It was a really good weekend, this Labor Day, maybe even because I wasn’t necessarily expecting it to be. Before the hurricane I was all concerned because I didn’t have plans and I felt like a big loser. I’d really been in the mood for someone to invite me to their fabulous beach cabin or something. I don’t know anyone with a fabulous beach cabin but that’s what I wanted anyway. For a while I considered taking a trip by myself, to Portland or Vancouver maybe, but then I thought the likelihood of my sitting alone in an expensive hotel room at night would be pretty high, and I decided I could sit alone in my own room, which has my bed and my books and my laptop and my pictures on the wall, plus my kitchen with all my food in it right downstairs, for free. I figured I’d maybe do some touristy stuff in Seattle on my own and watch a lot of movies and read a lot. I was even looking forward to it in a low-key way, although I would have preferred the imaginary fabulous beach cabin.
And then, well, after Katrina…I mean, I had the same horrible week everyone else had. My friend had a baby, which was cool, but when I wasn’t thinking about how awesome that was, I was frothing at the mouth with anger and grief and misery for the victims of the hurricane. A couple of people have asked me if it’s because I am recalling going through the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew in 1992, but you know, honestly, I don’t think that’s really it. I mean, first of all, I wasn’t there for the storm itself, I was hundreds of miles away in Jamaica. By the time we could finally get back home the National Guard was already in place and there was a curfew and the tent cities were already going up. It had been declared a disaster by the first president Bush within twelve hours of landfall, if I recall correctly, and while, yes, it was scary not to be able to find my mom for a while, and yes, we did lose a lot of stuff and had to get all new floors and everything, I can confidently assert that what I went through in 1992 was not remotely comparable to what they’re dealing with on the Gulf Coast. Politically, socially, hell, even geographically, it’s a whole different thing. I know I was extraordinarily lucky even in the context of our hurricane, because of course some people did die and some people did lose everything…but there is no comparison at all with what’s happening with Katrina. I never thought I would say that Hurricane Andrew was not really that rough, alls things considered. It’s still inconceivable that something like that could be relative.
So I feel the same guilt and shame and disbelief as well as the same sense of outrage fatigue that a lot of us are feeling. I’m reading the same news and swallowing hard when I see the same pictures. I’ve been sending schmoopy emails back and forth with my girl in Baton Rouge and have heard some good news from that quarter. It seems like some of the relief efforts are starting to be coordinated a little better, but I still keep hearing all these ways that various politicians from various branches of government are, like, refusing aid from other countries, and insisting that paperwork was required to declare a state of emergency and to get the marines into New Orleans, and so on and so forth. I feel powerless and scared and furious and I don’t really want to read the news or see the pictures but on the other hand I kind of can’t do anything else. I know it doesn’t help anyone for me to be on 24-hour freakout here, but I still, somehow, am doing that sort of magical thinking, where in the monkey part of my brain it makes sense to me that if I learn everything I can about every new horror, every new incompetence, then somehow that will make it that one more person in Mississippi will get the food and medical care she needs, that one more person in New Orleans will find a way out of the city. I know that’s not the way it works and I’m trying not to think with my monkey brain too much but the conviction is still there, buried way underneath.
So I feel a little funny telling you that it turned out that my weekend filled right up and that I was way more social and had way more fun than I expected to this past weekend. I did a bunch of my favorite things and hung out with great people and felt really glad to be alive and very much in love with my friends and even a little bit with my city. My monkey brain magical thinking doesn’t really know what to do with that so I guess I’ll just tell you about it and leave it at that.
Friday was the last day of my now-former-coworker Potato. Our office went to lunch at the mall and then went shopping, an exercise I don’t usually enjoy very much but proved profitable this time in that I scored a good pair of jeans that fit me pretty well and were even on sale. They are way more flared than what I usually wear but I don’t care and have decided to embrace it. Flares are probably even pretty good for me because they hide my very often regrettable shoe choices. I’m pretty pleased and I may even go back to the store and get another pair this weekend. It worked out particularly well because as I was on the bus back home after the gym I got a tearful call from poor Potato, whose car tire had blown out and needed some help up on Capitol Hill. I just got off the bus and into the car and fortunately had the jeans on me to go out later that night, because by the time Triple A showed up and we got everything straightened around there wasn’t enough time for me to make the hike back to Ballard and then make it back out to the bar we were all going to that night.
I’ve often found that I like like the getting-ready part of going out more than the actual going out part of going out. Potato let me use her special body gel and nice scented lotion, and she gave me a scandalously low cut shirt and earrings and heels to wear with my new jeans. It was so fun, listening to music and talking and laughing and eating pudding cups. The bar itself was less fun. I think I just don’t like bars too much, at least when they are loud and full of annoying fratty people. When my friend Kara started telling me about the movies she and her fiancé had at home that they were really looking forward to reading, I knew it was time to go. I was pretty proud of myself for wearing such a low-cut shirt out in public but I was even happier to get home to my orange sheets. I guess I am old.
Saturday I had all sorts of errands planned, none of which I was able to accomplish for various reasons. I ended up having a really fun day in Capitol Hill with my friend Eric, with whom I saw the intriguingly flung futon on the street that one time. We had lunch at Crave, which I absolutely adjure all Seattleites to do as well, as it was SO GOOD. Neither of us had any real plans for the day so it was like, “Hey, want to go to the park? Hey, want to eat a doughnut? Hey, want to sit in the coffee shop, hey want to trade iPods for an hour, hey want to get sushi, hey want a copy of that song you liked so much?” I love that kind of day. I didn’t really know how I wanted to spend my Saturday but through some great good fortune I got to spend it exactly the way I would have wanted had I thought far enough ahead about it. But of course part of the charm about those kind of days is that you can’t really plan them, you just have to go along and have them.
Sunday turned out to be another kind of favorite day, though rather different than the day before. I ran into John and Treasa in the kitchen Sunday morning, where they expressed surprise that I was home and told me, rather sternly, that they stayed up for \\hours\\ Friday night waiting for me to get home and finally were too tired and had to go to bed before I made it back at the unheard hour of midnight. Treasa hadn’t seen me at all on Saturday as I left before she was up, but John assured her that he’d seen me come down the stairs so all was well. It was so silly and cute. I love my housemates.
Treasa and I went down to the market for veggies and I wore my new jeans again and I picked up, rather dubiously, a bunch of kale with which to make my soup of the week. That’s my new thing, I make a soup a week and then eat it for lunch every day. This week it’s white bean with kale and garlic. I call this “aggressively healthy hippie food” and it’s quickly become a nice little part of my routine. I had missed the market last week because of being in New York so I was glad to load up on berries and pluots and apples for a rather ill-advised apple crisp. After ascertaining that the U-District Trader Joe’s did not, in fact, have my special kind of oatmeal it was time to come home and chill for a while before Ian and Katie came over for dinner and movies. We don’t have people over at the house too often, but since Ian and Katie used to live in my room we’re all very comfortable having them over and it was great to see them. Matt and Sarah came up from downstairs to have dinner too and it was all just very homey and nice, with hot soup and stupid movies and an ill-advised apple crisp (I didn’t put the oven on hot enough, it turns out). I guess it’s fall now, or something.
Monday! Monday I had off from work! Monday I had to get up at the crack of dawn to make my aforementioned soup, which turned out only okay, nowhere near as good as either the sweet potato-summer squash-corn-and rice or the cream of broccoli. But whatever, I made soup at seven in the morning and was all ready to get on the bus to spend the day at Bumbershoot. I’d planned to go back before my social calendar filled up and I thought it would be a kind of interesting thing to do. I went the first summer I lived in Seattle but I don’t really remember anything about it, except I think I saw the Red Elvises and I think the girl I was with got up on stage and danced with them, or something.
I’m not that huge of a live music fan, which, I know, is totally a crime in Seattle. I have been to about three shows in my life, none of which I can remember at the moment. Uh, They Might Be Giants, once, I think, and I think also the Aquabats and the Specials. Yeah, see? Not so huge on the live music. I don’t exactly know why that is but I think it has something to do with being sort of a dork, and also with wanting music to be a part of my everyday life, in my ears on the bus, floating out the window as I drive, percolating in the kitchen as I cook. I am always a little surprised, too, to see that the music that comes out of my iPod actually has people behind it, and a little uncomfortable. I never know where to look and when to do that weird arms-in-the-air-twirly dance and when to cross my arms and bob my head and look bored. It’s rough. So the fact that I would be going to a arts festival specifically to see a live show or two and that I would be doing this completely alone, was something of a shock to me, even though, you know, I was fully in control of my mental faculties when I made the plans to go.
Going alone to the arts festival, man. Best idea ever. You know why? Total selfishness, that’s why. None of this fussing about where to meet or what show to see or who wants an elephant ear and who wants strawberry shortcake because you can’t eat a whole one by yourself. No worrying about timing or other peoples’ tired feet or hydration needs, no having to justify why you want to go to a lit reading in the middle of the day. It’s great and I recommend it highly. While I was there I felt a little the same way I did when I was traveling on my own in France, very independent and answerable to no one. I think I should do more stuff that lets me feel that way, even if it’s only for a day or two at a time.
Anyway, I put on the only cool shirt I own (all hail Girls Bike club!) and took the bus all by myself to the Seattle Center and saw The Decemberists, who were very good and funny and whose new album I would like to own, and also Kinski, who I literally knew nothing about except I see them mentioned in The Stranger all the time and I didn’t have anything planned for that spot in my day so what the hell. I turned out to be the very last person they let into the venue (“How many in your party?” “One.”) and so even though it was very loud and a little too bangy-bangy for me, and also even though I had no idea it wouldn’t involve lyrics, and I generally like music with lyrics, I stayed for an hour, just to justify having been let in as the very last person. I felt slightly cool for even being there but it really was too loud for me because, as abovementioned, I am old.
At the lit reading, put on by contributors to this cool new magazine I got to laugh at some very funny women and also get a book signed by one of my heroes, who did her presentation wearing a very short dress and very tall boots and was very nice to me when I asked her to sign my book. I have a crush: on her, on her book, and on Swivel in general. Not to mention a bunch of new authors to read. Plus they had Fankick! bring on each of the readers and it turns out I have a crush on Fankick! as well. Awesome.
My true love though, one I believe will be with me for a long time, had to have been Flight of the Conchords, who I heard about on pamie.com and about whom I had another oh-what-the-hell-I’m-there-anyway moment when I saw that they’d be playing on Monday night. I am, quite simply, in love. In love, I tell you. I mean, with me it’s easy. The math goes like this: cute boys + dorky glasses + sweaters + unassuming attitude + very very very funny but not in an obvious way but also not in a way that’s specifically not obvious, which I know makes no sense but you have to trust me, very funny + New Zealand accents + guitar from the future + self-deprecation + funny hair = LOVE. I can’t seem to find a CD with the awesome “It’s Business Time” on it which is maybe a good thing because I would do nothing but play that song all day every day if indeed I could find it. I can’t even explain it. Flight of the Conchords, my new boyfriends.
It was, really, a great ending to a wonderful weekend. I did what I wanted when I wanted to with the people I wanted to do it with, and really, how can you beat that? My sad monkey brain did intrude from time to time, and I did deliver a couple of angry hurricane-based polemics at various points, it’s true. I don’t know, though, it was so good to be out in Seattle with some of my favorite people or just by myself, that I felt more grateful for what I have than anything else for most of the weekend. It’s a welcome change from being angry and sad, especially since I don’t think those emotions are going to be in short supply any time soon.