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

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.

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.

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.

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’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.

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 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.

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?

"last frost" indeed.
Originally uploaded by capnpuck

in my morning ritual of peering at the damp earth that the seeds are planted in, i discovered… that glass is more insulating than rice milk boxes are. and also that perhaps i should turn on the space heater that my housemate lent me. because it actually snowed. in april. when it snowed in october a few years ago, that was understandable because it was the very end of october. this… i just can’t comprehend.

i’m really glad that i’m not living in a tent right now.

this planting project i officially declare to be a failure.