spring is white and fluffy

Lesson of the week: Egg replacer is like magic.

Boo is vegan and into metal. She also bakes cupcakes. Jessica and I got in on the action Tuesday night and low and behold if the cupcakes weren’t as tasty and softer than regular cupcakes. If softness is a criteria for your cupcake enjoyment, I highly recommend giving egg replacer a try. It comes in a box and for $1.49 you have enough egg replacer to last a lifetime even if you have some weird longevity gene. It’s an amazing value.

Cupcake Quote Of The Week: “I wonder if you could bake a really big cupcake. Oh wait, that would just be a cake.” I said that and sadly, I wasn’t even drunk.

Saw a rock n’ roll show. Saw The Boy On Whom I Have A Crush at that rock n’ roll show. We stood by each other and yelled things over the music. Drank beer and smiled a whole lot. I blushed a couple of times. Said a couple of silly things. Had an impure thought or two while yelling into his ear. I wish I had sang a Barry Manilow song when he prompted me to sing a little something for him. I woulda picked “Can’t Smile Without You” or maybe something we coulda disco’d to like “Copa Cabana.” I would have called him Tony the rest of the night and bought him a drink with an umbrella in it. This is my favorite. The happy that comes with potential. Even if the potential is just for another Wednesday night. Giggly and smiling on the bus. A reminder that happy is perennial. Just like the grass.

My favorite thing about this boy so far: his smile.

I’m moving in less than 7 days. My apartment is a sea of boxes and my cat is nervous. The new place is lovely. Full of windows and charming. It’s in Queen Anne and handy to everything. Right now, my current place, only handy for 3am drug runs and not much else. Oh wait, handy for getting mugged. And for throbbing techno beats. There are plenty of those around. But soon there will be squirrels and morning walks and pleasant smells instead. I’m going to get a plant and maybe a fish. And I’m setting up an art space so it’s easy to paint and sew. And less easy not to. Once I’m settled in, I’ll invite y’all over for dinner.

What I’ll make: potpie. Because it’s the funniest sounding food.

I had the most wonderful email exchange with my boss. About a job in marketing that opened up and my curiosity if the new girl, meaning me, could apply. Apparently I can. And apparently, he was hoping I would. He’d still be my boss (!) and tomorrow we’re going to coffee together to talk details. It’s not even the money or the neat new title. It’s the chance to have a job where ideas are the currency because I’m rich with those. I can promote and sponsor things in my sleep. I can hang a banner with my eyes closed. If I get this, man, again - Proof! Perennial like the grass. You can’t keep the happy down. It rises to the surface like air bubbles.

Bloop bloop bloop.

learning to name things

All the milestones hit at once. I turned 35 on Saturday. Said goodbye to my proclaimed Year of Debauchery and toasted in The Year of Conscious Choices - designed solely for the purpose of keeping me out of trouble. Tomorrow is my one year anniversary of leaving Minneapolis. The yellow Ryder truck, the small Montana made me feel, the cute punk rock boy I was lucky enough to kiss. A few days after that I started my new job. Met the then strangers that would become my best friends. Met the boy I still can’t put into words. Realized quickly that a year lease is a really long time in a sketchy neighborhood. I remember getting here and thinking Seattle was all possibility. That I was going to change someone’s life. That I had changed mine. Three hundred and sixty five days later, I still feel the exact same.

Potential / potently.

Birthday events like comic book panels. Moving the story right along. A midnight donut run with Boo where we listened to a homemade fart CD. Not our handiwork, mind you. Charlie’s Greatest Hits. By track 62, I was having a hard time catching my breath. By track 85, Boo was curled up into a little giggling ball. Next. A mad chase to follow a shopping cart race. Waving and yelling as Chris and friends rode past our window, red shopping cart bouncing wildly behind them, pirate flag flapping in the breeze. Later. Someone else's birthday party. It was attended by a hodge podge of artists, musicians and indy business types. A faded rock star working on a feedback opera. A tattooed man in grad school for nursing. There was a rice crispy treat cake with frosting and mashed up Whoppers that was so dense you coulda killed a guy with it. An accidental puddle of fake blood on the driveway. An art piece that had a life of it’s own.

Birfday / burpday.

It ended quiet enough. Hidden away at the Hideout. Drinking drinks and talking talk. Further proof that Boo knows everyone: I met a boy there, friend of a friend of hers. We raced each other picking up ice cubes with straws used as chop sticks. Smiling wide the whole time. Somewhere in the middle I had that sudden awareness of how I was sitting. That shy nervousness about how close our hands would get. Plans for Wednesday. Or the Wednesday after that. An open invite. A certain rematch. When we said good night he held my hand for a second too long and looked me right in the eye, “It was nice to meet you, Heather.” Stomach knot. Butterflies. “Nice to meet you, too.”

Gun-shy / gushy.

I think this is where I say thanks, kids. For the birthday and for the year. For taking in the Midwestern girl and overlooking my inability to use hip hop slang correctly. For the happy hours gone awry and the ones that didn’t. For being the bright spots in an otherwise dim job. For letting me befriend your friends. For driving me all over this twisty city. And then for driving me all over it again. For giving me a sense of family when mine is so far away. For honest to goodness, no holds barred, without question being there for me when I needed it. For making me feel like the kid sister. For making me feel on top of the world. Y’all are living proof against the idea that Seattlites are cold and aloof. You could melt ice caps. Or boil water. You’ve made me feel right at home.

Aww shucks / awe struck.

pretty on the blue

My last post. The last two paragraphs. Have lingered a little. Hung around. Disappointed. Disappointed that I’d have those feelings. Disappointed that I’d write them down. I shouldn’t miss him. And there are many days where I don’t. But I haven’t written those days down because they don’t lay on the page as lovely. Longing is pretty. Missing is pretty. It’s veiled and soft somehow. It’s starring out a window. But the sour that boils up in me some days. That isn’t pretty. Every time I try to write the why of it, it spits out juvenile and clunky. Filled with and thens. And then, and then he, and then. I imagine myself catching my breath between accusations. Finger pointed. Wet cheeks.

So I don’t write it.

Instead it gets blown away when I’m looking for my keys, or lost in the mail. It gets packed away and forgotten about or handed off in a knowing look. It gets dropped or kicked under a table. It gets left on the bus. It falls out of my pockets when I sit down. Or stand up. It washes off me in the shower. Twirling down the drain. Married to the soap suds and smelling like cherry blossoms. You can’t always tell the vinegar by its smell. And sometimes the pretty reeks of sugar beets. My hair reaches the middle of my back now and see. Time heals all. All, time heals. Heel. He. Eels. Hey kid, it’s. Time to move on.

Off. On. Off.

On.

Had drinks and tiny appetizers with Boo and a Boy With A Very Small Head. This was overheard: I’m a hermaphrodite. This was said out loud: It was a different fucking Algerian. Number of tofu puffs consumed: 2 dozen. Number of chopsticks used on both ends: 1 pair. Number of people with dark hair: two. Number of girls: one less than three. Number of mixed drinks consumed: too times two. Did you know that in the movie, he kills her because she is terribly inconvenient. Know what else, I’ve been terribly inconvenient. So there. At least I wasn't murdered. At least. That didn’t happen. Or at least I don't think it did becuase whenever you breath out, I breath in. Positive. Negative. Positive.

NeGaTiVE.

I think I just took a step sdrawkcab.

Nah. I’m moving right along.

Another afternoon there was Brad and me. We were both wearing dress pants, slacks I said, trousers he laughed. And talking on a conference call. All his papers were dog eared and we walked away with a $100,000 contract to split. Banana split. He said she swirled her ice like Yahtzee. And I told him I thought the word sticky was a terribly ridiculous thing to have a conversation about. With the window down my hair spun around my head. An updraft (like fingers) brushing my neck. I wished for my sunglasses as we drove toward the city, across the floating bridge. I wanted to see if I could walk on water. I wanted to see if I’d sink or float. I wanted to see if it would recognize me after all this time.

Because that’s my home town.

Where everything is fluid. Where everything bobs with the waves.

look at what you did

Coming. Slow. Again. It’s been two weeks and seems like everything I wanted to say has been mushed together. In a ball. Like Play-Dough. And the happy parts are yellow. Like happy parts always are. Like street signs and banana taffy. Yellow like the sound of birds. Or yellow like taxi cabs. Yeah yellow, just like that.

There were parties. Two to be exact. But only one where I accidentally dressed like a French hooker. Black and white striped shirts and fishnets have a way of doing that. Instead of changing I made extra effort to throw my hips into my walk. Swish. Swish. Boom. Boom. I had my hair in folded up pig tails and drank red wine with a sense of purpose. The other one, we made cupcakes and I smiled wide like a 6 year old the whole entire time. Frosting with a pastry bag and choosing from trays of pretty to top the hill of buttercream. I smelled like sugar for two days. It was in my hair. My earlobes. That little place on my neck.

And then.

I made art and my hands were pewter from the wire. 5th Annual. Shrinky Dink. Invitational Art Auction. First ever. Time. I was invited. I drew colorful fancy-filled leaves and watched them curl and wiggle down to 1/5 their original size. Sticking the wire through the tiny holes and twisting it carefully around the branches of my stolen twig in the exact perfect way I’d think a pink polka dotted leaf would grow. Still more wire to hang it. Silver metal washers for balance. A few felt leaves to add a little soft. It was the biggest piece in the show and was bid on before I left. Smiling I said goodbye and wondered whose window it would be casting shadows from.

And then.

Procrastination caused an accidental meeting and a cat hair covered couch caused an accidental phone call to The Boy I Try Hardest Not To Think About. (Tuesday) Cleaning out the art space on the absolute last day we could clean out the art space, his mussed hair made him look like a little kid. He had on brown corduroy pants. The perfect brown, really. Cadbury if creamier. The color of the 1975 light brown M&M. I got my things and left as quickly as I came. Waiting for the elevator, I thought about the rock I held in my hand for two days straight and let the wave of missing him come and go. (Then Friday.) Transferred to him, I said nooooooooo even as it rang. Even as he answered. Even as he said there is a place in Fremont that takes unwanted couches. I mostly just wanted off the phone. I mostly just wanted to have been transferred to Chris. Where a call about a couch is a call about a couch. And not where a call about a couch is a call about a couch, ya know? Hanging up, I quickly started flipping though pages of market research on wine drinkers in Western Washington and figuring out ways to spend $10,000 of someone else’s money in a month’s time. When really. I just wanted to look out the window and remember how we’d laugh and kiss and how his hands would slide all over me.

But.

He looked so beautiful in the half light of my bedroom. Making me laugh and scream and pull his hair all at. The. Same. Time. Wine drinkers are 25 times more likely to visit us online than non-wine drinkers. The print buy is twice as much, with twice as much free. How do I write that? Let me try this. This. This connection could have powered a small city some days. Electric as I fed him licorice in a dark movie theater. Sparks when I'd kiss his ear. By adding online you increase your reach to wine drinkers by 35%. For just 10% more investment. How. Can. You. Say. No? He was pulling down the elevator gate as we all waved good-bye. And I was walking backwards for a second. Looking for the eject button and instead turning off the radio. Thanks for your time today. I look forward to working together to further promote and brand Washington wines.

rescue

I think I was coated in gunk. Picture this: a penguin in an oil spill. It slowed me down. Dulled me. Changed my colors. I tried to think it was just a job. Some stress and a few sleepless nights. But it was really 40 hours of my week and then some. It’s one of the building blocks of calm. For as much as I claim it doesn’t, my career plays a role in how I define myself. I knew right away I wasn’t going to last there. By the end of week three I was already plotting a way out. I had applied for another job by month four. I started doubting myself. I started doubting my career choice. Second guessing everything I did. That was a recipe for a slow decline. I’d slump into Wendy’s office, open my eyes real big and ask her to take and peek and see if my soul was still in there. It was. But barely! I started looking for a job on December 2. I had one by the middle of January.

Thank GOD.

It’s been two weeks at the new place and I’m kinda in awe. My boss is supportive, encouraging and funny. My old boss - - eh -- not so much. This guy smiles and heaps on the praise! He’s asks me my opinions on things because he values my experience and perspective. He said that! Out loud! To me! WHO IS THIS GUY? My grandpa reincarnated? I keep expecting him to pull a quarter out from behind my ear! So the 9-5 is loads better and the gunk has been power washed away. I’m working my ass off and enjoying it. Best yet, my soul is firmly attached to my body and instead of plotting a way out, I’m plotting ways to move up.

Group hug anyone?

Went to the Seattle Central Library with Boo today. She had some research to do for an evil punk rock quilt project she’s up to her eyeballs in. I had high hopes of working on my kids’ book. Neither of us got much done. Instead we worked out an elaborate plan for a fanzine and are now in search of a leggy cover model wearing a Gucci dress to pose as if she were on the verge of cutting someone’s break lines. OH! It’s gonna be a good magazine!

Here is a picture of the Seattle Central Library:


Here is Boo’s first words upon entering it: Wow, this sure is fancy bum storage.

Boo also thinks Oprah is the only one who can bring about world peace.

A week has made a big difference in my mood. I think it was the fight I picked. Woke me up a bit. It was also a conversation I had with an unlikely confidant. And maybe time is kicking in. I'm typically pretty cheerful and it’s thankfully proven hard to hold down. I’m moving on and best part of that is I’ve given myself permission to do it. I hadn’t been. Thought I should feel like shit for a while. But I know that’s not needed and more importantly, it’s not respectful of The Events or lessons I learned to wallow in the discomfort. So I’m letting myself rebound and dang if I haven’t rebounded. I’m like a superball.

OH’Grady’s gonna have fun with that line.

Boing.

pull the ripcord

I am employed again! It’s like working for NASA. I went from a much smaller paper to a much larger paper and the amount of high tech gadgetry and sales support is making me feel like I’ve hit some sort of work jackpot. You can listen to your email over your phone and your voicemail over your email. This may not sound like much. For all I know maybe 75% of all companies offer this fine feature, but my email and voicemail have never met before and if I wanted them to it would have required the help of a grumpy IT guy and a tape recorder. But OH, It doesn’t end there! Customer management programs are chit chatting with Outlook. Emails and attachments are automatically saved in the customer program via seamless address recognition. We drink Tang every morning and wear silver sapcesuits around the office. There are zero gravity rooms and the coffee is freeze-dried and crunchy. Seriously, pinch me.

Plus, I somehow got paid already and I’ve only been there since Monday. How do they do it? Seriously. HOW DO THEY DO IT?!?

Went to see King Kong. Otherwise known as the worst movie ever. Save your hard earned money, Jimmy. I didn’t hold a gun until I was in the army, Jimmy. I had a drill sergeant. I was a man, Jimmy! We were in the theater for what seemed like three days and the monkey still wasn’t in New York.

One of my many problems with the movie: there are like 10,000 prehistoric species of animals on Skull Island and they take the angry gorilla as their prize. THERE WERE DINOSAURS, Jimmy. Dinosaurs? Big gorilla? Dinosaurs? Big gorilla?

Can you hear me slapping my forehead?

Who picks the gorilla?!?

I’m experiencing post KONG stress disorder. It’s been 72 hours and it’s still pissing me off. Matt and Boo were good movie buddies though. Our collective squirming and snide comments got us through. We were like a team that went in and played a good game. We high fived when it was over. I poured Gatorade over Boo’s head. It was fun.

Tonight we’re going to a show. Matt has some pals playing in this kick ass zany hip hop meets punk rock aerobics kind of band and I’m nearly wetting my pants in anticipation of the night’s festivities. It’s gonna be a rip roaring good time and I may even take a shower and attempt to look “cute” for the occasion. Although. Eh. Don’t count on it.

The Events are still making themselves known. It’s all left field kind of stuff lately. Things I overhear or stumble across will remind me of it. It’s like high tide when that happens. It washes over me and then slides away. Anger is the most persistent of the tides. I picked a fight with my costar and realized, rather quickly, that it wasn’t a smart move but I didn’t know how to get out of it once I was in it. It’s easy to blame him. It’s easy to spew mean mean words that have my full backing and support only in the moment. It’s part of this process. Part of accepting what happened. I hear that it’s normal. I hear that it passes. I hear that you can stay angry for a long time while this settles into you. And that’s where I am right now. Sometimes fine, sometimes not. The scales will continue to tip though. The fine days will stake their claim to me and the angry ones will turn to understanding and peace and calm instead. It’s all deep breaths and one day at a times. Picking up a little meaning here and there along the way. Filling up my pockets.

fly away

I’m on day, um, forty-five or something of my surprise unemployment. Seems like when you give your two week notice at the smaller paper to take a job at the larger one - - they aren’t such a fan of that. Suddenly you’re some kind of “media spy” or “security risk.” I got the same day boot topped off with no pay. The boot part isn’t so bad. I actually needed a few of the days off and have kept busy the rest of the time. The no pay part though - I pretty much hate it. I am broke. Broke broke broke. It’s temporary as the new job provides me with a pretty nice raise but until that glorious first pay period ends, it’s cereal in a bag for me.

Today I was cheerful. I have this idea that I shouldn’t be but was only momentarily concerned. I’m blaming it on hormones or full moons or my triumphant return to caffeine. Seems too soon after The Events to have this return to happy. But whatever the reason, it was a gift to feel like myself again. It’s been a while. I’m not usually a down in the dumps kind of person but it got pretty bad. My friend Laura said I seemed hollow. That’s how I felt. I was sinking into this circumstantial depression and couldn’t pull myself out of it. My friends were worried. My mom, calling 10 times a day. Brooke was the unexpected hero in my story. She crafted a phrase that turned on a lightbulb and helped me shift from depression into grief and while that sounds like not much movement at all, it was like an earthquake. Here is what she said: “You know in your heart what you need, you just have to give yourself permission to hear it.” That was about two weeks ago and today, happy. Funny how that works.

A 4pm coffee break was the icing on the good day cake. A rendezvous for a phone charger lead to seeing a bunch of people who I have sincerely missed. My old department turned out for the event and as I saw them file past the window and into the coffee shop, I was all smiles. Hugs and the same old jokes and lots of laughter filled the half hour and the residual smiley lasted well into the evening. I know they are a total buncha toads but dang if I don’t love ‘em.

This writing thing is coming back slowly. I feel rather rusty. Clunky. I know I’m ignoring the pink elephant in the room, but I’m not ready to tackle it just yet. Writing about coffee breaks and paychecks seems to be all I can muster for right now. And that’s probably a good thing. The dust needs to settle and I need a break. Some calm. Some peace. So it’s the surface for this girl. The ocean floor is safe for now.