magical for you. Sorry.

So I expected that when I moved up here, that I'd be blogging a lot more. It's become this weird contradiction, though: I don't do anything except work out, write, and work...but I also don't have any time because all I do is work out, write, and work. But I kind of miss blogging on here all the time, so I'm gonna try to do it more.

Not for you, though. I'm doing it for me.

So I guess we'll just talk about my amazing thoughts and feelings and stuff.

I had this day or two of panic about a week ago. My expectation of how much time I'd have to myself and how much time I'd spend with my family was, in reality, reversed. I love my family, but...I think we'd all agree that we gain much more from each other when we spend quality time vs. quantity. And it's hard, y'alls. I am definitely not operating at my highest self when I'm around my parents. I know it's not a phenomenon - a lot of people feel this - I always feel like I automatically revert to a bratty 13 year old whenever in the presence of my parents. And it was those little things that just built up in the course of a day: I hadn't cleaned up the cabin before heading to the house to work, and my parents went in there without telling me (it really, really bothers me when people enter my space when I'm not expecting it). My dad got the mail and asked me about a letter I had gotten. My mom kept talking about the cell phone bill, which was stressing me out because I hadn't yet gotten a check from a client that was months overdue.

And it's hard, to do away with that emotional memory of how trapped I felt the last time I lived here. Like there were no real choices open to me, and I had to just swallow everything I didn't like about the place and the people because I didn't have anywhere else to go (or any means to get there). This time it's completely different, because I want to be here, and I have a purpose for being here, and I'm in a completely different place then where I was eleven years ago (thank god). And I leave any time I want, and I have limitless options available to me. But that emotional memory, man...it's like a rubber band. It keeps wanting to snap back to where it used to be, to the shape in which it was originally made.

So I made myself a promise the other night. It sounds really cheesy, so I'm worried that sharing it with you will crack this ultra-cool and sophisticated image you all have of me, but...I promised myself that this was going to be the most magical summer I've ever had. I've had a few magical summers before, but they were mostly dependent on the fact that I fell in love or had a boyfriend or some such shit like that. This one is just for me. Because that's just kind of the thing, you know? If you tell yourself that you're going to have a magical summer, and really look for things and people and events that do and can and will make it magical, then it becomes...magical.

So there's this effort that I've been making. A lot of what this summer is about is shedding baggage. The book is about processing all this emotional stuff and creating something that might be of worth to someone else. The working out and walking and just getting out there is about shedding the physical baggage and those small, subconscious things I do to keep myself in that comfortable place where I feel like I don't deserve to have good things (and therefore I don't have to work hard and ask for and expect good things from myself and for others). And the rest of it is about slowing down, enjoying and reveling in what I have in the present*, and just freaking sitting on the deck and staring at the water and the sun and the pine trees and feeling lucky that I get to do this.

Also, the writing? So good lately. There is nothing compared to the feeling of waking up in the morning after a day of great writing. The only word I can think to use that comes at all close to describing it is fulfillment. The book has hit a couple of roadblocks, and I stepped away from it for a day or two, took a walk in the woods, and came up with two new stories that I'll be leisurely fleshing out when I need a break from the book.

Also, we need to find a new way to talk about this book, because I used to call Holiday Chick The Book when I was working on it, so I can't really call this book The Book because that's confusing. And I'm not going to call it by its title yet, because that always feels to me like I'm naming and talking about a baby that I haven't even given birth to yet, and when people do that kind of stuff it creeps me out. So we gotta figure it out. The Book Dos? World Domination, Step 2? The Second Coming of Amber's Book of Feelings?




*Yes, I started reading Eckhart Tolle and I can't say that I'm enjoying it, but I can say that it does speak to me and my life at the moment.

While walking in the woods today, I got a new idea for a YA paranormal novel.

Which is weird, because I bet that's never happened to anyone else before.

Did you guys know that I'm super good at building fires now?

Because I totally am.