HOLA
BONJOUR
HOWDY

Happy Friday.  Super fun read for this first Friday in May 2024 + exciting NEWS!

Beginning with exciting NEWS!
Stephanie’s Chic on the Cheap from here forward is Stacy’s World.  Stephanie and Stacy are one and the same.
Beginning next week Stacy will pop in every other week – or weekly depending on her schedule – with her Stacy’s World column and share fantastics, not just fashion tips and tricks, but recipes, DIY cool ideas for home and life, adventurers around town and elsewhere, cool product finds, entertaining ideas, where to find chic on the cheap and So. Much. More.  As in whatever strikes her fancy!  I’m super excited and thrilled that Stacy is such a giant part of Daymaker Readable Art with her innovativeness. 

I love Katiedid Langrock’s writing.  This piece – Memory Climb – yes, I sometimes think about the good old days from my younger years.  However, she’s braver than I taking those memories on.  Ha!

QUICK QUESTION
What’s the funniest sounding instrument to me?  All can be funny depending on how they’re played and what’s being played.  Without a doubt the childhood instrument of grade school — the RECORDER is my answer. HA!!   Do kids still play the recorder in grade school I wonder.

3 THINGS IN LIFE

Beautiful + Simplistic + Absolutely True

RESTAURANT STYLE SALSA + BEST EVER GUACAMOLE RECIPES

Delish!  Chose these 2 as Cinco de Mayo is Sunday and they’re fast and easy to whip up.  Serve with your favorite tortilla chips.  However, on a special occasion, I like to get the blue corn tortilla chips.  Serve with a frosty bottle of Mexican beer or homemade margarita ** click for recipe**

THANKS ALL
For sliding by today and giving us a piece of your day.  We sure appreciate your time + love + comments.

READY?
SET.
GO!

MEMORY CLIMB
BY KATIEDID LANGROCK

“I used to be interesting.”

I got too used to saying that.  It’s part of the reason we moved to the wild.  The memory of who I was — camping under the stars, rappelling down cliff sides, hiking into vast nothingness — was still too clear to ignore.  It hadn’t drifted into the misty haze of happenings long past — you know, the place where one can’t be sure whether one experienced adventurers personally or just read the adventurers, such as snorting Pixy Stix or toilet papering your crush’s backyard.  No, the memories were clear, and they were calling me.

Funny thing about getting older, your memories may stand the test of time, but your motivation?

Yeah, not so much.

This past week, I was in the Virginia mountains, surprising my dad for his birthday.  We sneaked in while he was in the bathroom and were sitting on the couch in the hotel suite eating popcorn, when he returned.  He jumped out of his skin and then laughed so hard tears squirted out of his eyes.  But his jump was the smallest of the trip.

The resort where we were staying is meant for active families with mountain hiking, a water park, river tubing, golf, zip lines and much more.  But there was only one thing on my must-do list:  rappelling down the highest mountain peak’s cliff side.

I begged my little brother to go with me.

We filled out the paperwork, signed our lives away and waited for the first of many chairlift rides to get up to the highest peak.  In line for the lift, there was a clear view of a free-fall drop activity.  The resort had erected a climbing wall with a platform at the summit.  From there, the presumably suicidal would hook their harnesses to a bungee and jump.

I watched in awe as kids flung themselves off the platform and trusted that the bungee would gently deliver them to the large mattress below.  The adults, however, seemed directionally challenged.  They would move their bodies as if they were about to jump forward into the air but, miraculously, would wind up going 5 feet backward, their butts landing hard on the platform.  It was as if a force was pushing them back and screaming, “Not today, old man!  You want to live!”

Clearly, the adults wanted to jump.  They thought they could jump.  They had climbed up a huge wall in order to do so.  But there they stood, or more accurately, crashed down onto their butts, trembling in fear.  Some cried as the kids waiting in line behind them chanted, “Jump!  Jump!  Jump!”

The image seared into my mind as the chairlifts carried my breakable body to the top of the mountain.

“I used to be interesting,” I found myself saying to the 21-year old who was explaining how to abseil.  “I used to do this.”

“That’s cool,” he replied.  “Most old people get here, freak out and wish they had done it in their youth because they’re too freaked out to do it now.”

I asked him why he thought older adults like me have a harder time.

“Brittle bones?”  he replied.  The instructor explained how I was supposed to hold on to the rope by my hip and just lean back.

“Just lean back,” I repeated, “Over the cliff.”

“And just sit on the air like Wile E. Coyote before he plummets to his death.”

“I thought you said you did this before,” he said.

I told him I had.  A ton.  But that was nearly two decades ago.

“Oh,” he said.  “Then don’t do it.  You were smart and had adventures when you were young and had the nerve.  Most people who give up now will never get to say they’ve done it.  I’ll take your harness off.”

I thought of those kids chanting “Jump!” and I flung myself off the mountain.  My butt didn’t hit anything but air.

The rest of me didn’t get so lucky.

My arms, legs and shoulders are covered with scrapes and bruises from when the rope flung my body back into the cliff after I spitefully jumped off.

Small price to pay for the taste of an old self.

~ KATIEDID LANGROCK
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