a) This week donned its best Hammer-inspired crazy pants and thus
b) my words have been spent elsewhere, writing instructions for grant-torch-passing, helping students attack comma splices and encouraging them to write conclusion paragraphs.
c) This being very-new-to-me territory, I honestly have no idea what to expect (beyond miles of trails and trials of miles, of course).
d) All of the above.

Matt’s written a far more eloquent version of the past week’s events and our impending trail-laden trek. The truncated version of the story goes a little something like this:

Tomorrow I’m running 31 miles. That’s (by far) as far as my legs will have carried me up to this point. I’m a bundled mix of nerves and excitement and fear and trust and doubt and without a doubt I’m finishing once I start. My legs feel ready. The rest of me isn’t so rock steady. But I said I’d run, and as crazy as it feels to admit, hydration unfinished and unfriendly pathogens making their presence known, right now thirty-one still sounds like quite a bit of fun.

And not just because at some point I’ll be running here:

But also because of that.

See you on the other side, kids. (I’ll be the one crying and looking like I just went swimming and probably not being able to walk, but also beaming and asking with a mouthful of pizza when we get to do that again.)

It was here, while waiting for my brother, that I started this story, although, of course, at the time I did not know that stories of life are often more like rivers than books. But I knew a story had begun, perhaps long ago near the sound of water. And I sensed that ahead I would meet something that would never erode so there would be a sharp turn, deep circles, a deposit, and quietness.

-from A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean

There are so many stories to tell she isn’t quite sure where to begin. Lately she’s been waffling about where and how and when to best tell her stories, and which stories need to be told at all.

Sometimes she feels as if she’s hoarding her happiness, keeping so much sacred and soft and to herself, but then that isn’t entirely true, isn’t probably true at all, because she’s been told she radiates joy even when she isn’t climbing mountains to sing at the top of her lungs. She’s been told she has light behind her eyes even when she isn’t dancing from moment to moment, skipping merrily from mile to mile, each step revealing words and plans and looks and trips and bellies full of laughter.

She wants to tell you about epic road trips, whaleslap weekends, saturated spring breaks. About ground nut stew and soft green trails, accidental sunburns and mothers who bake blueberry muffins and talk with happy tears in their eyes. She could cheerfully regale you with stories about her preferred ring-toss stance (unconventional and yet effective!), how poorly she plays bean bag toss (and how she refuses to call it “corn-hole”), high-fives and bike rides. She wants to tell you about brewery tours (she could this minute write a compelling ode to Scotch Ale), meeting new friends who instantly felt like old ones, easy conversation with nary a trace of small talk, how much she’s missed artichokes.

She wants to tell you about twenty miles run and years of loss undone by legs turning over even when they wanted to scream, wanted to cling to doubts about their ability to careen along trails unexpectedly unfriendly. She wants to tell you about cramping calves and a high-ten she almost collapsed in, about how just the sight of him made her want to run farther, run faster, master her mutinying limbs just a little bit longer.

———

Once in the recently passed past someone well-meaning attempted to unearth historic heartache to make a point. He loves her and she knows it, but not being an authority on her heart, he was out of bounds and she told him so, without hesitation. She wasn’t able to say much else for the duration of the conversation, so overcome was she with a range of emotions and all of them giant-sized, all of them wiggling in their seats while eagerly raising their hands, vying for front-running attention. So she sat still and thankful someone who knows her heart could and would and did speak, not for her but for himself, boldly, but with heartfelt sincerity and patience.

Not wanting to be too hasty in her storytelling, too harried with her heartfelt responses, daily she’s been collecting her words, fishing them from streams, plucking them from early morning sunbeams, finding them tucked behind her ears amidst strands of hair longer than she’s grown in years.

She could tell you she has a past, yes, and it’s both black and bright, as all pasts are. As everything is. But what she really wants to tell you about is her present. Her now full to the brim with smiles and inside jokes, with once-buried speed and dirt under her feet. Her now littered with light and vertical promise, with tie-dye and big sky and endless ridgelines. Her now rushing steadily with memories worth cherishing and keeping, joy seeping in from all sides, threatening often to make her cry. She wants to tell you about a present routinely making her grin, causing her to swim headfirst into currents at once both new and thrilling and yet somehow easy to navigate, perpetually gentle. She knows she hasn’t seen this watercourse before, and yet it feels homegrown, feels winsome, feels perfect amounts of unknown.

———

Daily she finds herself pausing to revel in the frenetic beauty of her life. She would say she feels lucky, but that word never quite fit in her mouth just right. She would say she feels doors and walls and tangles of vines thrown asunder. She would say she feels as if she’s standing atop a high peak with pine boughs for arms and buttercups for eyes, a cool ocean breeze wafting through all of her favorite trees, a litany of trails unraveling their routes below and behind and beside her and all of them calling out to her in welcome and challenging tones, perpetually urging her to brighter and bigger and bolder movements, conversations, transformations.

She would say all of that and think it sounded as much like truth as oversimplification.

Mostly she wants you to know she’s really very happy.

(She really hopes you are, too.)

Until today I haven’t known where, exactly, to begin. And so quiet this space has mostly been because some beginnings are tricky. Sometimes it’s quite impossible to denote where something ended and something else entirely began.

I’m not going to be able to tell you everything, but then the best stories never really do, do they?

(That’s not a trick question. I promise they don’t.)

(Unless the story was penned by Henry James, in which case he probably really IS going to tell you everything. And you’re probably going to want to break all of his fingers by the time you reach page 500.)

———-

Before Thanksgiving I drove from Portland to San Mateo and back in a single weekend* to give Iggy a better home. He traded a one-bedroom apartment he was forced to occupy mostly alone while I worked and worked and worked some more for a house near the beach with a sun-soaked yard and multiple laps to occupy at all hours of the day and night.

I know how many of you appreciated and loved him, and anyone that ever met Iggy can attest to how surely he loved you right back, so routinely did he nearly asphyxiate himself out of sheer excitement whenever anyone walked through the front door. Letting him go remains one of the most emotionally challenging decisions I’ve ever made, and yet one of the easiest, too.

I didn’t talk publicly about my decision or the trip until it had already begun, and while it certainly might have looked abrupt from the outset (most decisions do when you’re not privy to the emotional or physical backstory), it was a decision a long while in the making, and the best for all parties involved, but most especially for Iggy.

I held him close the entire trip, paid attention to how and why I would miss him, took an excessive amount of pictures. We ran in circles at rest stops and made new friends in San Francisco and fell asleep listening to Pacific waves cresting and crashing steps away from a tent I pitched at midnight in Half Moon Bay. Like so many mornings prior, I awoke with a snoring pug curled against the small of my back.

The day after I said goodbye I started sobbing mid-run, still in San Mateo, sun warm on my face, the San Francisco Bay in front of me so bright and beautifully blue. Two days later I found this picture in my inbox, taken after Iggy’s first walk in his new SoCal city, and I haven’t cried since.

*Not at all recommended. Unless of course you have an Erin to play co-pilot, and a Hans and a Jen and a Matt for triple-team text support, and another Jen to play gracious hostess/distractor/non-judger as you start crying while petting her boyfriend’s dog.

———-

If you’re good at inference reading, you’ve probably already surmised this isn’t the only story I’m going to tell you. But it’s the only story I’m going to tell you today.

Tune in tomorrow (or maybe the next day) for more radical life changes!

Visual learning is fun. (Speaking of, there are a great deal more pictures here, from my outbound trek and my Mer-cuddling time in Minneapolis.)

Still to come: The epic return and oh, the endless stories I have, about the endless gorgeous I saw, and the endless mosquitos that oh so enthusiastically and perpetually bit me, and my car that in a moment of swoony weakness for the Grand Tetons momentarily bit the dust.

Milestone, The First: A 5k without thinking. I just ran it. After weeks and weeks of no running. I just started running and didn’t stop until I hit 3.1, which turned into 3.5, and my legs felt amazing, and my chest didn’t feel like it was burning itself in effigy and all of that was quite unexpected, a bigger-than-baby step for this always-only-a-sprinter, and then I turned around and did it all again the next day.

Milestone, The Second: A 13-mile hike. A Saturday morning hike was my idea, but I didn’t anticipate a thirteen-miler straight out the gate. I’ve long loved hiking, have spent countless summers exploring various destinations only reachable by foot, but it’s admittedly been awhile since my weekends were consistently characterized by endless green, my feet tackling delightfully muddy trails, my eyes taking perpetual snapshots of waterfalls. I grew up playing in the woods, traipsing trails new and old from as early as I can remember, trying to get lost for hours at a time in the dense woods surrounding Priest Lake and never quite succeeding. My dad had done too good a job teaching me how to navigate the trees. I always seemed to know where I was even when I was sure I didn’t.

Among a list of eight hikes suggested by Cayly, Eagle Creek was sitting there, batting its alluring mileage at me, wooing me with promises of challenging terrain, multiple scenic pay-offs, pools I could swim. I couldn’t remember what a thirteen-mile hike looked like, but I stopped being able to sit still when I realized that was what I wanted: I wanted to tackle the longest hike on the list, and her favorite. The one requiring a 4:00am wake-up.

I nearly bounded out of bed at 4am, so excited was I to see this trail, so eagerly anticipating perpetually sweating and laughing with Cayly as we climbed and climbed and climbed. I knew before stepping foot on the trailhead I would love this hike as much as she did. Knew following a gorgeous creek for half a day was going to be a perfect way to start a Saturday. Knew I would be taking countless pictures even while realizing none of them would be able to capture the deafening beauty of standing next to a roaring waterfall while it pours itself over a 130-foot wall of rock. I knew all of that.

What surprised me was never once did I want to stop. Never once did my body feel like it couldn’t handle the mileage. If anything, my legs were telling me they wanted to go farther, wanted to keep pushing, wanted to create a new trail from the end of the old one. The waterfall-littered hike itself was breathtaking, and Cayly and I didn’t see another soul for the first two hours, unless you count the doe and her two fawns who bounded in front of us along the trail, and who we met on our way back, standing mere feet away from us this time.

It was (and no doubt will continue to be) one of my favorite days of this entire year.

Milestone, The Third: Running without music. This happened accidentally this past weekend as I visited Tryon Creek for the first time (after yet another stellar recommendation from Cayly), and again found myself instantly captivated by the sheer beauty of the place, the unexpected quietness of the space. We already have Washington Park, Forest Park, countless coastal spots just a short distance away, and then there’s Tryon: A veritable bonanza of green resting comfortably in the middle of our otherwise bustling city. It’s almost unfair how beautiful Portland is.

It was pouring when I parked at the nature center, just as it’d been pouring most of the night and all morning, and as these trails were new to me, and because I was so smitten with the sound of the rain hitting the canopy overhead, I decided I wasn’t going to start with headphones in my ears. A mile in and I had already forgotten they existed, and there I was, thoughtlessly and merrily running the way so many do, the way my sister always has, listening to nothing but the woods telling me stories amidst my own breathing and the rhythmic turnover of my feet on the forest floor.

There’s something about rainy woods that will always be so comforting to me, as if the raindrops themselves are keeping me company, spurring me forward with their steady rhythmic drip drip dripping, my pace quick quick quickening as the trail bends and I stretch my legs as long as I can, eagerly anticipating what I can’t yet see as much as I what I still can: Lush green tumbling in, surrounding me on all sides, ferns reaching out to brush my legs with their waterlogged tendrils, branches falling over themselves to touch my head, my shoulders, narrowly missing my face as I dodge in and around and through them.

I ran four miles of rolling trails with a giddy grin on my face and by the end of it my legs were tired and all of me was soaking wet, and that giddy grin? Well it really hasn’t left my face.

(For the visual learners (myself included; holler), I’ve created a Flickr set to house all of my woods-traipsing photos, doing business as Hike The Planet! More coming soon and very soon.)

I want overflowing summer, refreshing water, to dive deeper and deeper into nouns not me. I want pine trees, fir trees, big bright green leaves covering us with a canopy of neon possibility and late afternoon cool. I want more ferns, never enough ferns. I want to be able to articulate how much the forest reminds me of you, and will always, while simultaneously reminding me of nothing but peace, stunning design, a promise of a time when I’m not back-diving, not looking to find you coming around some bend in a long-forgotten trail, looking for me all these years, greeting me with a hug that would last a lifetime.

I want to be able to access my darkness, to float alongside the loss I was given–to write in and around and underneath and through it–and not live there.

I want to live near the ocean, on a lake, in a tree house with a mossy staircase.

I want activity, my body always reminding me how much harder I can push it, how much more it can take, promising me steadfast feet, strong limbs, graceful poise on the muddiest roads. I want sheer exertion, my arms and legs pumping pumping, pushing myself up the tallest hill I’ve ever run, again and again and one more time, just to see if I can do it without losing my grin. I want to keep falling deeper in love with the feeling of my feet flying faster, pulsing and praising their God-given ability to traipse over wild and unruly rock, singing hymns to poetry in motion, to devotedly circling a soft track hardened with determination, with fierce competition, with memories of baton passes and 300-meter leads and the dumbest bet I ever took. I want to jump into a pool ten months after the last time I swam (last August, next to my parent’s pontoon boat for hours while they cruised Deer Lake lazily, my mom feeding me carrots and pretzels over the side of the bow) and do a flawless freestyle kick-turn, the way I did Friday without even thinking about it, blushing and diving underwater again after surfacing to unexpected, roaring applause. I want to swim for months without stopping. “My little fish” my mom will always call me, and I’ll always smile before diving in again, deeper this time.

I want music. New music, old music, live music, improvised music, melancholy music, music that side-steps me back to hours of your face close to mine, to one perfect night in a periwinkle dress I borrowed from one of my best friends, to two years of walking away from you. Music that giggles me back to ’90′s movies with ’90′s soundtracks and now-vintage dreams. I want to dance. I want to dance by myself and I want to dance with you, both of us laughing hysterically at how neither of us knows what we’re doing, but it doesn’t matter because I can play the tambourine and you can play something equally silly, maybe the kazoo, and we’ll both lose ourselves in drum beats and sax solos and make myriad references to dabbling in Jazz flute while everything else fades to back-up singers.

I want adventure, barefoot banter, aimlessly purposed wandering, lake discovering, trail blazing with Chacos and sheer optimism, laughing as I walk through another spider web because I excel at always finding them first. I want bluntness and camaraderie, unexpected hours of non-stop conversation peppered with sore calves and sweaty foreheads and copious amounts of jokes and stopping to look each other in the face when conversations get a little treacherous because what we’re saying is hard to say but we’re saying it anyway, for no reason and every reason, because we’re happy and comfortable and quite surprisingly so, but happy and comfortable nonetheless. I want to be touched gently, and spoken to sweetly, and made to laugh raucously until my spleen hurts. I want to be urged on ruthlessly, to never leave your side even when I’m hundreds of miles away. I want my own space. A lot of space. To run and roam and grow independent of you and everything I thought I once knew.

I want to take blurry self-portraits in sunglasses with a pro-hipster premise and send them to people I care about so they can laugh, yes always, but mostly so they can see how happy this girl is. How happy she will always be. Flying solo or equally matched I want you to know she’ll soar, higher than she’s ever climbed on her own before, no more stopping on any dimes, incapable of losing her forward momentum this time. This girl, this Kerri Anne who was once so lost and is now so found, about to be run underground by a freight train of joyful premise, propositioning purpose, unplanned terrain beckoning, guaranteeing her a life-changing reckoning, and she: running out of her woods to meet it.

I want all of this, and more. I want hope I’ve never smelled before.

Some of this I surely already have, already own, already heartily condone and carry with me, a fleece blanket of green sentiment, sediments stitched together from collected ferns and words I might have whispered, once, if you were listening closely.

The rest of it? Careening, screaming, rocket ship beaming toward me. Or maybe lapping sleepily in a sparkling stream, avoiding the meaning, floating soundlessly on a billowy breeze. Some of it surely lost in translation, waiting patiently for further concentration. But on its way, regardless.

Happy! Monday, friends.

(Oh, and I’m “kerri_anne” on Instagram if we’re not already photo buddies there.)

(Aside to the latter group: I know we don’t know each other, and some of you might even think Sarah Palin is totally awesome, but political insanity notwithstanding, I have a good feeling about you. Feel free to pull up an Internet ottoman and stay awhile.)

I just realized had I waited one more week to write and hit that cheery blue “Publish” button, I could have let an entire month pass before updating this here site, which I think would be a personal abandonment record for me. Alas, here I am, because I missed you all too much. (Awwwh.)

Oh, and I’m not having a baby, in case you thought you had missed some big important (immaculate conception-type) news.

My sister is the (mighty adorable) one currently carrying her very own fun-size human, and while I heartily concur pregnancy is beautiful and life-changing and Merriam and Webster really didn’t provide me ample amounts of words to convey how extremely psyched I am to be an aunt, can I just tell you how surreal it is to see your little sister in her third trimester, because: Whoa amounts of surreal over here.

Theresa of course looks amazing, as you will very soon get to see for yourself because I (‘m a visual learner, yes! and) took five bazillion pictures over Memorial Day weekend as we showered her and my soon-to-be-onesie-wearing niece or nephew with myriad tiny and sweet and maybe-not-so-gender-neutral baby things.

The general guessing consensus is that Theresa and Will will be welcoming a bouncing baby boy on or around July 18th, which is a consensus based on pure conjecture and gut feelings which could end up being less “hunch” more “too much spicy Thai peanut sauce.” I will undoubtedly be all sorts of ecstatic to announce I have a niece OR a nephew, and will forever maintain the “Handsome” onesie I WAS TRICKED into buying–itself being the center onesie in a pack of an otherwise neutral set of three, and me thus assuming it to be white and only white–will only be all the more entertaining if worn by a little girl.

As you read this I will be lounging in a window seat at 30,000 feet, on my way to Minneapolis to spend nine! days with my one and only and aforementioned sister. I will also hopefully be napping as it’s become nearly impossible for me to sleep before an early morning flight, my brain preferring instead to waltz from one unrealistic flight-missing-scenario to another.

I would promise to update my site while I’m gone, but we all know I’d probably be lying. But hey, you never know; maybe Minneapolis comes complete with bonus blog posting mojo!

Until then, here’s a sampling of some of my favorite pictures from the most recent Baby Shower Extravaganza(s):

T & Momma:

Behold, the best guest book idea in the history of guest book ideas: The fingerprint tree!

Will and T’s newest niece:

On Saturday night T and I made what would be my favorite decorative addition to Sunday’s shower. Poms!

These three have been best friends since junior high, bridesmaids and maids of honor in each other’s weddings, and are now all moms, too:

Theresa, our great aunt Joy, and Grandma Ladish. Three of the loveliest souls you’ll ever meet:

The entire Flickr set is here. I named it Nobody Puts (My Sister’s) Baby In A Corner. (Guess which movie I watched recently.)

Catch you on the flip-side, kids!

FACT: Making the invitations for my sister’s Baby Shower, Our Family Is Huge Edition resulted in me officially becoming Extremely Excited for the upcoming Memorial Day festivities wherein I get to see my sister for four! days, and help throw two baby showers for her therein. I cannot even stand said excitement and have taken to making copious amounts of lists for packing and planning and baking and please someone make me sit still before I OD on baby shower-related happiness. Also, how cute are these? I’m verily smitten with them.

FACT: I crack myself up. Often for no reason at all, but specifically when Michael C. Hall paper cut-outs are involved. Exhibit: What I sent Sizz as part of her birthday package, after some perfectly timed inspiration from Jen:

{WARNING: Nerd tangent! WARNING: Nerd tangent!}

FACT: My love for everything Buffy being quite vocal, I can’t believe no one ever told me about the GAME CHANGING crossover episode on Angel (Season 1, episode 8: I Will Remember You; Netflix instant that ep, post hastey!**). It’s supposed to happen in between episode 8 and 9 of Buffy Season 4, and while episode 9 does reference Buffy going to LA to see Angel for “five minutes,” HI, THERE IS THIS WHOLE BIG THING THAT HAPPENS in the aforementioned Angel episode, that, even after seeing Season 4 of Buffy multiple times, I had NO IDEA happens because as I might have mentioned it’s on Angel and not on Buffy, and

FACT: Try as I might (and I’ve mightily tried) I just can’t get into Angel. Except for the aforementioned (and soon to be mentioned) amazing crossover episodes, because

FACT: Angel is no Buffy. And there’s no Xander and no Willow, and (the horror!) no Giles. And for reasons that make zero sense, I can’t watch Angel even pretend to have smooshy feelings for anyone but Buffy, even while I can watch Buffy love Riley and Spike***.

FACT: There’s also a second crazy crossover episode (again on Angel) toward the end of Season 1 (episode 19, I think), with both Faith and Buffy, called Sanctuary. It’s crazy. And pretty important to the overall narrative arc of Buffy, as Angel shows up in Season 4, episode 20 to directly apologize for what happens in Sanctuary.

FACT: Angel drives ME crazy, in an “I think I just want to stake your emo face” sort of way. Mostly because

FACT: I don’t understand why Angel and Buffy can’t just live happily ever after, and while we’re at it, Xander and Willow (or at least Willow and Oz), and also I have a huge crush on Giles and his open mic tendencies, the end.

FACT: I might be a little (overly, ahem) emotionally invested in Buffy. But it really is the best series of all time.

{End nerd tangent! End nerd tangent, hallelujah!}

FACT: May 4th marked the first official return of the mid-week PSU farmers market and it has been making me exceedingly happy ever since. Erin and I go every Wednesday and revel in the the fresh produce and cider and flowers, oh my! Not to mention the lovely (sometimes) sunlit midday stroll.

FACT: I have lovely and photogenic friends. Who like to wear stylish sunglasses.

(Ian, Jenelle, and their Zeke-a-saurus.)

FACT: Honeycrisp apples have overtaken Fuji and Braeburn for the Top Apple spot in my fruit-loving heart.

FACT: Orchids are gorgeous. Especially purple orchids that are a gift from coworkers as a way of saying, “Hi! Look how pretty we are! Also: We appreciate you.”

FACT: This perpetually in-my-face Portland rain is making me want to cry. I’m no rain wimp, and I will herein pledge my undying love to the Pacific Northwest, but Great Odin’s Raven, this spring has been less “Don’t forget your sunglasses!” and more “Quick, run for cover BEFORE WE ALL DROWN.”

FACT: I’m so ready for summer, and swimming, and sunburns, and SHARP TOOTH! SUNSHINE, it’s not even funny. Well, it might actually be a little funny. If you consider laughing at people’s perpetual soggy hair and faces and everyday places amusing. #fakeguilttrips

FACT: I quote movies, a lot. Also: This post sort of grew exponentially longer than I anticipated. Whoops.

—————
*Twenty gold stars for the first person who knows from which movie this post title comes. Hint: It’s amazing. And has nothing to do with vampires or vampire slayers or forbidden love doomed from the start because the man you fall in love with happens to be a brooding masochistic soul-y undead who is hell bent on a lonely path of redemption, and did we mention tall dark and handsome?

**Buffy quote (the “post hastey” part, that is). I couldn’t stop myself.

***#TeamSpikeForever
—————

Your turn! Tell me something true about you.

Friends. Bloggers. Countrymen. I have a confession to make.

I really like Pinterest.

It’s quite unexpected (to me, anyway) I’m enjoying it as much as I am, being that before joining I was staring at the site blankly, confused and overwhelmed and for the love of HTML, why, what is the point?

But here’s the thing. I think I’m sort of a story-boarder by nature. I love grouping interesting and like (and pretty) things together, sometimes just for the sake of grouping (see also: my Etsy favorites or my Flickr favorites). And that’s sort of what this is: Collecting and cataloging inspiring and/or lovely and/or helpful and/or amusing items together on a board to share and enjoy.

I also realized I have at least three versions of personal story-boards in my apartment. Like this one, which reminds me daily to eat breakfast and move until I’m sore.

As a bonus, you can add friends and family to your Pinteresting circle, and thus be newly inspired and helpful together. Just this morning I snagged an awesome(ly simple) chocolate mousse recipe Torrie originally found and posted, that I’m verily going to make for upcoming sisterly baby showers.

More perks to the Pinterest:

a) It doubles as a sweet bookmarking tool you can take with you anywhere without being tied to a specific computer or browser.

b) It makes me think of both golf (Pinnacle) and climbing a mountain (Everest). I don’t know how that’s a “perk” exactly. But I find it amusing.

c) I can also see how it could be pretty awesome and efficient for work-related projects, especially in the creative circuit, as there’s a setting which allows multiple users to add pins to the same board(s).

d) All of the above.

Anyway!

I’m sure a lot of you are already using Pinterest (If you are, what’s your username? Let’s be story-board buddies!), and if you’re not, maybe I just convinced you to try it. (Do it, do it!)

I may have also just convinced you to head for the hills, running as if being chased by a rabid story-board.

In any event, thanks for still liking me even though so often I’m a Super Nerd, built in a laboratory out of parts from lesser nerds.

(Oh, and for the record, this is Pinteresting me.)

(Updated to add: Let me know if you aren’t using Pinterest and would like to be. I have invites!)