I Cooked For Myself Today!

Sometimes that's all you can ask for.

(For the curious, which basically means my mom: miso soup made from red miso paste and hot water. And spinach-from-a-bag, well coated with a harissa-cream cheese-champagne vinegar mix that I made up myself.)

Notes From An Insomniac (Warning: Possibly Depressing)

Being an insomniac is not as glamorous as it appears in the movies; and although that's true of many things, it strikes me as particularly true about not being able to sleep. 

Sleep seems like a basic human right; something that your brain should do unthinking; and certainly it's possible that we as a species are now so overbred, overfed, overmedicated or over SOMETHING, that really we should feel lucky we can still perform the act of breeding at all, or at least without the constant assistance of our therapists. Still: it seems incredibly rude of mother nature to have yanked the ability to perform this particular physical need. I mean, at least I'm female--and, because my parents read this, I'll leave the rest of that sentence as an exercise for the reader.

After all, you've been up for a dozen hours, perhaps more; you've performed some kind of work; you've run errands and prepared and eaten a few meals and generally taken care of the detritus of the day; you've brushed your teeth and you lay you down to sleep and maybe you DO, at least for a few hours, but then suddenly at 3:30 your eyes slam open and you are well and truly fucked.


Being awake when everyone else is asleep is ostracizing, disorienting, and depressing. It's not as much fun as you think, listening to people snore, even if you love them. It's actually one of the very few things that's MORE fun, or at least more tolerable, if you live alone, because you have no one lying next to you, snoozing peacefully in the arms of Morpheus, unpacking the cares of the day, hammering home the fact that you are broken, that your brain hates you, and that you are completely out of sync with the rhythm of the world. 

And so you decide to get out of bed, because lying there will just make it worse. Maybe you'll get a little work done. HA. More fool you. Being awake when you should be asleep has one defining physical quality: you're out of sync with time, and that means you are FREEZING. (Terry Pratchett nails this in "Thief of Time.") I don't care if it's the middle of summer in Florida with no AC: you are shivering too hard to type accurately.

So you end up, instead, at a diner with the rest of the other losers who have nowhere else to be.

It should be mentioned here that part of the assumed glamor about being up when no one else is includes the idea that you'll meet someone. Maybe not in a romantic way, but that you'll have a deep conversation with someone you've never met before, baring your soul in the way you can only do in the middle of the night with a stranger that you'll never see again, some twisted Puritan version of Confession for the Damned. It seems so romantic, very Casablanca, that of all the hours of the night and out of all the diners in Seattle, you're sitting there, and so is that other person, and doesn't that mean that you and he have something in common, possibly even more so than you do (at least at this moment) with your lucky, lucky, sleeping partner?

No. Because literally no one is at their best in the middle of the night. Not you, not your promised conversational partner, not anyone. The reality of being up when no one else is is more like the jungle: everyone reverts to their basic lizard instincts, like that scene in Mean Girls. You have to physically watch yourself to make sure you don't start grunting and pointing as you hunch your cold body over the counter. And so you try to talk to the waitress, if you can and she has time, and eating greasy food just to have something to do, and re-reading a book you've already read a million times before, watching the hours tick by, wishing that you could have stayed there, with your partner, in the warm and cozy bed, where you thought you belonged.

Strong Father Figure--or, Happy Birthday, Dad! (Early!)

Countless times in my life I have overheard this phrase: "Hey, have you gotten Steve's opinion on this?" Before Google, there was my dad.

He's just that kind of man. People care what he thinks. They come to him with problems or concerns. They ask his advice. He is routinely asked to lead a committee or read the Bible passage at church. He is always the man to lead prayer. He's a Presence, and he has this VOICE. I let him read bedtime stories to me long after I could read them myself, because I liked sitting on his lap and hearing the vibrations in his chest. The Voice says something to people, something they subconsciously and viscerally respond to, something primal. The Voice says, "I have recognized you as a human being. I have really seen you. I have really listened to you. And we are in this together. Have no fear; I got your back. I have the situation under control. This is what we are going to do." People HEAR him. You would probably not be surprised to learn that he is a fantastic salesman.

My dad is the kind of man whom would be asked by a group of COMPLETE STRANGERS to, for example, say the blessing. 

He is exceptionally tolerant. I can still list every single time I have seen him angry; that is how rarely it occurs. He is calm. He treated me, and still does treat me, like he would treat a son. He never told me he was too busy for me; he took time to explain things to me until I understood; he told my favorite stories over and over, upon my request, never telling me that he was tired of them. He never laughed at me for using such big words that my mouth could barely fit around the syllables, and, in fact, he taught me more of them. He never censored anything that came out of my mouth, even if it might make him uncomfortable. My ongoing questions about boys and the universe were never too silly for him; and what's more, he never gave me advice until I asked for it. (I discovered boys very early--it's just that it took a little longer for them to discover me.) When I did start dating, he wasn't one of those dads that sits on the front porch cleaning the shotguns, partly because my peace-loving dad has never owned a gun in his life, that I know of; partly because he's not much of a porch-sitter; and mainly because he trusted me to make my own decisions. He never gave my dates the third degree or played twenty questions with them. He only cared if I liked them and if they treated me well, and since--in him--I had a rather stellar example of how a man SHOULD treat a woman, he probably had some confidence that I knew what it was, to be treated well. (Also, to cement my standard for "good treatment", my dad took me on my first date! I would highly recommend this approach, fathers of the world.)


We disagree on many things, but he is compassionate, non-judgmental, open-minded. We discuss politics, gay rights, religion, and he does not get heated. He doesn't discount my opinions, and he allows facts to influence his judgment, instead of the other way around. (Discovering that people DON'T do that most of the time was a real shock.)

He is, in short, a man who taught me that I had a voice and I should use it, even if that meant I would use it to disagree with him. Incredibly smart leaders all over the world have consistently refused to  wrap their heads around this idea, and my father lives by it every day.

Happy Birthday, Dad. Sniff. Sniff.

Talking About: Surviving the EVIL Frathouse--Or Actually, Escaping The Evil Cathouse

Let me tell you something: no one is prepared to suddenly box up all of their possessions and move overnight.

I had a lot of stuff. It wasn't...a HUGE amount, necessarily, but I was a book lover, and so I had tons of those. CDs? Well, some, although fortunately my years in college coincided with Napster's debut, so I had fewer than I otherwise might. DVDs? Yeah, because it was before the age of Amazon. But not a lot, because I have really never been a TV watcher.

And I had cupboards full of hair product I'd never used. And makeup. (WHEN will I learn my lesson? I never use this shit, like, ever. But I buy it anyway.)

And shoes. OMG THE SHOES. Some of them I still can't find, and I miss them. I'm still missing some items of clothing--seriously, I lost CLOTHES in this move. That just seems wrong to me, somehow. Clothes are not--at least mine are not--expensive, or overall too bulky, but yet I lost key items in this move and I'm still so fucking angry about it, I suspect because I'm still getting over the fact that I suddenly had to box up all of my possessions and move overnight.

The signs had been there for some time, really, this ex-roommate whose girlfriend was the most awful person I had ever known, but since I tend to sit on my emotions, I just struggled through somehow. The yelling. The black eyes on my ex-roommate. The fact that this woman, her girlfriend--did I mention, a twice-convicted domestic violence felon?--would start telling me how awful a person I was, when my ex-roommate wasn't there, because this felon didn't have a home to go to--shocking--and just had to abuse someone, the way an alcoholic will drink hand sanitizer if that's all you've got. And then when I finally had the courage to voice my concerns to my ex-roommate, a woman whom I'd known for 20 years and whom I thought cared for me as a friend, she made it very clear that she didn't care about my boundaries, my safety, or my life. "(Twice convicted domestic violence felon) is my life now," she said.

Well then.

I hired movers and my mother came, gods bless her, and E, who was rather new in my life at that time, also came and actually made things worse, but at the same time I loved that he wanted to stand up for me, was willing to physically approach (Twice convicted domestic violence felon) if she threatened my life, which she ended up doing.

It was Mayday, and so the numerous times that we called the cops--they didn't answer. They never came. I called, E called, and the Landlord of our apartment building called. No cop response whatsoever. So glad I'm paying THEIR wages with my taxes. Being threatened for my life in my own apartment, by a convicted felon. And no response. AWESOME.

The movers almost left, citing that it was too dangerous an environment. Fortunately I convinced them to stay, in the face of (Twice convicted domestic violence felon) who kept yelling at them, telling them that I was a cunt who they should never believe. Yes. Because a sure sign of sanity is yelling violently at strangers. That WAS fortunate because it was literally the only day I had to move--I had taken the day off from work, because I no longer had weekends available. I had been in SoCal the weekend before and I would be in NYC the weekend after, with E. If the movers had left I might NEVER have moved.

It helped, I think, that she was so abjectly crazy--telling me, and my mother, and the movers, that it was HER apartment and she had a right to do what she wanted in it--well, honey, given that my ex-roommate moved you in a week ago, you aren't paying rent, and your name is certainly not on the lease because there's a very strong policy about felons getting leases--honey, it's not actually your apartment. At all.

And then the fun began.

I actually got out of there, leaving behind hundreds of dollars of belongings that I'll never see again, before (Twice convicted domestic violence felon) kicked out an apartment window, which my ex-roommate told me about by phone call. "Landlord was so upset, I just felt so sorry for him," she said. "He was so upset! I felt so sad for him!"

I hung up the phone shortly after. 

And this is not even mentioning the times in which ex-roommate's mother called me, asking my opinion of the recent screaming match that she'd witnessed between ex-roommate and (Twice-convicted-domestic-violence-felon). Each time I had to reassure the mother: Yes, ex-roommate has fallen in love with a violently abusive and crazy woman. She's 28 now. She's still just a barista at Starbucks and she has never taken responsibility for anything, so I can't imagine she's going to start now. And she's 28 now.  There's not much you or I can do about it. I just moved out. Sorry.

Do I Know You? (SEATTLE TIMES!!)

If I do, or even if I don't, my new company is GOING TO BE IN THE SEATTLE TIMES TOMORROW. AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH I CAN'T EVEN DEAL I'M SO EXCITED!!

Ahem. You may now return to whatever you were doing.

Also our dryer is out again because the Artisan Finishes shop next door used up all the 220V. I have this image of 220V electrons coming out of the factory, being sucked away by the shop next door, and therefore eventually drying up the 220V line that runs into our place, although I know that's not how it works.

Hey, Ohm's Law! Didn't see you there. It's not like I run an ELECTRIC MOTOR shop or anything...

On with this Death March of Random: I actually ate like three servings of veggies today and ENJOYED, for ONCE, going grocery shopping with E. Also it turns out you can totally make your own green juice by throwing greens, water, and something gritty--vitamin powder, hemp/chia seeds, etc--into a blender. Throw a healthy dollop of almond/peanut butter in there if you want to, maybe a scoop or two of honey. POOF. Never let your greens go bad again. (Seriously. It's shocking how well this works.)

More startup fuel, paleo friend? You got it. Take two raw eggs, mix in bowl until it's your standard yellow color. (If your arm is getting tired, congratulations, my friend, your eggs are really fresh! Chow down on those suckers.) Moving on. Add some kind of cooked meat--smoked salmon, bits of cooked sausage, or cooked bacon, whatever. Throw in microwave for 2 minutes, give or take 15 seconds. Ta-Da! Hot breakfast. The texture is a little strange--sort of like a dry quiche, or a wet frittatta--but it works and it's cheap and it's good for you. Sprinkle cheese over it right as it comes out of the microwave and stir, if you'd like, but for gods' sake don't put the cheese in FIRST. You'll never taste it. (I have heard, though, that this method works well with salsa in the eggs. Maybe pesto or tapenade would work equally well?)

Other good startup snacks, so you add as many vitamins to your diet as possible without spending too much money on food: anything vegetable that can be made into a chip. Those veggie chips? Eat 'em like crazy. Kale chips? Sure. Plenty of Snapea Crisps around, too. QFC has green bean chips and OKRA chips, of all things, which E loves.

That concludes this report from the front lines of Startup. See you next time, bloggers.

Acheivement

I just made the E laugh so hard his eyes leaked.

It was a wonderful moment and it capped off a rather SHITTY three weeks, with nothing sold and this blog unfed and therefore, my only connection to SANITY not fed or watered, or perhaps reinforced or created at all.

Not that our past three weeks have been hard as a COUPLE. I mean, we're soul mates and life mates and that is obvious to even the most casual observer, so although we do have our bad times as a couple, they tend to last shorter than 48 hours and are not, perhaps, all that remarkable, as a whole. I've been in very few "relationships", or in fact anything that resembles the word if you didn't look too closely, but I DO have a sense of what a bad relationship is and we absolutely don't have one, which is to say that we are approaching riding off into the sunset together but have no idea about the lay of the land ahead. (Are there roadside diners? Are there sudden canyons? We can't be sure.)

WHAT I'M SAYING HERE is that no one with a lick of sense or an ounce of self-preservation gets into business with their life mate at all. I said that to the E today. We were at lunch, and he suggested going on an overnight horseback ride. And with what money I have NO idea, and since its MY job in both the relationship and the business to make the money, you can perhaps understand why I'm a little touchy about that, but really I'm just as bad, because I have this inbound desire to earn enough money, and to make us successful enough, to take him to Iceland, because he's always wanted to go, and where the money for THAT is going to come from I don't know either.

ANYWAY. He suggested this overnight horseback camping trip, and he is (almost) certainly a better seat than I am, but I love animals and would love to go, and so we talked about it, as lovers do, over a table outside on a beautiful Seattle day when we'd already been to the doctor, the banker, and the bicycle maker, and I'm aware that has barely any relationship to the old poem and I'm only somewhat sorry about it. And then he said, "Well, we could maybe try a one- or -two hour trip first, to see if we handled it okay."

And this was, in fact, a very prudent suggestion, and I said as much. "That's a very prudent suggestion,"I said.

Because to be fair he has been sick for going on ten years now, on full disability, really too sick to stand up, some days, and I've been sick for about a year, but am improving, but both of those things are really quite tied to our backs, both of which might, in fact, COMPLAIN about being strapped to a horse and riding over any kind of terrain whatsoever.

And so it would be prudent to try out this horseback idea for a shorter time than, say, a DAMN WEEKEND in which you're probably STUCK somewhere OUT ON A TRAIL, right? (Although I'm sure whatever company we went through would have some way of dealing this, but still. GAH.) Hence my use of this term, "prudent."

And I followed it up with: "And in fact, I'm impressed, because I have never really suspected you of having the ability (beat pause) to do ANYTHING in the prudent fashion."

And this stud, the love of my life, looked right back at me and said, "Well. You raise an interesting point. I mean, I CAN do things in the prudent fashion, and I'd like to raise the particular example of Exhibit A, back in 1998, which I realize is before your time,* so you'll have to take my word for it. And it was exhausting and way more work than it was worth, and so I did it one time and I'll probably never do it again. But I CAN."

*The E is, in fact, only three-and-a-half years older than I am. I was most definitely around in 1998, but the man will have his joke.

Relationship Tip #937

If your partner is being a drip, he is (most probably) fully aware of it already, and already feels bad about it. He's trying to improve his mood and be less of a drip. He doesn't need you reminding him that he is being a drip. He knows. He ALSO knows that you are well within your rights to point it out, and he won't be mad about the fact that you DID, in fact, point it out, but neither does he need you to do so. He knows he's not being 100% awesome right now, and he's trying to fix it, okay? You won't make any friends by going on about it.

Remember: the point of a relationship is to NOT make your partner feel like a jerk. If you find yourself deriving some pleasure from making your partner feel like a jerk, something is wrong.

Most Importantly:

NEVER, EVER, EVER, TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE GOAL.

This would be fine advice if I only had ONE goal. Alas, I have about fifteen, all colliding in my brain at any given moment, shouting to me and making little "umph" noises as they grab, dejectedly, yet animatedly, at my neurons. Greedy little grabby things, I already TOLD you, I have ONE neuron available at any given moment and it has about the availability of the the phones at the New York Stock Exchange, and there is some guy in a green visor and a serious mouth expression and ink-stained figures with his hand firmly on this neuron and he is not going to just let go.

Goal Setting

The thing about working for yourself, as E would say, is that your boss always knows when you aren't working.

I'd add: And you keep seeing what you haven't done, or what you've done completely wrong.

The first month, printing out business cards takes all of your resources, because you have to keep printing them on your inkjet printer. You know this is a bad use of your time, but then you can't get ahead enough to take the two hours to design business cards to send to a printer. And on top of that you want them to be perfect, so you keep trying things, and you want the flexibility of printing off a small run.

And THEN you realize you need a real damn logo, so you have to take the time for THAT. (Tip to small business owners: Hatchwise is thebomb.com.). In between those things is trying to design adwork, trying to run a storefront, and trying to, you know, actually build a product. Several of them. And, like, sleep.

Because in a startup, you do EVERYTHING. Everything from designing ads to writing the business plan to taking out the trash. Meetings with government and venture capitalists and project planners. Loan paperwork.

Send coffee.

I also have no idea what, if anything, this post has to do with goal setting. I think I was going to make some point that setting goals and achieving them--meeting with X, business cards sent--seems like it would help, seems like it would give you some sense of accomplishment, but it totally doesn't because those things aren't goals at all; they are steps to achieving your goals, or more like steps to Being A Business Professional.

Sending off a business card design won't net you a purchase the next day, but it DOES allow you to hand them out at cocktail parties, which is really the same thing.

Oh, wait, it's not?

The problem is that customers won't come in and say, "Oh, I saw your ad in The Stranger/picked up one of your business cards at Vivace/saw your Facebook page in a friend's feed." (Actually, that last one HAS happened to us, so...win?) The lack of transparency makes every decision, especially when on a budget, fraught with anxiety, with the fear of spending money on garbage and creating excess waste. "Those postcards have to be perfect, they cost us $458!" "Could the business cards POP a little more? I mean, we ARE going to have 250 of them." Etc.

Why should I get business cards at all? How can I tell that they will help me get customers? Will the bank magically loan me more money?

Just Another Day

Bad: We have had no business cards for two days.

Good: Because we have a new logo and we want to get it on the cards!

Normally we'd print cards on our own printer in the office. But,

Bad: Our printer broke late last night. Like, at midnight.

Good: Therefore, we placed an emergency order for "real" business cards, which we've only needed for a month or so.

I was planning on going to FedEx or similar this morning for an emergency stash to hold us over. Then today happened.

Bad: E woke up late for his 9:15 meeting. An angry New Yorker is not a pleasant sight to wake up to.

Good: Once he was out the door, his mother (oh, did I mention she was staying with us?) and I had a lovely morning.

Really Good: I have a meeting with Seattle government next week; they want to get more involved, officially, with our pedicabs!

Really, Really, Good: I also have a meeting with a venture capitalist next week.

Related, Really, Really, Good: When a venture capitalist asks for your investor pitch AND YOU HAVE ONE ALREADY PREPARED. That you can just send off like it ain't no thing.

Bad: Still riding high on all the goods, you return from your 11:00 meeting to discover that a pipe has burst. Let me say that again: A PIPE HAS BURST. Above, say, a lot of electric motors, batteries, and other assorted electronic equipment. Did I mention our store is supposed to open five minutes ago?

COMMENCE EMERGENCY PROCEDURE #15, which would be so much more believable if we actually HAD emergency procedures, or worse, we were able to determine what, exactly, qualifies as an actual emergency. Opposed to, say, a normal day in the life of a startup.

I had a point here, but tequila and red wine have, blessedly, thankfully, erased it.

Is there a patron saint of startups?

Survived to Friday!

I have been to Auburn three times since Tuesday, which in itself should be enough to qualify me for sainthood, as if cutting out all carbs and losing a whole pants size within two weeks wasn't enough.

BUT. When the product that you're trying to launch falls apart two days before launch, you decide that you'd better become capable of almost anything, because what the hell else are you going to do? Not launch the product? Unacceptable. Did I mention that dry shampoo is Your Friend during Weeks Like This?

And so, if failure is not an option, you learn how to bend physics. But GODS does that take it out of you. I am a lump.

A lump that has eaten delicious eggplant parmesan, drank a glass of red wine, and indulged in chocolate frozen custard with a shot of espresso poured over it. I have eaten rice crackers and fruit juice and drank hard apple cider. Tonight I may have a lemon bar. I'm not gonna make a habit of this, but today? Worth every calorie.

My parents came to our launch party (shoutout!) and brought a flag, and my father, bless him, watched me lay it out on the floor with puzzlement.

"What are you doing?" he asked me.

"I'm going to learn how to grommet," I said, as if that was a perfectly normal thing to do at 8 pm on a Thursday night while wearing heels.

Wow, Writing Is Hard Work

Wow, you guys! Writing is, like, HARD.

Coming up with new things to say every day is...daunting. Beyond daunting. It's blackout hard/As in, the mind just looks at the enormity of the task and blacks out.

When I think of finishing my novel, I tend to think of it all at once--which is absolutely preposterous. Because no one has ever sat down and written 250 pages in one sitting, and I'm not likely to become the first person to do so.

My novel being finished won't happen all at once--so why do I think of it like it will?

Bad form, really.

It's the same with organizing. It just seems like such a massive undertaking. But once I start--it doesn't seem so bad.

Austerity Measures

Are, in fact, No Damned Fun At All.

E and I stick to them occasionally, like any couple does, I think--reminding Oneself, or possibly, if in a crabby mood, Ones Partner, when One of us has just looked at the bank statements--that we are, in fact, broke.

And Ones who are broke have no call or reason to be out buying dinner in restaurants when we could be eating at home, on beans and rice and cheap wine studded with fruit-fly carcasses, which we should be damn grateful about getting for free because they have protein in them.

The OTHER thing about eating at home, as everyone knows, is that it's a lot better for you. E and I have both been slowly gaining weight over time, and although we both started this gain so underweight that our various friends and parental units were genuinely concerned about us, it turns out extra fat WILL make its presence known even if it grows on you so slowly that you have to take stats every four months or so, (because every the change every two months will be still unnoticeable) and eventually you have to do something to reverse the trend. The FASCINATING thing about the timing here is that E and I are suddenly seeing ourselves On Camera a lot, not because we've suddenly become movie stars (I wish) but because we are Doing Social media, i.e. Generating Content for our social media pages, and a lot of that ends up with One being, as it were, On Camera.

I saw myself on camera four weeks ago, wearing stretchy clothes (I had just come from the gym) and thought to myself, "Who's that fat girl? ...OH SHIT."

And E, bless him, had the same reaction to his OWN image, captured on camera just a few days ago. He watched some recently taken footage with me, and somewhere in the middle of watching himself load a bike onto a display he said, "I need to start losing weight."

I think an important distinction might be addressed at this time: that, as athletes, both he and I are acutely aware of our body shapes and conditions. It's not that I think I'm FAT, necessarily, ignoring my comment above. It's that I know I'm carrying weight that isn't making itself useful. My body is not performing up to Standards. And it Should.

So: more roast chicken and salad. Less happy hour fried food at Stadium Lodge. Yay.

Talking About: Surviving the EVIL Frat House

aka "Out of the frying pan and into the fire", only with correct Title Capitalization, which I leave as an exercise for the reader.

For seven months in 2012, I lived with a very hostile environment. The weirdest part was that I lived in TWO SEPARATE very hostile environments, so moving out of one fixed the problem temporarily, and then it got much, much worse. So in a way I sort of...moved backwards? I'm still not sure. I would certainly rate the entire experience 0 stars on Amazon, if that was possible, but we all know it's not so I suppose I'll have to rate it 1 star, which is perhaps appropriate in spite of itself because I certainly did learn something, so perhaps there was some value after all.

Note: when someone uses the word "perhaps" twice in the same sentence, they are not ready to...

You know what? Fuck that. I'm not really ready to talk about that yet. (And I didn't even realize it until I wrote "perhaps" twice.) Everything is fine now, and that's...well, maybe not the important part, although it certainly is A, or maybe AN, important part. That's not the ending. There's a lot of mini-endings, or arc endings, that are wrapped up in that story--how E and I met, and how we merged our lives in a crucible, forged them together because we had nowhere else to go, how we therefore ended a lot of other people's stories, or at least killed the bonds connecting THEIR stories to OURS.

It's hard for me, in my lesser moments, not to hold that against him. To not imagine how awful those months were and then, if I'm angry at him for some small reason (see "microwave door", below) to try to push all my decisions off on him. To avoid taking responsibility for the choices I made. To decide, as I think many people do, that my life sucks, and it's my PARTNER'S fault for taking that job/moving us here/buying this house that I hate.

(E and I have started referring to this unfortunate avoidance shortcut in the human mind as the "microwave door" shortcut, after my own desire to have him close the microwave door when he's done with it, and deciding that his tendency to do so, after I've specifically asked him not to, is OBVIOUSLY proof that HE DOESN'T CARE ABOUT MY NEEDS AND HAS PROBABLY NEVER LOVED ME AT ALL. Many couples have "the toothpaste cap" shortcut, or possibly the "left out the cheese again" shortcut.)

Because the long and short of it is that E and I have decided to be partners, both now and (we plan) forever, and so I HAVE to accept my partner just as he is with all their faults or else drive myself crazy, because he probably won't change and doing anything else is completely illogical. Yes, that DOES sound rather sanctimonious, doesn't it? I'm sorry. It seems accurate, although maybe not phrased very well. The point is, I'm learning that the human mind has all these shortcuts that try to FORCE you to be unhappy, and part of being an evolved human is to spot those and avoid sliding down them like Life has suddenly become some sadistic version of Chutes and Ladders, where the Chutes are lined with razor blades and the rungs of the Ladders melt into gooey drips as you attempt to climb them.

Did I mention I have vivid nightmares? I drink to avoid them. Sometimes it works.

ANYWAY.

I fell in love with E on the night we met, and there has never been another option for me, realistically speaking, but that in itself is a kind of weight that he gave me to carry around. And another thing that I can hold against him, if I choose to. Sometimes it's hard not to. I didn't want to be in love and I hadn't planned on it, and now I AM and maybe the whole thing would be easier if I just ran away, moved out, got my own apartment, suddenly pulled the trigger on a whole different life and exploded my current one to shreds so small that they couldn't be pieced back together with an electron scanning microscope (ESM) and several hours of an extremely sharp-sighted grad student and a pair of minute tweezers.

No end to this one.

Well, Hello!

Hello there! Yes, it HAS been a long time, hasn't it? How have you been? Yes, I've been doing well too. You look smashing. Oh, yes, I know I do, too. Oh, you. Oh, you're making me blush. No, really, stop, so I can please get a word in edgewise?

WELL. Now that we've gotten that out of the way. It HAS, in fact, been some time. Only three months since I last posted, but really, more like a year since I posted with any sort of regularity at all, and before that I'm scared to look at my record, and I pray that you are, too.

Let's just get the stats out of the way in a fairly boring manner so we can swallow them all at once like a mouthful of broccoli we never intended to eat:

1. I live with my boyfriend!
2. In a warehouse!
2a. Not the lofty sort, either, but a real warehouse with NO light and, worse, NO EXPOSED BRICK. I know. I had the vapors.
3. I left the Lazy B!
4. So I could work for my boyfriend's business!

And with that, I really WILL have the vapors now. WHEEZE. WHEEZE.

Still with me? Not passed out in front of the mirror? (Is that just me?) Whew. I'm glad we all survived, and to that end, I'm going to have another glass of wine.

*swallows*

That's better. Writing always makes me so THIRSTY.

And it's to this end (not the wine drinking, because I can do that with no excuse at all, but the writing habit) that I'm starting (I hope, no promises whatsoever) to blog again, at least with some kind of regularity. To be honest (which I hate doing, much like sucking in my stomach to look skinnier, but I do that with EVERY KIND OF REGULARITY and so why not attempt honesty while I'm at it?)...where was I?

Oh, yes: I am attempting to write regularly again.

Writing has always been my therapy. And for some years there, more than I like to admit now because I feel completely stupid for not realizing this earlier, say, TWO! YEARS! AGO! that a lifetime of typing at the computer has taken its toll on my nervous system, I created less and less and I listlessly scrolled through the internet more and more.

Call it nerves (which I have--and so do you, for that matter) or call it Drift or call it whatever you want, but I had starting creating less and less and drifting through life more and more. There was a time...in which I decorated my apartment enough to be featured in Apartment Therapy's Small Cool Contest and had a piece published in the Seattle PI's blog. (Which I will have now linked.) But. That was a long time ago. But! I can reacquaint myself with the medium!

Because writing is important to me, and I miss it. And sometimes it hurts me, now, but really...I'm living with my boyfriend in a WAREHOUSE and trying to RUN A STARTUP! If there was EVER a time to blog, it is now. I will not piss away these years of my life. I will focus.

And writing = focus.

Want to know how to survive without a shower? In the middle of a frat house? In the middle of an EVIL frat house? Want to know what it's like to live with your boyfriend for the first time? To think, for the first time, that you'd ever have a long term relationship again?

Stay tuned, my lovelies. And get yourself a refreshing beverage while you're at it.

Mind Reading

E and I have been on the computer, doing some work, as you do, when "you" is "an entrepreneur that never stops working". He has gone into the other room, and calls out to me:

E: "I have a song from THE JUNGLE BOOK in my head."

The lightbulb flashes on for me, and I cackle. I know which one, too.

E: "What? No. You couldn't possibly know."

But I do. I can guess it.

E: "There's only a limited number of songs in The Jungle Book. You could nail it by guessing enough times."

Okay, one guess then.

E: "Okay, I will give you one guess. Shoot."

Bare Necessities.

E: "YES! THAT'S IT! HOW DID YOU KNOW THAT?"

You've just been over my shoulder at the computer, looking at my email. On the top of my email account is an advertisement email from a bra company called..."Bare Necessities". 

E: "Holy shit, I didn't even see that email. Or at least I don't remember seeing it."

You didn't notice it consciously, but clearly it attached itself to your subconcious. Because then you said "Jungle Book" and I put two and two together.

E: "I love you so much."

Your god is not my god.

A conversation with a team mate, who is an avid cyclist:

“Bikes are awesome, man. Everyone should bike!”

What about an ebike?

“A what?”

You know, an electric bike.

“WHAT? No. No electric bikes. That’s against my religion, man.”

Does your god HATE PROGRESS?

Jealousy.

The dude whose office I am sitting in has a most superior chair.

Family Biz

Working for the same company as my cousin—especially at the same site—is a little strange. For example, I can chat to him over company IM, on company time. I’D LIKE TO POINT OUT THAT WE RARELY DO THIS. But. All the same, it’s a possibility. He and his wife just had a baby, so occasionally, news needs to be passed, and it’s odd, but handy, to be able to discuss things while at work, and just by typing.

And it’s handy for me when I do things like miss a bus and need a ride to the express to Seattle, and my poor cousin gets called at home while he’s already in his pjs, and drives me to Everett Station.

And it’s ESPECIALLY handy when we want to go to lunch together and can easily plan it, and talk about who’s driving, which led to the following exchange.

Him: “Hey, do you have an elite parking pass?” (Parking at our site is notoriously, outrageously, difficult.)

Me: “HELL no.”

Him: “LOL okay. I thought, since you just changed jobs, you might get some kind of ‘relocation’ or ‘guest work’ type consideration.”

Me: “I WISH. Some members of my new team did, and I wish I could hate them, but they are very nice about it and carpool me around all over the place. This makes it impossible to hate them.”

Him: “It would.”

Me: “B*tches.”

Nothing Is Irreversible

Mighty Girl. "Decorating Your Home: 5 Tips On How To Get Started"

Turns out I have the Number 3 tip DOWN PAT. I am that girl who says, with an extremely outwardly-expressed form of long-suffering patience, "Look, let's just get paint on that wall/move the bookshelves from the warehouse to the kitchen/move your table into the living room so I can install MY table, because I'm tired of making decisions, and if you don't like it, we can always change it later. NOTHING IS IRREVERSIBLE." Many roommates have been very bothered by this. I still have trouble understanding them. 

Comes With The Territory

"Hi", I typed to AZ. "I'm tired and whiny."

"So you said hi just to whine?"


Me: "Yep!"


Him: "How did I get so lucky?"


Me: "...you dated me."