Mountains Made Her @mountain-hearted - Tumblr Blog

“Move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. Walk in someone else’s shoes or at least eat their food. Open your mind, get off the couch, move.”

— Anthony Bourdain

In case you were wondering how the rest of moving say turned out. It’s gonna be a two day process. Oooohhhhh well 🤷🏽‍♀️

Moving Nightmares

(Not actually but just let me have it okay)

About a week ago I booked a 10 foot truck with UHaul for today. My Dad was going to pick it up and drive down to help me move all my stuff back up. This morning when he arrived at the rental location he realized his license was expired. So my brother had to pick him up and take him to get it renewed. Since I had reserved the truck for the whole day they said it would be available for him when he returned. Surprise, surprise... 1.5 hours later when he did go back it was not there. And apparently there were no larger trucks anywhere in the city. Like I know it’s the same 1st of the month and lots of people are moving, but I’ve booked trucks super last minute on days like today so I don’t buy that. His only option was to take a small van. Here’s to hoping a queen size bed, box spring, couch, rug, dining table, coffee table, bed side tables, and kitchen appliances fit. I’m pretty sure they won’t... which means I’m going to have to drive another 6 hours round trip again tomorrow to get the rest of my stuff. That is as long as the woman who is taking over my lease lets me leave some boxes here over night.

I’m so frustrated!!! I just spent almost 2 hours on the phone with customer service to see if there’s anything I can do about this since my original booking was not fulfilled. Before I was actually able to speak with anyone I was transferred like 4 times and hung up on twice. Right now it seems like the only option is to put in a formal complaint once we drop the van back off. Uggghhh.

I know this is super privileged first world white girl problems. I know. But fuck me I’m so pissed off!! I know part of it is that my dad messed up with his license but if you say you’re going to hold a reservation then hold the god damn reservation!!

I never really get mad but I am actually seething right now. I wish I had a punching bag. But that’s counterproductive. So instead I will remind myself of this: I am so thankful that my Dad is able and willing to help me move. And I am really lucky to have found someone to take over my lease so that I don’t have to pay a ton of money to break it. Even if it takes an extra day, this move will happen and it’s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things.

So my ex just popped up as a recommended account on Insta... he must have deleted and remade. And of course I couldn’t not look. The only post was a truck in the mountains that had a girl tagged in it. After stalking her profile too (because duh) it’s obviously his new girlfriend.

It just made me sad.

Not because I still hold hope or space for him anymore. I am completely over him and at peace with what our relationship was. But I loved him. He was my first love. So of course it still makes me a little sad. Everything about him and our relationship was so monumental and meaningful to me. I’ve moved on but of course it’s still a part of my heart. I don’t miss him acutely, but I do miss him the same way you miss a childhood friend you drifted apart from. With a small smile and air of bittersweet nostalgia.

He truly doesn’t cross my mind much anymore. Aside from the normal way that people who were once in your life do. But last week sometime I was driving and I just got hit by this huge wave of feelings. All of a sudden I could picture how he used to look at me with adoration. How we’d be talking sometimes and then just catch each others eyes and the hugest grins would spread across both our faces. I remembered how safe I felt with him and how calm he made me feel.

Then again I also remember how instantly he appeared to get over me. As soon as we broke up he was lighter and happier. We were so good and then suddenly nothing. That hurt.

Our love was brief. Our little love felt like it came and went too quickly. It was never going to last though, I always new that.

I’m ready for that again, universe. I’m ready for a bigger love. I’m ready for a partner.

I miss looking into someone’s eyes and instantly feeling and knowing so much about them. I miss having someone special beside my family and friends to talk to and to hold me close.

#funny how a picture of a truck can make you cry at 12:30am

lovelustquotes

“We either expand or recoil. That’s what relationships do to us. We either love more than we’ve ever loved before, or we don’t. We’re either more playful, or we’re not. We’re either more cerebral, or we’re not. We’re either more challenged, or we’re not. If the relationship isn’t making you more of something, it’s making you less. Expand. Don’t recoil.”

— Vienna Pharaon

Finished the last day of the worst job of my life!! Thankfully I can move on to bigger and better things now. Back to wildlife biology. This is the first time I’ve lived somewhere that I won’t be sad in the slightest to leave. Even places that weren’t my favourites always have me at least a few reasons or people to shed some tears for at departure. Medicine Hat and Redcliff... nope. See ya never! I’m excited to be back in Calgary and know that I’m finally going to be in the same place for a while. It feels good to make a decision about where I want to live and build more roots instead of letting the winds blow me wherever. I’m lucky that I got the job there. Time to make more outdoorsy and mountaining friends so I can enjoy my favourite part of the Rockies with people who love them too. And time to finally for real learn to rock climb like I’ve been saying I’ve wanted to for years. This shitty city doesn’t even have a climbing gym so I’m excited to make good on that promise now too. Tomorrow I move and then I hope I never have to come back here :)

One thing I really don’t like about myself is that I tend to put people in boxes and then judge them based on one or two characteristics that I’ve decided on. What I’m saying is that I think I am really judgmental. And I don’t like that. I sometimes make snap judgements about people when I first meet them and then it takes me a long time to let those go. People are so many contradictory things, myself included. I think my judgement of others ultimately stems from the judgement I place on myself. I really want to be able to give everyone I meet the benefit of the doubt more often because I think most people are usually pretty decent human beings. Or at least they’re trying to be.

How do I change this pattern of thinking?

I’ve noticed this about myself for a long time, however, the older I get the more obvious it becomes. Partially because I’ve moved a lot in the last five years and met a lot of different kinds of people. That has opened my mind and at the same time I think it’s made my quicker to judge in some respects. Take my boss for example: he is definitely not a great manager or supervisor in my opinion. He expects way too much overtime for no pay out which is against labour board rules. There’s a lot more but it’s not worth getting into on here. My point is that I’ve kind of just thought of him as an asshole, but since I gave him my notice he has been nothing but kind and accommodating. Especially considering that I’m leaving early and not even filling out my two weeks notice. That is an agreement that we made, but he has been very respectful and gracious this past week and I didn’t expect that from him. I had just put him in the asshole box and not given it a second thought. And that’s ridiculous because I know he coaches his son‘s soccer and baseball teams and he works extremely hard. He is a good guy in many respects. I just do not like his management style.

So I’m trying to learn from this and not judge so quickly. He can be both a bad manager but still be a good human being. Both things are possible and both can exist at the same time. No single person is any one characteristic all of the time. We are all a bunch of complicated shitheads. And I need to remind myself of that more often.

My weekend in the form of an insta story. Yes, Bon Iver was as magical and brilliant as I had hoped. It feels like going to church every time I see him. Contemplating going again in Calgary on Tuesday and driving 6 hours. Am I crazy? Very likely. But I just love him so much.

#happy heart

mountain-hearted

sometimes, like tonight, i just realize how much i don’t like myself and then i feel really deeply sad and so profoundly lonely ya know

mountain-hearted

ahhh yes, a Friday night alone on the first night of your period = so emotional

perfect timing to see Bon Iver tonight

but for real, I can’t wait to see him again. it’s gonna be magical!

sometimes, like tonight, i just realize how much i don’t like myself and then i feel really deeply sad and so profoundly lonely ya know

mountain-hearted

I came in early so I could speak with my boss and of course this is the one day he’s not here at the ass crack of dawn

Fuuuuuuck

I just wanted to quit before the big boss lady came today

If he doesn’t come in soon I’m gonna have to wait until later in the day when she’s gone and sit through the whole meeting pretending like I’m still invested in this company and then I’ll look like a major asshole for waiting until after

But it would be more of a dick move to quit 10 minutes before his boss arrived soooo

Please just get to the office soon so we can all get this mess over with

None of this is going how I hoped and the longer I wait, the shittier it gets

mountain-hearted

I DID IT!!

It was fine, in the end all my anxiety and worrying about it was for nothing. He didn’t even say much lol

I said I would stay for my full 2 weeks because obviously that’s the way right thing to do. However, I don’t want to pay rent for June if I’m only going to be living there for 1 week. He said it might be possible to negotiate my end date for May 31 with the understanding that I wouldn’t receive pay for the week not worked. Fine by me. I just wanna get out of here! And not waste a ton of money in the process.

I came in early so I could speak with my boss and of course this is the one day he’s not here at the ass crack of dawn

Fuuuuuuck

I just wanted to quit before the big boss lady came today

But it would be more of a dick move to quit 10 minutes before his boss arrived soooo

Please just get to the office soon so we can all get this mess over with

None of this is going how I hoped and the longer I wait, the shittier it gets

Ways to make quitting your job as awkward as possible:

Make the whole office change field work plans so you can be in the office one day for a “medical appointment.” Said appointment is actually a drug test required for the new job. While a colleague woke up at 4am to cover for me today, I left work early to pee in a cup. (I’m a jerk.)

Your boss is super accommodating of your shitty last minute appointment so you apologize for the difficulties multiple times and begin to feel super guilty about quitting soon.

Find out that the division manager from Calgary will be holding a meeting in our office the morning you plan to quit. Sounds like a great first day to meet her.

My best friend convinced me to ask for more money with my new contract and I just got the revised version today. I didn’t get much more, about $1/hour more lol. But whatever, this broke bitch can you all she can get. I’ll sign it tonight and quit first thing tomorrow morning. I’m preparing myself for a very awkward and uncomfortable day. I’m very curious to see if he’ll actually want me to work my final two weeks. He let the last girl go immediately, but we’re pretty slammed with field work right now so he might need me. Doubtful, but we’ll see. Obviously I wouldn’t mind paid time off and extra time to move between jobs.

tbh neither you nor your mom is wrong about food. and neither of you is right either. our culture has been standardized around larger and larger portions of unhealthier foods for many years so yes most of us are probably eating too much (and that's why we're fat) but there's also no catch-all "correct" amount of calories for everyone.

I generally agree with you that our culture standardizes larger amounts of food than is usually necessary. And yes, sometimes I do eat larger portions than I require. I also agree that aside from the basic tenets of eat green vegetables, fruit, lean protein etc… nutrition and the proportions of macros that one eats can be highly individual.

My point with my parents always having an opinion about what I eat is more tied to the psychological realm of food and eating. I have struggled my entire life with food and being overweight and I FINALLY feel like I’m getting to a place of more peace and less anxiety. Food is just food. It fuels our bodies and it’s something to be mindful of, but at least for me, placing so much importance on it at this point in time is harmful. Creating feelings of shame and guilt around food only serves to perpetuate the binge/diet cycle that I’m trying to break. Eating ice cream doesn’t make me a bad person any more than eating a salad would make me a saint. Food is just food, not a measure of my worth. My issue is that what I choose to eat is my decision and mine alone and I hate being made to feel guilty about those choices on a regular basis. I know my Mom means it from a place of love, however, I have explained my boundaries on this topic hundreds of times and it’s rarely respected.

Anyway, all that to say that on the surface it seems like an argument about food and portion sizes but for me it goes way deeper than that. I’m working on creating a healthier relationship with food and judgment from others about my food choices simply does not help.

It’s a long weekend in Canada so today is a holiday Monday and I’m sitting in my car trying not to cry because I just got in a huge fight with my mom about breakfast. Apparently two pieces of gluten free toast, 2 eggs, tomato and 1/4 avocado is an unreasonably large portion size. According to her 1 egg and 1 piece of toast and a tiny bit of avocado totally 250 calories should be enough. I think she still believes I should be eating 1200 calories/day. This is why I have a fucked up relationship with food. I said sure, it’s a larger breakfast but I ate it at 9:30 and then I’m gonna go for a bike ride and walk the dogs and other than an apple or something I probably won’t eat or be hungry again till dinner. To which she replied that maybe that wasn’t a good way to eat, maybe I should eat 6 small meals a day. Two weeks ago she literally told me I should try intermittent fasting. Are you kidding me!? I can’t. I want to and need to lose weight but I’m not trying to do that right now. For the first time in my life I’m just trying to not stress over food, eat relatively healthy in pretty standard portion sizes and live my god damned life. And guess what!? I’ve been maintaining my weight. No gain, no loss, just living. Which means that when I do what to try to lose weight obviously something will need to change. But it also means that my normal eating habits aren’t completely horrific and that I can trust that my body knows it’s satiety signals for the most part. Like yes, I do need to make changes to my diet eventually but that is my decision for how and when I do it and mine alone. I’m just so sick of feeling shame and anxiety for eating breakfast. I’m sick of being told what to put in my body as an adult. It’s taking so much self control to not go eat a pint of ice cream and cry cause that was previously been a coping mechanism. Instead I’m going to go ride around the reservoir, maybe take the dogs out, and maybe hike up a mountain quickly on the way out of town. I don’t know how I’m going to survive 3 months back at home when this is what 3 days are like.

#anyway #the rest of the weekend has been great #happy shitty monday though

A guy that I follow on Instagram but have never spoken to just messaged me about joining on the hike I’m doing tomorrow. Hahaha what is my life!? I mean I’m cool as hell but my social media definitely makes me seem way more awesome and way more badass than reality.

He seems cool and I’m going with a pretty big group of people so I said sure. Why not I’m always looking for more hiking buddies. I’m actually really hoping to connect with more people and make more hiking friends via Insta this summer because the Alberta/Canadian Rockies hiking community is pretty poppin.

As Alanna just told me, my life is truly a sitcom.

(If you like mountain photos, my Insta is steph.outside 🙃)

#I kind of hate myself for just using the words community and connect in relation to social media #lololol who am i

You guys, I am SO salty that the guy I went on a date with didn’t text me. I’m not gonna text him, it doesn’t matter since I’m moving now. And I know that if a guy wants to talk to you he will make every effort to do so and make it abundantly clear that he’s into you. If there’s one thing I learned from my relationship with A it is that fact. So I’m not reaching out. I’m not sad or anything, I really don’t care much, I’m just salty. Like I am great! I am a fucking catch! We had really good conversation, good laughs, and so much in common. Why did you not like me!? His loss, I’ll forget about by next week. But ugggh what an idiot. I hate when people just ghost. Cowardly.

#this is the most pointless post #just wanted to bitch to ya’ll :)

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