Balls to the Motherf***ing Wall

I
know I am prone to dramatic hyperbole, but INTERNET. I just had the most restorative,
thought-provoking, action-encouraging all round blindingly good holiday probably ever in the world.

Thursday
night I watched the final show that the graduating colors had put together for their parents, laid out all my best clothes,
and books for learning, and self-development notes, and just as I was about to
go and wash my hair so that I could braid it and it’d be curly for the morning
(and so my vacation would start beautifully because having good hair means
ultimate happiness) I got collared by my colleagues for ‘just one drink’ and didn’t stumble back into the convent until 4
a.m.

GODDAMN
LIVING IN THE SAME PLACE WHERE I WORK.

I was
so determined to do my Nice Hair that a drunken shower meant I fell asleep
briefly in the bathtub and never quite got round to braiding it before I left
for the train station at 6 a.m., my roommate still not back from the pub
despite the fact that the train to her vacation left ten minutes before mine.

The
epiphany, Internet, is that OH HEY UNIVERSE! I TOTALLY WROTE LAST WEEK THAT I
WAS PLANNING NOT TO PLAN, AND TO RELAX, AND TO NOT CONTROL ALL THE THINGS! And
then you went and got me drunk so that I had to pack my carry-on in less than
six minutes.

Smart
move, universe. I see what you did there. You called me on it.

I
went to Switzerland to see Alma, a girl I disliked when I first met her,
re-met a year later, and who is now the single most ambitiously focused, self-aware
and kind person I have in my life. So much so that I can only ever refer to her
by her full name. ALMA RADA! PASS THE BUTTER! I’M GOING TO SEE ALMA RADA!
ALMA RADA HAS COOTIES!

Related:
I hate most people when I first meet them. It's a thing. 

We’ve
met in Milan, in Rome, in Geneva, and the precedence has kind of been set for international Wellness Weekends- Wellness Weekends because Alma and I have a relationship that revolves around targeted
self-improvement and eating a lot of food, thus no matter what state we find
each other in we leave better people than when we arrived.

The
task for this Wellness Weekend was to cycle around Lac Lamont, starting in
Geneva where she lives, and ending in Geneva where she lives. It’s a big
fucking lake. She’d assured me it was flat, and that I wouldn’t die.

INTERNET,
IT WAS NOT FLAT AND QUITE FRANKLY I AM LUCKY TO BE HERE TYPING TO YOU TODAY
BECAUSE I DIED EIGHTY-SIX THOUSAND TIMES AND HATED MY LIFE FOREVER THE END.

That
bike seat touched me in ways I haven’t been touched in a long time. I lost my
virginity several times.

Day
one was an accomplishment, with much cycling and some minor hills that meant I
was forever at the back of the group, but goddamn
it we got to where we were going. I was exhausted
and could barely eat my dinner, but the day had seen a stop off for our
packed lunch (Quinoa and Trail Mix, obviously), a dip in a lake, and an
impromptu pause for some singing, so basically, I won life.

Day
two saw us traverse mountains, by which I mean really big hills around
beautiful vineyards, by which I mean I spent a lot of time walking my bike
around the lake instead of pushing the pedals because SHE SAID THERE’D BE NO
HILLS.

And
then when I did try to push the pedals, I fell off because I forgot my hands
were greasy from the sunscreen I’d just put on, and then I fell off again
later, and then when I was pushing my bike it fell onto my leg so I ended up
bleeding and I lost my big girl pants for a minute even though I was trying to
impress everyone with my breezy attitude with regards to just how easy cycling 100 kilometres was.

OH!
WAIT! I DIDN’T TELL YOU THAT BIT YET!

As we
sat, on day two, eating lunch (a late lunch, incidentally, since all my
bike-pushing and falling-off had set us back by eleventy thousand hours) Alma
Carver said something about 60 miles. I was all, WAIT, WHAT? And she was like
YEAH. WE’VE GONE SIXTY MILES THIS WEEKEND and I was like SIXTY MILES? DO YOU
KNOW THAT IS THE COMBINED TOTAL OF HOW FAR I HAVE GONE ON A BIKE IN MY ENTIRE
LIFE UP UNTIL THIS POINT? 

And then I put the bike down, said I’d take the train
home the rest of the way, and went to rub some Vaseline between my chafing
thighs.

Related:
maybe I cried a bit with happiness, too.

So
then Wellness Weekend became the FUCK! I CAN DO ANYTHING! Weekend, which
became, Hey- What Lessons Can I Learn From Cycling To Apply To My Life In
General? Weekend, which became Damn, Bitch Can Do Anything If She Puts Her Mind
To It! Weekend which essentially meant that Alma Carver and I decided that for
both us, we’re in the period of Balls to the Motherfucking Wall since evidently,
anything is possible in the whole wide world so we may as well just follow our
dreams and have done with it.

And
that is the story of the new wallpaper on my computer. This new period of my
life is the period of Balls to the Motherfucking Wall, where anything is
possible and if I can cycle 100 kilometres around a pissing Genevan lake I can get a bloody book published.

So
yeah. That happened. Which was nice. 

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