exas

Anxiety is a wonderful, fascinating condition that causes those who cope with it to occasionally go two or more weeks without checking their mail, because there's always a chance that there will be something absolutely horrifying in there.

Yesterday I checked my mail for the first time in two weeks, and I found the following:

• Something about car insurance
• Seattle Public Utilities bill for $7
• Card from my mother extolling me to "stay true to [my] path and day by day, all will be well." Check for student loan payment was enclosed.
• Card from my small, daring friend-for-life Breezy, featuring a kitty in a raincoat, proclaiming that "One day at a time, we will figure this bullshit life out."
• Postcard from K's visit to France, cover art a vintage travel poster, informing me that his trip "didn't change my life, how unfortunate. But I'm about to go have a huge ice cream, so I guess that's still pretty good."

Where I'm going with this is the same place I tend to go with these things, which is that it is rarely as bad as I expect. 

Four hours of web dev today, three of it at the hospital. The more I see of WordPress, the more I appreciate it as a reprieve from actual coding while simultaneously resenting it for encouraging me to build a skill set with zero applications outside of its own twisted little universe. 

I'm rewatching the entire series of Friday Night Lights in the background while I work. Texas is so much more romantic on Netflix than it will ever be in real life. I still want to go to the Texas State Fair, though; preferably with Moon Base so that I can say "one of my exes came with me to Texas." 

sunlight.

Pray for Seattle as we suffer through a 70+ degree spring day. We don't know what to do with ourselves, you see. Do we party party party all day long, or do we simply let the garrulous sky's blue-eyed beauty remind us that no loveliness is permanent and that according to the weather forecast everything will turn to shit definitely no later than tomorrow night?

Just as surely as my beer will run dry, my fauxhawk will grow overly tall and begin drooping regardless of intensity of hair product, and I will consume the very last of the chocolate-caramel truffle cookies I've been hoarding in that tin with the little dogs on it, every stunning Seattle spring afternoon gives way sooner or later to the wet gray dryer-lint sky of a dreary, deadening Seattle spring morning.

Yes indeed, readers, nothing gold can stay.

RECALL, though, that: I am gainfully, even joyfully, employed, and can therefore buy more beer, yes, more beer, ever more and more beer; that haircuts exist (I have heard, though anyone laying eyes upon me these days can tell that I have yet to see conclusive proof of this rumor); that I am a pimp at baking and can make more cookies any fucking time I please; and that even here, in the Rainy City, motto: "Don't Get Mad: Get SAD(Seasonal Affective Disorder)!", city of losers, nerds and madmen, winter and even spring have been known at times to give way to summer.

sit.

I'm housesitting right now for my friend Dr. Homie. He and his wife are in the Philippines, presumably living it up, possibly getting typhooned. I am in his delightful Eastside home, sharing a bedroom with a cat, a dog, and a series of spiders who are perfectly happy to mind their own business as long as I'm on board with that plan.

The cat is a handsome longhaired gentleman, white with black patches, including a fetching smudge on his nose which gives him a studious, ink-spattered appearance, like an 18th Century London novelist staying up late nights to finish his latest masterpiece. He enjoys snuggling, chirping fetchingly for kibble, and, due to an unfortunate combination of inflammatory bowel disease and food allergies, recreational vomiting of the kibble he consistently begs for. His nickname, due to dignity, poise, and a dramatic familial last name, is "Detective Jack."

The dog is small, chubby, and idiosyncratic. Best guesses peg her as a cross between a Chihuahua and a Pomeranian - Chihuahua swagger accentuated with spitz plushness makes her a highly desirable commodity. She washes her face like a cat, refuses to walk farther than a block, and spends nights snuggled up next to my thigh, a minuscule, fluffy hot water bottle with a good attitude. She enjoys coconut chips, belly rubs, and performing a trick called "kiss-kiss," which is really more of a love-bite than a kiss and which she will perform only on me and Dr. Homie's wife, never on Dr. Homie himself, being, as she is, a discriminating sort of dog. Her nickname, due to a combination of large, antenna-like ears and enormous eyeballs, is "Mosquito Face."

Though I am infested with awesome, I am also plagued by low self-esteem at times. However, the fact that every single one of my friends who has pets has at some point requested that I housesit for them - that makes me feel like I've got something going for me.