AMA with AMA: Answering YOUR questions!
Planning a perfect birthday + small talk about the weather.
Dear Kula Diaries,
It’s that time of week where I get to dig into the Kula Diaries Vault and answer YOUR questions — so thank you in advance for submitting them! I had fun answering this week’s questions, and I hope you enjoy reading my answers.
I also really loved your feedback about my last weekly post entitled, “I’m going to stop trying so hard.” Every single morning for the past few weeks, I’ve been intentionally finding the feeling of relief — a feeling of really being done… and it is glorious. I’m finding that the more and more I allow myself to feel the relief, the easier it is to find — and here’s the thing… it isn’t dependent on anything at all. I’m having a lot of fun allowing myself to feel the thing that has been the proverbial carrot of my entire life: an endless quest to reach an imaginary point in the future where I can finally relax and enjoy where I am.
This is going to sound a bit silly, but I’ve been really focusing on the little miracles of life — and I have been amazed and astounded by what I am noticing when my mind isn’t pre-occupied with an overwhelming sensation of ‘falling behind’. This morning, the miracle of my toaster struck me in a profound way. I can put bread in a silver box… and then it pops up, automatically, and is perfectly toasted. I can then apply butter and salt… and make the most delicious breakfast sandwich ever… and I can savor every single bite of it… without needing to be worrying about all of the things I need to do. Appreciating my toaster felt hilarious, yet oddly special this morning… because it’s not one of those things that I normally notice, perhaps because it seems so bland. But really — how can you call a toaster bland? Even the fact that I have a toaster is miraculous… the fact that I live in a home and can cook my breakfast in a warm kitchen? Truly remarkable. These little miracles are always there for us to see. When you stop trying to be somewhere else, you can actually take the time to notice them.
I hope you make some toast today too. Ok, time for the questions…
Dear AMA,
What's the best birthday you've had as an adult? What made it so great? Did you go somewhere new, eat something delicious, do something fun? Needing some inspo for a milestone birthday coming up soon, in one of my least-fave months of the year due to muddy, wet, cold, dreary weather in this part of the world!
First off… Happy Almost Birthday! I’m going to share a few things about some of my most favorite and memorable birthdays… and I hope that it helps inspire you (and everybody else) for your own birthday plans — any time of the year!
I’m pretty simple when it comes to birthday celebrations… I don’t have a large friend group that lives locally, so I haven’t had a ‘party’ in a very long time. However, I do have a special recipe for the perfect birthday: eating things I love, doing something that I love, and going out to dinner. My birthday is in the beginning of October, so the weather can be unpredictable. For my last birthday, the weather was ‘warm-ish’, so we started the day with a motorcycle ride to a bakery called Choux Choux, where we both got almond croissants (my favorite!) for breakfast and some fresh coffee.
For dinner, we went out to my favorite restaurant here in WA — The krō bär in Bothell, WA… which is a tiny little restaurant with the most magical food and drinks I’ve ever had. Aaron and I have eaten at some pretty fancy restaurants before, because it’s something we really enjoy, and very few of them compare to the transcendental wonderfulness of the krō bär.
That being said … you might not live in this area, so I’d suggest doing some research and finding a brand new place that you can go try… I’d also recommend doing something different than you normally would. For my birthday, Aaron and I decided to sit at the bar instead of at a booth, which ended up being really fun and we had some great conversations with some other folks there and enjoyed our time in a surprisingly spontaneous way.
When I think about my past birthdays as an adult — many of them have involved hiking and backpacking. One year, we circumnavigated Broken Top — a peak in the Sisters Wilderness in Oregon. Most recently, we’ve been travelling to Montana at the end of September to go fly fishing with my parents, so I’ve had a few birthdays spent on the side of a river in Montana.
You mentioned that the weather is sometimes less than ideal in your birthday month, so I will share a story about one of my more memorable birthdays a few years ago… and being spontaneous and open to the possibilities. At the time, I was hiking and backpacking almost every single weekend and I was unbelievably rigid in my plans — in fact, I had a lot of anxiety about making sure that I had ‘enough’ hiking or backpacking trips planned… the idea of not going hiking sometimes put me into a tailspin of anxiety and dread. And so, for one of my birthdays, I planned a trip to Crater Lake National Park… with a backpacking trip.
During the month of October, the snow can arrive at Crater Lake National Park, but it hadn’t showed up yet — so we were able to access the park through the North entrance, which is usually closed during the Winter. Once at the park, we had one day planned at a small cabin… and then we had packed for a 3 night backpacking trip. As I watched the weather leading up to our trip, I saw it go from really great… to horrible. In fact, it was almost guaranteed to bring snow to Crater Lake… and torrential rain to the lowlands. At first, I was resistant to change my plans — the thought of not backpacking on my birthday or not getting out was really disappointing. But, I also had to admit that I didn’t want to spend 3 days being wet and cold in a tent. So, with absolutely no idea where we were going… we changed our plans. Crater Lake is about an 8 hour drive from my house, and we had 3 days to explore… so we looked at a map, opened the AirBNB app… and decided that it might be really cool to drive to the coast of Oregon to watch the storm from the comfort of a warm room.
The next 3 days were unplanned and magical. We ended up staying in a few different towns up and down the Oregon Coast — including Cannon Beach and Gearhart, Oregon. We went on a tour of the Tillamook Cheese Factory (which was delightful)… we went to the Tillamook Air Museum to check out the B17 planes (my husband Aaron has his pilot’s license and loves planes!)… and we sat in our room during the day and relaxed and watched the waves crash on the beach. One of my favorite memories from that trip was an evening at McMeniman’s Gearhart Hotel. We were staying in a teeny tiny hotel room … and we had dinner at the hotel and then put on our rain gear and went for a walk on the beach. The wind was howling and the rain was coming down in sideways torrents and we were leaning into the wind … half running and half walking, just trying to stand up. We could hear the ocean crashing on one side of us, and the feeling of spontaneous freedom and unexpected joy was so delightful — in fact, we actually went back to the same McMenamins a few months ago on our Lighthouse Quest, and it brought back so many good memories of that one specific, unexpected Birthday celebration.
So, my best advice for you is: make plans if it feels good, but leave some room for the unexpected. If it’s in your budget… and the weather is stormy… is there a place you can go to safely watch the storm? There is nothing more cozy and relaxing than enjoying nature from a warm room. Detach from everything for awhile — and just enjoy a day where you fully get to celebrate not only your life, but all of life. And then, see if you can do that every single day — not just on your birthday.
After I left my job as a railroad police officer, one of the first things that I started doing as I began creating the ‘new version of me’ was almost daily live videos on Facebook called ‘Violingrams’. In those videos, somebody would nominate another person to receive a violin gram… and I’d go on Facebook live and perform a surprise concert for another person. It was a really fun experience for me — and it led to some amazing ‘chance’ encounters — I even had the opportunity to perform my violin at a penthouse apartment in Seattle! So… I decided to bring the Violingram back… for you. Here’s a little Violingram for your birthday and a wish for a day… year… and life filled with peace, joy, adventure and love. Happy birthday, friend!
P.S. If you’d like to nominate anybody else for a Violingram, please do so in the Kula Diaries Vault and I’ll include them sporadically!
Dear AMA,
Why do people make small talk about the weather?
Weather is a funny thing, because it’s a great equalizer — we can all talk about the weather… observe it… describe it… and call it by name… and most humans are on the same page about it. If it’s gloriously sunny, “It’s a beautiful day!”… if it’s rainy and overcast, “It’s so dreary today!”. To be honest, I think that weather is just easy to talk about: it’s observable and it’s usually happening right now. When you first meet somebody… or if you’re in a situation where you aren’t sure what to say — the weather is always something that everybody can talk about. More specific things like current events… sports… pop culture… or the brand new pee cloth you just bought… these are less likely to be topics where everybody will be able to (or want to) talk about them. The weather, I’m pretty sure, just feels like a really safe topic. It’s not going to offend anybody… and most people will have something to say or feel about it. In that way, I think it’s a pretty beautiful thing to talk about: a way to make sure that everybody feels included.
BTW some of the wildest weather I’ve ever experienced was in Patagonia… here’s a tiny clip I found of me on a Tyrolean traverse after crossing the ice cap!
A few months ago, I was at Trader Joes and the cashier asked me the best ‘small talk’ question I’ve ever heard. They said, “What are you excited about right now?” I ended up having a surprisingly interesting conversation with the cashier, and it really inspired me to start trying to ask more open ended small talk questions. When I worked for BNSF Railway, I was trained as a facilitator for a required safety class called, ‘Approaching Others About Safety’. One of the things that we practiced during our facilitation training was how to ask open ended questions so that we could encourage meaningful conversation among the students. Questions such as, “Does anybody else have anything to say?” typically served to shut down the conversation… whereas, a simple question like, “What else?”, tended to encourage thought provoking discussion.
I’ve shared this video before… but it makes me laugh. This was on a backpacking trip with Aaron and my mom in the Goat Rocks Wilderness:
Your question didn’t indicate if you enjoy talking about the weather or not — so I won’t assume one way or the other. Personally, it doesn’t bother me at all, because I still think it’s an opportunity to observe and acknowledge another human and our shared experience. I used to get annoyed when people didn’t have ‘deep’ conversations, but then I realized that having a deep, intellectual discussion at every moment of every day was an exhausting pursuit — and sometimes, it’s just nice to be able to look at the rain and say how it makes you feel. If it is something that annoys you or feels trivial — I’d be interested to see if you could investigate those feelings more deeply. What does it mean that somebody wants to comment on an observation? Does it mean that they are less interested in you? Or could it possibly mean that they are, on some level, trying to make sure everybody is included?
It might be fun to experiment with an open ended question about the weather. For instance, “What’s the most interesting weather you’ve ever been in?”, or, “Tell me your favorite weather-related story!”. With a question like that, people would be at ease because the topic is simple and approachable — and it would also give somebody an opportunity to reflect back on their own life and tell a story. We all have fun stories about the weather.
And because I just can’t possibly pass up an opportunity to talk about wild weather in the wilderness… I’ll tell you my wildest backcountry weather experience. I might have mentioned this trip before, but it deserves re-mentioning because it makes me laugh. This was in 2017… just after I had left my job as a railroad police officer to start my ‘career in the outdoor industry’. My mom and my husband Aaron and I usually do a backpacking trip together every single year, and on this particular year… we decided to take my mom on a trip to the Desolation Wilderness in Lake Tahoe. The first day of our backpacking trip was incredible … the weather was perfect for backpacking… but on the second day, we knew we’d have to contend with what appeared to be a small weather system. We were camped near Lake Aloha, and we climbed into our tents in the middle of the day once it started raining to keep dry. We knew that we were in trouble when I looked into the vestibule and saw my Crocs floating away.
What ensued from that moment was an epic whirlwind of attempting to ‘drain’ the alpine tarn that was rapidly consuming our tent pad. As the daylight waned, the rain changed to sleet… and in a desperate, last-ditch effort to salvage some tiny bit of hope that we could sleep through the night… we unstaked the tents and sprinted across flat granite slabs holding them. And when I say, ‘holding them’ — I mean that we didn’t actually pack anything up… the tents were still set up, with all of our sleeping gear inside. I can vividly remember running across the desolate terrain… desperately hoping to find a flat spot where we could get a tiny bit of relief from the storm. Eventually, we found a spot — but all three of us were soaked to the bone. We skipped dinner, and huddled in our respective tents for the night. When we woke up in the next morning, the ice had ruined the zipper on my mom’s tent and my pants and boots had frozen solid. I actually had to physically ‘break’ my pants so that I could put them back on… I think I might have hiked part of the way out in my long underwear. My boots were inoperable, and it took me about 20 minutes to wrestle my feet into them.
Mercifully, we decided to bail on the backpacking trip. We had originally planned to spend a few more nights out in the wilderness — but with my mom’s non-functioning tent, and our wet clothes… we were done. With our tails between our legs, we plodded back into town where we rented a warm AirBNB for the night and ate a deliciously hot meal. It’s funny because weather is such a big part of so many of my memories — particularly in the wilderness, because it has such an impact on the entire experience. In our day to day lives, it is the ever-present reminder that we are alive: the cold, the wind, the heat, the fog, the mist, the snow… it reminds us that we are here and that we can still feel something.
By the way —all this weather talk motivated me to share the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen on a motorcycle ride… I still can’t even describe it — it was overwhelming in so many ways (and the video doesn’t even remotely capture the brilliance of the colors!):
It’s raining right now as I’m writing this answer. I can see the rain dripping off my roof and it looks foggy and misty out. A few minutes ago, the rain was coming down in torrents and our electricity kicked off for a few minutes as a burst of wind blew through the area. In a little while, I’ll probably put on my rain gear and walk outside with my husband for our evening walk. At least once on our walk, I’m sure one of us will comment on the weather. I’ll probably say, “It’s so misty out!”, and he’ll probably say, “Yah, it is.” Maybe it won’t go further than that… but I also know that it means a lot more: it means we’re both here, we’re alive… and we’re experiencing life together.
Friends — no matter what weather you face this week… both the internal and external kind… I am wishing you peace, acceptance, joy and love as you navigate all of the different seasons of life. Thank you so much for being here — I appreciate your support so very much!
I have picked up my tent fully put together with sleeping bags and pads inside and ran across a campsite area to get out of the weather 😂 In Enchanted Valley and the ranger looked at us like we were crazy. I like to think we gave him a chuckle.
How have we never connected about Aaron and Daryl both being pilots before?! Where does Aaron fly out of? How fun would it be to fly to get "$100 hamburgers" sometime?! Y'all could fly out of where Aaron flies, we could fly out of Boeing, and we could meet up in the Islands or someplace with either bikes to ride into town or a short walk (one of my favorite flying lunches we've had was flying into Concrete and then walking to the burger place and getting burgers and a perfect milkshake, then walking through the big community yard sale that was happening in the lot next door).
Sending love, always <3