hiatus

I won't have an internet connection until sometime next week, so I probably won't be updating until next Friday or so.

SHHHH, don't cry...it'll be okay.
No no no no, don't blame yourself.
It's not you, it's me, I swear.
I promise, I'll be back and things will be better.
I'll call, I swear.

moving violations

You know, when I moved from Kentucky...I planned for months. I called around about moving companies, I collected boxes from work and school, I did everything ahead of time. This time, I haven't done anything. It's Wednesday, I move on Saturday, and I haven't done a thing. No truck, no boxes, nothing. But I'm going to get my keys today...and I called to have my cable and internet hooked up. The important things first right.

ghost stories

When I was in high school, my friend's mother used to tell us scary stories that she heard as a girl growing up in Germany. Maybe it was the accent on top of hearing stories you hadn't ever heard before, but those stories were pants-stainingly scary. They always had a little something, some detail, for your imagination to hold onto so that you couldn't sleep for weeks after hearing one of those stories. One of the tales I remember vividly involved a desciption of the reaper. He didn't wear a hooded shroud like we all imagine. No, this repear wore a long black cloak and a black hat with a large feather. And he would come to you and leave his hat for you as a calling card; you saw the hat and then he took your life. So imagine my surprise when I got into my car yesterday and looked in the rear view mirror and saw a black felt hat with a feather laying in the back window. My heart stopped beating and I know I stopped breathing for a few seconds, staring at that hat and hearing my friend's mother's voice telling her story. Then I remembered that Jen was wearing a hat when I picked her and her girls up at The War Room on Friday night...and things were right in the world once again.

canker sore

Sometime Friday or Saturday, those two days are a total blur at this point, I bit the shit out of the inside of my mouth. It was all raw and ragged. But because we can't help but touch the painful spots, I've been tonguing the sore for days and now it's smooth like the inside of an oyster shell. I guess this is one of the few times that you can keep poking at the pain and it turns into something that actually feels pretty good.
Also, at this after hours party Saturday night/Sunday morning some guy kept video-taping me. No matter what room I was in, every time I looked up I found his camera pointed in my direction. It was a little unnerving because I try very hard to keep my Wonder Woman and Diana Prince lives separated...but now there's some kind of video surveillance evidence of Wonder Woman out there. I should have asked me what he was video-taping for and got a business card or something. I shudder to think where that tape will end up, though I wasn't really doing anything. It was just weird.
I should be signing my lease on Wednesday and hopefully moving on Saturday. It seemed like it took forever and now it's just moving way too fast. I hope I'm ready for this new story arc in my life.

club dread

I'm exhausted. Between the triple shot latte that I drank at seven pm and my brain working at a frantic pace, I didn't get much sleep at all. It's really hard to avoid the elephant in the room when it is sitting (shitting? I haven't decided which yet) on your chest. But then again, I seem to be the only one who can see it, so I guess it's just me making something out of nothing, which is hardly surprising.

freak show

No, not now, not when I'm in the throes of an existential/late-youth crisis! It just can't be happening. WHY ME!?! WHY NOW!?! WHYYYYYYYYY!?!?!

I found my first old-lady chin hair today!

working hard

In the last twenty-four hours, I have been told by two of my good friends that I'm trying too hard. And I probably am trying too hard, or at the very least trying too hard at the wrong things. But here's the problem, where do you draw the line between trying too hard and not trying hard enough? Exactly how small is the "just right" line? Parts of me want to let things/life happen organically, happy people just go with the flow. But other parts of me just don't have that kind of patience and want to make things happen, successful people MAKE things happen. I'm feeling very Goldilocks lately, and I'm still eating from the wrong bowls of porridge.
So, I went and looked at this studio in the Belltown section of Seattle last night. It is a GREAT location and I am completely enamored with Belltown. I really want to live there but it's very spendy, I absolutely could not do it without a roommate. The studio was TINY, my bed would take up the entire "living" space. It was about 350 square feet. Then later, after talking to my sister about buying a condo rather than renting an apartment, she sent me some listings for condos. The only Belltown condos that show up are the studios in that same building I had looked at earlier. And those teeny-tiny, less than 400 square feet studios cost $150,000. Wow, I was blown-away. Talk about inflated housing costs. I should just be happy with my crack-alley apartment.

craigslist

So I'm a loser, I admit it. I pretend like I'm going over to craigslist to look for apartments (even though I have a hold on the other one, I'm still checking out other places), but that's just a pretext for scoping out the Missed Connections. I LOVE reading those. Every once in a while there is one that is just a precious precious gem of hilarity. But sometimes there are a few that I read and think, "Wow, that could actually be from me," because they read like something I wish I had said to somebody. So that made me think about connecting with people. Do the connections we imagine with other people actually exist? Can connections be entirely one-sided? It seems like a connection implies that both people would feel the pull, but judging by the great number of people looking for missed connections, maybe that's not the case. That makes me a little sad.

dreamspace

I don't know why or how, but last night I had a dream that I was making out with Scarlett Johannson. And she was a really sloppy kisser.

fit but you know it

Reading another blogger's hilarious post "not to be judged by my bra size" reminded me that I had a bra fitting this weekend at Nordstrom's. If you ever want an abject lesson in humiliation, I would recommend a bra fitting. The first clerk I asked for help stunned me when she looked at me and suggested a cup size; I won't even say it here because it makes me cringe just thinking about it. Then I ended up being helped by another young lady, who was actually really nice. Since I was looking for a strapless, which for the busty gal is like searching for the Holy Grail of bras, I knew I was in for a long day. And as it turns out, like most women, I am wearing the wrong bra size. At least that's what the clerk said as she poked at my boobs and said things like, "See all this tissue here, you need more support for it." Then we talked about the relative advantages and disadvantages of boob size and this is definitely a grass is greener situation. So in the end I tried on a billion bras, had a sales clerk get to second base with me, and surprisingly I found a strapless bustier for less than the price of a new Buick. I'm starting to feel like my boobs have a life of their own and the rest of my body is just a life support machine for them.

pillow fight

Do you remember somebody telling you not to eat before you went to sleep because it could cause nightmares? I vaguely recollect being told that and last night because of the overconsumption of sealife, I had the strangest nightmares. I dreamt that my pillows were trying to do me in. First it was all fun and games and they were just tickling me. Then the tickling became really aggressive and turned into an all out shaking. So in a half-awake state I threw them on the other side of the bed, but then a really deep man voice came from within what is normally the feathered goodness and started yelling evil things at me. So I hit the pillow and more mean things were said. Finally, I forced myself awake by screaming and then tentatively touched the pillows to make sure they were still the inanimate objects I went to sleep with. Luckily they were, somewhere between half-consciousness and full lucidity, an exorcism had been performed. I was one hundred percent creeped out and could barely fall back asleep after that.

celebrainguish

Today is my sister's 28th birthday. Happy Birthday to my favorite sister! We went out to eat and I cannot eat nearly as much as I used to. Less than a year ago, I could have wiped out an all-you-can-eat buffet. Now, I can barely make it past the salad. I'm so stuffed and it's been hours since we ate. And oddly enough, the restaurant we went to ran out of salmon. First of all, a seafood joint running out of salmon is bad enough, but for god's sake this is Washington...that's like running out of potatoes in Idaho.

hookers on the point

As of last night, it is official. I really DO look like a hooker. I was walking to my car because I parked pretty far away from the club I was meeting my sister at and decided to park a little closer. So as I am walking to my car, a car with some guys pulls up and they ask me if I had just been in the club nearby. I said no and then asked them if they knew how I could get to where I was going. So they're giving me directions and as all of this is transpiring, a cop car pulls up. So these guys pull away and the cop car pulls up to me and in his suspicious cop voice asks, "Is there a problem? What do you have going on here?" So I tell him I needed to get to point X and he proceeds to give me some craptastic directions and the whole time I'm standing there thinking, "Oh my god, this cop thinks I'm a hooker!" Surreal!

i'm with the dj

What is it about DJs that makes them so damn hot? Seriously? There must be something because if there is a DJ within a fifty-foot vicinity that spins amazing beats, I will most assuredly crush on him and make a complete asshole out of myself in the process.
Also, just to give you guys an update on the apartment situation...So I got a place in Capitol Hill of Seattle, which is a trendier part of town, though I would have preferred a Belltown location. It's pretty ghetto fabulous, right off the corner of Crack Alley and Homeless Boulevard. But it's a GREAT deal, plus I'll have a parking space for a nominal price, which is practically unheard of. Let's see, it's a 1-bedroom, not a studio, but the kitchen runs right into the living room so it feels like a studio from that standpoint. But they're putting in new carpet and new kitchen countertops (which is only like three feet of counter-space, but still it's new) and new blinds and they're painting the place, so it should look pretty decent cause right now it smells like a smoking room. The really bad thing, it's on the first floor and it faces the street, so I won't be leaving the blinds open ever. The other window in the place faces a brick wall that looks like a prison wall. There was actually another apartment I wanted in the complex but I missed out on it by a day. Apartments go amazingly fast in Seattle, blink and you're totally assed out. But I'm taking it, even though I've got a few doubts, I'm really excited about moving up there. I should be up there sometime in the beginning to middle of October, before my 30th birthday. WHEEEEE! No more long drives home from work and from going out.Also, I'm still out partying from the night before to celebrate my sister's birthday, right now we're in somebody else's apartment drinking more than should be medically allowed. I've been awake for 24 hours straight. Luckily all I have to do today is get a haircut, buy my kick-ass new boots, and go to the Puyallup Fair (just try and guess how that's pronounced) with a fellow Kentucky transplant. Responsibility is for suckers!

uban hunting

So the apartment hunt continues and the people I have talked to have mostly been a bunch of asses. Whatever happened to Pacific Northwesterners being uber-friendly people? They obviously don't work in property management. I just spent the better part of half an hour arguing about how much difference two pounds really makes and how I should be rewarded for my honesty because I could have just lied and said Iniki was under twenty pounds. Then after being offered a viewing, I asked the guy to not waste my time and just tell me no about the dog if the two pounds was really going to make that much of a difference; but no he's gonna waste my time and let me look at the place and then tell me no because of my dog. But at least I got a response from him, most people won't even get back to you. I've called oodles of places and sent out a kabillion emails and only about two percent of them have been returned. Seriously, now would be the time for a sugardaddy who could put me up in a decent apartment.

girls gone wild

Today I stepped on the scale and what should have been a proud moment was clouded by the fact that I'm still nowhere being "socially acceptable" as far as beauty standards go. And because of that, I realized the fruitlessness of my trying to be girly. And I've made an honest to goodness effort since I've been here. I've bought shirts with lace and sashes, purses, and I even own a few shoes with heels now. But that's just not me...I'd be more comfortable at a Dykes on Bikes rally than hanging out with the girls who work at bebe. I don't know why I felt I had to get girly....because I'm supposed to want to be that way, because guys like the girlie-girl, because I like the guys who like the girlie-girls...I don't know.
But I'll never be a that girl. First of all, I'm not built for it...I'm like a truck. I can build muscle that most guys have to juice up to achieve. Second, I just don't do cute. Though I generally haven't had nicknames that stuck around, most of them are along the lines of Bodyguard and Billy Badass. One girl used to call me Sunshine,but she meant it facetiously. All the pictures I traded in Basic Training (yeah, just like in high school) have "You're one kick-ass soldier, even if you are female" written on the back. So why am I trying to change myself? For whom? For what? I'm trying to fit into a world that tells me I'm not good enough because I'm supposed to emulate people like Paris Hilton?!?!?! Are you kidding me?!?!? Well that's never gonna happen, and even if it COULD happen, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want it to. So to hell with it, to hell with being judged for not measuring up because we're just a bunch of sheep buying into a terrible beauty standard. I'm liberating myself from hating myself because I just don't have the energy to do it anymore.

crystal ball

You know, I really thought it couldn't get any worse at work. I REALLY thought that, it was almost a little optismistic for me. But then...I met HER, the most obnoxious and annoying person I have had the displeasure of sharing eight hours with...my god! We've already had a couple of tense moments and it was just ONE DAY! It was like working with a rabid little chihuahua who should be put down. Not surprisingly, she's friends with this other girl I can't stand...another drama queen with a shitty attitude. I mean, it's pretty bad when somebody makes ME look like Pollyanna and Mary fucking Sunshine all rolled into one.

nightlife

I worked my first evening shift last night. It wasn't too bad...a little boring...but at least the people were pretty nice. But, the drive...oh the drive...two and a half hours of my life wasted just driving to and from work. By the end of the week, that's ten hours and I don't deal with any rush-hour bullshit. That's an entire night of rest. And for what? A yard? Easy access to a strip mall? I can't lie, I would prefer a house over an apartment too. I hate smelling other people's cooking and hate hearing their noise. But I gotta move closer to work, I hate driving more than I hate any of the other things. And it would be a community service to remove myself from the road as much as possible...can you say road rage?

cinema paradiso

Because my daddy was in town this weekend, I didn't get out and do much other than eat copious amounts of animal flesh and drink beer. But it was nice, I can actually talk to my dad. He gave me a good & realistic pep talk, not just the rah-rah-rah cheerleader, everything will be okay bullshit. Candor is one of the things I appreciate the most. So anyhoo, we watched a couple of movies because that's what you do when you have nothing else to do.
Let's see, we saw Four Brothers. It was okay, I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either. But I did love the littlest brother...MEOW, I love grungy little rockstar wanna-bes (and DJs, but that's an unfortunate addiction).
Then we watched some rentals. First, we watched Crash. This movie was devastating. It is the kind of movie that almost makes you wonder what the point of being alive is. How we can sometimes be trapped by a social structure that we had no part in creating. How we often perpetuate the structure even though we want it to change. How, often, we don't even care enough to try and make change. I cried during this movie, A LOT...a big blubbery cry. It was both emotionally draining and cathartic.
So, after we took my dad to the airport and I sat at home getting pissed off about the apartment hunting situation, I called up my sister and we decided to rent another movie. We watched Diary of a Mad Black Woman. This movie is HILARIOUS! Despite yourself, you hear yourself screaming stupid shit like "You go girl!" And Shamar Moore is HAWT, with a capital H! but the whole headband look...a little icky-poo. There were references to other movies in there, An Officer and A Gentleman, The Color Purple...and a few others than I can't remember now but they were fun to spot. Anyway, good movies all around. Well, I'm off to the gym and tonight I officially start working the evening shift. Sigh.

hatorade

I finally decided to look for an apartment in Seattle. Well no, actually I've been looking for a while, but I'm finally ready to actually move into one. But I can't find one that will take dogs...if they take pets at all, they only take cats. Well boo to cats...what's the difference? Some cats pee all over the place and that smell lasts FOREVER, some cats mew all night, some cats damage the apartment and they can get higher. That's what the deposit is for. Dog-haters.