Winter Time

Today I feel like an old woman trapped inside a young womans body; it's too cold outside to walk or ride bikes, I'm afraid to drive. I'm not tired, just resigned to my resignation. I am an old woman in a young womans body. Some people feel the opposite.
My eye sight has been getting poor. All this winter I've been reading, writing, watching movies, and walking with my head down, my scarf wrapped many times around my neck and mouth. Rarely do I look distances beyond two arm lengths. I've stopped looking out the window, rarely looking into the horizon or into the distance. I've stopped meeting people.
It's too grey outside.
The rare and lonely winter fly has found her way into my kitchen and hovers under the grow lamp, smelling my tomato seedlings. She must feel like she discovered a magical island of summertime. But this would be an untrue thing.
This is why I don't look out the window. There is no magical island of summertime. Just the absense of it.
Last winter I almost joined the protestors on Friday to raise awareness for the underground guerilla anti-winter movement I had started, if only to let the people know there was someone out there who was doing more than whining about it. Now, this winter I am learning to cross stitch and acquiring a taste for bitter rose tea. Anything to keep my eyes and thoughts away from the outside where there is no grass to lay on in the sun, no mint in the alleyway to chew, no flowers to make bouquets.

My old cat Snowball is curled, inanimate, on the back of the couch. She is trying to stay alive until the summer when she can die in a sunspot. I, to, wait for my sunspot to die in.
I am an old lady trapped inside a young womans body.

I hate you OLCC

Dear OLCC,

I hate you.

If you were a cat I would make hissy sounds at you. I would splash water in your direction. If you were a cat you would be like Lucifer in Cinderella: making messes and laying around like a rotten jerk being stroked by an evil step mother.

For several reasons you are not on my Christmas greetings list. First and foremost, you enforce a law that sucks!

I spent time in France: once when I was 17 and again when I was 20 and an incredible privilege opened up to me; I could drink alkeehawl! Yee dog! Every night I drank myself sick, hung out with people of ill repute and drove recklessly home!! Alright!

Not really. But that's what you would expect, huh?

In Paris, friends and I would climb on the rooftop of our hotel to share beers, we drank wine with our dinner, Champagne under the Eifferl Tower on Fête Nationale, in Nice we drank Heinekens and passed a bottle of Rhône on the beaches until we were silly; danced, and walked on the promenade, we smoked and drank Kingfisher in the Indian restaurants and smoked and drank Rosé in seafood restaurants. We toasted everything and swatted one anothers heads when we burped (a German ritual). And then I went home to the dry country that is the U S of A. Like every young adult in American with stunted maturity compared to our European friends I was given coloring crayons and Shirley Temples with my dinner.

Now I am over 21 and I can't go out with my little sister because she is twenty.

Another reason I whisper curses when someone speaks your name is because you trick people! You solicit a bunch of corrupted minors to go around the state ordering alcohol the way an undercover prostitute wears short denim skirts when trying to seduce people into letting her crawl into their car and slap handcuffs on them. And when a busy server or bartender misses one step; doesn't check ID, doesn't check it thoroughly, pours the drink and then checks ID BOOM they lose their license (and any chance of a job in the restaurant industry) are freakin' FIRED, fined and then you beat their dog and make them watch. Really? REALLY? People under 21 can't even be set a foot in a bar without there being a violation. God forbid!

Why can't you just relax?!?! Just let the kids buy some beer, and give the servers, bartenders, grocery store cashiers, bouncers, etc. etc. a break! You really give people a complex! I feel like I should surgically implant my ID onto my forehead until I am eighty years old so I don't have to hand it to every person in the room when I step into a bar. Here I am at Ray's the other day and some smiling, god-fearing employee offers me a wine sample. "Oh, lovely! Yes, please!" "Can I see your ID?" "...never mind."

And a word to the minors working sting operations for OLCC; TRADERS!!!! I hope you garbage eaters have lonely evenings with pee in your beer when you turn 21 and realize you have no friends!

Okay, we shouldn't serve drunk people. That's probably a good idea. I spent hours in your required OLCC class at the Shiloh Inn years ago just to learn that you shouldn't serve drunk people. Thank you, i would have never known.

Because of your iron hand, neo-prohibistionist existance I hang around 7-11 parking lot and sell marked up cases of Busch Lights, PBR's, and Santana Champagne to children. TAKE THAT OLCC!! You can never stop me! HISSS! HISSSSSSS!

Faint at Heart

There is this funny little disorder I have. My Mom gave it to me. We are the kind known as the "faint at heart;" the people doctors usher out of the room when bad news is about to be announced. The people story-tellers shoo when a gruesome story is about to be told.

We cry at things. I cry at Hallmark commercials, the cheesiest of animal rescue stories, Chicken Soup for the Soul, country songs, and Obama speeches. I just cry. I don't even need a glass of wine in me. The cheesiest of cheese has me in raptures. At the Goodwill I was looking at this book made to soak in additional revenue from Tim McGraw's song "Live Like You Were Dying" and I was reading the lyrics and started getting all teared up.

"and I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter and I gave forgiveness I'd been denying."

It's this song about a guy who gets diagnosed with... something, it doesn't say, probably cancer, and with this renewed perspective on mortality he does all this awesome stuff like sky dive, ride on bulls, fish with his Dad and watch eagles fly around. Oh, man. I cry EVERY time.

This weekend, driving with Erica, my sister, she puts on "Waitin' on a Woman" and we're listening to it, feeling the music and by the time Brad Paisley is talking about a first date in the second verse I am yelling at her, "turn it off! I can't listen to this! I'll cry and crash the car!" Quickly the song is switched to the Lonely Island's "I'm on A Boat" which not even the most emotional emo could cry at. I told Erica to never ever play country music when I am driving as I become blind with tears of deep emotion, and veer of the road into an abyss (because abyss' are always on the side of roads).

Crying at everything makes me very very uncool. I realize this. How can you be cool if you are chillin' with your bros, about to watch Valkyrie or Wanted and a preview for The Secret Life of Bees comes on? "I gotta... get some more popcorn," you announce crumpling a tissue to your face like a runny nosed four-year-old.

One time I was running on a treadmill at the gym, totally zoned out with my headphones connected to the television watching America's Next Top Model and suddenly I hear "In the arms on the angels..." Oh. No. Sarah McLachlan, my nemesis. It's that Humane Society commercial with all those slow motion clips of animals in cages, kittens and puppies and old cats and old dogs and suddenly my lungs seize up and I can't gasping for air, stepping off the whirring treadmill as if having as asthma attack.

Another time at the end of AI (which I always call A1) tears were rolling down my face as the credits began to roll. My then boyfriend comments, "that movie sucked," then turns around and says, "are you crying?!" I buried my head, "Leave me alone!"

Yeah!? So!? Maybe the Spielberg ending was really really really weird but it was so sweet!

The movie Armageddon and Homeward Bound had me in raptures as a child and I sobbed in the bathroom from several minutes at the theater after watching Blood Diamond. My brother and I cried together at this historial documentary about dogs that went to Vietnam to help the soldiers. At the end of the story the dogs had to be left in Vietnam because the government thought they would be diseased or something. They had all these old vets choking up over losing their dogs. It was horrible. I am told everyone has, but I cried at Elf.

I am my mother. One day my kids will laugh at me when I am crying over some ridiculous Lifetime movie about a girl who has the whole world against her and manages to get back on her feet and find a loving man to boot. And hopefully one day they will cry with me when they break down and discover their inner uncool.

Cal-lee-for-nee-ay

I keep hearing these conversations, people wanting to move away.
"Where do you want to go?" I ask.
"Cal-lee-for-nee-way,"they say and I know why.
It's cold here and the job market isn't what is used to be. Jobs in real estate have tanked and those invested in the market are no doubt leaving their therapists, shopping at Grocery Outlet, and eating at Del Taco. I have seen them there in their faux fur and replica Louis Vuitton purses.
There's talk of leaving Oregon to find ye ole gold mines.
Has Bend already taken steps to go back to the pre-California days? Volo and Merenda closing... maybe? That stupid baller hat store on Minnesota going away is a sure sign.

What Sex In the City Taught Me About Friendship

Don't get me wrong. Furs, vanity, labels, high heals, dieting, cosmos; these are not things I align myself with. However: writing, city-life, and friendship, I like.

I took an online test; "What Sex in the City character are you?" I was Miranda. These tests never mean anything to me so I won't read into it. I like Carrie the most because she has the ability to take her experiences and put them into perspective. This is a skill I would like.

*Always answer when your girls call

(Miranda calls Carrie on New Years because she is recently divorced and all alone and even though Carrie is in a bed she throws on a furry coat and high heels (so practical) and takes a cab all the way to Chinatown to spend the rest of the night eating Chinese food with her friend.)

*Be supportive, always.

*Go to any length to see your friends when they need you

*Give honest advice from the heart

*Tell your girls everything
*When you have done something wrong apologize and keep apologizing. Forever.

(The night before Carrie's wedding to Big, Miranda, all jilted from her divorce tells Big"you're crazy for getting married," and the next day he gets cold feet on the wedding. Miranda tells Carrie, on their single ladies Valentine's Day dinner months later and Carrie freak out (in a scrum of pink balloons and string) and refuses to answer Miranda's phone calls. Miranda calls and calls and calls and eventually shows up on person waiting outside Carrie's place in a taxi.)

*You can be angry, forever, it's fine. But eventually forgive, even if it's 70 years later.
*Girlfriends should be likened to the Mafia rather than a knitting circle
*Friends are not more important than man-loves and family, but they are a top priority.

A late night thought

Laying on the couch in my brothers apartment in Springfield, Oregon and I am unable to sleep trying to think of how dipped candles are made. Two in the morning, people are running water, the harrowing rushing sound of moving water, pipes connected (if I empty the toilet perhaps we can talk like they do in prisons? Head in the bowl, tapping messages, whispering jail break secrets...) but really I am thinking about National Geographic writers and the how they do what they do. They are the white wick dipping again and again into the hot pool of liquid wax- immersing themselves in Bosnia, Ireland, Pandas, Beiruit, Mummies of Mayan sacrifices found on the sides of mountains or any one the articles I've read in the past week. The writers immerse themselves in layers of their subject matter. . .

It was one of those mornings...

It was one of those "World Have Your Say" episodes where Rabiya Limbada was hosting and everyone was getting out of control.