Signs you may be ready to leave your twenties

10. The word "club" makes you break out in a cold sweat and you don't own a single halter top, a curling iron, or a push up bra.

9. You spent two weeks looking for the perfect commuter bag, that was age appropriate and didn't make your back/shoulders hurt, then bored all your friends with a running monologue about the features of said bag.

8. You recently purchased a "skort" from an outdoorsy company because it was "practical," and you wear clogs almost every day.

7. You think guys in their mid-twenties are cute until they open their mouths and say something. Anything.

6. You can't sleep without melatonin, valerian, benadryl, wine, or some combination therein.

5. When a kid starts screaming at a restaurant, your first reaction isn't to smother it with a paper bag. Babies start seeming endlessly fascinating.

4. One night of stoned grazing causes you to gain a whole pound. Jogging starts to seem like the only viable option for fitting into your pants.

3. Someone mentions the latest 'it' band playing at the Showbox and your first reaction is "who?"

2. You compliment your 60-year old coworker on her outfit from Chico's... and you mean it.

And the number one reason....

1. You're spending your birthday dinner at an all-organic restaurant with your husband and mom, because that's what you wanted to do.

This Vagina-American needs some hair of the dog

On the cusp of my 30th birthday, things are looking awfully bleak. On a personal level, life is a-ok. I just had a champagne-fueled birthday party, where I may or may not have engaged in a lurid display of my finer dance moves, and I'm about to head out on a European adventure like the yuppie I am. I have a sweet Hobbit house and am hemorrhaging friends and loved ones. I'm pretty much the Scrooge McDuck of joy right about now, diving in my giant pit of luck and imported chocolate.

The bleakness, my friends, is not personal, but is affecting me personally, as I'm wont to internalize such things. The election, the economy, the war--it seems to have whipped up a shitstorm of anxiety among my peers. I don't think it was a coincidence that my party made haste of no less than ten bottles of bubbly alone, in a Gatsby-esque attempt to drown whatever discontent is gnawing at our temples, etching permanent worry lines into our faces.

With how bad things have gotten over the last, gee, eight years, we of the liberal salon set were smugly sipping our over-priced macchiatos and gleefully planning our victory outfits for inauguration day. Now that She-Ra, Princess of Hicksville has entered the arena, we're running scared. I can only speak for myself, but it isn't even the prospect of a McCain/Dumbshit with a vagina presidency that sends me into a crying jag. It's the idea that the American public, having lived through the Bush years, would blithely turn around and vote in another pair of bass-akwards, cronyish, fear-mongering, racist leaders. It's the idea that my fellow countrymen would invite more of the same against their own self interests? And for what? To keep gays from getting married? To keep 16-year olds from getting abortions? To keep their taxes down? Or to simply keep a half-black man out of the white house?

If fear and ignorance end up winning out over rationality and progress yet again, I don't know that I can continue living in this country.

A rush of love to the head

Trying to write the entire story of evilcat and povertyrich's wedding would be like stuffing an entire Christmas ham into your craw. Impossible. It was too rich, too lush, too lovely, too crazy and too indescribable. So here I'll commit the snapshots: the little vignettes that stick out in my mind.

Standing in Kamaria's house with inumerable girls--gorgeous, smart, strong women talking about makeup and hair and sex and life and love--giggling and singing and playing with the baby, eating toast with brewer's yeast and drinking gin and juice while we prettied ourselves for the main event. And then, evilcat's arrival. Snapping her up in her corset and crinoline, helping her through the dress and standing there, while Pohaku cried behind the lense of his camera, looking at such a breathtakingly beautiful bride. Then all of us jumping on a trampoline (and not a Mormon in sight?) in our wedding finery.

Processing through the woods to "Sympathy for the Devil" played on acoustic guitar and banjo by Chelsea and her girlfriend, emerging on the bank of the stream to see 200 people beaming down at us from the bridge and across the creek on folding metal chairs, holding their breath in anticipation of seeing the bride and groom. Seeing Po out in the creek, up to his knees with that massive camera. Catching Alissa's eye, and seeing Presley on her hip in his bow tie and suspenders. Watching the creek run past, hearing the vows and reading (without throwing up) what I'd written about these kids to all those eager faces.

Eating tacos on hay bales with friends I hadn't seen for years. Laughing and eating and drinking a compostable keg cup full of champagne until I was past the point of caring that I was on the verge of a wardrobe malfunction. Dancing in the dark to 80's hits and country songs I don't know, almost falling down on the uneven ground, and laughing and laughing.

Watching Zeb take mushrooms and setting off into the dark to find Rachel only to find a woman named Marigold who talked to me for half an hour about the strange twists life takes, until she brought me to a giant pot of hot soy chai, simmering under a tent. Leaving the chai to continue my quest, but being waylaid by Shoshanna by the fire. Staggering off into the night with a punched can lantern to the other field, where I finally found Rachel asleep in the motorhome.

Watching hombrelibre puke up Gatorade and breakfast burrito on the side of the road outside Junction City, taking the wheel and driving almost to Portland, then both of us napping in a rest stop when my eyes started to cross.

Spotted yesterday on the bus...

...the most fetchingly nerdy couple I have ever laid eyes on.

She had milky white skin liberally adorned with freckles, coke bottle glasses and light brown wavy hair that fell past her butt, held in place by a ridiculously large irridescent butterfly clip. But her outfit was even more amazing: a baggy light pink sweatshirt, intense pleated mom jeans with tapered ankles and a bright purple leather fanny pack worn over both articles, making her look not unlike an overgrown six-year-old from 1989.

He was in a white polo shirt, almost white khaki pants and white tennis shoes, his baby gut straining at the pants, giving him the appearance of an angel gone to seed. His accessories were less angelic, however, as he flashed large yellow gold rings shaped like horseshoes and a tasteless goldtone belt.

They read the paper together, he on one side of the comics, she on the other, and made snarky comments in the sort of distinctively smug nerd voices developed from years of communicating only with one's parents and being reassured that they were "too smart to be popular."

I wanted to sell them as indentured servants to South Park. Trey Parker and Matt Stone could copy them intricate detail for detail and have another hit on their hands.

What to do on the bus when you can't read

My leetle bus riding experiment has gone swimmingly well. It takes longer, but my stress level has dropped considerably. In fact, on Thursday I ended up driving because I felt like ass and it was raining, and the resulting commute wrecked my physically. I was so tense and angry on the way home (at 2 p.m., I might add) that my one consuming thought was, "I wish I was on the bus right now."

The only problem with the bus is that I get violently sick if I read in a moving vehicle. Heck, I tend to get car sick no matter what, but reading really pushes me over the edge. To keep the ralphing at a minimum I have opted to spend my trips staring. Out the window, at my fellow passengers, at the molded texture of the plastic on the seat in front of me--you name it, I've stared at it.

More fun though, are the games I play while staring. My first diversion is a game I like to call "If there was a nuclear holocaust and you had to repopulate the earth with the people on this bus, who would you pair together, and why?" Let's just say my neuvo earth village would be highly interracial.

I also like to play "makeover" where I mentally redress and rehairstyle my fellow passengers. Only one rider has remained unscathed, and he is so painfully fashionable I'm hardly qualified to stand in the glow of his vintage reproduction Raybans. Naturally, he works at Bellevue Square. Boys that hot and gay always work retail or bartend or pursue whatever occupation gives them the best opportunity to shoot lasers from their soul-piercing eyes.

Today I played a new game, courtesy of my pink mini Ipod, which has languished, unused, since I stopped working out at the gym. As we rolled through town I scrolled madly through my playlist to find an appropriate soundtrack for the voyage. Cast in my own little movie I moved in dramatic form with the music--slowly turning in repose over the sweep of Keane, bouncing in the early morning sun to Ereland Oye and even sucumbing to Bright Eyes' 'Arc of Time' as we crested the 5-20 bridge. Bathed in the blinding reflection off the water, barely separated from the seagulls who glided past, I closed my eyes and felt, if only for a minute, like I was flying.

Whipped

When you don't sleep because you simply can't sleep, you become so close to madness-so intimately intertwined with her, that you slip into something like lovers. Madness and you; you and Madness, strolling hand-in-hand down sandy beaches with heavily-lidded eyes, weaving your fingers together to erase where one begins and the other ends. You're a darling couple. You really are.

I'll give you something to cry about.

The only thing worse than feeling sorry for yourself is when you want to punch yourself in the face for feeling sorry for yourself. Nothing ruins a good sulk like the little voice inside your head saying, "but really, you have it pretty good. And there are people in Africa starving. And think about Iraq. And shit, you even have it better than some of your friends, you SELFISH WHINY BITCH."

All that aside, I will temporarily remove myself from the hierarchy of pain to indulge in the most self-indulgent thing I could possibly do: blog about how hard it is to be me today. Try not to throw up in your mouth.

1. It took me one hour and fifteen fucking minutes to get to work today. Otherwise known as going 5.76 miles per hour.

2. I'm the fattest I've been in years. My clothes don't fit right. I feel like a hovercraft. Like the Koolaid man. Like a whale with a glandular problem. I mean, sure, there are literally thousands of people sitting at the DMV right now who are fatter than me. But I live in thin-land and all my friends are pocket-sized people and I walk, on average, three miles a day and how the fuck did I gain seven motherfucking pounds in three months? HOW? And have I mentioned that I'm hungry all the time so me on a diet is just fucking delightful? If you thought I was moody before, take away my food and I'm really, really, really 'pleasant.'

3. I apparently can't sleep like a normal person anymore. I now sleep roughly six hours a night. Fuck you, mind.

4. I'm a mediocre copywriter.

I wish I were a man. No, a raccoon. No, maybe just a jellyfish, adrift, blissfully unaware and boneless; my tentacles waving as I made my way under the heavy covers of the sea.