ridiculousness

i’m always surprised when i tell people that i’m vegan that they think that i eat fish.

i feel somewhat distant from the land of normal people these days. it’s been awhile since i’ve felt like i didn’t fit in that i almost feel like it’s grade school all over again. as i type this the inside of my left elbow starts to tingle and itch despite an application of hydrocortisone. my right shoulder near my clavicle too. hives. hives have always meant stress. i remember breaking out into hives for the first time in college. i was a full time student, i was working a full time job and i thought it would be a good idea to pledge a co-ed fraternity because i just wasn’t busy enough. ten minutes before a pledge meeting i turned all sorts of welty and swollen. it had never happened to me before so i couldn’t explain it. my roommate whose parents owned a pharmacy fed me an uber-benadryl and i slept for 14 hours straight. i woke up hiveless and proceeded to run myself into the ground until the end of the semester.

the second time i broke out into hives was during the great sleep disorder of 2007. i had finally given in and taken something to help me pass out and i woke up 17 hours later and went to work like nothing happened.

the third time was the night before i was laid off last year. i itched my way to the office, was told I had a month and showed up at the dr.’s doorstep weepy and tired.

i have nothing to really be stressed about which is the strange thing. i am not working 60 hour weeks nor am i awake for days straight. i am in a healthy relationship and i have wonderful friends. i am not taking on more responsibility than i need to and i do not have a sleep disorder. this hive business is all ridiculousness.

i get to see michael tomorrow, which helps as i haven’t been to yoga in 7 days. maybe the hives will retreat when i get to see laura again. someday.

i deep fried a hot dog stuffed bagel

it’s been an emotionally exhausting week. my second week on the job and i’m already having days where i realize it’s 3:00PM and i haven’t gotten up to pee yet. friday, i discovered that if you wait it out long enough hunger and the desire to urinate go away eventually but be forewarned when they come back, they’re not playing around and you best be sure there’s a toilet and an emergency cliff bar near by because you’ll be needing both.

nothing spelled wonderful better then being in the kitchen with jeff and my dear portlander friend bobby, making dinner and drinking wine. it was comforting to have them near and i was so happy that they got to spend some time together to hang out since i ended up coming home so late from work. i had left dalva’s thursday night painfully tired. my face hurt. much crying was involved. lots of it felt really good.

i took bobby to samovar saturday morning before his flight. i kissed the dr. on his sleepy forehead and walked outside to find the first truly sunny day in what has felt like seven days and seven nights of torrential downpour. i joyfully sipped a vegan thai iced tea and ate squash dumplings. after seeing him off to bart i dropped by birite for provisions for josh’s deep fry party. upon entering josh’s apartment i declared that it smelled like a chinese restaurant. i made an acceptable but not exciting vegan dipping batter and i began doing what every fiber in my being knows is wrong.

I stuffed a veggie dog into a bagel, battered it, and fried it.

and fitfully ate it.

fried. bagel.

it was horrific and wonderful at the same time.

the highlight though had to be the mushroom caps stuffed with toffutti cream cheese or the batter fried oreos.

or the coming up with kitten garbage’s first single, “should i hug you like friends or kiss you like we fucked?”

the dr. and i lingered long after everyone left and we sat and lounged with josh and buckley. the moon had come out and was large and hanging low over the city. i wanted to touch it. like somehow it was possible. i reached my hand towards it like i could do it.

the rest of the weekend unraveled with ease. i felt safe and taken care of. i felt good about life in general. as i stare down the barrel of another busy week jam packed with conference calls, design meetings, the first LOST NIGHT of the season, the dr.’s surgery and dinner in oakland with sadia’s mama i know i’ll make it through ok.

i’ve got the new broken bells, a gigantic winter squash, a boatload of friends and a wonderful boyfriend.

all sorts of fucked up

toda-err-yesterday felt all sorts of fucked up.  waking up at 3:45AM didn’t help.  i had an awesome dream about kittens and game shows. i woke up feeling the residual happy warm feeling that goes hand-in-hand with kitten dreams only to have it dissipate into this odd panic.  my brain started to go into overdrive, predicting that certain change was on the horizon, lots of life stuff in flux, without any specifics, i do what i do best.  worry about things outside of my control.  i hate it when i get all fortune telly and weird.  too much fleetwood mac and rain and before you know it i’ve got a crystal ball, a tattered shawl and too much make up.  yeah, i don’t know either.  this shit comes of nowhere.

thunder only happens when it’s raining.

no shit.  you don’t say stevie nicks.

(but really, i love that song.  i totally do.)

i pulled out the journal and saw that the last time i had written in it was while the dr. and i were in SLO.  i remembered that time fondly.  before the business of nanowrimo and the holidays.  before i actually started to let myself worry about job and money.  it felt good to be free of normal life stuffs while holding the hand of the boy that i love.  why does it feel so silly sometimes to write about it?  love.  why are there times when it makes me feel sheepish and weird? where i want to keep it to myself lest i seem cheesy or ridiculous or one-of-those-people. you know those people.

i like keeping things quietly awesome.  awesome doesn’t need to be loud or flashy.  awesome doesn’t have to be obnoxious and in your face.  awesome can exist in those rare moments, those times that you realize that it doesn’t matter if it’s the 7th or the 700th time you’ve stood at his door and rung his doorbell, your heart beats so loudly in your throat that you think you’re going to throw it up you’re so excited to see him and tell him whatever mundane thing it is you’ve done that day. i fought with my cat.  i took a shit. i went to work.  i made a pie. and he’ll follow behind you, up the stairs and you know that he’s looking at your butt and you like it, every last bit of it.

who knew going up a set of stairs could be so exciting?

i flipped back several pages and read more, went backwards in time through our relationship. i used to chronicle in such detail but i see that i’ve started easing up in my old age.  less we-went-here-and-ate-this and-saw-these-people and more this is how we play and this is how i feel.

i read back through glorious lazy days spent in the park and random drunk nights and many many many naps.  more naps then i can handle.  and some rogue illnesses.

when i got to the beginning i flipped the pages to the empty spot i had originally opened the journal to and started writing.

the sun didn’t really come up, my window just got bright and the rains that have been coming down lately continued to come down.

i didn’t stop writing until the rain actually stopped and i was starving.

i didn’t mean to take that nap around 5PM but it happened and after yoga i made cupcakes, ate said cupcakes right out of the oven despite the fact they were burning my fingerprints clear off and watched more of season 4 of dr. who.

it’s almost 1 and i’m wide awake and normally that wouldn’t matter but work looms in front of me.  blinky sleeps all day and manages to pass out at night.  i’m watching her sleep now.  she has restless leg syndrome.  or epilepsy.  i occasionally catch her stretching out one of her back legs and shaking it all over the place.  she doesn’t bother to wake up while this happens.  i wonder if she dreams about kitten game shows too.

life happens, work tomorrow.  i’ll wake up, eat some things, drink some things, accomplish a random assortment of tasks, read an assortment of words on screens, maybe i’ll make it to yin yoga, maybe i won’t.  whatever change my subconscious thinks is on the horizon will either be true or false or maybe forgotten about completely.  who can be responsible for the weird things that happen to you at 3AM?

which is only two hours away right now.

right.  bed.

g’night.

alien slug

for all the thinking i do about emotions, people and the reasons why we do what we do i am no closer to discovering an answer then i was the day i was born.  i was actually closer to it the very day i shot out of the womb into a cold and cruel world all mucous eyed and screamy for at that moment i had no idea what was going to happen next and it didn’t matter.  i didn’t spend hours pondering how i was going to fix this discomfort of being naked, wet, hungry and recently evicted from my home.  i just yelled and the universe provided.

life seems to be so much easier when i don’t think myself into a hole.

there are those rare times when, without any real conscious thought, everything disappears except my authentic self and for a brief shining moment i can open my mouth and talk about the things that plague me without any real fear. because it doesn’t matter.  there is nothing wrong with me.

you were once covered in schmutz like a tiny alien baby slug too.

my friends came over sunday night to make dinner and we ate, laughed, shoved each other around and watched stupid cake challenges on the food network.

when they left and i crawled into a clean bed and fell asleep with sufjan stevens playing and dreamt about fonts getting married inside kangaroo pouches that blasted eddy grant and whoever sang funky town.

it’s still raining and i’m still swimming knee deep in butternut squash soup, riding this tide out til the end of the season.

i <3 youtube

i love youtube and how it gives young musicians a platform to create and share their music with such a gigantic audience.

home made music. a lot of it can be crap, but sometimes you stumble upon some great stuff.

lauren o’connell. love. love. love.

pork chop

i found myself sitting at a peet’s coffee this morning drinking a lackluster soy latte and reading tao lin’s bed wishing it was better.  or at least not so desperate.  i was so close to finishing the book and i had to stop or i was bound to walk into the office on my first day of work full of warped emotional distress.  every character in the story i was in the middle of was either listless to the point of catatonic or dripping with so much need, so much want that i couldn’t take it.  couple this with some leonard cohen and buckets of rain and i was ripe to burst.

i’ve since put bed to bed.  i’m supposed to mail it to inna but i don’t think she’ll want it.

after nanowrimo, the only fiction i’ve read that has not failed me has been vonnegut.  i think i’m going to go back to nonfiction for awhile.  at least until my brain resets from tao lin trauma. i take my tiny eraser and i make it go away.

work was good.  the first day jitters dissipated once i got to lose myself in new tasks and projects.  it felt good to start training and realize i know what i’m doing.  this job is not as foreign to me as some have been in the past.

i did end up staying late and walked through the front door completely starving.  you really shouldn’t wait 7 hours between meals.  a snack drawer is in order right quick because i came home, cooked and ate entirely too much food too fast because of insane hunger.

and now how i bloat.

i sat in the office kitchen alone this afternoon to eat lunch.  too many hand slappings at higgins for eating at my desk and i’ve subconsciously trained myself to sit in the break room even though everyone else merrily ate sandwiches and the like at their computers.  i remember managing to eat a pork chop out of my desk drawer at higgins without getting caught by hr.  oh, those were the days.

wet

i had a sneaking suspicion that i was probably not meant to go to work today although both my offer letter and phone conversation confirmed a monday, january 18th start date.

it didn’t matter though.  i was happy enough to traipse through the desolate wasteland of the financial district on mlk, fearing no puddle, singing ‘two headed boy’. there is something about jeff mangum’s voice that gives you permission to wail and warble off pitch and all of sudden it feels good to be obnoxious and loud, no one is around on this holiday.

the song goes right into the next with barely a pause and ‘the fool’ with its mourful horns made me feel like i should be on a an old ship with tattered sails, all billowing blouse and pantaloons.

the rain boots survived the puddle jumping and when i was satisfied and sufficiently wet i hopped on the bus home to comfy pants, kitty snuggles, books and journals i haven’t written in since october.

close

i have to go to work tomorrow.

i want to go to work tomorrow.

i felt logey and unmotivated this morn-er-afternoon, laying in bed with the dr. somehow convinced that this kind of lazy splendor would soon become a memory, knowing full well that was not true. i don’t know why my brain likes causing these blips of desperation and drama. cue hand-on-brow fainting position.

i came home to find the boys in the kitchen making bruschetta and my cat perched on the arm of the sofa looking at me like ‘where the fuck have you been?’

the house was warm, clean and smelled like garlic, like love. i took an extra long hot shower, thanked myself for doing laundry before the weekend started so I could slip into a clean bed, made a simple soup with tofu, spinach, broccoli & mushrooms and packed my bag for tomorrow, a strange ritual i had not done in quite awhile. every weeknight i would go through my messenger bag, swap out crap i didn’t need, used yoga clothes for new, keys, book, journal, planner, pens, emergency pack which holds a sewing kit, lip balm, ibuprofen, travel brush, moisturizer, eye drops & a packet of emergen-c. stuff i carry with me all over this city, making sure i’m prepared for whatever, somehow comforted by these things, like lip balm and two pens can prevent disaster.

this need to be prepared is strange but has been with me my entire life. i felt like i should have spent some time studying contract standards before my first day (but i wasn’t crazy enough to do so). it’s both a blessing and a curse. there are some things you can’t prepare yourself for.

this time last year i was not prepared for a long spell of bronchitis. i was not prepared to be dumped nor was i prepared to lose my job. no amount of prep was going to prevent these things from happening and my little world that i usually manage to keep in order unraveled all over the place with no real game plan on what to do next.

and it was magically…ok.

i was ok without a game plan until recently where i felt the overwhelming need for structure and purpose. i don’t like that this meant job but i guess it’s a starting point.

in discussing this with some of my various yoga teachers, it’s something to keep my moving forward with goals in mind…like being able to start making $$ to put towards things that i’ve been wanting to do like teacher training, weekend baking courses and massage school.

i spent some time in the dr.’s hallway trying to kick up into a handstand, something i’ve only been able to do twice with some extra help (i.e. brian actually taking my ankles and placing my heels against the wall). the dr. coached and i tried, jumping, trying to get my hips up and over hoping the legs would follow. he told me i was close. i couldn’t tell how close though, i wasn’t sure. something familiar i’ve felt the past couple of months. people telling me i was close and i would eventually get there and not being able to tell how close or what to do next.

this time i feel really close. and i promise myself not to be lazy.

i’ve managed to get by with little complaint and with very little money this past year. i can count on one hand the number of times i’ve whined about being poor. while the job is only part time until march and once full time i’ll be taking several steps back salary wise, it will be more then unemployment, which has kept me clothed, housed and fed for 9 months with very little struggle.

my other other savings account is aptly named yoga and still has money in it. i look forward to putting money in it once again.

in other news, i had so much ridiculous fun with the dr. this weekend.

super cat forever.

burro

hmm.

my ass looks bigger.

bodies are strange.

nearly lost my shit in class this morning. for some reason there were 20 more people then normal and the room was well over 100 degrees. i was dripping with sweat 2 minutes into class and sat out some poses convinced i was going to throw up my non-breakfast i did not eat that morning.

even after class i sat on the floor of the little hallway outside of the bathroom trying to pull it together. a classmate asked me if i needed a hand.

recovery took forever today. i had a hard time lifting my leg to get into the shower and had dropped several items, my muscles refusing to co-operate.

they are going on strike for the pain and heartache i had caused them.

whatever fuckers, you’ll thank me later when you’re 60 years old and can still do jumping jacks and things.

everything is still pretty sore.

it’s times like this when the trip down the back stairs to get my laundry feels like the journey of natty gan. not to mention the trip back up with all 80 lbs of freshly laundered bedding.

where’s a burro when you need one?

i am too cute to be your slave

phases

i can haz job? really? seriously?

full time in march? ’scuse me. eye itchy.

lemme put you on hold. my wallet is ringing.

this is what happens on very little sleep. you hear your neighbor’s phone ring and you reach over and you answer your…wallet.

i snored in savasana during both classes today.

*i love how i’m holding both phone and wallet to my temples and not to my ears.