ghosts are good company

i can’t blame all of the lack of activity here on facebook/twitter/tumblr/other such things, but it seems like that’s a part of it. it seems like the things i put here should be substantial, to make it worth folks’ rss feed and time, so i keep the flighty interesting stuff to less important spaces. that feels kind of like i’m cheating myself, though, in losing the record of it here.

my partner’s typetyping on his computer in the kitchen. unsurprisingly the last post didn’t end up manifesting exactly as we’d pictured it, but things turned out pretty swell. four of the specifics didn’t pan out, and a few of them turned out half-way… we’re on the eastside, just barely – and i’m finding that a lot of awesome folks live nearby. the outside garden space isn’t optimal, but there’s a glass room that’s serving nicely. the most surprising thing? it’s a studio. after the last studio i shared with a lover turned out badly, i promised myself i wouldn’t do that again…

god that was a trip down memory lane that i didn’t really want to take, trying to find that linked entry. anyhow, i was saying that this studio is bigger and right downtown and i have friends and transportation here, so all in all i think it’s better to have a big space of our own than a little space in a shared house, which is what we could have gotten for this much money elsewhere. rationalize. but yeah, it’s a lovely old place and there’s a giant monkey puzzle tree and a giant kitchen, where i’ve been doing lots of beautiful cooking since we have two farm shares and that’s a lot of vegetables and we don’t have much money for anything other than vegetables.

the cooking is part of working on healing is the moral of the story. i’ve been trying to make this my focus since, well, all my life, but pretty actively since the beginning of this year, but something (school, work, school and work) has always seemed to come up. since my work ended officially on sunday and i hopefully have another engagement coming up in a couple of weeks, i’m using this time to breathe breathe breathe breathe breathe and work on the self-love thing (trying to break excessive reliance on the external validation thing).

so far that has been about letting myself do mostly just things that i want to do, a little meditation with good friends and a lot of down time, which is something for which i usually judge myself very harshly. i’m trying to move in to more structured work, but don’t know what that looks like yet – we’ll see.

i’m hoping it will go well; let me know of any ideas y’all might have to help strengthen this time.

xo

they’re selling the house we’re living in soon, so we’ve been dreaming and decided to get it written down somewhere…

here’s a list of what my partner and i are dreaming of in a living space:

• two bedrooms (or one if it’s big!)
• no housemates
• no neighbors we can hear
• preferably a house, rather than an apartment.
• outdoor-space where we can garden
• well-behaved-cat friendly
• month-to-month or six-month lease
• no active mold
• within a mile or so of an intercity transit bus line that runs until (at least) eight
• bike/pedestrian-friendly access to said bus (currently there are no shoulders or streetlights on a 50mph road)
• room to park one, maybe two cars (based on bus access)
• responsible-student friendly – we may not make three times the rent, but we will always be able to pay it.
• downtown or westside oly
• our optimal price range tops out somewhere around $800

on our end, we are…

• a graduate student and a returning evergreen ba/bs student who have been living together for a while
• a sweet and friendly orange cat (with references of his own)
• crafters makers do-ers
• extroverted in public, introverted at home
• strong believers in “use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without”
• in love with our local communities

If you won’t scold and dominate us
We will never give you cause to hate us
We won’t hide your spectacles
So you can’t see
Put toads in your bed
Or pepper in your tea
Hurry nanny
Many thanks
Sincerely,
Jane and Michael Banks

there are things about the spring, no matter how much i try to fight it. this time last year there was snow, but this year it’s bright and sunny and causing me to start my garden before it’s really feasible.

i have a home to myself and am stretching out, wanting to dig my roots deep even if that’s not the most wise plan possible. i want to stretch my limbs and cross-pollinate, growing my community and my family.

i’m baffled by how much work that can take, hyperaware of how the ten miles i live from town can seem like a day’s journey. but i’m trying to strengthen and grow.

this next quarter i’m just taking one class, using the rest of that time to store up my resources. i’ve made it through the winter into a time of rebirth, but i need to actually pay attention if anything sustainable is going to happen.

May has been busy what with the sun being out and the houses being moved and the seedlings that *still* need to go into the ground… We have deer all over the place in our back acres, and I can’t stand the thought of planting the babes without some kind of deer protection.

Cable internet should show up next week, in which case I’ll have more of an opportunity to update – dial up, ah how I did not miss you.

tomorrow i’m going to a “first time homebuyers class.” i’m going to bring my padfolio (yes, i just said padfolio) and pretend to be a grown up. i really like this house, but it’d be a super-long commute to oly. still, it’d be amazing tto live on way to tipperary street. who thought that putting the word “way” in a street name was a good idea? i also love this one, but i think it’s a little to old for me to be able to keep it happy, it needs someone a little better at taking care of the puppy once they’ve brought the puppy home.

also tomorrow is nettlefest! where choir is singing. and my friend andrew is moving away, so he’s holding a party for us to kick him and tell him not to move away. at least i’m pretty sure what the party is for.

sunday i might go to look at the way to tipperary house! also it is blintzapalooza, which – oh my goodness exciting.

on monday i have my first burlesque 101 class! i’m excited and petrified. a few weeks ago i did a basic class and tassle twirling, but this six-week course ends with a performance which is… golly. it’s funny, though – at the tassle twirling class i had to ask about a “how to twirl your tassles” article i pulled out of the stranger when i was sixteen, it was illustrated by ellen forney… i knew even back then that i wanted to be a drag queen, and indeed the article was about miss indigo blue’s going-ons. it became suddenly obvious, afterward, that ellen had done the illustration of indigo that’s the academy logo.

……..i tend to get fixated on things. sometimes i check my email in the early morning, when i should be going back to sleep, and one day i got an email from sophie asking if ghosts are good company (the song, also the name of this blog probably maybe obviously also i am the fourth result for that phrase on google) was by bishop allen as it… is… or by the moldy peaches as it is often labeled. and instead of just going “no, it’s really bishop allen” i spent a good hour of my sleeping time on the internet being grumpy. and then listening to the song again and going “well, i can see how it sounds like the moldy peaches to some people, but it’s totally not kimya.” and then thinking about how much i love bishop allen and how much i love the moldy peaches kids and is the latter why i got so into the former? are more of their songs similar-sounding and i just didn’t know it? speaking of which, that comcast ad campaign? grr.

every so often, my favorite comic publishes a(nother) strip that makes me squeal “that’s my (new) favorite!” … i’ll admit that i was really behind on things, since it was published more than a year ago, but this is my favorite.  the trouble with claiming a favorite, though, is that not long after, i always find one like this one which argues and tries to take its place.

i save comics that i like a lot, so that i can devour in batches when i am sad about things like how my great-grandmother just had a stroke.

my small orange friend is back in town, which is fantastic.  he is getting along well in our new household.  i bought a car.  that’s how he got up here, me driving for thirteen hours from san francisco to olympia.  it was a good idea in my head.

it seems like my new apartment comes with built-in trans friends, and also crafty friends?  so that is pretty neat of it.  i’ve been stepping up my knitting game due to peer pressure, yarn donations and halloween (all combine, actually, to equal – remember what i said last year?).  knitting is good.

this is like i’ve taken all of my boring entries and combined them into one meta-boring-entry.  i mean, i got bored in the middle of it.  i’m going to go back to cleaning the house, and you know that means something.

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.

oh right, i graduated.

and got those seahorses in the previous post put on my body forever.

i’m antsily waiting to hear if i got a job – things sound promising, but they are taking their sweet time contacting my references. for now i’m (scouring job boards but also) living as if that is what’s going to happen, so i’m planning on couch surfing around seattolympia this summer (much like last summer, except under much lovelier circumstances).

yesterday was oly pride, which was ok – small town pride beats big city pride any day, except for when there’s not enough to do at littlepride and you’ve said hi to all your friends five times and don’t know what to do next.

so i went to a party and there was awesome music and square dancing (my favorite exhousemate was so amazed that i danced!) and babies and amazing gluten free cake, but then there was a “please save me there are no trannies at jake’s” so i went to the bars and the non-square dancing for a while.

saturday was the big gay bout, which was beauuutiful (and vagely offensive, if i want to read it that way), although the defeat of the pegacorns by the ligers was pretty devastating.

friday was solstice, monday the mariners lost to florida, which is just depressing, sunday was father’s day, friday was graduation, thursday i spoke up for washpirg to the board of trustees, tuesday i saw eli clare at u.w. (awesome) and then the sex and the city movie (not awesome), before that i was so swamped with school that i can’t begin to try to remember what was when. and the cosa nostra donnas kicked grave danger’s butt and i was sad.

so, we’re kind of caught up, yeah?