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June 25th, 2009
12:06 pm
Last night I had a dream. I have dreams every night, always intense, but this one is sticking out at me for some reason.
I was at the aquarium. Katie was going to teach me how to scuba dive, and I was excited, but as I was getting ready to go and finding the gear I suddenly became petrified of the claustrophobic effects of being underwater. Presumably I ran away, because the next thing I knew I was in a bedroom with a friend ( i don't remember who, but someone comfortable and familiar and female) laying on the bed, and I noticed a chiton crawling across the pillow where we were laying. This bedroom was located in building 2, so I took the chiton back to the touch pools in building 1 and put it in one of the tanks. It seemed very ill at ease there, rapidly changing colors, and moving at least 5 times as fast as chitons normally do, seemingly towards the other tank. I remarked to one of the senior aquarium staff that it had probably come from the other tank, and that it was trying to get back by using magnetic north to locate it (Chitons really do do this, they use the tiny bits of metal in their radula - the special kind of tongue many mollusks have- to detect magnetic north and find their way back to their favorite spot on the rocks.) We moved it to the other tank, and it seemed happier.
Then there was an impromptu meeting of all the volunteers, where one of the higher-up people told us that we should have all met our 100 hour requirement by now, and that if we hadn't we were out of the program (I'm currently at 88 hours, so this was very devastating news).
Katie found me again and said she still had time to teach me to dive, but I was late to meet my mother. In London. We went to the British Museum (a location that factors in my dreams in various guises all the time) and then I woke up.
Here is a picture of a lined chiton. I discovered this little guy in the touch pools at the aquarium the other day (there's always something new to discover, there was also a baby nudibranch which was only about as long as my pinky nail). I'm sure that my long minutes of staring at the lined chiton with my face inches above it heavily influenced this dream:
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My grandmother is apparently very sick, and has a mass around her pancreas. I spoke to her this morning, and she didn't mention a word about it to me. I found out later in an e-mail from my mom. It hasn't really hit me yet, but it will.
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March 17th, 2009
10:31 am
My Grandpa Warren died. My dad didn't tell me about it for three weeks, and then only because I called him. I didn't know about the funeral.
I'm grieving for my Grandpa Warren, and I'm bemoaning the fact that we did not know each other better, and that in the past year that's been my procrastinating, cowardly fault for not calling him. I was afraid he wouldn't know who I was, and that combined with my fear of phones meant I kept putting it off.
I'm also grieving for the fact that my dad feels I am so distant he doesn't need to communicate with me when his father dies. I'm hoping this says more about him than about me, but I don't know.
Seattle is depressing. I want to go back to Maui.
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March 8th, 2009
08:44 am
The Night House
Every day the body works in the fields of the world
mending a stone wall
or swinging a sickle through the tall grass --
the grass of civics, the grass of money --
and every night the body curls around itself
and listens for the soft bells of sleep.
But the heart is restless and rises
from the body in the middle of the night,
and leaves the trapezoidal bedroom
with its thick, pictureless walls
to sit by herself at the kitchen table
and heat some milk in a pan.
And the mind gets up too, puts on a robe
and goes downstairs, lights a cigarette,
and opens a book on engineering.
Even the conscience awakens
and roams from room to room in the dark,
darting away from every mirror like a strange fish.
And the soul is up on the roof
in her nightdress, straddling the ridge,
singing a song about the wildness of the sea
until the first rip of pink appears in the sky.
Then, they all will return to the sleeping body
the way a flock of birds settles back into a tree,
resuming their daily colloquy,
talking to each other or themselves
even through the heat of the long afternoons.
Which is why the body -- that house of voices --
sometimes puts down its metal tongs, its needle, or its pen
to stare into the distance,
to listen to all its names being called
before bending again to its labor. ~ Billy Collins ~
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February 21st, 2009
08:15 pm - Mish mash
Work at the aquarium is hard. Really hard. I like people, but I hold so much contempt for them, and it makes me want to cry when it's obvious that they hold contempt for me in my role at the shop. I can tell I've grown because I don't actually cry, I stoop down behind the counter to get a bag and I silently mutter what I'd really like to say to them and then I come up smiling. Or at least grimacing.
Today a school group of teenagers came in, and they all had hundred and fifty dollar bills in their wallets. They bought 50 dollar jewelery on very light whims. One of them impulse spent the value of half the paycheck I just picked up. It made me sick.
When I ask people if they need a bag, it makes me crazy when they say "sure". For one thing, I say "need" because I want people to think about whether they actually do need a bag or not. Most of the time when they say "sure" they really don't. They have a tiny magnet, or a necklace, or something else equally tiny. Furthermore, "sure" is not an appropriate answer to the question "do you NEED ______". The word "sure", in this context, is equivalent to "well, why not?" which is not an appropriate answer to a question of need.
I am too pedantic to work retail.
Being at the aquarium and volunteering is easy. I love it. It feeds me. I saw the sea otters mating today. I think the females are on birth control, but oh god, I hope not. A baby sea otter would be amazing. I got to help a 2 year old little boy feed sea urchins. He was very enthusiastic. I learned that the pink sea star can stretch the tube feed around it's mouth/stomach up to 12 inches, and that it will position itself around a clam's siphon and then stretch it's tube feet down and pull the clam up. Amazing. I made friends with a tiny kelp green gunnel, and by "made friends" I mean I became totally obsessed with it, it's the cutest fish ever. I learned about hooded nudibranchs. etc. etc.
Kerenza makes me happy. Tammy makes me happy. They are very sweet ladies. I feel let down by certain other individuals.
Yesterday I celebrated my anniversary with Dev (6 days late because of work) by packing a romantic picnic complete with wine glasses and sparkling cider and a rose and unveiled it on a ferry ride to Bainbridge Island. I was quite pleased with myself, and it was fun to treat him. He made me a fancy dinner on our actual anniversary. Taking the day to be with each other was exactly what we needed- things have been a little off course and it felt like they righted themselves that day.
I want to buy lots of buiscuits and crisps and condiments and sweets from brtisuperstore.com. I shall resist, but only because I'm poor.
I like my life, but there are several ways in which I would like it to improve. I think the root of all of these is that I would like to not be a (semi) responsible adult. And by that I mean that money is boring. If I could somehow volunteer at the aquarium full time and not have to worry about monetary concerns my life would be 90 something percent perfect.
blah blah blah.
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February 10th, 2009
07:35 am
The following is for my own use, I don't expect anyone to read any or all of it, although you are welcome to.
A very strange dream:
I am at an aquarium. It might emotionally be the Seattle Aquarium, I cannot tell. Physically, it's not, although it is on a waterfront.
The sea otters are taken outside and led to a pen where they will be fed their "dessert" food, a special combination of shellfish they don't usually get. They are clearly excited about this, and there is a fairly large crown gathered around to watch on the docks. In my obsession, I am crowded up close to the pen. The man in charge asks some of the children if they would like to feed them, and a little boy next to me says yes. He is part of a Chinese family, apparently an only child, with his mother and father. He bites the Oyster in his mouth and bends down and the sea otter takes it out deftly.
As we are standing there, the water becomes choppy, and the water level begins to rise. The little boy's parents can swim, but because they are so much shorter than me they can not stand on the dock with the rising water and hold on to him, so I offer to. I carry the boy, who is about 7, into the building at the end of the docks, which is not at all like an aquarium anymore, more like a large sterile medical facility.
The family is grateful to me, but once inside, the boy notices he has developed a rash, dark red-purple blotches all over his torso and limbs. I also notice that his left arm is covered in recent wounds and scars, like he's been cutting himself. Suddenly he falls down and begins to have convulsions. The parents look on as if they've seen this before, while I hold him and put my finger between his teeth so he doesn't bite off his tongue. It is incredibly intense. The father looks at me, and tells me to take him to floor 9.
I start climbing the white grey silver staircases up. There is nobody else around, and it is as if I am not meant to go up. The staircases start from nowhere, behind railings, and I have to crawl over them and around things and struggle to get up, all the while holding the boy, who has stopped siezing and is now chatting to me like a child would. He is also getting smaller.
When I reach the 7th floor I appear to be in a cafeteria area for hospital staff. The boy is now unconscious, and small enough to hold in my hand. A doctor (who is bailey, from Grey's anatomy) rushes over to me, looks at the boy, shakes her head and clucks her tongue and directs me up the remaining flights of stairs.
When I enter the 9th floor I am in a completely different world, it would seem. Everyone is dressed lavishly in long flowing robes with velvet and silk and embroidery, and there are rich colors everywhere, and lots of gold. However, this room also seems to be a caffeteria, with families sitting at tables eating dinner (it is evening here). One family gets up suddenly when they see me come in holding the boy in my palm, they have been expecting me. They are not chinese, the man and the woman, middle aged, are white, which throws me. They are both attractive and well dressed, the man with dark salt and pepper hair well trimmed, and a powerful, tall build, the woman a little shorter than me with long wavy golden hair. They have a daughter, who is about 9 and also has blond hair and is dressed very much like her mother.
The daughter takes the boy from me and puts him in a structure that looks very much like a wooden rabbit hutch on one side of the room, complete with straw. It has rows of shoeboxes in the back, the perfect size for the boy to sleep in, and it is in one of these that the girl makes up a bed for him and puts him to sleep. I talk to the parents about him - they are surprised that I don't remember the name of his sister from the other world, and I tell them that he does not have a sister in the other world, and that I hadn't actually exchanged names with anyone there anyway. I ask them what the boy's name is.
The little girl looks up from the hutch and says:
"His name is Xian Tao"
I ask the father about the cuts on his arm. Is the boy suffering from depression, possible related to this illness? The man laughs and says that his son has probably just been experimenting with medical techniques with his friends, and it might even be one of these experiments that caused the illness. He get's a little tetchy. Other people in the room urge him to listen to me, but he is becoming enraged, and I let myself out, somewhat satisfied that the boy is now with people who are, in some sense, his family.
Then I wake up.
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The dream that leads into the dream about the little boy:
I am at an aquarium, and I am feeling very low. I let myself into a pen where sea otters are sleeping, not on their backs on the water, for their is no water in this pen, but on concrete pallets that jut out from the walls and remind me of a prison. I let myself in to the pen and lie down on one of the pallets. A se otter comes up to me and asks me if I'm sad and need her to help. I say yes, and she wraps herself and her gorgeous fur around my neck and head and stays there until I feel better. Sometimes I'm a little smothered and have to ask her to adjust herself, but for the most part it's lovely.
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The dream that made me wake up crying:
I am in a gorgeous field with orchards around it and lots of birds in the trees that I haven't identified yet, with peachy plumage and orange plumage and some blue. Gorgeous. There is a house, and I go into it to look at my bird book a lot. I think my grandmother Marge, my Dad's mom, was in the house. I see a new kind of Flamingo in the distance, and I'm looking it up in my book, when I hear my Dad calling from the other room, "Kate, come here please". I say I'll be there in just a moment, and he roars at me "Kate, I want you to get in here RIGHT NOW". I go, shaking and crying, and he's standing there smiling and holding a little white box and tells me he has a present for me. I get into a fight with him about how I was just looking up a bird, and he can't order me around like that, and he certainly can't order me around and then expect me to be happy to recieve his tokens of affection. He yells back, I yell back, and I wake up crying, cling to Dev and go back to sleep. It almost felt like a nightmare. Emotionally, it was, because the general theme seems to be: You've already terrified me with your anger in the past and I'm not a little girl any more, it's too late to make it up. Which most of the time I feel is the truth. Ugh.
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February 9th, 2009
03:21 pm
I woke up to snow today. It was the lovely sort of snow that isn't thick enough to get into your shoes or slippery enough to cause you to fall over, but it is enough to lightly frost every bare twig. I went to Twin Ponds park to take pictures, stalked some interesting ducks, and got pelted by melting snow and bits of ice from the trees. It was like being caught in a sudden downpour. on my way back home I heard my new neighbor across the street calling for help. He'd locked himself out on his second story balcony and needed me to go through his house and let him out. It was very surreal walking into the home of somebody I've only met for about a minute in order to save them from inconvenience/peril. He was very grateful, and I got to cuddle his dog, who was very excited that I was helping her person.
Eleanor has new oil and a clean bill of health from some truly lovely mechanics. A bit on the expensive side, but she got a full check-up and all is in working order. While I was waiting for the oil change I had a lemonade across the street, and got almost totally taken in by Rolling Rock's new spoof campaign, "moonvertising". Pepsi and coke were talking about doing it around the millenium, and I was afraid that the nightmare was coming true. I've very glad that it turned out to be a hoax, and I'm feeling very foolish.
I'll be spending nearly every day at the aquarium in the next few weeks. Oh my.
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February 4th, 2009
08:58 am
So, my life:
I got a job at the Aquarium gift shop, which all in all is a pretty nifty job. I have to work weekends, and that is extremely lame, but I get to play with bubbles and stuffed animals and toddlers, and I get to visit the sea otters on my breaks, so all is well.
I'm also more than halfway done with my volunteer training at the aquarium, and it's wonderful and fascinating and I can't wait to actually start volunteering. I do have a volunteer badge already, which unlocks the doors and lets me visit the aquarium whenever I want, which is excellent. On Sunday we learned about orcas and I talked to a marvelous woman with Brooke who shared all sorts of career resources with me. Life is very good.
Things are very good with Dev, my dear friend Kerenza (from England) is going to visit me soon, my little brother and his mother got the money from the government that they desperately needed, I'm creating my own space in my house and trying to spruce everything up, and all is well.
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January 21st, 2009
06:06 pm
Enjoying the pain in my belly, the gnawing of emotion and emptyness. This is the top of the spiral staircase. I've been singing my lungs out all day, it seems the only appropriate way to deal with my emotions. It isn't true, but it feels that way. I'll give in, I always do, but I wish I was courageous enough to be in control in the stupidest of ways.
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January 20th, 2009
05:27 pm
I've been fooling around on the piano. Re-teaching myself a bit of musicality from my choir days. It makes me very happy to have a grand piano in my house, and I plan to stop abusing this unlooked for privilege and learn to play it somewhat properly this year. I'm also goint to tune my beautifully blue guitar and re-learn and re-build my callousses.
I've been reading all the Nick Bantock books I can get my hands on. The Griffin and Sabine books are wonderful and make me have good dreams. The Museum at Purgatory is interesting, but not my favorite. I'm very much looking forward to re-reading The Venetian's Wife, because I remember it being wonderful, and solving the riddle of The Egyptian Jukebox (probably with much help from cheats on the internet, I'm not all that clever when it comes to riddles.
It's been very foggy and atmospheric around here lately. Ice covering everything every morning. I like it, except when I forget about it and I have to de-ice my car in a hurry.
I had another dream incolving loads of marine mammals lately. Hundreds of dolphins, a beluga whale walking about on it's hind legs, looking for food in the trash cans like it was homeless, it's white skin smeared all over with trash residue. And a beautiful blue whale that was breaching very close to where I was on the shore.
We have a new president. I cried throughout his speech, and the preliminaries, and I was so happy that I was dancing with Dev in the aisles of the community center where we were watching the proceedings with the 32nd district democrats. Kerry Lee and her family were there, and it was wonderful to have friends to share the moment with. I dressed up in my Paris dress, because it was a special occasion and you dress up for those, and also because it was a reminder that I can now travel abroad and not preface every conversation with "I don't like Bush" before people will talk me and direct me to the nearest underground station. I can be proud of my country, at least in some measure, although we still have a lot to apologize for to the world, and to ourselves.
I would like to state my concern that people are pinning too many expectations on Obama as an individual. He is not a messiah. He is a man, who we have put our trust in to run the country, and I believe he is up to the task, but he is still a man. It's a wonderful thing that for the first time in a long time our president is smarter than most of us and more articulate than most of us, and has surrounded himself with people of the same caliber. But it isn't as those opposition forces have slunk home with their tail between their legs, and it isn't as though he has the right opinion about every issue. He can do a lot to turn this country around, and he's a very powerful symbol, but people need to remember that we haven't waved a magic wand and made all of our problems melt away by electing Obama.
Nevertheless, I am currently heading to Capitol Hill, where I will meet Maia, find the Brazilian band VamoLa, and dance in the streets. We do have a lot to apologize for, a lot to be cautious about, a lot to struggle for still, but I believe tonight is a night to celebrate.
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January 17th, 2009
08:36 pm - I have isolated the gene for unreasonableness
I'll probably regret writing this, but whatever.
Apparently Lea Culver can't be in contact with me or be my friend anymore, because "she's respecting her sister's wishes".
The kicker is that she ended the friendship silently, without explanation, just like Alisha did. She unfriended me on facebook, she didn't respond to follow up friend requests or very polite enquiries about what was going on, and then when I finally bothered her with appeals for information, she sent me a very short message saying we would not be in contact anymore.
Seriously, what the fuck?
I never did a single malicious thing to Alisha or anyone in that family. Everyone who is a mutual friend of both of us, including responsible adults who are far removed from the situation, think that she overreacted to a stunning degree over something that was not meant to be a slight to her in the least. It is the most absurd bit of drama I have ever encountered.
But Lea and I have talked about this. We've talked about the situation, and she said that our friendship was not affected by the failure of my friendship with Alisha, because we had a separate relationship that was not touched by what happened.
Suddenly, over 2 years later, she has to respect her sister's wishes? Whatever happened to making up your own mind?
This is a family I grew up with. We attended numerous birthday parties and halloweens and camping trips together. I never acted in a purposefully cruel way towards them, I was always the first to say sorry when we had a fight because our friendship meant more to me than being right, and this is the gigantic slap in the face I get in return. Clearly they aren't worth getting this upset over if they won't spare a shred of rational thought to the situation, but for YEARS I thought of them as family, and I can't help it. It is a hideous blow when people you thought of as sisters disown you for something this trivial.
A recap for those of you who are not aware of the original circumstances: I was home for the summer from England, and finances in my family were extremely tight, so tight that we weren't sure if I could come home for Christmas (which would have meant the entire school year spent away from home). I sent out an e-mail on the UU church listserve to see if I could do some odd jobs for people to help me raise the money for my plane ticket. One family that Alisha was the primary babysitter for responded, creating a few jobs for me that they didn't actually NEED covered in order to help me out. I also worked a few childcare shifts at the church, which was pirmarily Alisha's job, but I worked shifts I was told she was busy for. For this I was shunned, because APPARENTLY I should have been more compassionate to her financial situation, since she had just (voluntarily) quit her job, which was not a horrible employment situation, it was just more hours than she wanted to be working. Nevermind that her job was for extra cash and I was trying to scrape enough money together to see my family for the holidays, and nevermind that I explained that the family had specially created the jobs to help me out. She gave me the silent treatment for weeks and then waited until I was out of the country again to infomr me (via e-mail) that our 10 year friendship was over. So over the issue of babysitting, with no malicious intent on my part, I have lost an entire family that I was once extremely close to. It's an incredibly ludicrous scenario.
I'm off to lick my wounds and try to clear out the space in my head that this situation lives in, so that I have room for friendships with rational and unselfish human beings.
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12:55 pm
The things in my life that are exciting are:
Dev.
Nick Bantock books.
Eating my weight in Hershey's Kisses.
Kerenza is coming to visit in less than 2 months.
New lingerie that makes me feel like a very pretty lady.
Peeing in a cup (not exciting so much as hilarious and irritating, but hilarious is something).
Remembering that I have a rather sizeable scholarship from the state of California that I have till I'm 30 to use.
Downloading every British comedy I've ever loved, and Brit documentaries. Lots and lots of Stephen Fry and Michael Palin.
The way that as I'm typing this the lines of text make a pretty staircase, with each new sentence forming a lower step, which I did not plan for until writing this sentence.
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January 12th, 2009
10:31 am
A dilemma:
The Seattle Aquarium gift shop is hiring. I've been quite aggressive about pursuing this job, applying, checking in by e-mail, ducking into the gift shop during volunteer orientation at the aquarium yesterday morning and getting the name and phone number of the manager, and calling first thing this morning. At first she was telling me that they're still going through a lot of applications, etc. etc., but then I just kept talking and being charming and she offered me an interview on Wednesday.
Good news, yes? I could be working at the Aquarium AND volunteering there, I could basically immerse myself in all things aquatic and smell the tang of the sea every time I went to work. Sounds excellent to me, as a temporary solution to the employment dilemma.
The problem is, as a part time "seasonal" position, my hours would vary from 6 hours a week to 30. 30 is just dandy, 6 is not remotely enough. I don't know if I can accept this job if it's offered, because I need to be making some actual money at this point, I really do. My bank balance is tragically low, I am embarrassingly dependent on Dev in a way that makes me far more uncomfortable than I like to admit even to myself, and I really need to be following a lucrative course of action.
I also need to follow a course of action that makes me happy, and I also need to think about how the jobs I get look on resumes.
There are other work dilemmas on the horizon, such as the interview I have at starbucks today, with the prospect of shifts that start at 4:30 in the morning. Sweet Jesus.
Does anyone have any advice? Any ideas about supplementary and very flexible jobs that could support my aquarium habit? Given that I am a college graduate who is likely going back to college at some point, but who would also like to be paid for her brain as soon as possible, what do you think my course of action should be? I need help sifting through my options and not doing anything stupid.
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January 10th, 2009
08:21 am - Before I forget...
I woke up at 7:30, and went back to bed for an hour, and had this dream. You don't have to read this, it's for my own memory:
I was travelling in Southern Calironia with Dev, and we were at a UU church. I ran into Sam Wilson (although for the purposes of this dream she was a brunette and didn't look like herself, but it was her) and we stayed very close throughout most of the dream. I ran into Shawn Jones, and we embraced like long lost friends and I think he gave me a piggy back ride, and we laughed a lot. I saw Alan Dykstra, and Eric Rosloff, and Sam Ames, and Liz Eldridge, and Ashley Rose, and Devon Porter, and lots of people from the past who are a little hazy at the moment. There was a sleepover like a con, and I was lying on the ground next to Amelia, telling her about how I'd been very depressed earlier this year, and she told me "you know you're still suffering, right?" I told her yes, I did.
We travelled north to Santa Barbara, and it was in a different world, I think. I had been seleeping on the beach with Dev, and two of my friends were kissing out in the water (I don't remember who, but I think one of them may have been Devon Nelson) and I wanted to join them. I never made it, because I kept trying to put a bathing suit on, and even though it was there in a pile of clothes and kept putting on half of my bathing suit, but pulling on a lacy black bra or panties to go with it, realizing my mistake, and trying again.
Someone who I believe was Sam Wilson, although she had that brunette hair and was not herself, was suddenly with me, and Dev was not. I think she may have been a combination of Sam Wilson and Rebecca Leigh. The real Rebecca came up to us on the beach and met this other woman, who I was dating, aparently. I was very protective of her and carried her around in my arms like a child. We went to a classroom where people were gathering, and Sami freedman was there, and Justin Elder, and assorted other people, and I desperately wanted to sit next to Rebecca, but she had other plans, I ended up sitting next to a girl I didn't know, and it turned out it was a class that I wasn't meant to be taking anyway, so I left.
I saw a man jogging along a big concrete sidewalk next to the beach, which had a 20 foot wall of concrete blocking off the view of the beach from the walk, and a drop of about 10 feet down to the road on the other side. The man was rtolling a coin along the sidewalk, running after it, picking it up again before it lost momentum, and tossing it again. He didn't quite catch the coin in time, skidded on the sidewalk in a dive, and fell into the road.
The reason I think this part of my dream was in a different world was that the flowers everywhere were huge and brilliant and like nothing I've ever seen. There were gardens with Dahlia-like flowers that were crimson-maroon red with white tipes, but their centers had been removed and structures like passion flowers were inside. There were hundreds more splendid flowers that I can't remember, except that they looked like complex and beautiful architecture as much as they looked like flowers. There were tiny orange and magenta hummingbirds that flwe around pollinating them, and I looked at them for awhile before looking out to sea.
Alone now, I ran down to the beach in the bathing suit I had been trying to get on earlier, the one I wore when I was 14 or 15, and crashed into the waves. They were up to my neck, and extremely powerful, and I let them pummel me and pummel me.
I walked back up to the boardwalk area, studied some more of those complex flowers, and then walked through a beige stucco hallway, the sort you might find in a California elementary school. When I walked out the other side I saw a crow calling from a telephone wire in front of a eucalyptus tree. I thought to myself "oh good, they have crows in this world, I wan stay here then", and then I woke up.
So much nostalgia in this dream it's ridiculous.
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January 4th, 2009
07:30 pm
It was not supposed to snow tonight, but in the past few hours we've gotten two and a half inches. The world is silent and beautiful, but the snow is not welcome. The beauty lasts for a day, and then the snow turns to ice, and I can't drive, and because I live in hilly Seattle I also have a lot of difficulty walking without falling on my face or wrenching my back. Oh dear.
Lets see, things that are going on in my life:
Dev and I met a year ago today. Things are still going strong.
I'm finally moving out of boxes and off of the floor and into a personal space of my own. It'll really be combination art room/retreat room/guest room. The color scheme is an homage to a special time with my mother, and stillness, and mental clarity and space.
I'm getting tapped into my art again. I haven't acted on this yet, but I'm entering the right headspace for it. It feels wonderful. Part of this is due to the fact that my dad got me an amazon gift certificate for Christmas, and by shopping around for good deals I am receiving a bundle of books by Nick Bantock in the post. All 5 Griffin and Sabine books and that I don't have and The Egyptian Jukebox are on the way, and The Museum at Purgatory and The Venetian's Wife have arrived, and oooh it's wonderful.
I had a very healthy and drama free conversation with my father recently. It could have been better, but it could have been far worse.
I'm missing my mother and my grandparents and all my connections in San Luis Obispo tremendously.
I'm missing my friends who are closer too, especially Portland friends, but my weekends are taken up until mid-February, because I will be engaged with volunteer training at the Seattle Aquarium on Sundays. I'm very much looking forward to this.
My New Year's Eve was pleasant, but a bit lackluster. My last New Year's Eve was full of drama and pain, but it was also enjoyable, ferocious, and it made me feel alive, sexy, in the thick of things. I felt like a rockstar, to be honest, in decadent squalor. That's not where I am now, but that part of me is still there. I want to find a balance.
This year will be all about balance. I'm putting together a life plan for myself for 2009. I'm hopeful.
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December 29th, 2008
07:11 pm - Christmas: Part One
Part One: Getting from Seattle to San Luis Obispo in something approaching a blizzard, otherwise known as a Christmas miracle of epic proportions. In which Kate brings an extra touch of drama to the situation by passing out on the airplane.
Dev and I had been viewing the weather report with apprehension in the days leading up to last weekend. The streets in Seattle were already icy and slick from a few days of snow, and a major storm with up to a foot of snow and freezing rain was predicted to hit the night before our plane was due to leave. Things did not look good.
Dev had the foresight and the generosity to book us a hotel room near the airport the night before our flight was due to leave, since the roads were likely to be impassable and public transit would not be an option at that point. Airport shuttles were booked, cab companies could not be reached by phone, and I'm from California and don't want to kill people by getting in my car. So we get out on Saturday afternoon, just as the storm starts to hit. Even the 5 has an inch of snow on it, you can't tell where the lanes are, and traffic moves at a crawl. It takes three buses and an airport shuttle (all the while the weather is in the 20s and dropping), but we finally make it to our hotel. All United flights before 9:00 have already been canceled, we hope and pray that our flight, which is due to leave at 12:30, pulls through.
The next morning we wake up to the news that our flight has been canceled, and the local news is reporting that the airport is asking that anyone with a canceled flight go home and rebook from their, since too many people are stranded and the airport is almost at capacity. Too bad, we're already there, and I'm going to get home for Christmas.
So once at the airport we wait in line for 2 and a half hours, while meanwhile Alaskan Airlines is suffering crazy setbacks, the wait for their line looks like it's 8 or 9 hours long and they are making announcements on the loudspeaker telling people to go home. Remember, the streets are icy and snowy and people in Seattle are not safe drivers in the snow, so many of the employees of the airlines are unable to make it to work to help process people. We thank our lucky stars we aren't on Alaskan. Once at the counter the poor beleagured airline attendant tells us that the first flight he can confirm us on leaves on Christmas Eve (!!!), but he checks my bag and puts us on a standby list.
Due to the poor weather conditions that aren't letting people make it to their flights, Dev and I make it out on standby on the first plane we wait for. It actually leaves an hour earlier than our intended flight, and the seats that they have available to us are in first class. I can't believe our good fortune. I have a celebratory free drink on the plane.
This may have been a contributng factor to what happened next. I started to feel as though I couldn't get enough oxygen. I began to feel nauseated and dizzy, which a bit of light turbulence certainly didn't help with. I thought it more considerate to try to throw up in the bathroom rather than in a bag next to the man I was sitting next to, so I got up and stumbled towards the bathroom.
I could have sworn I made it. I was thinking conscious thoughts continuously, as far as I could tell. I thought I was just sitting in the dark of the bathroom, lost in thought. So it was rather a shock to open my eyes and find myself horizontal on the floor, with a steward, stewardess, and doctor hovering over me. Apparently I had passed out when I tried to go to the bathroom, and hit my head on a corner in the galley with a loud crack. Accordning to Dev (who missed the event because he was asleep, much to his chagrin) the stewardess did the cliche "Is there a doctor on the plane" announcement over the loudspeaker and everything. The doctor checked to make sure I wasn't concussed, and they gave me an oxygen tank and a blanket and kept fussing over me in a really embarrassing way. I felt fine as soon as I had the oxygen, but everyone fussed nonetheless. So much so that they insisted that a team of paramedics meet our plane when it landed.
The paramedics were very embarrassing. The captain got on the speaked and told everyone to remain in their seats until the paramedics had come onboard to escort off a passenger who had been ill. No less than 5 of them escorted me off the plane to a secluded area in the terminal where they double checked that I was unconcussed and able to keep flying. Release forms to be signed, etc. It was all rather embarrassing, and a little hilarious.
Once in the San Francisco airport, we thought our worries were over. We were in plenty of time to make our connecting flight, I was feeling fine (even a little oxygen high, maybe) and all was well. Except that it turned out that when the attendant in the Seattle airport re-booked us for the 24th, he had also cancelled our places on the connecting flight. We had to wait for almost three hours in the customer service line to get our names back on that flight. It was a little hellish. A woman in front of me had a bag that said "Don't freak out. Ok?" all over it, and I found it very helpful to stare at it.
In the end, after delays and cancellations and standbys and paramedics and all the rest of it, we made it to San Luis Obispo on the same day we intended to, and just a few hours late. A little while after our plane took off from Seattle, they shut down that airport. Probably thousands of people were stranded there for 24 hours or more. It was chaos. Even considering our misadventures, we were so so lucky. Thank you, travel gods.
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December 20th, 2008
01:37 am - Writer's Block: What Kind of Wonderful?
Muppet Christmas Carol. Hands down.
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December 19th, 2008
07:09 pm - I'm a consumer whore, but so are you.
So I know I pimp Threadless a lot. By now you have probably realized that it is because if you buy Threadless purchases through clicking on my link I get points, a.k.a money off of shirts that I do not need but really like. The other reason is that I like Threadless and feel like I should spread the love (It's probably because I'm white: http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/03/07/84-t-shirts/).
Anyway, the sale ends on Sunday, and there are still a lot of good things, and they keep reducing stuff, and I just stumbled across a coupon code, good for 3 dollars off your total, and it is:
Holiday08
So yeah, make me feel less bad about spending money by following me lead.
http://threadless.com/?from=Lunanuula
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December 13th, 2008
11:57 pm
Best day ever:
There is snow. Lots of it. It's sticking, and it's gorgeous.
Dev's dad moved out of the house today. I celebrated by making a fire in the fireplace and reading under a blanket.
YES.
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December 12th, 2008
08:05 pm - Dev, having just woken up from an hour long nap to the sound of his alarm:
Dev: It's six!?!
Me: It's eight.
Dev: It's eight in the morning!? (it's currently pitch black outside)
Me: No, it's eight in the evening, that's what you set your alarm for.
A few minutes later after some seemingly intelligent conversation has been exchanged (Throughout this entire conversation I am cracking up hysterically and Dev is dead serious:
Dev: When is that movie due anyway? (we do not rent movies except for netflix)
Me: What movie?
Dev: That movie about cleaning Rome!
Me: What? What movie? What about Rome?
Dev: Cleaning the room! We were going to clean one of those two rooms. In this case it's that one. Where did that idea come from?
At this point I lose it and start cracking up so hard that he becomes more conscious and realizes he's ridiculous. I came over to my computer to document this for posterity, and he's fallen asleep again. Time to go jump on him.
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November 26th, 2008
01:17 am
I want to go live in a treehouse by the ocean (well insulated and with lots of blankets) and do art. Not talk to anyone, except when I got too lonely. Lead my friends there by secret twisting trails so that they could only find their way if I led them. Sink into my own alternate reality. Get over my fear of fishing and live on fish and kelp. Only very special friends could come to visit. Friends who understood the remoteness, the need for it. Friends who understood how one harsh lash of tongue could cause someone to retreat, to burrow, to seek solitude. The friends who you can go years without seeing and meet as if nothing has altered. I would become an old hunched woman over my art, after so many years of being a young hunched woman. No one would depend on me, I would depend on no one. There would be no one to disappoint, and no one to be disappointed by. The animals and I would show each other mutual respect and affection, but not dependence. My world would be the color of washed out sand and the sea on a cloudy day. I would not feel like I feel now.
You wouldn't believe it, but today was actually a pretty good day.
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