SoulMoxie

Music For Dogs

I came across this yesterday and was all is this a joke? Because I'm pretty sure no human would willingly subject themselves or their pets to such a thing.

Then I did. Much to my relief my dogs were not only uninterested, but they actually got up off their doggie dozers, looked at me like WTF and walked out of the room. Let's hope my kids feel the same way about Barney.

The YouTube comments are priceless:

"If you think this song is cool. Take a 44 magnum and shoot yourself in the face."  Well, that seems a little drastic.

"geez my dawg didn't give a shit to this.. and this was maybe the most mindraping song ever. Total bs" What is a mindrape anyway?

"great my dog just had a shit fit and ripped the cable tv box out and broke it. thanks freaking song. you owe me a cable box." I owe you a cable box?

"Are you a dog? How would you know they're not happy, on the inside?" Are you a dog? How do you know that they're not all TURN THIS SHIT OFF, on the inside".

"Squeaky deaky it always makes me laugh,
squeaky deaky I'm a phycopath."  Do you mean psychopath?

"HAHA THAT DOG RAPES LITTLE KIDS"  What? 

"You guys dont understand this! its music FOR dogs, not humans."  No, really, we get it.

Have I Told You?

Have I told you JUST how much fun we had on our wedding day?

I Maybe Possibly Have Lost It All Together

It's true. I'm losing my mind. How do I know this? Let me count the ways...

1. I lost my phone last week on my way to Maine. Somewhere between Salt Lake City, and New York City. I think. I was positive I left it on the plane, but now I'm doing that whole "maybe I had it in Times Square?" Or "did I have it at Starbucks?" "Did I give it to someone to hold?" "Maybe that weird chick with the boots who was eyeing me in the bathroom took it?" People - don't go down this road. It is a slippery slope. One that will lead you to call Tmobile 5 times until you get the one customer service representative that will indeed tell you that yes your phone was in NEW YORK CITY even though they shouldn't be divulging that kind of information, but you've cried and pleaded and spent 12 minutes explaining what your phone means to you, all of the numbers and contacts that are nowhere else, and how you're depressed about all of the text messages you're sure to be getting over this holiday weekend that you're going to miss. And when she says "Well surely you've backed it up?" you quickly hang up. Because you haven't. Because you haven't gotten that far in phone 101. Because you suck.

2. Jess's phone decided to shit the bed. Only because I lost my phone. I haven't checked my messages in 48 hours. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. I am just positive that I have 24 messages all from buyer's ready to put offers on my real estate listings but I am not responsive. AHHHHHHH.

3.  Jess and I went for a trail run in Maine yesterday. In a bog without bug repellent. I won't even tell you the places I have bug bites.

4. It's 2:30am and I am wide awake. The 3 hour nap on the plane was not a good idea.

5. I'm moving to Germany and still am completely averse to learning the language. No bueno. See?

Tomorrow we should talk about deep breathing and meditation, no?

Checking Things Off The List

This is us at the top of Mt. Washington. Freezing our asses off. They say that the mountain has 235 days of "crap" weather a year. Crap is an understatement considering how windy, wet, and cold it was. Despite how soggy we were, Jess and I ran down the mountain.  Because we are bad-asses.  

Obsessed With The Idea

I am obsessed with the idea of living in a cutesy, little German village.  Jess will be working on an army base, but I don't feel like that should have any bearing on where we live. As long as it's within 29 km.

I began looking at villages about 1 week ago. And oh my gosh just about had a heart attack when I came across this one which just happens to be 29 km from the army base. Convenient, no?

 

It's 5,000 people. Home of 14 beer parlors. Is connected to 120 km of hiking and biking trails. Has a huge outdoor pool. Is on the Autobahn. Has a train station. And best of all is pronounced something along the lines of Windishishishisheshenback. At least that's how I say it.

 

Oh. And it's only an hour from Prague. Yes. Please.

You're Doing What?

This is exactly the response I have heard REPEATEDLY over the past two weeks when I tell people that Jess and I are picking up and moving our lives to Germany.

"Do you speak German?" No.

"Have you been to Germany?" Not me.

"What will you do?" Don't know.

"Where will you live?" Don't know.

"Are you crazy?" Potentially. But in a very good way.

I knew when I married Jess that my life would be filled with adventure. Most of our dates consisted of driving down unmarked roads until it was impossible to drive the car an inch further, then running by foot to explore the area even more.  Weird? Yes, but something we both enjoyed immensely.  I loved these moments where it felt like it was Jess and I alone in the world. When we never knew exactly what was around the corner, but it didn't matter as long as we were together. This is exactly how I feel about our move to Germany. 

Jess spent 7 years active in the military after college. He lived in Germany (90 km from where we will be living), Korea, and Africa. When I met Jess, He was two years out of law school and was just home from his most recent deployment in Africa. He was working at a law firm, but uncertain if this was the right gig for him. We began to explore different options and decided that a civilian job with the Army would most definitely kick serious ass! It was the spring of 2008 and the real estate market had begun to tank (I own a small real estate brokerage) in Utah. What better time to move abroad and learn about another culture? We must have sent in 30 applications over the next 6 months! Hawaii, Italy, Germany, Africa - if there was a Department of Defense job somewhere cool-sounding that Jess was qualified for - we applied for it. After receiving 0 responses, not even the typical "thanks, but no thanks" letter, we gave up. We sent our last application in November to Grafenwoehr, Germany, and then got on with life.  Jess quit his law firm job and began working at the local VA hospital as a program director in May and despite the down real estate market, my business has been thriving. Life has been good. Which is exactly why we would receive a call out of the blue two weeks ago from Germany saying "Hey, do you still want this job? Because if so, it's yours" and "We want you here, ASAP". Right?  If Jess was still at the law firm, or if we hadn't COMPLETELY moved on from the thought of moving, this call would never have come. Murphy's Law SUCKS and ROCKS simultaneously.

We will be moving to Germany in September. While I don't speak any German, I don't know where we'll be living, I don't know what I'll be doing, I don't even know what to expect, there are a few things that I do know:

1. You only live once (unless you believe in reincarnation) and I believe that you have to seize opportunities when they come your way.

2. While I'm scared to leave my business, friends and everything here in Utah, I believe they will all be here when I return and know they will all be with me in my heart in Germany.

3. I don't think I'll look back from my deathbed and say "I wish we hadn't moved to Germany".

4. You will benefit from a lot more blogging, as I won't have a job.

5. My friends will benefit from all of the sweet hangbags I'm unloading.

6. And finally, I believe that you have to leave your comfort zone to grow as a person. This doesn't neccessarily have to mean a move abroad, but for us, right now, it does. While I'm overwhelmed, nervous, abit panicky, and most other emotions you can think of, I'm most excited for all of the possibilites of the unknown and that I get to experience all of this with the one person I am most fond of in this world, my husband.

Don't You Know That Only Fools Are Satisfied...

Crickets...that's what you've been hearing...

Not for long...

My life is changing...in big ways...    GERMANY will be my new home.....

The Vacation Hangover

Vacation is a sweet, sweet thing. You get to travel around without a care in the world pretending that your perfect little niche will be waiting exactly how you left it when you get home. And then you GET home. And you realize that it was all a lie. That the weeds still grow - in fact they grown triple time in your absence, that the mailman still delivers bills marked "urgent", that the small pile of laundry that you left has now quadrupled into what resembles my 9th grade year float (Hawaii in the form of volcanoes on a big old hay wagon) and it takes everything in me to not buy chicken wire and plaster of Paris and do a mini replica because that sounds less painful than actually washing the soiled clothes that smell very similar to the place where I imagine my bacon comes from.

 

If I die in the next 24 hours, please, for the love of God, put this picture in my obituary. It is the most accurate representation of myself that I have. Underneath will read something along the lines of "Cause of death unknown. It appears that she was suffocated by a toppling mound of laundry unlike anything seen before. We are not ruling out asphyxiation. Chicken wire and plaster of Paris were found by her side. She was naked in the fetal position. Loved by many, understood by few."  Yes, I want full disclosure in my obituary.  I find nothing more annoying than "our sweet Jason went back to our Heavenly Father at the tender age of 28". WHAT?  Sweet Jason - ? Sweet Jason - who suffered from a heroin overdose and stole from every member of his extended family in the last few years?  Sweet Jason - who loved to  ride his motorcycle at high speeds in wet conditions with no helmet? I need details, people. Don't do this to the world. There are so many questions that  will never have answers, that when I read the obituaries I want to walk away with not only what the medical examiner has determined, but  what Aunt Pat thinks really happened. "They say it was a heart attack, but between you and me, he's never been the same since Sheila left him for their son's girlfriend, Lou Lou.  It was a broken heart, if you ask me." Yes Obituaries should read something like an article from US Weekly or People including the time-line of pictures: One as a cute innocent child, the graduation picture with bad hair and the palm tree backdrop, the token stumbling out of the club drunk, wedding pictures, family pictures, security camera pictures from that one seedy hotel, etc. You get my drift. All of this accompanied by "close friends reveal" and then some saga about the love child that was born just after a brief humanitarian stint 30 years ago in Zimbabwe.

All I'm saying is that if my Obituary doesn't read like a Lifetime movie script. I don't want one at all. You are now all accountable to fulfill my dying wish.

Back to the laundry.

He'll Never Admit It, But It is 100% His Fault

*Editor's note: This was written on Friday morning, but somehow never was posted...whoops!

I am having such a nice morning sitting on the patio of my hotel room enjoying this view that I am almost forgetting that less than 48 hours ago Jess's navigational skills led us VERY astray on a Navajo Reservation.  Almost forgetting.

 

Jess and I have an agreement when embarking on journeys in the car. One person navigates, the other drives. Unless, I'm driving and then usually I navigate as well. This is a pet peeve for Jess who likes to flex his orienteering and map reading skills and has accused me more than once of being a control freak. I don't think this has anything to do with being a control freak - if I'm driving I like to see where I'm going. There is something very comforting about looking at a map and understanding where you are and where you will be and approximately when you will be there.  Jess, on the other hand is perfectly content driving blindly for hours only changing course when I distinctly tell him to. He is continually surprised when we arrive at destinations when he is driving - as if they have arisen from nowhere.

The Open Road

Jess is in between jobs right now so we decided to enjoy this brief stint of unemployment and hit the open road.  Jess spent the weekend packing and I spent the weekend watching him... and yelling "Don't touch my stuff" and "I can pack it myself".  If Jess has ever thought that I resemble a 5 year old, I'm sure this was cemented the second we pulled into our camping spot and I asked "You have my sleeping bag, right?" "Where is my tent?" and "Why don't we ever bring my stove?" I'm surprised Jess didn't make me sleep in the back of the truck with the dogs.

We left bright and early Monday morning (that's 9:00 am to me) and drove down to Hovenweep National Monument. Hovenweep is a collection of Ancient Puebloan dwellings in Southern Utah. It is a magical place that was only intensified by the lack of people. Jess and I went for an 8 mile trail run yesterday morning and didn't see a single person.

 

We loved having the ruins to ourselves...a little too much. In fact, it wasn't until we got back to our campsite that we realized that the chain fence had been surrounding the ruins for a reason. To keep people like us out and away from them. Whoops.

 

We then headed to the Four Corners monument, the only place in the U.S. where 4 states touch borders in one place: Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona.  Jess hadn't planned this stop in our trip. He knows I live for this kind of thing so my only conclusion is that he hates me, or he was afraid of what I would do once there.

 

We spent the rest of the afternoon running around Mesa Verde National Park, the home of Ancestral Puebloan cliff dwellers. They climbed down huge rock faces to get in and out of their homes everyday. Wow. It's a good thing they didn't have wine.

 

We are in Durango right now waiting off the 10,000 caloried Mexican dinner we inhaled last night. 

Until next time...