Years ago, when I stilled dabbled in fiction and harbored delusions of a literary lifesyle, I wanted to write a story about a man whose whole goal in life was to write "choose your own adventure" books for grownups. His problem, the source of all of his grief, was the sad fact that no one wanted to buy his books because adults don't want to go on adventures. I've since met many, many adults who love adventures, but the sketch of this guy has stayed in the corners of my brain ever since.

I've made plans for many different lifestyles over the years. I was to be a ballerina--no, an underwater archaeologist--no, a teacher--no, an editor, and I had everything worked out for all of them. In the end, I'm hard pressed to be anything but samantha, and too busy to worry about all the other versions I'm missing out on. I make it from day to day and that's pretty much as far as I get.

Spaulding Gray told us that it was almost impossible for him not to tell everyone everything. I'll be back in Florida in a few days, but the Florida I return to isn't a place of breezy palm trees and quaint alligators. It's a place where too much dirty water has gone under too many rickety bridges, a place where little feels clean anymore. It tears at my fingers, the past does, and yet I do not tell you about it because in the end I am not very brave. I spend too much time being grateful for things and not enough acting grateful for them, too much time trying to blame a child for the actions of adults.

Whenever I get a new haircut, the first thing I do is go home and undo all of the special styling things that my hairstylist has done. I always want to know what it's like without the magic, so there aren't any surprises.

I left the office early this afternoon, in a sparkly fifteen minutes between rainshowers. The bottoms of my chronically too-long jeans soaked up puddles and now and again got themselves caught between my feet and the back of my broken red loafers. It's been another couple of weeks of long days and late nights, and although I pretend like I'm surprised that I'm still a little bit sick, I know what the reason is.

There have been slugs on my morning walk in for the last week or so, and I always want to pet them. Last night I had an armful of cute sleeping baby. I am calm, and a little bit exhausted, and enjoying the back-and-forth of the weather. I need to work on my posture.

I am still in love with Seattle, all over again every day. I have a great big huge ridiculously not very secret crush on one of you, and these blustery undecided days make me almost brave enough to call and say so, except I have no number to call. Which is probably, in the end, for the best.

There's a certain time every day when the light outside and the light inside my apartment cancel each other out and it's not dark or light in here. When that time is depends on the weather. Today, that time is right now.

"To me, all sports are just a game of 'who's got the ball?' Who's got the ball? I don't give a fuck...I want a pretzel."

When Tara and I drove around the corner on our way to Neumo's, we found a great big crowd standing in a circle outside. Turns out Mike Doughty was hanging outside with his guitar, having what appeared to be an impromptu show on the sidewalk.
I love that guy.

Dear Mike Doughty,

I noticed that you were wearing pants this time around. Not that I made it a point to look at your pants. Um. This is not the point.
The point is, hooray for you coming back to Seattle and playing another show for us. And thanks for playing The Gambler--you really do need to know when to fold 'em, y'know.
I've said all that I have to say to you a million times before, so this time around I just want to say thanks. Please consider my idea of doing a guitar showdown with Lou Barlow. It'd be such a party.

love,
me

All I need is air in the spare, kids. Air in the spare.

So evidently the thing about hot air balloons is that they won't, um, lift off if it's raining. Rather unfortunately, it was doing just that this morning in Walla Walla when we woke up unbelievably early to go look at them.

Hot air balloons or no, it's been a good weekend. I went to my first ever prom on Friday night, and then got to drive across the state with two lovely girls yesterday morning. There were cherry trees, tumbleweed, hats, and free chocolate Frosty milkshakes. And they did light up the balloons at night, so at least we got to see them on the ground.
Man, those suckers are big.

We drove away in the rain this morning after a little bit of shopping and went wine tasting. I was in search of a Syrah and came away with a sweet Riesling instead. And as always, the best part of leaving is coming home.

Thanks for the weekend, ladies!

Alright, fellows, I have to ask you this, because I’ve gotten it from three consecutive men in the last bunch of months and I’m curious. That walking on the outside of the sidewalk thing? In case of, um, runaway carriages or something? Where do you get that from?
I’m serious. I want to know. Do you learn it in guy school? Is it a father-to-son passing down of information sort of thing? It doesn’t appear to be age group specific, since there’s a twelve-year difference between the youngest of them and the oldest. It’s not a regional thing. And it’s also not all men—I’ve walked places with lots of you who don’t make a point of always being closest to the street.
I’m not complaining even a little bit: I think it’s sort of adorable. I just want to know who tells you to do it. Come on, guys. I’m willing to give up female secrets for the information.

My dad blames the hospital for the death of the father that he never really liked, anyway. I’ve never been sure what actually killed him, what the specific ailment was that required a tube in his throat. It’s a touchy subject.

Going back to Florida always makes me grumpy. I just can’t figure out how to be anchored by the past without being covered over by it, how to make the happy memories weigh less than the sad ones, and the sad ones weigh less than the terrifying ones. I feel more and more like a character in a Tennessee Williams play every time I go back for a visit and I can’t walk anywhere without tripping over a million little ghosts of the same sad girl.
I am very tired of the notion that I’ve just climbed out of a box of after school specials but haven’t yet gotten far enough away that they can’t snag me and drag me back in.

My nana’s Parkinson’s seems to be gaining momentum, rolling her faster and faster back inside her own head. She didn’t really like my grandfather either. And yet there must have been a time, however brief, that she loved him enough to throw over her family and her religion for him. We can’t really say what it is that happens between two people in and out of love, the transactions and the compromises and the angry tightening of lips. I wonder often if, as she finds herself further and further down the tortured crystalline paths of her own brain, she ever thinks fondly of him—if disease is enough to overcome fourteen years of absence and all those other years of angry marriage.

Good things are coming. This weekend Cat, Caroline, and I are off to look at hot air balloons in Walla Walla. Next week Tara and I will be going to see Mike Doughty, and I’ll be getting a haircut. The Peach People’s wedding is going to be an awful lot of fun. There’s really no reason for me to be as gloomy as I get whenever I think about this trip, but the bottom line is that I hate Florida and always have.

Not too long before my grandfather died they moved him into a different part of the hospital that I couldn’t go into—you had to be fourteen, and I was only nearly eight. And there was a point where it was made known to me that he wasn’t ever going to be coming back down that elevator. I don’t remember any of what happened then, not who told me or how. All that I remember is the nurse that came down with them turning to me while she waited for the elevator to take her back up. My arms were wrapped around a stuffed koala bear that had been in his bed with him since he’d gone into the hospital, my whole upper body curled around it. The nurse bent down and took me by the shoulders, looked me straight in each of my eyes individually, and nodded. She might have spoken, but the elevator doors opened then with a chime and she stepped inside. And then the mirrored doors slid shut and I was left standing there, looking back at myself.

For the first time, I've brought my new computer out of the house, taking the wireless card out for a test drive.
I feel very silly, sitting here with my laptop and a cup of chai.

I hadn't planned on leaving tonight, but after an extended dawdle through the rain back to my rental kingdom I realized that the very last thing I wanted to do was stay home. I spent the day bowed under a great big project, and the thought of an hour out around other people was very tempting. At home there is a fruit bowl and cupcakes and a couch that loves me, but there is also a pile of unwritten letters and unread books. I couldn't take the extra responsibility.

"You know, you've never asked how old I am."
"I haven't?"
"Nope."
"Oh. Should I?"
"Is it important?"
"If it were important, I probably would have asked you two weeks ago."
"Oh yeah, good point."
"...Should I ask how old you are?"
"Well, I'm older than you are."
"Right, I figured that much."
"Oh."
"Alright, I give. Fine. How old are you?"
"You know, I think I chipped my tooth."
"You're not allowed to talk anymore, old man."

Happy Mother's Day, moms!

When my mother was my age, she had a two year old child and was two years away from her first divorce. She had long, straight brown hair, a twisty-mouth sense of humor, and a heartfelt love of rock-n-roll.
They've put up with a lot from me over the years, she and my stepmother. They've nodded and smiled at my freakish stance on not brushing my hair when I was seven, nodded and smiled while I plotted a million ways to leave Florida, nodded and smiled when I refused to use silverware. They have never tried to stop me from doing the things I wanted to do, and they've let me grow in whichever directions I choose. I give them a lot of grief for the choices that they've made, but I seldom allow for the fact that they were their choices to make.
And I remember her laughing like a kid, her hair fanning around me to make a curtain between myself and the rest of the world. I remember her haircuts, her boyfriends, her silly mistakes and her sillier jokes. I remember watching from corners while she laughed with men that weren't my father, and I remember knowing even then that although she was my mother she was herself too. She is many things that I will never know about.
I talk to my mother, these days, once or twice a week, and to my stepmother a few times a month. We are friends. And that's lucky, because as we grow up most people realize that their parents are just nice people. It has taken a lot of work and a lot of forgiving, but my mother is also my friend.

Thanks to everyone that came by last night! It means a lot to have you guys around. (Bonus points to Manuel for bringing along the hook and Elvis glasses, and to Brandon for coming to drink tequila in a house full of strangers. Pictures by Dayment have been posted.)
Update: Looks like I have my own Flickr tag.

I like anniversaries, as markers and signposts and as a clear place to pause and figure out what's happened between there and here.

Today, of course, marks two years since I found myself in Seattle. We had spent the week wandering across the country, talking to locals and wearing cowboy hats and singing along to everything. We had decided against Memphis and for tumbleweed, we had eaten huckleberries and freedom fries, and we had seen Wall Drug. We had been having an adventure.
Neither one of us had a clue what would happen next. Andrea was headed back to Florida via California to drink Mint Juleps and languish. I was staying here, without any friends or job or money. But I had an apartment. I don't think I'd ever been as sure of my own fool self in my life, but then I guess I didn't even know it was possible to fail.

We drove up to my apartment, unloaded my world from the car, and went off to hunt for a grocery store. It had hailed on us driving through the mountains, and as we had little experience with hail and none at all with driving through mountains, it was a miracle we made it at all. Somehow we happened upon the Albertson's in Greenlake, which seemed full of people who looked like the ones I had just left.
This was our first meal, spaghetti and a bottle of Riverboat Red from the Les bourgeois winery outside Kingdom City, Missouri. It was the best thing I'd ever cooked.

And so it looks as though I'll be headed to my first conference at the end of next month, right after my family leaves town. Do I know anyone in Indiana? I don't think that I do. I'm terribly excited, of course (a free trip to a section of the country I've never been to, and an opportunity to learn so much about something that I love? This career shit works, man), but I'm a little scared as well. I am so much younger than other people who do what I do: the jump in position that I just made should have taken a couple of years rather than six months to reach. And though I generally try to pretend that the years that they have on me--that all of you, really, have on me--don't affect me at all, the bare truth of the matter is that sometimes it scares the stuffing out of me. I'm afraid of being found a fraud for things I didn't even realize I was pretending at.
I have a habit of tossing myself into new waters to make sure I remember how to swim. This time, it's someone else that's doing the throwing.

Feeling much better today, thanks. An unexpected visitor yesterday evening helped cheer things up, and my throat no longer feels like I've been trying to swallow sand spurs. I met a very nice roly-poly this morning on my walk in to work and I didn't trip over my own feet once today.

Steph and Ryan were here on Saturday, typing stories on Ethel, my typewriter. They were doing so well that I set them a task, to start a story with the sentence, "If you feel faint, it's because all the blood is rushing to your still-intact hymen! Lose it ASAP!" and to end it with "That is the power of grapes."--lines pulled from my envelope of words. They did splendidly, and now it appears that they've brought home their own typewriter to love and cherish. It makes me want to do a little dance.

My party is coming up this weekend, and so I'm getting into the usual panic about playing hostess. (This time, there's someone famous who says he's stopping by. I've got tequila, my friend.) I'll fret about it right up until people start showing up, and then I'll quit it and enjoy myself. This is what always happens, but knowing what's at the end doesn't make me any less spastic now.

Things are still just slightly off center. There can be, often during strokes, damage to certain parts of the brain that make a person able to see noses, mouths, eyes, but not a whole face. It makes recognizing the person to whom you are speaking nearly impossible, visually. I feel a little bit like that now, as though I'm seeing fits and snatches of something and if I could just cross my eyes properly I could figure out what it is. And I should know by now that the best way to open a stubborn jar is to leave it alone and come back later. But then, there are a lot of things that I should know, and one of them is that knowing and believing are generally not the same.

Dear everyone,

Hello! I had intended to write you this weekend, but then I got sick and spent all of my free time clutching my shoulders, trying to make the room stop spinning. It's stopped now, so now is the time to get down to brass tacks. Or, you know, whichever other kinds of tacks.
But I hope that your April went well, and that you got some of what you had planned accomplished. You've been so quiet lately, and I've been worrying about you in all the usual ways and also some brand new ones. I worry that you're spending too much time looking over your shoulder, that you're going to turn around and run smack into what you never saw coming. I worry that you keep losing sight of the million little things that you're so good at in the glare of the few big ones you can't just get right. I worry. And this is not the time for that. It's spring! Our toes should feel like they're each tied with helium balloons. There seem to be too many days where that's just not the case.
I've been doing a pretty good job at things recently, at standing up straight against the thousand pound weights of my collarbones. I have been seeing people and behaving irresponsibly and writing a million notes inside my head. I have only panicked a little.
I called my mother this morning to tell her that I saw her gout and raised her a strep throat. We went back and forth for a while about whether my strep throat against her gout could be considered a see and a raise. The doctor, diagnosing me, informed me in the usual way that I should get a houseboy to fetch ice cream and apple juice. I asked her to write me a prescription for one, one that did magic tricks. And also, where would I fill that? She just laughed and patted me on the shoulder.
Had I told you that I've been having strep throat? It feels like I've been eating gravel.
My favorite dog west of the Mississippi has been having health troubles lately. I'm sure good wishes would be appreciated. Haida is a sweet dog, a lovely dinner guest, and a fantastic chaser of geese. I hope everything goes ok.
I stopped by my favorite sandwich place on my way into the office from the doctor's office today. It's been a while since I've been down there, and every time I go in I remember why I love it so. A man named George handed me a mother's day poem he wrote for his mother when she was 87. The boy with a hoodie making my sandwich sang songs and danced the whole time, and the fellow who often gives me cookies smiled and waved with his hands full of bread. This city always makes me feel like it's glad I'm here.
I can't wait to see you all again. I've been cooped up for days and my hands are itching to organize picnics and hugs and funny jokes. I want you to teach me how to make origami cranes, how to make wounded fish swim. I want to be a whole bouquet of flowers sitting on your side table.

Love,
me

This is the newest member of my family, for the moment alternately called Owen and Dick Turpin until I can hit on a suitable name. I've been talking about switching for a while, and decided that now was the time to go. So far so good, aside from some minor troubles with getting files off the old one. Stubborn thing.

Mike went with me to get it yesterday during lunch, because he's the closest accessible technosexual--his office is right across from my cube. I don't know quite how annoyed I'm supposed to be that whenever I find myself in public with a male friend, people automatically assume that we're together. I do know that telling Mike to help me along getting the thing set up was a bit much.

I woke up this morning with an angry porcupine in my throat and chills that made my skin hurt. But I am a trooper, or a masochist, and so I shuffled myself into the office anyway. A couple of hours later, I conceded defeat, came home, put on the warmest clothes I could find, and fell asleep for the next three and a half hours.
That was the best I've felt all day. I took a nice long bath, filling the tub up with enough bubbles that I almost expected my mom to call from Florida to yell at me for overfilling. The water wasn't ever hot enough to make my skin stop wanting to crawl off, and I think I'm officially sick. And craving apple juice.
My shower curtain rod is crooked.

A voicemail message from my mother this afternoon says, "By the way, your grandmother got hit by lightning yesterday and I have gout."
And you wonder where I got my penchant for dramatic and slightly inaccurate turns of phrases from. (Grandma's house got struck by lightning, not my grandma. It fried some of her electronic equipment but otherwise things are fine. Almost getting hit by lightning runs in my family.)

Years ago, my friends were in the habit of actively trying to hook me up with single boys. They have of recent years (thankfully) fallen out of this habit, but back when it was the thing to do they would always start their laundry list of good qualities with the words, "I know this guy, he's really strange, you have to meet him."
I was alternately amused and really irritated by this particular way of putting things. Was it a comment on me myself or just my taste in men? Eventually I decided that I really didn't care, and I moved on.
Except that recently I've realized that this sentence is making a sort of inverted comeback. When my coworkers ask me what the men I've been dating lately are like, I notice that one of the first things out of my mouth is, "He's a great guy. A little odd, though." And when I say this they look at me like I'm intentionally being thickheaded, and they reply, "Well, yes. That's how you like them, isn't it?"
And thinking about it today, I guess it sort of is.

At the very beginning of our senior year of high school, Amanda, Jimmie, and I were walking down the hall and carrying on a conversation. This was before Amanda became The Peach People, before I became Bovine Woman (hey! there's a story you'll not be hearing!), before almost everything. We were walking towards class and chatting, and then suddenly I was walking alone and chatting because Jimmie had pulled Amanda between the lockers, in a very teen movie sort of way, to ask her out. I knew what had to be happening--the whole school knew it was coming--and so I continued to class. When Amanda arrived she was as fluttery as I've ever seen her, and it was that day that I started talking about their wedding.

Many of you have heard this story before, and in a month I'll be on my way back to Florida for that wedding. It has been a whole lot of years in the making, but I don't think anyone has ever expected that things would turn out otherwise.

Not too long after they got together, Jimmie wrote Amanda some sort of missive spelling out his feelings for her. She sent it in an email to me--there are some things no girl can keep secret, especially not at eighteen--and I have kept it all of these years. I've found myself the keeper of these sorts of things often, and I still have several such declarations that have outlasted the relationships they were made in. I doubt that Amanda even remembers sending it to me, but I'll keep it. I won't bring it out for the wedding, because if I tried she'd fly all the way to Seattle just to kick me in the head, but I'll hold onto it because I have this poem in my head for the future. And in this scene I see myself visiting their kids, good old Aunt Samantha, and sharing it with them in secret. Just so that there's always proof of how much these two have always loved each other.

I met a man in the market today who told me all about his trip hitchhiking across the country in the sixties. It sounded a little like he was making up the story as he went along, but since he seemed pretty convinced, I wasn't going to argue. His eyes stayed unfocused above my right ear the whole time.

A little bit later, I shared my cookie with a boy named Alfred. He was six and visiting Seattle with his mom and dad and aunt and uncle. He was bored, but he thought that my cookie (oatmeal raisin from Three Girls Bakery) was pretty good. He asked if I could do a magic trick, and wandered away when I said that I couldn't.

Down at the waterfront, an elderly lady stopped to comment on my bright coral shirt. I made a small joke, my usual 'you can see me from outerspace' line, but evidently bright colors are no joking matter. She warned me at least twice to enjoy wearing them now because soon enough I'll be too old for them. I'm pretty sure she thought I was approximately fifteen.

Another man on the bus ride home asked what I was thinking about. I just smiled at him, and he sighed and said, "Ah, must be a young man. When a girl smiles like that, there's always a young man on her brain." I'm sure I blushed--I'm always blushing, and I'm not certain how to stop--and told him that I'd been reflecting on how I've noticed recently that exceptionally self-confident men have a way of looking at you as though you're a new species that they've just discovered. It is, I explained, disconcerting. "Do you want them to stop?" he asked me. "Well, no, but I do want to have some way of reacting that doesn't involve blushing, stammering, looking away, or fumbling with my hands." He leaned forward and looked me right in the eye. "That," he said firmly, "is exactly the reaction that they are going for." He chuckled dryly, and I noticed that he smelled a little of liquor. "You listen to me, young lady. I know. I was once a chaser of girls myself."

"Who are you hoping to run into? Donatello? Leonardo? ...Raphael?"
"Um. Those? Are the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles."
"Oh. Oh yeah, I guess they are."
"I don't give my phone number to Ninja Turtles. I don't care if they are heroes on the half shell. What sort of girl do you take me for?"

For a few years my father drove a motorcycle that I remember as red but which was probably black. My stepmother eventually made him get rid of it because she's not a fan of motorcycles, and the thing is neither am I. But I can't seem to get away from them--even my mother rides them now, and the last boy I went out with was in the process of buying one when we fell out of the habit of, um, dating. I do not like them, and will not like them, as there are too many pictures pinned to the back of my head. I have been to too many funerals of boys I once knew.
I am, on the other hand, a big fan of motorcycle helmets. I remember taking possession of my father's helmet whenever I could find it, carrying it around the house with me until someone took it away. I'd snatch it as soon as he took it off and hide my hands in the heat inside. I am certain that it was red, and I'd lay down on the floor with my head inside it, face mask closed, breathing in the smell of my dad in the dark.
That helmet always smelled like shampoo and Drakkar Noir and sweat. And it is still through that helmet that I think of my father most fondly.

Also, it looks as though I'm having a party on the 7th of May. Not invited? Want to be? Let me know.

The town the I grew up in smelled of the Gulf of Mexico, of warm oranges burst open on sidewalks, of suntan lotion and wet bathing suits and fast food chains. It smelled like steamy wet dirt and car exhaust and old people. It never smelled like home.
The town I went to college in smelled of sulpher water and late night palm trees. It smelled like butane and history and superstition, like sheets of paper torn in half. Like surfboards and cheap alcohol. Almost like home.

I wandered downtown today from the post office on Broadway, carrying in one hand a package from the clever pretty kids written all over in Chinese characters. I had left work a little early with a coworker to catch a ride up to the hill, and the sun was whispering in my ear like a new best friend. (I am seriously one lucky punk to have the coworkers that I have. They're amazing.) My brain, as I moseyed, was elsewhere. I dreamt last night that you were standing behind me fastening my dress while I spoke on the telephone, but when I woke up I couldn't remember who you were. I still can't, and it was this I was thinking of when I stopped walking and focused on the scent of this town. It smells like slightly damp grass and smiles from strangers, like the breeze right before sunset, like a little bit of self-righteousness. It smells like open water and pastries and pink colored cocktails, like the color green.
I took off my jacket during my walk, and officially earned myself my first sunburn of the year. If you need to find me anytime during the next few months, you can follow the smell of coconut and bananas, SPF'd 45.

Yes, that tulip bud is staring at you.

It has recently been blood-giving time at my place of employment, a time of year that makes me feel terribly guilty. I've never been able to give blood. I wouldn't meet the minimum weight requirement soaking wet with my heaviest shoes on, and even if I did my blood is lacking in iron and tends toward the sentimental. So every time I pass the tables inviting the passers-by to sign up and donate I shrug sheepishly and avert my eyes.

A coworker brought me a bag of clothes and shoes that are too small for her. Other women tend to see me as a doll for grownups, and they're always trying to dress me up. Included therein is a smoking pair of dangerous black heels. I won't be able to wear them often--I do too much walking--but when I do wear them it will be completely worth it.

Also, it appears that this is an even better year than last year for being my ex-something (boyfriend, one night stand, long distance correspondent) if you want to get married or have kids. Just as a warning to those of you who are reading this and are an ex-something.
I guess the logical conclusion of that ought to be an invitation to become an ex-something if you're looking to get married or have a kid. There's still a few months where we could do something and then stop, with a few left over to acquire someone to marry or have a child with.
There is honestly absolutely no bitterness here, just a little bit of 'huh, well isn't that interesting.' I wish them all the happiness they deserve, and even more than that for some of them. Better them than me--my apartment is far too small for either husband or children.

The best possible way to have spent yesterday was squelching around in a muddy field of tulips with Cat and Caroline, frozen fingers clamped around my camera, fighting with the wind for control over a red and white umbrella. And before the flowers, girlyness and pirate shirts. Afterwards, creme brulee, fondue, and Axe.

I watch myself in my rearview mirror and wonder what exactly it is that I think I'm doing. But then I realize that what I'm doing is fumbling.

I promise to stop dwelling on this soon (or, at least, to stop talking about it), but I cannot believe I managed to forget my own phone number just when I needed to remember it most. Dear Boy, please return for dancing on Thursday. I promise I'll fix it.

Cat and I are starting to recognize the regulars at Neighbors, which almost certainly makes us regulars ourselves.

"I told you so" is never the way to go, not even when it feels like it should get to be.

I saw her on my walk through Belltown tonight. The little girl was blonde, and her hair was so thin that her scalp shone through it, seashell pink. She had big green eyes and a Barbie in each hand, and I could tell from the cut of her cheekbones and the lines of her neck that someday the boys will be wild about her. Her shoes were shiny and yellow, and she was huddled up against a brick wall, crying.
I stopped. How could I not? From across the street she had already broken my heart, standing there so perfect and alone on the sidewalk. When I asked what was wrong, she sniffed with all of the power of her little nose and told me she was cold.
I dropped my bag on the pavement, fondue pot and fixings clattering too loudly inside it, and threw my coat around her shoulders. She sniffed again, softer this time, one big leftover tear shining in each eye. I asked what she was doing out there in the cold, and that was when she told me that she lived in this building, had dropped a Barbie outside on the way in, and her mommy had let her run back out and get it. She was supposed to buzz up to her apartment like a big girl, she said, but was not tall enough to reach the buttons on the call box.
A sob shook her all the way through at this point, and she launched herself at me for a hug. When I cuddled her to me, I could feel her whole body shaking from the cold, her little bird bones clattering against each other. I hugged her close and we took a few deep breaths together, and she held my hand while I pressed the buttons for her apartment. I watched outside until she got into the elevator, where she turned and waved and then disappeared.

I've been trying not to think of what may have happened to her if I had not happened along, but the thoughts creep in and they hurt my soul. I hate to think that something that wonderful and pure will be stained someday. I hope that she went upstairs and had hot chocolate and a warm bath, and I hope that by tomorrow she will have forgotten being trapped outside in the cold.
I hope that she doesn't mind that I took a little of her light with me, caught in the fibers of my jacket and the backs of my eyes.

My French lessons have been pretty hit or miss the last couple of weeks, and I imagine they'll continue to be so for at least several more, as Cecile could really go into labor at any moment. I should be taking advantage of this and, I don't know, memorizing vocabulary words or something, but I'm not. Perhaps I'll make myself some flashcards and badger you all into quizzing me whenever I see you.

One of the many things I learned this weekend is that red shoes are appropriate for every occasion, including going away parties for people I don't know and dancing until late with friends. A very pretty boy asked Cat if I was her girlfriend, and another pretty one slid his hand into that place on my side reserved for the hands of boys and spoke in my ear. I blame it all on the red shoes.

I had to perform emergency surgery on my myrtle tree tonight, which sadly needs to be repotted in a bigger pot. The clouds are doing lovely things right now, and I want to give them all names and social security numbers, and invite them over for dinner.

The thing is that not all rectangles are squares, you know?

And I wonder sometimes what happened to all the late nights talking dirty to the potted plants, to the little girl that would leave plastic bags and plates and bowls full of baked goods on doorsteps, ringing doorbells and running away. I find that most days now I can resist those urges that encourage me to bite my friends on their arms and shoulders, to put m&m's in my belly button, to put my hands over my eyes and insist until I cry or you give in that you can't see me.

I have erased many, many things from my dance card. And there's a whole stack of stories that I can't figure out, all the ones that haven't ever left the present tense.

I would love nothing more than to be able to stop talking to you for days or weeks. But these sentences get stuck inside my head like song lyrics and I find that I can't stop pacing around my apartment until I get them out. Somehow the rattle of the typewriter isn't the noise that I need to drown out all of those words ricocheting inside my skull and all I can do to make myself rest is to give them to you. And there are mornings when I wake up and know that what would be best would be to move to Nebraska and start a dairy farm and never read another book again.

The thing to remember about the relationship between me and spring is that it never delivers on its promise, either.

Did you all notice the lovely spring day today? I always told you I was magic. I hope you took full advantage of it. Me, I jumped in all the leftover puddles, and I may or may not have charged face first into the breezes on my way home.

I learned today about the demon in the veins of a friend. I don't think he wanted to tell me--I don't think he wanted to tell anyone--but sometimes we don't get to choose who we confide in any more than we get to choose who confides in us. If I am to be perfectly honest, I'd have to tell you that it isn't a secret I'd have chosen to pick up. I'm not sure how to learn not to search for dying inside his face, how to learn not to want to make him soup every time he coughs or hold his hand when he sneezes. And learn how not to do those things is just what I'll have to do. The rest of his friends and family will know soon enough. And then he'll need someone to be his friend not because of his illness or even in spite of it, but because it doesn't figure into the equation at all.
I will be that friend if it is possible for any person to do so.

I can see you there, Spring, hiding beneath all of this mist and this chilly
bluster. You can't fool me. I've been walking through the rains and listening to the flowers and chatting with the bugs, and all I'm hearing is the end result of these April showers.
I've been spending whatever amounts of free time I have lately sitting at my
little blue table, watching the hazy grey sheets on Lake Union and drinking tea, making up stories about all of you. I do love the rains, and the weather of my city in all of its moods. But I am impatient (this comes as no surprise) for daylight that lasts until bedtime, and irresponsible road trips, and cold beer on hot days. I am impatient for dancing too late, for petting puppies, for talking about books until my tongue goes numb.
Any of these things could be happening right now. And to be perfectly honest, most of them are-my recent trip to the maudlin side of things notwithstanding. I have been having a whole lot of fun. But something about spring makes my palms itchy, makes me want to grab you by the shoulders and memorize the shades of your skin and the whorls of your fingerprints. It makes me want to be bold and shy, saucy and innocent: to go out and paint the town all night and to stay home and reorganize my closets.
So you just hurry up and get here, Spring. I have a lot of adventuring to do.

I've meant to mention this to you all for days, and now it's First Thursday and almost too late. But.

Art Squad Presents ......

Le Piéton Super
Photography and Paintings by
Joy Andrews
Lee Dicks Clark
Caroline Colón
Sally Moore
Donna Whitsett

Music by
Hakea

619 Western Ave. in Pioneer Square
5th floor, North Studio
6:30-10PM

I'll be there around 8:00ish. Anyone wanna meet me there?

My invitation to the Peach People's wedding came in today's mail, addressed in the perfect copper-plate handwriting that I've been making jokes about since we were freshmen in high school. The inside envelope? Addressed to "Spamella," a nickname no one has called me by, fortunately, for years.
It has always impressed me what an easy decision marriage was for these two. It wasn't ever even really a decision, just a logical conclusion--an assumed eventual step, from the day they finally started dating. Any yet I'm still stunned that things have gotten to this point.

I have a loaf of zucchini bread for my office baking right now, and it smells delightful in here. I used to be a baker of birthday cakes, although it's a habit I've fallen out of in recent years. The next time I'm home for an evening I'll make another batch of Bitchin Potato Leek Soup, which also makes my apartment smell just yummy.
You can always tell I really like you if I'm cooking for you.

I walked home in the rain today, which is something that people who live in rainy climates rarely do. But I did not move to Seattle to stay out of the rain and if you drove past me today I probably grinned like a fool at you. My leather jacket gave off a slight animal tang that mixed with the damp grass smells and the Lake Union smells.
I wish they could make the scent of my walk to and from work into a perfume.

Dear Bell Jar,

Hi there. It's been a while, my old friend, and yet I am honestly amazed at how it feels like no time at all has passed since we saw each other last. I've had a few visits with your cousins in recent months, but during a bout of vicious wallowing Saturday night I realized that you'd come to town again. You've got me firmly by the shoulders, and though I'd really like to kick you in the shins and run away I know from experience that you'll just kick back even harder.
Now that I know it's you I see that it's probably likely that you've been standing behind me for weeks now, wearing a mask and waiting to jump out and yell 'Boo!' You know that I've been drinking too much and reading too little lately, and you've been giggling up your sleeve at how I've been feeling rejected and inappropriate and so, so stupid. You think it's funny because you think it's your doing, but I've got news for you.
I'm on to your game. You and I, we've gone around and around like this for many years. We've called each other names and we've beaten each other up and I have done ridiculous things in your name. You've caught onto my neck with your fingernails and I've let you stay there because if nothing else you were a feeling that was familiar. But no more of this. You can stay as long as you like, because I know I can't get rid of you that easily, but I don't have to pretend to listen anymore.
Oh sure, I know that until you leave I'll have more hours and days where I feel useless and unattractive and dumber than most rocks. I'm not going to fool myself into believing that I'm cleverer than you. But I can fill my time in ways that you can't understand. I can wall myself in with work, and with friends, and with long walks around my city. I can hunker down and wait for you to get bored and go.
Because the thing is, I'll always win in the end.

love,
me

Normally I'm not a big fan of memes, but honestly, when am I going to pass up a chance to talk about books? Besides, it was Ryan that poked me with it, and although I don't know him I just love the way he writes and the way he talks about his son.
Also, he said complimentary things about me, and flattery'll get you everywhere in this house.

So.

1. You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
Possibly I'd be Fahrenheit 451, as it would be a shame for it to be consigned to the flames. But. More likely than not I'd be Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse. These days, it's almost a forgotten work, and it's a little sniffed at by Hesse scholars, but it so beautifully captures the disconnect between the needs of the body and the needs of the spirit. It explains the ache that happens in the space right below your heart.


2. Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

I'm totally in love with Andy in Generation X. But really, I find myself having crushes on authors. There could be an argument there about the authors as seen through their books being fictional characters, but honestly, I just don't have the energy right now.

3. The last book you bought is:

Anne Sexton's letters. You can tell by her poetry what sort of woman she'd be in her letters, but the fact that she is scatterbrained and needy and wants passionately just to live brings things home a little more.

The last book you read:

The Orestes Plays of Aeschylus. The translation I have is from the sixties and a little shaky, but the Orestia are proof that words can live longer than anything else. Written in the early 400's BC, they're still vibrant and valid today.

What are you currently reading?

Anne Sexton's letters. Still butting my way through Remembrance of Things Past, which is proving to be such a worthwhile experience the further along I get, and I can't wait to get through it and try it again in the new translation.

5. Five books you would take to a deserted island:

Criminy. This question hurts my soul.

1. Mindfield by Gregory Corso. The work of the streetwise angel poet will follow me to my grave. He is the lover and the clown, the best friend and the distant stranger. He's like a radio station tuned to the soul. I could no more survive on a deserted island without this poetry than I could with both hands tied behind my back.

2. Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges. I could read the same Borges story every day for a month and be reading a different story each time. My poor brain is always going, but after a Borges it's quiet and tuckered out. His absolute skill with language makes me humble.

3. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I love these characters. I love how they are listlessly self-destructive and I love how they don't ever seem to notice that where they end up and where they started out from are exactly the same place. I hate that this is now an Oprah book and that people are asking book club questions about it. It should be kept under glass unless it's being read, and it should only ever be bound in scarlet and gold.

4. The Gay Science by Friedrich Nietzsche. I know that Nietzsche has a bad rap and all, but I read this for the first time when I was fifteen and it held my hand the way a philosophy book only can at the very beginning and the very end of a person's life. It remains, for me, the best of his work.

5. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I believe in the goodness of people. I know that there are always bad people, and that good people will do bad things, but I believe in the light. And I believe in this book--that it's one of the stones holding up this haphazard American culture.

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

1. Sarah. We got the same English degree from the same teachers at the same time, and we've known each other half of our lives, but I'll bet our literary souls live in different houses.
2. Dylan. Because of our mutual love of Flannery O'Connor.
3. Cat, who has spent a lot of time on airplanes reading lately.

The thing about your ways and my ways being so alike is that we like to pretend we don't know it. But I've seen that face you make when you'd like to smack me in the mouth. I've seen that face a million times, and I've made it a million too. You and I, looking at each other, are like a particularly vile version of a mirror.
You don't write your letters, you grind them out as though you were armed with a mortar and pestle instead of a pen and paper. I scratch mine into flesh with heated needles. But the end result, it's the same every time.

I told you about one of the times he punched me in the mouth, about how I couldn't even hate him for the act itself, because at least he'd finally done what he'd been threatening for so long. I didn't respect him for it, never that, but I was relieved that the wall had finally broken and we could stop pretending that violence wasn't actually the answer. You asked how I didn't hate him for it, and you smiled with that knife in your eyes when I told you that there are some actions beyond hate.

If the doorbell were to ring right now, and you were on the other side, would I gasp like a fish for words, eyes wide, mouth open? I would. I would curse and founder and wholly lose my cool. That would be what you were expecting, and you would be amused, and you would offer whatever you held in your hands like a consolation prize, pretending like you hadn't planned it this way all along. You're tricky and clever, but I know your ways because they're my ways too.

We are slaves to the groove.

80's Night at Neighbors last night was what every 80's night should be--a bunch of strangers/new best friends squished together, drenched in sweat, and rocking out.
Steph, Cat, and I combined our girl's night out with Andrew's 30th birthday dance party (because this wouldn't be Seattle if we didn't run into people we knew), and had a blast. And we're making this into a tradition, so you're all invited to join us next Thursday. Come on! Don't be a stick in the mud! This is much better exercise than going to the gym.

Also of note:

Performance Anxiety
a group show by Seattle Photo Meetup members
Friday April 1st, 6-10pm
4911 Aurora Ave N (1 block south of the zoo)

My coworkers chased me out of the office this afternoon to go to the doctor, admittedly not with pitchforks and clubs, but close.
When I woke up this morning my right wrist was stiff and a little red, and it hurt like crazy. I tried to break my fall yesterday after my encounter with a moving vehicle, and evidently my scrawny little wrists are not built for bracing all ninety-something pounds of me. So I did the conscientious thing and wrapped it up in an ACE bandage and toddled off to work.
Do you know how embarrassing it is to tell people that you've been hit by a car when you're standing there in front of them not noticeably any less three-dimensional than you were the day before? My office full of moms connipted at me for coming in, for not having gone to the hospital, for not having gotten her insurance information. (They must have forgotten who they were talking to--I'm the girl that told the ambulance to go away when I got in a high-speed head-on collision with a concrete wall because 'there were people who needed them more than me.' Right.) But honestly, I'm pretty much a walking Laurel and Hardy episode, and it'd take a piano being dropped on my head to worry about it that much.
My boss was out today, and as she's the only one I actually have to listen to, I thought I was safe. But my coworkers called her and told on me, so I promised I'd stop by the doctor after work. And I did, because I am a sucker and a rotten liar.
The doctor told me that, indeed, being hit by a car was probably bad for my health and that I should probably find a houseboy to do any heavy lifting until my wrist heals. But I'll be fine, and if I'm lucky should live through the week.

Some of you are familiar with my Dr. Seuss obsession and my ability to quote from his books at inappropriate times. One of my favorites was always "I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew." And me, I'm just plain tired of things going the way they have been. Stuff? Has been sucking. "But I've bought a big bat. I'm all ready, you see. Now my troubles are going to have trouble with me."
Word.

I've taken to walking to and from work lately. There really isn't any reason not to, since it takes almost as long to wait for the bus, and I do sit at a desk most of my day. And as I've told you many, many times before, I love this city.
This last week or so I've been in an exceptionally foul mood, just really grumpy. Work has been overwhelming, and I keep breaking things at home, and if one more person anywhere asks me if he's called I might kick them in the shins. (He hasn't, and if one more person says 'but I thought he liked you' I really will kick them in the shins. Fucking quit it, people.) I'm grumpy at work and I'm grumpy at home, but during my daily walks I'm bouncy and smiling and just thrilled to be young and alive and in Seattle. I probably should just keep walking, but do I have places to go and so I go to them and try not to take out my shitty mood on other people.

On Mondays I have my French lesson at a cafe down the street. I've been leaving work a little early and walking down there, too--it's only a few extra blocks. Today I was waiting at a light to cross the street, singing along inside my head with a song and smiling at the sky that was suddenly blue. (The song was "Preaching to the Perverted" by Pop Will Eat Itself, if you're wondering.) The light turned green and the crosswalk sign flashed to a little man, so I stepped into the road and continued on my way.
Anyway, I tried to continue. But so did the car in the turning lane next to me. And though it shuddered to a halt before totally running me over, it did manage to nudge me rather roughly in the left leg. I, of course, fell ass-over-teakettle sideways and backwards into some grass. The driver sat there stricken in her car for a minute and then heedlessly threw open her door in front of another car and ran over to me. She found me laying in the dirt, one headphone fallen out, cackling hysterically and trying to stand up. There are moments when things have been going just rotten, and then that one extra thing happens, and you have to make a choice between laughing and breaking into a million pieces.
She apologized profusely, but people were staring and I really wanted to get out of there so I told her that I was fine and hobbled off to my French lesson. A half of a block later my cell phone rang--it was my French teacher calling to cancel.
I don't really want to spend the next couple of nights alone in my apartment, but it seems as though the universe is trying to tell me something. So if you need me I'll be here, eating ice cream and poking at my bruises.

Happy Zombie Jesus Day. Or, uh, Easter, depending on your preferred celebratory world view.

When I was little my mom and I would color eggs a few days before Easter and then on Easter morning I'd get up and find them. But then one year I didn't find them all and she didn't remember where she'd left them until a few weeks later when the smell became noticeable.
With that in mind, we always used plastic eggs for the boys to find.
They'd make me hide them three or four times on Easter, waiting with their heads under the bed until I called for them to come hunt. I enjoyed the hiding as much as they enjoyed the finding, so we'd play this game all afternoon until we collapsed in a sugar coma.
In the evenings, Kelsey and I would write vaguely suggestive, silly sentences on bits of paper and put them inside the eggs. Then we'd sneak out of my house and walk around the neighborhood sowing them broadcast in yards and mailboxes and open car windows. She and I would nearly kill ourselves laughing at how confused the people would be when they found our messages. We were overwhelmed with our own cleverness and daring.
At home Jet the cat would be crouched on the kitchen counter trying to get through the plastic and to the Peeps. He loved those little marshmallow chicks.

Tara and I went to see Lou Barlow play at the Sunset Tavern last night. (Added bonus? The guitar player from Mudhoney, who has stopped being punk and started being folk-y, but continues to be totally hot.) I haven't seen Tara much lately--we've both been so busy and our schedules just haven't been meeting up--and I've missed Lou the last 5 times he's been in town, so I was really excited at the prospect of combining them both into one evening. As we ended up with a bunch of time to kill before the two sets we wanted to see, we got to indulge in an awful lot of people watching.
Watch out, Seattle: Tara and I are watching you, and we're making up stories.
"See those three over there? Well, I think that those two are hooking up on the side, and that other guy is so in love with her and doesn't realize that his two friends are sleeping together. And they don't want to tell him, so they're keeping it a secret. Someday soon they're going to get very drunk and have a threesome."
"Ok, so that girl?"
"Which one?"
"The one with the cool shoes. She looks like she's been doing way too much heroin."
"Yeah, she is a little shaky."
"All her friends call her 'black tar heroin.'"
"Hi, my name's black tar heroin, but you can call me 'tar' for short."
"Dude, that guy is nine feet tall! He'll probably stand in front of us."
"Ok, so if I got to take home anyone in this room? It would be that guy over there. No, the other one. Holding his jacket? Yeah, him."

Lou's set was fantastic--he was funny and brilliant and made me feel smiley and hopeful and fourteen. My favorite shows are the ones in a small room played by a dude with a guitar. He showed us what to do when someone passes out while you're playing, which is to finish your song and then do a cover that everyone knows. It was worth getting home four hours before I had to get up.

Dear Lou Barlow,

Congrats on the new baby! Thanks for coming back to Seattle and playing some old Folk Implosion stuff. Did you feel like the Beatles when two people fell down at your show? I often forget how free and goofy your songs make me feel.
What I think is that you and Mike Doughty ought to get together and play for a show. But then I think that if you did that, I might die.
I'm willing to risk it. Sorry your cat left.

love,
me

Dear Guy Who Passed Out,

Man, are you ok? That looked like it hurt, when you cracked your face on the edge of the stage.

love,
me

Dear The Rest of the Audience,

By the end of the show, I felt like you were all my new best friends. Let's go have drinks.

love,
me

Dear everyone,

Here it is now, almost the end of March. I go back and forth every day between, 'how is it March already?' and, 'oh, christ, is it still March?' I won't say that I'm starting to write you letters every month--that's too much like a commitment, and we all know how good I am at those--but I will say that occasionally a summing up is necessary.
Things are still going well. I could tell you that and leave it and completely ignore the fact that I've spent most of my free time this week curled up reading Francesca Lia Block books and feeling fragile. But all I'd be doing in that case is lying to myself in front of all of you, and lying to myself is what I'm trying to do less of. Things are going well and I have no reason to be unhappy, but I still sort of am. It happens. I could also pretend to be welcoming to platitudes about the nonlethal nature of rejection and to cliches about seas and the vast numbers of fish in them, but honestly I talk to my grandmother regularly and can get that sort of stuff from her. I am grumpy and rejected, but I'll get over it. Promise.
Cat and Steph came over last night for a girl's night in. Cat brought brownie fixings and Steph, who is obviously somewhat psychic, brought ice cream and flowers, both of which were completely fantastic. It's only been in the last few years that I've started cultivating relationships with other girls. Now I can't imagine life without my girlfriends, who are all amazing and strong and wonderful women that anyone should be proud to know. (We plan to go dancing next Thursday. Anyone else? Ass shaking? 80's night at Neighbors? Be there or be trapezoidal.)
I'll have been at my job for six months in about a week, and occasionally I just have to marvel at the total about-face my world has done in the last six months. Seattle has indeed been good to me. The Peach People's wedding is in just a couple of months, and I'm looking forward to presenting myself as a samantha more myself than I've ever been before. Moreover, I'm looking forward to this whole summer, which promises to be full of traveling and parties and cocktails and friends, and all of the other things that make life worth it.

love,
me

For a while my mother drove a station wagon. I would do whatever I could--lie, cheat, and cry--to get to ride in the back. I wasn't interested in sitting in the front and watching out the windshield: I had lived in that town for years, and I wasn't interested in where we were going. I'd been all those places before. Where I really wanted to get to was wherever it was we'd just been.

Someone gave me a pogo stick once, but I never weighed enough to make it pogo.

A few years later Maria had a slumber party. She had a pogo stick too, and I couldn't make hers do anything bouncy either. The party was for her birthday, and we were going to the drive-in for a double feature of Aladdin and 3 Ninjas. I'd never been to the drive-in before. We all piled in Maria's mom's station wagon and drove to the movie. Just before we got there, she ordered us all to get in the back and hide under a bunch of blankets, because she was sneaking us all in. The drive-in was the most wonderful place I'd ever been to, even though I mostly lay on top of the car and watched the stars.

I used to photograph people's hands, because I believed that they held all a person's secrets.

A few years later he and I went to the drive-in. But when we got there the movie had already started, and although we wanted to feel like the 1950's there were other things on our minds. So instead we drove off in that big white van filled with music gear, his thick hands with their long guitar player fingers alternately laced with mine and tracing the inside of my thigh. Some time later we found ourselves in Sarasota, stumbling on the beach, drunk with each other. He collected empty coquina shells, putting them in my hair and pressing them into my skin--he always made me feel like a princess at night.

They've since torn down that old drive-in.

Aside from a jaunt to the Frye today with Manuel and Chas, I have officially spent my whole weekend in. (I advise you to run, not walk, to see this Joseph Park show.) I came home after work on Friday and didn't leave again until it was time to meet these two in Pioneer Square this morning.
As I've said time and again, things have been sort of crazy lately. This is a direct result of being single: there's no reason to stay at home if I'm just going to be hanging out with myself all the time. So I have been going out. A lot.
It ended up being a perfect weekend for staying in, as the unseasonable spring weather has been overtaken by normal Seattle drizzle and wind. I don't mind being out in the rain, but I do love to stay at home with some tea when it's like this. And that's what I did.
And so I spent some quality time with myself. I asked myself important questions and got satisfactory answers. I cleaned out my closet. I tried on all my clothes and assured myself that I looked totally hot, and that if I hadn't been currently involved in eating a sandwich, I certainly would have done me. I read, I watched movies, I knitted, I worked on some literary theory I've been mulling over. (What? You can take the girl out of academia, but you can't take the academic out of the girl.) Spring always get my brain going, and I'm full up to here with all sorts of theories. I always feel smartest in the spring.
And now I'm ready for you, week, and all you've got to show me. You're already filled up with plans. I'm still all antsy for adventure--even though it's raining I know spring is still there just behind, and I want to go hand out e e cummings poems on streetcorners like religious tracts. I want to follow the baloonman, but I want to be him too.

I have mentioned before that my mother was a grower of plants when I was a kid. I, however, was never an active participant in her hobby. Although I appreciated the flowers I did not like the work involved, and so I made sure to hightail it out of there whenever she would enter the living room dressed in her gardening clothes.
I find myself turning into my parents in a million small ways, in exactly the manner I swore I never would. And so it was with a little bit of sheepish mumbling that I asked my mom for a couple of plumeria cuttings when I was in Florida last June. But I was missing the lovely tropical flowers of my childhood living out here, and I found myself thinking longingly of the smell of plumeria by night and the silky thin feel of hibiscus between my fingers. So I brought them back with me and stuck them into pots, hoping. They sprouted leaves last year, but it was too late for flowers.
This is my first blossom, and I of course find something unspeakably appropriate in the fact that I have managed to cultivate warm-weather blooms in my frigid apartment. In the usual way, this makes me hopeful.

I'm alone tonight, back inside my head. Life has gotten away from me the past couple of months and I realized suddenly this morning at work that I hadn't even the prospect of plans for this evening. It's quiet in here, and my brain is spinning, not yet willing to calm down. Old philosophy jokes keep coming to mind, stuck in my head like bad radio songs and perhaps suggested by my plumeria. A couple of years ago, Friday nights would have meant a late night down at the spot, guitars and stories and sneaked cigarettes, aura boys and jokes and knee sex. A couple of months ago it would have meant dinner and a movie. Recently, it's meant drinks.
I'm glad for tonight's quiet. The recent social whirl has left me a little grumpy. But I'm thinking of you folks that I'm not with tonight--Steph and Ryan with family, Cat all far away, a certain boy that always smells of vanilla, and everyone else.

My favorite time to look at the Space Needle is just as dark is falling, when the flashes of the cameras on the observation deck are visible. It twinkles like a galaxy all its own, and it smiles at me.

The thing is, you know, that I've been settled here in Seattle--in this apartment--for almost two years. That's longer than I've been settled anywhere, ever. And since the grand cross-country road trip, I haven't gone to hardly any places that I haven't been before.
I think that's what's wrong with me these days. I'm jonesing for an adventure. It's spring time and I want to be going places and doing things and exploding myself all over new terrains. I want to be meeting ugly people with three fingers in towns with less people than my high school. I want to run through your sprinklers and wrestle with your children and glue myself from head to toe with flowers.
I'm not going to pretend that I haven't been giving in to my impulses these days--that I haven't been stumping around the office pretending to be a pirate or winking at strange men or dancing right in your living room.
So if you see me, skipping through dowtown with a giant or a unicorn or the president of France, remember that I have spring fever. And then wave to me, because I will be waving to you.

As is usually the case after a couple of weeks of sassyness and self-confidence, of short flippy skirts and tall leather boots, I can feel myself starting to ebb. I start to panic when this happens because I know these depths and I don't want to revisit them. And so I start to talk too much, and the difference between this and my normal talking too much is that I'm trying to build universes and crystal towers and pretty little bugs out of all of these words. I'm trying to make myself someplace to go because if I don't this momentum will continue and I'll smear myself all over your windshield like a redheaded bugsplat.
I don't want you to have to scrape me off of anything.
The problem is that everything I've ever seen is trying to press itself out through my eyes. It wants to get to you but I don't know how to jiggle the handle of the door and let it out. And I'm sure that if you touched me, just here on the backs of my knees, I would smash into a million pieces.

It ought to surprise you not at all that I ran off and married this big hunk of climbing rock yesterday.
On the way, we also had a whole lot of pictures taken of us, ran into Clark, had a small dance party in the Nordstrom BP, and ate tofu pillows.
I do so enjoy getting dressed up and making a spectacle of myself.
"Are you marrying this because, you know, life is rocky and stuff?"
"No. We're marrying it because it's big and hard."

Because I love it so, here's this picture of me and Cat, one of my fellow brides:

The beaches I grew up on were made of white sand so fine that your toes have to grip it to gain any purchase. After a few steps the arches of your feet hurt from the effort. My favorite place was always the wavy line where the water came up, and I would walk along that line and read all the things you were writing in the sand. The sun would reflect off the sand, blinding me, causing lazy whorls of sunstroke to start wheeling in the back corners of my brain.

I remember my mother and myself on a road trip in my old car, singing as loud as we could, feet bare, arms hanging out the window. My hair wasn't windblown, it was perfect.

You all look familiar today, and I want to carve lucky five-leaved clovers out of flower buds and hand them to you personally.

"Are you sure you don't want to tell me a story?"

"Yes. Why are you always asking me to tell you a story?"

"It's my hook."

"I could read you a story. Would that work?"

"Sure!"

There is rummaging here, off to the side, and I'm watching the movement and the smoothness of muscle, amused. The story is one of the Brothers Grimm's, about a girl who unmasks a group of robbers who want to cut her into little pieces.

"There. Was that a good story?"

"Honestly? With that voice? You could have been reading the phone book backwards and it would have been a good story."

On certain creeping hot Florida nights Toby would knock softly on my window, three quick smacks to the glass punctuated by a rap with the knuckle of his second finger. I'd clamber out, usually scraping my knees on the way, and we'd drive off into the dark in search of adventures. There were always matches in the car--we both smoked like damp brushfires--and I would light them, one by one, and drop them out the window. I loved to watch them flare brightly, struggle in the wind, and then die right by the passenger door. It seemed, at the time, an exceptionally poignant thing to do.
Tobes was in a bad place at the time, his mother having recently taken off with a man she met at the gas station. He'd sleep on the couches of various relatives sometimes, but more often than not he'd spend the night driving around until he couldn't stay awake anymore. He wanted his death, like his life, to be an accident.
I was also in a bad place at the time, spending days and nights shrinking in fear of the next round of random violence from my stepfather. I wasn't talking to anyone about what was happening because, at the very least, what I knew was better than whatever would happen next. But Toby and I didn't need to talk, we just needed to drive.

I apologize for not having pictures for you lately. I feel a little guilty, giving you all these words and no images. But I've been feeling many things lately, and not a one of them is creative. I'll try to step it up a little bit.

I've been meaning to tell you that I finally saw my first rat downtown this week. People talk about rats in most of the cities I've been too: in Florida they joke about how the rats have to be especially vicious to fight off the alligators. In New York City, old bums would whisper out of the shadows of doorways at me, "Be careful of the rats, little girl. They like to nibble." In Chicago the locals spoke about the rats in the same whispers they'd use to speak about cancer and racism. And here in Seattle people have always mentioned the rats in the skeptical tones they save for urban legends. But I saw one, I swear.

It was Tuesday, and I was downtown on my way up to Capitol Hill for my date that would last for eight hours and which I'll still talk about incessantly if you show even the smallest amount of interest. I was twitchy and nervous and looking all around and glanced at the sidewalk just in time to watch a big rat run across it and pop down into a sewer grate. No one else seemed to notice, but since I'm not in the habit of hallucinating rats, I'm pretty sure it actually happened.

There was giggling coming from somewhere in my office. Giggling in my office is pretty normal, since we're a rather merry bunch and we all like each other a lot. We're good at having fun--we do trivia every morning and, starting today, Friday Mad Libs--but this giggling was not from voices that I recognized.
After a minute or two I realized that there were small children around, and they were the ones laughing. Small children are also not too unusual in my office. I peeked around the corner of my cube but I couldn't see anyone, although I was pretty sure that the noises were coming from the unused reception desk by the elevator. I snuck over to the desk and peeked over, and there wrestling on the ground were two little boys. One of them had the other pinned and he was biting him in the head. I recognize that hold, the 'stay still you jerk so I can bite you in the head' hold--my brothers have perfected it. They seemed to be enjoying themselves and no one was bleeding, so I left them to it.

Last night someone told me to "Go on, do it," so I went on and did it only to spit it right back out into my napkin. I haven't done that since I was six, but apparently there are still some foods that require one to make the choice between spitting it out and throwing up.

I have recently found myself spending way too much time thinking about earthworms.
I walk to work some mornings, if I've just missed the bus or the morning is particularly sparkly or if I happen to hear a song that makes me want to stroll. Recently, the weather has been lovely and sunny and it's felt like spring is here. And so often on my morning walk I find dozens of thin little earthworms strung along the sidewalk. I say hello to them, of course, but I don't have the heart to let them know that it's only just March and that anything could still happen. But once I get to work I imagine the guilt that I'll feel if it suddenly gets cold and snowstormy, knowing that I didn't at least give warning.
I try to shake myself for anthropomorphosizing so entirely, but it's hard to firmly grasp my own shoulders. So instead I just worry.

Our favorite thing to do during my seventh grade English class was to get a copy of the latest weekly and match the personal ads up. Josh and I were especially fond of this game, hunching over the tiny print and whispering excitedly.
"Ooh! This one likes long walks! And so does he! Matched!"
We were practically made of exclamation points, enthusiasm, and romance. We were always on the lookout for a doorway into a story book, and we believed in fairy tales.

This is still a habit of mine, although I tend to do it online these days. Sometimes at work when I'm having a rest or waiting for a budget, I'll hop onto Craigslist and match folks up. Occasionally, I'll also have a peek at the missed connections. I still believe in fairy tales, and I like the idea of these people tossing out so many messages in bottles every day. It helps me continue to believe in hope, and in romance, and in exclamation points. And now and again, I'll wonder if anyone is out there missing connections with me.

But you know what? This weekend someone did.

I left work a little bit early today. All afternoon I'd been waffling back and forth between leaving early and staying late, but then my mom called and told me that I sounded like I was coming down with something and should go home. As I've always done whenever it's convenient, I listened to my mommy. I presented myself to my coworkers with, "my mommy said I should go home early, so I'm leaving," and then I gathered my stuff together for a leisurely stroll home.
I may be coming down with something. I've been feeling a little under the weather lately, along with being a little grumpy and a little blue. It's seemed like everything has been in 3-D and I've forgotten my red and blue 3-D glasses in the glove box. Walking home would be just what the doctor--or, anyway, my mother--had ordered.

I pressed the button for the elevator and waited. I play this game, waiting for the elevators at work, where I listen to the beeps and try to guess which of three sets of doors are going to open. Today, the elevator that came to get me was the farthest one down.
Inside, that elevator was padded, head to toe, with a little cut out around the buttons and the screen showing the floor's number. It's not usually padded, but after the week this has been, I'm not entirely surprised. The doors slid shut and I slumped back on the soft walls and sighed. Someone must be looking out for me.

Alissa called today to ask me questions about grants and to see how things were going. Her department recently moved down the street from the rest of our offices, into the building behind which my car was parked when it got broken into.

S: My car got broken into behind your building a couple of weeks ago.

A: Did it? Mine got broken into not too long ago too. Did they take anything?

S: Just my broken stereo. You?

A: No. They didn't steal anything at all. But they left behind a bunch of shot glasses and a thighmaster.

S: They...wait...what? A thighmaster?

A: And shot glasses. And now whenever I get into my car I get this picture of a drunk Richard Simmons type breaking into my car to drown his sorrows and work out his thighs. It's a little touching.

I was only sixteen when I tripped over your smile and hit the ground, blinded by a glib sentence and cufflinks shaped like martini glasses. And by now I manage to forget about you for weeks, even months at a time. It's only when I'm preparing for a trip back to Florida, these days, that you really creep back into my brain and take up residence, right there in the bottom left corner of my skull, just beyond the edge of where I can see.

I'm going back for a wedding, and a trip back there always takes a certain amount of preparation, an amount of reinforcing certain walls. I am far too fond of being wounded. But this trip for this wedding is going to be especially dangerous because it's going to haul me right smack back into that most dangerous of years for this nostalgic girl. It'll bring me right back to you.
I've still got to buy plane tickets, and to prepare myself for taking the actual steps involved in going on this trip I pulled out all the cd's I listened to then. I swear I'm trying to be less sentimental and frail, but I am still a creature of habit and there are still things that must be done.
There are whole albums that remind me of you.
I wonder how you're doing, but I will not take that step and find out because there are cliffs here that I will not be falling over. That may be the point of this, in fact; I'm just letting you know from here that I'm still not talking to you.

My mother once told me that she and my dad made the decision to have me while they were on a ferris wheel.
I can see the whole scene. The two of them in their hanging wire basket, lovely and younger then than I am now, younger in many ways than I've ever had the chance to be. In my imagination it was early fall, the sun just setting and the air still warm enough that she didn't feel chilly in her tank top. The last pieces of daylight would have been laying lightly across her waist length straight brown hair and she'd have been kicking her feel in their sandals like a little girl. His glasses would have covered half of his face and his short sleeved shirt would have been pushed up enough to show off his tattoo. She would have been snuggled back into his arm laid across the back of the seat behind her. They were young and in love and so full of youth and love that they thought they might burst.
If you would have told them, at this point, that in a very few years they wouldn't even like each other all that much anymore, that for a while their tiny towheaded offspring would get lost in the shuffle, they'd have stared at you with pity. It's often a good thing that we can't see into the future, that we are only able to look through the glass darkly.
I have never seen a picture of the two of them together.
In my baby book right after I was born she wrote, "Always remember, you were made out of your daddy's and my love for each other. We have so much love that we wanted to bring someone into the world to share that love with." I came across it not too long after they divorced, when I was four or five, and was instantly convinced that it was my fault that they had split up--that in making me they had used up all of their love--that I had stolen it all. I didn't tell anyone about it for ten years. Instead I kept that idea inside like a stolen treasure and sometimes I would curl myself around it and stroke it softly. It was my dirty secret, my hidden bag of drowned kittens.
It took a long time to come to terms with the fact that people make their own decisions and that what they do is not my fault. I'm always working towards being more thankful for that afternoon talk on the ferris wheel and less guilty about what happened afterwards. I am always working towards being more thankful, period.

I have made it a rule for myself that I am not allowed to watch any television shows involving crimes, because I am a great big fraidy cat and now and again have trouble telling the difference between what's real and what's my imagination. I live on the bottom floor of my building, which means I can hear all of the stomping and hammering that goes on above me, and I tend to get a little jumpy.
Except the other night I broke that rule. I was tired and thought that laying on the couch sounded like a fantastic idea. I only get 2 1/2 channels anyway, so it's really less watching television and more interpreting it. And so I watched one of those shows and then went to take a shower.
My shower curtain is see-through, and what this means is that now and again I catch myself standing frozen in the shower, soap clutched in my hands, staring at the doorknob. What I'm waiting for is for it to start turning, slowly, the way it would on tv. In my brain I can see the closeup, the door slowly starting to crack open. I find myself doing this and I make myself stop, but by that point I've gotten myself started and I can't shake the thought. So after I finish my shower I open the door slowly, waiting for someone to jump around the corner or emerge from my bedroom to, I don't know, hit me in the face with a lead pipe. No one ever does, but just in case I check out the whole apartment and then lock all the locks on my door.
After I go through this whole routine I always feel really silly, and thankful one more time that I live alone so there isn't someone around to watch me do these things.
This is just one more reason that I won't be getting cable.

I had intended, yesterday, to come home and tell you all about how you were not going to be getting any grumpy anti-Valentine's Day posts from me. There are no hard feelings between myself and the day, which I like so much just because of the goofy spectacle it has turned into. I believe in love, I really, really do, even if it's not at the moment sitting on my couch doing a crossword puzzle. I'm a satisfied single girl--a busy, hopeful single girl. Valentine's Day and I, we're cool with each other in and out of relationships.
And I had planned to tell you all about this in excessive detail. But first I was going to go have a couple of beers and a few games of pool with some friends. And that's where plans went awry. By the time I stumbled in at 4 a.m. I was no longer in the mood to talk about any of this.
In case you were wondering, the traffic here skyrocketed yesterday from all of the people searching for things like 'kissing lessons.' I love that.
I'm not going to tell you about what happened last night, because honestly I'm still not believing what I remember. I've been saying the phrase "Did I really...?" a lot today, and so far the answer has been yes. I really did. But I will tell you that while I've had more romantic Valentine's Days (last year springs to mind), I don't know that I've had one that was more fun.
Having a wonderful time. Wish you were here.

Some things:

1. I bought those shoes up there today. They are bright red and impractical and totally worth building a wardrobe around. They make my heart beat a little faster every time I look at them, and I think we might be in love. Now if only we could hurry past this stage where they give me blisters. (Yes, I did take that picture with my feet up on the living room wall. What? I was getting tired of taking pictures of stuff on my ugly carpet.)

2. My little brother broke his foot, because he is my brother and we are clumsy folk. It still just kills me, though, whenever they really hurt themselves. I'd do whatever I could to keep them from pain of all sorts, unless it's the kind that I inflict.

3. If anyone wants to buy me a Mark Ryden piece for my birthday, you have a few months to start saving up. This show was the first time I've had the chance to look at his work in person, and I'm even more in awe than ever.

4. I hate answering emails. And telephone calls. If it were up to me we'd all communicate via letters and smoke signals.

5. I find it likely that my plumeria will bloom this year.

It's been a long week, and I left work early this afternoon followed by a storm of paper airplanes fired by my coworkers who chased me away from my desk. I have great coworkers. The Seattle that I walked out into was shiny and blue and so pleased with itself it fairly squeaked, and I decided to walk home. A handful of steps down the road and my lovely city had already handed me back the bounce in my step. All at once I was pleased again, smiling at folks in cars and staring at the sky, trying to look so hard that I could burn this whole place into the back of my skull. A busload of kids drove past and waved at me, and I waved back with both hands.

Arthur Miller died last night. I heard about it first thing this morning, not too long after I came into work sleepy and grumpy and ready to go home. As is always the case when this happens--and it's always happening, my writers dying off--I fled to the one perfect bunch of words that's distilled his work for me: "And so there is hardly a week that passes when I don't ask the unanswerable--what am I now convinced of that will turn out to be ridiculous? And yet one can't forever stand on the shore; at some point even if filled with indecision, skepticism, reservation and doubt, you either jump in or concede that life is forever elsewhere." It's been looping in my head all day in a dusty corduroy voice.

I'd say that we'll miss you, Mr. Miller, but I've got you right here in my house.

I am always up for trying new things. I really believe all that junk about how I only have the one life to live and so on. So tonight, I got to ride in the back of a police car for the first time.
Sorry, though, that's the coolest part of the story. What happened was I was sitting on my floor trying to figure out how to make my vcr record things, because I am very slow where technology is concerned, and also at least 10 years behind. In the midst of this my doorbell rang, and I thought, "Score! Someone's come to visit me!" And I admit that when I opened the door and saw a rather attractive policeman standing there, my first thought was something along the lines of how they make porn that starts like this.
He asked me my name and we verified that I was the one he wanted to be talking to, and then he said, "So, your car has been broken into," and I stared at him as though I was at a party and had just realized we were wearing the same dress. He had to be kidding--I just got the stupid thing fixed last week! Sadly, he wasn't kidding, and my passenger window has been smashed. But hey, Mr. Cop, bonus points to you for tracking down my address and coming to find me so that I would know about it. (Minus points, however, for telling me all the ways someone could try to steal my identity with the things in my glove box. Don't scare the single girl, man.)
We decided that we should go to my car, which was a couple of blocks away, and he offered to give me a ride if I didn't mind sitting in the back. Mind! It was the best part of my week. As we were leaving one of my neighbors was coming up the stairs, and I could see him thinking "Oh man, there goes that troubled girl on the first floor again," so I tried to explain. I don't think he believed me, not when I got in the back of the car.
A very nice man living in his van that was parked behind my car had called the police for me, and he told me good luck and God bless, which really doesn't seem to be happening. This has been a vaguely poor week and I've been feeling a very light shade of blue, and at this exact point in the evening I'm wondering if it would make more sense to cover my broken window in plastic and draw attention to the great big hole there or to just leave it and hope for the best. The glass people will be coming by tomorrow afternoon to fix it, and I'm back to jumping at little bumps and thumps all around me.
I am, as they say, at a little bit of a loss for what to do now.

Dear jerks who broke my window to steal my stereo:

It's broken, you jackasses. Has been since Tennessee.

me.

Dear everyone,

I've been avoiding you for the last few days. Not so much because I haven't had anything to tell you--after all, when has that ever stopped me?--but because everything I've had to say has felt like I'm repeating myself. I'm always poking at this language of ours and sometimes I get to feeling like I've overkneaded bread dough and exhausted both it and my fingers.
But this afternoon it's cozy and raining and I'll be leaving shortly to go make donuts, and I realized that it's already February and I ought to check in.
Most of my free thinking time has been taken up with worrying about Sarah, who will probably be having surgery next week to either glue, sew, or staple her lung back into place. I disapprove of the whole thing most highly, because if I had to pick a place for her to be having surgery so far away from me, her chest would not be very high on the list. If I got to pick, they'd be operating on a toe--a middle one, one of the less important ones. But I don't get to pick and so instead all I get to do is worry.
Fortunately, I'm a fantastic worrier.
Last night there was a whole herd of birthday parties, parties for John, Kathleen, and Aleksandra. Cat went with me to the lot of them, which meant that I finally got to introduce Cat and Aleksandra to each other. It's always a really exciting thing when I get to put people that I like and admire so much in the same place, like I'm putting together pieces of a really big puzzle. I love birthday parties.
In all other ways things, at least the important ones, are going almost disbelief-suspendingly well. I love my job and my fantastic coworkers, and my evenings and weekends are crammed full of spending time with people who are smart and funny and astonishingly cool. I'm making lots of stuff--food, scarves, memories. It could all end at any moment, of course, which might be the best part of all. I'm pretty aware that these are the good old days.
So what I'm doing is trying to teach myself to look people in the eyes rather than the forehead or left cheek. It's important to have small, manageable goals.

Love,
me

You've been waiting for this, haven't you? Christ, I'm predictable.

Yes, I did indeed go see Douglas Coupland read last night, and yes he was incredibly funny and shook my hand twice. And I asked him to sign not only my copy of his newest book but my copy of Generation X, which is one of those books that have been my crutches for many years. I managed to keep my shit together reasonably well--or anyway, I spoke in complete sentences and made a moderate amount of sense. I don't usually get all that flustered around people but last night I shook and turned red and wrapped my scarf around and around my hands. (That, by the way, is a total lie. Get me in a room with a boy I have a crush on, and I absolutely get that flustered.)

The thing is, you know, that books are better than people. They just are, and there are a certain number of books that keep me going and steady my hands so that I can scrape together enough of myself to fill in the holes. This is the only one of those books written by someone I'll ever be in a room with, and so it's understandably close to a religious experience.

In case you're just tuning in, I have this irritating tendency to be overwhelmingly affected by small things. The last time I saw him read, in July of 2003, I had just moved out here and was feeling transparent and dreadfully lonely. I left the bookstore that day feeling like the world's biggest loser and if you touched me I may just have dissolved.

All this time later, I'm still feeling transparent but less dreadfully lonely. I left the bookstore last night still feeling like the world's biggest loser, but exuberantly so. I was samantha, world's biggest loser, and I felt like I was bursting with all this potential. At the moment, it was a cosmic thing to just be alive on a Tuesday night walking downtown with amazing folk like Steph and Ryan. I felt bigger than the whole world.

Today, of course, I'm back to being me. And that's a touch unfortunate, but it's all I've got--so for the moment, I'm ok with everything. And as always happens in these moments, I'm overwhelmingly grateful to the lot of you for indulging me. You're a star.