Nothing in my life will ever be as romantic as the first seven minutes of "Up". F--- you, Pixar.

The first time I fell in love, it was that crazy head-over-heels, words get jumbled your mouth, obsessive kind of love.

It was with Lion-O from "Thundercats".  I was three.

Looking back on it, "head-over-heels" was really due to my first-stage gross motor skill development and unfamiliarity with the physics of stairs, and I must confess that words getting jumbled were probably more related to primary language acquisition than anything else.  The obsession though?  That, my friends, was pure Laurie.

One of the most enduring memories of my thug life pre-Kindercare is of sitting upon the knee of either one of my parents, or one of my older sisters, each Saturday morning and waiting with bated breath for my favorite part of my favorite TV program. Being three, I was not really big on character development, so I did not pick up on the enigmatic leadership, innate truth, or overwhelming personal power of the leader of this ragtag group of human/feline superbeings. Nope, my love for Lion-O was based on something much more simple and raw: I really dug when he would scream "Thunder, Thunder, Thundercats HOOOOO!!!!" The fact that he seemed to throw himself enthusiastically into yelling when he was excited was something that we really had in common- much to the dismay of my second generation parents and perpetually-so-over-it teenaged sisters.

Such was my devotion to my man/beast, I went about putting together a dowry that consisted primarily of fruit snacks and Happy Meal toys so that I would be prepared for when I hit marrying age which, at the time, I believed to be twelve. In my fevered imaginations, he would come to sweep me off my feet and take me to Thundera where we would yell ourselves hoarse every night, and then kiss like my sister and her bad boyfriend did on the couch when mom was not home. In my eyes, life was just a decade from becoming epic.

Sadly, things did not pan out for me and Lion-O. There were many contributing factors- discovering fingerpaints, Michael Dukakis losing the 1988 election, riding my bike without the training wheels. When I was seven, I stepped on a rusty nail that went all the way through my foot. This near-death experience forced me to re-think everything that I ever thought was true and suddenly Lion-O and interplanetary migration were bottoming out on my list. What really sealed it though, was that by the time I was twelve, I finally realized what my girlfriends had been telling me all along- that Lion-O was obviously gay (ref: his clothes, his hair, his friends), and as important as screaming is to a healthy adult relationship, it is hardly the foundation of lasting happiness. Same sentiment also applies for spandex.

We change so much from childhood. I, for instance, no longer see introductions to new people as a an appropriate platform for showing off new granny panties with the days of the week written on the waistband. (That behavior is, of course, reserved for dinner parties with old friends.) Some things however, turn out to be formulae for what will become the core of our adult selves and sadly, while Lion-O was the first, he was certainly nowhere near the last of my 2-dimensional cassanovas.

This is something that I have struggled with accepting about myself for a while. I mean, it's embarrassing enough to admit that you are attracted to a movie or television character independent of the actor playing the part- I have many adult female friends that refer to Robert Pattinson as "Edward" (i.e. "Edward was on Jimmy Kimmel last night") who can attest to this. So much worse though, is loving hand- or computer-generated character, who owns but one set of clothing and- excluding the priest from "The Little Mermaid"- has unconfirmed genitalia. There is simply no excuse for this behavior.

Sadly though, there is no sense in love. The heart wants what it wants, and over the years I have decided that it is easier to give in and ride out my infatuations- decades though they may last- rather than attempt to blot out what is honest, genuine feeling. While it is not healthy for an adult woman to sit around fantasizing about life on Thundera, it is okay to sit back and smile when I am reminded of all the 'toons I've loved before . . .

So it is with this enlightened sense of self-acceptance that I present the following list of Saturday morning how-do-I-love-thees (in no particular order):

Damn! I Wish I Was Your Big-Eyed Small-Waisted Lover!

or How I Learned to Lighten Up and Love Four-Fingered Men

Milo Kamalani- Best friend of Disney's "Pepper Ann"

My approximate age at time of obsession: 15

Why I loved him:

Fifteen was an awkward age for me. I was an academic over-performer with limited social skills besides being funny, so much as I hated to admit it, I was still watching cartoons every Saturday when I woke up.

Milo Kamalani was so much of what I was really looking for in the opposite sex- long hair, cool voice, looked good in a beanie. Add to it the fact that he was a tortured artist- a sub-species of male I had become obsessed with since Kurt Cobain's suicide- and I really did not even stand a chance.

Was I ashamed that him being in the same year as Pepper Ann who was "too cool for seventh grade" meant that he was twelve and I was technically an icky predator? It definitely crossed my mind. Gratefully though, in my eyes we were both old souls and when faced with the future, I knew that we could take on the world armed with a paintbrush for him and a computer with a word processing program for me.  Preferably an IBM. (Yeah, I know I'm old. Shut up.)

Flash-forward to now:

Oh, Milo. Milo, Milo, Milo. I now realize how much was stacked against us. You would never be able to grow older than twelve and I became so much more a woman with each passing day...at least that's what the teen-oriented tampon ads of the time were telling me. Remember the hilarious scene in one of the Twilight movies where the girl realizes that her castrated and defanged vampire boyfriend is going to stay young and she will get old, so she daydreams of him kissing her as an old lady? Yeah, it would be like that, except that prison glass would separate us, because even though you are a far superior man to that pale batboy who is 90% pompadour, your being an eternal pre-teen throws a wrench into the works of anything resembling longevity. Le Sigh.

Trent Lane from the television show "Daria"

Approximate age at time of obsession: 16-17

Why I loved him:

Continuing my adolescent obsession with the tortured and (semi-) creative, Trent Lane was the monotonously-voiced rock god of my unfortunately hormone-addled dreams. At 17 I was certain that Trent had everything that I was looking for in a guy, including:

• Epic hair- black and spiky with some pretty intense sideburns.
• Piercings in your ear cartilidge and forearm/bicep tattoos that make this native of Eugene, Oregon (where the body art shops have punch cards) swoon.
• Played guitar.
• Gravelly speaking voice.
• He was SO. DEEP.
• Ridiculously cool.

I was once again in love, and this time it was forever.

Flash-forward to now:

It was not forever.

In fact, of all my cartoon boyfriends, Trent Lane is the one that I regret the most, and were I to meet such a character again now, I would run screaming in the opposite direction for the following reasons:

1. Lives with his parents.
2. Is in a band that is not very good.
3. Is in a BAND.
4. Has a soul patch.
5. Is always coughing for inexplicable reasons. What is that? Why don't you have it checked out?
6. Seems confused. Always.
7. Drives a crappy old van.
8. Drives a VAN.

My obsession with young, beautiful tortured souls resolved itself after getting involved with a couple of actual young beautiful tortured souls and realizing that they never pay for lunch and that as long as your name has two syllables, it's really easy to write one great love song and replace out the person as your fickle libido changes focus. Now, upon hearing that someone who strikes my fancy has ever even attempted the bridge to any Led Zeppelin song whilst testing guitars in a music shop, I immediately ask him whether he has a 401k and if so, what is his monthly voluntary contribution. Stairway denied, indeed.

Tarzan the Ape Man- Main character in the Disney movie "Tarzan"

My approximate age at time of obsession: 17

Why I loved him:

The movie "George of the Jungle" had come out a few years previous. I remember watching that movie and becoming obsessed for one reason, two words: talking monkeys. Just kidding, it was Brendan Fraser...in a loin cloth. Cause DAY-UM.

There was something that kept me from really loving him though. I mean, it had all the foundations of a great celebrity crush- disgustingly gorgeous body, tan, and perfect long hair (This being the 90's and me being ridiculous, that was kind of my jam at the time). Add to that the crazy fantasy of living in the jungle and swinging on vines while you are fed passion fruit by a man that has never been taught to be a douche by other men, and as my boy Jemaine Clement would say, the situations should have been perfect for business to be conducted (if you know what I'm saying).

There was something wrong though. Something that I did not have a word for at the time but have since come to understand quite clearly. That something was the horrible epidemic affecting our nation for eons known affectionately as butterface. It turned out that what I really sought in an ape man- in addition to all the wonderful things that Encino Man brought to the table- was beautiful piercing eyes, a strong jawbone, and a mouth that did not bring to mind Dr. Demento's "Fish Heads" song. I mean, what good is having a boyfriend in the jungle if you have to put a bag over his head? Watch out for that FACE. Ugh.

Enter Disney's "Tarzan". I saw this movie with a group of friends at the second-run movie theater in  while I was in college. This theater's $1.50 per show pricetag, combined with the fact that I did not have my license and could not drive myself home, was the reason that I ended up seeing "Meet the Parents" seven times the summer that it came out. Consequently, I cannot get on an airplane now without wanting to proclaim that I am a bombadier.

But I digress. Back to the movie. The lights dimmed...

• Credits rolled.
• Phil Collins drummed.
• Tarzan swung through the jungle and surfed on trees. His body was sick. His face was- dare I say it- dreamy. I sighed.
• Phil Collins drummed some more.
• The monkeys were funny and this girl named Tammy that I did not know laughed. Really. really. loud.
• Phil Collins, again with the drums.
• Tarzan kept being beautiful and I noticed he had that V-thing on his stomach that guys get when they stop ingesting things beside egg whites and vodka. And that scene where Jane draws his eyes over and over? I hear ya, girlfriend. I thought about how much I love cartoons and then smiled. Then Tammy laughed some more and I frowned.
• For variety, Phil Collins brought drums to the party.
• Tarzan and Jane had moments- several of them. She was booky and brunette so it was fairly easy for me to imagine myself knocking her out of that tree and taking her place. It was also fairly easy for me to imagine doing the same to Tammy, who had now added phrases like, "That monkey is funny!" to her reperatoire of annoying noises.
• All right Phil Collins, now you are just showing off.
• The movie ended and I left, one shameful crush richer, and searching for blunt objects to use on that girl that would not shut up during the movie.
• Phil Collins, played us out and reminded us via bongo-morse-code to pick up any garbage that was in our immediate area.

Flash-forward to now:

For Thanksgiving, I asked my best friend of the last 13 years, Tammy, if she wanted to go to Disneyland. My family was all going to be out of town and I did not want my parents to have to prepare a guilt ham for their one kid left coming home. No one likes guilt ham. Besides, I currently hold the record for being the only Mormon to ever keep kosher- why would I want to mess that up?

On our first day, the park was PACKED. We went and got a Fast Pass ticket to the Indiana Jones ride but then had to wait several hours before we could go on the ride which I thought completely contradicted the title of "Fast Pass". We saw that Tarzan's treehouse did not have much of a line. For nostalgia's sake we decided to pay it a visit.

Sadly for me, there was no live-action version of Tarzan waiting inside to show me how to speak gorilla on a tree branch. That's probably good, I don't know that I could withstand the temptation to stick singles in his loincloth and I did not want to get kicked out of the park that early in the day. Tammy took pictures of anything with a monkey in it muttering, "Those monkeys ARE funny!" and I swore that I could hear the ghost of Phil Collins in the trees even though Tammy assured me that he was not dead and that if Phil Collins did die, he would probably go to heaven and kick it with his girl Sussudio who had passed away in the early 90's due to a tragic synthesizer-related accident.

As we stepped out of the gorilla camp and back into the Southern California heat, I decided that it had been nice to get some closure on that which had promised to be an epic love, but suffered from my unwillingness to forgo flush toilets and a diet featuring complex carbohydrates. I waved goodbye to my jungle-based steady and went to buy a Wookie hat that I had seen earlier at the Star Wars attraction. I will save my list of disturbing characters from a galaxy far, far away about whom I have had inappropriate fantasies for another time.

Shrek as a human from the movie "Shrek 2"

My approximate age at the time of obsession: 22

Why I loved him:

I'm not going to lie. I dug the ending of the original "Shrek". Where Fiona frets over the fact that no one will ever love her as an ogre because she is not beautiful and Shrek tells her that she IS beautiful and then they kiss and suddenly they are driving away in that "Just Married" onion? Tears. (Pun intended- hell, pun CELEBRATED). Then you realize that you will NOT have to listen to another Smashmouth song before the end of the film and you are so overjoyed you CRY BUCKETS.

I'm not going to lie- as a plus sized chickadee, I identified with Fiona's search for a decent guy that appreciated her for her and did not live with his parents. It was a heartwarming story that helped me become a little more comfortable with the concept of finding true love, as long as I was willing to let go of the mandate that my soul mate have hair and perfectly straight teeth.

The concept of happiness with imperfection was not really new to me though. Prince Charming was never really my type anyway. In reality, I preferred a hopeless nerd with problematic facial features, ironic t-shirts about Marxism, and ugly old Converse sneakers that may or may not have had binary messages sketched on the side in White-Out. This was because experience taught me that they were more likely to have a sarcastic sense of humor, a firm grasp of the George Romero oeuvre, and an at least passing relationship with one or two classic dystopian novels ("You know who Yevgeny Zamyatin is?  Let's make some babies.") Unfortunately for me, over a dating life that spans over a decade and a half, I have met just one person that actually fits all of those qualifications that is not also a pretentious d-bag.  Also unfortunate was that in addition to his being born in the almost-90s (Zach Morris had a cell phone when he was born- eeep!), he was also Mormon and so went off to church school in the fall and was engaged by Christmas. During the time he was deciding to commit his heart to someone forever, I switched laundry detergents.  So really- big year for the both of us. But don't feel bad for me . . . despite a rough start, Arm and Hammer Odor Neutralizer and I are still very happy together.  (Insert Johnny Cash's "Walk the Line" here.)

Where was I?  Oh yes, my healthy (as my therapist assures me) taste in cartoon characters.  Enter Shrek the Human.  I am going to get this out of the way now: "Shrek 2" is easily one of my favorite movie sequels of all time.  Go ahead, make fun, but to my tastes, it has everything I am looking for in a movie- awkward moments, talking animals that lick their own crotches mid-film, fun musical sequences, a giant gingerbread cookie having an "E.T." moment, Pinocchio in a thong, John Cleese, Julie Andrews, and Edwina from "Absolutely Fabulous". In fact, I will go so far as to say that it is really only bested by "The Empire Strikes Back" for me, and even then only because never once did Shrek respond to Fiona's "I love you"s with "I know".  (Once again- now is not the time for a recounting of all my inappropriate "Star Wars" fantasies, so stop asking me about them, I will not tell you.)

Anyway, if you are not familiar with the plot, Shrek decides that he wants to change himself so that his wife Fiona, a princess, could have a man that would be acceptable to her royal family.  He uses a magic potion stolen from a Mao-ist fairy godmother in order to transform him from a street rat to Prince Ali Ababwa.  Oops.  Wrong fairy tale.  (You do have to admit though, that it is practically the same story, just change out the middle-eastern Hammer pants with plaid man-capris and the Genie with a cat that sounds like the Nasonex bee.)  Anyway, there is a lot of build up in the movie to this moment, and to the credit of the producers, there were no images released in advance of what Shrek looked like after his transformation, so it was kind of a moment when you finally saw him for the first time.

Where I was at that point, Shrek as a human was nothing less than perfect to me. Having recently had my heart-broken, I was sort of swimming in a pool of despair and self loathing that was based less on the heartbreak itself and more on my desire to have drama in my life.  (I wore sackcloth and ashes- it was a whole thing.)  Human Shrek arrived on his Noble Steed (who talked WAY too effing much) to carry me away from all that in a bucket (...get it?  Because I melted?  Because he was sexy?  Ugh, never mind.)  At the end of the movie Fiona tells Shrek in the last seconds of his Magical Spell o' Sexy that she loved HIM no matter what and wanted to be with the ogre she married, so he turns back into an ogre as the clock chimes and everyone sings a Ricky Martin song to celebrate.  As you can imagine, I was not pleased with this last minute twist and reacted accordingly.

Flash-forward to now:
Having had a lot more experience with adult relationships since that time, I have come to what you could call a healthy understanding of why Fiona did what she did.

It takes just such a lot of patience for bullshit to be with an extremely beautiful man.  Even if they are only recently beautiful, men that are pretty are just such a pain.  You have to wait hours for them to find the perfect pair of Vans to go with their skinny jeans and fitted black shirt; tell them forty times that their hair looks slept-in in the good way; and affirm to them that yes, they are sexier than Tatum Channing covered in chocolate sauce, I don't care what Cosmopolitain magazine has to say on the subject.  There is, of course, that rare sub-species of humble, soft-spoken, intelligent, kind, AND physically beautiful man that has just no idea that woman cross desserts to kiss the hem of his Carhartt work pants, but like Bigfoot, most of us have only heard rumors of his existence, and those that claim to have seen him are generally regarded as mentally unstable by the majority populace.

No- Fiona had it right.  Already ecstatically happy with her attractive-only-to-her fella, she also had the luxury of her love existing off the radar of meddling chicas like that slutty Jill, with her overfull pails of water.  Let's face it, when your man is rocking the verdigris of a beanstalk, and boasts a smile that could sink a thousand ships, you never have to worry about the sales clerk of Far Far Away Mart flirt-laughing and arm brushing him every time he goes out to get a gallon of milk.  There's a certain comfort in that.

The song doesn't lie.  If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, gotta make an ugly woman your wife.  The same goes for making an ugly ogre your hubby, which does not rhyme with anything catchy enough for a song, but I supposed could give depth to an evocative slam poem if you really tried...

Where I am now:
At the start of my 30th year, things have not really changed- I am still very likely to fall head-over-Pampers for a rakish hand-drawn/computer-generated anti-hero with Zachary Levi's speaking voice.  The difference is that I am now less inclined to talk about them as I am entering my sexual peak and my thoughts are now considerably less romantic and more.... in need of disinfectant and possibly an exorcism.

I was at the Whole Foods the other day and saw a man with pointed red hair wearing a wrestling singlet, a chunky belt, thigh high boots, and carrying a giant sword.  I went to call out to him before I realized that it was not my Lion-O, but simply one of the drag queens just off duty from his shift at Darcelle's.  My heart sank, but I realized that it is better this way.  I would never want to mar the innocence of 1985 just to settle the curiousity of 2012.  That's how the world ended up with a remake of "Arthur" starring Russell Brand and an obviously drunk Helen Mirren- and who wants to be responsible for a tragedy like that?

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.