ghosts are good company

i can see the matterhorn mountain from my window. my mother’s at a conference here at the disneyland hotel, so i’m relaxing in a bed that’s not mine. i need to get to work soon; i have proofreading to do, but for now it’s relaxytime.

i’ve been on an adventuretrip for a little while – on sunday i took a bus to the train to portland, then headed over to the zine symposium. the symposium was was pretty delightful – even if i was only there for a little while. it’s probably for the best, because had i been there longer, i’d only have managed to spend even more money. as it is i spent too much, but i also traded some of my button stock, and that comes together to mean that i have a pretty lot of awesome stuff. it was weird for me to be at the symposium because i really have no idea where to start with zines. i mean, there are *so many* that it’s overwhelming – even when it’s just single people with multiple zines they’ve written at one table it’s tricky figuring out which one of theirs i want. because they’re all awesome exciting promising.

so, um. end zine symposium tangent. i left my atm card in a machine up there, i realized as i went to pay for my dinner at the portland airport. fortunately i had enough cash, so was allowed to get on my plane to san diego.

in san diego i… bought a car. and filled it up with a bunch of my stuff. and then drove it up here.

full circle so far. on friday i’m driving up to san francisco, staying the night there, then picking up mr. butter banana saturday morning and heading to olympia, where i will take the giant step of… moving in with my boyfriend. i’m excited and worried and hopeful and we’ll see how it all goes.

i need to get a job.

i didn’t get the job. i mean, i might get the job in the future. but they’re not going to hire me as immediately as they had suggested. so i’m frustrated, and not sure where to go from here with some of my plans.

nat came home today and excitedly announced that he was surprising me with dinner guests (or an invitation to be dinner guests? i wasn’t paying too much attention, because). the response he got was perhaps not as he expected, as it involved me groaning (and whining!) in a fetal position. after consultation with said potential dinner companion as to where a low income health clinic could be found (yay after-hours and the lack of health insurance) and a visit to the doctor (i hate doctor visits), it was determined that i had a bladder infection. go go team awesome. i’m feeling a little better now, still not-so-great but stunned by nat’s rockstardom around a medical ‘emergency’ and the related anxiety/incompetence that builds in me around medical situations.

it was my mom’s birthday yesterday! it sounds like she had a great day, which is what she deserves. part of the frustration with changing plans is that i was hoping to see her this weekend, and now i’m not sure if i should head down there or not.

those are the things on my mind, this 3:35am. i’m heading back to sleep, and hope that your rest is better than mine.

although it’s been raining wonderfully for the past seven hours, and that’s perfect.

i’m almost afraid to tell you about how things are going well and seeming to come together, because it seems like whenever i tell you that things fall apart again. but. i’m pending on a job, have a pretty-sure-thing place to live, and am going to probably buy a car sometime next week. yes, after a summer of not growing up, this is where we get to. more plans, but pretty secure plans.

i’m still feeling pretty young, so recently graduated and recently smitten. every time i tell myself i’m not going to get seriously involved with somebody… i do. i mean, i was single for a year this time, which is… better for me than the, what, month or two between my last big relationships? but i’m surprised that i’m letting myself fall this hard. i’m trying my best to trust, but also to be prepared for implosion at any point. i think we both are.

so yeah. staying in olympia for a while. this boy also dreams of running off to amsterdam, so maybe (when our powers combine!) we can make that happen at some point.

i need to head to sophie’s house to water her plant. i like when she’s gone and i can sleep at her house, but i like even more when she’s in town and i can spend time with her! i have this evil plan that by being her only friend left in town, i can be her newbestfriend. don’t tell her, though. i’m keeping it on the down-low. only telling the internet, nobody else.

i went to bed thinking about working on this
gathered scarf, and proceeded to have a dream where i was going to go on a road trip (from the pacific northwest to san diego, i think) and i wanted to bring that project along to start. i wonder how to interpret that one, considering the above and that i’ve been borrowing my grandparents’ car this past week and that i’ve been trying to figure out how to get to portland in a couple of weeks.

it’ll be, if i make it out there, my first trip to the zine symposium without cubbie – but it’ll also be a trip where i know more people than ever. so it seems like a positive thing to do, and like there are more people from olympia going this year. i think i’m feeling like i really should do something awesome because typically i would be at homoagogo right now, but i’ve been travel-hungry for the past while anyway, as i mentioned.

last weekend (not yesterday!) a friend and i stayed in a (western) yurt at grayland beach state park. it was a really wonderful trip that made our overnight stay seem longer than it was, which i think is the mark of a successful retreat. we saw a pinniped of some sort on the shore… i’m pretty sure he was munching on seaweed, although that might have been in my imagination. also we flew a kite! and toured the gray’s harbor lighthouse.

most importantly on the trip, we learned that we can take the bus there from olympia! having acquired bus schedules for the region, i am excited about the potential for cheap minivacations by bus.

i’ve been trying to start skating again – i’ve been pretty wheel-shy since i fractured my tailbone, mostly because my sense of balance is missing. i went out the other day, though, and managed to calm down after a little while (my knees, they stopped shaking!!) and even fell properly (while falling managed to twist so that i landed on my fleshy hip, rather than my not-fleshy tailbone). i’m hopeful that the skatey trend will continue, but still laugh at the thought of ever being able to even take part in the tiniest part of derby.

i’m still trying to figure out some broad-based what-do-i-want-to-do-where-do-i-want-to-go questions. all of my ideas at this point seem more romanticized than realistic – i need to find a way to balance those aspects and find a life that can sustain me. ideas?