that dress looks nice on you

Painting the hearts on the rocks and typing up the fortunes was the hard part. It was the part that made me cry a little and it was the part that made Boo want to come over for a bit to see what I’d made. I had six little polished black rocks with imperfect bright red hearts painted in the center of each one. In a few hours time they would be holding down carefully worded fortunes and a row of lucky numbers.

You are free to move on.
Lucky numbers: 8, 4, 6, 3, 18, 71

When I moved here. See. Right here. I want to justify what happened by pointing out that I was a mess when I moved here. I was bruised. Bandaged. It was all I could do just to go to work. I felt like I’d landed here, accidentally. Spit out of some tornado that was mostly made up of hurt feelings and no where else to turn.

You can have fond memories of bad places.
Lucky numbers: 8, 4, 6, 3, 18, 71

Really. I’m guilty of holding on too long. Of allowing mud dragging door mat hit by a bus rinse lather repeat. I had forgotten that I’m pretty much the best version of me that ever has been and instead was remembering that there is a little insecure place in me that thinks I don't deserve very much at all. That little insecure part of me is willing to put up with a lot. And it’s also willing to not be so little sometimes.

You did the best you could.
Lucky numbers: 8, 4, 6, 3, 18, 71

So round two happened. An affair. And there I was settling for a hundredth of what I deserved. Talking myself into thinking it was all these things that it wasn’t. Mainly: harmless. And then come a Tuesday in December everything crashes into a brick wall that I didn’t see coming even though. Geeze. I should have. We both should have. It was a lot of disbelief and confusion. The kind of crisis that shows what you are made of. I’m made of some pretty good stuff.

You are forgiven.
Lucky numbers: 8, 4, 6, 3, 18, 71

The next month is not a blur. I wish I could say it was a blur. That it was dulled and almost forgotten. But it is not. It was a mix of me being a superhero and me being unable to get out of bed. Disbelief. Deer in the headlights. Vacant. Swimming pools worth of tears. Finding a place in myself that could love something enough to make a rock solid decision in the face of a thousand voices a thousand feelings a thousand possibilities.

You are always welcome here.
Lucky numbers: 8, 4, 6, 3, 18, 71

Just like that it stopped. The out of control. The chaos. The toxicity. A few more changes. Adjustments here and there. I came across the calm I had been searching for. A quiet place to gather my thoughts and get over the last couple years, the last couple months. I beat myself up a lot. For being a door mat. For making bad choices. But no more. August 4 was the day I let go. I freed myself. I put 6 happy ever after fortunes out to change the lives of who picked them up but mostly to change mine. I made pretty offerings to other wise dark places and poked around in the idea of forgiveness. Forgiveness of him. But mostly, forgiveness of me.

You have purpose.
Lucky numbers: 8, 4, 6, 3, 18, 71

i don't laugh like a french man

Although I've been accused of it.

Here is me trying to leave myself a voicemail about a sales lead I saw while driving around with my friend Chris. In the time it took me to dial the phone, I had forgotten the name of the business. This was funny only because it followed a two minute conversation about how I didn't need to write it down because I would "totally remember" it tomorrow. Yeah. Either that or completely forget it in, like, 20 seconds.

So, here ya go kids, this is me laughing while Chris mocks me.

with a side of punk rock

Oh. I’m tired.

It’s a good tired. Hard day’s work kind of tired. Don’t be fooled, I wasn’t out in a field and my job does not typically require that I sweat. Instead, I was inside juggling about two dozen things including clients, proposals, coffee breaks, contracts and insertion orders. It was three o’clock before I would have guessed it was noon. And come 7pm I was a little cranky, a little hungry and a little accidentally calling one of my clients Karen when her name is Kristen. When you become a liability, it’s time to go home.

Isn’t it weird that I have a real job? I read some of the stuff I write and think, DANG, amazing that I’m employed in, like, a professional position and, like, I make good money and stuff. Because I write about boys and stitch fake teeth. And want a yurt.

I more than want a yurt, actually. I am OBSESSED with yurts. I’ve been rallying the troops, i.e. my coworkers and friends, to start a yurt colony with me. We’d each live peacefully in our own separate yurts and all pitch in and buy a Command Yurt or Yurt HQ where we can gather to watch movies and bake cupcakes. I have the yurt brochure on my desk and make yurt jokes at every opportunity. Chris accuses me of being a yurt instigator. I’m not sure what that all means, but if it has the word yurt in it, I consider it a compliment. Abby found a yurt tree house today so now the colony is looking for woodland property instead of grassy fields near babbling brooks. This whole idea kinda makes me want to start a cult.

Other obsessions: large scale graffiti style knitting, hamsters, scoop neck t-shirts from Old Navy and if soy milk is giving me stomach aches.

I was asked to write two, count ‘em, two stories for the next issue of Gender F. Gender Fuck You. Gender Flunked. Gender Fabulous. Gender Fun! I said yes so eagerly that you’d think they’d negotiate on rate. “Yeah, um, we’re not gonna pay you this time...” I have yet to get the full details on the assignments but I know this much: one of the stories will be on how hipster girls are getting together and getting their craft on. That’s almost as good as it being on yurts. Because if there is one thing I know, it’s ah, being crafty.

What else. What else. I got my hair cut. Used Rock, Paper, Scissors to efficiently settle a dispute. (I lost.) Saw As You Like It in Volunteer Park. Had a sno-cone. Pet a really cute dog. Oh! Chris threw his gum out the car window and it somehow landed on the hood. I got a picture! I made a t-shirt. Finished an iBook cozy and checked on airfare to Europe. Oo la la. Tres jujujuju oui oui oui le croissant, non?

someday somebody's gonna ask you

He said he’d been antisocial and spent the holiday on his roof watching the tops of fireworks peek over trees from miles and miles away. I spent it on my neighbor’s deck watching them explode over Elliot Bay and having my mind wander sometimes to what he was doing and sometimes to how fortunate I was to be surrounded by tipsy friends with s’mores on the horizon. The mint julep had made my cheeks pink from two sips and I bet he was drunk, too. The booms were setting of car alarms and my friend Laura’s daughter was eating red licorice by the handful. Everyone looked so pretty in the darkened glow of red, white and blue.

All the important people were there. Laura. Boo. Charity. Charity is new. Met on 43things and have become fast friends. Together the four of us form some dream team of smart girls with special talents. Laura can speak French and makes an amazing macaroni and cheese. Boo works graphic magic and lights up a room. Charity is an emotionally smart genius who can knit you anything your heart desires. Me. I can paint and embroider dish towels and turn any problem into happy. If only we could fly. If only we could bring about world peace with well designed flyers, little sweaters and pasta dishes. I musta done something right to have found these girls in a city this big and this sometimes rainy. Apparently, I've had at least three lucky Seattle days.

I made a flag cake and baked beans and bought more food than I needed . Way more. Like four times more. I was sending leftovers home with everyone who had a spare arm to carry a zip-lock bag or covered dish. Laura and I made a trip to Costco for the occasion and while a giant jug of ketchup seemed like a good idea in the moment, it’s now turned into a lifetime supply. Same thing with graham crackers. Same thing with veggie dogs. Same thing with jell-o. In event of nuclear holocaust, I’m totally covered. Boo promised that next time I have a party she’ll follow me around and secretly put back 2/3 of everything I have in the cart.

It was my second Fourth of July here. The first one, I was a bit wide eyed and homesick. Remembering very clearly my last 4th of July in Minneapolis. Remembering riding my bike. Remembering the mosquitos. Then, from my perch on Capitol Hill, I watched the fireworks while playing with Sophie’s hair and wondering how exactly I had landed in Seattle. Figuring the reason would make itself known in time. And my only job was to be patient and recognize it when it crossed my path. That’s me still, one year later. Keeping an eye out and sipping summer drinks while sitting on the porch.

15 minutes

My first ever published story is in the Sunday paper. I thought I'd kinda hate it when I saw it in print - - but I don't! Hooray!

Thanks to Boo for her ass and connectionz.

I'm blowing my $125 paycheck on booze! Bottoms up! Pun intended!

Read it here.

P.S. Boo's ass and I are trying to make the Top 10 list of most e-mailed articles on Monday. Sooooo ... if you'd be so kind to click the little "send this article" button at the bottom and forward it to a few dozen of your friends, that would be super fantastico. I really think that the Times needs to have the word "butt-love" in it's Top 10 something before turning 110 years old. Don't you agree?

hope you get to be happy sometimes

It was a work project. Taking Polaroids of all the touristy spots for a client in Chicago. We spent 3 hours on a sunny Friday afternoon walking around the market and looking up at the Space Needle. We made friends with the fish mongers and Chris wished out loud for us to run into a Mariner’s player as we photographed Safeco Field. He said it with such youthful optimism that I asked him if he was nine. A giant 9 year old. Who could drive. And was entrusted with a company credit card. It was my little retrobutionary zing for saying the reason he didn’t have a myspace page was, and I quote, “because I’m almost 30.” Yeah.

Kay held the bobble head we had made tour mascot and I snapped the pictures. I had to search all over the city for a Polaroid camera the night before. The only one I have left is almost 22 years old, black with a rainbow stripe up the left side and uses flashes that haven’t been made since the early 90s. Everywhere I looked had film but no cameras. I struck gold at Walgreens and $40 later I felt like the luckiest girl in the world. It’s sliver and space age and cool. We shot almost 20 pictures. 20 times standing in a three person huddle, squinting in the sun and waiting for the picture to turn from drab olive green to the not quite kodacrome colors we all remember Polaroids to be. Wanting to shake it. Eyes peeled for recognizable silhouettes. The immediate critique of the shot. “Yeah, that’s a good one.”

We ate lunch at the pier and I paid an extra $2 to upgrade the fish in my fish and chips to halibut instead of cod. Cod reminds me of poverty and I always think halibut is the fish with both eyes on one side of its body. But that’s flounder. Hey. Had I been able to upgrade from french fries to tator tots, I woulda done that too. We all used a lot of ketchup and talked about regional names for things like tarter sauce and grandma made Jell-o salads. Chris is the right mix of alpha male and goofball. Kay and I play side kick and offer up the right amount of jokes at his expense to keep him in line. Come 3 o’clock my cheeks hurt from smiling. They were a little sunburnt, too.

Kay and I encouraged Chris to take us on a trip through the drive-through Starbucks on the way back and this is where you can take a second to hate me for lobbying for something so lame as a drive through Starbucks. It’s not like I don’t already go there almost every day with Diana anyway. But you know. Admitting it is a little sketchy. I told Chris I wanted the giant passion tea and that is exactly how he yelled it into the speaker. We decided to pay as a team since our triple threat outings were getting to be common place. Kay got this time. I’ll get next.

Stepping off the elevator on the 8th floor carrying a pink iced tea the size of my forearm, I felt almost guilty for the afternoon I’d had. I worried that my sunburnt cheeks and salt water smell would give me away and I’d be questioned about how dare I have fun at work and don’t I realize we’re in a revenue crisis. But instead. The quirky Polaroids getting the best of me and a revenue crisis no where in sight, I plop into Steve’s visitor chair and slide them across his desk. They are great he says. Asking if we had fun. Asking who took the pictures and who’s bobble head it was. Offering tips on the proposal and wishing us luck in closing the deal. Telling me to keep copies so when we win sale of the month, he’ll have handouts for the first time ever.

tiny things are always pretty

I’m people watching. Drinking an iced mocha that surprisingly has cinnamon in it. And eyeing the people that make up the ever changing line. It’s a mix of khaki and hipster. Baseball hats and tattoos. The universal flip flop is ever present. (It’s the official shoe of Seattle.) This cafe is weird in two ways. One. It’s a Mexican-decorated cafe that servers up Cuban specialties and is owned by a French man. I’ll pause here for you to reread that.

Pausing.

And two. The barista looks like he should be featured on America’s Most Wanted. I’m not sure what his crime would most likely be. I don’t think adding cinnamon to iced mochas is anything that would lead to a life on the run. He looks like a bank robber. Or maybe someone who kidnapped a trophy wife for a few hundred thousand dollars. No one got hurt, but now he’s living out of a 1979 Chevy Impala and nervously smoking cigarettes while looking out his motel room window.

I’ve never been that dangerous.

And here’s proof: I kinda want to bake this weekend. Baking, by nature, is not a dangerous activity. Even whipping up a cake version of Piss Christ or a giant penis doesn’t elevate baking to a dangerous art. It smells too nice and there is something meditative about creaming butter and sugar together. Well. And then there is frosting. Butercream can only make people happy. It’s metabolically impossible for frosting to make you cry. Even if left out in the rain. That song was total bullshit. So I’m trying to think of a cupcake design that turns my crank and is G-rated so I can bring a batch to work on Monday. So no boobs. No butts. I gotta be appropriately creative. I will turn to this girl for inspiration - she is the world’s premiere baker of video game themed cakes. Absolutely amazing! Her house must smell really really good. And I bet she has a chorus of eager friends always sitting outside her front door.

Smelling in the smell. Anticipating the frosting.

I was worried for a few days. Maybe almost a week. WebMD got me. It was Saturday morning and I was putting on mascara like I do pretty much every morning and huh. One pupil is bigger than the other. Trying to think back to every eye I’ve ever gazed into, does this just happen? Or is it weird?

OH.

It’s weird all right. All the causes were terrible and the one I shared the most symptoms with was a brain tumor. I didn’t really think that I had a brain tumor. But I didn’t really think I didn’t either. I waited about a week and that eye got a little red and I finally sucked it up and made an appointment. Not a brain tumor. Not all that unusual. But instead, it’s an autoimmune thingy that can be no big deal or something to keep and eye on but the big news was I’m not dying. At least not from my odd sized pupils. So whew.

Fun links to say goodbye!

If you want to see my eyeball of near-death: click here.
If you want to see world's best hamster: click here.
If you want to see a bunny reading a book: click here.