In Which Kailey Goes Running with the Beasts

The past few weeks, I’ve picked up running again. My house is one block away from an entrance into the Cherry Creek State Park. Unless it’s dusk and I run a risk of coming face to teeth with a pack of coyotes, I usually end up within the confines of the reservoir, soaking up the beauty of the Colorado landscape whilst I pant and wheeze my merry way along. I’m not a sprinter, but I like to think that I can go forever, albeit at the risk of compulsive diarrhea on the other side.  On Thursday morning, I woke up at five in the morning and thought I would take an hour run and start my day off on good footing. That was the intent, but I am gifted at getting lost. I always have been. The first time I use any large public restroom I can guarantee that I will get lost on the way out. The simple act of walking into a restroom stall and using a sink is disorienting for me. Living by the Cherry Creek State Park now for three and a half years, I have explored many of it’s crevices and know the ins and the outs of the places I love. But the Cherry Creek State Park is a good deal larger than I originally realized as I set out with worthy intent on Thursday morning. And animal paths never lead back to gravel. As I circled back home on Thursday morning, I made my way from the beach to the Wetlands preserve. My eyes alighted on the third deer I’d seen that morning. I moved carefully, taking in the closeness of the timid creature. Distracted by the deer, I turned onto a path, worn down by the pitter-patter of little paws. My flipper feet thumped along the path following my short little legs until there was simply no more path to thump along. Looking around, I crashed through the grass in search of a path, increasingly aware of the nocturnal beasts who knew the sun hadn’t finished rising.  The more I looked, the more lost I got. But I was determined to find it, so I beat through the summer vegetation as thistles and grass rubbed along my bare legs. I am very reactive to grass. And weeds. But somehow they didn’t deter me. I could see light through the cracks in the trees, and I knew that if I followed it, I would hop down the bank of the reservoir and save myself from the wild animals and environmental allergies. But I allowed stubborn Kailey to steer my body. About half an hour later, after scaling rotting beaver-hewn logs down a creek bed and fully implanting all the necessary ingredients for hives into my legs, I found the path. It was not more than a quarter mile away from where I had been frantically searching while the sun slowly rose in the sky. I don’t know what possessed me to run through the weeds and grass for half an hour while I saw my salvation at my back, but I do know this. If you’re looking for me, you can find me rubbing antihistamines into my bump ridden legs and my arms, laden with mosquito bites, while I laugh at my foolhardy nature, and then again charge confidently into some unknown territory, hopefully without dragging another poor soul down with me.

The beginning of my run.

The tide is a little low believe it or not. This is actually a buoy.

The first pair of deer I saw along the beach. 

The distracting deer

There are beavers in Cherry Creek State Park. Who would have known?

(While on this run, I thought how kind it was of the Lord to withhold our immediate futures from us. How many times would I have taken a pass and chosen some other, more comfortable experience? But my life is richer because of my ignorance, and for this I am thankful.)

Life With Six People, Three Dogs, and a Cousin

I originally thought that a week of living would be just enough material for a blog post. I was wrong. Completely underestimating the plenitude of stimulating incidents in a house full of six people and three dogs, I couldn’t decide which story to share with the world out of the many that occurred during the hundred sixty-eight hours that comprise a week. I’m trying something new. I’ve decided to share all of them. I’m going to post pictures of all of the stories that I want to share, then I will add the stories that accompany said pictures as captions. If you like the photo, you can read the caption. Or you can skip the caption if the opposite is true. This is sort of like a choose your own adventure blog post. We’ll see if it works. (Note: If you click on a picture, blogger will show all of the pictures in slideshow format.)

1.     I accidentally saw a small-scale fireworks show. I live in the little section of Englewood between Centennial and Greenwood Village right next to the Cherry Creek State Park. It’s a nice neighborhood and a far cry from the cockroach infested dwelling we started out in as a small family in 1993. Last Sunday I decided to take a run in the dark of the evening alone in our beautiful, generally safe neighborhood. Around mile three, as I was jogging down Belleview towards Dayton, I heard gunshots. First one gunshot. Then another. Then rapid-fire shooting, at which point I thought to myself, “Well…this is happening.” And then, “Don’t you think that’s enough already?” My mother taught me to be calm and collected in the face of extreme danger or life-threatening situations. She used to say to us, “I will let you know when to panic, but right now is not the time to panic.” She had plenty of opportunity to say that in our household, given the fact that my brother and I were gifted at endangering our lives from the moment we were surgically extracted from her womb. My mother also hammered the importance of being aware of one’s surroundings into me from an early age as I was a dreamy child, prone to checking out of the real world in exchange for a more exciting world where I was the heroine and nothing, not even weapons of mass destruction, could touch me. But I have been (mostly) cured from this tendency and naturally when I had heard fifteen or so gunshots, I turned my head to the right and saw an explosion rock the sky. So I ran towards it. Now aware of the fact that the gunshots were in fact fireworks, I booked it a mile to where some branch of the Greenwood Village bureaucracy was hosting a fireworks show in the park by the Dam Road. I saw half of the show from a distance, and half on the lawn of the park, running an extra mile home and turning my light four-mile run into a five-mile run.

2.     My cousin was in town. My younger cousin Wesley visits about once a year. He is sweet, and we love him. Usually he stays for several weeks, but this year his dad (my mother’s brother) only sent him out for a week, which turned out to be a painfully short time, in which we managed to go swing-dancing, play pool, see Wolverine in the theatres, miss his flight home, and make memories. We’re already scheming about the next time he comes.

I wish this picture was more in focus, but I'm still getting the hang of my new camera.

3.     We went swing dancing!!! (The picture is blurry, but it gives the general gist of the amount of fun that we incurred from this new experience.)

4.     Morgan and I played piggyback.  In our house we frolic. A lot. Actually quite a lot, it’s been an unusual day if no one gets picked up, twirled around, poked, prodded, punched, shaken, or generally messed with. This is a fact of life in our house.  We are affectionate, and affectionately playful, which means you may be side-tackled on your way to the bathroom. You just never know. Tuesday night however, we actually noticed the occasionally unfortunate result of our frolicking. The consequence of frolicking that only presents itself on infrequent occasions, meriting a rub of the bottom or a scratch of the head to even out the resulting bumps and bruises. On Tuesday night, I asked Morgan a question she immediately knew the answer to. “Hey, do you know what time it is?” She did, and without explicitly answering my question she squatted down for me to climb atop her back. This action was out of the usual. Although Morgan is over a head taller than me and at least ten pounds heavier, I always carry her around on piggyback. I was built to haul things, for long distances, without strain on my short, stocky little body. My parents call the women in my family pack-mules, affectionately. You would think this would mean that I wouldn’t be procreating anytime soon, but we’re like a band mutant pack-mules with extra-special fertility powers, giving birth to equally effective pack-mules with thick legs and dense muscles. I responded to Morgan’s unwonted actions explaining that she always fell, and that since I never fell on the floor, I should be the one to run around the house with her on my back. “But I’m stronger now!” She said. My own mother echoed the sentiment so I submissively climbed atop her back and rode there about ten feet. At which point her feet slipped out from under her. Normally Morgan falls forward during this game, providing the little pack-mule with a nice, Morgan shaped cushion. This time she didn’t, and came tumbling down on top of me after catching plenty of air on the way down. I imagine this is how a jockey feels after an unpleasant run with a wild horse as he rolls out from underneath the braying beast. I am not saying Morgan is beast-like, nor am I saying that she weighs more than half a ton. I am simply saying it hurt. Immensely. But as I rolled from my back onto my pack-mule belly, gasping for air as my solarplexis came back to life, I couldn’t help from laughing. And laughing. And laughing. Because these are the war stories I will tell my grandchildren a hundred times when I’m senile and too stubborn to accept assisted living care.

5.     Morgan and I went shopping. That’s unexciting. But our trip to Lush wasn’t. Lush is a store that claims their products are au natural while displaying neon bath bombs and facial scrubs full of food coloring made from crushed beetles and who knows what other chemicals. But they’re beautiful nonetheless. And the store is awfully alluring. We walked in thinking that we would just look at the all the pretty colors, sniff the pretty smells, and leave. But that’s not what happened. We entered the store and found an ice tray full of metals bowls with facial wash the texture of humus topped with food products like almonds, blueberries, and chocolate. Soon a young saleswoman clad in a funky black and white dress reminiscent of the fifties assaulted us, her black hair pulled loosely into a renegade ponytail, and her lips smothered in red lipstick. She berated us with peppy questions about our skin type while we stood trapped beside the humus-wash, the little woman between us and the door.  She seemed like exactly the kind of person you wanted as a friend to go out on the town with. She did not seem like the type of person you wanted to sell you humus-wash for your face. We thought we lost her after she finished telling us to try at least three different humus washes, but as we moved on to another section with shelves of color filled eyedroppers and make-up applicators, she appeared out of nowhere explaining that you could use this make-up on any part of your body for anything you wanted. Lip-color, eye-color, any location.  You name it.  She moved a sliding mirror in front of us, jumping around and commanding us to try them out, experiment, because they never come off! I saw my face in the mirror and mentioned the possibility that maybe I had gotten a sunburn while out running earlier. “You think?” the woman asked, ”I’ve got just the thing.” And she scurried away returning a few seconds later and spraying something on my face she claimed contained aloe vera. Except it didn’t so much spray, as it torpedoed directly at my forehead, leaving the sticky fluid to drip into my eyes. Apologizing profusely, the little woman scampered off to grab a bottle with a less defective sprayer on it, and squirted the magic elixir at my face five or so times. Each time I jumped at the cold shock of the substance harshly misting my face. Needless to say, as soon as the little woman left us for a moment, Morgan and I made a bee line out of the store, losing it as we made our way to the bathrooms to cleanse my face of the magic elixir, and meeting the female members of her ex-boyfriend’s family along the way. And now I know. This is why Lush is safer to enjoy from a distance.

This picture was not taken by me, but is the sort of humus-wash set-up that Morgan and I saw at Lush.

So...It's been a while.

Sometimes I put things on this blog. Sometimes they’re nice things. Sometimes people like reading them, but the frequency with which I write these things is erratic. I think I’ll practice being scheduled and predictable about this whole blog thing. I elect Sunday evenings to be the night that I post something, anything, on my blog. After all, in two months or so I will be out of the country, and because I am blessed enough to have people that love me securely planted in my life, I will have to share my escapades with them via pictures and stories and other such fluff. So here goes, practice post number one, complete with a supplement of unrelated pictures. They're my favorite pictures I've taken so far with my brand new Nikon D3200 which my beautiful parents got me for my twentieth birthday (Thanks, guys!!!)

My mother has one of the most beautiful faces.

This dog is with us for a while longer. We're enjoying the time we get to spend with the old girl.

So. I focused this picture entirely with my zoom lens. I hadn't yet discovered how to focus the proper way. Let me just tell you, it was not easy.

We're washing our fruits and veggies in wash basins since we're cooking out on the porch all summer.

My dad got my mom a camera one Tuesday. She used to be an avid amateaur photographer pre-children/family. We changed that for her. But now we're grown.

My brother's beagle runt is too photogenic.

A family friend, teaching me something. 

My dog is too cute. Even if he is old and freaks out about leaving a gnawed cob of corn unburied in the yard and never will be fully house-trained, I still love him.

My brother looks this good after demolition. In fact, I think this is the roughest he will allow himself to look. 

Merry Christmas from the Kaes Family!

This is a summary of what the Kaes family did this year. It's a brief summary and only hits the highlights. I made it. We call it our Christmas card.

Create your own free photo slideshow

Song of Today

Theme Song for October 11

Awkward Chambers

I call elevators awkward chambers. It seems that anything that you say outside of an elevator automatically becomes awkward once in the elevator amongst other passengers. Likewise, anything that you might say that would be awkward outside of an elevator becomes exponentially more awkward once you’re inside the elevator. I had one of the latter moments yesterday morning after musicology class.

The lovely young horn player I’m assigned to accompany this year and I were sitting outside of the elevator on the bench. (In a comfortable silence) He spoke up. “So…how’s piano stuff going?” To which I replied, “Good.” And then remembered something. It’s actually not going that well because I was recently injured in a four-car rear-ending. So I proceeded to explain what had happened. I saw it as a business move. If I told him I was injured, three weeks from now (hypothetically speaking) when he wants me to have the whole of a Hindemith sonata learned to accompany him at a jury, which he won’t- he’s a very reasonable fellow, but supposing he did, then I could say to him, “Well, I hope you remember that I was injured and that is why I only have the first movement learned and so I hope that is enough and I’m dearly sorry for any inconvenience.” I was explaining the particulars of the incident to him in my foresight, just as the elevator approached level 2 and opened for us to board. As we were stepping onto the awkward chamber, I was saying, “So, yeah, the police wanted to give me the ticket.” At which point all heads turned toward us. Four strangers can become highly attentive in less than eight square feet of cage-like space. He replied “That doesn’t make sense. If you’re the third car in a four car accident, why should you get a ticket?” The strangers visibly relaxed. To which I answered, “Yeah, but I didn’t get the ticket after all. My mom showed up and she’s half-black.” The poor horn player didn’t know what to say so he said the age-old, “That’s random.” And one of the passengers giggled nervously.

 I should explain the giggling passenger here. He is not simply some stranger as I put it before. He is a freshman jazzer. What kind of instrumentalist he is, I can’t remember, but I do know he has taken a particular shine to me. He uses my name more often than is normal for conversation and very enthusiastically makes observations about small things to me non-stop when we are in the same elevator together. In fact, I met this chortling jazzer on the elevator and happen to do most of my getting to know him on the same said elevator.

            I had dropped a bomb that I couldn’t possibly diffuse in the time it takes to get from floor 3 to floor 5. What I meant when I said, “My mom showed up and she’s half-black,” was that my mom advocated for me in front of the police in a persistent manner characteristic of her upbringing. .  If you’ve ever seen a cougar mother bravely protecting her cubs, you know how intimidating it can be.  Imagine that sort of feline advocacy mixed with the matronly protective instinct of a bear and you’ve got what we refer to as “Rambo Mama.” Usually that line at the end of my car accident story (yes, I have used it previously) gets a knowing nod or a chuckle or both, but not from my horn player. I’m convinced it’s the affect of the awkward chamber.  We stepped off on floor five and parted ways without another word.