Goonies Never Say Die

Sometimes I blog in my head, and then life moves on and I lose the momentum to tell people about it.  This is why it looks like in April I took one loooooooong nap, when really I was doin' some stuff.  Not that I remember what that stuff was, now, but I'm sure it was important at the time.

Last time I went to the dentist (again - April) was a tedious experience.  "Ah, looks like you haven't been flossing right here." "I have..."  "You know, when you brush you should start on your right side." "I do."  "Did you know you have a little imperfection in your enamel right--"  "I know!"

I have, I do, I know! Life has been kind of like that lately.  I'm unsettled and know I have to do things to change that, but I can't quite get the motivation to do so.  This whole My Journey thing got kind of muddled and misdirected.  When did Kirsten Valentine turn into this?  A character in a book I read recently described his maladies this way: "And I won't even mention my head... Solid cast iron!... simultaneously hollow and full of drafts: A great vestibule with poorly shut doors!"  Yup.  I welcome those drafts - the wind and I have always been friends.  And movement is SO preferable over sedentary cast iron!  (Despite its utility in making me iron-rich foods.)

So I’ve made a decision to be more selfish.  What? you say.  Even more selfish!  Is it possible?  Oh yes.  Step one is to shake up my housing situation.

It’s been great to live with Mom and Dad – how can I ever criticize kind people who love me and take care of me without my having to ask? My every need is met and then some; my mail shows up on my bed every afternoon, and sometimes a surprise box of animal crackers under my pillow.  But.  Rent-free and protected, safe and sound isn’t the challenge I need right now.

So I’m looking for shared housing on the East side of Portland. Closer to work, with fewer bridges and big giant hills to bike commute over.  (Bike commute?  Yep, that’s another challenge I’d like to set for myself.)  Houses of varying condition and class.  I have interviewed with: the industrious hippies, the quietly lonely cat lady, the untidy forty-year-old men, the veggie household with the food-stealing dog, the very 420-friendly hipsters, the very much in love lesbian couple, the friendly Alaskans, and the curt aspiring homeowner who didn’t want to repeat any information she had already posted on Craigslist.  All in a week.  It’s been quite a sociological and geographical journey.  And through it all, I’ve felt a lot more grown up than I have in recent memory.  I think it’s a good road I’m
on now, and I feel like I’m recovering from being stalled out.  Engine heart turn over, rumble purr.

Sunday, during a sunny long weekend at the beach, Mom and I climbed the Astoria Column – a very tall  monument at the top of a very tall hill in Astoria, OR.  For many folks there this was probably a casual, easy way to fill an afternoon.  But Mom is very afraid of heights, so she gripped the railing tight and stopped on every available landing, and made people go past her, all the way up 164 steps.  Out on the balcony at the very top, she clung to the too-smooth concrete side of the big pillar as other folks gaily peered down over the railing and launched balsa wood airplanes purchased from the gift shop.  She told me on the way back down, “You know, I thought, ‘If Dad can do chemo, I can do this.’”  Yeah.  And if she can do that, then I can do this new house thing.  I won’t say I’m not hesitant, nervous.  But it’s about time that something good and tough in my life knocked me out of the daily groove I’ve been wearing into the ground.  A good fear, a manageable one.  A kickstart and a shove in the right direction.