Having just watched the Olympics and being enthralled with the sprinters and basketball, and especially the amazing performances of Sha'carri Richardson & all the great female runners, I was reminded of a memory that has stayed with me for over 50 years. Junior high was a pretty awful time for me, as I'm sure it is for a lot of people, and I dealt with the horrors and rejections of that time with journalling, compulsive drawing all day in class, and with intoxicating romantic fantasies of running away from my life.

I always had a close friend or two who made life more bearable & feel really grateful for that, but I was left out of all school activities outside of the classroom. I loved the idea of being in sports, but did not have family support to be on a team (ie: driving me to practice or events) so had to be content with whatever was on offer in gym class. I always loved running, but was slow. I ended up jogging for exercise and running 10Ks in my teens and 20's, and that was very satisfying. But the sharp memory from junior high is when I was on a relay team. I remember standing in my gym suit on the track, either right before or after the event and having this feeling that was brand new to me. I felt immense pride for myself. I felt like I belonged and was a part of something bigger than myself. I felt not alone. I felt connected to a web of interconnectedness I can only think of as belonging. I felt as if I had risen out of isolation and belonged to a class of something I desperately wanted to be a part of: a tribe.

I don't remember the race, how I got on the team, or even if we won or not. I just remember standing there feeling very proud, and there were bleachers of kids and I was the one on "stage".  I could see how this might seem like such a strange thing to be emblazoned in my heart to those who got to be in lots of school activities and played sports all the time, but for someone who wasn't allowed to do any activity that I couldn't get myself to on my own, I got a glimpse into what accomplishment and pride felt like. And I have spent my whole life since then making sure that I am always doing something in my life that feels like an accomplishment or stirs up feelings of personal pride.

During pandemic I watched the Last Dance (10 part Michael Jordan series on Netflix) and have been obsessed with sports documentaries ever since - partial to NBA stuff mainly. I went down the wormhole of all the great players, even watching all of their hall of fame acceptance speeches. 

One of the best things to come out of the sports watching obsession is that it bonded me with my step dad in a new and delightful way. He has been a lifetime sports fan, and I had never watched a game with him, and now when I visit we watch all kinds of sports documentaries and just watched the Olympic events that we both enjoy together. I watched Sha'carri's amazing final leg of the women's 4X100 relay where she bolts up from 5th place to win the race, and obsessed with that shot of her looking over to see where the other runners are as she blazes by them to win gold. The final shot of her, rain soaked and roaring like a champion makes my inner 12 year old misty eyed & happy. You Go Girl! I know people who hate sports and poo poo it like it's for dim bulbs but I totally 100% get why people are like Swifties for NBA or whatever sport they are into. I'm one of you.

So at 63 years old the only thing I do is try and get several miles of walking in a day. I don't feel right if I dont do it, even when it is 100+ degrees outside. I also paint, write, and make beautiful knitted things, and go on a big trip to wonderful chilly countries every summer.

But the shows about personal excellence and championship resonate with me for two reasons: I have the experience of what that is like from learning how to ski at 47, and of having worked hard for my Antarctic life. The other reason is that it pulls me out of traumatic or painful realities. This past year was one of the most challenging of my adult life.

I started hanging out with someone - got a crush on them pretty hard, and then it turned into an obsession/addiction to them. Without going into too much detail, I had entered a feeling state that was brand new to me, matched only by my euphoric experiences in the Antarctic, a place I was so in love with. With this person I felt so happy and alive and for the first time in a really long time, that I had found something I wanted to commit myself to for my lifetime. The way I felt around this person was something I'm not sure I can describe, but it was something akin to feeling like I had arrived home after 60 years of trudging through a dry hot dusty desert...I had landed in the warm and loving and much needed embrace of the thing I had been searching for all of my life. Here it was: the happiness I had been chasing after. I had had many boyfriends and a husband, but this was something totally different - I felt I'd met my soulmate.

We didn't spend but a few months hanging out but it quickly became and anxious/avoidant deal where I was either euphoric during our hang outs, or in tears during his pullback which felt like extreme abandonment. I did all the things: intensive therapy, hired a new life coach, went to tons more AA meetings to work the steps on my codependency and addiction to try and keep myself sane during the relationship, but he eventually ditched me late July 2023 and I was barely able to function until we reconnected in Nov-Dec of that year, with things falling apart after a terrible time during out last hang out in December. He contacted me a few times in January of this year about a show I was having, and our last phone call was Jan 16th, the day of my one person show that he had helped me with. Hearing his voice made me fall into the swirl and want to reconnect, but he said he was going to bow out of hanging out with ANYONE, and was going to go underground to deal with his depression or whatever.

I did my show that night and he didn't come, and I decided to go off social media for a month and just paint and do major self care. A few weeks later I looked at fb during intermission at a play and saw tons of posts of him hanging out with this girl and them doing lots of fun stuff tougher and her raving about HIM and tagging him in a bunch of stuff. I fucking plotzed like hell. I went into shock and went into numb zombie mode and left he play and went home and studied their socials and ended up contacting her for a "hang" to find out info. What I nightmare I put myself through during the time I interacted with her. I was very honest with her that I had been madly in love with this person who was now her friend and not mine, and he just kept reassuring me that they were pals and there was no crush or flirty stuff on either side. It didn't matter. No amount of her soothing me about her relationship with him prevented me from knowing the cold hard fact: that he was pursuing her company and not mine. That he had replaced me with her. She wanted so much for us to be good friends and really close, and it was making me so sick to even text with her...I was still in shock and obsession while I was dealing with her, and finally decided to pull away for good and went no contact.

So here it is 6 months later, and she finally contacted me after a few months of not hearing from her. I didn't respond to her, but the timing of it was interesting as I had peeked at their socials and knew he had just gotten back from a trip and was about to be on stage with their mutual friends. I had gotten a lot of advice and decided not to write her back. I went to my parents house in Houston and on Sunday morning after the show he was in I looked at IG and there was several pics of them hanging out together having fun (an important piece of info is that the last time we spoke in May she had told me she thought he was a yucky person and wasn't going to be friends with him anymore. She said she would give him up for me (WTF) but I told her I would just go away, which I knew might reinforce their friendship as she is totally dependent on people for rides, and he loves racing to pick up a girl). She also knew that me seeing photos of them together on fb made me insane with grief, so she said she would not post them anymore. I had unfollowed but not unfriended them so I could keep track of what they were doing so I wouldn't run into them.

Back to a few days ago when I saw the pics of her at his show and them doing fun things - I grabbed my phone (the obsession was reignited) and decided to write her back and said I could not be friends with her as they were hanging out and I was not over it yet. I should have left it at that, but we got into a big knock down drag out via texting where she got very butt hurt and defensive and my butt hurtedness caused me to play the victim card. After several hours of this and us apologizing, I deleted her from my phone, and went to fb to unfriend them. She had already unfriended me (knowing she was going to be posting about them) so I unfriended him as I knew that it was really, completely over. I was closing the door on any potential relationship or contact with him.

When I hit that unfriend button, I was filled with a sense of freedom and acceptance, but underneath it was the deep realization that there was a part of me that was still holding on to hope...hope that he would miss me and contact me again, that he was looking at my page, that he was in some way still wanting to possibly see me. When I saw that he immediately wanted to see HER when he got back from his long trip, it was the final nail in the coffin for me. As a mega-scorpio, the revenge fantasies are so violent and over the top, and my jealousy so intense, that if I didn't have a spiritual program the outcome of this could have been very bad (someone dead or in jail). The love addiction literature describes this in detail, and I fit it 100%.

I didn't realize how much this situation still held a constant little stream of drama for me until I unfriended him. It was a big choice, but totally provoked by her statement that "he is my friend" that was like a twisty knife in my heart. I was like fuck this shit I am fucking DONE with the both of you.

I parsed the entire texting dialogue with a friend and she said the one thing that is still the most baffling part of it all: why, out of all the people in this giant city that she could be friends with, does she want so badly to be friends with ME?!??! Especially when I have explained in great, painful detail how much it hurts me that they are friends and he has no desire for contact with me. Well, fuck her. And fuck him too. I know that is not the spiritual way to be, but for right now it is the appropriate way for me to feel in the situation so that I cannot possibly romanticize him anymore. The obsession with him morphed into an obsession with THEM and with HER. This has been the ghastly theme of the last year and a half of my life and now I am done.  It's never taken me more than a month or two at the most to get over any relationship...this was something I'd never been through before. It will be very interesting to see what beautiful thing is birthed out of it. I can only imagine that it is my own fucking freedom!

So I don't think it was an accident that I was obsessed with this young lady and her bad-assery, heart and grit and she roared across the finish line. I will ditch these two humans I let destroy my serenity and self esteem, and roar forward towards my own future, fighting the most destruction addiction that has ever enslaved me...

Sha'Carri Richardson!

1987

My life was starting to unravel...or more truthful: it had completely unravelled and I was scraping bottom, but my bar was so low that I didn't see how far down I had gone until my only option was to move far away and to be with the one nurturing person I knew. I sometimes romanticize this period of my life and there were some soaring moments, but underneath it was the beginning of the end of a 16 year jag of what I thought was the true meaning of "fun."

I had graduated college in 83 and moved to NYC the next day. The year and a half in NY has been written about previously on this blog, and it is a harrowing report - I'm just really glad I survived it. I had a caring boyfriend during that time, and that is always what has gotten me through my life until I turned 50 - from the age of 17 I always had a loving, nurturing boyfriend as a web of support that I didn't realize I had until now that I have been single for years. Because of the support I didn't have from family, I needed it badly to help me get through life and it usually showed up as a devoted boyfriend. So thankful to have had that...

So summer of 1987 became increasingly bleak...I had broken up with my boy scout boyfriend for a guy who buzzed by me on a skateboard while I was getting drunk in the afternoon at Les Amis cafe in Austin. I saw this beautiful boy and decided to gamble everything, so dumped K. the next morning over the telephone and went over to Skatbeoy's house for very awkward hang out with no connection or simpatico. K was devastated and his mother was dying of cancer and I spiraled down into wasterville, stopped going to my job, stopped seeing the skate boy, and met another man who would be my rock for the next couple of years...but I had to run away as that seems to be built into my DNA as how I escape escalating problems I didn't know how to deal with.

So I packed up everything I owned in my Hondamatic Civic (looked like a helmet on wheels) and drove to Omaha NE to be with a friend who I bonded with in a fierce way on a summer trip to Ireland in 1984. We met through a mutual friend and both fell in love with boys on the Dingle Peninsula and had the most magical and romantic (and drunken) 6 weeks ever. I went back to NYC where I was living and she went back to Houston where she was in college (but her home was Nebraska). We NEVER stopped talking and writing and dreaming about going back to Ireland. Not necessarily to be with those boys but we LOVED Ireland and made a serious plan to move there. I moved back to Austin in 85 and she moved back to Omaha a year or so later. By 87 my life was going nowhere and I had a boyfriend that I as in love with but felt I HAD to take this chance to follow a really big dream. The sweet guy I had dumped earlier that year drove with me as far as Topeka KS and then I headed to Omaha on my own....looking at a paper map and Julie's hand written instructions from a letter. I pulled up into the old craftsman house's driveway and we gleefully reconnected. We went downtown and drank in the Irish bars and I loved the old brick streeted downtown.

I don't know how long I lived in Omaha but it was only a few months...a giddy, vodka soaked few months of singing Irish songs and driving downtown to pubs and working the worst jobs at call centers, merry maids, etc. J was serious about moving to Ireland and she did it - I was a coward and moved back to Austin to be with my guy. I never forgot about my cowardice and giving up on a dream so avowed to myself that I would not ever do that again. It took 17 years but I got a bigger and better dream and went for it. Loyal readers have read reams about that!

Even though the move to Nebraska was brought about by spiraling downward circumstances, that few months of 1987 remains one of my fondest times. I don't know if I have a long post about Nebraska, but I'll rifle through these blogs and see if there is one. Criminals I just did an extremely satisfying post about one special day in 1984 when I lived in Rego Park Queens. Nebraska deserves a novella.

Sixty Two

 I just read a previous draft post and it seemed good enough to post! It's funny that I'll do these brain drain diary posts and they seems terrible when I read them...then a year or two later when I re-read them they are seem decent and insightful.

I have been off my game this past 6 months or so. Last August I went on a trip that was so fun I was euphoric for 3 1/2 weeks. Iceland, Greenland, Newfoundland (and all those places in Eastern Canada I love). I came back and was supposed to go to Taos, but just not ready to go on another big trip where I'd be eating a lot every day. I did something possibly insane: I had two weeks off before work started back up in Sept. I went out and bought a tiny house in the tiny house village about 20 minutes from where I was living. It felt wrong from the start, but I felt like I had to go through with it. My apartment I'd been living in was turning into an awful place to live...I knew I was going to have to move and wanted something totally new and different (as I have just read from my previous post I AM IN A RUT - and no wonder! I just read some Antarctic posts and no matter how hard I try to accept that they don't want me and I cannot get back, I want that lifestyle again. I want want want it. I just went on a cruise...wait, I need to end this sidebar and get back to my story...) so I saw this beautiful, pristine tiny home and bought it.

Now I'd been looking out there for several years so it wasn't a total impulse decision...what ended up happening is I could not adjust to how far away it was from everything I like to do. I was 9 miles from a grocery store and no restaurants around. Here, I can walk to everything. I can walk to grocery stores, restaurants, am a short bus ride to downtown, and am near EVERYTHING. It was just too strange out there...so not me...I would walk around the "village" and pretend to like it and care about everyone but I couldn't freaking stand being out there. I would drive into town every day and spend all day here and would feel despair if I spent any amount of time out there. The people out there were nice, but there it was like I had moved away from Austin, into some experimental community that just didn't work for me. And when I tried to force myself to be a part of it, I felt very sad, and like the best part of me was being crushed. The part that is urban to the core...that likes a total private and hidden living space...not having to interact with my neighbors if I don't feel like it. I moved into he tiny house in mid September and moved into my Hyde Park apartment on March 1st. So I spent around 5 months out there and every single day I KNEW I would be moving back into town. The apartment I am in is darling, perfect, quiet, in the heart of the best neighborhood (to me)...a neighborhood of old historic homes and funky old student apt. complexes. A neighborhood that I lived in for most of the 80's. This is my 5th address in Hyde Park, and exactly 40 years ago that I first lived in this neighborhood.

Every time I go on a walk here I feel the ghosts of my college years and the time I moved back from NYC. My first Hyde Park address was on 38th and Speedway in an old wooden 4 plex that is no longer there. It was at the height of my punk rock days, my last year at UT, the end of my relationship with Mike and beginning of the one with Steve. So many shows, so much booze, so much crank.

I moved to NYC in Fall of '83 and back to Hyde Park in Jan of '85. I lived at 43rd and Ave B in a tiny room attached to a large old house that I dubbed "hovel". I think the house is still there but my apt. may have been absorbed back into the house. Then I moved to a darling backyard house '86 on 49th and Caswell (that just got bulldozed) and set it up as a darling little cottage that I sewed in and my boyfriend Kenny stayed at most nights. That was a fraught time as I was trying to be a good girl and not go too off the rails with partying. I was jogging and running in races with Kenny, and we had a little domestic bliss thing going on, but then I'd start partying hard and would run off with other boys and live a double life, like I'd been doing in college: the good girl, bad girl thing. When I went full bore with the drinking, I'd find more boys and get into intense relationships with them and hide it from my stable guy at home. Eventually the stable guy thing would fall apart as I would train wreck my life by dumping him for some other dude and start the whole thing over again. I was going down a dark path and by summer of '87 I had decided to move to Nebraska to be with Julie and plan the move to Ireland. I had dumped Kenny for some guy I just saw on a skateboard and he turned out to be a dud. I stopped going to my job, was living at the dope man's house, and decided it was time to vamanos. All my friends had moved away. It was time for me. BUT, I had fallen in love with yet another guy before moving to Nebraska...

I was EUPHORIC in Omaha! It was like when I first moved to Austin (McMurdo, Portland, NYC, back to Austin). It was 4 months of the most insanely wild time with Julie and the Irish pubs downtown. I lived in her basement and did a bunch of stupid jobs and talked to Michael every night on the phone. Julie and I drank a LOT of vodka and she was very upset when I said I was moving back to Austin in November, but she said the good thing about me leaving is that I was turning her into an alcoholic (first hint!). I drove back to Texas in a snowstorm and Michael was waiting for me at the four seasons hotel in Dallas. We had a rapturous reunion and I came back to Austin with my tail between my legs as Julie went through with our dream of moving to Ireland (we had travelled there in '84 and fell in love with Irish boys and drank and screwed our way though the island...and had talked about moving there every day since). I got my first UT job in a horrible basement of a brutalist building and did the 8-5 thing in a windowless room while Julie went to Ireland. 

For the first time in my life I truly felt like I'd let myself down. My mother had thought I was a failure for not getting a job in film upon college graduation, but I moved to NYC which was a huge win for me so I knew I was no failure...with the amount of partying I was doing I knew I was winning, at least in the high functioning category. I would sit outside on my lunch hour and stare at the clouds in the sky dreaming of doing something fabulous with my life. It was 1987-88. It would be 17 years before that fabulous thing happened. In that 17 years would be many boyfriends, a husband and divorce, more boyfriends, many job changes at UT and the State, and in 1992 I quit partying for good. So in 2004, 20 years after that Ireland trip, I deployed to Antarctica, and had a life of joy and meaning beyond anything I could have ever imagined. I had it for 8 seasons, and I don't have it anymore. I just read some Antarctic blog stuff I wrote on my other blog and I ACHE for that life again. I'd give anything for it again.

Yes I am grateful for my sweet little life...but I was not built for a sweet little life.

Random stuff from a couple of years ago...now posting

 I have not been writing much and at all...and then I'll get a wild hair and read an old post and BAM! There it is...a magic sauce that comes from not me and transforms me in the doing of it - the Writing. The writing is something I have always done, from earliest memory. It was like my soul knew that it was the thing I had that could connect me to myself. I read a post from Skiing and Knitting this morning that was so good it took my breath away...I thought, did I write that? It is so good! And I wrote it how I am writing this and how I've always written everything: fast, free flowing and automatic...it just pours out of me and there is editing going on...but mainly I am trying to get to the vein of what I am trying to say...

I feel I've been in a rut for a few years. Either Covid or aging has made me less excited about things. Maybe that is good? To be more serene and peaceful...just to live an ordinary life and go to work and have my treats be these simple things I really enjoy: AFS, driving for early voting and Eday, my NYC & Taos trips, going to shows and seeing my new friends. Yes I have built an interesting Austin life! Post pandemic it seemed we were all so ready to connect...I fell hard for some dude who I never think about anymore, and that was several months of distraction, but something else is going on as well that is mysterious.

I seem to have low tolerance or interest in peoples b.s. anymore. I am happy enough with my own company and work conversations and talking to the poll workers but old friendships seem to be not as satisfying as they once were. The friendships feel like a rut...but then I feel like I really need them sometimes. I have a very confusing relationship with myself over romance - sometimes I think I really want it and other times I'm not interested at all...it may present itself right in front of me and it's just a big fat NO from the universe...

And yet, driving my Travis County van to the Flawn center fills me with joy every time. The building right next to the Tower, that was called the UGL when I was in school at UT, that building on that campus, that I am at for work reasons feels like one of my "homes". There's Austin, NYC, the Ice, and UT Campus...I have so many memories from that campus: the 4 years I was in school, the first job after moving back from Nebraska, then the many years of work there until 2004 - then Antarctica, Oregon, and a move back to Austin that had me temping at UT again and having a BLAST in the libraries and working with plants, and a weird clean out job at Psychology school, and the the UT Press, followed by Drew asking me if I wanted to be at Elections and I said yes! Elections led me back to being on the center of campus again.

Tonight I had my van parked at Flawn for two hours...the evening was cool and beautiful after a heavy rainstorm all day...ending my day at Flawn feels like coming home...the nostalgia is so big and so heavy...the Union, Cactus Cafe, meeting Erica on the west mall and grabbing the Chronicle too see where the Punk shows were. Mike M waiting for me every day after class...sitting in wonderful classes hearing amazing things and enjoying so much of what I was learning. The awful times with David F and hating him. 

But in the beginning was Richard R who I met in his Plan B English class when he was a brilliant 17 year old prep school dropout. I was wearing my Elvis Costello glasses and a tie, and my friend said I have a guy you should meet - it was instant, I fell hard, we hooked up and were lovers and in love. We were in NYC at the same time over X-mas break...I went every X-mas to see Gary and be in NY over New Year's. We met at Elaine's, because that's where Woody hung out. I wore a beret. We sat at the bar and I knew he was seeing his other girlfriend there. When he came back to Austin, where I had been thinking about him every single moment of every day, he dumped me first thing. He came to my Jester dorm room and said he was breaking up with me because he was in love with Arabella and had actually just been using me the whole time. But before that he had told me he loved me, and wanted me to say it back and I couldn't. He was a terrible lover but we hooked up over the years several more times...and then we'd visit in NYC when I'd visit later on..and there was that ridiculous time when he stayed at my Queens apt for a month or so and talked on the phone every night with his girlfriend back in Austin.

How strange to write all that and know that it all started 43 years ago...43 years ago I moved to Austin to be a freshman at UT and what a wild ride it has been...but I keep circling back to campus...a place I lived next to when was born, a place I came back to 18 years later for college, then many years of work, and now I drive there in a completely unrelated job by some freaking miracle...yes this campus is my home - and not because I was bleeding orange or involved in campus activities, sports, or even friends with any other students...this campus was the first place where I got to grow into myself and explore me..the first place I got to break free from my parents rules and be my own person. I was a wild drunken party girl who was also a talented student in some areas (absolutely clueless in math/sciences from day one)..those are ecstatic memories. I think I always tried to recreate that magic by changing jobs every year at UT trying to find that just right FIT and it never really worked...never really worked until I started temping and then now feels perfect as I'm just cruising in in my van and doing a service. I am servicing the polls. I get to see my friend James Thomas a lot. I get to see someone from high school whose life revolves around the campus also...especially west campus...oh those magical days of running around from Radkey Manor all over town. That was a God moment (1988), when I ran into Michael's friend who needed a roommate and it all fell into place. Another magic moment (2010) was when I went up and asked to be duty fork operator and Todd said YES and gave me a contract. And going to NYC at 18 for the first time...going to Europe at 17 for the first time...my life feels like it was designed for me, like it is not random...this beautiful life was designed for me...and I've had so much fucking fun...nyc with Kate, my 25th aa birthday...the cruises with mom, the cruises with myself and with sober people...the super fun job I have now...the fun people I've met: Dana Norman, Paul Rodden et al...the first few years post divorce -wow!

Cowboy

It had been an epic summer of vaccinated fun going out to clubs and seeing bands and meeting cool guys who I really connected with...first there was R at Hole in the Wall and he gave me load of attention and told me how beautiful I was..then there was the tall tattooed German at the next gig who we had an intimate and juicy 3 hours of talking with and he gave me his card. I was perforing in the Cinderella play and had a solo song that was spectacular and I was just beaming from how awesome it is to peform and be on stage...I was so joyful from the the production and all the love we got from the audience and my freinds that I met that I had absolutely forgotten about the German that I was hoping was more interested...but I didn't mind so much that nothing was happening with him...it just seemed every time I went out I met a really intersting guy and had a great interaction...after the incredible Slacker reunion show and two punk reunions shows and the princess play I thought, can it get any better than this??? ...and then it got a whole lot better - I went to the second performance of the princess play and I was not really looking forward to it that much - there was a big Hickoids show afterwards that I was not planning on going to, but after the fun of the play and how alive and awake I felt I knew I wasnt ready to go home and saw the the venue for the show was only 3 mintues away! I drove to the show and heard my band and decided just to go for it and go in - very dressed up in my tight jeans and silk blouse and lots of makeup...I excitedly greeted friends and guys were all over me telling me how beautiful I was...I was watching the band, enjoying myself standing alone and felt a presence behind men - a man (or some men) had planted themselves behind me and I turned around and started talking to them as Chris Burns was talking to them...one was this tall gorgeous cowby with boatloads of swagger...he was tall and manly and seemed so out of my league - the kind of man that I would never think would ever go for me..but I was chatting away happily and must have mentioned something about guys never flirting with me , and he said "Oh I'm flirting with you"...and I said you are! and I never left his side for the whole night...we talked, and Wylie acted a fool constantly coming up to me and saying stupid shit...and the Cowboy put his arm around me and held me close and I asked what he was doing and he said "affetion!" and I was still so baffled by what was happening...we hat that magical connectin that I have with F but this guy was available and wanting to go home with me (or maybe his idea was to go home with some girl that night)...but I asked him to walk me to my car and we passed by a photo booth and we went in and he started kissing me - romantically and passionatley kissing me...it went on and on and then he got bery handsy with me and it all was very fun but I noticed I didn't feel anyting physical with what was going on, I was just so agog with amazement that this beautiful creature wanted me that I was going along with it - he was treating me like I was this gorgeous desireable thing and it was just like a Cinderella moment that was just beautiful and magical and felt like the first time I was with Andy in ANtarctic after wanting him for SO LONG - God I wanted Andy!!! So I was very clear that I liked this guy - I really liked this guy...we had talked a lot and he was the real deal..so when he walked me to his car he reached out his hand and held mine in a grand gesture...it was So. Romantic. There was a full moon, there was a summer cool breeze...we both looked hip and cool and he asked if he could come home wiht me...he wanted to be with me....but no part of me was going to bed down with him...I just didn't want to....I drove home in a swirl and woke up the next morning and was in a LOVE JONES a Big Way...I abanoned my usual routine and my usual self to lay around and feel drunk on the love I felt we had cooked up...I went through the day and did my stuff and he texted me at 2:00 telling me how much fun he'd had...I texted back - heck yes!!! and he asked did I want to get together later to pick up where we left off...which I'm pretty sure meant sex...but if I'd had my wits about my I would have queried..later that day? Pick and do what? Was he asking me on a date? I already know the answer to that...I texted back that I was busy and could see him later in the week or the weekend but I wrote that text out of fear...then a week later I wrote, and yes I want to pick up where we left off"....but I think the moment had passed....night we met was so passioante and beautiful and he was still feeling it the next day and I pushed him off because I was so afraid he just wanted sex...and now I it's been almost two weeks and I havent heard from him and don't really expect to - I have obsessed over him....been giddy talking to my girlfreinds about him, but deep down feel sad about it - sad and angry that I've become someone who cant say yes to this unknown big gesture...maybe it would have been okay? But no part of me wanted to invite him to my house and me have to go through how unromantic it my vaginal sitch is...but I miss that girl! I miss that girl who alway said yes! Who could operate in the moment like that...but it is not me anymore...I could have no more said yes to him that night or the next day even if I'd forced myself...the last time I went against my body with Joel I felt horrible for days...my body said NO and it said it BIG!!! My body said no, but my heart if fully open for him if he decided he wants to get to know me...I need to be courted, and cherished, and takend out on dates...I need to be valued...but a part of me feels I missed out on soemthing beautiful...but did I? what we did have was truly, truly beautiful :-)

Crush

Around 1980 I was a wild party girl punker just living a wild and reckless life while keeping it together enough to stay in college. I dumped my high school boyfriend as soon as we got settled into the dorms and knew I wanted to be wild and free. And I wanted them all...some were one year boyfriends, most were flings with passion, some one-nighters, but I was so in love with my dream to moving to NYC upon graduation that that was the north star that steered me...that and my new affectionate relationship with my long lost father (who lived in NYC). But one night, Greg, the sweet guy I had dumped freshman year took me on a scooter to a party near downtown. Greg was big enough to still be my friend though I had hurt him badly, and we are still friends today. So I remember being drunk from being out at Raul's and Greg wanted to go to this party and it didn't sound cool to me but I went anyway and it felt too ritzy and buttoned up for me. I was used to skinheads and drunks in a dusty old wooden floored house with no furniture (we didn't sleep in those days) and a keg in the middle of the living room. I have snapshots of horrific things going on in these rooms sometimes - just real low brow for an uptight suburban girl like me (who liquor transformed into I'll do anything sort of girl). I remember an old mansion, dimly lit rooms, and then sitting down and seeing some lines being chopped on a plate. Yea, my kind of party. The person doing the chopping had very thick blond hair and even thicker coke bottle glasses. We partied, talked a little bit, and something happened to me: I become obsessed with him. I still have the diaries I wrote about him. I talked to everyone I knew to see if they knew him. I had someone bring me a giant San Antonio phone book so I could look him up. He has a common name so there were several M.S. to choose from. But somehow I found out the right one and sent him a dozen roses around Christmas time. Where I got the money for that I do not know. I didn't hear from him. Then one day a few months later I ran into him in a line at a bank. It was awkward and I felt strange, and we made a date - I'd probably had several boy toys by then but the hook was back in...M was here and was going to come pick me up for  a date. I was so terrified as I waited for him. I wouldn't drink because I was too nervous and when he knocked on the door and sat down on my couch he slapped his hand on my knee in an affectionate way and I about jumped of the couch. I was so nervous...I only got this way around guys I was obsessed with: mute, frozen, not knowing how to act. Completely the opposite of how I acted any other time I was around I guy I was hooking up with. We went someone on a date and he was driving terribly...it seemed like something was wrong with him and he said he was his glasses, but I finally figured out he was messed up! And it didn't seem like just alcohol he was on. So we had out date, he stayed over, I don't remember much else but he started hanging out with us in our punk rock squad of really rotten acting characters. We did some shitty things, stole stuff, threw molotov cocktails (I don't remember where) and just general trashing of people's apts. and yards. We were just into using the one car between us all a late nite weapon. I wasn't crushing on M anymore and was probably hooked up wth someone else but he liked the drugs so hung out with us but was older than us. My best friend always messed with my boyfriends so she knotted his shoelaces together when he was nodding out one night and when stood up they all got a big laugh out of it. No one from our group was spared practical jokes. Almost 30 years later I ran into M outside a SXSW film premier. I was in line and saw him and thought who...is...that...guy...and looked down at his badge and it was him and it all came rushing back. We caught up and he took me around on his Harley to shows and we ended up having a sweet sweet beautiful romantic hookup for a few months before I went back to the Ice. Yeah...some connections never die...

...and only come around a handful of times (or less) in a lifetime. So here I am pretty much single for a decade, with a few bits and bobs of dating thrown in, a month or two hangout with a guy here and there but basically BUPKUS for the 4 years I've been back in Austin. I actually had more of a dating life on hillbilly mountain in Oregon that I have here in this town where I know so many people...mostly old fucks. So I started working with someone and it happened again...the work ended and I went though withdrawal and was fine and now work started up and he's back. All I know is that I am thrilled to know that this giddy, sweet, über romantic and squishy side of me can still be awakened. I never meet a guy that I really like. And I met one that I really really like. But I can't have him, and that may make it even more interesting for me psychologically...but damn I want him.

Tommy (old draft just posted)

Deeply entrenched in the punk scene in Austin in the early 80's, I like a lot of chicks, wanted a really punk rock boyfriend. I had my square side still, but at night, lubed with liquor in those clubs, thrashing around to that 3 chord noise that can still blow out my solar plexus, I felt as punk as they come. I couldn't do the full on costume: the mohawk and safety pins through the cheek, but I was punk in my bones and that's all that mattered. Because I had such fragile self esteem when my buddy alcohol wasn't in my system, I usually had sweet, mild mannered boyfriends who made me feel safe. I had kind of a double life where I went to class during the day and drank and slam danced at night. One night at the club I met some boys who I hadn't seen before - they were all standing in a pack and I grabbed a beer out of one of their hands and swigged it, and the boy who I took it from said "you're the meanest girl in Austin." He went home with me that night and never left, and we lived together for the the remainder of my college days. He was one of the Vidor boys, a group of country boys who moved to Austin and moved straight into the punk scene and took it over. I swear, I've looked at thousands of photos of those days, and I am not in a single one of them even though I was at every show, but Tommy is every one of them, front row center, flying across the stage, totally engaged with the band. Tommy was not the boy I took home with me that night, but he was one of the pack of boys from Vidor that I soon fell for...he was my muse, the one I always wanted to be with, the one who I wanted and then he wanted me and I was too afraid to go all the way and be with him. We were from different worlds...he drank way way to much (the reason he is no longer alive), and there was too much chaos and drama around him. He lived on the knife's edge of junkiedom and homelessness and squalor, and I was a self hating obedient college student. We circled each other for almost 30 years...dear sweet Tommy. When I was getting divorced he was the only person I wanted to see...I lost 50 pounds and bought sexy mini-skirts and hung out at the 24 hour coffee shop across from he restaurant he worked at, waiting for him to get off at around 2:00am..me having gotten up at 6:30am and worked at my hideous office job all day, gone jogging after work then primped to go out and then sat and waited, and waited...all my friends started going home at 11:00, midnite, 1:00am...and then eye stabbingly bored, I still waited in my perfect tiny skirt and clunky heels and big red lips...waited in a boiling hot plastic chair on a cement porch for that kitchin smelling man to come meet me and whisk me away to his apt in South Austin. At around 3:00am we're on the couch watching tv with his roommate and he's drinking, and drinking...me in horror-ville, having been awake so fucking long, but waiting and waiting for that magical 5:00am time, when he's liquored up enough to get in bed with me and get on top of me...and he's sweet, and its terrible, but this is what I've been waiting for...the call of the muse wrecked my marriage and upended my life..the call of this sweet, broken drunken muse..who still calls to me, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to get back to him...the muse busted me from the prison of marriage...led me to back to Tommy, led me to S., led me to C....and then, led me to Antarctica. And most recently led me back to Antarctica after 4 years gone, and led me to A. - and a pain I couldn't reckon with. I knew how to handle past pains but this one sunk me. I'm ready to hear the call again, to follow again...

[deleted]...only to be recreated then. God this feels good to come back home to the writing...feels so good to come home to.

The Great Loves of My Life

Damn that last post was over two years ago and sometimes my own writing blows me away it is so good. I am glad I read it as I am still in this cabin considering moving back to Austin, or some other city I may go explore this year. Since I wrote that I have been back to Austin for a few days and that time was magical also. The dog died a few months after that posting and I immediately wrote to the Ice folks letting them know I was available, and lo & behold, I deployed last summer 2015-16 for a doozy of a season. What was so interesting about that season is that I took my loneliness and isolated self with me. People ran from me, and I didn't know why the fuck for. It was alarming and scary and sad...I coped as best I could, had some really good days and incredible work times and a magical trip to the South Pole, felt crushed when I left...and now almost a year later with no contract I am missing it terribly and feel very lost.

I have been single for 4 years....like straight up nun single almost, which is very unusual for me. I have been trying to date since I've lived in Oregon, but no one really interests me that I have met..and finally, through dialoguing with a mature man recently I find that I seem too much a free spirit for most men "our age" he said. Wheeeeee!!! This kind of filled me with bliss! I had been feeling sorry for myself and wondering what the heck I was gonna do with my life and feeling very very stuck and having this little bit of information (that I already knew anyway) seemed to set everything straight for me. I can go on, I can take risks, I can move, try some more cities, and if I don't like them I can keep moving along. Rootedness scares me, and I was lying to myself that I wanted a boyfriend in Oregon and it took a total stranger to remind me of that. Living in this cabin doesn't sit right with me all the time. My neighbors are all much older than me and the stuff they talk about is so not anything I am interested in - and when I talk about stuff I like they look at me like I just landed from another planet. So I was almost in a panic that romance was over for me when I got a real does of reality and some clarity during yoga today. Love and romance and being madly in love are something I am very well acquainted with and the problem I was having with my most recent dating snafu was that I was looking for love in all the wrong places. Yes I was looking for love with a MAN, which has never been the thing source of my joy & happiness and rich feelings in my soul. My Great Loves have been places and times and experiences. My first panting love was New York City...I remember every minute of every day I spent there from 1978 til I moved there in 1983. The courtship period was so heady and intense and I carried that spark in me til I moved there after graduation from college. I felt it again as if for the first time when I spent my birthday there in fall of 2014. I love her as much now as I did then. I had an explosive love with Ireland when I went there in the summer of 1984 and was obsessed with moving there for 20 years. But then I found my greatest love of all, which I'm sure I don't have to tell you what it is. Before I even went to her I was prepared to give up everything: job, boyfriend, home...and I happily did. And a few years into our love there was nothing that was going to take me away from her. A relationship with a man I met there was tested when he wanted to work somewhere else, but I said no, my heart belongs here..she has my heart, for better or worse. He went off to work somewhere else and married someone else, as all my boyfriends did...and that is okay...that is not my path.

Like a friend (who loved her in the same way i did) brilliantly said, her relationship with the continent was like a bad marriage...an experience I agree with completely: I was completely committed to her but she has turned the cold shoulder (nyuk) on me this year. Like the sun she is impartial to my feelings...giving life and joy but also killing when coming on too strong and wanting too much from me. She welcomed me with open arms while her wardens toyed and soothed and rejected us. She had rules one had to play by but some of us free spirits are too free even for her. We speak our minds when even she hasn't evolved enough to handle it. I carry her in my heart, like a granny no longer walking the earth, still close enough in time for me to still pine for her, still carry a torch for her, still romanticize and put on a pedestal. Like other great loves time will ease the searing split from her, and hopefully other enriching things will come in to take my attention off of her. There is no human man that I had a relationship with that can compare with the intensity of the love I felt for these places. They were a part of my life and I cared for them but they were not my north star or what I dreamed about night and day.

Damn it is hard to write when I have been avoiding it for so long...I have been out of my groove - lame, self-pitying, numbing myself with knitting and movies...neglecting this thing that always reveals truths to me and connects me with my deepest self. I have been in this cabin for 3 years...feels like 40. I hope I am not wasting my time. I have done lots of amazing travel in the past 4 years - but that has been easy: research, click purchase, go on trip. I am very fortunate to have gotten to do this, but deep down I wanted my marriage to the Ice to last til I couldn't go anymore. I wanted to go until I was 70. Maybe we will get back together...I hope so because she is still my great love and I am not ready to move on or replace her...I can do other stuff, but my relationship to her is what beats my heart, what gets me out of bed every day, what gives me something to hope for.

An Unintentional Mini-Memoir

I always think I know what's good and best for me, but now I'm having to humble myself & see that maybe I don't always know...playing god in my life instead of letting Reality run my life is always the dance that I am dancing. Example: it seemed perfectly logical to move to an area with weather that I loved after living someplace with weather that I hated for most of my life. I moved across country to that place and even though it is beautiful and lush and green & wet, I am not happy there. I have really really tried to be happy there. But since I have been back in Austin for over a month now, I see all the things I took for granted here: tons and tons of friends and a history that would make a most excellent mini-series or memoir. I moved here when I was 18 & that is when it felt like my life began. I went to that punk rock club the first day I moved here and my life has been steered by that scene since that day. So I am actually considering moving back here, even though I hated it so much when I left I felt so relieved to be going...I am also starting to let go of the fact that I cannot be happy unless I go back to McMurdo...it doesn't do me a damned bit of good to feed that story anymore...it's just a boring old sad story now and I have to focus on the continent I live on now, while still holding on to that tiny tin of gold glowing in my soul, the little glowing ember of joy that was burst into flame by Antarctica and will be stoked again when I go back. I am tired of tormenting myself about the dog. My sister brilliantly said "No one quits their job to stay at home and watch a pet age"...well, that is what I have done. I am not staying home 24/7 like my parents do with him, but I have given up my work, my happy place, traveling at the drop of a hat, going out late at night, and probably having a boyfriend take me seriously because of my neurotic focus on the dog. He is 17. How much longer can it last, and yet I love him dearly. And then there is the yoga. The hot 90 minutes a session yoga. It is hard. It is really hard, and sometimes I don't know if I can take another minute of it, and then it is over. I feel like I am a part of something really amazing doing this yoga...and I almost want to devote a lot of my time to it because I feel so good after doing it. Since I got back from my trip to Europe, I've totally forgotten about it! It's like I almost never went! I went through 7 days of HELL not sleeping on a 14 day trip, then come home with NO adjustment issues whatsoever.

Fully intending to drive back to Oregon this week, I was delayed a week by another health issue with the pup. He needs to be monitored closely over the next 10 days so I am staying in Austin two more weeks. I thought it would suck because of the weather but I am having a good time. Every time I go to see friends I meet some wonderful person & have some epically good hang and intimacy. I went to a music show last night where I felt the bones of 35 years of my history with Austin weaving it's warm & loving soulful hands around my heart...yes it is like my heart is being massaged by this web of history in this town. The friends, the history, the 35 years...the 35 years that Antarctica was just a part of. A big and awesome part...but I remember being as headily intoxicated when walking by Les Amis for the 10 years after Raul's closed as I am now by remembering the Ice. Yes, I get it now...as usual the truth is revealed through the process of writing: Seven of those 35 years were Antarctica...but the other chunks had juicy life stuff as well: 1979-83 was college and the wildest 4 years a person could have in love with a music scene and a city. And we knew it was something special that we precious few were swept up in...it is magical now, even when we have reunion shows. Then NYC for a couple of years, which I could write a book about, but all that needs to be said about those years is that by some miracle I survived it. I lived very very dangerously there...but I was SO IN LOVE with the city...I would walk around New York no matter how hung over or love sick, and the city would hold me...the city would hold me...but I couldn't take the lack of support and friends so I moved back to Austin...85-87 were some crazy years...worked full time and partied hard on the weekends...worked crappy jobs & felt like a loser cuz I wasn't using my degree...fell into some hard times and bolted to Nebraska for a fresh start - lived there for 3 incredible months and moved back to Austin in Fall of 87, started my first UT full time job and worked there full time (with a few breaks) until the middle of 2004. From 87-89 I was really wild...hung out with a guy named Tom Smith I met at a Raul's Reunion & was off  & running on an even drunker, crazier binge...man I was just partying and running around and going to clubs and slam dancing for 10 years...I was TIRED! I met the man who was to be my husband in 89 or 90, and we married in 91. I had a full time job and so did he & we bought a cute house. I painted a lot and had art shows and became steeped in religion and quit drinking and the marriage fell apart. It was very sad, I did not know how to be happily married & did not understand why I was so miserable. So in the middle of 1995 we divorced & I was single. I was 50 pounds overweight and 34 years old & was scared to death that I was going to fall apart. Nothing could have prepared me for the 5-6 year euphoria that followed: getting really skinny & feeling like I was 19 again and had just moved to Austin except I was sober and gorgeous! I was absolutely boy crazy again. I dated bikers and big tattooed guys and rock starts and crazy guys, I had a biker boyfriend who got in a crash and had a serious head injury...I had tons of girlfriends and we all hung out at the same coffee shop stoop every single night for YEARS! I finally met a super guy who moved in with me & we had 3 happy years together. It was with him I adopted the dog I still have. When this boy moved out and moved on I got even skinnier and went into a knew level of babeness (and insanity). I was nearly 40 now, and had never looked better, felt more badass, and was a known artist..my life was so exciting & I wanted a prize, and I got it in the form of what I thought was to be my dream man. I GOT him! We dated for two years and he wanted more (which is what they all want) and now we are friends. Thank goodness I'm friends with most of my exes. He told me to "dream BIGGER" when I was going on & on about my terrible work life...it planted a seed. I decluttered my house in a frenzy, sold the empty house, bought a condo with the cash & was debt free! The freedom of that made me dream of bigger possibilities...I hated the condo - it was a lemon. I was also dating someone who turned out to allow me to hit "bottom" in my relationship issues. It was insane...he was crazy & so was I. We had intoxicating chemistry & good hang out but he was scary with his unresolved anger. By early 2004 I was really sick of my life and the patterns and office work and I was sitting at my desk at work & a little voice whispered in my ear "working in Antarctica" and that is exactly what I typed into the google screen - what popped up was the hiring website for antarctic workers & I felt my entire universe shift & every fiber of my being knew that I was going to do whatever it takes to get there...I had found what I wanted to do for the rest of my life...I had finally finally found it...I put 8 hours a day into networking with Ice people, polishing my resume & buying a plane ticket to the hiring fair...I worked my ass off for it & it paid off.

There is an entire blog devoted to my life on that continent...it has been the single greatest joy of my life, and this section of the 35 years was the cherry on the cake. Or more like the cake, with the other parts being the cherries....those 7 years were so beautiful, so carved out for my personality, so beyond anything I could have ever imagined for myself..you know...it's all I ever talk about on the other blog, so not time need to be spent on it here...

Feb. 2011 redeployed back to the US and to my mom telling  me she would no longer take the wee pup for me to go to the Ice. I used this fact to make the decision to move to Oregon -I had a man there so it made it easy...the first few months were great but then I found myself calling to get a job for the next season on Ice..ugh, 3 years in Oregon I've blogged about too...three different moves, tons of different jobs...and not a deep connection at all to the place. Nope. Some sweet things as a result of my really hard work I put into it...but no, it will be very easy to say goodbye to Oregon. (But I still might keep my sweet ski cabin).

So here I am at the 35 year mark of when I first moved to Austin as a terrified 18 year old...and feel like that girl again as I'm thinking of doing it all over again...moving to Austin after a time away was always so fun - but this time I am a middle aged woman who probably is not desirous of the typical middle aged women things. The world feels wide open & filled with possibility once again.

A tiny treatise on trying to become a better skier as a life goal in one's 50's

I came into this ski week with very high expectations. I took my first lesson ever here 8 years ago this same week and have been coming back closing week every year. I had been progressing a little each year & could feel it a lot in my 6 days on the mountain. Two years ago I had gotten about two weeks skiing in on Mt. Hood and had gotten a lot faster so that my 7th year I felt very confident. Last summer I moved to Mt. Hood and got 40 days on skis before coming to Taos this time and expected to be put in a very high level class. I got here a day early and got a big day on the mountain before class started and for the first time did not feel intimidated by this macho & rugged peak. So when I got put in the same level class as last year during ski off (where the head of the ski school watches you do a few turns & assigns you to a class) I was shocked. I saw someone I had skied with for years in a higher level than me. I saw that there was only one class lower than me & couldn't believe what was happening. Did those 40 days not make me better? I was told that just time on skis made a difference but it apparently didn't. I wondered if I had not improved at all & what, if anything, I had gained by doing all that skiing. And it was hard: the decision to move someplace where I didn't know anyone, buy a cabin, buy snow tires & drive up to ski by myself in total fear & awkwardness. I met some folks on the mountain & we would meet up at the resort & ski together but they were at a much higher level than I was. I found one ski buddy & we started going up all the time. He was very fast & I asked him for help & he told me some things & made me feel lame for "not improving." We had some huge powder days & I couldn't ski it, and he would say "then you can't ski" & we would fight & grouse at each other driving down the mountain as I let my ability at this sport control my self esteem while he obsessively texted his girlfriend. What else did I have? I had defined myself by being an Antarctican for seven years. I was no longer an artist, no longer an old Austinite, felt lost in Oregon as it has never felt like "home" and was putting all my eggs in one basket. I really wanted to be an expert skier & felt that I had failed after putting in all those days.  Deep down none of this really felt like "me" but that was also what was so alluring about it - stepping into a life that was nothing like I'd ever been in before.

What is interesting to me now is WHY I want to be so good at this...I had never wanted to ski until I took my first snowboard lesson in 2006. I saw this energy and excitement on the mountain that was intoxicating. I failed so badly at my snowboard lesson that people suggested I take up skiing first. I had to wait til the next year though as I'd broken my tailbone on my one day out. I had never played a sport before. In junior high we had to do volleyball and softball & I was terrible at them. I was so scared in volleyball at how aggressive the other girls were that I made excuses to not play. I only liked track and gymnastics, finding out that I am not much of a team player. I started jogging in high school, started again more seriously after college & fell in love with running. Did it 3 times a week for half an hour for about 15 years. Did aerobics and weight training mixed in there too...and always walked a few miles a day. Discovered yoga about 10 years ago and love it about as much as anything I can imagine. I am not one of those people that hates exercising. I really love it, only if all I can do is a brisk walk around town or through the woods. But skiing is a sport. A very strange and mysterious one in the beginning. And I have never been good at sports. I was always good at writing and art and handicrafts but I was not naturally athletic. When I ran for years I still never got fast in a 5K. I dropped out of track in high school because I was the slowest one. I couldn't stand being the worst at something because I'd been so good at so many things naturally...but I think that is ultimately why I chose to commit to skiing: my first week was so bad, I was so scared and the last one left in beginner school, but that final day when I successfully took turns down the bunny slope I had a breakthrough that I've never forgotten. I have met people who started skiing at my age who do double blacks and I have yet to do them. I am timid about terrain I've never done, and won't do anything new without an instructor. So my class this week started off with us all being about the same with one really slow person...the slow person dropped down a level, we picked up two really fast people, and all of a sudden my class was 3 super fast people who just bombed down the mountain with me trailing far behind. I had never seen this happen in 8 years of ski week (where my class was not a perfect fit)....and the past few years we did moguls & trees and this time we weren't going to do them. I ended up after a lot of drama being dropped to a lower level class that had almost beginner skiers in it. Now I was the fastest person in class but was not being challenged. But I accepted that this was supposed to be about "fun" and not being a superstar, and besides, I have far surpassed where I thought I would have ended up in my ski career.

Something else was off at Taos: me. I usually blossom & dazzle there, but this time I felt this shroud around me...like I had gauze around my heart and there was a hardness, a bitterness that I did not want to look at. Yes I knew I was sad about not deploying for the third year in a row (and now possibly looking at a fourth) but was the cumulative effect of having my dream deferred turning me into a bitter old crone? Or was it something else? A dark veil seemed to come over me when I saw couples interacting in tender and romantic ways. A man turned his wife on the dance floor and his eyes melted with love for her. My life has had none of that of late. I was seared, and wondering if I had used up my boyfriend allotment for this lifetime...I mean, there have been a lot of them....and a lot of them have been awesome, and the one thing I knew is that I would always have one - until now. I'm not going to go into some new-agey tie in about how being single is awesome and one has to love themself first - cuz I'm out her in new territory for me & it is terrifying. I mean the programming that our culture has about old single women & sick cats and fat stomachs - that is not me...I love solitude & doing my own thing, but I like having companionship & a partner too...I'm not sure I'm very good at it, but for some reason I'm terrified I'm never going to find someone - gosh just writing that seems lame - it's not like I'm hideous or anything. I skied today & felt bored - bored because I am tired of groomers & no longer afraid of off piste...I took off by myself into crud & trees & baby jumps all with success. Maybe I didn't turn into an exper skier this year, but I will next year. Grand Masters here I come. Look! A puppy!

I love my little dog with his bum eye..he is more fragile now & I am more trapped - not being able to leave him alone as long as I used to because of having to be medicated every few hours...I wonder, if when he dies & I can actually try to get back to the Ice, if it will be the same glorious infusion of life that it was for so long...and this time was not wasted..I did some really bold things that I will be proud of but increased my sense of isolation. There is no guidebook for a single middle aged woman who still has lots of fiery passion for things she wants to do. I actually have women friends my age who are besotted with their grandchildren. The horror!  Effing Hell get me back to he child free work camp! Forward is the only way I can go.

All This Useless Beauty (or, Finally It's Over!) & Dub Step

I must love this title for a blogpost (also an Elvis Costello song title) because it autofills when I type it. A combination of events have had a snowball effect of making me not only okay with not deploying this season but GLAD I didn't deploy this season (wtf you say!!!). Yup, deep down I knew how childish and wrong headed it was to have the internal stance of arms tightly crossed, aggressively pouting, and announcing to EVERYONE on the PLANET (hello internets!) how UNFAIR it was that I was missing seasons on the Ice. Number one, I was choosing not to go and this was a big piece of reality I was denying. Number two, it is starting to snow & I have a job that will start at the ski resort soon (mountain groomer hell yeah), and the two most exciting things evargh: James F. from my first season on Ice reconnected with me....and, I found Skrillex.

Now these last two things happened almost simultaneously...Jim wrote me out of the blue, four years after an e-mail exchange where he appeared entrenched in matrimonial bliss and family life, where he revealed his status as single, and I wasted no time in pushing us towards a reunion. I was watching a concert documentary called Made in America by Jay-Z which had a lot of great new and older artists but when I saw the few minutes of Skrillex's set I felt that way I did in 1974 when I was riding in a car and heard Born to Run for the first time: my whole sad past melted away and I caught a glimpse of freedom and excitement and a musician that could not only provide me with endless hours of joy, but also help steer the direction of my life. So I went to iTunes and youtube & listened/watched everything I could of his and bought some tunes and barreled down the hi-way bass dropping my tiny throbbing car down the highway with just a handful of his songs being enough to push my sternum towards my bowels.

It was always the beat that got me...when I first discovered punk rock I didn't really care about (and couldn't understand) the lyrics - it was that fast beat that I could vibrate with. Not to say I don't love passionate lyric driven music, I can really get lost in Gillian Welch and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but it's not so much the lyrics and the mournful mood. But when I'm jonesin' for some adrenalin powered live music it has to be the beat...I have been looking for something new now that the Gourds have disbanded and I only get to see the Riverboat Gamblers once a year - and I found it. I haven't been this excited about an artist since Marah, but the unfortunate part is that, unlike Marah, Skrillex has to play in gigantic arenas because he is so famous now.

Saturday I go find out what my schedule is going to be...it's going to be an interesting winter, living on the mountain for the first time, starting a new job, and feeing kissed by the Universe.

The Place Beyond The Pining

There is the thing, and the pining for the thing, and the are two very different things. Sometimes when I get the thing, I miss the pining for the thing. Lately I have been pining for...everything I've ever had, been or done. My life is so solitary and peaceful (though I'm kind of uncomfortable with the peace) that I just sit in reverie over things I've never really thought about before as having been so freakin delightful. I miss what my life was like in college. I miss what my life was like when I live in NYC. I miss the two hour nightly phone calls with Erica that went on for years when I lived in New York & she in Chicago. I miss that my life was all in front of me and that it doesn't feel that way anymore. I don't know if I can possibly top the deep fulfillment and excitement that the 7 season in the Antarctic brought me. I am waiting to go back, but am afraid of that I've been gone so long some key continuity will be gone when I get back. I've got to change my thinking about that. I've just got to as I've got all my eggs in that basket.

For some reason I just bought a cabin on Mt. Hood. I am in the period of serious buyer's remorse and thinking I'm going to try & get out of it right away but maybe it could lead to something really cool. I bought it so I could ski every day, so hopefully I'll get to do that...or at least 3-5 times a week. I want to impress them in Taos next year...I want to be good. But even as I write this there is a part of me so walled of to this world & place I live currently. My heart is at McMurdo, and everything that goes with that, and to some degree in Austin. I don't give a fig about the hipster Portland thing...I just want to do unbelievably fun & exotic trips, with knitting and processing in between.

It is so hot & sunny here it is shocking...but the best part is as soon as the sun goes down it drops into the 50's...something we never got in Texas. This move is doing something for me that is good - I am very busy with it & get to settle into my new place and see what it is like out there. I don't expect to like it in the summer but who knows, it could be surprising. Maybe I am a mountain girl after all. I know that of all the mountians I've been too, I really like this one. It is less intimidating than Taos, and the snow covered trees are amazing in the winter. It will be beautiful!

Pie For Joy

Wow, just read that last entry that was written almost 9 months ago and I'm always impressed with what I've written after I've written it. While I'm writing it it always seems logorrheic. I've been writing in diaries for as long as I can remember. I threw about 30 years worth of them away in a massive de-clutter, but I have one I wrote when I was around 12, and it is so sad it is hard for me to read. Probably the most miserable time in my life. I don't know why I kept that one and not the insanely entertaining and shocking ones from my college days. I could probably just have typed those up and had a memoir (albeit a 10,000 page memoir). There were thousands of entries about some boy or man that I was over the top obsessed with...don't think I wrote much about all the crazy drinkin and druggin, nor did I itemize my daily activities like some people do. It was all about the angst within, which was basically a bottomless hunger for the twisted fulfillment of basic id needs and an addiction to excitement that the bar kept being raised on until it became reckless and dangerous.

This is not what I sat down to write about! I just got back from my fourth trip of the year...ughad why I think I could ever feel sorry for myself about anything is beyond me. All I ever wanted to do was travel and have adventures and now I get to do it. But I don't get to do it all the time WAAAAAAAH. And I can't go back to Antarctica because my dog is still alive WAAAAAAAH.

I just got back from my annual painting workshop in Toas. Jesus I cannot believe how awesome that was....In March I went to UAE and Oman and came back almost tripping with happiness. The I went to my annual ski week in Taos and that seemed even more awesome than it ever has been. And a few days ago I just got back from a 9 day workshop in Taos that I have been doing for 13 years. 13 years later I have had my heart blasted open like I have never done this painting before. I had a full on ripped up from the inside see-god-now experience and it just keeps happening every time I go there. I always go so crickly and hard-edged and angry and addled...and come back just soft as a grandma. Just drop all that shit in nine days of full on intimacy with myself. And I came back wanting to move to Taos. For the first time kind of seriously. If I can live in this former farm town now silicon valley of Oregon I guess I can live anywhere. I cannot imagine living anywhere and feeling more isolated that I am here. But when the plane from ABQ was flying over Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens and I saw all that lush green I sensed I would miss this place. I had such a great experience going to Mt. Hood Meadows this past winter, and if I worked at Toas it might not make the annual mecca there as special. So now I am looking at these affordable cabins near Mt. Hood so I can work there during ski season. I would live in the mountains, but not near any town...not near anytown near as cool as Taos. But I have to take the chance and do this one goal I've been thinking of for years so that I can get in a lot more ski days. I only did 31 last season, which is about 25 more than I usually do, but I want to ski all season. I want to get good. And having started so late, I have to do it 3 or 4 days a week to get good.

But it is only May. And I just got my new passport in the mail...wheeeee it is so beautiful and stiff! My last one got quite a workout and was floppy with wear. I'm itchin' to get those first stamps this year. I could move out of my apt. when my lease is up in June and go to India or Scotland or Africa. I'm going back to Taos in Sept. for the painting again so that will be a big deal. I feel like I should be doing something worthwhile, to help other people or something...I spend so much time absorbed with the planning and the details of my little dreams and plans. Delicious.

Tomorrow I'm driving out to look at the wee cabins again at Mt. Hood. The owners called me as they really want to unload them...The two ladies I talked to were so kind and gave me so much information about the mountain and what it is like to live there that I saw that living out there would be like living in a really tiny community..I felt like I had some friends after talking to them for about an hour each. I have seen this side of myself lately where I try and keep strangers in a conversation way too long as I need the human contact so badly...but the one lady I talked to told me that she was 85 & her son wanted her to move out of a house that had stairs so she is selling her cabin. Her name is Joy and we tried to talk several times but there were some phone & bluetooth issues, but when I finally got to really talk to her I felt a sharp pang that she was living alone and driving herself places at her age. She told me  to come to her cabin after her dr. appt tomorrow morning and I found myself wanting to offer to drive her to it. She lives 90 miles away from me but what else do I have to do but knit and scheme. When we  were getting off of the phone she said she'd love to visit with me even if I didn't buy the cabin...and I was very touched. I so appreciated her graciousness in wanting to spend time with me after a phone conversation, and I'm sure she sensed I could use a friend too...even if it's just for a few hours. The Herculean efforts I make for social contact since I've moved to Oregon are sometimes embarrassing in their desperation. But I'm not going to be hard on myself for this: I'll never beat myself up for making efforts and showing up even if the event turns out to be a bust (and oh so often it is here)...because damnit, I'm making an effort and not just sitting at home. Not one thing has come my way here...I've had to chase it all down. Life is so different now. I think the only way I could get a date with a man is to pay them. My life was so different before the Ice. Then there was the Ice. And now I'm not sure what the fuck is going on except that it's a mixed back of euphoric travel experiences mixed with a whole lot of downtime and knitting...and waiting...waiting...waiting...

And the one thing I've never had to live without, luscious and lots of attention from men, is totally absent. And that is one of the worst things about this suburban vacuum: my spinster status and the continual and draining attitude adjustment I've had to make to try and accept this really dry and awful season...nothing could be more against my nature than being asexual, or celibate, and I really really hate it. And for the first time, I have no options in that area. At least no options that wouldn't leave me feeling crappy about myself.

And I never thought I'd say this kind of thing but I'm looking forward to meeting this sweet old lady tomorrow. I just went and bought her a piece of pie for our meeting. I will take some pie for Joy. And we will have a nice visit.

We Can Stand a Half Mile Away From Each Other and Wave Enthusiastically

While in the throes of hysterical jealousy and sadness (mostly internal) while my tribe deploys to the Ice without me, I realized that I had made a choice not to go back, so while it's okay to feel some pain around not being able to go with them, to act like a whiny assed toddler was just stupid and childish.

My new life hasn't been that great. I feel like I've had to WORK so HARD for just a scraping of happiness or joy when that stuff just floods over me on Ice. I've tried to force myself to recreate the same sorts of things in Austin here in Portland, and even tried the same sort of work I did Way Down Under...but I haven't hit the magic button. When Winfly started this year I was flattened. I was heartbroken. And what I've had to really take a hard look at and turn the corner on is acceptance. Stone cold acceptance of Reality. I was not truly accepting the decision I myself had made to take care of the doggie in his geriatric years. In the back of my mind I knew there was the escape hatch of begging my mom to take my pet so I could go back. But this would not be respecting her wishes of being free of that chore. As a former therapist said about me, I always have my hand on the doorknob. I need an escape hatch.

I have spent almost every day of the past 16 months with my dog. This is the longest time I've spent with him in over seven years. I gallivanted around the globe, taking for granted that I had a dog sitter that loved this little guy as much as I did. Probably more. Because now that I am missing a second season in a row on Ice, I see how much I have loved my career more than him.  I loved my career more than any man or job or house or stateside routine. And I might still love it more, but I feel it is the right thing to do to commit to an ancient pet. I mean, it won't kill me will it, to miss several seasons of deployment? Won't it mean something in the end that I took care of this little guy in his final years. Ultimately, I don't know. I'm so nutso over this that I am having to listen and replay the words of a wise friend "you will never regret spending his last few years with him..." I have to keep replaying that in my head because my selfish, massively Ice-stroked ego keeps raging at me. He bullies me day and night calling me a loser for living this cosseted, easy lifestyle of long languorous unbusy days and endless mornings of coffee drinking followed by endless hours of waiting for the sun to go down. He was built and empowered by my gradual ascent into Bad-Assness on the Ice and now he is starving and angry and really pissed off at me for taking his big yellow tractor away. He says fuck it to the dog I'm fucking going back I don't fucking care how much she doesn't want to take care of him or how much fucking money it costs to get out of this lease or how logistically difficult it will be to get everything in place to go - I don't fucking care because I have to fucking go back. I have to go back to fucking survive, because if I don't I'm a big pussy loser who took the easier, softer way so fucking fuck it! It took me so long to find this gig  and explode it into the awesomeness it became - and now I can't have it? WTF!

Wow, I guess I really needed to get that out of my system. Underneath this Ice-stroked bully (therapy mode on) was a terrified child who was clueless on how to direct her life now that everything that defined her was gone. The hardest thing in the world for me to do was to be kind and loving with this terrified child. It is so much more in my nature to go with the ego..the one that Wants and Rants and Judges and Refuses to by Happy until he Gets what he Wants. Just like a two year old. Life would not bring me here to drop me on my ass (or maybe it did). Is it really as I hard as I'm making it to make a happy life here? I mean, I have a living situation that I LOVE, a smattering of pals and maybe even a close friend here. My deep, deep interactions are with oldest and dearest spattered around the country.

If I really think on it, I had joy in my life before the Ice: there were coffee shops and bands and yoga and trips and juicy good hangs with friends. I still get to travel. And I even don't have to work (though I'm better off if I do). I could sign up for classes. I can go on dog-friendly road trips. I can make more friends. I can do just about anything BUT go to the Ice...and by the time I stop freaking out about it, the precious pet may be on the other side of the dirt. G'bless him, he's an angel.

Maybe I'm just justifying why I'm not following the deepest yearning of my heart. Maybe I just really suck and figuring out what to do with loads of free time. But I think it's really important for me to remember the words of my Wise Friend: you will never regret spending his last few years with him...

The fact that I had to write that down twice (and even once in squiggly writing so I could find it easier) shows what a stone cold bitch I am at wanting the dirty-black-carhartt-wearin'-tractor-drivin' Me back, and saying "fuck it" to dog sitting.

I guess it's okay to just miss it. To miss the life I had for the last seven years that I can probably get back when I'm pet free someday. It's just getting through the days themselves that are the hard part. I just need to keep the little broken hearted girl whose dream came true and then she had to give it up contained and soothed until that time rolls around again. And then there's the little dog - so precious, so full of love and loyalty, and me, his assigned caretaker. It's the only thing I have to do.

Hello From Crone-ville p.III

this post was written over a year ago, cleaning out my drafts folder, enjoy!

Now that I'm entrenched in my 50s (OMG) I feel the burgeoning of some sort of wisdom but I also can spiral into obsessing over my trouble free and "luxury problem" filled life. I listened to a friend today while he talked about the troubles he was having around eating too much food & an hour into his sharing I was struck by the empty void that needs filling by the child free life - it must be filled with the babies of creativity! We, who have nothing we HAVE to take care of outside of ourselves, nothing depending on us for sustenance, can create "worries" and "problems" out of some pretty banal stuff. We, who sit in coffees shops wearing shorts we bought for two dollars in 1987 at the army surplus store, with our identical Mac laptops surfing sites that fill our brains with information so we'll have something to talk about...think about.

I only write postings like this when I am off Ice and my mind is skittering about over 10,000 things I could do with my life. 10,000 things before breakfast. I live in a small country town outside of Portland where I don't know a soul and live a cloistered life in the most wonderful domicile I've ever lived in. I knit and watch movies and play with my dog and feel very content. But the old excitement-craving me is bubbling under the surface...

I thrive on excitement, travel, an unknown future - I could never do the 9-5 again...not for an extended time period at least. I feel stuck...like I can't decide which way to go, like life is just waiting & brimming for me..holding out it's giant earthy hands swirling with lions & tigers & death & joy & sadness & living on the knife edge of reality.

Hello From Crone-ville p.II

If I could speak to young girls in an auditorium (assuming someone asked me to) I feel like I would have something to say to them. I would tell them that there will always be boys and men and dating and sex so just accept it as part of life but put YOURself as the person most important in your life. I never had a desire for a family or children and I know that this puts me in a minority of women, but if there is one girl who goes into that lifestyle who doesn't want it (do that many girls really want that?), and if I could reach out to that one girl and tell her her deepest dreams and desires could, would actually, come true if she was driven and committed to them as we women of my generation and before were told we were to be to men and our children. Say a 12 year old girl dreams of travelling the world. She doesn't come from a wealthy family or know if she can get into college but that is her dream in her heart. Her heart starts racing when she sees travel shows or brochures, and studies maps and globes as some girls study fashion magazines. Her family and friends may tell her to focus on a practical job and their may be subtle or unspoken generations pressure or programming for her to find a man to "take care of her," but if she takes that dream seriously and starts to take action towards it, however small, the dream will grow and expand and she may find herself doing things she'd never even considered or thought of...but she will be travelling. That is actually my story. I saw throughout my life that anytime I'd try to compromise that dream I would be miserable. Sure I found ways to jam some travel into my life...but it was not until I took some really big risks and made some big changes in my life that that dream became bigger than travel, bigger than anything I could have imagined. I talk to people my age, some younger, and even some kids about what their dreams are and they either say they never had any or filed it away as unattainable so many years ago that they can't remember what it was. I was driven by a hunger. I was clueless when I started out in life and didn't know what I wanted. I only knew I wanted to live in New York City. So I moved there and adult life overwhelmed me so I fed my hunger in self-destructive ways. I had very low self esteem, and saw very quickly that I wanted nothing to do with the corporate world. The dream that burned in me seemed at times to be my tormenter too - it wanted to be satisfied but I didn't feel I had the tools or maturity to address it. It took many years to get on a track of loving my life and my work, and I took a lot of action to prepare me for the life that I had pursued: I quit being self destructive with alcohol and chemicals, I went to a therapist, I employed a life coach, I did all kinds of workshops on finding one's passion, and read every book out there on the color of my parachute...and I think all that stuff helped. I was blessed with not having a family that pressured me for grandbabies (whenever I hear of such nonsense being played out today it seems surreal) or pressure me in anything at all. And I've seen how my "defects" have helped me to pursue my dreams: I'm so bad at romantic relationships that they don't last long enough to take me off my track. My fear of rootedness, domesticity and stasis has kept me on the run and externally and internally and I've always thought of "settling down" as a "settling" in general. If someone's hearts desire is to be utterly rooted and domesticated for their entire life and they can obtain that that is awesome. That is their success!

I see homeless people everywhere around me as I live downtown. When I do this feeding mission in the park I get to engage with hundreds of them. I make eye contact and smile and make chitchat with a lot of them and they are great folks for the most part. Many or mentally ill and drug addicted and some seem like they just got on the streets. When I leave this gig on Sunday I have this very strong sense that I am not one bit different than these people except for one thing: I am luckier. It is so sad that this country throws mentally ill people out on the streets; it is heartbreaking to see the elderly sleeping out in the rain, and it reminds me to not kvetch about whatever problems I might perceive that I have. But I have always felt very connected with these people on the streets. I wonder what dreams these people had and how they got to a place where their life was just about survival. When I was first out of college and working I could not for the life of me figure out how people made enough money to buy houses, cars, etc. I could never find jobs that paid much more than minimum wage, and always felt like I was one hair away from living on the streets. It was an extremely stressful time in my life..and with all my intelligence and independence and a bit of help from my family it was still very very hard. I can see why people pair off as it is very expensive to live alone. I have been able to afford living alone for 15 years now and don't know if I could ever give up that luxury.

This is a long rambling mass of a post that has no new or important information. I'm doing this just to practice writing, and to keep reminding myself that even though most of my dreams have come true, I still have more clambering for attention. Whoever said it was about the journey and not the destination was right - the second I reach my destination I see that the joy was in the dreaming, planning and action phases. I am having a bit of rootedness right now, but it's not the trapped style, it's more a pause to see what is going to happen next...or what it is I'm going to have to make happen next...stay tuned!

Hello from Crone-ville

this was written  05/24/11 & posted 08/21/12

I must have used this title before for a posting as it auto-filled as I started writing it. I had been putting up fluffy, shallow postings on my other blog about my exciting new life in a new city, but they were not heartfelt or real...just something to throw up to keep people reading, and more, I think, to see for myself if I could come up with something to write about. I have a lot of idle time on my hands now that the thrill of driving across country and setting up my new place have been completed. I get a lot of good feelings from going on job interviews and I've sent out so many applications that I've gone on quite a few...I got a part time teamster dock worker job within 10 days of moving here & I thought "this is it. I've arrived. I'm as cool as I was as an Antarctic worker...", but such is not the case.

I had such an epic season this last one on Ice that I'm finding it hard to just be a regular joe living a regular life. That scenario makes me panic, so I'm looking for creative stuff to do in my idle hours. I'm disappointed with my dock worker job for two reasons: I never know when they are going to call me (I'm an "on call" worker) so I am stressed out to make plans for the day, and I've gotten injured on the two shifts I've worked. And I couldn't tell them because of the macho culture there where we won't get hired full time if we get hurt as a part timer. All of this while I'm paying hefty Union dues and not getting anything out of it except for an extremely cool hoodie (that I paid extra for). So I'm continuing my job search, yet worried about committing to a full time permanent gig after 7 years of working half the year. I'll go back to the Ice someday, but probably not til my dog has made his "transition."

Also, along with the idle time has been some discomfort that has been tugging at my soul...some teeth grinding and tear filled Sundays where I'm feeling frustrated and sad. [ginormous, sprawling & whiny deleted section]. I had been obsessed and grieving until I got to the Ice, the Great Ameliorator and Fixer of everything in my life. I was so busy and engaged in my new job I didn't feel the pain of the loss anymore - though I must have talked about it as a friend pretended to be sawing his neck open with a plastic knife in the galley one night - oops, I must still have been talking about it more than I thought. I met someone wonderful on the Ice and we are having a great relationship, but recently I saw that I still had some grieving to do over this old relationship - [another huge new yorker length tomelette deleted - you would thank me!] but I found out today, and it was just: ouch.

I am going to try and make the best of "regular life" here. I have gone to storytelling shows, art museums, hipster golf, and some awesome volunteer gigs. I may give up this potentially high paying teamster gig to do a more scheduled type warehousing job. Moving to Portland has made me happy in so many respects, and I am grateful for the opportunities laid at my feet. I am tired of trying to be "good" and trying so hard to be perfect since moving here.

I do a homeless feeding mission that should make me very grateful for my luxury problems. I have cracked ribs right now and the good thing is they hurt everytime I laugh...and the one thing I do a lot with my boyfriend is laugh. We were serving up the plates for the 750 homeless folks who showed up for dinner and one guy bumped into the guy next to me and I ended up wearing about a gallon tub of cottage cheese on my jacket, purse and shoes. Chad and I were so busy we couldn't stop serving to clean it up so I just kept laughing as the cheeze was rolling down my side as the rain was hitting it. We laugh over trips to goodwill and the dollar store. He is my Wyoming cowboy gone city cook...and has enriched my life in ways he'll never know.

Reinventing at Mid-Life

I cringe when I write that: mid-life. It sounds so freakin old! I don't act or look my age (I hope) but I feel this strong push to reinvent myself by 50 (soon-ish). I've already gotten a new career, completely and utterly unlike what I've done up until now. I worked fairly hard to get it and then luck met opporunity and things fell in place. Check. I am struggling with accepting my looks. I've kind of just gone with the aging so far but am really thinking about getting a little "work" done...don't even know what kind but some sort of neck-skin replacement surgery might be called for. My figure is amazingly holding up well despite my diet, one that is akin to an 8 year old boy's. If I changed my diet radically I would probably look amazing. I am riding on good genes, lots of physical work outside & moderate exercise, and the ability for my anxiety to act like "aerobics" and speed up my metabolism. But the thing I'm really feeling like I need to look at is my accomplishments - in one sense I can stack them up & say they are pretty fair: college degree, acted on a couple of big moves to unknown cities by myself, fair amount of world travel, a thriving art life with dedicated painting, shows, and sales, and trying some new things like skiing, acting & scooter riding. But I want to do more. I am jealous of people who know how to fix lamps, refinish furniture, repair autos, or just tinker with things in general. I know people who can spend an "idle" weekend building websites & doing amazing things on the computer that I don't have an aptitude for. Now I could easily learn how to wrench on things or make stuff in my free time but I find that I don't do it but spend a lot of time thinking about it. Once I got off Ice just obsessed with learning how to operate heavy equipment. I investigated all the schools but it just didn't feel right. I see my friends who make art plug away at that & use the excuse that I am houseless and don't have a studio space. I try to blog, and at times that can be extremely satisfying when I've gotten to the vein of truth in a piece, but I feel a call to write a memoir and I get a thrill when I think about it but feel overwhelmed by it at the same time. I want to stack accomplishments now: learn to dive, ride a real motorcycle, get in great physical shape, find a bitchin' hairdo. I also want to find a new way to express love & appreciation to people and the world. Maybe in a creative way...maybe in a service way...and finally, someday I want a wee manor house in Scotland or Ireland...for when I'm older.