Nope

Hey friends. I just want to apologize for the lull in communication lately. I no longer have internet access at my house so it is hard for me to find time to update my blog. But have no fear. I am here now. The past week has been busy. I bought a car, a Subaru wagon of course. The last car that i had was a Subaru wagon. It was a 1987 and i bought it for seven hundred dollars and drove it around the Kenai Peninsula for several months before selling it for the same price i bought it for. It was such a great little car that i vowed to never own anything but a Subaru ever again for the rest of my life. Anyway, this one is from 1998 and it's maroon and has four wheel drive and is a kick ass camping trip car. It's got a rack on top and will look good with a canoe on there. The worst part about it was that i had to get an iowa drivers liscence in order to get car insurance. I was not happy about this at all. In fact i cried a little bit on the way home from the DMV, where they wouldn't let me keep my old Alaska drivers liscence even after i told them they could cut it in half. I said, "Please can i keep it?" and the woman said, "Nope. Welcome home." And i narrowed my eyes. We'll see about that.
I also took this past weekend off. Originally i planned on going to Iowa City to help with some tornado clean up, but i never made it. I went camping near Elkhart, Iowa instead with some friends. I had a good time but drank way too much and didn't really eat anything and ended up being sick all day sunday. Yuck. Someday i am going to outgrow the raging party mandy, but part of me doesn't quite want to, despite how awful it can make me feel. I've been thinking a lot lately about growing old and how, inevitably, i will. Part of me wants to embrace this, to enjoy every moment of my life and really experience all that i can. Part of me is just scared shitless.

Canoe

So i decided today that i'm going to buy a canoe before heading back to portland. I have always loved canoes and have always wanted one. There's just something about a canoe. The way it lazily and quietly cuts through the calm water of a lake. The way it looks perched on top of a car, the feeling it gives me seeing it there. I always think to myself, ah that person is lucky. They are going canoeing. How nice. Even the word itself. Canoe. It is the most beautiful word in the English language. Canoe. Camping options really open with a canoe too. You can cross mountain lakes and camp on the other side. You can access places that other people can't, making them more remote. A canoe just needs to be part of my life. I was looking into buy one a few years ago, but it just never seemed plausible. I didn't have a car to put it on. I didn't feel right spending the money on it when i hardly had enough to pay phone bills. But now feels like the right time. It also feels like the right time for a Golden Retriever is coming too. But not yet. Not quite yet...

I Heart National Forests

I have been feeling this overwhelming desire to be in the mountains this morning. Now that Spring is here and the outdoors are appealing to the point where i have a hard time spending even an hour indoors, I'm starting to feel the bug. The camping bug. The backpacking bug. The hiking bug. Last night i dreamed that i had a little mountain restaurant. I served only breakfast. Eggs cooked anyway you like, applewood smoked bacon, potatoes cooked in a campfire, Stumptown coffee from the french press and fruit of the day, usually avacado. That's it. That's all i served. It was a tiny place, basically my garage, but it was cheap and everyone in town loved it. I drove a white subaru around but also had a pick-up truck that some friends were borrowing to move furniture. When i woke from this dream i wished that i was waking up in my tent, near a waterfall, or maybe just a mountain stream, somewhere where i could hear water. When i was making my morning coffee i wished i was making it over the campfire and drinking it in my camp chair, looking out over a mountain view, the air crisp and cold, my feet resting on a boulder in hiking boots. When i read my book in the kitchen this morning, waiting for breakfast to cook, i wished i was reading it in the woods, that breakfast was sizzling on the camp stove. When i was driving my car through Urbandale, to the library, i wished i was driving on a mountain highway, listening to String Cheese Incident with the window open and the smell of the earth growing through snow.

Champagne?

Current credit debt: $0
Original credit debt: $9,125.24

Well, my friends, I did it. Yesterday I sent my last payment to my last credit card officially taking me out of credit debt. Back in September, when I first started out on this mission to eliminate my debt and figured i would accomplish it sometime in April, I looked forward to it desperatley. It was going to feel so good. I just knew it. I knew that it was going to feel good. Other people assured me of this, especially around January when i felt like it was never going to end, this working and working and giving all my money to some evil lender i have never met. That is going to feel so good when it's all over, they would tell me. And i hate to disappoint you all. So i'm not going to. It feels really fucking good. Exactly as good as i knew it would feel and better. Yesterday, after i wrote the check and slipped it in the mailbox, i walked to work. It was a nice day, in the upper sixties and it smelled like suburban spring, like thawed ground and fertalizer, a nostalgic smell. I felt like running. I felt like dancing. I felt like knocking on people's doors and saying, "Guess what? I'm out of debt!" I felt like skipping work and playing frisbee golf, a sport i don't even like to play. I had a nine hour day ahead of me and i couldn't wait for it to get over, to open a bottle of wine out on the back deck and enjoy the sunlight until eight-thirty and put my barefeet up on the railings and say "ahhh. That feels fucking good." But nine hour days are long and when eight o'clock rolled around i was just tired. So tired. I drank a beer on the four season porch and read that james frey book, tried to stay awake long enough to go for a drink with my friend Sandy in town from Seattle. I was so tired i almost forgot to tell my parents i made it out of debt today. When i did my mom said, "Well, we should be celebrating. We should open a bottle of champagne." Then she went downstairs to watch Lost. I didn't make it to ten o'clock. I snuggled up in bed and slept for a solid ten hours. Which was exactly how i wanted to celebrate. It felt really fucking good.