://Life /Roundup

I have some ideas about giving this blog some kind of purpose, but until then, I will merely use it to update the world on the goings on in my life.

Things that are happening/have recently happened/will soon happen:

• I’ve moved roughly two blocks to an apartment I hope to enjoy even more than the last one. Pat and Tuck remain permanent installations in my living situation.
• I’ve been at my real, grown-up job for just over a year now. Yay!
• Freelancing? Sure, why not.
• My sinuses are once again cesspools of despair. You know, like happens.
• A certain childhood best friend seems to be getting married. Yay! Vacation!
• I have something like a life direction, at least in the short term.
• The Emmys last night were an excellent show, even if the results were absolutely predictable.

://Anniversary /City Life

This post is about two weeks premature, but I’m in a writing mood (and those have been rare of late).

August 29, 2008. After not sleeping at all, roomie Pat and I drove a rental truck packed with all our possessions 350+ miles at excessive speeds. We remarkably made our 3:00 lease signing appointment at our apartment. And then we were too sketched out to leave all our crap in the back of the truck, and unpacked the entire thing, still on no sleep.

That’s how I came to St. Louis. In two weeks, it will officially be a year. A year since I left rural Alabama mediocrity for this city of midwestern splendor (and that’s not sarcasm; this is splendor compared to what I’ve come from). I had no money, no job, no car, and no friends aside from my gay and my dog. Oh, and it was just as the economy was full on plunging into its current downward spiral.

It took a solid month for me to get a job from a craigslist post that I had some concerns may have been luring me to my death. Instead I wound up working at an interactive marketing agency. Because, you know, what else would an English major do?

God, that all seems like it happened ages ago. In the way that life always gives you what you need, things have turned out beautifully. It’s been a crazy fun summer to cap an awesome year. I have a pile of friends who are equal parts amazing and terrible influences on me, as all friends should be. I have more of an idea than I ever have of what I want to do with my life, or maybe just what I want in life. That’s not to say I’ve got it all figured out. I’m told it generally all works out by about 30, so that’s something to look forward to, right?

It hasn’t all been perfect. Life never is. I’ve made some stupid decisions, blown a lot of money, and wasted a lot of time worrying about unchangeable things. I’ve grown into myself quite a lot, though. I think that counts for something.

Thank you, St. Louis, for bringing out the fun in me. Thanks job and friends and Pat and Tuck. Thanks, tiny rusty car. It’s been a kickass year, and I look forward to the next.

Oh, and we’re totally fucking going out to celebrate.

://Life /WTF

So let’s play a little game of “Sweet Holy God What Happened Saturday Night?”

Well, for starters, it was our nation’s birthday. The only suitable way to celebrate, clearly, was to drink probably 2/3 to 3/4 of a bottle of whiskey, a couple beers, and God knows what else because I sure as fuck don’t remember. As a result, I woke up Sunday morning, remarkably in my own bed, with absolutely zero memory of how I got there. And then some blurry memories kind of sifted in as I lie as motionless as possible in my bed for most of the day.

There was a bar I may or may not have ever been inside. There was a car ride I remember absolutely no part of, but I remember being told we were catching a ride with [someone]. There was a cab ride I have only very vague, blurry memories of. I remember yelling, crying, and slurring incomprehensibly. I remember a few faces here and there.

And then I have these pictures. I’ve got to say that the one that most concerns me, and the last one taken according to my phone, is the one that I’m in. WHO TOOK THIS PICTURE? WHY DID YOU TAKE IT? Things I will likely never, ever know.

In all honesty, I’m still pretty freaked out about all of this days later. For one thing, I made a drunken idiot of myself in front of God knows what people, though they were surely all friends of the friend who unfortunately took me out that night. But mostly I’m incredibly uncomfortable with the concept of not remembering hours of my life. Sadly, I can’t say it’s the first time it’s happened, but after a second (I think just second, right?) round, I really, really hope that it’s the last.

Lesson: Never, ever drink faster than the alcohol is affecting you. Bonus Lesson: If your current drink is a glass of nothing but ice and bottom shelf, plastic-jug whiskey, you should not be drinking anymore. You probably should have stopped some time ago. DO NOT GO TO A SECOND LOCATION.

Got any info about something fucked up I did? It will probably make me sad, but I’d like to hear it anyway. It’d be nice to have some idea what I was doing.

://Life /It’s the perfect time of day…

Right around 7:45 is the absolute perfect time (this time of year) to sit on the back stairs and drink a beer. The sky is not quite purple and the neighbor cats scurry under the fire escape. The woman across the alley comes out on her back stoop and smokes a cigarette. And despite the rushing traffic on 44 and the occasional ambulance sirens at the hospitals just blocks away, it’s quiet.

I envy my friends and neighbors their quiet little backyards. The next place I live has to have some kind of outdoor area. Preferably a little house, with a little yard. Someplace quiet but still in the city. I just can’t do suburbs anymore. I mean I can, but I choose not to.

I’ve done a lot of shit lately, and haven’t written about nearly enough of it. I made a short film. In 48 hours, I helped a fairly remarkable group of people make a mother fucking movie. It was roughly six minutes long, and that doesn’t sound like a big deal at all, but it so was. It was fun and filled my life with immediate purpose. It’s not that I feel purposeless, I just loved the immediacy.

And speaking of beer, which I was a couple paragraphs back, when did that become such a thing in my life? I remember the very first time I tasted beer, sneaking a sip in the middle of the night at my grandma’s house with one of my trouble-making cousins. I was maybe 9? It was terrible. We poured it out and got in trouble for it the next day. I wonder, looking back, if we’d have gotten in less trouble if we’d drunk it. And then again in middle school, I went to a party with kids who were way cooler than me. There were cigarettes and beer, and I had to smoke and drink to be cool. I again took a sip of beer and quietly poured it out when no one was paying attention.  And then somewhere in the last year and a half I decided it was good. I mean, I’ll always love my rum, but there are so many times when a beer just sounds absolutely perfect.

Like when it’s a perfect 70 something degrees out and the not-quite-purple sky is filled with fireflies. Were there ever this many fireflies in Alabama?

Why so nostalgic? So deep and pseudo-philosophical? I don’t fucking know, I just go with this shit when the mood hits me. But I’ve found something here. Maybe it’s something I always had and just needed to be displaced to recognize, but at least part of it is specific to this St. Louis chunk of my life. There’s something to the people I’ve met here and the times I’ve had here and the way I’ve lived here. Here, for a whole 3/4 of a year. Here, since August 27, 2008.

I’m excited about summer, which I never am. I’m excited about the rest of this first year. I’m excited about making the most of whatever the fuck this is. Excited about another beer on the back porch.

://Life /Right back where we started from…

I’ve admittedly been a little The OC obsessed lately. I loved the show the first time through, and I’m pretty stoked to be going through it again. Aside from being a pretty well put together show for pure entertainment value, it’s just fucking beautiful. It fills me with a longing for sun and sand and saltwater.

Which is unusual. Sand is all clingy and itchy. I have near-translucent skin that doesn’t agree with much sun, and saltwater’s cool and all, but I’m not exactly a swimsuit kind of girl (by which I mean, nothing fills me with a deeper terror than wearing swimsuit-type apparel in public). That said, I’ve just been pining for all those things, and The OC has only aggravated the situation.

I could have been a Cali girl. Not quite 25 years ago (holy shit, am I almost a quarter of a century old? *shudder*), my parents were living in a hovel on the edge of Death Valley. Then they get pregnant, and rather than raise me potentially in an environment more suited to something deep in my essential core, they move to Texas. To add insult to injury, they raise me in Alabama. I’ve spent the beginnings of my adult life sampling big cities.

So here’s a perfectly attainable goal I have: I will go to California in roughly the next year. I don’t want to say exactly a year because of how my vacation days fall and all that, but as close to a year as possible given that consideration. I want to spend a real vacation there, planned to the extent that I get to see all the parts I most want to see. I want a tan for the first time since I was nine. I want to swim in the ocean. Fuck everyone else and my terror of swimwear. I just wanna see what the West Coast has to offer.

I love St. Louis. I still feel like it’s where I belong right now. I like my job and love the dorks I’ve befriended through it. I like my little apartment and our neighborhood. I’m not ready to jump ship by any means, but I like to think of myself as open to possibility. And I feel this compulsion to go out there. It might just be another vacation. It might be the next stop in the city-hopping life I suspect I may live. Needless to say, it’ll be a change of pace.

Until then, I’ll catch some of the highlights with Ryan, Seth, Summer, and Peter Gallagher’s eyebrows. I realize Marissa is there too, but I’m counting the days until she’s dead.