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.

I'm a damn liar

I didn't take the bus the other day. Despite my best intentions, and a really heart-felt blog post that all three of you who read this were privy to, my fat ass stayed comfortably in my car seat for the past two days.

In my defense, I "needed" to drive yesterday, insomuch as we headed to my mom's after work for some home-style cookin' and a little "So You Think You Can Dance." As a one car household, we "needed" the car to get home from said mama's house.

A word about SYTYCD--it just might be therapeutic. My mom, a clinically depressed emotion-whore is back on the Zoloft sauce, so one could argue that the dolls are lifting her spirits. Me? I think it's the dancing. I made her watch SYTYCD last week for the first time, much to her grumbling as it didn't involve torture, insect copulation, sensationalized news or any of the other depressing-ass topics she seems to gravitate toward on television.

And did she like it? You bet your sweet Mary she did! As so eloquently stated above, the woman feeds off emotion. She'll rile people up just to parasitically feed off their feelings. And what, I ask you, is more feeling than dance? Throw in the fact that it's a reality show and thus is obligated to highlight the dramatic inner monologues of the participants and you have a recipe for OCD household fun.

It's not just fun for her, either. Watching this sort of show with my mother is pretty entertaining for me. Just imagine witnessing someone with the unmasked, unwalled responses of a child, the intelligence of a highly-educated adult and the attention span of an ADHD teenager and you have the general idea. I've always said that I never fully understood my mom until I started taking hallucinogenic drugs. Once I did, I could imagine seeing the world the way she did and I've been slightly more patient with her ever since.

In any case, these Wednesday night gatherings are becoming something I really look forward to. We eat dinner, go for a walk, then watch the dancing while Hombrelibre semi-drunkenly heckles us from the other couch.

My mom said that last week, after the show, was the best she had slept in a long time. This week we pulled away from her house watching her pop-and-lock on the front porch, her arms waving, her grin positively lighting up the night.

Save me a seat on the shortbus. I'm comin' aboard.

They've finally broken me. I am broken. Not heart-broken, not house-broken (that's a whole 'nother story), but traffic broken. I am only so patient and my patience has worn through the proverbial toe in my sock of life.

Bad analogies aside, I really am resigned to do something, or rather attempt something I've been avoiding for some time: namely, ride the bus to work. It wasn't the cost of gas that broke me, although it's utterly outrageous. It wasn't my devout environmentalism at play. It wasn't even the time involved. Quite simply, it's the fact that I am too "delicate" for my commute. I get carsick so easily that more of my drive is spent concentrating on not puking out the window than actually focusing on steering my car. The stop-and-go, go-and-stop jerking combined with the ever-present Seattle drizzle makes me literally sick. And the copious amount of dead raccoons along the side of 5-20 doesn't help.

I've avoided the bus thus far because, let's face it, I'm lazy and I hate being bound to other people's schedules, even if those "people" are Metro transit. Cars are the ultimate symbol of independence, at least as far as I'm concerned. I didn't learn to drive until I was almost 21 and I spent much of my youth either on the bus or being ferried around by my patient friends. I hate relying on others. I hate being a burden on others. And I hate asking for favors. So I essentially spent my teen years embroiled in constant guilt and discomfort whenever I had to go anywhere. Call me crazy, but the bus carries some negative connotations as a result.

But tomorrow morning I will set out to trek the .4 miles to my bus stop at 7:39 a.m. and arrive at 8:48 a.m. in Bellevue, a full 48 minutes past when I should technically arrive and at least 18 minutes past when I used to arrive. Long and annoying? Yes. But after spending nearly an hour this morning in my car, struggling with nausea and feeling rage seeth up into every crevice of my body, I am willing to try.

Travel Whore

We're going to Europe. Eastern Europe. Or really, more accurately, Central Europe since the fall of the Iron Curtain. Prague, Krakow, Budapest, Vienna. It's almost all I can think about. I'm like a masturbatory teenager but instead of sex I have a one track mind for Prague.

My mom instilled the travel bug in me early. Sure, all our furniture was picked up off the street or from other people, sure we didn't have a properly working toaster or a tv for much of my childhood and sure our bathroom sink didn't work and we had to brush our teeth in the bathtub but damnit, we traveled.

When I was little, travel meant camping up and down the Oregon Coast, living out of our tiny honda, aka "Little Blue Horse," and making our way to Ashland for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. When I got older we ventured further south to California, and then, when we were finally above the poverty level, we made two epic voyages, paid for by many years of savings and birthday money. First we went to Hawaii when I was in 7th grade and then to England when I was 16.

For people at our income level, this sort of travel is almost unheard of. But my mom made it happen. When we went to London we only had the money to eat twice a day--the breakfast that was included at the B&B and then one meal out, typically consisting of a sandwich. My sister and I complained bitterly, as we were walking roughly 10 miles a day on too few calories, but I have to give my mom some serious props for getting us there to begin with.

I went again to England and Scotland when I was 17, funded primarily by my first job at the University Village QFC and weird fundraising efforts like playing an extra in a movie that was never officially released.

And then there were the two trips to Tijuana, Mexico to build houses for homeless families taken my sophomore and senior year of high school, funded by a conglomeration of my parents, my extended family, myself and the church. While not vacations, per se, they certainly expanded my vision of the world.

All that before I was 18. And I just kept going after that. I've been ridiculously blessed and lucky. I pushed Hombrelibre on this trip. I really did. We can't really afford it and we're stretching our vacation time to the max. And we just bought a house, so it's doubly stupid.

But you only get one life. And I don't want to spend mine without adventure. And I have a second job for a reason: to blow it all looking at castles.

Small moments of beauty

Last night, as I was driving to Everett, I was listening to NPR and heard a piece on these ornately carved, sacred Russian bells that have lived at Harvard for 80 years. The 17th century bells were saved from Stalin's wrath by an American industrialist, who sent them to Harvard, where they're played by a roving team of students who refer to themselves as, I kid you not, "clappermeisters." Maybe it was the rain and the way it seems to stir my maudlin pot, but I started crying a little, right there in the car. There was just something so beautiful about jaded teenagers carrying on an age-old tradition of playing large, cumbersome bells. I pictured them, pushing the pedals with socked feet, up in their tower above the tree-lined campus. And then they played the theme from Harry Potter on the bells and I just lost it. It's a wonder I didn't drive off the road.

This happens to me more than I should probably admit. These times when I'm quite literally overwhelmed by beauty; when my heart seems to seize in my chest and blood rushes to my face and my fingers.

It's both a gift and a curse to feel this much, this easily.

"Prada is never funny."

This was the feedback my fellow copywriter gave me. And I'm glad she did since I spent the other night knee-deep in virtual Prada. They're gorgeous bags, they really are, but I'll admit some relief when I switched to Fendi and later, Christian Dior.

With fashion copy, much like fashion itself, less is often more.

This is a hard lesson for those of us who lean toward the hyperbolic and too clever-clever. If you have the ability to spin words, to feel them vibrate off your tongue and onto the page in snappy little couplets, it's hard to reign yourself in. The impulse to show off, to prove that you are the literary equivalent of an Indy 500 driver, is strong indeed.

But few people want to read that shit. I mean, sure, we all love a Douglas Coupland novel, with its nuevo-slang and self-actualized ironic imagery. And I get postively wet for Tom Wolfe's journalistic rantings in his older novels. But by and large, so much of maturing as a writer seems to come from relaxing and pulling back--not hitting your audience over the head with one wordy line after another.

And copywriting is a challenge unto itself. Cramming meaning and clarity into a few lines is an exercize in restraint. Churning through descriptions, assembly-line style, when you're dog tired is another. The later the night gets, the more I want to resort to the weird and amusing. But couture, even couture that has little hand-sewn rainbows and clouds on it (for the low, low cost of $2 grand) is dead serious.

This is all good for me, though. I feel like it's a test. In the same way that others jog or go to boot camp, I am seeing what I'm made of.

Baby Steps

Yesterday, when asked by a friend of a friend what I "do," I paused, and then, for maybe the first time ever answered, "I'm a writer." Not, "I do this but I WANT to be a writer," or "I am hopelessly attempting to be a writer" or any such disclaimer. I said, "I'm a writer"and then went on to describe what I write.

Of course I felt guilty, as if I didn't deserve the word. As if I shouldn't besmirch the same lauded title that could also be attached to Dostoevsky, Tolstoy or, heck, J.K. Rowling. In my head, on loop played the same obsessive thought: Am I a writer? I mean, I get paid to write now, but does that make me a bona fide writer? Does one have to be paid to write something more substantial than articles about remodeling and descriptions of couture handbags to be a writer? Or would even writing books qualify me? Would I ever comfortably classify myself as a writer if I wasn't also living in a flat somewhere, subsisting on coffee and cigarettes, living a half life of endless nights and manic fits of creation? Can a 'writer' be comfortable?

Another night of not sleeping. Tonight, I'll take a pill.

Go, go gadget arms!

I tend to overextend myself. And overextend myself. And then suddenly snap. Because I am both extremely efficient and a consummate procrastinator I often think I can handle just about anything thrown my way. I always get it done in the end, right?

Well, this theory is about to be tested, along with the outer reaches of my limits, because I have signed on to do freelance work for a fashion Website. In addition to my 45-hours at work per week and my daily commute of 1.5-2 hours, I will now be cramming in about 10 hours a week writing copy for this semi-startup. All of which has to be done on the weekend.

I really, really wish it was the fall and not summer, a time that I like to spend generally lazing about during my off hours. I wouldn't have taken the gig if it weren't for the fact that I could really use the experience. Fashion copy opens up a whole new world of options for me in the future.

So there it is. Always feast or famine, right? At least I'll have extra money...and no time to spend it. So we'll see how long I last.

Hope for America?

The American public finally voted for the right guy last night on American Idol. Instead of putting the predictable, simpering, vanilla crowd pleaser on the throne, our fellow citizens voted in the scruffy rocker. For some reason this gives me hope that Obama could actually win. Maybe our country isn't completely lost. Maybe, underneath the layer of fat and excess, ignorance and greed there still beats the collective heart of a people who desire a true leader.

God, I hope so.

You have questions, I got answers

What are five things on your to-do list for today?
1. Edit shit.
2. Write shit.
3. Call people back.
4. Answer e-mails.
5. Look up marshmallow recipes online.

What are five snacks you enjoy?
Bumble bars, clif bars, string cheese, pears, broth.

What five things would you do if you were a billionaire?
1. Pay off my house and my sister's house, and get houses for probably 10 to 20 other friends, preferably right by my house. And set up full-paid college funds for all of my friends' kids.
2. Give each of my family members a million bucks.
3. Buy a house in Mexico and Hawaii and let my friends stay there whenever they wanted.
4. Give a lot away to Habitat for Humanity, The Evergreen State College and whatever charities I felt like supporting on any given day.
5. Get massages every single week, have a personal trainer and on-demand chef and go to dinner at Tilth at least once a month.

What are five of your bad habits?
1. Picking at my teeth in public.
2. De-wedgifying myself in public.
3. Swearing in front of children.
4. Leaving used tissues places other than the garbage can.
5. Correcting people's grammar/pronunciation.

What are five places where you have lived?
1. The house I grew up in, Ravenna neighborhood of Seattle.
2. The dorms, Oly
3. The moldy Westside apt. I shared with the Midget in Oly
4. The nice Eastside apt. I shared with the Midget in Oly
5. Hombrelibre and my apt. by Turtlebread in Mpls.

What are five jobs you have had?
1. Bagging groceries at QFC in University Village.
2. Canvassing door-to-door for WashPIRG on the clean air campaign.
3. Painting apt. buildings
4. Selling cameras
5. Doing phone interviews with people living in Alabama who had chronic health conditions

What three people do you want to tag?
The Midget, Knitsybitsycycler, Chipmunkvs.finch

Needle Stickin' Daddies

I've been giving some thought lately to getting acupuncture. I'm into all that hippie/alternative health shit and with my lemon of a body I figure it's good to try anything that could be even somewhat helpful. Want me to drink aloe vera? Done. Take probiotics? Of course! Choke down fish oil, chromium picollinate, multi-vites, l-tyrosine and milk thistle? Every frickin morning! I'm beyond drug cocktails at this point. I've moved on to full-on drug highballs.

So poking a few needles into my face or wherever else they want to stick them sounds pretty reasonable. Hell, it sounds downright exciting. At least it did until I talked to hombrelibre's mom this weekend and she told me about her recent acupuncture experience, which was positive and all until she caught herself going postal on people at dinner parties from the heady rush of having all those emotions released.

I'm a little shaky on the whole principle of acupuncture but from what I understand it's supposed to unblock energy flow in your body, and essentially remove those impasses. Which is excellent for releasing emotion, but bad for tourette's syndrome-like outbursts. And as anyone who knows me will attest, I am somewhat prone to the outbursts. I spend an inordinate amount of time looking for water to wash my foot down with. I even once had a boss who made me put a post-it note on my desk saying "Does it need to be said? Does it need to be said by me? Does it need to be said now?" Suffice to say, I'm scared of releasing any additional blocks. What little blocks I have seem to have kept me employed and barely passable in society. In the land of the giant mouth, I am Queen.

On the other hand, I have been stuffing a lot down lately in the ol' emotional barrage that's been my reality. Seeing as how I moved and had two friends die in the course of two weeks I've had to compartmentalize a lot of my feelings just to keep chugging along. I'm no physicist but I cling to the theory that an object in motion can't fall.

I said I was no physicist.

So maybe some unblocking is in order. Maybe I should woman up, toss back a few, have a stranger slap a few needles in my temple and get ready for the crying catharsis to begin. And if you get a drunken-sounding phone call from me rambling about the beauty of life and how much I love you, just indulge me.

Black Monday

My grandmother died yesterday. It wasn't unexpected, but it still hit me like a blow to the chest when my dad called me at 7:30 a.m. and relayed the news in a shaky voice. I was at work, in the middle of writing an e-mail, bragging about how the bionic woman was still with us. But she wasn't. The strongest woman, the ultimate farm girl, the powerful physical figure who I was often compared to had left her shrunken, broken form for somewhere better.

I am not a highly religious person, but I am a believer, and I believe my dad when he said he felt her escorts come to get her as he held her head in his hands. And I did not doubt, looking at the shape on the bed that was so clearly no longer her, that she was gone. I have had the fortune of making it to 29 years of age without seeing a dead person, as those who I have lost were not lost in my presence, but I calmly broke that barrier yesterday, looked into her lifeless eyes and said goodbye.

There were moments of great joy yesterday. Everything seemed funnier than usual and I found myself in hysterics at the strangest moments--like when we found the unopened bottle of morphine and half the family fought for it while the other half wouldn't let us have it. Or when one of my aunts relayed her tendency to steal toilet paper out of the trash and collect leftovers from potlucks at work. Or when Walgreens called to remind us to refill my grandmother's prescriptions.

There were also moments yesterday that may haunt me forever. When the undertaker came with his stretcher and his body bag and my grandfather fled to the other room to shake with sobs. And when my most emotional aunt arrived her grief was so palpable it ripped me apart. She sounded almost like an animal, her pain was so raw and so wild. I loved her even more for her ability to feel such unmasked love. But somehow I couldn't really cry until I went to bed that night.

After they took her away my most organized aunt made us go for a walk. We bundled up, I in my black overcoat and giant black sunglasses, my father in his dress pants and shoes--all of us in a strange array of whatever we were wearing when we hear the news--and left for a three+ mile hike through the scrap of woods left in Bellevue. We watched a bunny hop in front of us and stopped at a waterfall and creek where my dad used to play when he was young and we inspected the new Microsoft buildings being built on the edge of what used to be thick woods.

As is typical in a family full of engineers, physicists and techies, we lapsed into blessedly distracting discussions of flow meters, my dad's new smart car and cell phone towers. The stupid dog provided entertainment as well. Silence felt oppressive.

Today I feel like cardboard. I'm tired as hell.

Self Indulgent Rambling

Forty years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis. Twenty-nine years ago today one of my oldest friends was born. And today I will cross the threshold of my first house in Seattle.

It's a classic Seattle April day here, with rain drip-drip-dripping noncommittally and dove grey skies robed in mountain-country clouds. I woke to remembrances of Dr. King on NPR and drove to work listening to the Decemberists spout literary glamour. "Decked by a Japanese Geisha with a garland of pearls" indeed.

My car is full of painting supplies. My apartment is full of beer and wine at the ready for tonight's open house. I am full of maudlin; of sentimentality, excitement, fear. I love change but I sometimes feel lost after I've caught whatever change I'm chasing.

This mindset is pretty much central to who I am and how I think, which I think can be pretty maddening for many people who watch me along the way. A friend once put a song about Virgos on a tape for me (yes, a tape) with some pretty damning, hilarious lyrics, but my favorite part went like this:

Virgo has to know the why, the who, what, when and where

She'll strive to reach perfection, and then improve from there!

Whether or not you believe in astrology, that is pretty much spot on. I'm restless for constant improvement and I have to know every damn detail on everything. Improvement equals change. Ergo I'm constantly changing elements of my life trying to find the best option, or a way to make myself better. Even after we bought the house I went on the real estate site every day to compare the new houses on the market to the house we purchased. I simply had to know that we got the best option in our price range. (We did).

Both Hombrelibre and my sister think I'm insane for doing this. My sister said that the second they bought their house she stopped looking at what else was out there. I simply cannot do that. It might be physically incapable for me. Ignorance is never bliss for me. It is only by knowing that I can relax.

The more I know, the better I feel. It's not knowing that sends me into a panic. My default assumption, when I'm ignorant, is always something much, much worse than the truth. I will imagine every horrible scenario that I can fathom. If I didn't look at houses every day I would convince myself that 18,000 better, cheaper houses came on the market the second we closed on our house. When I was fainting regularly at shows for awhile a few years back I decided I was dying because I didn't know what fainting felt like. Before I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis I was (yet again) convinced I was dying, or at least had cancer which was pretty understandable considering I was crapping myself regularly and my hair was falling out in clumps every day. Now that I know what fainting is like I don't stress about it. Now that I know what ulcerative colitis is I can spend countless hours researching alternative therapies and harassing doctors and reading about it.

So for those of you out there who think you're protecting your Virgo friends when you don't tell them something...you're not. For the love of god, tell them if you're mad at them or if they have a piece of spinach in their teeth or if they need deodorant. They might look temporarily taken aback, but by god, they'll love you for your honesty in the end.

'Swearin.

Planned Obsolescence. Or Get Thee to a Knocking Yard

The last couple of days I've done something I absolutely hate to do; namely tinkering with technologies I'm not overly familiar with. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I'm the worst student ever and a complete and utter brat when it comes to learning things I'm not innately gifted with. Hombrelibre still shudders at the memory of teaching me to drive. As a result, I'm pretty much self-taught in almost everything I do. And sometimes it really shows.

Yesterday I was burning pictures onto disks, which is at about an ape-level skillset but something that regularly flumoxes me. It's not as if I haven't done it before, but every computer has their own set of drama associated with different programs and what not and I was burning massive files and a shit-ton of snaps which only complicated the matter. After a lot of tinkering and swearing I finally got three disks burned, then just about had a coronary when my coworker couldn't open them. Much like in setting up a blind date, you had to make sure the fuckers are compatible.

Today I was creating a flier in InDesign, which again, isn't altogether that challenging but definitely a program I have just enough familiarity with to be dangerous. I was patting myself on the back for remembering how to text wrap and color match but my flier still looked painfully amateurish. I'm such a design snob that my inability to create something truly spectacular made me want to rip out my eyes and fling them at the screen, which makes about as much sense as a beginning piano student blowing their head off for not mastering Chopin. Welcome to the Virgo brain.

In any case, all of this strang und durm got me thinking about how many of the skills I learned while growing up are rapidly growing obsolete. I'm not even 30. I wonder how the 80 years olds feel right about now with all those crazy kids and their cell phones and blackberries and Ipods, texting a collective "the future is now" while we stand hopelessly by.

My 60 year old coworker, whose methodology pains me at times, is like a walking billboard for obsolescence. She prints out every single email she gets and diligently files them. I caught her the other day printing out websites for reference. I don't think she knows how to cut and paste, much less resize a picture. And none of this would really matter if she weren't in a department that depends explicitly on all of these technologies. Lately, I've noticed my rage toward her verges on the irrational. Granted, she has a nasty habit of singing classic show tunes at full tilt pre-9 a.m. which is no doubt grounds for murder in some countries, but my knee-jerk vitriol at her inability to navigate powerpoint may belie some deeper impulse in me.

One might surmise that she represents everything I'm starting to fear as I creep toward my next decade of life. That I'll be somehow left behind, rapture-style, as the young and clever are sucked toward career heaven, leaving me to languish in early-thirties purgatory. No longer young, not quite old, I fear I'll dog paddle my way through the next chunk of my life, clinging to my proverbial MySpace as the kids gravitate toward Facebook. Or whatever the hell they like these days. I can't keep track.

"Oh my god, Becky, look at the size of her vest!"

I am wearing a vest today, something I haven't done since 1992, when I was in middle school and liked to wear my hair in artfully labored-over bang constructions. It feels good.

I've always dug the menswear look, which is a shame, really, since my body type is about as far as you can get from a man's. I have equal parts hootertown to my padunkadunk and a whole lotta thigh to match. Suffice to say, I don't even really do proper justice to most pants, much less vests, suspenders or pork pie hats.

I have friends, wily lanky friends like glassmongoose and knitsybitsycycler who look so good in this stuff it makes your teeth hurt. I watch them effortlessly pulling off aspects of Annie Hall aesthetics and think, "damn, that looks good. I should try that." But like the consumate younger sister I am, trying to emulate all that inspires me, such flights of fancy are often best left to paper doll fantasies than actual fruition.

So I look like a dork. I know it. I'm wearing a vest covered in stars, straining where it should be relaxing, and as cool as I want to feel right now, I am patently aware that my outfit screams "Ren, ren, rennnnnn!" That's Ren as in Rennaissance, for you non D&D-eschewing homies out there.

But what the fuck. I am Ren. I read Harry Potter. I have a NeverEnding Story tattoo. I play D&D. I don't live in my parent's basement and I am getting laid, so really, what do I have left to prove?

The vest, she stays.

The Unbearable Lightness of the Return

I like returning things. It brings me an enormous sense of relief and almost, dare I say it, a high. This is partly due to the fact that I'm cheap. Spending money makes me nervous. But the true underlying impetus is that I get off on feeling unfettered. I'm a freedom junkie with an almost physiological need to purge. My shopping trips are roundtrip: I almost never escape a purchasing excursion without a return trip scheduled for the not-too-distant future.

My mother is a bit of a hoarder. To this day, she won't let anyone into the basement as it's so full of stuff. She lives in a three bedroom house with a full footprint basement and every room is at saturation point. She's definitely not a full-blown hoarder. Nothing to Oprah-expose levels or anything like that. But the woman certainly clings to things and feels physical stress at parting with even old magazines or well-worn clothes.

It doesn't take more than a semester of Psych 101 to draw the connection here. Many of us feel compelled to remake ourselves in the inverse image of our parents, and I am no exception. Material possessions equal burdens. So I unburden myself.

I am in the process of buying a wee house. Not a small house, mind you. A wee house; an almost midget house weighing in at a mighty 810 square feet on the main floor with additional basement space. I'm beyond thrilled about this, yet cautiously thrilled as our inspection won't happen until tomorrow. It's so cute you could puke at the cuteness. It's hobbit meets hello kitty with all the class and sass of old Hollywood and art deco. It's both old and moderne--a cozy hidey hole perfectly proportioned with curves in all the right places. And soon it will be mine!

But as mentioned, I'm a compulsive returner. So what am I doing? I'm continuing to scout the house ads every day, just to torture myself. Is there anything else? What else is out there? I feel a manic need to compare and contrast. Just in case. My itchy trigger finger longs to release, daring me to back out, to run before it's too late. But like many a well-chosen Target purchase before it, my gut tells me this house is staying with me. It's already chiseling out a little castle-shaped hole in my heart.

And if we buy it, if we really truly buy it, I'm already excited about all the purging of my possessions I'll get to do before we move in. A small house demands disciplined streamlining of objects. I can hardly wait!

Que sera sera

Whatever will beeeee, will beeeee.

Or at least that's what I'm telling myself. Over and over. As I rock back and forth. Baaack and forth.

We lost out on the house we bid on. Bid on, and, I might add, shelled out four hundred dollars for an inspection on. And wasted god only knows how much psychic energy on. Bah. Apparently some fucker paid cash and offered more than us. I hope they get mauled by a bear.

The hippie/spiritualist in me says "it wasn't meant to be." The really bat-shit crazy superstitious freak in me says, "you offered a number comprised entirely of threes and sevens and there were 13 offers. What did you expect?"

Does anyone know what the fuck I'm talking about? This is what happens when you're the only one of your friends who attended Sunday school. You can take the girl out of the church, but you can't take the church out of the girl.

So back on the horse or bike (neither of which I can operate, I should point out). Tomorrow is another day.

What Brown Can Do For You

I'm dead serious about chocolate. I don't fuck around. When it comes to general sugar I'll eat just about anything, from Necco wafers to peeps. I'll even down a stale marshmallow circus peanut if I'm desperate. But for chocolate, I have standards. I won't eat a Hershey bar, for example, and Snickers are taken only grudgingly. And while I might scarf down Halloween candy at a friend's house or from the front desk at work I certainly won't buy most mass-manufactured chocolate.

I like the good stuff. High quality, well-sourced, local, organic and fair trade if possible. 3400 Phinney and Theo's, Fran's, oh my. Or Vosges from Chicago. Or Dagoba and the sinful semi-sweet ultra dark bars from the co-op. Dear Lord.

I was just reading about how Seattle's Fran's Chocolates (a.k.a. "The Best Overall Chocolateir in the United States" according to the "Book of Chocolates" and more importantly, yours truly) is opening another shop in the belly of the new Four Seasons Hotel. Sure, I'm excited about this, but I'm also still smarting from my last visit to Fran's.

You can buy their gold bars all over the city, but to get their coconut gold bars, which are basically like crack to me, you have to actually drive to one of their retail outlets. Unfortunately, they hire what appears to be the slowest, most incompetent work force I may have ever encountered in a retail environment. Everyone who works there is frail, skinny and scared-looking and moves at a snail's pace, which are not attributes I typically associate with chocolate consumption.

Shit, if I worked around chocolate I would be ecstatic. I'd probably be about 50 pounds heavier, but I'd look like I was in the throes of an orgasm and greet each customer with manic energy and joy. I would move at a blur, slowed only momentarily to throw back a shot of hot cocoa between raucous bursts of laughter. How can someone look nervous and pinched around chocolate? Did chocolate beat you as a child? Does chocolate yell at you? No, my friends, chocolate only gives. Gives joy, gives pleasure, gives cellulite dimples to your ever-widening thighs, but by god it gives.

So there I was at Fran's, standing in line with my coconut gold bars, my mouth filling with drool, when I witnessed what can only be described as a new level of inneficiency playing out before me. There were maybe 15 people in the store, roughly ten of whom were, like myself, just trying to purchase items they could grab from the store shelves. The other five people were purchasing boxed chocolate. There were four employees.

Two of the employees, looking as if they might break at any minute, were sloooooowly and deliberately packing chocolates one by one for two of the customers who were picking individual chocolates. One of the employees was sloooooooooooowly and deliberately wrapping a box of chocolates and the fourth employee, who I assumed was the manager, looking very much like a praying mantis but without the sex appeal, was talking to a customer. No one was at the register. No one was ringing up the ten of us who just needed something rung up. This went on for 15 minutes.

By the end, I was literally sweating, I was so angry. I am horribly offended by innefficiency, to be sure, but this was amazing. I almost expected people to jump out and announce we were on Candid Camera or something--such was the ridiculousness of the situation. Finally, after loudly suggesting someone actually man the register, to the murmured agreement from my fellow patrons, I screamed "this is ridiculous!" threw my gold bars onto the counter and stormed out.

I haven't been back.

I miss my candy, though. I'm not willing to punish myself by living a gold-bar free life for the sake of driving home a point. But I'm pissed. So what's a girl to do? Slink back and admit defeat? Force feed the anorexic bitches running the place until they speed up? Complain directly to the company? I want my motherfucking coconut gold bar!

All Penned in and Nowhere to Go

My boss came in at 10:20 this morning, left for lunch at 11:30 and still isn't back at 1:48. This is normal. The guy is never here. He might be looking for another job. Lord knows I am. But the question remains- will my next job be any better than this one? Will I ever be happy working for someone else?

I was talking to knitsybitsycycler yesterday about how we're part of a whole generation rife with creative people who are stuck in office environments where they fundamentally don't belong. These are people who have taken cross-trained artistic abilities to a new level-they're often irritatingly talented in a whole pantheon of disciplines, with gifts in painting, drawing, photography, design, writing, music and general crafts. And they're not doing any of these things. They're sitting, usually in a cubicle, in some warehouse like environment where they are churning out uninspiring crap that doesn't matter for people who don't appreciate them. Don't get me wrong, I don't think most people enjoy the modern job market, whether or not they have artistic tendencies. But for those who do, I think the pain is taken to a new level, an uber pain if you will.

I told knitsybitsy that we're like veal cattle-young and semi-maleable big-eyed calfs penned into our little boxes, where our muscles atrophy, our coats lose their luster and our bleating becomes softer and softer until we finally go quiet.

This is not ok, people.

The worst thing for me is I have no solutions. I like to think of myself as a fairly skilled strategist but I have beaten my head against this issue until it was nothing but a mass of emotional scar tissue and I can tell you I've got nuthin'. Or rather, I have some ideas but they all scare me and the last time I up and quit to go out on my own I started crapping myself and was diagnosed with a chronic disease.

What I do know, however, what I'm sure of, is that we can't stop bleating. It might sound like just so much whining to the untrained ear but I am set on this point- keep bleating. Keep talking. Keep screaming until your voice is strained and hoarse but don't go quiet. Beat on the wall with sticks if you must-just keep making noise. Don't quietly accept this shit and tell yourself that this is just how things are. Nothing good has come in this world by just accepting things. Change comes from unrest and agitation.

So agitate.

Gimme Shelter

By nature I'm a nester. And my nesting impulses have, as of late, swung into overdrive. These days I'm often found in the park, hopping quietly with twigs hanging from my beak, my feathers ruffling in the wind. Or up in a tree, regurgitating vole bones and fur into little pellets.

Or I'm just looking for houses. And thinking about houses. All. The. Time. I'm obsessed. It all started when HombreLibre regained full employment after a four month stint of spending even more time at the corner coffee shop. The second he got work a little light flipped on in my head and a little voice started providing non-stop fantasy scenes of glossy technicolor homeownership, with all the good bits and none of the hassle.

It isn't a space issue. Our apartment is huge. It isn't where we live, because I can biasedly say we're in the best neighborhood in the city right now. And we love our neighbors, despite their tendency to play Rock Band above our heads for hours at a time. It's just....some intangible desire to own a place, to have it as your very own, your preciousssssssss. And i've also found that I cannot sleep with anyone walking above my head, a lesson I have been fortunately spared until this, my first first-floor apartment.

I think it's a natural human impulse, or at least I'm telling myself that. I bet even cro-magnon man fell prey to such an emotional pull. He probably wanted a cave in a nice neighborhood with good access to tool shops and fire pits. Or some shit.

My issue with the house hunt, of course, is that Seattle is so bloody expensive it's hard to not get jaded and give up, or as I'm wont to do-throw fits. We went out on Saturday to poke around and the hunt devolved, as usual into me going quiet and sullen followed by a little hysterical rant about how "impossible this is and how are we going to do this and where do these people get all their money, the fuckers!" At one point I was shaking my fist at a row of Craftsman bungalows screaming "Give me your house! Give me your houuuuuuuuse!"

Shortly after the feeling sorry for myself bit, I also typically sink into a deeper pit of sorrow where I extrapolate into the greater unfairness of the economic system, the plight of the middle class, the yoke on the necks of the poor and how I am actually so priveleged and should just shut up, give away everything I have and dedicate my life to helping others.

Then I nap. And usually wake feeling better.

Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. I'm a veritable barrel of laughs, I am.

This will undoubtedly go on for several months, until such time as we actually put an offer on a house. And then I'll find something else to obsess and fret over. But in the meantime, if you catch me with a glazed look, I'm probably looking at house porn.

In the Belly of the Bat

I work in a building that is undergoing a remodeling facelift at present, and as a result is wrapped up like Britney Spears in psych ward wear. It's about that charming, too. My office is missing its windows and is currently host to a plastic-wrapped plywood wall with a little door cut into it. If I were nine, I would think that was pretty sweet, and you'd probaby find me reading comics out there during lunch. But being the old and semi-arthritic 29-year-old I am, I mostly regard the wee door with contempt as it's repeatedly flung open to allow the construction workers passage. So I simply sit, huddled over my space heater, clutching my cup of tea and try to channel the inspiration to edit another semi-literate article or answer another email about the rules of logo placement.

It's the first floor that really does me in, however. As charming as it is to stroll the halls of the now windowless second and third floors, I can somehow tune out the cave-like feeling that lingers; but the first floor is something altogether more sinister. The entry to our building now looks almost exactly like a bunker, but with less head room. I have to resist putting on a pith helmet and launching into my Winston Churchill impersonation as I traverse the passage, muttering "get Franklin on the phone. More victory garden propaganda posters, stat!"

And then there's the conference rooms, which have eschewed the clear plastic covering in favor of what appears to be black Hefty bags stretched over plywood. It's so unbelievably ghetto looking it's not even funny. I've seen more tasteful makeshift walls in Tijuana. I spent this Monday's cruelly-early morning meeting writing goth poetry about being in the belly of a bat as I sat through the minutes in that frigid, tar-colored pit of despair.

But it's not all bad. When I leave at night, blinking mole-like in the light I feel buoyed to even breathe the outside air and bask in the elements. And I have pleasant flashback memories of my days working in the dark room, huffing chemicals and listening to Elliott Smith with Churpita. It could be worse.

Gahhh. Gah, I say

Dear lord, I'm tired. I had to wake up pre-7 a.m., which is an ungodly time and should be banned. Have I mentioned I'm not a morning person? Well I'm not. Morning people disturb me. I mean, what is wrong with them? Why are they so cheerful? Mornings should be spent grumbling and angry, gripping a coffee pot and cursing the dawn, not poncing about with shit-eating grins doing yoga or whatever else morning people do.

I slinked off to the lactation room to take a nap at around 11:00. Thankfully no one noticed I was gone for half an hour. Despite the fact that this means I'm even less important than I flatter myself to be, I'll keep up with my little siestas and hope no one grows the wiser. We used to have a whole unused wing of our building where I could lie down during lunch, baking in the window-enhanced sun like an overgrown, hairless cat. It's unfortunately occupied now, narrowing my napping resources, but I'll soldier on. Sure, I run the risk of having new moms with milk-heavy breasts honing in on my quiet time, but I figure they probably need the break more than I do. I'm so giving.

The Original Blue Man Group

I was pawing through the Internet the other day, avoiding work as I’m wont to do on a rainy Monday afternoon, and happened to read that the Smurfs had turned 50. While the half-century anniversary of those Belgian blue guys is decidedly “smurftastic” I can’t help but be panged at the news with an old jealousy I’ve nursed for nigh on 25 years.

One may recall from their childhood, or their ill-spent stoned adulthood, that the Smurfs are comprised of a town full of seemingly inbred blue creatures with boomerang-shaped heads and a penchance for all-white attire. Much has also been made of their thinly-veiled Communist tendencies, ranging from their groupthink behavior to their apparent sharing of collective wealth and goods, right down to their one, no doubt very tired female specimen.

While I could prattle on ad nauseum about this somewhat sordid arrangement, I’m far too sober to believe anyone would care for the dissertation, and so I turn my attention instead to my previously inferred envy toward my little friends. The jealousy in question stems from the Smurfs utopian arrangement, oft-seen in literature and fairy tales, of “each man to his calling, each according to its purpose” societal organization. The talents of every Smurf have been channeled into a respective career, that is to say, the smurf with baking tendencies has been allowed to be “Baker Smurf,” the metal-working artisan is given the title of “Blacksmith Smurf,” the art-minded blue Michaelangelo-type gets to be “Painter Smurf” and so on and so forth.

Sure, there’s no room for existential crisis in this arrangement, and we never got to see “Angst Smurf,” “Dead-beat Smurf” or “Strung-out Smurf,” but perhaps such blights on productive life were notably absent because such a system could not conceive of producing such characters. Everyone wants a purpose and a calling. Everyone wants to feel as if their talents are not only identified, but appreciated and put to use. And yet, throughout much of history, people have been shuttled into narrow occupational fields seldom befitting their true interests or skills. Now, perhaps more than ever, we have a wealth of options with which to eke out a living, yet the choices still seem painfully few and far between, particularly for those of us with creative tendencies.

And so I’m jealous. Painfully, gut-wrenchingly jealous of these elfin eurotramps and their perfect, little Socialist society. If I were a smurf I might very well be working as a writer from my mushroom-shaped home office instead of slogging through another day as a corporate drone in cubicle city. If I were a smurf I would know my place, would have my name, my very identity sealed by my talents, leaving me secure to pursue pastimes other than the never-ending job search, like avoiding Gargamel or trying to annoy Papa Smurf with my uppity feminist ideas. But I’m not a smurf. And I’ll get no smurfity perks. Heck, I’m not even Belgian.

Smurrrrrrf.

Angsty angsty angsty

I am dissatisfied. Truly, deeply dissatisfied. It may be on a cellular level for all I know. I imagine if you stripped apart my DNA you might see it had abandoned the double helix in favor of a frown formation; such is the level of my discontent. I have always been dissatisfied. Take for example one of my honest-to-God poems from fifth grade:

Alone

Blamed
Hurt
Running away in tears
Sobbing
Hurting
Minute by minute
More and more
Time stands still
Nothing
Quiet
Alone

In addition to being incredibly embarrassing, I think the above stab at literary greatness demonstrates a ridiculous amount of angst for a ten-year-old. And sadly, while I’m debatably a better writer, the sentiment is still alive and well in the nearly 30-year-old me. I’m not entirely sure where all this whiny frustration comes from. It could be genetic of course. Both my parents have struggled with depression. But I’m not depressed. Or rather, as a non-licensed psychologist I would say that I do not consider myself depressed. Depression, to me, is a state of inaction. Of paralysis. Whereas I am nothing if not action-oriented. While many, if not most people seem afraid of change, I thrive on it. I crave it. I will almost always choose flight over fight and let’s just say I spend a lot of time in the air.

So no, I’m not depressed. I’m simply…annoyed. To keep myself sane I try to focus my annoyance on the outside world. It is, after all, wholly self-destructive to fixate on one’s own shortcomings. I’ve done that and it isn’t pretty. But the world outside my horribly flawed mind and body provides no shortage of things to be annoyed and disappointed with. There’s all the stupid people, of course. And the incredibly misguided Government we are now under the jackbooted heel of. And everywhere, everywhere you look, there are horribly inefficient systems, from coffee shops to multinational corporations. As one stumbles through the day it’s often more a question of what isn’t annoying than what is. Life is an all-you-can-eat buffet of annoyances. And I am a glutton for it, I suppose.

Sometimes I very dearly wish I could shut off my radar for all that is wrong and trade my black colored glasses for rose-hued ones. I would like to bask in gratitude and unfettered joy and see the good in everyone and everything. And sometimes I do. There are those moments where I very nearly choke back emotion at all that is beautiful and real. It buoys me. I regain my idealism. And then, as always, it is dashed upon the rocks like so many ill-fated ships in a storm when I’m terribly disappointed once again.

In the beginning...

...there was the blog. And the blog was good.

It's about time I did this again. I used to have a blog. A blog with a following and bona fide fans and little monkey minions in top hats to do my bidding. But I got lazy and stopped, as is wont to happen to many of we unmotivated, creative types.

But I'm back. Back because I need an outlet. Back because I have too many sick little thoughts crowding my head, waking me in the night like a toddler needing to pee. I just can't have that. I work full time and I can't afford that slightly mad, slightly glazed look in the eye that comes from too many nights replaying every conversation I've ever had.

Thus Obsessive Compulsive Overdose was born, or as I casually call my little pet, OCD OD. I hope you enjoy my little trips. I've packed enough baggage for both of us.