Miss Independent- But not the Kelly Clarkson version. I'm talking about the ironic cover by The Submarines.

One of the sometimes infuriating things about living in Portland, Oregon, is the double-edged sword of the reverence for the word "independent". Indie movies, indie music, and especially indie food are the only truly respected means of cultural conveyance, so you better recognize . . . and blessed be.

On the positive side of things, it is fun to love something sort of small an unappreciated. When your favorite band has only 12 fans, then you can actually buy the artists a beer and shoot the breeze with them for an hour after their set. Likewise, loving locally run restaurants supported by their own farm fills you with not only your weight in quinoa, but also a sense of supporting local economy while at the same time not infecting your body with any scary little multi-syllabic carcinogens. Also? "The Kids Are All Right" was right- ALL men that cook for and own farm-to-plate restaurants look like Mark Ruffalo . . . unfortunately for my libido, many of them are also gay, but they are all that hot.

The negative side of things is that you are practically shunned if you love anything considered to be popular by the masses. No Lady Gaga, no Rihanna, no Justin Timberlake movies or music, no movies with Ben Stiller where he does comedy (WHO THE HELL WANTS TO SEE "GREENBERG"??!!) "Indie" cred is valued so much here that people that used to be indie but decided to actually capitalize on their talent because they, I don't know, wanted to stop sleeping on their sister's futon, are relegated to the status of the "unclean" and our once-strong love of them is shoved into a dark place at the back of our collective broken hearts. The minute Death Cab for Cutie went mainstream and Ben Gibbard married the sister-of-Bones (I dare not speak the Manic Pixie Dream Girl's name, lest she make herself known and adork my brains out), I was forced to burn my copies of "Something About Airplanes" and "We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes". And by burn, I mean erase from my hard drive. Never mind that their one of their breakout hits "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" is a really gorgeous (creepy) love song- I AM NOT ALLOWED TO LOVE IT BECAUSE THEY WEAR ARMANI NOW.

Because I am just unhealthy enough to always love the thing that I am told I cannot have, and because I am tired of having to have an "experience" in a dingy jazz bar with a fusion band just so that I can get some driving tunes, I find that I have thrown myself pretty aggressively into pop culture in my late twenties. Unabashedly, I consider myself to be a Gleek (although I am less of a practicing one since that giant bug took up residence in Finn's ass in the middle of season 2), I cheered aloud when Ron and Hermione finally kissed in the last Harry Potter movie, and in the spring, "F*** You" by Cee Lo Green became the most played song on my iTunes. Yes, I will have some Kool-Aid- and I will sip it slowly from my McDonald's promotional cup for the movie "Puss 'n Boots" while you attempt to sound out the ingredients of my radioactive beverage listed on the side of its brightly colored packaging.

In choosing to be closed-minded, my Portlandian brethren and sistren (?) fail to recognize a few things:

1) Not all pop culture is bad. Pop culture=/=horse plops, it simply means that the appeal is broad. Jay-Z, Adele, Natalie Portman in "The Black Swan", the Coen Brothers producing westerns, the guys that thought up Outback Steakhouse's Bloomin' Onion- you cannot tell me that just because you don't like it that they are not amazingly talented individuals that excel at their craft. The fact that other people recognize their talents as well should not stop you from loving them. And you should really try the Bloomin' Onion, guys- it's a deep-fried onion you can eat like fries!

2) Organic, natural, indie. Stripped of most claims to glitz. It is not bad to sometimes want sequins over organic cotton. When I want to shake my ass like an escaped lunatic from a dancing asylum (just go with it), I am not going to turn on Pink Martini- it's Shakira and Wyclef, bitch! He is absolutely right, my hips are not lying, and you better get your half-animal/half-man self over here and dance it up too- I don't care if your skinny jeans inhibit movement below the belly button.

What I hope that this little vignette has done is show that I AM open-minded when it comes to the culture of pop. I don't get the appeal for everything- I kind of think that Katy Perry should just get it over with and call all of her songs "I Have Big Tits"- but I see its value, and I am not at the level of hater that my similarly ZIP coded American Apparel-clad kindred may seem to imply.

Also- do you have any idea how huge a corporation The North Face is?

Wes Craven poops in the dark.

A couple of months ago, I met a guy that I thought was really cute. Hilarious sense of humor, smart, close to my age, not white- he seemed pretty cool. He also seemed kind of shy, so I thought I would take it upon myself to ask him out. We both went to a party and as we were standing by our cars about to leave, I said, "Hey, do you want to hang out sometime this week? There's this movie I want to see called 'Insidious' about a little boy that's posessed. It looks pretty good." He told me that he would like to hang out, but that he could not see that movie with me. I asked him why not, and he sang "Cause I'm a PUUUUUSSSSYYY!!!" which honestly, was such an awesome response, it caused me to go home and spend the evening naming our future children. Sadly however, this is not the story of how little Ash George Romero and Ray Peter Egon's father met their mother.

Aside from the time spent reflecting on the adorableness of self-deprecating nerd-boys, that I evening I took some time to really pull myself apart from my life in the last few years and reflect upon the time when I too, would bow out of a movie invitation to a scary flick despite the relative attractiveness of the person doing the inviting. There was a time when scary movies were the bane of my existence, and for good reason . . .

The second most scared I have ever been by a horror movie happened when I was 12 years old. I was attending a slumber party for a girl named Tina. It was only the second slumber party of my life- all of my childhood my parents nursed a constant fear of me being molested by someone's itinerant uncle and wanted me to be old enough to kick a grown man in the stones before they let me out of their sight between the hours of 6 PM and 6 AM. I was anxious to prove that I was well-versed in the protocol of slumber parties, and thus walked into Tina's party with my sleeping bag held high above my head, announcing myself to be "up for anything". Now that I think about it, with that kind of attitude my parents may have been right to keep me at home...

We decided to watch a scary movie. Since it was 1994, the world did not yet know the ultimatums of Jigsaw, and the words "human" and "centipede" had only a passing acquaintance with one another on evolutionary diagrams found in banned textbooks, so we turned to the man that authored the nightmares of our generation: Stephen King.

One of my favorite things about the early 90s was the proliferation of TV miniseries adaptations of Stephen King's bookstop horror stories. They were all TERRIBLE- "The Langoliers", "The Tommyknockers"- even "The Stand", a book I read just two years ago and now count among my top twenty books of all time- all of them suffered at the hands of ABC Entertainment. Every one of them featured cheesy music, poor editing, washed-up actors, and endings that should have been stuck in the barbecue by James Caan along with the text for "Misery's Baby". What made them so appealing for kids my age though, was that since there was no rating (TV did not yet have the little box in the corner of the screen for people to ignore before watching "Two and a Half Men" with their six-year old), 8-12 year old kids could easily convince their parents that the stories depicted in these six-hour jaunts into terror were "not too grown up" for them, meanwhile blaming the dog for the puddle of piss that was found on the living room floor during the commercial break just following the scene where all of the dolls in the toy store turn their heads just sliiiightly to the left.

After consuming an inhuman amount of candy and caffeine, we sat down in Tina's room to watch "IT" on the 13" TV/VCR combo that her mother had purchased for Tina's birthday. In case you are the one person on earth that is not familiar with the iconic image of Tim Curry wearing makeup that is NOT accompanied by a pair of fuck-me heels, I can summarize the story of "IT" in three words: Clowns are evil. Okay, if you need more- they tear the arms off of little boys, cause pictures to come alive and wink at you (AUGH!!!), come up through the shower drain in the locker room after gym class, cause blood to flow out of your bathroom sink, and elicit really creepy recitations of passages of the boy scout handbook from kids with asthma. Apparently there are just so many balloon animals that you can make before you snap and start bitch-slapping baby Seth Green.

Heightening the terror however, was the fact that I watched this movie for the first time with nine other twelve-year old girls. We were huddled on Tina's bed in a sort of pre-teen version of a rat king- our arms and legs entwined with one another, becoming more so each time a new horror met our eyes and we scrambled around trying to get away from all that WRONG. We lived and breathed for the 3 hours as one entity. A screaming, weeping, eye-covering entity that was terrified to take a pee break.

Speaking of pee breaks: The resultant consequence of Tina's slumber party was the re-tooling of my bathroom habits. No- this has nothing to do with the regularity of my bowels, although they are fine, thanks for asking- I mean the actual actions that one performs while in the bathroom. See, in the movie, Pennywise the Clown got to most places/affected the largest cross-section of the populous via sewer drains, and so the bathroom became my own personal portal to hell, with its three drains and innumerable horrific possibilities.

As already mentioned, the clown came up through the shower drain in one scene, and because I was 12 years old and did not yet have the ability to tell my brain to LIGHTEN UP, I was convinced that if I did not keep vigilant watch on my shower drain while showering, this would happen to me- so I faced the head of the shower the entire time I was in there. For a year. An admirable feat, considering the need to eventually rinse one's crack. Additionally, the blood faucet scene meant that if I closed my eyes while washing my face before bed, I would open them again to find my face covered in O+. Finally, there was a scene where Pennywise pulls the neighborhood bully into a sewer pipe by folding him completely in half. I am not sure why this translated to me that the toilet is my enemy and sitting upon it will result in immediate death in a like manner, but I spent most of 1995 hovering my way through every evacuation. My poor parents had no idea what was going on, and I am sure that upon observing my hair to be greasy in the back, my bloodshot eyes suffering soap damage, and the constant evidence of my having gone pee and "missed", they must have been convinced that I was on drugs. If only.

To repeat: This is only the SECOND most scared I have ever been by a movie.

The top honor in the Laurie-Loses-It-at-a-Movie-and-Blames-Her-Nervous-Gas-on-the-Guy-Sitting-to-her-Right Awards goes to the 2002, re-made-for-American-audiences-because-we- apparently-don't-like-it-when-people-"talk funny", horror classic "The Ring".

I know what you are thinking, "Seriously? THAT movie? It's so LAME. With the overplayed creepy-little-girl concept, the hollow-eyed kid that speaks doom, and the cabin in the woods. YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED." To this, I invite everyone to remember that in the moment, a lot of movies seemed a lot more impactful than they actually are. I mean, really people, "Titanic" was the #1 monkey-making movie for like forever, and now it's "Avatar" which I have not seen, but I assume to be "Titanic" with a little kink thrown in (I mean they are blue, and have sex with their hair. What else am I supposed to garner from that information?) All I am saying is that it may seem dopey now, but at the time, "The Ring" was insanely scary, and my first viewing of it was more scarring than the time I accidentally saw my father naked. (AUGH!!!! I JUST REMEMBERED THAT HAPPENED! MY EYES!!!)

I was 20, in college, and for the first time people were "getting" my sense of humor enough to want to keep me around, so I had a group of friends that traveled in a pack of about 14 people at any given time. Most of us were too young to believably talk our way into bars, and too lazy to play capture-the-flag again, so more often than not, we spent our Saturday nights at the movies. Yup, Eugene, Oregon is a lot less thrilling when you don't smoke pot.

One evening we decided to go see the new horror movie that had come out. I was trepidacious. Despite having once again become my own master of rooms containing three or more drains, I still remembered the nerve-shattering horror of my experience watching "IT" and amazingly, had avoided watching any scary movies since that time. (This does not include Lifetime Original Movies, but those are scary for a completely different reason having to do with certain actors' post-"90210" career decisions . . . )

I went to the movie under the auspice of it being an opportunity to sit next to a cute guy whose name and face I no longer remember- for funsies, let's call him "Burt Reynolds" and give him a mustache. I was already skilled in the art of the unrequited crush, and Burt Reynolds had shown no interest in me at that point, so when the movie- which was in its second week of release- turned out to be nearly full about 20 minutes before it began, most of our group was split up, including me and my mustachioed lover. Sadly that meant that any and all "Smokey and the Bandit" sexual fantasies were out the window for that evening as well. I was, as you can probably guess, understandably grumpy.

It fell upon me to sit with a girl that was more of a friend-of-a-friend- a pretty girl with big teeth unironically named Joy. Joy had revealed to me at dinner that she had gotten her first cell phone that day, and was still figuring out some of the more minute aspects of its operation. As was the case with most phones in 2002, it was clunky, had a dot matrix screen, and since the ringtone revolution had not yet set the nations ears ableed, had a pretty standard ringer for the time period. Being a girl that was still taking her messages from her home answering machine however, I thought this was pretty tight and asked to use it to play "Pong" while we waited for our blooming onion appetizer to arrive.

Being split off from the rest of the group at a horror movie, I turned to Joy after sitting down and said, "I'll admit, I am not great with horror movies." I hoped for her response to be something along the lines of, "Oh don't worry- if you listen to the music, you can tell when something insane is about to happen and cover your eyes." or "Really? I think they are kind of funny." thus easing my anxiety. Instead Joy said something akin to, "If I get scared enough, I may cry." Lights down.

The movie began. The PTSD that resulted from that evening has thankfully wiped my memory of most of the details of this film, so I only remember the following terrifying highlights:

• There is a VHS tape (w00t! Technology!) with some weird performance art-type stuff on it that if you watch it, someone calls your phone and whispers "SEVEN DAYS" and then you die in seven days with your face looking all messed up.
• There is a long-haired little girl that they kept in a barn until her mother threw her in the well to kill her. "The Ring" is the ring of light that she saw when looking up from the bottom of the well.
• At one point, an old man kills himself in a bathtub using equestrian accoutrements and it is really weird.
• At the end of the movie the dead little girl crawls out of the TV to kill people, and you want to crawl inside your own bumhole to get away from the image.

Joy and I sat next to each other completely terrified for the entire movie. Not really being friends, we were not comfortable enough with each other to hold hands during the scary parts, or make jokes to ease the tension. Also- I think Joy may have been in a similar situation to my own- having come to the movie hoping to sit next to someone testosteronal and snuggly, and had no contingency plan for when that fell through and times were tough. I do not feel that it is an exaggeration to say that that night either one of us would have choked Linus with Snoopy's dog collar for his blue blanket and its attendant emotional security.

Also- remember Joy's new phone? Turns out the features that she had not yet figured out were the "off" button, and the "silent" setting on her ringer. A poorly timed need of her mother's to get a hold of Joy regarding a strudel recipe meant that Joy's phone went off about 12 times right in the middle of the movie. The first time people laughed- we all jumped six feet in the air, and someone whispered "SEVEN DAYS", while Joy furiously hung up on her caller in embarrassment. By the fifth time though, people were starting to get upset- in the context of the movie it was terrifying each time the phone rang, and since this was during the time period when cell phones were still a luxury, people whose cell phones infringed on the interests of the public good were nominated to be the centerpieces in Salem-style stake barbecues. Poor Joy, too terrified to leave the theater by herself, and suffering from the peer pressure that comes from jerks around you saying, "TURN OFF YOUR F---ING PHONE!", was near tears in her desperation to remedy the situation. Always one to run like a ninny from these types of situations, I leaned to the opposite side of my seat from Joy and pretended not to know her by refusing to look her in the eye or answer her terrified entreaties of "DO YOU KNOW HOW TO WORK THIS THING?"

The movie ended, and I was one kind-of friend less than when it started. I met up with my best friend, Tammy, aka that evening's Smokey (lucky bitch), and informed her that I would not be able to sleep alone that night. She kind of laughed until she realized that I was serious, and that my statement meant that I was coming over to her place to platonically share her bed for the evening. I know Tammy probably thought that me wanting to share the bed with her was because of some misplaced rationale I had that she would protect me if anything bad happened, but I was more going with the idea that to most movie serial killers, my fat thighs and persistent post-teenage acne would make me the second choice for a moonlight virgin-in-her-nightgown chase. Believe me, if you and I are ever in a situation where we are running for our lives, I am not fast, so I am going to trip you. My (non-itinerant) uncle Machiavelli taught me that.

So I went to Tammy's house with her. We crawled into bed, me on the side with the window because Tammy is even worse than me at sacrificing her friends to the monsters- if the two of us were being chased, I am pretty sure she would trip me and then throw the damn thing a bottle of A-1 and a bib. I spent the evening with my eyes wide open staring out the semi-closed blinds at the foggy night air, and her family's giant trampoline, which, from far away looks like a well. Worst of all was that at the time, Tammy had a terrible snore, and the noise was absolutely, and in all ways, terrifying in a way that made me have to pee really badly. My bladder finally won against my will to survive around 4:51 AM, and I cried my way through a pee in the dark. It was several nights after that that I was unable to sleep really well and with (most of) the lights off. Compounding the fear was the fact that, with long brown hair and the pale skin that accompanies being a nerd, I looked like that little girl whenever I got out of the shower, thus making the bathroom once again a terrifying place to be. Of course.

Spoiler alert: this story has a happy ending.

I moved to Portland in 2006, and continued to nurse my fear of horror movies for about another year before . . . one day it just stopped and I realized that they are, in fact, awesome.

No particular movie sparked this new appreciation- I think it just came down to the fact that most horror movies feature lots of blood, families with ISS-UES, teenage sex with ill-advised partners, and steady employment for people who played in the string and horn sections of middle-school band. All of these terrible elements come together to make them FABULOUS in a way that is hilarious, surprising, and most-often groan-inducing. Also? I started watching "Supernatural" and Dean and Sam Winchester may have caused my libido to suffer a Pavlovian sexual response to demons and monsters. But I digress . . .

As I have become more of an appreciator of horror movies, my ability to be legitimately scared by them has waned because I have learned the formulas:

• What I said about the music before was correct- if you pay attention to the crescendo, there is a half beat of "fake-out" and then BAM- knife through the door- cue screaming 20-year old Jamie Lee Curtis.
• The killer is never the psycho-looking mute janitor, innkeeper, stagehand, orderly, or mime, or the person close to the main character that suddenly has their motive for killing become clear 5 minutes into the third act, or anyone logical really. In fact, the truest indication of whether or not someone is a killer in most horror movies seems to be that they have shilled skin-care products at some point in their previous acting life.
• Monsters and human killers both have to be killed AT LEAST TWICE, and even then, it is unlikely that it will stick if there is likely to be a franchise option coming out of the movie.
• In a horror movie, your own reality is never as it seems. I promise. For realsies, guys. The reality you suspect about halfway through the movie that you MIGHT be living- wrong too. Just get used to not really getting what is going on, and move on with your short life.

At this point, the only things I will not watch, horror-movie wise are 1) torture-porn because EWWWW, and 2) anything referencing Cthulu- I have this irrational fear of sea monsters stemming from my inability to swim. Also, H.P. Lovecraft is a sick mother. Otherwise, I <3 my horror movies, and am not above grabbing the leg of a friend that is sitting next to me during tense scenes.

The trailer for "Paranormal Activity 3" came out recently and depicts two little girls playing Bloody Mary in, you guessed it, the bathroom. I am excited though. Bring on Halloween, cabins in the woods, mental institutions with questionable building security, ghost children, crazy fathers quoting Ed McMahon while wielding an ax, and all those people that do not realize they are dead.

Oh, and that puddle on the floor? . . . That was the dog.

Boo!

The cat is ALWAYS the big spoon.

Rascal

1994-2011

Physical Characteristics: Black cat with tuxedo markings and green eyes. Thin as a rail- particularly in her later years. Was suspected by multiple family members to have either been hit by a car or have feline AIDS. The Pet Psychic revealed that her low body weight was because she actually suffered from multiple eating disorders brought on by body dismorphic disorder that activated itself after she watched a Friskies for Kittens commercial.

How she lived: Like a boss.

How she died: Like a boss.

Rascal's story is more interesting one than one would expect for a cat. I am not saying that she solved mysteries with the help of any of our dogs or anything- the only mystery most of them ever solved was the question of "Who likes to lick his own privates the most?", and they arrived at the answer to this query only after months of diligent practical study- or even that she helped a scientist to finally work out the solution to that pesky cold fusion problem. What I am saying is that for an animal with nine lives, the four of them that were not comprised with sleeping in the windowsill and firebombing our dogs from above were generally pretty interesting.

We first got Rascal when I was 12. My sister and her then-husband had gotten her after moving to Idaho, and I met her upon their inevitable return to our state of trees and independent thought. The only things I remember about that day are 1) this was the first time I ever saw "ER", which my brother-in-law had taped the night before and had us watch for some reason (my impression of the show was that it was boring and would not last) and 2) I thought their cat was too mean to be a kitten and had to be the reincarnated personage of a particularly crotchety old man who did not like those damn neighbor kids. I kept checking her personal effects for a tiny garden hose or a weathered rocking chair, but she must have hidden them away under the stairs along with her dead bird.

For reasons that are not entirely clear to me due to the fleeting nature of the memory of insignificant events, and because that was the year that Kurt Cobain killed himself (which, at 12, I believed to be the most important thing to ever happen ever) my sister and brother-in-law ended up relinquishing the custody of their cat to my parents. It was probably because they moved into an apartment that would not accommodate pets, but I have long suspected it had to do with my brother-in-law knowing that Rascal was, in fact, smarter than him, and that his inability to find HIS way out of a paper bag would eventually be figured out if the opportunity for comparison was left unchecked. Regardless- she moved in with us, and all of the sudden my parents, my brother, and I had a cat.

For the first few years, it was strictly professional. Rascal was there to work- we had a farmhouse with a ridiculous amount of vermin, bugs, and other unwanted pests, and her job was to eliminate the enemy in the expeditious unfeeling way of Austrian cyborgs tasked with making the world safe for John Connor. Of course, she was able to accomplish her task without being such a big pussy about it- so what's your excuse, Ah-nold?

Then something happened- again, memory is fleeting, but I remember there came a point where she decided that, if she had to pick from the sorry lot of us, I was an acceptable offering to be "her" person, and so we bonded. She started sleeping in my bed, coming when I called (Just kidding! I came when she called.), and letting me actually pet her for more than five minutes at a time without attacking me like I was attempting to sell her into a kitty trafficking ring like some strange feline version of the movie "Taken". We were both strong-willed, opinionated (I assumed her chewing up my worn out corduroy skater shorts was commentary on my fashion tastes), ignored people that pissed us off, and could get very mean very fast. Honestly, I think she saw me as an honorary cat which is sweet but like an honorary doctorate, completely worthless to anyone but Denis Leary.

As I grew up, I moved out, then back in, then out again, like some sort of human ping-pong ball of indecision. No matter how long I was gone- 3 days or 3 years- Rascal always came back to me when I was home- sleeping curled up in the small of my back, leaving dead mice on the stairs for me to find, and mewling at me with a judgmental look in her green eyes that said, "Oh, so your fingers AREN'T broken. I was worried when you didn't call."

When I finally let my parents be empty-nesters by leaving home for good at the ripe and embarrassing age of 23, Rascal was 11, and although they were not super-fond of her, my parents kept her on the basis of her being an excellent mouser, an outdoor cat, and such a low-maintenance pet that they sometimes forgot that they owned her.

Needing to have a human ally available to her on a daily basis (mostly for the skills brought to the table by opposable thumbs), Rascal turned to my father and what resulted was a sort of pet-marriage-of-companionship that would characterize the remainder of her life. She would jump on his lap and angrily demand affection to which he would tell her, "Well fine, I hate you too." but then assent and pet her while she whined and occasionally bit his hand.

My mother openly claimed to hate the cat, but her affection showed through on a few sweetly moving occasions- like the time that I moved into a house that would allow me to have a pet, but my mother would not let me take her because "She's not made for the city- it's too dangerous." Seeing as we were talking about the animal equivalent of Tony Montana ("Say hello to my little friend! . . . He's my catnip mouse and I LOVE him!"), I realized later that it was unlikely that Rascal would have trouble adjusting to life in the big city . . . particularly since that city was Tualatin and the biggest danger was that every left turn resulted in a strip mall. I decided it was far more likely that my mother had simply grown to love and accept Rascal as a part of her own daily life and would not be able to bear to see her go.

Around the time Rascal hit 14, my family started to go, "Hey- has anyone noticed that the cat is old?" We all just sort of watched out of the corner of our eyes to see when she would eventually drop out of the race. Cats are pretty good about knowing when it is time to go, so we figured that we would be able to tell when she was on her way out when she started skydiving with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman and making impassioned speeches to her offspring about not needing to be dead to be appreciated.

Sadly though, that time never came. On one fateful day, my parents returned home from a business trip to find the cat very badly beaten and cut up in what was obviously a fight with a large dog. She had pulled herself home and was laying on the doorstep waiting for someone to find her. They took her to the vet, but there was nothing to be done, and after tears from both of my parents and all of the assisting veterinary staff, it was determined that the merciful thing was to put her down. So they did.

I found out in a phone call from my dad. I was surprised that it just made me feel so tired and numb, which was a feeling that would continue for several days. I felt silly mourning so deeply the loss of a non-human friend, but that did not stop the tears when they came- and they did for a while. Even now, I still have moments where I accidentally think I will see her when I go home to visit my family and then I reach for something to pull around me because I get kind of cold and tired again. I can't explain why.

Apparently, I was not the only one to experience the death of this cantankerous old cat on a deep and profound level. My father and mother were inconsolable for weeks and still have trouble talking about it without tearing up (I imagine the trauma of finding her in her pre-death state contributed to this). My sister- the one that brought the cat from Idaho in the first place- cried, which I will admit, floored me, since she had not been close to the animal since America first learned that George Clooney was capable of more than sporting the world's most traffic-stopping mullett. My nieces and nephews seemed to take it worst of all though, with my youngest niece reacting to the news by becoming Scarlett O'Hara and throwing herself in a loudly tearful and heartbroken heap upon the closest piece of furniture resembling a fainting couch (a Target ottoman). Ah- the drama of being eight.

Fast-forward to this week: Rascal died about four months ago and my family has been pretty cat-less since then. This week- after hitting a sort of personal breaking point on what has been a year made of all the moldy lemons that life already gave to some other asshole and then re-collected to give to me- I decided to do something really big that was just for me. After going through a laundry-list of possibilities- putting together my trip to New York, move, take a class on advanced print-making, take over the entire tri-state area- I finally thought, "You know what? I'm getting a pet." As an aside- I don't know what I was thinking with some of those choices. I don't even like printmaking.

This is how I bought a TV: I went into Best Buy, I found one that was in my budget, I bought it the next day. This is the same for all of my electronics. If you put a consumer report in front of me, it is likely that I would use it to make a paper hat. This is how I got my cat: I went on Craigslist, found a cute cat for free, took her home that night. I'm sure the couple I got her from thought that I was getting her to make a stew or something- I wasn't super-snuggly about it, and to be honest she didn't seem to like me much as we walked out the door together. My thought though was, "A cat's a cat. If it doesn't work out, I can always give her to the Humane Society or to someone that really does want to make a stew." My mother told me that this is probably why I am not married . . . which caused me to get stressed out enough to go out and get another cat (Just kidding on that last part- that just made me sit in a dark closet listening to Morrissey while eating black licorice.)

It's been about five days since I got my cat and in that time I have learned a couple of important things:

1) Big clumps in kitty litter are urine, not diarrhea. Concurrently, if you bring a clump of urine to give to the vet as a stool sample, he will wait until he is out of the room to laugh at you, but give no respect to the fact that there are giants slits under the doors and his Santa-like, booming laugh against the linoleum is the sound of pet-owner shame.

2) If you do not have a pet carrier, do not attempt to drive 100 miles with your cat stuffed underneath an overturned laundry basket with only your right arm to anchor it in place. This only ends badly.

3) When cats overexert themselves, they pant like dogs, and it makes you think the apocalypse is coming like Billy Murray foretold.

The most important thing that I have learned to appreciate though, is that animals, like many (but surprisingly not all) people are each their own little entity full of idiosyncratic personification that makes them specifically themselves and no one else. My little cat- Hoshtola' Kowi (pronounced "Hosh-toe-lah Koo-wee")- is a strange little beast that is constantly kneading soft surfaces, wakes up at 4:30 AM, clumsily falls off of most things she attempts to scale, and sleeps off veterinary drugs in postures that bring to mind frat guys passed out on their front lawn after the Civil War game. She's not Rascal, but really, who is? She's her own little soul, and if she plays her cards right, she may live a long life, the end of which will be mourned by her acquaintances with all of the drama of a sweeping, Southern, Civil War epic. We should all be so lucky.

This is not my beautiful house. I rent.

I recently became aware that according to rental companies, my housing history is less than desirable. Upon moving into my newest home in September of last year, I was informed that my tendency to rent from private parties and/or apartment complexes with all the record-keeping skills of a set of Muppet Babies raised in a meth lab had made it difficult for them to determine who exactly I was in this world. Since there was another woman with my name (and I am assuming, bad hair) with three evictions and a court order against her, and according to them I had no way of proving I wasn't her (my protestations of "I'M NOT!" were wholly ineffective), they chose to increase my deposit substantially to punish me for crimes that I did not commit. I am determined that if I ever do find the Super Cuts version of Laurie Evans, there is going to be a full-on Kill Bill v.1-style throwdown- complete with samurai swords, maces (is that the plural of that word?), and a legion of acrobatic Asian men in masks. Bitch made it so that I can't ever own a waterbed, and for this she must pay.

This altogether infuriating experience did get me to thinking though. Like any single person in their twenties, my housing history has been nothing if not replete with too many mismatched dishes, psycho roommates, rent increases, and neighbors with overzealous girlfriends that like to keep their windows open during "the loving". I have lived alone twice, had one (mostly) good roommate experience, three bad roommate experiences (also known as "Yo, She-Bitch. Let's go."), and one neutral/annoying lease of a room in someone's home.

So, with the hopes that this informal documentation can somehow stave off future deposit hikes by soliciting pity for my poor unlucky soul, I give you all my rental history from college to now.

Apartment #1

Timeframe: Spring 2001

Apartment: Egg-crate complex on campus just down from frat row. Smelled like old man despite being entirely populated by students.

Roommates: Girl 1- Her name may have started with a T (I think). I ran into her just twice in the four months that I lived there. Girl 2- From my church congregation, was 27 years old (only bad when you consider that I was 19 at the time), in graduate school, and suffered (loudly) from fibro-myalgia.

Highlights:

• This was my first time away from home. I spent my days watching rugby with cute neighbor boys Chad and Seth, hiking at Spencer's Butte until 4:00 in the morning, visiting the student health center for Tecnu after getting poison oak from hiking Spencer's Butte until 4:00 in the morning, placing my stereo in my open window and blasting Counting Crows, and yelling at the neighbors to shut up when they started screaming during the season finale of "Friends" where you find out that Rachel is pregnant.
• Lived off of Totino's Party Pizzas, bagels, chili from a can, Cheez-Its, and Shari's diner food- most of which was consumed after midnight despite what they tell you about your colon being like unto a Gremlin.
• Purchased my very first piece of furniture for that place- a $20 couch at St. Vincent DePaul's that smelled like failure and regurgitated Jameson's.
• Roommate 2 went IN-EFFING-SANE during my second month of living with her. One morning I woke to find a bunch of blond hair in the bathroom garbage can. I came home that night to find her sitting on the couch, bald as a cue ball, studying for finals. While working at the graduate school as a student aide, I filed some of her paperwork and read it by *accident*. It said, "I have to quit my position as a GTF because I have been struggling with the decision of whether or not to kill myself." I started locking my door at night after that.
• Announced to Roommate 2 that in June, I would be moving out and would be looking for someone to take over the last month of my lease. She told me that whomever I chose would have to meet her approval. She then refused to tell me when I got messages after placing an ad in the student paper and in all ways tried to sabotage my moving process. After calling the rental company, I found out that I did not have to have her approval to sell my lease, so I sold it to the most annoying person of our mutual aquaintance- a person that Roommate 2 had sworn hatred of to me in deepest confidence. Roommate 2 and I were in the same church congregation for two more years following living together and she never once talked to me again. I still have not decided if this is one of my most or least proud moments.

House #1

Timeframe: June 2001-July 2001

House: Adorable two-bedroom on the busiest street in Eugene. Was inherited from some girls that we knew that were graduating/moving on. This house was famous for being a great spot for awesome Halloween and summer parties.

Roommates: My best friend for life, Tams inhabited the hobbit-sized bedroom that fit her floor-anchored mattress and little else. I shared the master bedroom (and a bunk bed) with a girl who was dating my best-male-friend-and-object-of-unrequited-love-of-the-moment. Side note: He ended up sleeping with her older sister, so I feel more bullet-dodgy than remorseful of the fact that we were not to be. This roommate was constantly grossing me out by taking out her false front tooth that became a necessity after an unfortunate childhood accident involving . . . blah, blah, blah, something boring about Idaho.

Highlights:

• First time living with friends. Nearly lost the important one. Did lose the non-important one (and her weird-ass tooth). Word to the wise, kiddos: boundaries.
• I once ended an argument with my room-sharing roommate by mooning her and walking out of the room.
• I learned how much I hate sharing my stuff when people were constantly on my computer, particularly when I needed to study. This begs the question- What were we doing? Why did I go on the internet before Facebook?
• The roommate dating the boy I loved (dear heavens, his nickname was actually SPIN) had him over every night after he got off work at McGrath's. He smelled like fish. He would shower at our place, and once he poked his head out of the bathroom and asked me something as I walked by. He was shirtless, dripping wet, and sexy. This story has a lot to do with why I get aroused whenever I eat grilled salmon.
• I once flushed the toilet when my room-sharing roommate was in the shower, and my former breakfast burrito came up through the pipe. You have never seen a partially-toothless girl run so fast.
• I had one of the best birthday parties of my life at that place, including a spank machine that was awesome when it featured the hot boy that lived at the local stud house "The Den", but terrifying when it got to his bespectacled and tent-crotched roommate with sour breath.
• Tams had a legitimate low-rider bicycle from the seventies that I rode to school all the time. Mostly without permission.
• Crazy landlord convinced me that one of my roommates was stealing money, when in fact it was her. I got so mad with both roommates that I packed up and moved out when they were both on a camping trip. Yeah, I was THAT roommate.

Limbo 2001-2003

Living back at home with the 'rents. No dignity in dependence, but at least no one puked outside my bedroom window on an 86 degree day, so you take your victories where you can get them.

Apartment #2

Timeframe: June 2003-September 2003.

Apartment: One bedroom in the Westmoreland Apartments complex that both of my older sisters had lived in during their own college years. Following my experience, this complex would also receive patronage from my nephew, who was actually living there for the second time since this was the complex he and his family lived in from his birth until he was about six or seven. Our family crest is on the company website.

Roommates: None on a permanent basis, but I did let a random girl from England that was traveling the U.S. stay on my couch for the better part of two weeks.

Highlights:

• This was my first real apartment on my own, so people kept giving me plants as housewarming gifts. I put them all in the windowsill of my kitchen in back of the drapes so that they would get sun. After not opening the drapes for two weeks, I became terrified of what their state might be and wholly refused to open the drapes at all until I moved. By that point my plants had died and been reincarnated as fairly significant fire hazards.
• I was walking through my living room one day and looked up and across the lawn to the apartment complex across the field, only to realize that my immediate neighbors were friends of mine who had gotten married and I had not seen since. An awkward conversation ensued with us shouting at each other from our mutually open windows. It was at this point that I determined that I would not be opening my living room drapes anymore either.
• It was at this apartment that, with my friend from England, I made the decision that it was critically important for me to go to Wal-Mart at 2:00 AM and buy the movie "Holes" AS SOON AS IT CAME OUT. Why? I mean, I realize that Dule Hill was beautiful in it, but seriously. I was such a weird-ass kid in college.

Apartment #3

Timeframe: September 2003-May 2005

Apartment: Two bedroom in same apartment complex as Apartment #2.

Roommates: Just me, except for when a friend named James stayed on my couch every weekend for two months. Honestly, for the amount of people that I did not know that I was letting stay on my couch at that time, I am surprised I was not robbed blind or at least diddled with while I slept.

Highlights:

• The price. Oh my gosh, the price. I lived in about 750 sq. ft. of apartment for $355 per month. There was a point where I was literally living in a hole in the ground in SW Portland and it still cost $100 more than that, plus more than double the utilities.
• One time I walked a boy I had gone with on a date out to his car (yes, yes, I know- I am ridiculously progressive), and on the way we saw a nutria camped out on the lawn adjacent to my neighbor's place. We "talked" at his car for about 15 minutes, so that by the time I came back, I was lightheaded and forgot what I had seen previously. It had moved from one side of the yard to the other, and the way that the light was hitting it, it looked like a cat. I said, "Here kitty, kitty, kitty!" to which it horrifically responded by rearing up on it's hind legs and hissing like a snake in a Harry Potter book. I ran home.
• I was eating breakfast with James one day when a precocious squirrel came onto my porch area. James lured it inside of my house with a piece of bagel and it sat there happily eating and turning its head from side-to-side. As it sniffed my entertainment center and judged me for my "Alias" boxed sets (at that time, I was also considered progressive for thinking Bradley Cooper was hot), I worried about all manner of diseases and infestation being brought into my home by this bushy-tailed Pandora's box. Of course, because I kind of liked James at the same time, I was just like, "Awww! He likes you!" while I swallowed down the bile that kept rising in my throat.
• Living by myself for the first time for realsies meant that I realized that I was LIVING BY MYSELF. It took me about four months to understand that this meant that I could be naked anytime that I wanted. Like many freedoms in life, this was taken advantage of with pendulum effect. First I did it too much and had to determine appropriate activities for full-frontal (example: cooking is not a great time to be naked), then I thought that I was some psycho nudist freak and became way too conservative and ceased nudity during activities where it is not only sanctioned, but recommended (example: one must not wear a full burqa in the shower if one expects one's mango/pomegranate body wash to work its magic.) I eventually hit center with it though, and determined that it was for hot days and special occasions, and that with-the-curtains-open was only for the end of finals week.
• I lived in the same complex as most of the people from my graduate program (see first point for reason), and a few from my church congregation. One was a surly, stocky dude that smelled bad the first time I met him; the other was one of those "straight" guys whose voice has the same cadence as a Sex and the City writer, but somehow (somehow=$$$) still end up finding women to make out with them (Close your eyes and think of Bradley Cooper, Justin). The second of the two came over to my house one night to ask to borrow toilet paper and became skeptical of my actions when I refused to open the door wider than six inches. He thought I had a guy in there and wanted to see who. The real reason was that my apartment was a mess and I did not want to let him see the filth I could inhabit. I may have teased out the idea he had that I had finally been successful in picking up on the checker with the dreadlocks from Trader Joe's.
• My then best friend/brooding-guitarist-by-whom-I-thought-the-world-was-constructed worked in my apartment complex and had a boss that would force him into mandatory work slowdowns. He would come over to my place and stuff his face on the crap in my fridge while I looked at him and sighed like all three of the triplets from "Beauty and Beast". One summer he broke his hand by punching a box in what definitely equates to the Least Badass Move in History (TM), so while he was at work, he got bored and nailed/screwed a bunch of stuff to his cast. This was the young man that I counted among the intellectual elite of my peers. (This says, I think, more about my peers than about him.)
• I lived right next to a canal/swampland area. It was kind of cool because there were literally a thousand frogs that would sing me to sleep each night of the summer. It was terrifying because of GARDEN SPIDERS IN MY HOME!!! I don't know how they got in- the junk they are packing in their trunk more than exceeded the width requirement for my doorway- but get in they did. I snuffed them from this world by various means: for the one I found on my living room wall, I used a hammer and had to work up the nerve to strike by calling my big sister; the one I found on my doorknob was easy because I had just been out with the brooding guitarist, so I quickly called him (by means of my 7 lb. cell phone) to come back and slay that m.f.ing dragon with his boot; and the one that I found in the shower while I was showering was disposed of by means that I am not really sure of, since the only thing I remember is running screaming out of the room and weeping until I passed out in the spare bedroom. Gratefully, I think that was a James weekend, so I was covered. At least as far as spider disposal is concerned. He may have gotten more than an eye full of me streaking across the hall in terror but it is doubtful since he was not struck blind as a result.

Limbo May-December 2005

Back with the 'rents after getting done with graduate school. Who am I? What do I want to do with my life? The only answer I had to those questions was that I wanted to sleep and not look for a job. A LOT.

House #2
Timeframe: January 2006-January 2008

House: Four-bedroom with huge backyard and perfect living room for epic parties. My 25th birthday party hosted upwards of 100 people.

Roommates: Consistently, it was Ali, Char, and Char's puggle, Wasabi. The fourth roommate cycled in and out more times than a professor teaching "Defense Against the Dark Arts" at Hogwarts.

Highlights:

• Ali, Char, and I were all closet TV junkies, so we got DVR and became obsessed with watching "America's Next Top Model", "American Idol", and "So You Think You Can Dance". I made the ill-advised decisions of loving Melrose, Benji, and Taylor Hicks. National hysteria affects us all. I am sure to be one of the first casualties when the apocalypse comes. Sigh.
• One year there was a freak overnight snow storm, so we were stuck at home. Someone made cookies and because Ali had such a busy schedule that she did not get to watch TV very often, she chose what our InDemand movies were to be. We watched "Quicksilver" with Kevin Bacon, but she and Char kept getting distracted, so it took us about seven hours to watch it. I still maintain that this is the longest movie I have ever seen.
• One time the puggle swallowed his rawhide bone and I came home to it hanging out of his bunghole. I called Char to ask what I should do and she asked me to please get a plastic bag and pull it out. I made the mistake of staying on the phone with her while I did this and she was crying with laughter while I went, "Oh gosh . . . Oh no . . . GET DOWN! . . . WASABI . . . I'm going to be sick!" Apparently her co-worker at the neighboring cubicle thought that she was having a seizure because her body was shaking so hard from the laughter.
• One of Wasabi's favorite pasttimes was waiting until there were at least 3-5 attractive members of the opposite sex in our living room and then coming out of the hallway bearing a dirty pair of underwear. It was never sexy underwear either- he would go straight for your granny panties. I have a working theory about him attempting to build a parachute, but I think that gives his intelligence a bit too much credit.
• My friend John and I decided to go to a Halloween party together one year and he brought over a bunch of costume options to my house so that I could help him decide what to be. John is usually shy, but is also very funny when it comes to things like this. He had the idea of being a doctor wearing running shorts for some reason and came out of the bathroom in this outfit. It should be noted that the shorts were VERY short and that the coat was VERY long. Ali- who had no idea of what we were doing- suddenly screamed from the hallway, "AUGH!!! WHY ISN'T JOHN WEARING PANTS?" and he ran back in the bathroom.
• In 2007, I got head lice from one of my students at the summer school that I ran. For about a week, I went home from work each night to coat my hair in mayonnaise and plastic wrap and then wrapped it all up in a bandana in an attempt to fully exorcise the demons using one of the home remedies I found on Google. At the time it was 100 degrees in the shade. Not only was I miserable, but I was shunned by my roommates for my sulphuric haze, and I am about 87% sure I am the reason the dog developed asthma.
• A friend of Ali and Char was down on her luck, so they offered her and her five year old daughter the opportunity to stay with us. I was not a fan of this plan. For a while, the friend was unemployed, so she watched TV constantly, her face six inches from the screen, ROCKING BACK AND FORTH THE ENTIRE TIME like a meth addict waiting for the candy man to come take the shakes away. Her daughter was hyperactive and loud, so one Saturday I told her that although I was a mandatory reporter as a school district employee, I am not mandated to report myself if I ever just want to take off and beat a kid bloody. She at least stayed away from my bedroom door on Saturday mornings after that.
• While I was living with Ali and Char the movie "Dreamgirls" came out, which is only noteworthy insofar as it changed Ali's entire religion. Target, which had been my boon companion prior to this point, betrayed me by providing Ali with her very own copy of the soundtrack, which she sang along with every morning while getting ready for work. At first this was fine, since Ali has one of the ten best voices I have ever heard in person, however, much like "Semi-Charmed Life" lost its sheen for me after the 1598th iteration, so too did "I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" and various other ditties belted by Beyonce et. al. Thank heavens for "Glee" or I would have never made peace with that motown-based soul musical.

Apartment #3

Timeframe: January 2008-September 2008

Apartment: Overpriced apartment complex in Wilsonville, which is just south of bum-f--- Egypt by about 60 miles.

Roommates: Satan's two bitchy older sisters.

Highlights:

• I anticipate this highlights section to be fairly short for two reasons- 1) I have blocked most of the memories of my experiences from living in this apartment out of my head, and 2) it's hard to know what happens in the rest of your house when you do not leave your bedroom for 10 months.
• The first week that I lived with my roommates, I saw that they had fanned out the magazines on the coffee table. I picked one out and read it and put it back on the table, but out of place. I came back the next day to find it fanned again, so I did a little experiment and pushed them out of place by a microscopic amount. They were perfect again when I came back. I hoped for an neat-freak poltergeist that would eventually kill me, but realized quickly that the situation was likely much, much worse and that the ones I should fear were still alive and would see killing me as a mercy.
• Here was the difference between my roommates and I- Me: Knew boys. Hung out with boys. Enjoyed company of boys. Occasionally kissed boys. Them: Used parts of the nether-regions of boys to brew spells in their evil cauldrons of celibacy. I was hanging out with two fairly attractive male friends one night when I realized I had to go to the bathroom. I knew it would be more than a minute, so I told the guys that I needed to go back to my place to change my shirt, because I didn't want them to know I needed to take a deuce. I invited them in, only to find my roommates in the kitchen wearing pajamas, no makeup, and no bras, making crepes that they were eating with their hands. The boys were polite and joked around with them, but I still got the evil death stare of "WHY ARE YOU RUINING OUR LIVES?" which solved my problem of having to poop- for about two weeks.
• My roommates and I did not talk to each other aside from with the white board for THREE MONTHS. Yeah. It was THAT apartment.
• One of my roommates was a teacher, the other a student in law school. They both left for the summer and when they did, they stripped their bedrooms of all linens, took down the shower curtain in their bathroom, and took the couch pillows with them. I am assuming this is because I am a filthy person that was going to filth up their space in their absence. They should not have worried about me filthing up the place while they were gone for the summer. They SHOULD have worried about me licking all the dishes and silverwear before I moved out. Which I did.

Limbo September 2008

The bottom fell out of the place that I had been planning to move into, so I found my new roommate on Craigslist, but the room was not available until midway through the month. I had already put in my intent to vacate (and I had no desire to stay in the seventh circle of Hell for longer than necessary), so I gave my friend Kim some money to let me stay in the new apartment that she would not have time to move into until mid-month. I had my clothes and toiletries where I could find them as well as my Supernatural and Psych DVDs. I lived off this and food help in paper cups for two weeks. Six square feet of personal space and moldy windows that gave me a substantial cold that stayed in my lungs for four months was still better than the 10 months that came before it.

House #3

Timeframe: September 2008-August 2010

House: Family home in VERY southwest Portland (one more hill and it was Lake Oswego).

Roommates: Very nice woman from Mexico; her Australian Shepherd named Lucky that followed me from room to room; her boyfriend, Mike, on the weekends; and a snotty but gorgeous college-age daughter that I unfortunately had to share a bathroom with during the summers and who thought it was my responsibility to clean her towels.

Highlights:

• I moved into the basement- at the time, I was thrilled because it was huge, had a Portland address (Multnomah County, bitchez!), and was three miles from my work. My family and friends feigned interest in it, but it was a hole in the ground with no windows. Hey- I thought the guy in a women's silk robe holding a pomeranian while standing at the top of the stairs was just offering me tips on skin care.
• I found out quickly that despite the fact that I was renting a room and did not share in any of the "communal space", my roommate took deep offense to being called a "landlord." Until I asked her to cash my rent check late. Then she took to the role surprisingly well.
• In the Winter of 2008 there was a vicious snowstorm in Portland. I did not have to go to work for several days and neither did my roommate (or much of the rest of Portland). I am very good at having time off- I like to read, watch TV on DVD, chat with friends on the phone AND computer, and sleep, my gosh, sleep. My roommate- who was extremely Type A- was not good at having time off and was constantly asking me if I wanted to do things with her. After a 1 hour walk during which I almost fell and broke my arse four times as well as an ill-advised attempt to introduce her to the Whedon-verse, I pretended to be asleep every time she popped her head into a room. This proved especially awkward while I was on the toilet.
• This was the first time I lived with a roommate who had a romantic partner that was a stay-the-night friend. I would come home very late sometimes and, being a child of the new millenium, I would check my Facebook before I went to bed. The only computer with internet access was in the living room, just next to my roommate's bedroom. One evening, while in social networking stalker-mode for my latest hoped-for paramour, I heard a sudden and guttural male moan of the "Mike is tapping that" variety. I froze in place, and when I suddenly heard the higher-pitched female squeal confirm that "Mike IS tapping that!", I practically vaulted down the stairs to my room, to the comfort of my waiting headphones and old school Led Zeppelin. I knew I needed to move out when I realized that I had just become privy to someone ELSE'S parents doing it.
• The dog loved men. I mean he LOVED men. He loved my best male friend in particular, which was sweet, right up until he found it fit to come up and nuzzle said friend's privates every time the guy sat down. They don't name dogs "Lucky" for their lack of willingness to try . . .

Apartment #4 aka Current Digs

Timeframe: September 2010- Whenever I die.

Apartment: The world's most perfect apartment- 1 bedroom apartment with a huge kitchen, living room, bedroom, front closet, and back porch (not a euphemism). The place even has an air-conditioner, which is absolutely unheard of in Oregon. My perfect place was inherited from a male friend that knew I was looking, and he swears that if I ever do move out, he wants first dibs on getting it back. Hahaha. Silly man- I plan on dying horrifically here, just so that I can stay here for all eternity as a vengeful spirit. It's that good.

Roommates: Kristen on Tuesday nights. Possibly a cat at some point in the future.

Highlights:

• I inherited my friend Amber's couch from her parents. Amber enjoys telling me every time that she comes over that she has "many fond memories" of this couch. I have a weird tendency to make out less on my furniture than my friends do, and I am thinking- that's gotta stop. Applications currently being accepted for anyone that would like to break it in with me. No chicks or fugmos, please.
• I was showering recently, when my mind started to wander. I realized that my friend James lived in this place for a long time. He and his buds were constantly together on the weekends- and it is doubtless that during that time, there may have been necessary wardrobe changes- dirt-biking to Saturday night, work to play, casual to Turkish bath, etc. Quickly, I realized that about half the guys I know have been naked in my apartment at one time or another. My apartment- where I conduct my own nakedness! I am not sure if this makes me a slut or a victim of poor timing.
• My amazing apartment has made me a bit of a hermit. The only reason I go out anymore is to come home to my own little patch of awesomeness and revel in how great it is to live alone. Add to that the giant HD TV that I recently purchased and the result is that my skin now makes a sizzling noise whenever I step out into the sunlight.
• My closest male friend never had a problem with volume control until I moved into a place with neighbors in the very immediate vicinity. Now all of the sudden, our talks about Europe lead to him screaming about Paris at the top of his voice for no particular reason. After one evening where he yelled, "Oh gosh, no, NO, Laurie- NO!" he was given a stern talking-to about the fact that if he was going to yell things in my apartment in the middle of the night, they had to make me sound like I was really GOOD in the sack.
• The trees behind my apartment are amazing. I live on the edge of Fern Gully, but without the annoyance of tiny overly moral wood sprites that get pissed when I do no recycle.
• I recently realized that with Kristen being my only overnight visitor that my neighbors- who I do not know- probably think that I am gay. Two thoughts struck me at this: 1) If I were gay, I could do a LOT worse than Kristen, so good for me for being able to score a hotty, and 2) I need to get a boyfriend.

So, there you have it. My housing history for the last ten years. The lessons have been many- never live with two best friends when you are the odd one out, do not feign interest in a roommate's neice or nephew's life at all because you will see that child again and they WILL tell you the entire plot to High School Musical unsolicited, and most importantly don't talk in your sleep about the boy sleeping on your couch. Oh, and then of course there were the three evictions and the court order against me, but that's a story for another time.

Oklahoma is my least favorite musical.

Oy. Has this week ever been insane.

As you all know, my mild-mannered day job is that of non-profit conference and event planner. Some of the most sexy of my job duties include the determining how much coffee 50 people are likely to consume between the hours of 10:00 AM and 2:00 PM, which trainer will hate me the least upon being asked to stand in for one of their peers that suddenly planned a last minute trip to Guam, and deciding where the conference is going to be located from year-to-year. Of all the responsibilities laid at my (cluttered) office door, the one that is usually the most fun for me is the last of these.

Because my organization is a national non-profit, we hold our conference in cities throughout the United States. The decision as to general region is made by the higher-ups and is usually based upon where we have the most constituency. In order to choose the hotel properties though, someone has to visit those states in particular and view the facilities in order to determine which of these may be right for our participants. That person is me. This responsibility has been pretty awesome- sending me to places I do not have the cheddar to visit myself, such as Florida and Alaska. I also get spoiled while I am there- getting fun swag and staying in luxurious locations. Not a bad way to spend your 9-5.

This week, I undertook the slightly less glamorous task of visiting Tulsa, Oklahoma, in an effort to find the location of our 2014 conference. The work portion of this trip can be summed up with the following bullet points:

• Tuesday night: Check-in. Hotel #1. Fellowshippers conference taking place- man those Christians know how to rock out! Oh, they gave me a double queen room instead of a king (mental scratching-out noise in my head). Free chocolate!


• Wednesday Morning: Hotel Tours. Lots of food. Too many stairs. Thank you for the steno pad holder and flash drive with the hotel name on it, it will make the perfect addition to my collection.


• Wednesday afternoon: Check-in. Casino Hotel. Oh my gosh, they gave me a three room suite. Giant gift basket of food! Tub built for three! Six-head shower! TV that emerges from a cabinet with a remote! Maybe I should go pick someone up at the bar, just to show off . . .


• Thursday Morning: Casino Hotel site tour. Oh no, my salesman is gorgeous and looks like Jack from "Lost". Don't they have any ugly salespeople? How do they expect me to do business when I cannot form coherent sentences? Those are nice shoes. Oh, he's gay. This I can work with.

This brings us to Thursday afternoon, where I checked in at the airport for my flight home. I was ready. Oklahoma was approximately 102 degrees in the shade, and I have sweat coming out of crevices that were not even aware of the existence of sweat prior to this trip. I stepped onto the plane and it was the tiniest plane that I have ever seen. I looked around to see if my fellow passengers were clowns who had decided to take to the skies but maintain the hilarity of a miniscule means of transportation. Excluding the woman with the heavy makeup and New Jersey accent, they were not. Prior to the stress-based semi-blackout I can remember having the cogent thought of, "Wow- how much would it suck to get stuck on THIS plane?"

Stoooooopid.

A lot happened in a short period of an hour and a half. Ten minutes after heading out onto the tarmac, we were informed that air traffic control was not allowing anyone into Denver and that we would have to wait an hour just to hear any news.

At this point, things got ugly.

In the interest of keeping this account light and brief, the highlights were these: 1) an old man is threatened with being put on the no-fly list, 2) the stewardess aptly exhibits the lack of crisis management training in the United Airlines air hosting program by yelling at the passengers, 3) my plane-based claustrophobia rears its ugly head, and 4) the pilot experienced first degree burns all over his lower extremities, resultant consequence of the LIES to us about our estimated time of departure and the effects of such fallacies upon ones pants. Truth told, it was the worst 90 minutes that I have experienced in recent history.

Gratefully, the people in charge of my trip were able to connect me with a free hotel for the night which provided a free shuttle from the airport. This free shuttle turned out to be a life-saver since I was twiced peed upon by Lady Luck and forgot my wallet at the airport. It was 9:00 at night when I had to be taken back to Tulsa International by a sweet older gentleman with large teeth and a lazy eye named Manuel. Sigh.

Today, I hit the airport again, only to learn that my second flight had been cancelled and that the first flight out would be tomorrow morning at 6:30 AM. This will mean that, on the morning that I turn 29, I will be up at 4:00 AM, getting on my third scheduled flight in as many days. Hopefully, the scheduling on this one is not just theoretical.

Needless to say, this has made me grumpy. In the shuttle on the way back to the hotel, I sat with my hands behind my head thinking, "I am never leaving this ridiculous city." and threw myself a good old-fashioned pity party complete with teeth gnashing and comparisons between the city of Tulsa and Satan's sweaty ass crack.

Then I stopped and told myself to stop feeling like life's bitch.

I have a good life. An extraordinary one really, and this is really just a bump. It's not even a real bump- it's one that I am seeing through a great big magnifying glass known as lack of perspective, and as soon as I take that magnifying glass away it will lose both its importance to the overall picture, as well as its excruciating definition. With this in mind, I would like to take advantage of the opportunity to do something positive that I have made a pretty regular practice for some years now.

Every year on a holiday (usually Thanksgiving or Christmas, but I have done birthdays before too), I take advantage of the opportunity to write down a list of people, places, things, experiences, feelings, etc. for which I am extremely grateful. It helps to remind me of why I am here and that I need to constantly be working to re-pay those that love me- both earthly and otherwise- for all that I have been given. It also helps when I need to get over myself, as is clearly the case today.

So without further ado, I give you:

Awesomeness Squared- The Good Bits v.2011

1. My family. I have amazing and inspiring parents that believe in social justice, empowering future generations, and the potential of a human mind. My siblings have each made choices this year that have showed that they are advocates for happiness- both for themselves, their partners, and their children. My neices and nephews are hilarious, generous, sweet, fierce, and strong. When I grow up, I want to be like all of you.


2. My faith. Although I struggle, I have been given the opportunity in my life to feel that there is truth- something absolute, finite, and unchanging. I know that there is something greater than myself because I have had the opportunity to find solace when there should have been only darkness, and because I have too often been fortunate to be on the receiving end of "right time, right place."


3. My friends. Over the last 15 years, people have floated in and out of my life for various reasons and seasons. To them, I am grateful for the game-changing, for being a part of the cheering section, and for the memories forever immortalized by my addiction to literary documentation. To my "lifers"- there aren't words. We have grown up together, cried together, shared our most important moments, suffered through death, illness, and constant change . . . and we did it all while looking fab. I love you with all the bits of me.


4. My job. I applied to work at my organization with the intention of quitting as soon as I got a better job. Who knew the better job would be within the same organization? I love what I do- I love the playing on computers, working with money, working with people, anticipating needs and problems of certain situations. As this job evolves and my responsibilities take on more of the attributes of my strengths, I realize how much it is true that sometimes we clear our path, and sometimes the path is cleared for us because it is the one we need to follow.


5. Writing. I figure myself and the world out by putting my fingers to a keyboard. I haven't found my whole story yet, but as soon as I do, I promise to jot it down.


6. Weaving. Thank heavens I dropped my "History of Theater" course Winter Term of 1997.


7. Books. Thank you Sherman Alexie, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, Ray Bradbury, J.K. Rowling, Rudolfo Anaya, Kurt Vonnegut, J.D. Salinger, Michael Chabon, Shel Silverstein, Cormac McCarthy, Roald Dahl, David Sedaris, Stephen King, Anis Mojgani, George Orwell, Oscar Wilde, and Dr. Seuss. To those I have forgotten- you know who you are.


8. My apartment. Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood, when blackness was a virtue, the road was full of mud. I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form, Come in, she said, I'll give you shelter from the storm.


9. Music. I love to sing- sometimes it sounds good. Sometimes it doesn't. For the most part, I love the performers that I discovered in my late teens- Guster, Matt Nathanson, Ani DiFranco, late sixties Beatles. I think I love them mostly because they have the fingerprint of my twenties in their lyrics. Honorary mention to Bob Dylan, Glen Hansard, and Van Morrison, all of whose voices and lyrics are what I hope forever sounds like.


10. The Ocean. We have been out of touch for a while. I think it is time we reconnected.

I better leave soon- it's unfortunate that my vehicle for meditation is also the means by which others check their Facebook and there is a line beginning to form for this public terminal. I leave though, feeling richly blessed and ready to enjoy the king-sized bed waiting for me to climb into its cloud-like Egyptian cotton sheets. Remembering the reasons that I wake up each day makes me feel a little bit better able to handle what life tosses my way.

If they cancel my flight again though, someone is losing a testicle.

"It took me an hour to realize that 'F.U.' meant 'Felix Unger'!"

The first time I met my best friend was in a church gym. Ironically enough, this is also the place where she met her husband, so it's safe to say that organized sports and organized religion have been good to her.

It was 2006 and I had just moved to Portland. At that point, I could count the community of people that I could call "friend" in the city upon less than one hand. The only person with whom I could really "hang out" was a girl that I will call "Patrice" for the sake of it being fun to give people aliases when you write about them. She had been my closest friend throughout my two years in graduate school and was spunky, talented, smart, quirky to an often mystifying level, and immensely fun to be around. I also benefitted from her being a member of an unnecessarily hip family that included a teenage brother who was quiet but hilarious in the way that electric bass players are, and another brother in his twenties for whom I once had embarrassing feelings and in whose name some of the galaxy's most horrific non-Vogon poetry was written after he broke my melodramatic heart by marrying a Perfect Hippy Girl. Side note: I still have moments where I look back on my disastrously silly behavior during the time of my first heartbreak and experience full body shudders- this is a phenomena as yet unpublished in the DSM-IV known as "aftershawkward."

Patrice and I had yet to really make friends with anyone in our area, so our Saturday nights for the first month or so after my relocation were comprised of taking in marathons of "Flava of Love" and debating over whether Hoopz or New York would be the one to rock the clock of Public Enemy's one and only timekeeper. Occasionally we also mixed things up with a venture to the city for confused driving on one way roads, and were rewarded with the finger from pedestrians with 25-gauge ear plugs. Ah yes, it was a crazy time to be young and post-collegiate.

One night, we decided to attend "family home evening" (FHE) which, by way of explanation is a phenomena in the LDS church wherein Mormon families come together for a wholesome night of fun featuring an uplifting spiritual lesson, home-made snacks, and fun activities like going to the waterpark or playing spoons. Unfortunately, Mormon singles do not yet have families to share their Mondays, so our FHEs essentially consist of a spiritual thought slammed together at the last minute by the person in charge, Crystal Light with a manufacture stamp that pre-dates Y2K, and awkward conversation had with a member of the opposite sex who is either sweating from the 45 minutes of full-court basketball he just played in his HSBC work shirt, or because this is literally the first time he has ever talked to a girl. As a cultural past-time, FHE as a single person is awkward even when you know people, so I was not thrilled to be going. Patrice, however, insisted, so I went, dragging my heels the whole way.

When we got there, we saw a girl wearing a blue hoody that read "Brigham Young" on her left sleeve and "University" on her right. She was talking to a guy that was at least ten years older than her but leaning towards her, giving her those hungry eyes oft-spoken of in Eric Carmen songs of yore. Ew. Patrice pointed and said, "That's Kristin talking to Dave. I met her last week in church. She's new too. She is pretty cool." Rolling my eyes at her sweatshirt, I grumbled, "Doubtful"- ready to have to my prejudice against BYU graduates once again reinforced with another agonizing conversation about how ballroom dance IS a legitimate major, and how the Jazz are God's team, it's just that the National Basketball Association has yet to acknowledge this fact in writing.

Before I tell you what happened next, I have to explain one of the things that I loved about Patrice while we lived in Eugene- she has practically no filter for saying weird stuff. She had some of the most randomly strange ideas which, combined with her amazing talent as a pianist, resulted in some pretty hilarious sing-alongs during summer breaks. Life is always interesting when the first person on your speed-dial is basically an imaginary friend come to life. Sadly though, I realized quickly on that fateful Monday evening that this quirk was not a charming quality to have when forming new acquaintances.

Having met Dave several times before, she and he immediately dived into conversation while I listened to Kristin talk about her exercise sciences degree and how horrific Provo is when you live there after graduating. I raised my eyebrows at my fellow noob- somewhat impressed by the fact that this brunette Barbie might actually have depth. We rejoined the conversation with Dave and Patrice shortly after, and as my brain worked to catch up, I realized, in horror, that the current PASSIONATE subject at hand between the other two parties was . . . poo.

Yeah- poo.

And Patrice was taking the lead.

Horrified, I listened to my friend talk with that beautiful freedom of speech about scat and several items of scat-related merchandizing. I kept looking from my friend to the pretty girl in the BYU sweatshirt that I was absolutely positive was within weeks of becoming one of the "popular people", and winced in horror at what was certainly my future as Vice-President of the Society for Crazy Girls Obsessed with Shit.

Despite my best efforts and pathetic attempts as segue ("Have you ever tried to get a penny OUT of a penny loafer?") the conversation continued FOR TWENTY MINUTES. Kristin, who was pretty quiet and hard to read throughout the interaction, did laugh a couple of times, and only checked her phone once when she got a text, which- to her credit- she did not return.

Back in the car, Patrice turned to me and said, "I had fun. Dave's hilarious and Kristin is great. We should hang out with them more." I leveled my eyes at Patrice and told her, "Okay- seriously? I love you, and think you are funny, but we will never see that girl again."

Kristin called and asked if we wanted to hang out a few days later. "Wow." I thought. "She's going to be less popular than I thought."

Turns out Kristin liked people that spoke their mind. She was a genuinely cool person with no unnecessary ego; strange taste in music that I blamed on her being from Canada ("Foreigner? REALLY?"); and an optimism that on anyone else would be annoying, but on her was just really genuine. She also had a lack of tact that somehow managed to be fearless, embarrassing, and hilarious all at once. I was in platonic love.

In the year that followed, Kristin and Patrice and I hung out quite a lot. We went to the zoo and teased Kristin about her fear of birds in the aviary, pointed out a tall skinny member of the deer family that looked like Patrice, and attempted to get me through the emotional crisis that I had upon realizing that my thumb is the exact same size as an adult male gorilla's. Kristin fell for Josh, aka the Future Mr. Kristin at a church basketball tournament where he sunk everything but the Titanic. Patrice broke up with her long-time long-haired guitarist boyfriend and vowed to marry a Mormon boy. I went on a movie date with a guy that yelled at the screen in the movie theater in anticipation of the trailer for the movie "Snakes on a Plane". Everyone was growing and we kept each other abreast of all developments via every form of communication possible except smoke signals because I felt that they were culturally insensitive.

Several things happened that brought me closer to not only Kristin but her extremely cool boyfriend who was fast developing into a close friend. Unemployment, new employment, struggles with family, drama with boys (mostly mine), life-threatening illness, the "WHEN IS HE GOING TO PROPOSE?" drama, and above all else, "US Weekly" magazine to which my roommate subscribed and we regularly read and snarked upon in a group setting when I was too poor to do anything besides sit on the couch and grump.

In a series of events completely expected, Kristin and Josh married after a year and a half together. In a series of events that still makes the staff of Ripley's Believe-It-Or-Not go "Wha- huh?", Patrice married a guy named "Patrick" (gosh it's fun to give aliases!) after dating three weeks, and being engaged for two months. I remained a crock-pot less head-of-household on my W-4.

More time passed. Kristin and Josh and I continued to hang out together on a regular basis- none of us uncomfortable with the fact that our double dates were missing a fourth wheel. After ten months of being married, Kristin finally responded to my weekly inquiry of- "When you gonna start popping them out?" with "In January." Along came baby. REALLY shortly after came baby number 2. After a LOOONG trial process at work, I was finally promoted and got my first real apartment in Portland (okay fine, Lake Oswego.) Again- Yay! Personal growth.

Sadly, Patrice and I grew apart. I am not really sure what happened, aside from her thinking that being married to Patrick was the most interesting thing in the world, and me politely disagreeing. I am still friends with the electric bassist though, and an admirer of the prolific artwork of the Perfect Hippy Girl (aka her sister-in-law), so I get semi-regular social networking updates as to her wellbeing and she seems to be doing fine. The best that I can do now is wish her well and thank her for the belly laughs of 2004.

All this brings me to now. Kristin and Josh have moved to Salem to support Josh in his new employment, presenting her with a small problem- although Kristin works only two days per week, her commute is long, and at each end of a 12-hour day, exhausting. After learning of her predicament I told her, "Just spend the nights at my place! You are always welcome."

I did not realize the situational folly into which I had entered myself.

Here are the good parts:

• I adore my best friend. I adore her children, to whom I am "Aunt Whoa-wee". Sadly though, her having kids meant that we could never really go out and DO anything unless we went to special effort. With her spending the night at my place each week, we get girl's night on a regular basis- which is kind of awesome.
• As a mother of two under three, she gets one night per week of uninterrupted sleep. Most women would proffer up certain necessary digits for that luxury.
• I get to maintain my relationship with one of the most important people in my life despite her moving an hour away.
• I am learning how to cook because there is someone else around to cook for. Granted, I have only done it twice, but it's coming along.

Here are the not so good parts:

• Kristin has a very high standard of clean.
• I do not.

Already, this has proved for some interesting developments.

Week 1: She was astounded at the pristine condition of my living room, bathroom, and kitchen- which I came home from work early to spit-shine- but despite my best efforts, she accidentally caught a peek of the wreckage that is my bedroom as I was getting ready to sleep.

She shook her head. "Heh."

Week 2: I realized that I did not have any clean towels for her to use for her shower, so I had to go buy some at Fred Meyer's. "Wouldn't it just be easier to set aside towels for guests?" "How is that easier?"

She shook her head as she removed the tag. "Heh."

Week 3: "I'm sorry- I didn't have time to clean my kitchen, I was working on a project."

"Is that a bottle of mustard on your kitchen floor?"

"Sorry, that's where I usually put the catsup."

She raised one eyebrow. "Heh?"

Week 4: I called her in a panic because I found what I thought were twenty bug bites on my arm and so became convinced that it was bedbugs. I told her she would have to stay with her in-laws that week and begged her to wash her clothes from her previous stay in boiling oil. Within two days I would learn that I did not have bed bugs but hives from being sick.

Over the phone: "Heh."

Week 5 (This week): After my $5/500 lb. garage sale TV gave up the ghost, I decided to invest in a GREAT, BIG TV because Best Buy has a leasing program and I could not live without "So You Think You Can Dance". I became obsessed with getting it by the time that she got there that night, and so enlisted my friend Bryan to help me with the project. I did not have time to do anything besides clear off the coffee table and make sure that there was no underwear on the bathroom floor. In horror- I realized 15 minutes before she got there that the towel that I had put out for her was the one that I had used on my hair that morning.

I spent a full two minutes deciding whether or not to tell her, but decided that I could never live with the guilt of lying to her about a hairy towel, and so, set about solving the problem in the best way I could. When she got to my house, I was straight with her about what I had been trying to cover up for 5 weeks:

"The sink is overflowing with dishes. There are things growing on the kitchen floor. You have to dry off from your shower with a top sheet because I ran out of towels. My friend Bryan, who was setting up my GREAT BIG TV laughed, and wished her luck on getting a cotton-poly blend to absorb any moisture.

At the end of the evening- after walking Bryan out to his car- I came back to an open dishwasher that was beginning to be filled by my friend, who had apparently "heh"ed her last "heh" and was taking matters into her own hands. She did all but clear out the unknown matter in my sink that was sticky and stinky and looked like it might cause birth defects.

I started cooking a batch of brownies for us both and watched as she slowly began organizing the piles in my front room. She poked fun at my inability to open mail marked "Urgent: Please Read" and my collection of movie ticket receipts from as far back as February. I continued to justify my messes with protestations of a career woman on-the-go, and when those failed, I pretended that I could not hear her over the racket the dishwasher created.

When she finished, I realized that with anyone else I would have been ashamed to have them clean my house because they needed life to function at a certain standard of clean, but with her, it was just Kristin being Kristin. Just like how the feeling that purchasing new towels is infinitely simpler than the practice of designating guest towels is an attribute of me being me.

We are an odd couple. Thank heavens.

It's a nice place to visit . . . but now you gotta live here.

In third grade, I flunked the geography portion of the final test in the "All About Oregon" unit at school. I was asked, "What's the capital of Oregon?" to which, I responded with resounding confidence, "PORTLAND!"

(Insert soul-crushing game show buzzer sound here.)

Wrong.

I was politely informed by my teacher that it was not Portland, but in fact Salem, which was the capital of our great state. I told my teacher I thought this was pretty cool since the city of Salem was rumored to be haunted by a bunch of dead witches. My teacher blinked and then pinned a copy of the Sylvan Learning Center brochure to my shirt so that I could give it to my mom.

The only other extremely vivid memory of Portland from my childhood happened when I was about 13. I was in the car with my parents, and as per usual, my father was driving like Mr. Magoo on Oxycoton and my mother was reacting to his slow slides into the opposing lanes with an impressive amount of volume. To make matters worse, it was rush hour so the patience that the other drivers had for my father's Super Dave Osborne-esque attempts to ride up on the highway divider on two wheels were not accepted with any degree of what one might call patience. My mother kept muttering, "The traffic here is crazy!" and cursing the day that the other drivers were born. Amidst the honks and frequent tests of the Maternal Broadcast System, I vowed to myself that I would never live in this place. I was wholeheartedly surprised to learn after a couple of white-knuckled road trips to P-town in my early 20s that it is not the city that makes the trip scary, but rather your tour guides. (In defense of my parents- there is much that they do well- volunteer, community-build, raise awareness for various civil rights-based issues- it's just that land travel together is not one of them.)

So I moved here at 23 with absolutely no idea of anything aside from the fact that I wanted to be out of my hometown. Over the course of the next six years I would learn many things I would have previously thought impossible: how to use chopsticks, that I could learn the names and positions of each player on a professional sports team (GO BLAZERS!), that the truest proof of this world having been created by a Divine Being is found in the existence of Powell's City of Books, and that bacon on top of a maple bar is the greatest thing to happen to breakfast since the first farmers said, "Hey what's coming out of that chicken's hoo-ha?" "I don't know what it is, but I think maybe we should eat it!"

After all this time though, I don't know, I think I just got jaded. The waterfront festivals that happen every weekend during the summer can get annoying when all you want to do is get to Burnside without hitting a kid dressed as a turtle-loving zombie with your car. Last Thursday on Alberta has great Thai food but STOP TOUCHING ME!!!! And the hipsters. My gosh, the hipsters. If I see one more Jack Skellington look-alike wearing the same Jazzercizing bears sweatshirt that I wore in the elementary school underneath a tweed blazer and topped with a Muslim prayer scarf, I am going to grab a giant frozen turkey and play everyone's favorite game of "Bowling for Anemics".

Last weekend though, Portland did its best to re-prove itself to me. In a very real sense, it stood outside of my balcony in the pouring rain, renting it's bird-bedecked shirt in two, yelling, "LAUR-IE!!! LAUR-IE!!!" (That reminds me- I gotta update my "Best of Brando" list on Netflix.)

Last week, I took part in a Fam Tour for Portland. Before I go on, I should explain that a Fam Tour is an opportunity for cities to show off what they have to offer to the planners of large-scale events. They fly people in, wine them, dine them, and do their best to convince that person to bring their conference (as well as the hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue they represent) to that city. I have gotten to go play in both Alaska and Florida on Fam Tours, and they were AWESOME. They spoil you rotten and give you a lot of free stuff. Not being able to partake in the GALLONS of free booze on these trips by both company and personal religious directive, I use these trips to eat my weight in free steak. Seriously, it's as though I saw Lady Gaga at the Grammy's and said, "Throw her on the grill and hand me a decent knife." Of course, I am not a fan of Gaga, so I would just put all that to the side and save it for the dogs . . .

Anyway, a recent conversation with a hotel contact of mine resulted in her encouraging me to attend the Fam Tour for my home city of Portland, as it would help me get to know the hotels in the area for the meetings that I plan regionally. I called Travel Portland- the Convention and Visitor's Bureau for P-town- to ask if I could take part. They said yes. They were even nice enough to put me up in the hotel where the rest of the participants would be staying so that I would not have to go home each night.

Because these trips are meant to highlight the wonder and beauty of the city, they took us to do a lot of things that were very tourist-y but also very wonderful. We took a driving tour of the Washington Park area; went out to Multnomah Falls; ate at farm-to-plate restaurants; watched a local aerial troop perform acts using hoops, ribbons, and ass muscles I have never even heard of; and learned all about this, the City of Roses.

I guess it was not so much the sights that reminded me of why it is great to live where I do, but what people said about it that reminded me that it is not like this everywhere. People kept commenting on how beautiful and enormous the trees were. I forget that in many places, it is not common to have a 100 ft. tree in every front yard on the block. They were shocked and delighted that there were receptacles for recycling everywhere that there was a trash bin and that social culture dictates that you conserve or die. I guess I take for granted that I have receptacles for both in my kitchen and that I do not have to pay more in my garbage bill to take care of the earth.

They also commented on how nice the people are and that there seems to be a great sense of a unified community all around. This was confirmed for me as I sat in the window seat of my tenth floor hotel room and watched the end of the Starlight Parade on Saturday night. If you are not familiar- the Starlight Parade occurs a week before our own Rose Parade and is basically the most random collection of lit up floats, marching bands, and random weirdos that you could imagine. I watched as joyful people were smiling and cheering and in all ways showing their enthusiasm for floats that ranged from the cancer survivors on the Susan G. Kommen float, to the active military, to the Star Wars enthusiasts, to the Newfoundland (dog) Society of the Portland Metro Area. At the end of the parade, some random guy ran out into the quickly deserting street and wrote in huge letters on the ground "KEEP PORTLAND WEIRD" and then ran back to the waiting arms of his adorably nerdy girlfriend. I smiled and sighed to myself because it was sort of a perfect moment.

I came away from the trip a few aluminum water bottles richer, and with a renewed perspective on my city. Sure, the people can be unbelievably pretentious at times (I think this may be, in part, what spurred my love of reading obscenely popular Stephen King novels in independently-owned coffee shops- thus marring the brooding landscape with my advanced degree AND love of popular literature), but they are also enthusiastic about some things that are pretty great- music, art, nature, food.

My biggest worry about Portland though, is that it suffers too much from the idea of being "better" than other cities because of our reduced crime, city cleanliness, air quality, progressively minded politicians (let's leave the dirty Sam Adams jokes by the wayside for now), etc. The problem this kind of thinking creates is that people fail to understand that there is still much, much room for us to push ourselves as a community and grow. I think that as long as there are people out there that are willing to remind us that all is not right in Oz, and move us to make positive change for our people, wildlife, and environment, then we can truly embrace Portland for the weird wonder of the Northwest that it is.

Now if you will excuse me, I gotta get naked and ride my bike down 6th Street with 500 other people . . . .