Free and Easy

"One child has been born
an Adventurer, with a heart of gold.
Don't let her good looks try and fool ya,
She's an ancient soul."
-the Big Wu, Make Believers

Well, my time here in Des Moines is really starting to wind to a close. I'm at a point where i've stopped making To-Do lists and have started doing the things on the lists. I'm scheduling in my remaining evenings so that i'm sure to hang out with everyone, do everything i wanted to do while i was here. I have a little over two weeks left. Four of those days will be spent camping out up at Harmony Park in Minnesota with some girlfriends for a music festival. The rest of the days will be spent working, packing, barbecueing with my grandparents, trying to make it to Living History Farms or the Science Center or canoeing around Gray's Lake, doing all the things there actually are to do in Des Moines but i never did because i was working all the time. Mostly those things won't get done now either. I feel excited. I feel the way seniors in high school do in May. Like i really don't want to put any effort into either of my jobs right now, but i also don't have a terrible time making myself go to work because i know it's almost over anyway. So even the depressed whinings of the Urbandale Cafe waitstaff seem cute somehow like Awww, i'll miss the way you let mis-stocked ketchup bottles ruin your entire day. I feel excited about the road trip. Steve and i are going to camp along the way out west. We'll set up tents in the Badlands, the Black Hills, Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons and the Bitteroot Mountains. I'm excited about stuff like showering at a truckstop, making coffee over a campfire, wearing the same clothes for three days, forgetting about stuff like deodarant and face wash and looking in the mirror. I'm excited about roadmaps, and wildlife sightings and taking pictures out the windshield and that little sunburn that you get just on one side of your face and on the arm that hangs out the window. I'm excited for Sarah and Kevin's wedding up in Victoria, British Columbia. I'm excited about driving up through the Olympic Mountains and sleeping in a hostel bed and taking the ferry over the Straight of Juan Defuca and flashing my old passport. And oh, i am just so excited for that feeling of brief freedom. With all you need right there in your backpack. With the only thing on the agenda is getting some food and drinking a beer and sitting back in your campchair so that the sun warms your face while you listen to a mountain stream rush past your campsite that cools the air to the perfect napping temperature. And i am excited to be back in the Pacific Northwest, back in P-town. Back amongst the adventurers. I guess, as content as life has generally been in the past few months, since credit has been paid off and the car has been purchased and i'm just waiting around, spending time with my loved ones, i've been feeling a little uneasy. Not because i'm nervous about the move, about the uncertainty of it. But because i've been nervous about the lack of uncertainty. Sure, having a good savings and knowing where your next paycheck is coming from is really soothing, but i think that once you reach a certain level of security, you just make up stuff to worry about, to get upset over. And i like it better when things are just a little unstable, a little unsure. Not only because that leaves the door open for all kinds of possiblities, but because it is only then that i feel i am truly experiencing life.

Sunday Nap

Yesterday, after a typical whirlwind, busy day at the cafe, i left work and headed home where i figured i would lie down and take my routine, every-Sunday, three-hour nap. Ahh, the Sunday Nap. The king of all naps. I once thought that if i could somehow sell this nap, say to people with insomnia, i would be a billionaire. It is that great of a nap. So great, in fact, that i often feel better rested after this nap than i do after some entire nights of sleep. It is the best rest that i get all week. And yet, somehow, i sort of resent this nap. Every Sunday, as work kind of winds to an end, i tell myself that i am not going to take a nap today. Today i am going to go fishing. I am going to go mushroom-hunting. I am going get some things done around the house that i have needed to do forever. See, Sundays are a precious thing. They are good for so many things. They are a good day to work, actually. I make a lot of money on Sundays and yet it is still rather laid-back because it is Sunday and Sundays just have that vibe. Yet Sunday is a great day to have off too. To sleep in. To make a giant breakfast of blueberry pancakes and bacon and cantaloupe and coffee. It is a great day to lie in a hammock and read for like five hours. Yet it is also a good day to do laundry, to clean out your closet, to go canoeing. So, even though it is good for napping, it is great for napping, I feel bad napping. Like i am wasting my time. There is always so much more i could be doing on a Sunday afternoon. So for the first time in five or six months, i got off work and, telling myself i wasn't going to take a nap, i actually didn't. I took a shower and headed over to my friend Kori's house to help her plan her garden. To drink beers in the sun and watch the dogs bark at each other. I felt envious of her, as i always do, even though she is going through a divorce and just put one of her dogs to sleep last Friday. I felt envious of her garden, of her garage full of dry cement she will never use, of the artistic way she has arranged pictures in her living room, of her house, of her dog, of her job, of her independence. See, i have often thought of myself as a very independent person. But i never really have been. I have never really lived by myself or completely supported myself. I have always had roomates and shared living spaces and have always depended on other people for fun and a reason to cook a meal. I have been feeling particularly dependent the past eight months living with my parents, who have been a huge financial support for, well pretty much forever. I know that in order to have this life, this house and garden, i have to stop moving around for awhile. I have to pick a place, probably a place like des moines where things are cheap and jobs actually exist, and stay. Then i would just get restless and sad and wish i didn't have so much stuff. That if i didn't have all this stuff i could just get up and go whenever i got bored, which is about once a year really. Today i feel tired. Maybe because i didn't get my nap in. Maybe because i drank too much at the bar last night, trying with Kori to figure out the answers to have both. Both independence and love. Both security and complete freedom.

Faces of Debt

I realized a long time ago that debt never really goes away. It just changes form. My attitude about debt changes right along with it. A few years ago, the first time i was up in Alaska, i took out an $800 cash advance and bought a car so i could tool around the Chugach Mountains and explore Denali. I never once regretted it and i don't now. Several months later i was at a bank in Portland taking out a cash advance to pay my electric bill. That made me feel dirty. Shameful. For some reason this seems backwards to me like i should have been okay going into debt to stay warm rather than go play, like that is a more justified reason. Especially to those hoity-toity people who have never really had debt and group all poor people into one category- the kind that drain your tax money with welfare and food stamps; the kind that take your change and buy booze when they should be buying food. I think that if i were a poor person, i mean really poor, like jobless and homeless, I would be the kind of person who begged for change and bought booze instead of food. I'm not saying this because i'm an alcoholic. I'm not saying this because i think these people are right for buying alcohol with your hard earned nickle. I just think there's a difference. There's something awful about not being able to provide your own basic needs. Something shameful and dirty that makes you feel like less of a person when you can't even buy food, you can't even pay your freaking electric bill which isn't even very much really. But not being able to provide your own fun, well shit, that's not a big deal. Who can afford their own fun these days? That's what borrowing and begging and finding twenty dollars in a book at the library is for!