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.