Late for a Train

I Just Don't Know

2006-08-04T12:38:00.000-07:00

Hello my faithful readers. That is if anyone actually still checks the blog for updates, which I realize have been few and far between. And not very exciting. Things are not going so well lately. It seems our little friend Mandy is having a bout of depression. Something I haven't really dealt with for ten years. I mean I have my funks, things have upset me, but it's different this time. Clinical. I hate that word. I hate everything surrounding clinical depression. I hate having it. I hate that it exists. I hate taking medicine for it. I hate telling people about it. I hate people who don't have it and get all smug about whether or not someone actually needs drugs to deal with it. Last time I was diagnosed clinically depressed was my first year out of high school. And I was depressed. Really depressed. And I had reason to be. I lived in a tiny little community college village outside of Cedar Rapids with a bunch of rednecks, was flunking out of school, sleeping until one o'clock and watching TV all day. I took medicine then. The same stuff I just got prescribed now. And I got better. I pulled my life together then stopped taking the medicine and felt fine. I felt like maybe I just didn't know how to live life before and that's how come I got depressed. I didn't know that it felt good to clean the kitchen and go to class and write a really good paper and excercize and cook and have hobbies. So I got depressed. But after I got better I knew what to do, knew what I needed in order to be happy. So I should be forever. Right? And for a long time that worked. Though I hit some bumps, made some fairly poor decisions, I was doing alright for myself. Generally happy and easygoing despite poverty and incurable wanderlust. But suddenly the other day I got up to get ready for my new job waiting tables (I had quit the day care job for it) and just couldn't go. I started to cry. And I didn't stop crying. I couldn't stop crying. My eyes swelled. My chest heaved. I was afraid of my balcony and locked the door. I had to go to an urgent care mental health clinic (the free one for poor people) to make myself stop crying. But being there made it worse. People asking me if I was okay made me sob louder. A woman with an eye twitch told me I had a pretty hair color in the lobby and that made me cry. They put me in a little waiting room of my own so I wouldn't have to keep crying in front of everyone. Finally they brought me some tissues and all the Zoloft they could throw at me and asked me, "Damn, what's wrong?" And the only thing I could muster up, the only logical answer that I had and the pure and honest truth was, "I don't know."

Happenings

2006-07-06T16:55:00.000-07:00

Today, mark this down on your calendars, I finally got all of my stuff moved into one space. That's right, everything that I own is in one state. One city. One apartment. That hasn't been true since high school. When I was in college I had a lot of stuff at my parent's house. In fact I've had a lot of stuff at my parent's house since college. But when I took the road trip out here I cleared it all out and brought it with me so they could move to Dubuque. Then for the past few years i've had stuff everywhere. At one time i even had stuff in four different states. Yikes. So it feels pretty good. I cleared out the storage unit today as well as hauling all of my stuff out of the respective friends' houses who have been letting me crash the past few weeks. It feels good. I am living on my own. No roomates. No one. This is exciting! I am not saying that it won't be lonely, because it will. But i will be independent and that will be exciting. I have a lot of work to do still, but the place looks good. There is a balcony overlooking Mt. Tabor and the neighborhoods of southeast Portland. I have my own kitchen and bathroom! All of my stuff is one place! I even had a job interview this morning to be a teller at Wells Fargo. Not very exciting I know, but I kind of like the idea of a 8-5 job. And i like to spend my weekends camping, not working. So we'll see how that goes, otherwise I start a job on Monday working at a Day Care facility, which would be okay too. At least with them, I won't have to buy new clothes!

Blah, Blah, Blog

2006-07-05T19:47:00.000-07:00

So i'm a little late to pick up on things, especially when it comes to technology. The internet has been around for a really long time, at least since i graduated high school and all i really know about it is how to check my email. I mean look at this blog. I don't even have any pictures on it. I tried once to upload a picture and got frustrated after twenty or so minutes and stopped. Other people's blogs have all kinds of pictures and links and networks. I just got words for ya. I hope you're okay with that. But i feel like most of us aren't okay with that anymore. Maybe we all just have ADHD and can't handle a whole paragraph without a picture or something floating across the screen. Maybe i'm just jealous because i don't know how to make my blog flashy. I don't have a camera phone so that i can take pictures on my road trips and post them, instantly, to my blog, miles and miles away from a computer. Maybe i feel resentment in the fact that anyone can have a blog, and it seems to me that everyone already does have a blog, so what makes me so special? What makes me think anyone would ever want to read mine? Maybe no one is reading it. That's okay too. Maybe it's even better that way. Maybe then i can get away with really writing.

Not the First Nice Day I've Spent in Bed

2006-06-23T06:57:00.000-07:00

It's not quite seven a.m. and i've already been up for a couple hours. Had a bad day yesterday. Drank too much the night before and spent all day with a hangover. Pretty much just slept and watched movies. I sort of knew that night that i was going to have a hangover. I knew before i even left the house. I knew because i was going out with Michelle, who is my Very Bad Influence Friend. I know Michelle from Alaska and we drink together. I mean we drink together. One of her favorite stories of going out with me was the night we drank about ten jack and cokes at Chopsticks in Portland and sang karoake songs all night. When they finally kicked us out because we kept entering songs under fake names so we could sing more, we tried to both ride my bike home, which resulted in a lot of laughing and falling over. Anyway, we decided to go out Wednesday night and as i sat out on the stoop, waiting for her to pick me up, I knew i was going to be hungover the next day. Instead of thinking, I know they way we get together, I need to be good and not take any shots, I just succumbed to the realization that we were going to get wasted and, after three Duck Farts, end up slamming PBRs in the dugout of a Little League field at three a.m. This is the kind of attitude that I need to give up. I need to tell myself that, no I can't handle shots. I can't party like a rock star. And i need to tell myself that I can go out and party without taking shots and still have fun. I need to stop succumbing to my hangovers and stop drinking in the fashion that gives me them. It's time to get in shape! Start reading again! Mark my words, I have taken my last shot. I have had my last debilitating hangover. Never again. I am grown up. I am responsible. I like my health. I like my happiness and I do not need to take shots to have fun.

My Cows

2006-06-19T19:51:00.000-07:00

Tonight i sat out in the yard in my campchair, sewing National Park patches on the arms, an idea i picked up from my friend Kate. I saw her camp chair several weeks ago, at the Big Wu Family Reunion, a festival i may have outgrown, and it was covered with patches. I have always loved patches, especially those souvenier kind of patches that you pick up at truck stops and gift stores, but i've never really known what to sew them onto. So on our two week road trip, i did my best to pick up a patch at every stop. My first was the Badlands, where we camped in tall prarie grass and woke to a buffalo asleep not twenty feet from our tent door. We tiptoed in the other direction, to use the bathroom. The next night, i was unable to find a Black Hills patch. Unless i wanted one of Mt. Rushmore, which i didn't. I didn't even really want to take a picture of it. I just wanted to see it, from the car, and say "ahh, there it is." You have to pay to park near it, which is dumb. That night we camped on top of a hill at Deerfield Lake and a midnight thunderstorm had us down in the car in mintues, watching Anchorman on a small portable DVD player while the lightning rolled down the other slope, away from our tent. From there we endured the long drive to Yellowstone, where i got my favorite patch at the gift shop by Old Faithful. I like the patch the best, mostly because it was a gift from Steve, but also because it has buffalo and grizzly bears on it. It is my favorite patch, but it was not my favorite place. The geyers and bubble pools were cool, and an amazing sight indeed. But it was tourism hell, full of white haired ladies, needing to rest after walking fifty feet from the bus. No offense to them. I just preferred Teton National Park, Yellowstone's shy and gorgeous neighbor to the south. I got a patch there that looks like a ranger badge and i sat sewing it on my camp chair, on the banks of Pilgrim Creek while Steve fished for trout, the rushing current up to his armpits as he tried to cross the banks. The mountains there were jagged and snow streaked and reminded me so much of the Chugach Mountains, that sometimes it was hard to believe that i wasn't in Alaska. Especially the way the mountains reflected in Jenny Lake and the highway curled around it like the Turnagain Arm. We slept softly at a rustic campground and I felt surprised that it got dark at all, like we should be up above the arctic, where the sun circles the night sky. After four nights of camping and not showering, we decided to skip the long trip up to the Bitteroot Mountains, and got a hotel in Boise, where for some reason they didn't have patches. Believe me, if they had souvenier patches for the Best Western in Boise, i would so have one on the left arm of my camp chair right now. Because never before did a hotel feel so great. Well, maybe the time that Patrick and Michelle and i drove the Alcan down through the Yukon Territory and slept for four nights squished in the bed of his truck with three bikes and a full summer of fishing gear, until finally Michelle insisted we get a room in British Columbia. We showered up and went to a bar, and i began to feel sad because it was almost over. Though we still had a wedding in Victoria, a couple of ferry rides, another thousand miles and a week of playing in Oregon, it felt almost over. After that i didn't buy any more patches. I took fewer pictures. The hardest part about road trips, about vacation, is realizing that, amongst all this good time, it will someday be over. Someday it's all gonna be over.

Achy

2006-06-18T19:23:00.000-07:00

Well, I did it. I made it back to Portland, after a very enjoyable two week road trip with Steve, who left Friday on a train back to Iowa. A train that he is still on today, Sunday. He doesn't have a cell phone so I haven't been able to talk to him in a few days and after spending every second together for twelve days, it's really weird and two days of not talking to him feels like eternity. He always hints that he wants me to talk about him on my blog. To talk about how much fun we have together, how smitten I am. I've always been a little hesitant to do it. Not because I don't love him. Not because I don't want anyone to know that I love him. But because it seems a little diary-ish. But I do love him, and I miss him. I want him to move out here. To be with me all the time. So while i do my huge job hunt, I keep him in the back of my mind and I circle all the jobs that he should apply to in a different color pen. I have felt a little unsettled since he left. Stressing out a little too much about finding a job and a place to live. Both of these pursuits are done in vain on the weekends. Especailly on Sunday. But i did find a kick-ass studio apartment near my favorite neighborhood. It is reasonably priced and has a balcony. I love it so i filled out an app, but i'm not so sure they like the idea that i'm currently unemployed. I've applied for several jobs too, mostly in the baking/restaraunt biz, which i sort of vowed not to go into. But it's the easiest way to get a job fast. I can always quit it if i ever do find a job that doesn't require weekends. I don't usually like to stress out about anything, i just have a lot on my plate i guess and steve not being here makes everything a little bit harder. Long distance relationships are rough. But it's nice to be back in Porltand. The weather is amazing. Cool, sunny and breezy. Of course, while Steve was here it was all rain and fog, but summer is coming. I've been having a little trouble sleeping and wish i would have saved up some of those Sunday naps so I could take one now. Another day, when i'm feeling more wistful, i'll write about the road trip. For now, just checking in. Just telling Steve that i love him, i miss him and i can hear his train whistle from here...

When Life Looks Like Easy Street, There is Danger at your Door

2006-06-01T12:34:00.000-07:00

Last week, at about this time, i was feeling good. Amazingly good. Like i just realized i had the power to feel happy all the time and just then discovered how. I wasn't worried about money. I wasn't annoyed with work. And i could have been, i just decided not to be. I was on the brink of a road trip, of an exciting life change. My debt was paid off, i had a good car, a plan. And for some reason, my happiness felt independent of these things. I felt as though i could still be thousands of dollars in debt and car-less and bound in iowa and i would still be happy. This happiness was all manifested in the new life philosophy i took on which i can't describe any better than the "everything is going to be all right" philosophy. And it worked. I mean i really felt good. Yet still, i couldn't shake this feeling that something bad was going to happen. I tried to shake the feeling, telling myself it's all a self-fulfilling prophecy and that if i worry that something bad is going to happen, not only will it, but i will spend all that time leading up to the doom worrying about it, wondering what it is going to be. So i let it go, telling myself, again and again that everything is going to be all right. And even if it's not going to be all right, it's alright now, so stop worrying about problems that don't even exist.
Then they started to exist. My car was having a slight problem with its get up and go. Something i didn't think twice about, but that my dad convinced me to have looked at before i get on the road and break down in the middle of South Dakota. So i do, figuring it just needs like a transmission flush or something. But it's a problem, a big one. An expensive one. The kind where my mechanic looked at me with sympathy when he told me then stood there with a frown as if he wanted to give me a hug, do something to make it all better. This isn't a big deal, right? It's just a car. Everything is going to be fine. But they couldn't even fix it. I had to take it to a dealer, something about the All Wheel Drive. Something that is going to take days. Parts need to be ordered. It'll cost over a grand. It'll be over half the amount of money i have saved for the trip and it will take days out of the trip. Maybe one, maybe four. So we have to cut out some of the national parks i wanted to camp in along the way so we can be in BC by the wedding. The Grand Tetons, the Bitteroot Mountains maybe, I've never been to either one. And as for the money it'll cost. I just don't have it. I mean i have it, but not to spare, not if i expect to really move across the country within the week. So that means i have to put it on a credit card. You know, the one i just spent the last nine months paying off? Yeah, that one.
So i'm back in credit debt and i'm unemployed as of today. I'm bummed about the days I'll be sitting here waiting when i could be out in the forests of the mountain west. Whereas last week i felt on top of things. More on top of my financial situation than i ever have before, like to the point where i thought maybe i could really stop worrying about money. Now i just remember what it felt like to be constantly poor. The not sleeping because i'm up thinking about money, about debt, about a future continuously in poverty. And i try to get the other feeling back. The happy feeling i had last week. The one that i thought was entirely wihin myself and not at all tied to the situations around me. And i can't get it. I can't find it. I think to myself, Damn, i can't get the breaks. I'm just not one of those lucky people.

Free and Easy

2006-05-17T07:19:00.000-07:00

"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

2006-05-08T08:31:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-01T17:41:00.000-07:00

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!

Nope

2006-04-24T08:19:00.000-07:00

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

2006-04-13T07:47:00.000-07:00

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

2006-04-10T07:18:00.000-07:00

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?

2006-04-06T08:24:00.000-07:00

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.

No Flowers Yet

2006-03-29T08:41:00.000-08:00

As April nears, we are finally on the brink of Spring. The grass is pretty much completely green now and the sun comes up before i have to go to work and i wake with the sounds of robins. Spring is a slow process here in the midwest, but it's coming along. Only a few more weeks until the unbearable humidity and heat of a relentless summer. Hopefully i will escape the worst of it. Last night i dreamed that i was back in the Pacific Northwest, in Seattle acutally, on the shores of the Puget Sound. I was standing outside a motel room with some other people that i sensed were also from the midwest. They were very sleepy and lacked enthusasim and i got the feeling that they wanted to go back to sleep. But i was so excited! It was a nice day in Seattle and the mountains were out. The Olympic Mountains with their jagged peaks and white snow caps. Even Mount Rainier was huge and looming with snow above the city skyline. I pointed this out to them! It was all so beautiful. It's a rare thing to see these mountains, I explained to them. You can't always see them. You can't see them when it's raining. They shrugged as if seeing them was no big deal and had an air of self-righteousness like the fact that you couldn't always see the mountains made the mountains defective in some way. So the Pacific Northwest was therefore faulty. Midwesterners have this attitude about the rain up north too. They think that being around that much rain would be depressing. I have to see the sun everyday. And here, where it is sunny most of the time, everyone gets sad when it rains one day. The rain is so depressing, they moan and stare ominously out the window. In Portland it rains all the time so you just feel normal in it. And then when the sun comes out. The glorious and mysterious sun rears its shining face, you rejoice! And you do it amongst daffodils that start blooming in February and lilac bushes that are fragrant along the sidewalks right now.

Dreamers Can't Be Doers

2006-03-22T08:18:00.000-08:00

I've been living almost entirely within my own head lately. Dreaming about future plans that may never happen, taking trips to uganda to feed hungry orphans, backpacking through the forests in British Columbia, restoring a small town Iowa firehouse into a bed and breakfast that makes the best pancakes in the state. Getting married, opening a business, having kids, a dog, a garden. Decorating a small one bedroom house with a wood-burning stove. The scenarios change often. I find myself spacing off during these daydreams, forgetting things that happened moments ago and "waking up" periodically throughout the day, looking around at a restaurant full of depressed waitresses and customers who show up in the obituaries every few weeks, and burrowing back into my mind again. I know this sounds bad. It sounds, seems, and even feels quite a bit like escapism. And i guess that's what it is. I've always been a dreamer. I remember one time in first grade i was sitting at my desk, just thinking, going over all kinds of adventures and questions in my little head. My teacher snapped me awake by asking me to go check on Megan. I looked up and all the other kids were standing near the back of the room, huddled around a desk. Since when had she stopped teaching? I walked out in the hall because i sensed that's where Megan was but i had no idea really. Apparently she had thrown up in the middle of class and there was a big commotion about it. I hadn't even noticed. That's how i feel lately and i'm hesitant to admit it. I'm afraid that it sounds like i am being too passive with my life. Or that it sounds as though i am very depressed and that i can't handle being in my own life or around the people in my life. But that's not how i feel about it at all. I actually really enjoy the people in my life right now and have a feeling that my life is on the brink of becoming something great, even happy. And even if it means letting a child read four pages without ever correcting his mistakes because i am too busy placing elderberry and fireweed on a three-tiered chocolate cake at an outdoor wedding in the Chugach Mountains for the bakery i run in my head, well then i apologize. Because i really enjoy dreaming about things to come. And if i just live my life without ever dreaming about it, then those dreams are certain to never come true. Because they never even existed in the first place. And all the doing in the world can't replace that.

May you be a half an hour in heavan before the devil knows you're dead.

2006-03-17T08:54:00.000-08:00

Cheers!
Happy St. Patricks' Day.

Slainte!

2006-03-16T06:36:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is the big day. People in the midwest celebrate St. Patrick's Day with much more fervor than those in the Pacific Northwest. It's something i remember complaining about while living there. In the midwest, on St. Patrick's Day, everyone is Irish and every bar is an Irish bar. Last year in Portland a couple of Minnesota friends and I walked into a sports bar called the Jolly Roger all dressed in green and it was like a record had scratched off and everyone turned to us. What's with the green? We sighed and lamented for our hometowns, for pub crawls and green beer and taking off work to start drinking car bombs at nine a.m. But Portland definitley gave St. Patrick's Day a much needed sense of authenticity. Maybe the Jolly Roger shouldn't be draped in green shamrock lights and bright green Mardi Gras beads. I mean what's Irish about that anyway? Before we walked into that quasi-pirate bar, we had been up at a pub called the County Cork. Now with a name like that in Iowa, the pub would have been packed with people in light-up shamrock necklaces and giant foam Dr. Suess hats with green stripes instead of red. There would have been an enormous beer tent outside and a high school girl throwing up green beer by the kybos. But it wasn't like that. There was a small band playing traditional Irish music, with traditional instruments, and not just drinking songs. People wore Irish wool fishing sweaters and drank thick pints of Guiness and straight Jameson. They served fish and chips instead of corned beef and lamb stew instead of cabbage. I don't think they even had green beer in the bar. It actually felt like being in Ireland where they don't celebrate St. Patrick's Day anyway.
That being said, I am glad to be in Iowa for St. Patrick's Day this year. I am going to start the morning off right, down at A.K. O'Connors for a breakfast pint with the king of American Irish celebrating, my dad, who can drink any one of you under the table. I won't even try to keep up with him anymore. I tried one year and ended up asleep watching Darby O'Gill and the Little People by eleven a.m. But we'll have a beer or two there and then I'm heading to Waterloo with Steve where we're meeting up with some of my old friends that I studied with in Dublin. I'm very excited. Not only to see my buddies, not only to celebrate Ireland, not only to drink black and tans until i'm full, but to have a weekend. I haven't had a weekend in...hmm, in months at least. I work seven days a week and when Friday comes around I kind of get excited, I think it's a sentiment my subconciouness has held onto from childhood since really I have to get up even earlier on the weekends than I do during the week and all my days pretty much feel the same. But not this weekend. This weekend not only do i not have to work, but I'm going on a road trip. Granted it's a short one and just to eastern Iowa. But that doesn't matter. It's still a weekend, still a weekend trip. I've been excited about it all week, making mix tapes for the drive, doing laundry, smiling at random times just thinking that it's almost Friday! I haven't really had weekends since i was in Americorps and this past week i'm remembering what it was like, what a luxury it was to have weekends off. The week could just drag through itself, blending one miserable day into the next and it didn't matter because Friday always had that same feeling. That feeling of freedom, of accomplishment, of excitement and exhausted energy. And then Sunday carried with it a feeling of starting over. And not in a monotonous way, but in a fresh way. Man i really miss that. It's nice to have a little taste of that again this week. But i gotta tell ya, I can't go back to Portland and work weekends. There are just too many camping trips to miss out on. And the camping, the recreation, the weekend, is the whole reason to live in Oregon. Slainte.

Behold the Ides of March

2006-03-15T06:20:00.000-08:00

Well, today I pay off my Wells Fargo cerdit card in its entirety. Back in September it was near five grand. I managed to have this credit card active and still didn't use it my entire year of Americorps. Pretty impressive on my seven hundred dollar a month living stipend. But once i got out of Americorps it started accumulating again and the next thing i knew i was maxed out again. Cedit debt is amazingly easy to obtain without ever really buying anything. I know that now. I'm one of those people who like to learn my lessons the hard way. Anyway, that just leaves my Bank of America credit card left:

Current credit debt: $1,741.96
Credit debt as of September 2nd: $9,124.25

My estimated pay-off date for that card is April 26th. I am going to celebrate with a road trip down to Kansas City to visit my friend Mara. I also might buy a Wi-Fi chip for my laptop. That leaves the final expense. I am going to buy a Subaru wagon from the early nineties. This may require a road trip to Minnesota since people either don't drive Subarus here or don't sell them. Originally I planned on saving up enough money to just buy the Subaru with cash. But it's not looking like that's going to happen. At least not if i want to head back to the Pacific Northwest in June with any type of savings at all. And i'd like to have at least a grand or two considering how difficult it can be to find a job that pays anything out there. So i may have to take out a small bank loan to pay for the car. I'm pretty bummed about that because the main reason i came back to iowa was so i could return to Portland debt-free. So i could start fresh. But there's just not enough time to make that kind of money. I need to be back there by June tenth for a wedding and it's pointless to come back after that. But i guess if this bout of indentured servitude in Iowa has taught me anything, it's that as an adult, you are never truly debt-free. There are always bills to pay for some reason or another. I think i will feel a lot better about paying for a car, paying for the thing that will take me to the Oregon Coast and to Mt.Hood and out to the Columbia River Gorge and up to the Olympic Peninsula, than i did about paying off credit debt. So i'm learning to accept it. At least i won't be paying for a round of shots i bought at an Alaskan tavern four years ago.
So things are starting to wrap up here i guess. They are finalizing themselves. I feel happy about this, excited. In just two months i'll be back out on the road, heading west again, where the mountains and the ocean are simultaneously an hour away. But i guess i don't feel as happy as i should, as happy as i would have two months ago. I've been in iowa just long enough that i feel i am losing touch with my friends in Portland and feel closer to my friends in iowa. I've been settled in the comforts of iowa just long enough that heading back to Portland seems... well, it seems scary. I'm scared that i won't find a job and when i do it will pay next to nothing and i'll have to work on the weekends, the same time that everyone is going camping and out to the coast, all the things that i live in Oregon for in the first place and i'll miss them. I'm scared i'll get into a bad situation and have to start using my credit card again. And i'm scared of Dan. I'm afraid i'll be scared to go to all my favorite places, like the Laurelthirst on Tuesday evenings for Jackstraw, because he will be there. Just waiting to demean me, to call me a whore and make me feel guilty about everything i have ever done with my own free life.

Memoirs of Indentured Servitude

2006-03-09T07:09:00.000-08:00

The other day i got my taxes all finalized. I'm getting back a little less than usual, but it's still a nice little chunk that feels free even though it is actually my money in the first place. The thing that really distressed me about my taxes this year, though, was not how much i'm getting back but how much i actually made last year. In the year 2005, as a smart, creative woman in her late twenties with twelve years of work experience, refined job skills and a college degree, I made $14,098. What kind of shit is that? And the thing about it is that i don't really feel like last year was a particularly bad year. In fact, towards the end, I was feeling like i was making more money than i had ever in my life. Granted i was unemployed for almost a month and a half of 2005, but still. That is a ridiculously small amount of money and i'm honestly surprised that i'm still alive. When i tell people that i'm home now to pay off credit debt and i tell them that it was upwards of 10 grand, their eyes always widen. Damn, that is a lot of debt. How did you manage to rack that up? And i feel bad when i get that reaction. Like i'm someone with a shopping problem who had to make up for some kind of void in her spiritual life by surrounding herself with things. But really, i have very few things. In fact my wardrobe is so limited i can't really do a six-day workweek without wearing the same shirt twice. I don't have a car. I don't have an Ipod. I don't have any new CDs. I don't have health insurance. I have done a lot more travelling in the past five years than someone making less than 15 grand a year should, but it was never extravagent travelling. Mostly camping and staying with friends. I can remember taking my credit card to the grocery store. Taking cash advances out to pay bills. Bottom line is, the reason I got so far into debt is because i'm flat ass broke and i've been flat ass broke since college. Now i am not someone who is concerned with money. I believe that success and happiness do not follow the accumulation of material goods, but instead fall in line with waking up, going to sleep and doing what you love in between. But here's the kicker. I'm not doing what i love. I'm working random jobs to pay off my bills. And i know that if i was doing something that i love; If i was teaching writing or running my own bakery, I would not only be happy, but i would be making twice what i'm making now. And then i could do things like go to the doctor if i need to, replace my phone when it falls in the toilet, buy produce, have my own place to live, get a haircut, get my pictures developed, have a weekend. I deserve at least these things out of my life. I have earned it and i want it.

Wish Walk

2006-03-06T06:51:00.000-08:00

This weekend i dropped my cell phone in the toilet at A.K. O'Connors. That's just kind of how things are going for me lately. So now i'm waiting a few days to see if, when it dries out, it decides to work again. Until then i don't know anybody's phone number. I have also semi-recently changed email addresses and only have a few people's emails in my new address book. So i'm feeling a little cut off right now. It's kind of like being in Alaska, except without all the fishing.

Being back in Iowa has its perks. For one thing i have rekindled old friendships. I'm spending time with my cousin, Brad. I'm kicking around with people i haven't seen since high school. In some of those cases, a freindship was rekindled and then fanned out again. I saw my oldest friend's mom at Hy-Vee the other day. I serve coffee to my old little league coach on Friday mornings at the cafe. We talk about the old team and are still trying to remember the names of all the members. We were named the Larks and had peach-colored T-shirts. I like this about Iowa, it's quaint, comforting. But i just get so tired of the same streets everyday. The same buidings and the same stoplights. I guess you could argue that this could be true of anywhere. I could get sick of anywhere really. Maybe i am just a wanderer. But i think it's Des Moines. I think it's the fact that i grew up here. There is something so unnerving to me about passing by my elementary school everyday. That just seems like something that i should come back and visit, see occassionally and get nostalgic. It's not something i should pass everyday without even noticing.
On Saturday night I went out with my old friend Kori, who i hadn't seen since her wedding six years ago, but who i ran into at a bakery in Roosevelt. We used to sew together in her little apartment on University by Drake and draw pictures and smoke a lot of pot and watch the summer Olympics. We did a couple of Phish tours together and camped out in Indiana and made hemp jewlery and ate mushrooms by the campfire. She married Ben, another old friend of mine and they lived in Colorado for awhile and came back to Des Moines when his grandma got sick. One day he just decided he couldn't handle it anymore. He needed to see fly-fishing rivers and mountains and so he left. Went to Mexico, Alaska, where ever. Just off adventuring. Since Kori and i lost touch, she has been in the baking business. Learning to bake from scratch and use all natural ingredients. She had stumbled across a website for a bakery in Portland and she was impressed by the cakes, the pastries. It the old bakery i used to work for. I'd made those cakes and took the pictures for the website. We both expressed our disgust with speed scratch and bakery products that come off a truck. She said she wanted to open a little inn, a bed and breakfast type thing, in the Oregon side of the Columbia River Gorge. I said i wanted to help. We already know that we will work well togther. We used to sew together and just from being friends with someone you can tell if it would work out or not. So that's my new dream, but it's shaky. She needs to live in Des Moines for two more years and save money. I would have to do that too. So we could plan, so i could save money, so we could really be partners. That would mean two more years here. That would mean no grad school, at least not for a long time. It would still mean Portland, but it would mean Portland in two more years. I can't wait that long. If i would just sit down and commit some time to dreams, to planning them out and preparing and really making them work, then i know i could be successful and happy. But i just can't. I need to see fly-fishing rivers and mountains and i need to go out adventuring somewhere. Even if it leaves me broke and distant and cut off and feeling somewhat lost. I guess i wish sometimes that wasn't so true about myself.

Working on It

2006-03-02T07:51:00.000-08:00

I've been working on various pieces of writing lately. One is a very short story for my friend, Darby's literary zine called Other Than. It's been kind of a bear of a piece since I'm trying to cut sixty-five pages of writing into seven. This is hard for me because i like to be so wordy. I'm also struggling a little with the plague of the writing student. I studied writing every semester in college and a little outside of college too. And i studied it at Iowa, not at the workshop, but was taught by those in the workshop. Iowa finely tuned the study of writing and made it very pretty and a little exact. I like that. I feel like i really know how to write a story. I know what elements a story needs and i can tell when a story lacks those elements. But because of this i feel like i lack a sense of freshness, of edginess. Maybe i had that before i learned how to write, maybe i never had it. But i'm feeling a lack of it in my current writing.
Another project i'm working on is writing a piece to read at my friends' Sarah and Kevin's wedding in June. I'm very honored to be part of this wedding and it's fun to think about what to write because i've never really written anything like that before. But it's proving a little difficult. For one thing it's hard not to get really cliche and make refrences to birds fluttering side by side through a flowery meadow. It's also hard not to make it a reception-like speech, rambling about how awesome they both are and how this one time, it was so cute what they did and we were all like awwww, they are so cute. But i am determind to make it neither of these things. So while thinking about this dilemma, i went looking back through some of my old writing and i found something that has nothing to do with Sarah and Kevin, but that i wanted to share with everyone anyway:

ODE TO ODE
June 26,1999

By this time next week Susan Ode will be moving away from Iowa City to Utah. I just can't imagine living in this city without her. Once i was eating lunch in the River Room, gazing out at the snow on the Iowa River, sad about something, I don't remember what. Probably something dumb involving a boy, and i saw her crossing the bridge towards the art building. There was no way it wasn't her. Green coat, black hat, red and gray striped scarf. I ditched my lunch, grabbed my backpack, ran out of the River Room, through the Union and outside to the bridge, but she was gone. I sighed, sad again, and sat on a cold stone bench by the bridge to the stairs and solemnly smoked a cigarette, kicking at the snow with my boots. By the time I finished my smoke, she was there, smiling at me from the stairs. "we-he-he-helll. Fancy meeting you here." And i smiled too, because i needed to talk and i think sometimes, that if it weren't for Ode, I wouldn't talk to anyone at all. She knows what to say, when to listen, frown or smile or laugh or just shake her head and say, "Shit. That sucks, dude. I'm sorry." And never ever makes me feel stupid, even though that's how i feel most of the time. Every minute little problem of mine is as big to her as it is to me.
Ode is like my safe spot. And she's going away. Today me and Denice walked into their apartment and she was sitting there on her floor crying amongst half-packed boxes. I love her. I love that she has emotion through all her strength.

Get Those Snakes out of Here!

2006-02-28T12:41:00.000-08:00

Today is the last day in February which can really only mean one thing. March. Ugh, March. March has always been my least favorite month. People tend to look at me twice when I say that. Really? March? But March means Spring. March means warm. No it doesn't. March is always cold and the grass is still dead and the trees don't bud and flowers don't start to bloom. Nothing happens in March but winter dragging its cold brown drought through the midwest. And right when you are really really ready for it to be Spring. See, that's the tricky thing about March. With February, at least you are ready for winter. You know that it's winter and that it's going to stay winter. But with March we all have this illusion that it will go away. Except it won't. Not until May really.
Luckily, there is St. Patrick's Day.
For this reason, and for this reason alone, I am happy that it is almost March.

The Adventures of Kevin and Mary

2006-02-22T12:40:00.000-08:00

Life is full of surprises. It is totally unpredictable. The fact that i once again live in my old high school bedroom at 28 demonstrates this. The fact that last year i went from sharing a life and an apartment in southeast Portland to living alone in a tent behind a bar in Alaska to living in my old high school bedroom at 28, perhaps demontrates this even better. But for some reason, though none of these moves last year was premeditated at all, they really didn't surprise me all that much. Ever since college i have been a wanderer, an adventurer, and i don't care much to see my life as anything less than full of surprises. In fact, when i start being able to predict things, i get sad. I get scared. I feel trapped. This doesn't mean i don't make plans or have goals, it just means i get bored easily. Especially when i think about all that's out there in the world that i'm not seeing, that i'm not experiencing. I'm impulsive. Nothing about that should really surprise anyone who knows me. So i guess the best way to demonstrate the unpredictability of life, the surprises of life is by applying them to my parents. My parents are in their mid-fifties. They have lived in this house for sixteen years. My mom has had her job for as many years, my dad has had his job since the seventies. They went to the same high school my brothers and i went to. My dad comes home from work everynight, cracks open a beer and starts his nightly routine of laundry, dishes and meticulously maintaining the divine order of all the stuff in this house. My mom comes home and feels fat so she walks the treadmill and then feels bad about eating a regular dinner instead of rice cakes. She then keeps up her nightly routine of television programs, which may include taping them if the hawkeyes are on. They have never seen their lives becoming anything more than this. Sometimes my mom will talk dreamily about retiring in Arizona or some such warm place when it is snowing, but we all know they won't because her parents, two brothers and five sisters live in the midwest. I have never seen their lives becoming anything more than this. I figured they would retire someday and spend winters somewhere they can golf, but other than that, i never saw it changing. None of us did. A few nights ago my dad came home from work, from an office meeting of the slowly dwindling staff. They are closing the plant. The same plant he, my dad, has been working since i was a baby. The same place he used to take Tim and i when he had to work on Saturdays. We'd go to the Highland Bakery first and get donuts and decorated cookies and then Tim and I would play with the copy machine while he made his phone calls, did whatever he was doing there on a Saturday. They are closing it down and by the end of the year he will be out of a job. Fifty-five and not ready to retire. So just as my over-anxious mom was starting to relax a little because Mikey finally got a job (which he just quit today so you know), she has now taken back to freaking out and not sleeping due to so much worry. What are they gonna do now? They are fifty. They are too old to start over. My dad will never be able to find a new job for that salary and that vacation time. They are both worried. They are scared. I feel kind of excited for them. Can you imagine what it must be like to be unsure of your future for the first time in forty years? It must be like coming out of a drug coma. This is the time for them to have a life-changing experience. They can retire early and volunteer in some country with weird diseases. They can sell the house, buy an RV and drive from Canada to Mexico. My dad could start his own business, a freelance contractor for people remodeling their homes. He could open a bar in Ireland. They could do anything! But they are both worried. They are scared. And here I am feeling excited for them.

A Moment of Weakness

2006-02-19T12:33:00.000-08:00

I really like to think that i have everything figured out. The world, the way it works, the ways it doesn't work. People, the way they react to things, the ways they over-react to things, the reasons they don't react at all. I like to think i have myself pretty figured out too. I like to think that i know what i stand for. I like to think that i have certain philosophies that i stick to. That there are certain kinds of music that i like and certain kinds that i don't. I like to think of myself in categories. As a liberal, an environmentalist, a pacifist, an outdoor enthusiast, a fun-lover, a writer, an art-appreciator. I like to think that i have control over my emotions. When i know something shouldn't bother me, well, then it shouldn't. When i know i should be sad about something, well, then i should be. I like to think that i have things so figured out, in fact, that other people should come to me for advice. And i feel like, when they do, i should have amazing and profound answers for them. The kind you hear in movies where the wisdom of the family butler is so poetic and makes so much sense that it is, in itself, the most unbelievable dialouge. But i feel like i should be like that. I should be in control, brilliant, zen. Like the Buddhist i used to work with at a bakery who never let anything bother her. Even though we, as mere humans who struggle with emotions such as stress, fatigue, hunger and the desire to be told we are doing a good job, longed to see her snap. To freak out just once and heave the mixing bowl through the glass cake case. She never did. And maybe she did at home once or twice, but that didn't matter because none of us knew about it. It was like that tree falling in the forest when no one was there to hear it. I guess if and when i fall, i don't want anyone there to hear it. Because i like to think that i have it all figured out. And if, just if, in some small way i don't have it all figured out, i guess i want everyone else to at least think i do.