I can has Seattle.

I know, it's what Kristin has at wishville, but hey - she's all on the scooter kick now. And I reserve the right to enjoy the abundant styles Movable Type has left us - so I have. Don't hate the player... right? Isn't that what Jack Walters says on his bio page? I am particularly enthralled by, well, besides my whole life, the fact that the Pink Elephant car wash is so pronounced, and how the Needle is really a big magnet, and all things Seattle-y that I will love until they take my tourist card away. I know it's only almost September, but I'm putting Harvey Danger's "Sometimes You Have To Work On Christmas" on my MySpace page. Except the apartment isn't dull. It's awesome. Who do you know that gets to live with the coolest girl on the hill, and have her own fort too? Nobody I know besides me.

Just big enough apartment + excellent old friend / new roommate + KEXP within walking distance, technically = awesome life, with a side of perpetual temporary self-imposed cockblock and seasonal views of the Needle from my office building. Yeah. Besides, Kristin, if you are peeved at my blog template, just tell me and I'll clean the bathroom for you for the next three months or something. Anything you want. Just don't take it away from me. And for all my friends at home, this is Kristin's blog, and I am ripping from her original game, because she did it / came here / lived it first. Just for appropriate credit where credit is due. I mean, I've got my own trip and everything, but - you know what I mean.

Tonight we made a bunch of buttons, went to Dick's, and made a bunch more buttons. And on the note of old friends paving the way for new experiences, I've got to say, I have missed this terribly. Old friends went from everyday to visiting to maybe I'll see you once in a while to how did it get to be so much time has passed since we've gotten together? And it's kind of like one of those things you don't realize you've missed until it's right there again, just like how you couldn't put on a list the things you would want to get out of an experience you've never had because you don't know what it holds, and even if you projected some of it accurately, you just wouldn't know because you didn't know yet. So tonight was one of those nights, feet up on the dashboard, in the harsh side-lot light of Dick's, eating french fries and talking about boys. Reminiscing about CVS. Having these little secret moments that you can get close to with New Friends, even really close good ones, even newer Old Friends, but that aren't the same as the things you feel sitting next to someone you've sat next to while you were cutting your teeth on growing up, courtesy of the Daily. People you know enough that you don't always have to say anything, people who Get It completely, that the fights never stick with, that you never second guess. Besides Kristin, I think I only really have maybe two other people like that in my life, and they're all back East. When I first got here, Kristin said to someone, this is my best friend, she just moved here, and I wanted to cry. All in a puddle on the floor of wherever we were, rendered immobile from the weight of all the love that was in that one little statement.

And she's so amazing. I am so grateful to be here, and so lucky to have her in my life. Above and beyond all the technicalities, when someone opens their home and their life and their friends (and their boyfriend, and their boyfriend's truck) to you - not to dismiss that, but including that, and past all of it, is just this bigger thing that I don't even feel qualified to give words to right now - I can just see how much and in how many ways I didn't have very many of these relationships at home, with my New Friends and New Old Friends. Everyone I knew from the beginning of the game in AA got loaded or disappeared. And so I'm jaded and opinionated, and New Friends don't always take all that the right way, so I didn't win any popularity contests with them. And then there are the few good people in AA like there are in my pre-AA past, but again, it's two or three people at best. People that can just crawl inside your heart and know everything without much more than a look inside a fraction of a moment. That's hard to find. And it's piled up everywhere here in this living room, it's everywhere I look, from the words on my bulletin board to Saturday mornings on the back of the scooter for Designated Nothing Time outside of Lladro.

As an aside, I am up to quads. Yes, the coffee is better here. No, I'm not moving back. No, I'm not coming to visit anytime soon, and if I do go to CMJ in October, I'm hiding out in Stamford and not telling anyone if I'm actually there or not. Those are all the regular questions I've been getting, so on the topic of coffee and where Home is, I thought I'd answer.

National Nesting Week, Phase I: the mattress for my new full-sized bed. I didn't get a twin, because I would have rather blown my head off for all the tragedies it held between Ben Gibbard and Sean Nelson's words about it. NG. So I go to get the mattress today, and it's in a frat house. A clean one, with nice young men, a few of them wasted playing beer pong at 7 pm on a Tuesday, complete with Dave Matthews on the stereo. White college hats. They politely disagreed with me about the fact that it was indeed not a frat house, because there were no letters on the door. I assured them, being ten years their senior, that Alpha Omega whatever (oh, the TKE house at UConn! the boys, the barfing, the parties... sigh) or a lack of it made no difference to me, or many other women for that matter. A community of Boys, kegs, beer pong tournaments, and DMB bootlegs a frathouse makes.

But yeah - back to the boy with the mattress. At the risk of aging myself, what a nice young man he was. Clean, for a boy, and giving up a focus on a business major to study geology instead. He was about to go back to San Diego and then to Spain for a semester to fulfill his language requirement. Such a rough life these kids have, all perpetual students. But he was all down with KEXP, all nice about everything, helping me tie my new bed to the roof of my car, chatting it up, apologizing for the roommate that was extra drunk and talking to me a little too close. They were all just kids, like, 21, 22 - I felt old in a good way and a bad way all at once. Oh, and the other thing - this kid had a teacher who taught him to knit, and no, he's not gay. I wanted to pinch his cheeks and hug him. We bid each other farewell, and I drove off in the drizzle back to the cabana.

It's like, two years old, the mattress, but it's relatively clean and I'm going to Febreze it and toss an egg crate on it, and call it a day. Anyway, I'll be sleeping on it alone, and I've been in much worse places than on a not-too-old mattress from a not-quite frat house. Life could be worse. And Phase II is on Thursday, when the loft comes, and then Friday we're going to get the wardrobe from a guy named Woody. In Ballard. Of all places. I still want a Ballard hoodie. And I think I'm going to write the kid a thank you note, only I'm going to make it from the mattress, not me, because I think that's funny. And I have to bring the ropes back, so I might as well give it a laugh while I'm at it.

I am not defeated, lying on this couch, about to be in my new full-sized bed. I'm not. This is the beginning. How can I feel bad about taking the harder road to a new, full life? About ending a relationship, that, while it hurt like hell to end it, was undoubtedly the best thing for both of us? About giving Buddy a good home, because he wasn't happy? I guess the hurt outweighs the getting set free at first, for everyone when a home is broken apart, but at least for me, it's as good as I could have hoped to do, as right as I can hope to be - right meaning in the proverbial way, like doing right to everyone around me, and to myself. I hate it that Raf hurts and that we can't hear each other anymore, and that so much has gone misunderstood. But I have to just be okay knowing I did the right thing. I did. I know I did. And my whole life, people may never get why I do what I do, or vice versa, and it just has to be okay. At the end of the day, the night, whenever - when I'm not convincing myself that anything is okay, or that situations are alright because I've talked myself into them being alright - when things just are and I don't even notice - that's when I know I'm where I'm supposed to be. I notice all this space now in my head, where the conversations used to be, the ones where I would be trying to tell myself all sorts of things, or hoping for stuff that never was and never could be, or thinking that it was about shelves or clean floors. It's not. It's the zen clock that says "now" for every hour. It's this instant. It's being careful with me, and you, and paying attention, and not slaloming through excuses I make for myself to try and rationalize awful behaviors that are "technically" not "bad" because it's not stealing or drinking. It's just all okay. Because I'm not even noticing it.

All those alarms I kept ignoring - I kept hitting snooze on my life. Eventually you just shut it off and can't remember why you set the alarm in the first place, until you wake up late for everything and you've missed your train and you try to be alright with it but really, it's not. It's worth the getting up on the first beep. Every single time. We can sleep in on Sundays.

And on that note, that's all I've got. Big meeting with a podium tomorrow night. I'll keep you posted.

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VVB