Running away from all of that

I was sitting at the Hopvine Pub with Jeff and Kurtis, two boys from work. Jeff and I had closed the gym that night so it was late, almost midnight. Jeff invited his roommate Andy to come out with us. Andy was well dressed, loud, funny. And he was Jewish. Historically, I always get big crushes on Jewish men.

Andy was really fun to talk to. He appreciated all the things I said just to get a rise. He kept laughing out loud and saying, "Wait, is that a thing?"

Which is a 30 Rock thing, in case you "Oh...no, I don't watch TV, I don't even own one."

He said "Is that a thing?" four or five times before I called him out. "You're a Tina Fey fan, aren't you."

He tipped his head back and laughed so loudly it reverberated around the almost empty bar. "Wow- I've never been figured out so quickly by a girl before." Then he gave me one of those appreciative fist jab things, which is like a really meaningful high five.

The next bar we went to had a Medieval theme. There was a coat of armor in all the corners. Andy and I sat across from each other and started talking heatedly about comedy. Apparently we had not only watched the same shows but also read the same books. Everything was going well, really heating up, until he said, conspiratorially, as if I might agree:

"Not Amy Poehler. She's not funny."And then he said, "I'm Anti-Amy Poehler."

I stood up and with both hands tried to jerk the table over, but it was bolted solidly to the ground.  In fact, everything in the bar looked like it was sheathed in iron and welded to something else. "How is that possible?" I yelled. I yelled so loud that the waitress approached our table. "This idiot doesn't find Amy Poehler funny," I fumed. She shook her head. She was dressed like a wench.

"You're wrong," she said simply, shaking her head at Andy.

"Also, I don't think Jimmy Fallon is funny." Andy was clearly enjoying himself.

The waitress shifted her weight to the other hip and started taking empty beer cans away from the pile accumulating on Kurtis's table. "That I agree with. Last call."

"I have to get out of here." I declared. I held my face in my hands.

A few minutes later we had all spilled back into the cool December morning. It was 2:30am. Kurtis was getting screamed at by the bartender for something. I'd be more specific, but I really don't know.  We started strolling down 15th, and Andy offered me his arm. "What, you want to hold my arm?" I asked. I liked him. He was quick and good looking. But I haven't been on my game for the last....two years? Three?

He laughed and motioned again. I took his arm.

"Do you want to keep hanging out?" He asked.

"What- you and me?" For some reason I felt like giving him a hard time. Maybe make him give up. People can give up so easily these days.

"There's a place on Olive that starts serving breakfast at 3 in the morning."

A vision of the two of us flashed into my head, sitting on the wide black booths, ordering bacon (maybe he wouldn't?) and waffles from a stoned, surly waiter. We could keep talking about comedy. I don't get to talk much about comedy with my friends in Seattle, except for a rare and precious few. Others run for cover when I bring it up. I mean this literally. My friend Nika once hid behind a house plant.

I didn't give him an answer. I just kept saying, "What, me? No. C'mon, really?" And then something happened involving a disc golf frisbee. Kurtis had thrown one into the street where another group of kids (Adults? 20 somethings? Jerkoffs? What are we called anyway?) tossed it onto the roof of a Tullys Coffee. As they took off down the sidewalk, Kurtis was shouting "What the FUCK man?"

I started to saying, "It's okay Kurtis chill out, be quiet."

"What happened?" Asked Andy, throwing his chest forward.

"Those dicks just chucked the disc onto that building and took off! Man those things are like, 20 bucks!"

Andy, obviously a man of action, gently unlocked his arm from mine and started running after them. I could hear his shoes pounding against the pavement for a block.

Suddenly I was running, too. I was running in the opposite direction, heading towards my car. "Bye boys!" I screamed at Jeff and Kurtis. "Goodbye." Jeff called politely. Jeff is unfettered by everything. You could land a plane on him and he'd just go, "Oh, hey. A plane just landed on me." Meanwhile Kurtis was swinging his arms around going, "Wait- what?"

I was running in high heeled boots. Not super high heels and not at top speed, but still as I ran the three blocks I thought, "I am so good at this."

I was so pleased with the running and the escape and the car starting just right that I never stopped and wondered: why am I doing this?

I liked Andy. And I love breakfast at an obscenely early hour.  It's all so very On The Road. But I have this thing. I'm really good at the initial meeting. First I smile and act supremely confident. Then I say something sharply observant but slightly insulting across the table, smooth it out by catching their eye just right while touching my hair,  and then I listen to him for a while. Then I say something that make them go, "Woah, I wouldn't have said that out loud but yeah, exactly."

I have them just where I want to.

That's generally when I go home and read a book in the bath tub.

When someone asks to keep hanging out I'm like, wait- what? I haven't prepared a second act.

This time I told myself that running was the right thing because I could never get along with anyone that didn't share my love of Poehler. This was ignoring three hours of evidence to the contrary, but as judge and sole member of the Jury I declared myself correct and my actions warranted.

I made it home safely at 2:30, and calmed myself down by reading a book in the bath.

Well. Here's to a promising 2012, am I right?

So-So

Not pictured: Nutcracker

My friend So is a total bro-brah.

Which is particularly fun considering that growing up, So was my best friend. And he was a girl.

A few days after Christmas, the two of us were in a warm bar on a cold Vermont night. I was explaining something extremely important about my life: "Well, I think I kind of, but maybe, well I could make it work but- what if- however, then again-" and picking at the sugar crystals on the rim of my glass. So leaned back, crossed his arms and shook his head.

"Oh, you ladies." He said. "You're always saying things like this."

We really are.

I'm sure there's a lot to say about his transition into bro-hood. I keep trying to type it out, but each time I loop back to the same conclusion: I don't really care all that much.

Bare with me. I care enough to brag about him. I care enough to be really proud of him. And I love that he's willing to talk about all of it, answer all of my questions, no matter how straightforwardly I pose them. Sometimes he'll launch into a monolog about gender identity and queer stuff and I'll have to stop him and say, "What on earth are you talking about Sophia I mean So? Are you a boy? Are you a girl? Does this make you straight now? What exactly is going on here?"

Always, he'll stop, smile at me, and say, "Ahh....that's why I love you, Lina."

Thank God I don't have to be all, "Well, I celebrate the spirit that is you that is unnamed that is unlabeled that is pure creature that is hardwired that is learned." Because what the?

Curiosity and pride aside, I don't care. At all. Maybe because it's not a total surprise. Maybe because I'm shallow as shit and whenever we talk about gender I mostly want to steer the conversation back to me and whether or not bangs would be a BIG mistake. (Talk about a transformation!) Or maybe because people are people regardless of what goes on in the pants. Whatever. We'll never know.

Yesterday, So and I were drinking hot cider with ginger brandy and orange zest. What we were drinking has nothing to do with the story but it was really very delicious.

So has a deep voice now, an adam's apple (who knew!!) and a ridiculously ripped stomach. I know he climbs hard but come on. These are new additions since the last time I saw him, when he came up to Seattle for a visit in September. At that point, he was relatively early in the 'metamorphosis'.

I really regret using that term.

Anway, I asked him the changes that T brought on and he said, "Well, my stomach is rock hard, the bone structure in my face is more defined and I can eat a lot more."

Jesus. Sign me up.

After he went back to LA I got to thinking. I think I read a few pages of a book about it while eating sushi alone.  "Okay," I decided, "Let's be sad because we're losing Sophia and then be joyous because we're getting a So, a boy!" I'm a little proud of how many successful friendships I have with boys, so having one more will be peaches.

Boy, that was a bust. That sort of reasoning was totally lost on me. First of all, I don't use the word 'joyous' unless we're discussing waffles with stuff on them.

Secondly, and arguably more importantly, both So and I have lost people people before, as in they are dead. It's NOT THE SAME.  So and I lost our first climbing partner, Ben, after he fell off something tall, and we miss the shit out of him. God damned it we miss him! But I don't wake up in the morning missing Sophia. Not at all. Although some people might.

I know that gender matters. Totally. I'm a girl through and through and oh, I love being a girl. And getting away with things that only girls get away with. Here's an example. At the restaurant last night, there was a life sized nut cracker. I really wanted to take a photo booth photo shoot with my iPhone with So and I and the nutcracker.

He was not into that idea.

I can think of more than a few girls who would totally do the nutcracker shot.  Then we'd probably make a collage out of it and text it to each other. And my friends and I aren't even particularly girly.

I can't think of one single boy who would participate in such a thing willingly.

Another reason I know I'm all girl: I frequently browse Facebook looking for the opportunity to write this: Oh what a great pic!!! I love you soooooooo much!! xoxoxo. Usually on a photo of someone I haven't seen in six years.

Funny thing is, I always mean it.

That's a girl thing if ever there was.

You wanna know what a 'boy thing' is, by the way? A boy thing is to text: Oh I loved that story you told I think I'm in love with you. So then you, the girl, text them back about New Years plans and maybe having a bonfire and they don't get back to you for TWO DAYS and then they say something like, "Oh, sorry, I was on the bike trainer."

You were on the bike trainer for TWO DAYS?

God, boys are such pains in the ass. And now there's another one! Oh, man, So! Why??!

But as you can see, those are my own issues.

In conclusion, I love that boy. Gender matters but I really don't care which gender So is.  I do trip up a lot when talking about him:"She said- wait- He said, I mean sophia said, not that's not right- well-" but it's only because I've had 14 wonderful years of calling So Sophia. That's all.

Otherwise, eh.....whatever. I love you!

Now, let's get back to the issue of my bangs. Yay? Nay?

20

"There once was a man who became unstuck in the world, and every person he met became a little less stuck themselves. He traveled only with his passion, and he was never alone."

Happy Birthday Stephen, you traveler.

The Big God Damned Christmas Post

Well it's another white Christmas here in the mountains of Vermont. Tradition calls for me to write a post about Christmas celebrations on the hill, and I get to write whatever I want with no style whatsoever. It's my Christmas gift to me. Do you see how I just used the word Christmas three (four) times in one sentence? Any other day of the year that would be verboten. But not today!

All of my cousins come home for the week and we spend it together, spread out over three houses on 200 acres of land. We bake, cook, eat, and drink constantly. It never stops. It's complete mayhem at all times.

My cousin got married about two years ago, and she and her husband celebrate every Friday of every week by drinking Champagne. So, this past Friday, Christmas Eve Eve, we celebrated too. I love weekly alcohol rituals- Taco Tuesdays and Whiskey Wednesday are the best part of my life in Seattle. Champagne Friday? It sounds doable.  

After the toasts we moved on to a new killer Christmas combination: flan and Words with Friends on the floor. Our homage to Alec Baldwin.

Then of course, there are the lights. Sweet Jesus, growing up in the dark winters of this corner of the country, we needed the lights. People always say things like "Oh, yeah, enjoy your presents and whatever but remember the reason for the season!" I think they mean religion. Well, let me tell you, that's not what it's about in this family. The reason for Christmas was to keep everyone from staggering out into the woods alone and dying by their own volition during the extremely long, extremely dark, bitterly cold winters. It can get...grim. That's why we do Christmas as if the whole family had drunk from our own private steroid-laced water source. 

Of course, all of this hysteria gets exhausting and has to be tempered with quieter activities.

And walking three dogs outside in the 18 degree sunshine.

Peter KL came by the other night and I plied him with eggnog, rum, Margaritas, cheesecake and Jimmy Fallon ice cream. As ice fell and the roads glossed over, we spent the night telling outrageous stories of online dating and watching 30 rock.

My dad's favorite tradition is to take me to the Harpoon Brewery for beer samplers and chocolate stout. I'm not...I'm not losing weight on this trip.

Speaking of, it's Christmas Eve and the Chocolate stout is waiting. By the way, I didn't completely give up on my camera when I got the camera phone. But I did forget to bring the connector cable this year so, it's a Hipstamatic Christmas. Merry Christmas everybody!

I like you, so I'm going to give this to you

One last adventure in Washington for the year, a decidedly touchy year that is ending on a major upswing. Way to pull it out in the final inning, 2011.

The weekend began as all fine weekends should: game faces at the Bagel Oasis.

 

Then take the interstate out of town, fifteen miles on a gutted back road, and six miles mountain biking on a track of pure ice and rock. It was pretty easy as long as we didn't try to slow down, change directions or stop.

Andrew Oberhardt Photo

Andrew Oberhardt Photo

I spent the weekend with my friends Chris and Andrew, who I know from years of cragging at Index and evening climbing gym sessions followed by drinks at the fire lit High Life or the crowded, cacophonous Tin Hat.  Accompanying us was a gorgeous Kathryn Heigel look-alike named Courtney, whose raunchy tales of dinner dates with pot smoking evangelical Christians topped all our whitewater stories by a long shot. She is brand new to the world of outdoor exploration, and I have to hand it to the girl. Winter camping in frigid woods and naked hot springs is a bold choice for a first excursion.

By late afternoon we'd set up camp at the base of Goldmeyer hot springs, scalding aqua pools hidden deep in the foothills of the Cascades.

We stripped off our clothes and soaked in the dreamy atmosphere of the snowing, starlit forest. Next to us was a charging creek which put Chris, Andrew and I in the mood to recount all our paddling epics. (To be more honest, they have paddling epics, I have epic paddling mistakes.)

To get to the hottest and strangest pool you have to climb through a little opening into a narrow tunnel of rock. When night fell, we waded to the back of the cave and sat side by side on a submerged wooden bench. There was only room for one person to stand up at a time. We took turns standing up and telling stories, steam rising around us, the only light coming from a candle balanced on a shelf in the rock wall. We were all without clothes. It may have been the best story telling event ever hosted on the planet.

When the overwhelming heat sent us wading towards the mouth of the cave, we saw that  it was snowing.  The people lying in the pools glowed white, as if they were made from solid moonlight.

When we finally started to grow dizzy, we pulled on layers of down and wool and headed back the steep, slick half mile back to camp. We sat around a water bottle lantern drinking whiskey and rum out of flasks and breaking off pieces of frozen caramel.

Usually when we are out in the wilderness we're gearing up to tackle something vertical, demanding and potentially dangerous. I'm always a little bit wary and preoccupied thinking about it. On this night, we had nothing to think about, no maps to study, nothing to rest up for. If we didn't want to get any sleep, we didn't have to. We didn't have to ration the cheese or the alcohol or the water. We ate everything, drank everything, told every joke and story we could think of, and pushed each other around in the snow wearing down from head to toe. Long after Courtney retired to her sleeping bag, wide eyed with cold, Chris, Andrew and I were  growing more and more animated, lighting new candles when they melted into circles of wax. Chris at one point got overcome with joy and rum and told his kids' birth stories while I punched him repeatedly and said "Don't cry dude, I can't handle when men cry."

It was one of the happiest evenings I've ever spent.

That night I shared a tent with Andrew, one of the best adventure companions I've ever had. At this point you may think that I'm just abusing superlatives, but I've meant every word so far.  Every time we leave the city together it means multi-pitches, sleeping on roadsides, pretzels with peanut butter for dinner at the base of the rock. The very first time I hit my combat roll we were together, paddling down the Wenatchee river three and half years ago. I'll always remember that odd feeling of twisting and breaking through the surface for the first time, seeing him smile at me, excited and relieved and just as surprised as I was.

We stayed up for a few more hours, decently warm inside luxurious sleeping bags. I fell asleep whispering a story about the two of us being taken political prisoner in Cambodia.

I think we'd run out of true stories by that point.

The next morning, in a hurry to get to work by the afternoon, I biked out alone. It was snowing tiny white points which added the barest traction to my ride.

Andrew Oberhardt Photo

I made it to North Bend with just enough time to eat breakfast at the counter of the Diner in town. I put down an over sized classic two-egg plate with bacon and lots of other stuff in just under four minutes. The guy behind the counter refilled my mug and then wouldn't let me pay. "I like you, so I'm going to give this to you," he said. He seemed impressed.

What a perfectly simple phrase.

It makes me think of Chris, who made the reservations and invited me along in the first place. He's such a generous guy. Being asked to come along on such an occasion is the finest thing in the world. It's basically saying, "I know this place where there's hot water and snow, and we can spend a few days doing nothing but relaxing and having a good time. I really like this place, so I want to give it to you."

I'll take it! And I like you, too.

For tips on your own trip to the hot spring, check out my article Hotspringing 101 on Trailsedge.

Poultry Slam

Last night we held an informal wake for Marilyn. When I found out about her passing, I wrote Micah to see if there was anything I could do, like bring over a casserole.  Micah said he would accept a casserole but what he really needed was a tombstone.  It was then I realized that Micah needed to get out of the house. I didn't want to think about my soft-spoken friend sitting alone at home thinking about his Marilyn, wondering what to do with her remains.

At long last I persuaded him to join my friend Jenny and I at a tiny bar called The Dray. When Micah showed up we were busy drinking Jolly Roger's Christmas Ale and airing our grievances. "You know what the thing is," I was saying, "The things is that they are too intimidated to talk to us."

We both told Micah to order a beer and put it on our tabs as a little something for his loss, but he refused because he is a gentleman. He ordered a Rainier, the cheapest thing you can buy at a bar besides peanuts, which are free. They gave it to him in the can. They don't even give you a glass when you order a Rainier.

"I'm 25,000 dollars in debt," he said by way of explanation, settling in on a stool across from me.

Such is education. 

Jenny and I got drank down a few more cold Christmas beers and ate a bowl of pretzels with stone ground mustard for dinner. We all got a little tipsy. When Jenny got up to hunt down some more food, I leaned towards Micah and lowered my voice. 

"I'm really sorry." I said. "I've lost poultry myself. When I was a kid"

He looked down at his hands sadly. "I had to kill her myself."

"What?"

"With a Swiss army knife."

"I thought the coons attacked!"

"They did. But they didn't finish her off. I had to stab her three times. She wouldn't die."

"My God."

He looked up at me with his big, soft eyes. "Have you ever heard the term 'chicken with its head cut off?'"

I had. Like I said, I've lost poultry before. I've even killed a chicken myself. I've seen the way those fat, headless hen bodies flap around and twitch in the dirt.

"The coon took half her neck, I could see she wasn't going to live. So I had to stab her three times with a Swiss army knife. It was four in the morning. I was still in my boxers. Beatrice was gone. The raccoon was still in the corner of the yard growling. So I finished off Marilyn and then I wrapped her body in a blanket and put it back into the cage and I went back to bed. I woke up thinking, well maybe that was all a dream."

At this point Jenny appeared back at the table. Despite her scouting for snacks, she was empty handed. "It's just a chicken!" She declared. She was raised on a farm. She is the toughest girl I know. Her arm is twisted because her horse stepped on her when she was a kid. The other day I went to visit her at work at a climbing store and she cheerfully instructed me to put my hand on her forearm. I did, grimacing, and she twisted her hand back and forth. From beneath the skin I could feel bones grinding. "Pretty bad, isn't it!" She said, grinning.

"It's not just a chicken!" I shouted back. "It was named after his grandmother!"

"They used to jump up and sit on my lap" added Micah, as he opened his cell phone and produced a photo.  "And now her carcas is still at home in my trash."

"The trash?" We were appalled. "You could have at least composted her!"

Then we felt bad. We shouldn't be yelling at this boy who just lost a friend.

Beatrice, Micah's other hen, survived the attack. She'd fled that night in the chaos, but wandered home a few days later. Micah said he was trying to focus on Beatrice's survival, instead of Marilyn's murder. We agreed with him. Then we said goodnight, and I walked home alone. Poor Marilyn. Poor all of us. But at least if you're a chicken who dies in an urban coon hunt, you'll never be 25,000 dollars in debt and drinking bad beer, or worrying about another Christmas without a boyfriend, unwrapping "Cooking for One" cook books from your beginning-to-grow-concerned parents and repeating phrases like "They only go for the boring ones, anyway."

There's a silver lining to everything.

White River Junction

I woke up one morning and I was so tired that I could not get both eyes to stay open at the same time. So I came here, and I took a break.

Limping Reluctantly After My Groove

One day, a few years back, I came home and found my roommate engaged in a tickle fight with is girlfriend, right in the middle of the living room. "Oh, great!" I thought. "A tickle fight! Tickle fights are a lot of fun. I mean, they can certainly get out of hand, but in general they're very enjoyable."

The pair was rolling around on the couch. When they saw me come in the door, the girl started to yelp. "Oh, help me, help me!" She cried. "Oohhhhh! No no! I can't take it! Help me Melina! Eeeee!"

Seeing that I was needed, I jumped onto the couch and joined the fight, forcibly holding down my roommate with the great strength of a nationally recognized collegiate ultimate Frisbee player and tickling his stomach as hard as I could. The stomach is a very vulnerable place. Funny thing though, as soon as I jumped in, the tickle fight fizzled. They both sort of stopped and looked at me quizzically.  And that's when I realized, 'Wait a second. She didn't really need my help. This was never about tickling. This is about sex. Isn't it.'

When you're young and attractive and you've got somebody, everything is about sex. Take, for example, the game nights my roommates and I had in college. When someone first brought up the idea, I was immediately on board. 'Wonderful.' I thought. 'I could use a little friendly competition. What are we playing, Settlers? Scrabble? Tiddliwinks? Whatever it is, I volunteer to be scorekeeper.' I used to be an exceedingly competitive person, and I didn't trust anyone else to keep score.

We prepared for Game Night, which was to be held on a Saturday evening after dinner. I baked a three level frosted lemon cake for the occasion. My roommates invited their significant others. I was single at the time. Was that something you hadn't caught on to? I spent an entire Saturday making a triple tiered lemon cake. Of course I was flying solo.

Well, darn it if my comrades didn't treat Game Night like some sort of drawn out communal foreplay. They didn't give a shit who won; they didn't even try to win, much less keep up with the score. When I announced that I was the Scrabble champion by 207 points, nobody even bothered to double check my arithmetic! They thought the real win went to Gregory, who, earlier in the game, had managed to spell out Scrotum on a double letter score.

Game night was not the occasion for personal challenge and mental growth that I had been looking forward to. It was an excuse for flirtation, for cuddling, mock outrage and innuendo. Settlers of Catan was the all time worst. "Oh, Jessica, did you say you needed to trade for my wood?" "Oh, Gregory, I always need more Wood!" And then Andy would bust everybody up by saying "That's not what it sounded like last night!"

Meanwhile I'm sitting there with my score card and pencil sharpener thinking, "That's not even good comedy. How can they find that funny?"  Then I'd find a way to bring the attention back to myself. "Anyone want a slice of the cake that I spent all day baking?" I'd ask, and the room would erupt in enthusiasm.

"Oh, we do! We do! But you can just serve it to us on one plate, we'll share."

It was my big rebellion of the night to ignore that perverse request. I served out eight slices of cake with eight forks and eight napkins. Any other way was too ridiculous and I refused to participate.

Listen, I know what you're thinking. I know love exists, and that it's great and all that, I've been in love before! But I've never regressed to the point where I needed to share my dessert plate. Sharing dessert is complicated- what if you're busy telling a story, and your partner takes that opportunity to shovel the whole cake in his mouth? Forget it.

Game night always ended considerably earlier than it could have, usually with a few board games left untouched. One of the girls would yawn and stretch, and her boyfriend would nudge her and then they'd glance at the clock. "Oh, well, gosh it's....it's getting late. We really should be getting to bed." The others would murmur their agreement. It would be nine, nine thirty in the evening. "Wait!" I'd protest. "Doesn't anyone want to know the final tally?"

"No, I think you won, Lina!" They'd say, friendly and agreeable, as they filed downstairs to their rooms, fiddling with their Ipods for those abhorrent "Let's get it on" playlists. "You totally won! You killed us all!"

"Of course I won," I'd say aloud to myself. "You guys are all idiots."  

***

Well, I was the idiot this past Saturday night. I was working at the climbing gym, and there was this guy giving a lecture about mountaineering. His name was Brendan and I immediately found him quite attractive. When he came to the front desk to buy an Odwalla Super Juice I took the opportunity to introduce myself.

"Well, Melina, it's very nice to meet you," He said slowly, eyeing me. Eye away, my friend, because this morning I bothered to dry my hair so yeah, I'm looking pretty okay. "And let me say, Melina, that is a beautiful sweater. I love the subtle blue piping."

"Oh gosh thanks it's Patagonia!" I said, all in one breath. "Yeah I get a huge Patagonia discount for having once played on the world champion ultimate team." Then I proceeded to tell him all the details of my discount, what year it started, how often my password changes, how I'm never eligible for free shipping. I'm so smooth and full of mystery.

"My goodness!" Said Brendan, looking impressed. "That's a large discount! I don't even get that, and I'm a climbing guide!"

Well, that cinched it. He said my name twice, gave me a compliment and dropped in his rugged and enviable line of work. This dude is so obviously into me.

I realize that this interaction if far from scandalous. It's not titillating, it's not even interesting. But the fact of the matter is, for the past six months I have felt literally zero in the way of romantic interest. It just seems like, after ten years of overdrive, I've run out of enthusiasm.

I decided to do some investigation. "So, this Brendan," I said to my boss, "he a friend of yours?" The true nature of my question betrayed my faux-casual tone. My boss lit up with excitement. "I know what you're asking!" He said. "Wait a minute, I'm gonna go talk to him! See what I can find out!"

"No, No!" I pleaded, with the same level of sincerity that my roommate's girlfriend had used when she had begged for my help with the tickling. I didn't want to appear desperate, but at the same time I wanted that information.

My boss didn't get much news, but it was good news. "Well, he's not in a committed relationship and he's in the dating pool,"  he told me. Then we had a little discussion about Brendan possibly being gay. He had, after all, noticed the subtle blue piping on my sweater. We settled on probably not.

All systems go, I decided not to take my normal half hour climbing break, electing to stay behind the desk where I would be sure to see Brendan again before he left. Also, I was wearing my skinny jeans and the tall boots that zip up the back, which gave me a leg up in the gym. Sure, ladies look good in their skin tight Lululemon climbing pants, but still it was nice to stand out.

Around 8:30, I had another nice surprise when my friend Ginny showed up. She's not much of a climber so I was not expecting to see her. Also, she brought me a whole bar of Theo's Toffee chocolate, and when I offered to share she refused, saying she was on a cleanse. "Well, thank you!" I said, genuinely thrilled to see her and to have all the candy to myself. "I'll take a little break and we can go outside and talk. I want to tell you about someone I just met. Unless you want to climb?"

"Um, maybe? I don't know, I'm actually here to see my friend Brendan who is teaching a class today."

I thought Oh! She knows him! And then I thought, Oh, shit, she knows him.

"So..." I asked. "Are you friends with him or like, friends friends with him?"

"Well, I'm not really sure. I mean, we've sort of been on some dates?"

I sighed. "Well, full disclosure, I was going to tell you that I talked with an attractive guy but, never mind, because it was him."

Ginny waved her hands in reassurance. "No, no! Go for it! I mean, I think he's the kind of guy who dates a lot of girls at once. In fact," she leaned closer and lowered her voice, "this one time, he invited me over to his house to what I thought was going to be a small, intimate gathering. It turns out, there were three other girls he was dating, and he had invited all of us!"

I gasped at such blatantly bad behavior.

"Towards the end of the night, this one girl and I were obviously duking it out to be the last one there. And she won! I eventually just left and went home."

"That sounds awful!" I exclaimed. "That's a Sex in the City plot!" It really is a Sex and the City plot. It's the one where Samantha has to eat all that raw food so she can have sex with the waiter, who ends up being her boyfriend for the rest of the show.

Just then, Brendan came outside. "Why, look, you two know each other!" He said, beaming.

There was only room on the bench for two, so I got up. "I'd better get back to work. You two can catch up."

I went back inside and resumed my post behind the front desk. The front area was empty except for a very pretty girl who was standing idly near a rack of 5.10 climbing shoes. She kept casting distressed looks outside. When she saw the pair get up and head for the door, she ran across the lobby and hopped back into the bouldering room. Too late, she'd been seen. Brendan went to follow her, and Ginny grabbed my elbow and dragged me into the bathroom. "That girl?" She hissed, "That's the girl who ended up staying that night at the party! He did it again! He invited us both here to hang out with him!"

By this point I was thoroughly enjoying the drama, but my interested in the fellow was lagging. He had officially been denigrated from main suspect to person of interest, and I felt very little desire to jump into the ring. Ginny decided to climb for a while, so I had some alone at the desk to mull this over.

While I honor my resistance to the theatrics, I still need to encourage myself to have an interest in dating. In the past few months my personal life has reached a decidedly dangerous plateau. Do you know what I did last Friday night? I took Hometeam on a walk to the pet store, where we decided on a stuffed toy shaped like a an ice cream cone. On the way home, I ate a bag of popped Barbeque chips and listened to a Radiolab podcast on the History of the high five.  The previous night, I watched Jimmy Fallon's last episode of SNL where he tries not to cry as he says goodbye during Update, and I wept so hard that there were tears dripping off my elbow. And that was an episode from eight years ago. For crying out loud the guy was leaving SNL to have his own show. What I'm trying to say is, I need to get out a little. I need to start dating. You know, I apologize for using this term, but I need to get my groove back. I really do.

But oh, my God, the game playing! The tolerance and patience and luck and straight up guts needed just to get a date in this town? I'm not sure I have it anymore.

The whole evening reached a perfect crescendo just as I was starting the closing duties. I was standing in the lobby, holding a bottle of Windex and talking with Ginny when all of a sudden, Brendan comes around the corner, leans in and give her a big, lasting kiss on the neck. Then he takes her into his arms and gives her this big hug that lasts way too long. After about twenty seconds, I'm not kidding, their body language shifts and suddenly things seem, from my perspective, highly inappropriate. And that's when I realize, 'Wait a second, this isn't a hug. This isn't about being friendly or saying goodbye, this is about sex, isn't it.'

But I kept expecting it to end! After all I had been in the middle of a conversation. So I didn't move, I just stood there, frozen, just watching. My coworker, Ryan, was laughing so hard he had to put his head down on the keyboard.

Finally, the two released each other. Ginny sort of staggered backwards for a few steps. Brendan turned to look at me. "Melina." He said. "Goodbye. I hope I see you again. Very soon." Eye contact. Eye contact. Smile. Turn away. Damn. Dude's a pro. But you know, that stuff hardly works on me anymore.

"Nice to meet you, Leo." I called after him. A calculated move. Nothing cuts a dude down like confidently addressing him by the wrong name.

Later that night, alone in my room, I opened my computer and downloaded a few more episodes of Radiolab. That show is incredible; do you know how much knowledge you can absorb in one single, hour long episode? I mean everything- history, science, factoids, conversation fodder, ice breakers. I'm learning so much, I'm thinking about competing in those weekly trivia nights they host at the bars downtown. I'm actually looking for a partner. Any interest? But only if you're going to take it seriously. I mean that. Only if you play to win.

Will you sleep in my bathtub for me?

It happened again. I woke up this morning and heard the sound of hard rain hitting the window. It startled me because such intense, direct rain is rare in this city.  It occurred to me that I should wake up and take a picture of the storm. I turned over and opened my eyes and saw it was not raining outside.

I was confused but I decided to go back to sleep. The sound of water continued. Then I remembered something that happened a few weeks back.

I literally thought, "Oh, no."

I got up and walked across the room to the bathroom. For the second time, I saw that the water in the bath was running. The hot water spigot was turned on full blast, and the water coming out was very cold, meaning it had been running for a long time.

Is this something that I do in my sleep? Do I get up and decide to run myself a bath and then go back to bed?

I've never definitively slept walked before, and I had plenty of opportunities to be caught doing so. I went to boarding school. I had a roommate in college when I lived at the dorms. When I taught at New River Academy we all slept in extremely close quarters. I can name a dozen teenagers who would have loved to describe my sleep antics over breakfast, or as a distraction in my American Literature class.

I woke up a few times last night. I went to the bathroom, I checked something in a book that had been bothering me. Each time I got out of bed the room was quiet, I turned a light on, and all the faucets were off. I did not sleep particularly deeply. This is strange to say, but I just have the feeling that I'm not the one doing this.

Someone please tell me what's going on. Am I sleep walking or am I being haunted?

Today's giveaway is a call to tell a story. Either assure me or spook me. Do you sleep walk?  Have you ever been haunted? Any suggestion for rigging the bathroom so I know what's going on if it happens again? If you got nothing, just tell me how you're doing today.

A randomly chosen comment will get a 20$ Starbucks Gift Card. If you live in Seattle, Boston or Vermont, we can make it a gift card to a local place. Now go for it, leave me a message.

South America

On June 29th I found out that Stephen was dead. I was in Maine. I sat down at the end of a logging road and wrote his name in the dirt with a stick. It made me feel a little better, so I wrote it again. His name would have stretched on for miles, carved in cursive on the side of the road, until the road became pavement, and the pavement became state highway, all the way down the length of the Black River until I was etching his name into the granite hills in New Hampshire. But I had to be back at camp in the evening to make dinner for girls, so I had to stop.

Whenever I miss him now, I go down to the beach and write his name in the sand. Today there was sun in the city after two weeks of steady rain and I couldn't get him out of my mind. I gave up on work and took the dog to Discovery. We wandered around until night. I collected sea glass. I keep a pile of it next to Stephen's photo on my desk.

By now, my character is probably coming into focus. I have a strange schedule. I'm oddly employed, with long patches of days where I'm not required to be anywhere. I do my best work around the time that I should be getting ready for sleep, which leaves the days open for other things. I live inside my thoughts a lot and I refuse to go on dates. And although I have great cause to float around all the time and gape at all my excessive luck, certain things still cause me anguish. Like Stephen drowning. It wakes me up in the middle of the night sometimes. Those dreams! We'll be sitting together on a rock in the river and I'll ask, "Was it a great relief?" And he'll be just about to answer and I'll wake up.

I had the dream last night so I had to go to the beach today. It was a steely cold, harsh but gorgeous, a good day to be alive, to be by yourself.

I thought about the Achibueno river in Chile and the thanksgiving we spent on its banks. The school was living  at this big wooden lodge, so deep into the Andes that to get there, you had to abandon your truck in a meadow and walk the rest of the way, or ride a horse. The only other people we saw out there were cowboys. These days I find it hard to believe I ever ran a river so big and so remote as the Achibueno.

On thanksgiving we took the whole day off from school. Tino went to town and brought back soda, wine, and piles of cakes. We had way more cake than we knew what to do with, even with all those boys we barely made a dent. It was the happiest thanksgiving I can remember.

Over dinner we read Pablo Neruda poems and some of the stories the kids had written in my class. One of the boys, most likely Clay, tried to coax the tarantula out from where it crouched in the shadows. We weren't supposed to touch the tarantula because it was severely poisonous. But Clay, a handsome kid from Chatanooga who I liked a lot, was always breaking the rules and causing trouble. He gave us some headaches. He also gave CPR to David when he got stuck under a waterfall for too long. He saved Dave's life and I think that redeemed him for all the trouble he caused.

After we ate, we spent the evening as we spent every evening in the Andes, spread out around the fire place, reading, grading homework, playing hours of Uno. Talking. Tino took his guitar out each night, and Andy his fiddle, and the three of us sang a lot of Avett Brothers songs.

 

I do not have the talent to put that time into words. How it felt to be there, so removed from the world and so enveloped inside our own. I remember the river was very cold, it rained each day, and one time we all had to rescue swimming goats by pulling them onto our kayaks and paddling them to shore.

I wish I could crawl backwards in time and spend a few more weeks there. We were so lucky. I miss them very much. More than anything I miss Stephen. Our boy who went underwater. 

November

It's a mellow, bluesy kind of feeling to live inside a city that's gone underwater. Everything is silver and slick and dark, torrents of water glide over the sidewalks and rush through the streets. Each damp morning, I sit on the front porch with Earle Gray and watch as the dog goes ballistic for a stuffed green frog. She dashes into the yard, runs in a circle and then stops abruptly when she feels the rain coming down. Displeased, she stalks back up to the porch and demands to go inside, where she spends the whole day beneath my chair, crying and complaining, as if the weather is my fault. As if it's something I chose for us.

Days could just crumble away in this season, if you let them. Work in the morning, wet walks to the grocery store and the bank, maybe a few hours inside a cafe where the windows are fogged over and dreamy. The upside of these dreary months are the shining black nights; they have a certain lilt and timbre about them which all but rock you to sleep. Nothing in the world feels safer than my own bed after 10pm, the light blue sheets, feather comforter pulled around me. I curl up with the dog and keep one hand on her soft body as it rises and falls. In the evenings, I read and read and read. The sound of water sloshing at the windows makes it seem as if I'm inside the hold of a ship. I pretend it's a storm. I'm being sea-tossed. It helps me get to sleep.

I try hard not to let the days dissolve, one into the other into the other, and for the most part I am victorious. It helps to have something to show for the hours, something tangible like pages stacked on top of one another on a desk, or one more ink-drained pen, or muscles that ache from running. The latter is rare. Other things that will substitute as a good filling for passing time: clean clothes stacked inside the closet, the dog happy and sleeping because you threw the ball for her in an empty park that was turning quickly into a lake around your ankles, food you actually bothered to cook and a friend sitting across the table from you eating the last of it.

As it happens, this past week was Thanksgiving. It's bitter to live so far away from your family at times like this. What? No. It's always bitter to live so far from your family. I shared this city with my sister for almost ten years, but at the beginning of September she left with her husband. They moved to New York. For the past year, we'd been living together in a little house North of the city. I said a short, terse goodbye in front of that house and barely managed to pull the car down the block before I started weeping. There's crying, there's sobbing, and then there's weeping. I wept.

Luckily, you don't just let a gaping hole remain a gaping hole. Nature abhors a vacuum. My cousin and her husband and her little boy live across the lake from me, waking distance if I felt extremely ambitious. Thank God for cousins, can we all say that together? I have yet to meet one friend who doesn't have a very sunny and particular spot in their hearts and lives for cousins, the perfect combination of sibling, friend, cheerleader, therapist.

Once more, Seattle is a city of Orphans, self proclaimed orphans who live in the mysterious, glittery, mountainous town, far away from the homes and front lawns where we grew up. We are here for one of three reasons: school (college, grad school ) a love that didn't work out but we stayed anyway, or Amazon. Orphans are adept at drawing together during those times when our orphan-hood becomes stingingly apparent- holidays, winter months, elections, sickness, birthdays, and long evenings in the summer. We put our own spin on the holidays, usually consisting of mashing recipes together, board games and alcohol.

This Thanksgiving, I didn't have to miss my home in Vermont very much, no more than usual, because a crew of the most rowdy, hardy, die-hard Vermonters who ever lived drove all the way across the country and landed in my neighborhood just in time to carve the turkey. The day itself was a total blur: rolling out crust, whipping cream, laughing, story telling, music, and Balderdash.  I remember drinking a lot of beer and trying to read aloud a batch of fake movie plots and laughing so hysterically that I couldn't get through the first one. I remember that, and very little else. I fell asleep that night at 8pm.

That was on Thursday. On Wednesday I had Lisa and her whole family, on Friday I had my cousins, the four of us sitting perfectly aligned at their little square table. A had three thanksgivings, which is a good amount for one year.

****

Why do we live in this ridiculous city? Why does anyone? This evening I got home from work at 5:30 and it was already dark. It had been raining heavily throughout the day; the girls and I had watched the deluge through the huge, ceiling-high windows at the Seattle Bouldering Project downtown. But by the time I got home, the air was clear and the clouds were lifting. This is often the case, the sky stops crying in time for dinner.  In college, my ultimate team practiced each night from 8-10pm. With a few exceptions, the rain had lifted and the sky would be edged in bright pink. Each night,  as we ran sprints from one side of the field to the other, we'd feel the claustrophobic weight of the day evaporate, and joy would rise from somewhere inside, somewhere where it had been all along.

Tonight, the clouds promised the same sort of stalemate. Not clear, exactly, but not raining. I walked the dog to the grocery store and we looked at all the Christmas lights that had popped up over night.  The air was mild and soft against my face. I bought more beer and lemons and cream for tomorrow morning's coffee effort. I put the groceries into my shoulder bag and we set back down the hill. And as soon as we left the safety of the market, the sky cracked open and it began to rain so hard I could barely see. It was the kind of rain that makes people inside their homes leave the pots boiling on the stove, and the laundry unfolded across the bed, and the characters inside the movie going about their plot, and gravitate towards their window where they stare, open mouthed at the spectacle, and pity the poor souls who are stuck out on the streets. I know this because I saw them, palms pressed against glass, guilt and relief smacked across their faces as they watched me slosh pass.

By the time we made it to my street,  I was kicking through an inch or standing water. The drains were gurgling loudly. The groceries were drenched, my bag pooled with water, my jacket soaked through. And this is the beginning. This is how it's going to be for months and months. Why do we live in this city? Surely we'd choose some town back East, where the cold bites but the sun sparkles hard off of clean snow over this watercolored slush of a city.

I can tell you why I'm still here. Because I've lived here, on and off, for almost a decade. I know this place well enough to pull it tightly around me every night and be safe. I've eaten in every restaurant, sate alone at every cafe, waited in the rain at every bus stop, walked every inch of pavement through the city and every foot of sand along the Sound. Every music hall and library and empty lot and street corner is familiar to me. And I'm never alone here. I may fool myself from time to time, because I am by often by myself. I eat dinner alone, except for on Tuesdays, and I wake up alone. But the truth is I've forgotten what it's like to actually be lonely. And I think- I know myself well enough to know- that eventually I will be in a new place, where I know very few people, and that confusing, hollow weight will once again be pushing down against my rib cage. I'll go somewhere else, eventually, and for a while I will be all alone there.

 For now, I'm just so deeply grateful to be here, to be home.

Writing Update, or, Getting Your Period While Rock Climbing

Just look at John's expression. . ."Oh, you think you're done working for the day? How interesting."

Here is some of my recent writing news, from the heroic attempts to the almighty failures. Just in case you're keeping track. I know I should be.

The Onion Application

I applied for an intern position at The Onion, the word's most hilarious satirical newspaper. The internship description made it abundantly clear that this would not be a creative job. It specifically requested that applicants do not send writings samples. It did say, however, that small creative writing jobs might be given to the intern if they were deemed worthy.  Wanting to write for The Onion, just like any exciting writing job, is a long shot,  if not a virtual impossibility. An unpaid, noncreative internship at such a renowned establishment would be a major break into the nearly impenetrable world of comedy writing. Plus I'd move to New York!

Proud of myself for having spent all day writing the perfect cover letter, I announced to my friends via Facebook that I'd applied. The next day, three different people stepped out of the woodwork and connected me with their friends who currently work at The Onion. My cousin's husband Todd put me in touch with the paper's Digital Director, and my friends Paul and Cecily both emailed their writer friends. I cannot stress enough just how grateful I am to them for doing that.

I bet the slush pile that accumulates on the editor's desk during the intern application period is six feet deep. I imagine the editors paddling around in the office in row boats because of all those resumes and cover letters. It seems that everything worth doing these days, work wise, is almost sure to be met with rejection, but we do it anyway. If you don't apply you have no chance whatsoever in getting in the door. And at the very least, I want a chance.

Getting Your Period While Rock Climbing

I wrote a very detailed story pitch to a women's adventure magazine. I really wanted to write an article about working in the male dominated outdoors industry, my experience teaching at the kayak high school, the risk and emotions that are intrinsic with a sport as dangerous as kayaking, and what happens when tragedy strikes. It sounds a little broad here when I write it out, but it all wrapped together nicely. I waited a few weeks and then, after I'd given up and moved along with my life, I got a terse email in response. They said that while they they appreciated the pitch, they were more interested in things "Like getting your period while rock climbing." So yeah, hold on to your seats people, there may be a mind blowing expose showing up in a future issue of a certain women's adventure magazine about the unthinkable combination of rock climbing and lady business. And it will not be written by me.

Fiction Class with Holiday

This fall I've been taking an online fiction class from the awesome new site Litreactor.com.  My teacher, Holiday Reinhorn, is an LA-based author from Portland. She studied creative writing at UW, (just like me) and then attended the prestigious Iowa Writer's workshop for grad school.  She is the author of Big Cats, and is married to Rainn Wilson, my boss over at Soulpancake. I signed up for this class because I'd grown totally terrified of writing Fiction. Terrified. And I needed someone to help me back to those college days when I was churning out poems and stories all over the place.

The class is awesome. She provides class lectures, writing prompts, things to read, articles to look at, and lots and lots of insights. It's incredible just to talk with other writers. Last night I got off an hour long conference call with Holiday and some of the other writers and felt so much relief. A reminder that my own weird lets hide in the closet where the paper can't see me reactions to my work is totally normal.

The best thing to come out of the class is I have a real, working, first draft of a short story. It may take another six months or so to 'perfect' it, but I really like it so far, and I'm going to try and stick it out. Maybe I'll have a submission piece if I want to go to grad school at NYU, or something to send to a literary magazine or maybe I'll drink a whole bunch of dayquil and write a whole book of short stories, sell the movie rights to Hollywood and get super rich!

My Own Site....? 

I announced on Facebook a few weeks ago that the people over at Trailsedge were offering me my own site!  Which they did! But after a bizarre exchange of information, I turned it down. That's a whole other story. I asked to keep writing for Trailsedge instead. I love writing for them, I've published 34 articles so far on that site! Sadly, they are scaling it way back due to budget issues, and now they're publishing a lot less frequently.  Luckily, my articles always brought in a great readership, so they asked told me to keep sending one article in per week.

A few days ago the editor asked me if I would be interested in writing for a new site, a site about safe traveling. I sent them one article which they published, and am just waiting to see what will happen next.  But that's a useless sentence, isn't it? We're all waiting around to see what will happen next. Maybe I'll go back some time and delete that sentence.

Mindy's Contest

Positive association product placement. You're welcome, Mindy

I entered a very quick writing contest (I wrote it over dinner) that Mindy Kaling was hosting to help promote her new book. And I won! I was one of the winners, anyway. I got a  free signed copy of the book in the mail, and when I met Mindy at the show I worked last Saturday, I asked her to sign it again. Write girl, write! She wrote. You MUST! I put the book on my desk next to the picture of John Stewart. Sometimes I pretend that John Stewart is my loving but hard-driving boss and Mindy is the girl in the cubicle next to me. From time to time we act conspiratorially.

Gear Gal

During my extremely brief stint as the GearGal on Trailsedge, I got to review one thing. I was told to choose something from the Trailsedge retail store for review; I'd get it in the mail, use it, write about it, and it would be mine. I could choose anything, and after I reviewed that one thing I could choose another thing! And on and on forever!

But I knew too much about the industry to get too excited. A set up that good is not going to last. So I chose accordingly, and picked the one thing I wanted more than anything. Sure I could have reviewed a new belay device or water purification system or something useful, and I would love to do that, but I already have all the outdoor gear I really need. And the memory of my Kokatat botch is still fresh in my memory.

When I worked at the high school, I sold a photo to the Kokatat Watersports gear company. They used it in their print catalog, which was kind of a big deal. In exchange for the photo I could choose any piece of Kokatat gear I wanted. So I chose a neoprene top. It was probably worth 60 bucks. I could have chosen a 1,000 dollar dry suit! But I decided to be polite about it and choose something cheap. After all, it was just one photograph, and I wanted the company to remember me as a great person to do business with. Well, do you know where polite gets you? Freezing cold on a river in a damp neoprene top staring enviably at the people wearing expensive, mango colored dry suits. That's where it gets you.

Lesson Learned. So I mined the Trailsedge site and found these absolutely kicking Ariat Rodeobaby cowgirl boots. They were shipped to me, as promised, and I wore them, wrote about them, and then my job as Geargirl quickly evaporated as the site shrank. And my editor wouldn't put up the review because it wasn't outdoorsy enough. (He has a point.) I may post the review on this site instead so you can all see what my Peppy Review Writing Looks Like! If the personification of my normal writing self is a leg-warmer wearing slouched over the desk back of the classer, my review writing self sits with perfect posture in the very front row. Squeaky clean stuff.

And that's it for now! Check back in six months to see if I'm published, famous, or maybe I've given up the dream and settled for a nice boy instead. Let's all just wait and see what happens next. 

Looking to Cuddle your Dog?

Last night my friend Sammy came over. This is a big deal because Sammy is from Bridgewater,Vermont and she is the loudest, crassest, most hysterical person I know. She was visiting with her cousin Becca and boyfriend Jesse, also loud, crass, hysterical Vermonters. They had driven across the entire country and finally they were here, just in time for Thanksgiving.

I got on the phone and begged my best friend Lisa to come over after work and hang out with us. I wanted her to see just what a wild, raucous bunch my fellow Vermonters are. So I found a recipe for something called Cinnamon Pumpkin Ricotta Cheese Cake Pie and cooked it up as an incentive for everyone to come over. All of the above people are very food-motivated.

Well the Vermonters did come over, bringing red wine and bottles of beer with silver fishes on the labels and their enormous, house-shaking laughter, but the pie was a disaster. I should have taken a hint from the recipe, Cinnamon Pumpkin Ricotta Cheese Cake Pie, and gone in a different direction. Obviously the baker over at cooks.com didn't know what the hell it was supposed to be...pie? Cake? Lasagna? Breakfast? It was sort of all three mashed together with no taste. Big disappointment, but that's okay, it only took the entire day to make.

When the allure of the pie evaporated,  the Vermont crowd soon lost interest in my abode and decided to head to the other side of Ballard and play board games at the house of yet another Vermonter, Jess. "She really wants us to go over there and play board games," said Sammy. But I learned on the drive over that there had been a car crash that day, involving the Jess's car that Jess's ex-boyfriend was driving (the ex-boyfriend who is from New Hampshire, so yeah, big surprise!) and Sammy really wanted to learn the sordid details. That's why we were going over there. Nobody actually cared about the board games, especially not Jess, who was in bed when we arrived and acted very polite but confused. By then it was 10:00 pm, Lisa was out of work and heading over to my house and I just forgot to call her. Damn it, Melina!

Poor Lisa shows up prepared for a little party and some delicious cheesecake pie. She's probably holding a six pack of micro-brewed Holiday beer because that's the kind of thoughtful person she is. But the house is empty and the kitchen is a mess, and right in the middle of the cluttered counter there the wreckage of a pumpkin pie cheese whatever the hell, and no whipped cream left. Apparently, she tasted the pie and was incredibly put off by it, as we all were.

But this is why she's my best friend. She didn't just leave. Instead, she sat down at the dining room table and cut a ransom out of the Stranger. She used a knife and Athletic tape since we have no scissors or glue. Then she pinned it on the door to my room. Then she kidnapped Hometeam.

If you can't read it: Looking to cuddle your dog? I have her! Take actions now. Provide Toys Strippers and Shot of Whiskey. WARNING! Don't talk to the cops! No ifs, ands or BUTTS! Love, Rainn Wilson (accompanied by Rainn Wilson Cartoon.)

I just had to write that little story. And the best part? She didn't actually take the dog. According to my roommate who came home in the middle of this, Lisa took the dog as far as the car, but then came back to the house all wet from the rain and said, "Well, you know, I really want to kidnap her but I'm going over my boyfriend's house and there's another dog there, so....so I'm just going to leave her here, if that's okay with you." But she left the ransom note all the same.

Such gentle fun.

City Unfolding

I'm getting the feeling that my dog has started to think of me as her den-mate.  That's because I've been living like a caveman, or a psychiatric patient, or possibly both at once. Our house is like a cave, set back from the garden in a grove of pine trees. Despite the abundance of windows it's constantly dark inside my room now that the rain has started. When I wake up in my bed, I can never tell from the watery, grey light slushing through the clouds what time it is. It could be six in the morning or mid day or three in the afternoon. And because my body refuses to set itself on a fixed scheduled, on any give day it could be any of those times. It could be midnight. I'm never really sure.

I can't make coffee for myself. Does anyone else have this problem? Because for me it's a hopeless pursuit. Every morning I give it a try; I've got the individual drip thing and the filters and every other day I walk down to the grocery store, the nice one up on the ridge, and buy Zoka coffee beans in little batches so they don't get stale. I grind them right before I make the coffee. I've messed around with quantities and the temperature of the water, the ratio of milk or cream and no matter what, it tastes terrible, like brown water. Like dirt. Either too light or too dark. And I've lost touch with the root of the issue, I mean I can't tell now whether the coffee is bad or maybe I just altogether don't like coffee anymore. I can't tell whether the problem is inside or outside.

So every morning, after I throw the coffee down the drain and rinse out the cup, I give Hometeam her breakfast and we walk down the steep hill outside our house and a few blocks north to Cafe Bambino. It's a tiny place, so small that you can't sit inside. If you want to stick around you can sit on their porch, which has a roof that is lined with heat lamps so can you drink espresso and read a book outside in a rain storm. Two baristas, Pepper and Tyler, work in the pocket sized space behind the register. They make me a cappuccino with cinnamon. We talk about Pepper's music and what's been going on at the cafe. There's one man named Bruce who had a recent stroke, he comes in every morning, takes twenty minutes to order his coffee and leaves every day without ever picking it up off at the counter. It's like a ritual.

Sometimes I know that this interaction with the baristas will be my only conversation for the day. Some days. Not every day.

Then Hometeam and I walk home and go into my room. I light a few tea lights (everyone deserves candlelight, I once read,) and roll back the enormous bookshelf that serves as a door. The grey, spitting sky is depressing to look at so I usually pull the blinds down. And then I proceed to treat myself like a crazy person.

A few weeks ago I was writing a short story for a fiction class. I worried about it for a whole week, scared to death that I'd sit down, open up a notebook and discover I didn't know how to do it anymore. Fiction is a totally different animal than memoir. It's an alien. Anyway, once I got started I was happy to find out that it wasn't all bad. I could keep the pen moving for twenty minutes at a time, then sit back and take a breather, and low and behold the story was working itself out.

And then came sinister phase two, the reaction that everyone gets after they find something they love, be it a person or a career or an animal or money:  I became very afraid that I'd lose it. I was convinced that something was going to jump out from behind the furniture and steal away my ability to concentrate. So I took great care not to startle myself. I kept the lights very low, candles lit in the same pattern on the desk, and I listened to nothing but very pretty but very sad musical scores. No loud noises or sudden gestures. I'm so easily distractable, I had to shrink the world down to the size of my room. The dog became depressed and curled up in resignation under the bed.

But It worked! I wrote a first draft of a story that I really liked. And I can forget about the story for now, because once you finish a first draft you are supposed to print it out, stick it in a drawer and not look at it for forty days. But now I'm sort of stuck in this cave, this asylum, I'm afraid to pop on the lights or play loud music in case I can't find my way back. It's weird. I know.

In this quiet, soft room, I can't help but think about my last bright, vivid days in New York, after the conference was over. I lean back in my seat and drink the end of the cappuccino. It's nice. Mornings, or what I call mornings, are always the nicest part of the day. Mornings and night, because they are so definitive. It's obvious what you're supposed to be doing: winding up for the day, winding down before bed. It's the middle hours that can scramble me.

New York! The days flew by so quickly. I was always in motion, and I was never alone.

I stayed out in the Bronx with the Zamcheck family. I ate Shabbat dinner with them on Friday and watched as their lively conversation zinged about the table, after the candles and prayers and blessings, like a manic bird that began as Occupy Wall Street Movement, transforming mid flight into Lenin, was he an orator? What would he have thought of the Human Microphone? Folding like origami above our heads into the beat poets and Israel and I was lost, watching this careening free wheeling debate fly between Norman and Fran and their daughter Ariela and their two sons Abby and Akiva, and then everyone calmed down and we finished dessert and Ariela suggested we all go for a beer out her favorite bar in Riverdale.

Norman had ripped out a flyer for me about the graduate writing program at NYU. I told him I wasn't too interested in going to grad school, but then I read the list of faculty and visiting writers at NYU right now, a list that included Jonothon Safron Foer. So I asked Abby and Akiva to take me there. We took the long, silver train into the city and they showed me the brilliant new library with the fenced off floors (to prevent finals week suicides) and Washington Square park where the OWS movement had begun to spread.

We drank beers inside a bar that was so dark my eyes were never able to adjust. Candles threw little circles of light onto the crowded tables and walls, illuminating patches of a gold gilded, biblical mural. Gregorian chants were playing over the stereo, and we were only allowed to to speak in a whisper. Every few minutes the bar tender would climb on top of a chair and shush everybody from above.

They called a friend who is a writer to join us and we all went out to dinner. Then Ariella led me down the streets of the village and up a narrow flight of steps to a rooftop party. The deck was dripping with colored Christmas lights and everybody was wearing remarkable hats. The night was breezy and warm, more like early spring than late autumn. Our view from the roof was dazzling, New York City rolling out in every direction. I pointed out a splendid building all lit up with floodlights and asked, "What building is that?" And someone answered, "Uh...the empire state building."

I appear to have more friends here than I thought, but really, I know absolutely nothing about city. This pulsating, vibrating, flashing city. It can't always be this good, all the time. This city drives people insane. Was I insane for even thinking of moving here?

Then Zoey called and I ran down the narrow flight of stairs and met her in the middle of the street. Zoey is this unearthly beautiful girl, half Greek, half German, who paddled the length of the Grand Canyon with me one frigid February. She took me back over the famous bridge to her spacious, high-ceilinged home in Brooklyn. She had written little poems to herself with reminders to water the plants, and things of that nature, and the poems were all over the kitchen. There were spices hanging from the ceiling and plants in the corners and books everywhere. As I sit here in Seattle, I'm sure I'm reconstructing it in my mind. I remember Zoey's place as being almost too perfect, as if it were a set for a sitcom about a quirky, beautiful 20 something girl who works for a mad scientist and dates a red-headed jazz musician. (Which is indeed Zoey's life.)

She took me for coffee and pear juice in the morning. I kept updating my facebook status about it until my sister called and said I had to stop, I was driving everyone crazy. "You'd drive yourself crazy with all this if you could hear yourself."

My sister is always right.

So I caught a ride home back to Vermont from Pete's parents, who just happened to be visiting. I fell asleep in the back seat and woke up five hours later in a cold, quiet, starlit Vermont night. My mom picked me up from Pete's parents, and there's something about your mom picking you up, something about waiting on the porch for the familiar car to pull up on the gravel driveway, that makes you feel like you've gone back in time.

I read that blog

The writing conference, the whole reason why I came to New York in the first place, was a giant, work affirming, connection making, ground breaking, tiny little Tiramisu gorging success. I met with agents, authors, editors and marketing directors. I scribbled down notes for eight hours straight, almost delirious from lack of sleep, sensory overload and the stunning amount of information being put forth. Also, I could drink as many mini-bottles of San Peligrino as I wanted and when they started to pile up at my table, someone would come and whisk them away.

In my normal life, I spend all day at my desk. I used to write in a coffee shop which added a shot of social interaction into my work week, but those days are over. I'd end up spending too much money, drinking too much caffeine, and as each hour passed I grew less productive, unbearably jittery and increasingly neurotic. ("Hey! Hey! Can you quiet down a little over there? I can hear you drinking!) 

I've since moved my office permanently into my bedroom where I can sit and work for days at a time. As a treat, I'll get up and fold laundry. Receiving an email from my editor is a momentous occasion. Conference calls with Soulpancake writers are delightful. If I know I'll be getting feedback about a story over email on Friday, I'll lay awake all Thursday night, wild with excitement. But most of the time, I just sit at my desk.

My work life, which is quickly encroaching on all other parts of my life, is a social desert. But the conference? The conference was a tropical retreat. I was in New York! At the Hilton! With a hundred other writers! And it was catered! There were trays and trays and trays of little tiny desserts. We were given bags full of books! And I wore a name tag!

Without question, the most valuable insight I learned was how well respected blog have become within the publishing field. Honestly, this was not what I was expecting to hear. I even straight out asked about it to a panel of Penguin agents: "How do I make my blog actually register with an agent? Because I'm sure you don't go home after a long day at work and peruse the Internet for blogs."

And then, and I've never been so excited to hear these words, the (intimidating, poker-faced, fancy-suit wearing) agent leaned forward and said into the mic, "You're wrong."

Across the table, heads nodded. "Actually, we get paid to look through blogs. And then we go home, and we look through more."

In that one reply, almost every disparaging remark I've made about blogging in the past three years was contradicted.

One of the most remarkable moments in my career occurred during lunch.

Lisa Stone, the co-founder and CEO of BlogHer, was on stage leading a discussion with Dominique Browning. Dominique is an author and publishing veteran: she was editor in Chief at House and Garden, an editor at Newsweek, and recently published a memoir called Slow Love. Both women were professional, accomplished and poised, with enough elegance and grace between them to give Meryl Streep a run for her money. 

After the interview, they took a few questions. I lunged for the microphone.

"What I really can't stand, when I mention that I write a blog,  is when people say wow, blogging sounds so self-centered! It's a pretty common response, and I have a hard time countering this, because on a certain level they're correct." I asked Dominique if she had an intelligent response to this type of negative comment.

Before Lisa passed over the mic, she paused. "Wait a minute. You write The Wilder Coast, right? I actually read that blog. I really like your blog. And if anyone gives you a hard time, just direct them to the essay you wrote about eating your power animal on your birthday. They will shut up."

I was stunned. BlogHer is huge. It's enormous. And Lisa is very high up in the publishing world. It knocked me off my feet that she read my work, even more so that she could single out a specific post. There were a hundred and fifty other writers in the room, along with the agents and the marketing directors and the editors, and they were all looking at me.   

Then Dominique then gave me a gorgeous reply about how this style of personal writing is following in a grand tradition that goes back to the beginning of books. Write what you know.  I wish I could be as eloquent as she was, but I cannot remember her exact words. Maybe if she reads this, she could leave a message and remind me, and all of us who write.

****

So I'm back at my desk now, in front of a very cold, leaking window and a picture of John Stewart from the cover of Rolling Stone magazine tacked to the wall. He's looking at me with that face he makes, incredulous, eyebrows raised, and every time I glance up I imagine he's saying "You better keep working, kid. You better work, right now." I have a copy of Dominique's book on top of a stack I keep at my desk, along with the memoirs of Tina Fey and Mindy Kaling. I read a few pages when I feel discouraged, and I remember being at that conference room with all the other people in my field, and I think about Lisa saying "Yeah....I read your blog. I really like your blog."

It's so simple. I just want to write things that people want to read.

The Upper South of Lower West Houston

 Have you ever planned a trip to New York City? If so, than you have experienced the barrage of people demanding that you visit a certain restaurant, or theater, or street corner, for the sake of their nostalgia. Everybody is an expert on the hottest spot to visit: people who used to live there, people who have friends and relatives who live there, people who visited there once, people who switched flights in Laguardia, people who watched one episode of Sex and the City, once, in 2001. "I'll tell you what, you've just got to go to---" (Fill in the blank. Magnolia Bakery, the Margarita Mill in Mid-town, Crab Dungeon on lower 53rd in East Harlem.) And some of them get really pushy about it. "Call me when you're there! Call me! Ask for Louis, in the kitchen? Yeah, tell him I say hi and then both of you call me, together!"

I know it's just excitement, good intentions on their part. But I want to say, 'Listen, that sounds fantastic. When we go to New York together you can take me there. But on my own, the chances of my finding that place and eating that particular bagel at that particular window table are slim. Mischa Barton slim. Calista Flockhart slim. Not from lack of desire, but because I don't know my way around that place.'

I mean, I'm still trying to figure out what exactly a Borough is, and if there is any correlation between a borough and an island. To me, as to any New York rookie, all those villages sound like Ben Stiller's fictitious neighborhood where he throws his VIP Halloween Blow out,  SoWoHoBeLowHoWo. South of West Houston Below Lower Hoboken, Woah. Which, when found on a map, turns out to be in the middle of the Husdon river.

However, things are considerably different when you share an obsession with somebody. A few days before I left, I saw a show at the Intiman theater in Seattle Center called Build Your Own Musical. It's an improvised musical with choreographed dancing and singing numbers and everything. After the show I met the lead performer, Paul, who kindly offered to get together and give me the inside take on the Seattle improv scene.

It turns out that Paul used to live in New York as an actor. Among his many insights about life in the city, ("Don't try to throw a potluck. Nobody knows what that is.") he suggested that I check out the PIT- People's Improv Theater. Sometimes, he explained, they'd even pick a name out of a hat and call up a member of the audience to perform with them. (Don't get your hopes up, that didn't happen.)

 So, of all the recommendations I got from homesick East Coasters or disillusioned Ex New Yorkers who "Really can't stand that city except the cigarette shop on-----", the only one I held onto was the PIT.

When I arrived at Peter's apartment that first morning,  I mentioned offhandedly that I wanted to see an improv show while I was in the city. Peter said, "Talk to my roommate, he's an improv guy!" And on cue his roommate,  a clean cut Tarron Killam look alike, appeared at my side.

"My show is playing tonight at the PIT." He said, handing me his card. "There will be 2nd City guest performers and SNL writers there. I'll put you on the guest list."

I can't tell you how excited I was to hear PIT, 2nd City and SNL Writers in one sentence, and that the sentence ended with "guest list."

My first night in New York and I'm guest listed! VIP! Like a supermodel! Here that, all the boys who have broken up with me and old bosses who used to tell me I did a consistently bad job mopping the kitchen floor? Guess what! I'm on a guest list!

I don't see your sorry names on any guest list!

The PIT is a bar, lined with curtain and doors that all lead to multiple downstairs theaters. Different shows happen at all times inside the theaters. It made me think of a complicated bird house where all the birds are on different tracks going in and out at the same time. The bar was full to capacity, with loud music and people dressed in black and colorful drinks. You know, bar stuff. 

I met up with Julius Constantine Motal at the theater. Julius Constatine Motal could easily be the name of my fictitious photographer friend who's always available to go to shows with me on a whim. It's close to the truth, only he's a real boy. He writes for Soul Pancake, and we've been collaborating for a year and a half without ever having met in person. We saw the show together, a number of one act plays all in various styles of theater and authorship, all improvised.

After the show, Julius Constantine Motal and I went to a little upstairs Japanese place and drank beer and ate blackened quail eggs off tiny spears. It was past midnight, but the energy out on the streets seemed to just build and build and build. We talked about fiction and Soulpancake and writing and did a lot of banging our beer glasses down on our table for emphasis. After that we found a convenience store for ice cream which seemed bizarrely fun and spontaneous and hip, even thought it was just a convenience store. Then Julius saw me to the subway, and once again I shot through the city underground and got home at 1:30 in the morning.

When handsome, red-cheeked Peter came home from his Studio a little while later, we watched an old episode from Saturday Night Live in his bed and then I fell asleep. I don't remember exactly how, only that one minute I was laughing, the next minute I was dreaming, and I think after the TV was off Peter asked, "So how was your first day?" but I was already asleep.

A string of small, fortuitous events

On my first day in New York I stayed with my friend Peter, a boy three years older than me who grew up in the next town over from mine in Vermont. Peter graciously allowed me to stay at his neat little Park Slope apartment, and I do mean neat, as in tidy. Him and his two roommates were somehow able to pack everything they need- a functional living room, a decent kitchen, computers and beds and bikes, plus a dash of style into cramped, three bedroom apartment. I was instantly envious of the place. Peter was running out the door when I arrived and he gave me his only set of keys. "Just be home when I get back from the studio, probably....I don't know....1:30 in the morning?" Then he jumped on his bike and took off.

Peter is where handsome, flannel-clad Vermonter meets Pratt school of design. He has the most naturally flushed cheeks of everyone I've ever met, as if he exists in a constant state of apres-ski. He's all health and vitality and hipness, and maybe I would have searched through his clothing drawers to find his dark secret but I was too tired. It was nine in the morning and I fell asleep immediately on his bed. 

What happened that first day in New York, after I woke up refreshed and put on and a killer pair of tall boots, was a string of small, fortuitous events. I will regale them to you henceforth.

First there was the perfect place to eat I found on the corner of something and something in Brooklyn, and the bartender who gave me all my drinks for free. He talked to me about his projects as a Foley artist and we worked out a game plan for me if I decided to move to the city; what jobs I could take, where I could consider living, and so forth. "You really should consider moving to Brooklyn," he said as I was putting on my jacket to leave. "It's so feasible, you'll love it."

I took the train into the city and smartly stepped off at the wrong station. In that moment I learned a valuable lesson: time, space and math, all things that I had considered to be concrete elements of the world, are very, very altered in New York. To give a specific example, avenue 6 is woefully far away from avenue seven, and although they run parallel, they also intersect at random intervals.

Bewildered and already running late for the first event of the writer's conference, a Meet and Greet at the Hilton bar, I flagged a taxi. There was a little television set inside the taxi. On the screen, a reporter was interviewing a scientist. The scientist, white coated and safety goggled, was explaining something and holding up a frothing test tube at the camera. Then he lowered his goggles and pulled a lever that caused a row of pumpkins to explode in a chain reaction. I leaned a little closer. 'That's funny,' I thought. 'I think I know that guy.'

I did know that guy. The white coated man was Bob Pflugfefelder, the science teacher from my days at the Learning Project in Boston, a small, profoundly liberal little elementary school where we called our teachers by their first names and the sex education began the first day of first grade. Bob, as it turns out, has now become "Science Bob" and lives in Hollywood, tutoring Hillary Duff and that kid from Malcom in the Middle and popping up on shows like Jimmy Kimmel Live.

I absolutely saw this a gesture from the universe, beckoning me with a godly hand towards New York. Or at least the entertainment industry.
 
I arrived at the Hilton's gilded, bustling lobby twenty minutes late. It was another ten minutes before I found the right bar.  Due to my tardiness, the social groups inside the meet and greet were already firmly established. Women with name tags were standing in small, tight clusters, occupying leather seats and packed shoulder to shoulder around the bar.

I didn't know one person, not one single writer in the whole mix. I realize that for most people, this sort of situation would set the alarm bells of social anxiety peeling, but not me. In my world, free food and no obligation to talk to anyone is just about as good as it gets.

As I'm sure it will not surprise you, I can get a little carried away at social gatherings. At a recent housewarming party where my three roommates and I hosted an elaborate set up with a front yard barbecue, in-house Oktoberfest with 100 types of beer and outdoor fire pit in the back yard, I spent the entire evening trying to get one bun for my one hot dog. But with the constant stream of new people to act welcoming towards, getting from Point A: hot dog off grill in front yard, to point B: bun inside bag on kitchen counter, proved impossible. For the duration of the party I entertained  my guests while holding a cold hot dog skewered on a fork. I was terribly hungry. I never made it to the kitchen until the next morning, when in the harsh light of day it was revealed that all the food was gone, gone to much less social, much luckier people than I.

So tonight, at this fancy bar in this fancy hotel in the fanciest city in the world, I straight skipped over the social responsibilities and went right for the food.

And boy or boy, did I hit the food. I hit the food hard. Those trays of crab puffs and chive squares and bruchetta never saw me coming. I lunged at the cocktail waitress with the Chicken Satay. I threw 'bows. Overcome with a sugar and contact high that I misconstrued as a sense of freedom and unflappability, I threw caution to the wind and ordered three rounds of my signature drink, the Shirley Temple. I could have put on an air of haughtiness and cringed my way through a Manhattan or a dry martini but who did I have to impress? No one! I wanted grenadine and ginger ale to go with my shrimps and, by the glory of God I was going to get it.

And in the end, some of the women did talk to me and it was pleasant. I mean, I'm constantly hungry but I'm not a monster.

An hour later my friend Zach, who I used to spend holidays with in Seattle, picked me up at the Hilton and we walked a few blocks down the avenue of the Americas. He took me to eat (that's right, eat) at a lovely Vietnamese place where everything was shaded light green. "If you want to stay in New York, our couch is yours." He said, emptying a bottle of beer into my glass. "You can stay there as long as you want while you're looking for a place to live."

Zak offered to walk me to the theater where I had tickets to see a show, which was good of him because I had no idea where I was. We were waiting for the light to change somewhere in ...Midtown? Maybe? There were a lot of tall buildings? when another small, fortuitous event occurred. Right there on the street corner in the throngs of people, I ran smack into my friend Kelley.

I had tried to make plans to get together with Kelly, an old friend from Vermont, but unfortunately our schedules were complete opposites. It was looking like meeting up was going to be impossible, which was disappointing because she's enormously successful and she works for a company called Trip Films I was very curious about. Trip Films sends her to different countries around the world where she eats local delicacies and films sharp, funny little TV segments. She has perfect bone structure.

And we just happen to walk right into eachother.

We walked a few blocks together, and after the initial thrill of coincidence subsided she asked, "So, why the interest in moving to New York?"

"Because I want to write for SNL." I told her. I know how this sounds. It's like saying, "I want to move to DC because I want to be president." Most people respond with the same tone they use to tell little kids in halloween costumes how scary they are. But I think in Kelley's world, things like that are actually possible. "That's great," she said with sincerity. "My best friend was a writing assistant for SNL. We were both NBC pages." (In case you didn't know, becoming an NBC page is famously more difficult than getting into Harvard.)

"Well," She said, "This is where I catch the subway. You ought to make videos for Tripfilms. We'll pay you!" And then she hugged me and, like a dream sequence in a sitcom, she melted away.

And then I arrived at the Pit, the People's Improv Theater, which is something I'll tell you about in the next episode. So please, don't touch that dial, we'll be right back.

How does she do it?

Before I leave my home in Seattle for another city, I always have a little panic about what to wear. I know that what I consider to be a wardrobe here in the Pac NW wouldn't even begin to count as a wardrobe for anyone else who lived in any city, anywhere. Seattle's just that out of it relaxed.

So the night before I left for New York, I mined my friends' closets for clothes that would make me look hip and pulled together. I may never be on the cutting edge, but at least I can up there somewhere, maybe a few strides back from the edge, behind the safety railing, but still with a nice view. I brought home a nice haul of sweaters, legging, boots and layering pieces and threw them onto a pile in my bedroom, thinking I'd go through and sort out which outfits I'd wear on each day of my trip. I never got around to that. The stress of trying to predict my mood and what the weather would be for each day was too overwhelming. So instead I brought everything. I also had this idea, for some reason, that it was going to be extremely cold so I brought along a few extra jackets. The next day I threw it all in my giant trekking backpack and checked it onto the airplane.  I felt pretty good about it.

Then something horrible happened upon my delayed, 2 AM arrival. They gave it back to me! To take! This enormous backpack with things strapped on the outside was just sitting there, waiting there to be collected. It was then, in the harsh light of the Newark airport, that I realized my huge mistake. I had to run all around the city with this load. How would I fit into cafes? How would I stroll? The whole trip was going to be crushed under the weight of my own vain attempt to look appropriate.

You know those girls who own simple, elegant outfits for travel,  and they bring them around in little suitcases that roll? They don't own shirts or pants, they own 'pieces.' Most of their pieces are black and can be rearranged into any combination of business, formal, cocktail, casual. I'm not that girl. My 'pieces' are for sitting around, winter hiking, and attending funerals, and never the three shall be mixed and matched.

How do they do it, these elegant girls? These are the same girls, I'll bet you anything, that sleep in tight tank tops with satiny trim. I own a number of those sleep tanks, but they're not actually for sleeping. Everyone knows that. They're for wearing around when a boy is over in the evening, so that he'll think you're the girl that falls asleep cute and wakes up peppy. But who actually goes to bed in those things? I wear a big t-shirt and then I kick off my pants in the middle of the night. Guaranteed.

In any case, my attempt to blend as a New York gal on the go totally backfired. Instead of this:

I got this:

On the early morning train from Newark to Midtown to Brooklyn, I was all teetery and pushed around and in the way. I couldn't sit down because my bag wouldn't fit in my lap. My shoulders hurt. And I was sweating. 

There was only one way for me to turn this around. I decided that I was a visual arts major from Cooper Union and this 'situation' was my performance art. I'm constantly reinventing myself in little ways, so as the train made its many, many stops, I thought up little details for Cooper Union me. I was in my third year, I had a slight Adderall problem, and somewhere in the upper west side I shared a loft with my androgynous boyfriend who rode a bicycle. This morning's performance: A rumination on the Burden of Life and the Baggage We Carry.  By Melina Coogan copyright 2011.

So, yeah, in the end, I think I pulled it off.

I always pull it off. 

I'm a hero.

How television brought me to New York City

 At some point towards the end of the summer I began a relationship with comedy television. Saturday Night Live, Jimmy Fallon, Louis CK, Tina Fey, The Lonely Island boys. I spent nights watching shows, taking volumes of mental notes on what's funny, what's not, what causes some skits to work and some skits to flop. I read a huge book about the history of Saturday Night Live called Live from New York. It's around 500 pages of excerpts from writers and performers, and I read it in four days, calling my dad from time to time to discuss Belushi and Akroid and Chevy Chase's unwelcome return as host.

I took my dog on walks that lasted for hours, circling the muddy hole in the earth that used to be a duck pond out in Lake City. The dog chased the last of the late-molting, lamenting ducks as I listened to Moth podcasts and the Tobolowski Files, stories of Hollywood and the entertainment industry. Comedy television, and television related books and podcasts, replaced my former interests of eating, exercise, and friendship.

I was raised without a TV. My family didn't own one. I passed my years of kid hood playing with blocks, reading books, and building forts. I was a good student, killed it in extra-curricular activities and demonstrated robust social skills. I don't mean to brag, but I did win the Jump Rope for Heart all school competition at Pomfret Elementary and was elected mayor of the treefort village my fifth grade class constructed behind the playground. So yeah, back then, God did give with both hands. But all of these wholesome activities away from the television were setting me up for failure. The type of failure that befalls macrobiotic-raised kids when they grow up and discover cake. A sugar soaked free-for-all followed in no time by morbid obesity.

A cautionary tale: my sister and I playing outside in Vermont, haplessly missing vital programming on The Children's Network.

Even after high school when I could exercise free will, I remained abstinent. Through college and for quite a few years after, I remained that person who shook my head when there was a TV in a restaurant and said things like, "I wish I could tell that waiter to turn that thing off and do us all some good!" And now, thanks to Hulu and Youtube mixed with frequent periods of unemployment, I've finally arrived. About 22 years behind everyone else. I go to work and say things like, "Did you guys see that SNL sketch about Monica Lewinsky? Hilarious!"

As the hours of SNL piled up behind me and my climbing muscles atrophied, I comforted myself with my involvement in Soul Pancake. A year ago last summer, I discovered The Office. I rented a big stack of The Office DVDs and some confetti cake mix boxes as ammunition against a heart wrenching break up. I had no job, no place to live and very little direction. As I saw it, my only purpose to be on earth was to take care of my 2003 Subaru Outback, which I considered to be my one meaningful possession. Also my dog.

Alone in Vermont, I spent each day hiking to the same field, and all evening watching The Office. Or maybe I spent each day reading US magazine and all evening watching The Office. But if that were true, then where did this photo come from? 

Either way, to my utter surprise, I was very happy. Inappropriately happy, given my pathetic young life.

After I'd watched all the Office episodes and all the Office episodes with commentary, I started searching for information about the show on the Internet. Because I'm creepy and I'll turn the Internet inside out to get the info I want. The search led to Rainn Wilson, who caught my attention because he went to University of Washington, my Alma mater. That led to Soulpancake, which led to me becoming a writer for Soulpancake, which recently led to Oprah. So, that went well.

By the way, here's a never before seen photo of Rainn, Holiday and me. Pretty awesome, huh? What a great eyebrow I have.

So back to the current fascination. This time around, it wasn't a writing job that came out of my online trolling, it was improv. After a thorough background check of all current cast members of SNL, it was revealed that improv, in particular Second City in Chicago, the Groundlings in LA or Improv Olympics in New York, was the preferred ticket to studio 8H. So I signed up for an improv class here in Seattle. And that led to real live interactions with other humans and a talented, caustic, darkly hilarious teacher who'd studied at Second City. Tuesday nights were given over to little backstage classrooms, acting games and laughter shared with 20 other people, which is admittedly nicer than laughter alone under the covers with a computer. 

Improv was great but as always, I like to take things to the next level. Of course you've read my insightful, poignant piece "Ten Levels Of Everything". Here's an addendum:

Level Eleven:
At level eleven, you become in expert in wanting something so bad that you become totally miserable. You make huge life decisions based on goals that are almost guaranteed to be unobtainable. You prefer listening to music tracks on repeat for hours, if not days, at a time. Orange juice mixed with beer replaces coffee for your morning beverage.  

I'm totally the mayor of level eleven. At two in the morning when I close my laptop after a couple hours of 30 Rock I never think, Sleep time! I think, I must move to New York. I start worrying over real estate. Fortunately, in a rare moment of clarity, I decided I should first visit New York before looking for a sub-letter for my room. 

When I saw that BlogHer and Penguin Publishing House were hosting a writing conference in New York City, I jumped at the opportunity. I signed up before I had the money to pay the registration fee.

This is where my good luck began. I announced here on my blog that I was going to this conference and if anyone was thinking of donating, now would be a fantastic time. And they did! Donations from readers covered a good portion of the registration fee. Then BlogHer wrote me and said they were offering a discount on the conference and I got the rest of the money back. Now there was the plane ticket to New York to grapple with. For this I had no answers, no plans except finally taking out a credit card. Then one morning, just as I was beginning to panic, a reader emailed me and said he'd like to give me his frequent flier miles to get to New York. And just like that, I had a flight. A non-stop flight, by the way.

To the extent that I write about scrape ups and rejection letters and being mistaken for a midget, I do recognize the great fortune in my life. How heartening it is to have people support me like this.

So, I was off to New York. I had this idea that if good luck found me during my visit, I'd start making plans to move. I didn't think this would happen; I thought for sure I'd get squashed by the city, lost in the subway, elbowed in the face, run over by a truck. But, just to make life utterly confusing, good luck turned on like a faucet the moment I touched down in Newark. For five days I found myself in a pile of roof top parties and impossible coincidences. I shot through the city in a daze, rode beneath Manhattan and over the bridge to Brooklyn, met with agents and editors, ate little spears of quail eggs with other writers, saw live improv and collapsed each night in the tiny apartment of a handful of friends across the city.

New York! I'll be the first to admit, I never saw this coming.

New York!

I'm writing it! My articles are done, my fiction assignments are in, and now I'm writing about New York. Check back in soon.