Adventuring

Had just my big girl with me the other night - the other two were on a big sleepover at Grandma's. We had a boring school-type meeting to attend, but she was thrilled to pieces to have her mom to herself for the evening.

We parked across the street from Chinese Food / Japanese Sushi Restaurant. Seriously: if it had another name I never saw it. Emerging from the meeting, her dad met us there and she was insistent that we should all go to dinner at Chinese Food/Japanese Sushi Restaurant.

Really sweetie? we said. Wouldn't you rather go to PF Chang's just a few blocks down? You know, one that you've been to before?

NO, she quietly insisted. I really really really want to try THIS ONE.

In an instant, I heard it all: two tired parents, asking wearily if they couldn't go somewhere we knew, somewhere 'safe', worth our hard-earned dollars. At the same time I heard an eight year old who hasn't had the adventure worn out of her - a little girl who is curious about absolutely everything, including new places to eat. Who has faith that things might just turn out perfectly, at any given moment. (Even if her hopes are repeatedly dashed by the prosaic existence that is suburban life.)

Under my breath, I said to my husband (who, in his day, has found more adventures for us than is even fit to print) - sweetie. when is the last time you had an adventure? This man, who loves us Nilsen ladies in a very big way, far more than he hates Chinese food, chuckled, and said - great. C'mon. Let's eat over there.

Chopsticks 101

So I started thinking about adventure. The willingness to look past the uncertainty, to go beyond the safe. I am way too prone to stay where things are safe. My husband has always been my adventurer, taking me out to the edges of 'usual' and saying but what if we went over there instead? So when I heard him resist, heard him wonder if we wouldn't like to just find a restaurant we knew about, I realized even the most curious of souls can be worn out by commutes, deadlines, plumbing, phone bills. By the life more ordinary.

Then, inevitably, my thoughts turned to writing. Always back to the writing. I thought about how creative effort is an adventure - taking you to places you never knew about, to places that make you feel uncomfortable, unsteady, but also these places are the truest parts of you that are so much a part of your being they are hard to see.

It's time for me to adventure again. It's time for me to ignore the street signs that tell me I shouldn't travel those roads, to curiously turn corners in confidence that it is the way forward, to actively find new places.

Part of the adventure is knowing I might not have the right gear, the right maps, or even a good sense of direction. This poor little un-designed blog is testament to that. We'll figure it out along the way, shall we?

Adventure

Say you're a girl who likes a routine.  Say you're the kinda gal who might run the same route every day for 2 years, just because you love knowing exactly how many miles you've run, how fast you've run it, and knowing right when the hills can be expected.

Say you're the kind of person who loves to know what's happening today, tomorrow, and the next day.  The kind of person who tries not to cringe when an acquaintance casually says, "Oh, we'll just figure it out when we get there."  What? No plan? Ack ack ack ack ack.

You may be the kind of person who is mortified by these tendencies.  You may wish daily that you were a fly-by-the-seat-of-yer-pants kinda gal.  You may wish that it didn't give you an ulcer to be lost in a strange city, or to rushing for a flight, unsure if you'll make it in time.    You may watch people who operate without a wristwatch with envy, wondering if it EVER bothers them not to know what time it is, or if they're late, or how many minutes it is until the next appointment.

It's funny how life works.  Because say you're that kind of person, and you fall in love with a person who approaches life in exactly the opposite way:  someone who always flies by the seat of their pants, someone who never knows where their watch/wallet/keys are, but lives in faith that these items will turn up eventually.  Someone who hates to brush their teeth the same way twice, much less drive the same road, run the same course, or wear the same shoes two days in a row.

These two opposites might get married, might delight in this particular element of opposite-ness, and might make a darn good life from it.

And then might come a cosmic event where the kids had a day off from school, the Farmor would be in town from Norway, and the forecast for the beach would be sunny sunny sunny.

Then the Seat of Pants Man may come up with the bright idea of taking off for the ocean - driving into the night, and then spending tomorrow at the beach.  Mrs OCD might struggle mightily with ditching her schedule, with leaving all of her routines at home, with just "throwing sleeping bags into the car" and driving off towards the coast.

But she will do it.

Because man oh man does she love the adventures that Mr Seat of the Pants comes up with.  She loves that he has passion for possibilities as-yet-undiscovered, and loves that he ignores (in the nicest way possible) her protestations of practicality.

So we're off, dear readers.  Off on our next adventure.  Look for photos of the Not-Plan soon.