Everything I Tell You is Hearsay

I like to know exactly what is going on.

This is because I am a bit of a control freak. Having spent much of my childhood in circumstances which were chaotic and unsettled has turned me into a person who prefers a rather high degree of consistency. This is not to say I cannot enjoy spontaneity, or that I crumble in the face of the unexpected, but it is rather the case that in my day-to-day endeavors, I am happier if I know what to expect. To this end, I give a lot of thought to why things are the way they are, why I have made the choices I have, what drives me, what I might want to do differently, and occasionally, how my actions affect other people.

Turns out, not everyone does this. This came as a major WTF when it was finally explained to me. Apparently, many people do what they do without giving it a tremendous amount of thought. They don’t chase themselves around in their heads, analyzing the motive and origin of every action  they have ever taken. Weird, right?

So, I like to ask a lot of questions. Questions to which I want very specific answers.

By which I do not mean I want an answer in particular. I want the truth, whatever that might happen to be. I just want it in scrupulous detail.

“Well, was it that you found it confusing, or just annoying?”

“Did it just surprise you that it turned you on, or are you expanding your notions about your sexuality?”

“Was the whole thing gross, or was it only the texture that bothered you?”

Apparently, some people experience this as The Third Degree, and do not much enjoy the treatment. It is not that I am trying to pick them apart, but to peek inside and understand them better. I think I believe if I do this,  I can remove some of that pesky unpredictability from human behavior. For me, this is just about ensuring a high degree of accuracy in communication to facilitate more accurate predictions about the future.  Like any data, the more explicit and specific the information is, the better.

I wonder how we became friends. Not, I mean, how we met. I probably remember that. Less likely that I can point to the moment, or the time where we crossed that ineffable border from knowing each other to being friends. But, I realize I want to, and that I think it is important and meaningful.

Like falling in love, though it happens gradually, there is usually also a moment where it strikes like lightning, that this is now so; true and without question.
I realized this while mulling it over this morning, just how it was that the godmother of my child and I made that transition. I knew in the more general sense; we met on the speech team my first year of college. We weren’t  debate partners and so we didn’t initially spend that much time together. We were in the same orbit, but moving at different speeds and in different trajectories.

After consulting her, we decided it was probably when, at a team dinner, I announced that I wanted to go to the beach and she and her then boyfriend were game for taking off to do this, even though it was already 10 pm. We loaded into the decrepit  VW Bug he was driving and rumbled off to Cannon Beach. The moon was fullish and low and orangey. We lay there on the sand together amusing each other, until about 2 am when I heard a very unfortunate rumbling coming from my midsection. Fucking Montage. I hate that place.

It is no small thing to wander through Seaside at 2am with someone you don’t know all that well desperately searching for facilities. The security guard at the Shilo Inn was sympathetic and let me scamper by at top speed.

When I came back to the car there was some fear that I would be upset to discover that it wouldn’t start, and needed a push. You see, they didn’t know me well enough at the time to know that I come from a long line of finicky cars with all manner of ailments, and that push starting was old hat to this girl.

It is my stated belief that you cannot help but bond with someone after both your car and your bowels fail you in the same evening together.

And now that I think about it, I suppose I can say with surety when I claimed certain other people for my own; Lyza and Emma came to Kah-Nee-Tah with me. Getting drunk in a tee-pee with someone may be unconventional in this day and age, but it was effective in this case. Jeanne spent my birthday with me on a fruitless but nevertheless totally enjoyable quest for hot springs into the gorge. I dragged Hilary to a strip club. Pretty sure I got Catherine that way too…

I like to gather people in, and I like to think about how it was done. To turn over in my mind the wondering about what brought us into the emotional proximity we now enjoy. The work of time is taken to account, but to acknowledge as well the undeniable elements of circumstance that drew us together, that bound us to each other, at last.

If you remember, or have a theory, do tell…

Lyza always manages to take photos of me that I think look the most like I actually look, but good. She captures something that I can never quite manage to, and no one else ever has. I make weird faces, I stand like I am about to wander away at any second. While I perch gape-jawed contemplating the largest fern I have ever seen.

Or I sit in an altogether unladylike position

Or sprawled on the floor like a child.

Or I show the world my armpit.

She got quite a few good ones in Hawaii, but not only those…

Me, in the gutter.

and playing with fire.

Cloudy. 31 (feels like 31)

VS

Partly Cloudy. 83 (feels like 85)

Yes. And thank you.

Aloha bitches!

I’m in Seattle with Hodie visiting her godmother Allison. It’s been drizzly all day, but we had a pretty nice time nevertheless.

We went to H&M and I bought her various accessories because that is what I do.

Then we went out to Ballard and looked at the shoreline a bit. Technically, just Allison and I did this, because by this time, Hodie was interested less in scenery and more in avoiding the drizzle. Which, to be fair, was wise since most of the scenery was clearly visible from the car.

We then went and had dinner at a place called the “Hi-Life” and I can say that the only thing to recommend it was the lovely historic building in which is was situated. The food was underwhelming and overpriced while the service was just plain lousy. Ah well, it was a last resort after Hodie got us kicked out of the first place we went to…

Allison and her husband Michael suggested we go get some ice cream, and they were talking to the right pair of girls. During the course of this outing I kept making accidentally inappropriate comments. By which I mean to say, they were fine in context, I wasn’t trying to be nasty, but then M & A would snort and make them dirty. For example;

M: “You’ll want to take a hard right here.”

me: “Yes because god forbid I do anything that isn’t hard”

(snort, cough,heh)

M: “It looks like Oregon beat Washington 53 to 16″

me: “Yeah, they beat the pants off the huskies and now they’re going to cream the beavers.”

(baha, mert, ha)

Hodie was fairly mystified, thank the baby Jesus.

M also created on purpose hilarity of his own when he said:

“I’m better than average at that; you could call me outcompetent.”

A’s laughter was echoing off the buildings and we had to make sure she didn’t collapse in the street. It was wet there.

(heehee, haha, ahem)

Don’t thank me, thank Lyza.

I have a fondness for getting the fuck out of town. As much as I love Portland, I also like to leave it. Not having had a car for some time now, doing that had been kinda hard, unless I wrangled some car owner into taking me along with them when they got the fuck out of town.

At any rate, now that I am once again a CAR OWNER I decided to take one of my most favorite girls  Hilary (Hodie being always and forever my first-most-favorite girl) out of town for a driving tour of the Olympic Peninsula and Parts Yonder.

We went on what turned out to be an ACHINGLY lovely fall day. While headed north on I-5 we felt our day was blessed by a higher source; namely Jesus.

I have never really understood this particular monument to Our Lord and Savior. He’s sort of looming over the freeway. He looks kinda menacing, and vaguely bizarre perched atop that rust-colored plinth and surrounded by some other figure I can’t quite make out, and what looks like one of those death-cages for motorcycle stunts. I’ve never claimed to be particularly religious, but I would TOTALLY go to the church that sponsored a looming-motorcycle riding Jesus. That’s even better than the Buddy Christ!

We followed 5 north to Olympia and then 101 beside the Hood Canal and out around Port Angeles. The weather was stunningly beautiful. Mild and blue. I assured Hilary that this kind of weather was nigh on unprecedented for the rainiest part of the continental US. She replied that all of her firsts with me have been kind of amazing, so this is pretty much par for the course. To defend her point, she cites the 7 person lap dance of doom, and I am forced to agree with her.

My original plan had been to take her to Seattle and show her the sights. She’s from Maryland originally, so there is much tour-guidery I can impose upon her. Upon further reflection, I realized that

1. I wanted to go back to the Olympic Hot Springs almost as much as I wanted to go on breathing
   
2. Hilary would totally be in to that
3. We could sleep in the back of my dandy new station wagon

and then there was no stopping me. So we drove for about 5 hours, but it seemed like less. As we talked about the strange statuary (see above) scattered all around the state, commented repeatedly upon the unusually glorious weather, talked about my new album of comedy country songs and it’s likely title “Prison Cheese” and featuring the breakout gospel smash “Jeusu: King of the Rodeo” the time just flew.

That being said, when we DID finally get there, we were DEEPLY DISAPPOINTED to discover that the hot springs were broken. Or, more precisely, the road to get to the hot springs were broken. Thanks a LOT Obama and your FUCKING STIMULUS DOLLARS!!! The old road was perfectly passable, except for where the tree roots had mangled the blacktop. SHEESH!

To soothe our disappointed souls and buttcheeks, we got out and looked at the view. It wasn’t so bad.

We were also consoled slightly by the fact that the typical cost of entry to the park was $15 but for some magical reason, it was a “FREE” day. I’m not sure if it was just the generosity of the semi-elderly park ranger or if there was actually a legitimate reason for it being free that day, he never bothered to explain. So we parked ourselves next to the water and engaged in various pagan rituals. We had some leftover river-float-rum-n-coke (Thanks Drew!!) and had a very relaxing evening.

It was only as the sun went down and I was a little too river-float-rum-and-coke-tastic to drive that I realized I had not really made any arrangements to camp. No reservations, no permit. Just kinda, showed up. Now, it happened that there were virtually NO OTHER PEOPLE in the park. It was probably due to the fact that most people, like me, assumed that it would pour down rain that weekend. Like it does 287 other days of the year. We had, so far had more sunshine than I have EVER seen on the peninsula, so I was feeling pretty smug, all things considered. But being that we were kinda stuck, and the park was mostly empty we decided on the following strategy: if a park ranger comes by, play dumb and mention that the guy at the booth said it was free and that we were just shocked to discover this did not include camping. Practicing my innocently confused look was exhausting.

We eventually crawled into the back of the car and hunkered down on the futon. It was quite cozy. It got a whole lot MORE cozy when, perhaps you can see this coming, IT STARTED TO RAIN!! Shocking, I know. And this was no gentle, atmospherically pleasing fall drizzle. This was pretty much a deluge. In the morning when it let up enough for Hilary to finally climb out of the car for a whiz, a neighboring camper came by and asked if we got wet. She assured him we were quite snug sleeping in the car, with it’s solid roof and windows. He and his companion meanwhile, woke up to a familiar, if unwelcome, sight for most campers in the glorious Pacific Northwest: Tent Lake. And people give me shit for my “futon in the back of the car” strategy. Suckers!

We woke up and headed back toward the mainland for our Seattle tour. However, when we stopped for gas on Bainbridge Island, Colgate decided he needed to rest longer than we wanted to stop. He effected this rest break by just failing to start. As we were some 200+ miles away from home, this was kinda stressful. After about 20 minutes of cooling down, he fired right up. I guess I’ll have to treat my new car a little more like an old pony; rest breaks after long trips.

From there we got on the ferry, which Hilary described as “The most luxurious form of public transportation in the universe” I also enjoy the ferry, but was charmed by her complete awe.

“It’s so clean!”

“This is really fancy!”

“These seats are really comfortable!”

“You can get BOOZE!!”

She liked it way more than this photo would imply

We landed in downtown Seattle but I was so nervous about Colgate’s intermittent ignition problems that I elected to just barrel back to Portland. Which, we did. Good times.

is beautiful, and smart, and engaging. so is her website

you should go look at it.

i’m trying something new lately; when i am sad, instead of lying in my bed and praying for sleep, i actually get up and go spend time with people who like me. it’s revolutionary, i know.

to that end, i went out last night with my friend emma. we had a lovely meal at Wild Abandon (which is one of my favorite restaurants, but i always forget about it) and then tried to go see Up In The Air at the fancy theater in Vantucky for which i happen to have a gift card. it hadnt really dawned on either of us that it might sell out, but, of coruse, it did. so. we scooted back to the right side of the river and had some consolation cocktails at the Virginia Cafe. were very pleastantly surprised by the bill once we’d finished; apparently happy hour lasts most of the day on saturday at the VC.

so, movie time came and we decided on The Fantastic Mr Fox, about which i knew nothing, but emma had heard good things. it was a delightful surprise and i thouroughly enjoyed it.

mounted by the venerable Wes Anderson and his usual cast of characters (plus goerge clooney and meryl streep ftw) this story adapted from a Roald Dahl book was charming and sweet and funny and visually engaging.

being a fervent fan of The Royal Tenenbaums, i have a bit of a tendency to get very excited about any new Anderson offering. as such, i’m sort of pleased i had no idea what i was in for. having had no expectations, i was simply delighted by the film without reservation.

it is very much a typical Wes Andersen offering, but in no way the less for that. definitely hodie friendly, it was enjoyable and disarming, a pleasure to watch and a genuine treat.

emma liked it too.

recommended.