To go to sleep is just to hide away.

Just got home from work. It's 330. I helped facilitate the sales of $2400 in obesity in a mere six hours. Unfortunately, the night had to end in disappointment. We sold the last bacon maple bar and rushed to lock the doors, me jumping up and down exclaiming, "Let's get shots before we close up!" And my colleague replying with an overly emphatic, "YES!!" while I simultaneously ran around the corner to look at the giant clock on the wall that read 230. Even if our Tube friends really really really loved us they still wouldn't be pouring us shots when we ran to their doors... not on a Friday night. Not after they had to deal with the same jerkstores as we did. Probably even the same jerkstores that were surprised when I 86ed them without service after a request that I show them my "boobs." Seriously. I better get this new job. Because in my warped mind I believe for some reason that wiping the assholes of eighty six year old men with dementia will never degrade me to a point where I am asked to "show my boobs."

I want heat. I want scorching, sweaty, dripping heat like you wouldn't believe. I want to dread going outside because I know that my clothes will just stick to my body all over. I want to spend all day with hair plastered to my face and dripping down my neck as I run all over town looking for air vents to stand over with my shirt pulled out so I can feel the sheer ecstasy of the draft as it rushes up my torso. I want to have an excuse to look forward to getting home to jump into a cold shower for the shock of it and then change into comfortable, dry, clean clothes. I want a mango slurpee to be God's answer to a miserably hot day. I miss the desert. I miss the swamps. I miss overcrowded mugginess. I miss seeing debutantes with their mirrored sunglasses and $1200 suit pants sticking to their bodies, their hair looking just as shitty as mine, their make-up running down their face until they finally realize that actually, it's not necessary when the thermostat outside reads 112º F. Most of all, I just want the polar opposite of what I have instead; grey, dismal, melancholy, morbid, misanthropic, misty, cloudy, cold Portland.

I wouldn't mind if it were the grey misty cloudy mornings of Santa Cruz. The way the day always begins, until the sun burns off the haze around 1400 and suddenly you see its rays bouncing off the ocean back onto the clear blue skies. I don't mind a freezing cold breeze in those moments, when I know I can wear whatever I want and go wherever I feel like without having to worry if I'll be wearing muddy wet cold clothes all day. I mean really, cold wet socks are the absolute WORST.

Jonny wakes up for work in twenty minutes. I told him I'd try and stay up when I got off work so we could hang out a bit as he starts his day. I don't mind waiting for him. Aside from the fact that I love hanging out with him, right now I'm on my third to last day of vacation, meaning that after I sleep in and wake up real late tomorrow I'll have less than two full days before school starts up again. I'm finally used to seeing friends and the luxury of just sitting and staring from the window of a coffee shop on MLK for five hours.

For a couple months there I was looking forward to graduating and remaining a Portland resident, even contributing as a healthcare worker, giving back to the community that has supported me through my brokest times. Lately I've been dreaming of the East Coast again. Jonny is desiring the exotic. He can't stop talking about the coast... mainly Goonies town USA. He's even brought up Hawaii. I couldn't live on Hawaii. I've never been there before, but it's just too darn remote for me. I just can't picture any inhabitants other than obnoxious hippies and surfers and the indiginous population that resents them and us and the whole colonization issue. Besides, it's a gazillion miles from anything familiar. It may as well be Poland. But at least in Poland I can travel for three hours and be in one of five other countries. I can learn a new language. Eat strange food. Use strange currency to buy goods that I can't pronounce that are spelled with too many J's and Z's to learn anyways. We could choose between buildings that were built centuries ago, or one with new experimental and actually quite questionable architecture. We could even live in a grey, box-like apartment, uniform with our neighbors that most likely have lived there for the last sixty years since their grandfathers built the place. Sure, it's on the same parallel as Portland and from what I understand has the same depressing weather, but at least I won't be judged for my people's love of refined sugar.

Now I'm rambling. Now I need sleep for reals. Signing off.

my dear diary: it's just you and me tonight

The thinger that I bought in Dublin so that I could upload pictures from my camera broke today. I've been learning to take photos again, and suddenly the thinger that lets me put them on the interbot doesn't work. Not happy about it, no sirree bob.

Finished Battlestar tonight. Don't know how to talk more about it without including spoilers, so I'll sign out here. Everyone send in your condolences for the broken camera cord thinger. Pay your respects here online, as it should be. I'll be pouring some virtual 40s over the proverbial ground in my dreams.

All of the firefighters put out my fires took all my matches.

There's few things better than a morning with Hüsker Dü. While New Day Rising has always been my favorite to begin a day with, I'm discovering that Zen Arcade has some real fine points. I'm reminded of the time I was visiting Santa Cruz, probably about five years ago, and I went to see Steve Whitwill, walked inside to Zen Arcade blasting (this whole time I've thought it was Candy Apple Grey, ha!) and we were dancing madly. Fun times.

My guts are screaming at me right now. Drank too much and ate too much crap yesterday. Ah, it must be vacation again. Had a rude awakening when I opened my email account and discovered not one not two but three yes three emails from instructors instructing me on monday's instructions. School we be back soon... here it comes....

Woke up late yesterday after another maddening doughnut night. Walked in the misty grey Portland air to Junior's for a mediocre breakfast and mimosas that were ordered with grapefruit but came with orange and seemed to be missing the champagne. "Orange juice is a poor man's mimosa," Jonny declared.

Next we strolled on down to the massive Goodwill with the restaurant where I purchased an adorable little sewing machine broche and a collection of New Yorker comics. What a score. I jumped up and down ecstatically when I found the "It's A Shame About Ray" music book, but discovered in the register queue that it was guitar tabs rather than piano music, so it had to be put back. Woe is me. I walked outside feeling the remorse of spending money again on things I don't really need when I listened to my voice mail and heard a message regarding my resumé. A few weeks ago I applied for my first CNA job, one email was sent to a craigslist address, and it is the only time that I have used my new nursing resumé. I was shocked to hear the woman wanted to meet me, so, fingers crossed, I may have a need for Baby Phat scrubs in a color other than basil green, hooray!

We mosied down to MFP's for "Shrimp cocktails," which really was a red beer with a bunch of lemon wedges surrounding the perimeter of the glass. We read and did crosswords for hours and hours, and it was strange to leave to find out the sun had decided to once again show its face to Portland. I'm holding my breath to see if his friend Summer decides to make an appearance... I don't want to be let down as I have been the last few years.

Attempted to finish BSG and the free internet streaming disappointed us by freezing the show three times, so now I'm living with the anticipation of the last twenty minutes of my favorite geekery. (How will it all end? You know it will have to end in destruction, it's fracking sci-fi!!) Crawled back out of bed, through on smelly doughnut clothes from the night before and met Ubick at Roadside for more beers, only they were free this time. We matched each other's drunk off and rambled about lost love and shared disappointment. It was all entries you'd expect to find in a twelve year old girl's sparkly pink locked diary rather than out of the mouths of two late twenty-somethings, but I guess you could blame the red beer for that, too.

I love you so much it's killing us both.

I only got five hours of sleep after working the busiest Monday night on record when it wasn't a holiday. Yesterday was strange... Woke up, couldn't process much... walked to Cricket and drank mimosas and ate olive breakfast, tried to write a letter and I couldn't hold the pen straight. My handwriting was all sloppified, yet I wasn't shaking nor was my vision blurred... just experiencing difficulty with the fine motor movements. Felt cloudy,... no, that's not what it was like, pillowy is more like it... like my fingers were actually twice there real size and the tracts moving from my CNS had been impaired somewhere along the way.

Breakfast was a lot of fun, as was the walk there and back with the boys. Had a weird night the night before which was followed by a weird conversation with a friend who called me a mean name. Funny thing is I feel bad each time I take offense, because people don't mean to hurt other people. I don't know how to apologize for other's insensitivies... for the lack of insight I am capable of that could have prepared her to understand that that wasn't an appropriate thing to say to someone like me... I don't know how to prepare people to be sensitive to other's sensitivies. Felt my mood shift from sunshine to a hurricane... I'll name this discourse hurricane holiday plum spice, inspired by the tea across the table from me right now. We'll call her plum for short.

I painted a pretty ungo(l)dly amount of furniture yesterday. It's a beautiful green shade that I found in the remnants at Fred Meyer's for $5, with a strange blue-grey-green-gross accent that I found in the mud room at my old house when we were all moving out, with lavish gold foil metallic knobs. I love gold paint. I love how you can paint anything with it to add a touch of class. Is touch of class the name of a limo company or a shitty portrait studio? I can't remember. I've had some involvement with them in the past that involved a school formal dance though, that I know for sure.

In an attempt to calm Hurricane Plum I laid in bed and watched French New Wave, aware that after a half hour it'd put me right to sleep to prepare for my shift that night. Got up... made an awesome breakfast/dinner, busted my ass for four hours straight, and took one of the best breaks ever at Ash St. Some old friends were in town, by both meanings of the word old. Perhaps "older" would be a more correct way of putting it. But yeah, hadn't seen one of the guys since 1998. Brought them a crap ton of doughnuts, asked for a Fat Tire and received a Pabst instead, (did the bar girl mean to do that? She said "Fat Tire" as she handed it to me, yet charged me a paltry $2.25 for it, so does that mean that Ash St. has really cheap micros, or that's just the late night full price of crap beer?) Needless to say, I was grateful to wake up at nine to realize I didn't have to puke after the mix-up.

While chatting up old friends I got to watch a more recent friend scream on stage, and felt like I had been transported far far far away from menial tasks and quick number adding and 86-ing drunks. I was gone a half hour and it was something that should happen everyday when I take my lunch break because I had so much fun. We exchanged numbers when I left and I'm not expecting any phone calls, except for maybe the next west coast tour that they roll through on.

I feel like life has had more happenings these last few days but I'm tired of writing and want to go back and finish up the French New Wave. I'll leave you with this instead of my ramblings:

Hey, color's just another number tattooed with a blunt old tool.

OMG OMG OMG Spring is fucking here again. The coffee tastes SO good, my breakfast is SO good, my sleep sucks, but life seems SO good. Went to the coast... an amazing drive. Listened to al kinds of garbage in the car, drove through some snow and didn't feel like I was going to kill us all, flirted with some seniors at a trashy pub in Seaside, watched my dog shit in the sand four times in ten minutes, and Jonny and I got to daydream a while about what-would-it-be-like-if we just said screw it to the city and packed up and moved on out to the coast. A wonderful day. We ate delicious breakfast at Junior's, which I have hereby declared our spot. We stopped at some random bar that apparently he and Sean would frequent in their underage days outside of Hillsboro in some rural landscape environment. We were back for dinner and no one even knew we left.

This great dresser hunt has meant that I've been to too many thrift stores and walked away with too many amazing earrings and gold utensils and fancy dresses, and still no dresser. Today is the last day of this madness before I give back the car and go back to bike life and staying indoors. (Wow, the irony is palpable; I consider my bicycle to be the means confining me to the indoors.... I need a paradigm shift here...)

Ubick and I went to Ballard on Thursday. We each woke up at an ungodly hour after a few hours of sleep between us, drank too much coffee and tea, and first thing in town we ate enough doughnuts to put my usual intake to shame. I love Mighty O. Their doughnuts are the best. I am not saying that because work has caused me to grow disenchanted with the day-to-day availability of Voodoo. It is the insight of being an insider that allows me to understand the delicate balance of frying temperatures and the way they need to make love with the ambient climate, so much so that any amateur will never perfect the switching from non-vegan to vegan to non-vegan frying without at least one batch falling victim to unaccomadating oil temperatures. The magic outside of the whole that is so mighty is they only make vegan, therefore their oil is always the perfect temperature. It's a simple science that needs to remain simple.

After eating more doughnuts than we could fathom, we bought a half dozen and drove on over to see the beautiful Natalia. We did some more thrift store shopping, which resulted in an epicly difficult kitten puzzle that we spent the rest of the day battling. Mix in a few pounds of Indian food and you have us moaning and groaning in pure delightful pain and frustration that culminated in the collective creative process of describing a hundred ways to slay a basket full of kittens. It was decided that the kittens and Natalia and Halo and Paul and Bacon were the only purpose of our journey, so Devin would wait until the next Seattle voyage as would Ben and Elisa have to wait for the next Ballard voyage. It was kitteny kittenlicious kitten time.




Chris and I drove home to more Jawbreaker, a crap ton of Dead Moon to prep us for the next night, which for those of us that lost track was last night, at the home of Jeff and Toody's run down tenement building in deep southeast that houses Zach and is the new moped flop-house. Chris fell asleep in the car, so with motivations that were nothing short of vindictive I put in the burned Tilt CD to watch him jump up and join in the chorus. It was a classic Vanj and Chris roadtrip, and it reminded me of how much I love being alive.

"So say we all!" I hear echoing from Jonny's laptop across the table. I can't believe that Admiral Edward James Olmos got to address the U.N. These are exciting times today. I am grateful to be a part of it.

There was a sun once, it lit the whole damn sky.

OK, I'm feeling better. Got that out of my system. Don't worry, the razors are all tucked away and the sleeping pills have never been prescribed. Just heard that rain falling a bit too hard to walk the dog or walk to Beaulahland for some free wi-fi and friends and it made me kinda feel a bit locked inside, but the sun'll come out Tomorrow....

The landlady is in the big big city and a friend of a friend's dad is upstairs and he doesn't seem to care for the thermostat so much, so the place has been warm and toasty and that fun comforting noise that it makes, that subtle sigh, like it's breathing in and taking a great big breath that it's gonna store in it's body so it can let it out nice and slowly and fill the whole place with heat and gentle warmth and I love that feeling... I love that that feeling hasn't gone away all week. I may be hiding under the shroud of my red hoodie but the warmth is still there and I know that I am home and that I am alive and the ups and downs are ok. I am ok.

Tomorrow will be a good day. It will start with yoga in the living room. Some letters will be mailed and some books will be read. I'll meet a friend for coffee. I'll flirt with the oncology nurses and make a point of letting them know I exist and that there is no reason for them to be scared... I am just what they are looking for and have a fresh, new face to offer to the realm of oncology nursing. I will eat their lavish three course meal and listen to an expert who uses really big words and new acronyms that I will dissociate with other meanings but keep up the interest and pretend that I know what is going on, meanwhile paying close attention to the well dressed man and the classy looking female walking around with bottles that have names I've never read before as they're in the Vendange or Shaw family, nor do they remind me of calloused hippy feet or cute little tuxedo'd arctic birds... I'm speaking of those two that walk around with the wine bottles of course... the ones that fear not topping me off, unknowing of my novice status among the crowd...

After the free food and wine there will be friends and the wrath of khan and you know that is something that I couldn't possibly pass up. I don't believe in the no-win scenario.

Alcohol will see you through this.

(I'm not sure why the poison keeps falling from the sky. It's just seeping into the ground... contaminating the earth and everything I touch or use or try to absorb... Every drink I take from the tap is infected and I can feel it coursing my blood, penetrating each cell, seeping into my soul.

I'm not sure why I feel like I'm being quarantined right now. I don't feel it's contagious. I feel I'm still pretty useful to society... Just feeling like the eck wants my purpose disposed of. Why can't I get out of this funk???)

Life is hard right now. Life gets easy and it gets hard, and god-dammit it's fracking hard right now. It's all around me. I see people doing things to each other that scares me and makes me want to hide in the dark, clutching my dog and a book and a pillow and repeating to myself "it's all gonna be ok, it's all gonna be ok, it's all gonna be ok..." I feel like I'm the star role in some fracking self-help book right now. I don't know what happened to the fun in me... it's like it's been drained out... like those blood letters of the eighteenth century... the ones that got George Washington; they see i'm a little under the weather, so strap me into a bed and stuff me full of pipes and just start draining it all out of me, drop by fucking drop.

And it's only raining harder. It won't stop. I remember enjoying the spring. I remember enjoying time off. I remember when I had so much to do I was scared to leave the house because it meant I'd have to choose from all the fun to be had and I was afraid I'd forget to leave some fun out. Now I just can't find it anywhere. Am I getting too old? Have my serotonin and dopamine channels gone out on vacation as well?

It's like friendship has lost its meaning. It's like being there for someone has become a joke. It's like abandonment is my new best friend. I don't know... I'm probably abandoning anyone who is taking the time to read this, and I'm grateful you're here.. I guess I could just really use a friendly face right now, some friendly cheer...

Dear you

"I don't even have to pee anymore. I'm just sitting here with my dick out reading this thing." I am assuming that Jonny is referring to the Saturday Evening Post circa 1984 that I found at the bins today. As I presented it to my friends, I exclaimed, "He is so gonna be in love with me." That's what kind of a sunny day I insisted on in spite of the rain drops drop a droppin. I rented a car yesterday, a day late from my reservation, just in case I wanted to make lickity with the splitity. I have lavish plans of sitting in that coffee shop in seaside just a block from that epic arcade with all the really awful games and too much skee-ball to justify any twelve year old's desire. I want to write letters to lost loves and read about the loss of water and be grateful for not losing my mind.

I spent an hour and a half organizing binders. I don't know why that brings me such joy. There's something so satisfying with condensing divider pages and recycling assignment protocols and labelling and watching a mini post-it pad dwindle down to half its size. Some may think it's a sickness, but I just like to call it "holding my life together."

I really don't have much to write. I think I'm going to the coast tomorrow. Alone or not. I've gotta write that paper, but I'm going to say hi to that mother of an ocean we have.

Toothpaste on my teeth, there's books but I can't read.

Today marks the beginning of another spring break. Amazing how college makes you appreciate two rather inappreciable weeks of march. I'm listening to Jawbreaker for, like, my twentieth time in the past two days. Not sure if it marks the start of something beautiful of the beginning of the end. I do know that the day thus far has been relatively pleasing.

I walked out of class and worked out for a while at the gym, realizing I was too early to catch the daily show and instead was doomed to flip back and forth between Tyra Banks, Cribs, Dr. Who (with the ugly Dr. Who and that wild blonde woman, rather than the super hot Dr. Who), and a show on VH1 that went through the 40 worst celebrity quotes. or maybe the most embarrassing celebrity quotes. or perhaps the most idiotic celebrity quotes. It doesn't matter. It was a half hour on the eliptical with me gazing off stoned-like, staring at Mt. St. Helens, wondering what it was like thirty odd years ago when the fucker exploded. I kept staring at it, imagining a large mushroom cloud looming over, taking over the sky, causing the big rigs on the I-5 bridge to just start running off the edge and falling into the Willamette, as I look above and expect the tram riders to start panicking and slamming their fists on the windows, suffocating and begging to be let out high above on the wire so that they can jump to their own doom. And then I realize that the commercials are on, and wonder what Fox News is rambling about. They're always guaranteed to be entertaining.

A half an hour of this and I've watched my heartbeat jump all the way to 200bpm, then stabilizing back down at 147, my average for the day. I don't know why I didn't care much for breathing today. I just kept forgetting to do it. I'd be going 11mph and staring off past big pink, and look down and there it was: 188bpm, 194bpm, 198bpm, oh shit, I'm going to have a fracking heart attack. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. Stop forgetting to do that already.

It was beautiful outside. Disturbingly windy, but sunny without a cloud in sight. Jonny's first day at Mother's was today, and I was so eager to hear of how they kicked his ass and made him their bitch so he could feel like this was truly the place where he would grow and blossom into the gifted cook that he is meant to be. But that wouldn't be for a few more hours, despite his departure at five am this morning. I rode downtown instead, to celebrate that today was in fact the day after my favorite day of the month, new-buffy-comic-book-day. It was a great issue, focusing on Andrew, one of my favorites. Not only Andrew, but his best qualities to boot. It made me want to blow off the whole day to rush home and watch all of season six at once... like on X2 speed, where I can still hear the dialog, it's just choppy. I could back it up and review parts that I love if the need be.

I visited Floating World and requested they pick up the Love and Rockets boxed collection for purchase the first week of April when my financial aid check arrives. I walked through the gas station and Dante's parking lot, passing by the boys taking an early afternoon drink at Ash St., to say hello to old favorites at the Thai Basil cart. There I pulled out a table and chair from below their cart and unfolded, to find that the blasted wind was too ambitious with ruining my perfectly good comic book reading day. I shoved a bunch of oily hot tofu, broccoli, and bell pepper into my mouth, contemplated the four pounds of white rice and peanut sauce, and was grateful for the full belly so I instead gifted to public white can in hopes that someone from the Mission across the street may walk by with an empty belly and big, eager eyes.

To the waterfront I went, thai iced tea with soy in hand, laying across a dry patch, listening to Jawbreaker on the iPod and reading Buffy. I slept for a moment awaiting Jonny, who walked me across the bridge, both beaten and tired from a long first day. We grabbed the dog and sat in our living room, the back patio of the neighborhood bar, enjoying summer brews and roasting in the sunshine, reading and doing the Jonesin crossword. I found out a dear friend is having a horrible day, being confined to a jail cell in some backwoods redneck town in Idaho. A part of me wants to find a car to drive out and read Plato to him and sing Cocteau Twins Treasure songs, but I have to work tomorrow (and I could really use the tip money) and I know that those industrious men will succeed with escaping their predicament before I could possibly finish the adventure out there.

Jonny is trying to split hairs upon the blade of his Wüsthoff knife. I should probably finish up here now.

ETC.

Jawbreaker is too good these days. I don't know why it is that I can feel so emotionally drained and the only thing that sounds pleasing is a Jawbreaker marathon. In my daydreams, I picture myself sitting here right now in the morning, ETC side B playing and a Mimosa at my side, actually, I picture it stuck in my left hand, perched up, while I try to compensate for my home row disability with the right hand.

I want to write letters. I want to write letters everyday. I don't think I want to write a blog. This should be a letter. It should be one of a multitude, on small japanese playing kitten stationary, written with a soft purple ballpoint pen and mailed with an Edgar Allan Poe stamp. I wish I had some obnoxious shiny plastic confetti to include with it, like the gold dollar signs I pictures plaguing my wedding reception table. It'd be like I'm sending wealth in the mail, and wishes of success, both financially and in marriage.

But I never bought the plastic platinum and gold dollar sign confetti. I never bought the gold foil cupcake liners, or the dollar sign candy sprinkles, or even the bird nest veil. So these empty envelopes with just my words and no bedazzle and no flair will have to do. I hope my friends forgive me.

New Blog. Let's hope it all ends well.

Portland oh Portland, how you driveth me insane. Each February, each March, and nearly every April you cause everyone to go mad. Can't they see the daffodils are here? They are blooming everywhere, in spite of the snow and inclement weather's best efforts. In another month now the tulips will arrive... Perhaps it is the daffodils that cause the craziness. People seem to shape up when the tulips are near, so it must be a pollen thing... like it floats in the air and gets into the brain, a sort of neurotoxin that makes the mind entirely irrational.

So I've got a plan. Not 2010, but by 2011, I will be sure to plan my vacation each year for this time. I know that everywhere south of the equator is pretty nice in March. Even Fresno is nice in March. It should prove to be the perfect plan. I'll split for two or three weeks, let everyone have their insanity, come back into town, and I'll be the fresh new face and I won't have to witness the moments of their self degradation and humility.

Southern Mexico in March, the perfect plan.