Halloweekend was a freaking MARATHON this year. Spanning a full week and a half, I used the whole month to get into my new obsession: clown makeup.
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| a clown and gaga at her 2009 vma performance walk into a bar... |
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| juul clown |
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| coffin clurb clownin |
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| started getting ready at 2pm and needed a cigar break |
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| twinnies |
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| first time doing the nose lines and got my teeth gross on purpose |
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| vodka clown <3 ppl didn't recognize me and i threw up out the window of the moving uber yikes |
I applied for a therapist after work today. Actually, it was during work. Boss makes a dollar I make a dime that's why I hit rock bottom and realize I need professional help on company time. Or whatever they say. As a reward (read: spiritual punishment) I looked through a ton of old pictures on my phone, highlights include images of my exes, my recently deceased dog (RIP SPENCER ILY4L), and times in my life where I was cuter, crazier, chattier. I know that sort of behavior is a losing game, and I always romanticize the past no matter how bad or mediocre it actually was, but I couldn't help it. I texted Lili about it, complaining about how much of a carefree player I was two years ago. Doing ketamine before class and cute eyeliner every day. Unstable/unstoppable. I wasn't even that happy, if I really try to remember and get back into that headspace. Just happier than I am now, in this dreary and out-of-it era of my life. I looked at pictures un-movingly until my phone died.
I've been peering into my past so much for so long, and for a while I considered it some sort of super ego/ID schemed up self harm adjacent behavior, but I had an 'aha' moment the other day and maybe I'm simply trying to remember who I am, or who I've been before. Many such cases.
Having a digital record (in my pocket/hand/under pillow/in my lap, etc) of what I looked like, spoke like, dressed like virtually every day for the last 8 years is so interesting because when I scroll through I don't change that much day to day. But if I skip up a year, the difference is so obvious.
In my pocket/hand/under pillow/in my lap, etc I have tangible, time-stamped records, archives, PROOF, of mutual feelings growing and ebbing, of the sweet names we called each other changing over the years, of virtual gifts in the forms of letters and playlists, her photo in my virtual locket, a home screen, a lock screen. I can scroll through big proclamations of love, coming to the others' rescue in a difficult moment, familiar emojis and whispered voice notes. I don't remember writing those things, or sending them. But they make me remember the feelings. And make me regret putting it down and walking away.
I carry so much shame, guilt, fear, negativity with me every day. My pockets are full and heavy, dragging me to the bottom of the pool. There's no extra room in me to love myself, let myself be fully happy or in the moment. I have no bandwidth, there is no vacancy at the inn. I have these sad thoughts, or, they have their way with me, really, they play out like terrible movies, evil hypotheticals and I can do nothing but welcome the achey dull stabs of sadness in my gut and my chest. I dwell in that garbage dump mind prison until I get bored and watch reels lmaooooo.
I'm addicted to feeling guilty the same way I'm addicted to Instagram. Sick, sick dopamine. I oscillate violently between bottom-of-the-barrel-despair and blind optimism that things will improve, eventually.
Long beautiful days present themselves to me to be wasted away, laying on the couch with an anxious heart rate and frozen-mid-shrug shoulders. I want to revel in the free time, in the freedom. To take full advantage of each day which is really a present wrapped in a bow. Each day a new chance to laugh at something, to love someone, to breathe air!!!! I will be open to love again, I will enjoy my days again, I will find my purpose one step at a time. I will like myself again, I will feel passionate again!!!
I am determined to get my zest back!!!! I am slowly starting to remember that I can AND WILL feel better, I will claw myself out of this mood I've been in. I swam this morning. And I laid on the couch for a bit in the afternoon. I cried a little in traffic on I-84 going west, and I painted my nails red. I defrosted tamales I was only meant to refrigerate and devoured 3 in a row. I'm dyeing my hair on Sunday. I don't have to answer to anyone, I am a free bird. I have many loving, fulfilling friendships. My family is getting along and feels closer than we ever have. I have a very easy and well paid job. I could technically for a while at least, do whatever I want, if I wanted to do that, which I don't, thanks. I am a really good swimmer and collager. I try to do good in the world. Animals love me. I pick up litter when I see it on the ground. I write my friends letters. I have cool creative outlets. I am getting better at budgeting. This morning I was at my desk precisely at 9:00am. Like things on paper are objectively fine and more than fine. Can I chill out?? No!!
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| me rn unfortunately |
I really need structure in my life to enjoy it. That's why I'm so stoked to the sponsor of this post, Google Calendar! If you know me you know I use this dang thing every day, and it makes sure I can efficiently fry my nervous system by planning my days to have increasingly complex and overly ambitious social schedules and other wise, such as appointments, so my day is like a well oiled machine of activity that keeps me from dwelling on those uncomfortable thoughts that are 7 months overdue for emotional processing <3 cheers!!!!!!
[4/24/24]
I am in class it's my second to last class session ever of my life. That's so dope for me personally. Fiona and I had the genius idea of getting dr*nk all day. We took shots in the swim locker room and then me and Jane had our best workout ever. They were playing the most lit music and I was cross faded doing squats and planks and such thinking to myself 'THIS is portland's hottest nightclub right now'
We also have a running list going of what activities we should do during the first week of summer after we graduate (in literally one week and 3 days wtf??) and here are some of the highlights from that list: go to the enchanted forest on shrooms, kate teaches sophia and fiona how to swim, go to coffin club (fiona's goth debut), kate shaves legs, go on a hike to a waterfall, make popsicles out of buzzballz, and practice/master the art of whistling (namely the infamous 'wolf whistle').
I am beyond excited.
I always get really really pumped and delusional about summer, and I have since I was like 10 years old and I don't think I'll ever stop. I love getting my hopes up and then let down. It's the season of my birthday, I make pintrest boards of what energy I want to experience and it's all so romanticized and grounded in nothing but delusion. Expectations do nothing but get me excited and latched onto an ideal that is impossible to obtain.
Speaking of cyclical ups and downs, I recently coined a term for a lifestyle pattern/choice of mine. I present to you... drum roll... the kate milne dash and crash. Basically I push myself to insane limits and do super long packed days until I literally cannot take it any more and then I crash, harrrrd. As I'm writing this now (5/6/24), I just graduated. It happened guys!! A ton of my family members (15+) came to portland to see me graduate and we had a little family reunion of sorts. It was so fun, and so overwhelming, a whirlwind weekend that left me feeling like a shell of a person all day yesterday. We ate tamale boy and cubo de cuba, drove around in the rain and had a fun time at my house. It was so nice because Oli stayed with me in my room while the rest of my fam stayed at the blue bird inn, a boarding house type place that is super quaint. So I got extra time with her which was so special. I told her I hope we get to live in the same place again, I hate only seeing her a couple times a year. I got my electronic diploma sent to my email, and my name looks so cool in the fancy cursive used on things like that.
My birthday is in July, and it's part of why I get such high hopes for summers. This year I'm planning on doing a jersey shore themed party, I want to party like it's 2008 and have a horrible fake tan to match. Last year me and eric combined our celebrations, and our ages, and had a conjoined 43rd birthday party. This year we would be turning 45 how sweet :,)
I'm in a coffee shop and listening to the baristas chat about one of their high school girlfriends who had a horse named coco. Maybe it was cocoa. Makes me want to watch strawberry shortcake again, because my dad used to tell me and oli a story about a horse race on the beach where strawberry races against her friends, and one of the horses names was cocoa, as decided by my dad. I really want to have access to horses this summer. I think I'll try to find a place to volunteer/work at as a barnhand, and see if I can sneak some riding time out of it. That worked really well for me when I volunteered once a week at the hippotherapy place in gresham a couple years ago, I just gotta find someplace to do it at. I searched a while ago and found a stable on Sauvie island that looked super dope, maybe I'll call them.
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| Pony babie circa 2021 |
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| This is the barn kitty I think his name was baxter.. barns always have cats it's another perk |
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| Mt. Shasta (i think) |
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| Getting ready in the parking lot.. |
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| Gorgeous grin |
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| Snowy lake! |
I had a challengers themed house party the night before I left portland, I've seen the movie three times in theaters because I'm addicted to zendaya and also because the soundtrack was so good and I just love everything about it. Having a party theme where people had to dress sporty was really fun and funny and super different than the themes I usually do. A small ish amount of people came, it's hard in the summer to get people to show up to things because everyone's always all over the place doing different shit. I love hosting stuff and don't know if I'll be able to have parties at my new place, I kind of highly doubt it. I'll have to start scouting for locations for my jersey night... muahhahaha. I wore a braid extension thing to be like Tashi in the movie.. the pics were so cute it made me want to switch sports!!  |
| Celebratory knee slide in my cleared out room (I was packing right up until when people started arriving) |
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| Supportive high five for moving all my shit out |
An ode to songs called "seventeen" and to my best friend Ella who showed me that every song about being 17 is the best song ever.
seventeen by sharon van etten
I'm in the passenger seat and it's a Friday night. We have nothing better to do so me and my friends are going for a drive, one of thousands of such drives we’d take over the course of our restless high school years. We wind up the hills on dark backroads, windows down, our off-key voices leaving a trace of us among the quiet trees lining the asphalt, fleeting and headstrong, at once loud and self-concious.
I get goosebumps when Sharon Van Etten sings "I used to be seventeen. Now you're just like me... I see you so uncomfortably alone. I wish I could show you how much you've grown." Her voice floods the car with emotion and I tear up. Her words tease and comfort me like an older sister’s, and I think about what it's like to be seventeen, feeling like you're at the bottom of a mountain looking up, the oldest and wisest you've ever been but understanding that when you look back it will all feel so far away, so juvenile.
seventeen by peach pit
"Back at Patrick park/We stood in the dark. In my beer-stained mind, I said/'Please won't you be mine?'"
It's the eve of my seventeenth birthday and I'm laying on my back in a square patch of grass. Paul is laying next to me and we’re probably talking about something stupid. Paul was my summer fling two summers in a row, back when I thought I was bi and needed to prove to myself that yes, I could like a guy, and yes, he could like me back. He was loaded, his family exclusively drove white Porsches, and he was a weird dude but very handsome. We met in physics class, junior year, and awkwardly made out from time to time.
Under the yellow orange glow from the street lights, midnight creeps closer, and I get more and more giddy about aging up from sweet sixteen to a flirty, mysterious seventeen. It seems like such a big deal, and driving Paul back to his place as the clock struck midnight (past my curfew) I felt very adult. He runs inside and comes back out with a gift for me, Lorde's Pure Heroine on vinyl. I just about cry. My all time favorite album; Lorde infused those songs with wisdom and depth of emotion little girls attain at fourteen and men might eventually achieve if they do acid enough times. We kiss and I drive home, a grinning seventeen year old with a new prized possession.
I'm with my best friends and we’re walking to a party we aren't really invited to. I'm almost shaking with anxiety about socializing where I’m not welcome, nowhere near grown into myself, wearing clothes I hate because I can't bear to not fit in, even though I know the yoga pants and crop top don't look right on my over six foot frame. Walking the mile to the party along a busy road at rush hour, I can feel the eyes of every passing car driver on our backs like mosquito bites. Then they start honking. It's a fast road, each honker whizzing by and anonymous, and we four are stoic sitting ducks, refusing to walk faster or act like it bothers us.
"They only want you when you're seventeen, when you're twenty one, you're no fun." And it's true, most of the times I've been cat called were when I was a teenager; it's funny how now that I could legally be into that kind of thing, the honks have halted. Something about teenhood, looking vulnerable, and walking places lends itself to overconfident drivers and shouted quips through an open window.
We didn't make it into the party—they had a fucking guest list and a bouncer—and a hidden part of me was so relieved that we didn't have to go in, that we could just watch tv and lick our rejection inflicted wounds. Walking back home we took side streets, strolling in peace, seventeen and laughing with years ahead of us to throw our own parties.
This is the second year in a row where May to June has been the most jarring, flip flop, 180 switch ever. Last year I was coming back from Australia, had no car, no job, no girlfriend. Then by June, all of those were opposite. This May, I graduated from LC, moved out of my old place, started a job, visited home, and felt generally very uprooted and frazzled. Now it's mid June, and I've started a second job, moved into my new apartment with Teeks and Laszlo, got a hair cut and my septum redone (and high nostril studs removed), and feel better, I think.
It's exciting to explore a new part of town, and settle into new routines. I got something off my chest that had been stressing me out for months, and deleted instagram again. I went for a run one day after work at the county building and wrote some unhinged single lines of discordant poetry in my notes app. It was so nice outside, and I sat and watched people play softball and kick ball in the park. I got really in my feelings, which was needed. I need to find new modes of catharsis, now that I'm an adult in the world (scream).
Here are some things I've seen recently:
👾 The largest protected freshwater wetland within an American city... it was the Smith and Bybee wetlands, which I stumbled upon when I took a wrong turn off the highway coming home from my piercing appointment in Vancouver. I got my board out and skated for a while, I want to come back with a canoe or something like that.
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| me and my trick board (i have 3 now >.< determined to get good this summer) |
👾 A little bunny lost on a biking overpass over the highway... I was riding a nike bike home from Roadside (where I had a furious public journaling sesh and a good sob while texting with ella and then a recovery drink with Qwynci) when I crossed over the I5 on a bridge for walking and biking when I looked down and saw what I thought was a rat running alongside next to me. I almost swerved and fell out of fright but then I realized it was a small brown cottontail, who was lost and looking over the edge trying to find it's way home to the burrow (probably? or the bunny clerb) and I screeched to a halt and watched worridly as it eventually found it's way back to solid land. Thank god. I don't think my psyche could've survived watching a young bun accidentally jump off an overpass omfg.
👾 A little girl with a bright pink cast on her leg... she looked like the same age as I was when I broke my left leg (first grade) and got a bright pink cast and a wheelchair. That's how I learned my lefts and rights, I just look down and remember which one of my legs had a cast on it. Real shit.
👾 A gorgeous classic car and a Tesla truck in the same day... I don't know what kind of old car it was but it was red and white and a convertible and sexyyyy. Cars used to look so nice and sturdy. I saw a tesla truck later that day and I think it was the first one I had ever seen in Portland. It was sooo ugly but also looked sturdy I guess. How do people see out of those??
👾 Water reflecting off of rocks as I waited for the shrooms to kick in... they never did. I kept staring at different things around me while we were at High Rocks to swim and waiting for them to look weird or different. I stared at a huge American flag in the distance, and it looked like it was blowing and rippling in slow motion. But I think that was normal flag behavior. I stared at water reflecting off the rocks for so long, and it was beautiful. But the shrooms never hit.
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| gorgeous reflections were going on in this region here |
It's everywhere. It's everything to me.
Greyhound to my Left and a Couple Kissing to my Right
by frznstrwbrries
Feeling stupid young and horny this summer
With coke in my new nose piercing and my
Office job and staring out the window.
What the fuck am I doing??
Please god could I just
Chill out &&& enjoy the moment?
Look at those
Dust bunnies in the dog park,
Adults playing kickball,
Strangers enjoying each other's company.
Hang up some fly traps,
See if that works.
I chose 6 of my figurines to worship
They represent things like
Happiness, greed, etc.
Give them names and backstories
Forcing spirituality and prayer cuz
I don’t think anyone should feel so empty,
Empty like sparking lighters and travel shampoo bottles.
That thing I need again
It’s right over my shoulder,
Isn't it?
Turn turn turn desperate and dizzy and disilusioned.
I keep moving so my own shadow won’t catch up to me.
I don’t know how to talk to my mom,
I want the air to feel like home again.
Perfect atmospheric pressure
Sky so Truman show blue,
Except it is today and I’m still not satisfied.
Bottomless greed that’s what I feel
More guilt more!!!! More more more!
Eat me out like Jell-O shots,
Oxygen tank thrown in the fire pit.
California poppies and a summer salad,
I won't feed myself,
It’s all about self sabotage, control, feeling guilty.
You told me you wanted to kiss me
I said I’ll think about it.
Tears fall like nothing it doesn’t take much
Someone told me...
I forgot.
"Having a crush and vaping are the most fun things a human could do probably." - Claire Williams
Helllloooo readerzzz IT'S APRIL BITCH!
I'm back in Portland(ia) after my favorite holiday ever: spring break. Peak escapism from school, I get to go home and walk dogs (Luna, Spencer, Roxy, no particular order), sleep in my childhood bedroom and drink coffees. I wrote a lot of my thesis which was really good because I was having really bad writers block. Block is broken!!! I turned in my first draft this week it was a HEAEVY PACKET of me saying the same thing over and over. Now for the editing... alas let's talk about something fun.
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| Luna!!! my princess |
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| Dog walking fit yes yes |
For the purpose of this exact blog post I actually looked up a bunch of variations of 'pigeons in sfo early 2000s how' because I swear on my life that I saw multiple birds multiple times just chilling inside the airport terminal but there's like nothing about it online and now I think I was either have super insane hallucinations or false memories or I created my own mandela effect situation. If you've ever seen birds that weren't supposed to be there in the aiport PLEASE comment to let me know I'm not alone.
So back to the topic of spring break, Spring Breakers is one of my favorite movies of all time. It was in my top 3 for years, which included, no particular order: Spring Breakers, American Honey, and Stick It. I mean obviously I was onllllly interested in the plots of these movies (read: young lesbian perv). I like to rewatch those 3 movies at least once a year, to keep me on track. In touch with my roots and whatnot. Part of my continual effort to stay true to meself. Now, as an older lesbian perv, my top 3 is Bottoms, Love Lies Bleeding, and American Honey (she persisted!!)
I just watched a youtube interview with Sasha Lane about American Honey and while I already knew that she was cast because the director saw her out and about and thought 'I need her' (which would also be my thought process verbatim), apparently she was on a beach during spring break when she was spotted. mind bllown life is so beautiful and interconnected SCREAM
You can watch for yourself if you'd like >.< <-- here
When I go home for breaks I like to do my usual at home activities. I drove to the beach on a whim after dropping my mom off at the airport (same one that once had those maybe real maybe fake pigeon spottings), my favorite beach in Half Moon Bay. The one I can drive to with my eyes closed, no map, the one that's by my favorite sandwhich shop.
I got my sandwhich (turkey, sprouts, swiss, everything on it) and a bottle of coke drove it over and sat on a bench and squinted into the sun and the wind and listened to the waves and scowled at the ice plants (invasive species in Cali if you didn't know)
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| Blufftop coastal park |
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| Soooo pretty I can't |
I walked along the shore on the hard part of the sand and made up songs and sang them to myself and watched those little bird with legs as fast as lightning run up and down by the surf, I wanted to film an ASMR video on the beach but after filming one clip my phone died and I was FORCED against my WILL to live in the moment. UGHHHHH (just kidding it was fine and nice)
I left feeling windswept and rejuvenated and full of life and I drove back home along skyline, the winding road at the very top of the range of hills separating the bay from the sea. To my right I could see the pacific ocean in all her glory and to my left was the whole bay area spread out beneath me. I blasted Chappell Roan's album 'The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess' over and over and it was amazing.
That album is so important to me right now, it's upbeat and so gay and is my theme music at this time. She is my Olivia Rodrigo, don't know how else to describe it.
Anyways, I hope you are having such a good spring, I hope you're awakening in whatever way makes sense, and getting soo so excited for summer!!!1!
Kiss kiss
Kate
Here's the thing. I'm in the mood to reinvent myself. The season is changing, it was sunny for three days straight for the first time in like 5 months and the birds are chirping. My closet is finally back in working condition, after the Great Pipe Bursting back in January, I airbnb and couch hopped for like 5 weeks and then moved back into my room with an unfinished closet. All my clothes and dressers were stuffed into my room and it was ... garbage pit like, to say the least. So now my room is spacious and orderly again, and I realized my mysterious wet patch of carpet (don't ask) had been growing in my absence and so I jerry rigged a fan to my bookshelf and turned the dehumidifier on high and whaddayaknow, that cleared up in a couple days. Also, I am single now. It's a long story and sad but beautiful story and it's all peace and love and grief. Lol. I shant overshare cuz it makes me so upset and I'm leaning into letting myself feel sad... but it's awkward cuz letting yourself feel sad makes you FEEL SAD and I want to FEEL GOOD please god let me feel good. Please.
But I am determined to actually feel things (good things ideally but beggars can't be choosers) for the rest of this semester, my last semester of college!!!! and be present and meditate and go for walks outside and talk to myself and wash my face every day. Basicallllly I have to get to know myself again. The last couple months I would book my days so busy I didn't have time to do anything important (like make meals or take a piss) and then whenever I had an uncomfortable thought or feeling I would just... scroll it away (thanks a lot, Instagram). I don't have insta right now and I feel like my brain is waking up again. It's been good. I am proud of myself.
Looking forward, however, I am getting really excited to be a loose cannon this summer. I was looking through some stories I had saved from two summers ago and found these striking flicks.
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| In thee hot tub, we jumped the fence |
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| Story draft, after a couple of four loko beverages, looking visibly ill and mischievious |
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| I NEED THESE SO BAD!!!! |
Have you heard of MEPearl? I think you should hear what she has to say...
Here is her website, you should look at it : https://mepearl.com/
In high school me, Abe, Zoe, and Prahalad crafted a really elaborate and long and weird comment for the Q & A life advice style column on the website. This is what we wrote, and what She responded with. We chose the name MAURICE for some reason.
Reading this now, I am honestly so inspired still by what She said. She has so much wisdom. And responds really thoughtfully to each question. I bet it would make her day if we all left questions for her to ponder.
She also has an insane and beautiful youtube chanel : https://www.youtube.com/@MEpearl
She posts so frequently it's inspiring (like it's Blog Post Wednesday everyday!!)
This is a good and funny compilation video of Ms. MEPearl the All Knowing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtLrn2zPTxQ
I aspire to have this kind of digital footprint in 40 yeaars.
Ciao bellas
K8
Started:12/5/2023
Last week, I had the kind of day that I can only describe as a random adventure day. They don't happen often, and can't be planned or prepared for, but when they start to unfold, I must give in and let the rhythm of mystery and chaos take me, or else suffer a day of confusion and let-down.
I've learned over time that the more adventure and spontaneity is built into my day, the more memorable it will be and time seems to slow down more. When I get into too much of a routine, my days and weeks begin to blur and I can't remember what I've done or when things happened. If I do random shit (being random is def in for 2024) like follow a hunch or take a wrong exit on purpose, I always discover something new I never would've seen otherwise. Taking public transportation always seems to prime me for adventure, when I don't have a pressing timeline for what I need to do, getting on the bus or the train with a low-commitment destination in mind and seeing what happens is my favorite pastime.
This particular day was going to be a busy one that I needed to drive for, I could tell from my calendar line up when I looked at it that morning, my eyes adjusting to the bright white of my phone screen in my uber-dark basement/dungeon/bedroom/cave. First on the agenda was an 8am swim practice, this was Friday, and I had our mid-season meet that weekend. So this was my final chance to get in the water and warm up a bit before the competition the next two days. Our coach, Caitlin, prepared us really well for this meet, working us extremely hard in the pool and the gym for months, leading up to a week of easier practices to let our muscles recover so we could swim fast at George Fox. (NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: I did really good at this meet meow I was tapered so perfectly for it ugh)
The practice went well, I felt light and strong in the water, like a fancy race boat, all carbon fiber and details that have been gone over 1,000 times. I left the pool feeling refreshed as I always do, like my brain has been taken out and rinsed off and put back in my head.
I went to class, it wasn't memorable. This was my outfit. I don't remember what was in that bag.
Then, I took myself downtown to go to p:ear, a really cool community space for kids experiencing homelessness to do art and music, eat lunch and get warm. In one of my classes at LC, we did semester long projects in collaboration with p:ear, one group did an art project, one did a survey collecting data on what health services are accessed or needed most by the youth, and my group compiled a bunch of health and wellness resources in the greater Portland area and designed easy to read fliers that contained lots of information about how to access them. The adults who work there seem really solid and I want to get to know how they found themselves working here, and ask about what their professional paths looked like because I've recently been having epiphanies about how to intersect all my interests into one profession. Stay tuned, I'm still figuring it out (I will always be figuring it out). (ANOTHER NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: I am working with P:ear for my thesis project and for networking purposes and it's super dope).
As I was parking I mentally prepared myself to feel out of place, and nervous, and alone when I went inside. I thought about it, accepted that I would be going with the flow, and waltzed in. If put in this position, my younger self would have freaked out, going into this space without anyone by my side, not knowing what to expect and not knowing if they were even expecting me. But it worked out! I talked to Kanani, the woman who's leading the art project and worked on it with her for a while.
I did a puzzle with a little boy named Dasani (?), and his dad tricked me by pointing to the ground and helpfully letting me know I 'dropped my pocket.' Of course I looked down. And then proceeded to hear him try that line on almost everyone else in the room. It felt almost like an inauguration, our gullibility somehow uniting us.
After I loitered there for a while, I made my way over to city hall because I thought Edie might be there. I was right! We cleaned up the wreck that the person who fucked with their setup the night before had left, and chatted. There was a Native protest happening at city hall too, I listened to a speaker read excerpts from a website called Challenging White Supremacy, I talked to them afterward and got the link so I could look at it more later. Jeff said thank you when I was leaving, I told Edie the story of when I ran into him by the pinball machines at My Father's Place, it was funny as hell and he seemed so shocked.
I called my dad on the drive to the Cupcake Girls tabling event, and kept him on the phone as I paid for parking (4.80$) and walked around the block, and, still on the phone, realized I was in fact at the right numerical address, on SE 13th street when I needed to be on NE 13th street. Such a rookie Portlander move, a bit embarrassing that my dad was my auditory witness to the whole thing.
My Parking Kitty app conveniently lacks a "refund" button, but does let you have two tabs open at a time, so when I got to the right location, running late at this point, I paid for two more hours of parking (another 4.80$) and found my way inside. I don't know what I was expecting, but it was not a sugaring and waxing studio. Simply (and cryptically) called The Portland Girl, it was a small studio used for facials and eyebrow treatments having a holiday party with snacks and arts vendors and Mariah Carey on the speakers. There was a table with information about another local nonprofit spread out, and my boss that I was supposed to be meeting there was nowhere to be found.
I made a chai latte with the keurig in the esthetician break room, and read my Sherman Alexie book in the front lobby, and waited. I sat in a green velvet shell-shaped chair, and read prose that transported me and sipped my scalding beverage. One of my favorite lines went like this hem hem: "Late one day James and I watch the sun fly across the sky like a basketball on fire and it falls down completely and lands in Benjamin Lake with a splash and shakes the ground and even wakes up Lester Falls-Apart who thought it was his father come back to slap his face again. Summer coming like a car from down the highway." Just gorgeous words strung together in the perfect way.
After a while, I realized I should check my email and see what was going on and as it turns out, my boss had emailed me like 6 hours earlier telling me they wouldn't be at the event but was sending Alyssa instead and that they thought I could handle tabling alone anyway and I was like ok chill and kept up my reading and sipping, feeling silly in my baggy jeans and skating tee in the hyper-feminine salon but leaning into the adventure of the day and just rolling with it.
Then, the time Alyssa was supposed to show face came and went and I was like hmmm perhaps this chaotic and fun day is less chill now, but I emailed her and got no response and even tried calling her google number in her email signature and got her cheeky voicemail. I read another chapter of beloved Alexie, talked to a couple of people about The Cupcake Girls, and then overheard the manager letting a guest know that because it was their holiday party, they were offering free beauty treatments. My little ears perked up and I scurried over. The day was going so random, a free eyebrow sugaring session was perfectly insane and unexpected, such a curveball out of left field that it was full circle and felt normal.
As I lay on the bed with hot sugar goo on my eye region, I chatted up my brow sculptors and learned that one was a long-time resident of Chicago before making the move to Portland and the other was a Portland native (or essentially one) and had done a lot of event and fundraising stuff in the past! Ha! How perfect. They had also started a Portland pirate larping group? Or something like that. A very Portlandia conversation, I felt like I was networking and also like I was meeting an elusive Portland queer elder who hadn't moved away when things started to get expensive and more ~normal~ #makeportlandweirdagain.
When one of my brows had been snatched and my waxer was starting on my Mr. Right, I heard Alyssa's voice in the main area of the salon getting acquainted with everyone. Too bad I was super busy doing my unpaid work and getting my brows done! I eventually made my way to the front where I was supposed to be stationed and got to chatting with the people at the event, spreading the good word about the Cupcake Girls. I also got to know someone who was tabling for Rose Haven, another org in the city. They were super sweet and cool, and many months later when my dad was visiting me in January, I saw them walking down the street. I didn't say anything, but I felt super Portlandish and established then.
When the event was drawing to a close, I texted Qwynci because she lives near there, and she came by. We walked to a grocery store nearby because she needed toilet paper (or maybe paper towels... I don't know if it matters for story telling purposes..?) and we chatted and goofed around. Then, I drove her to her house, and we talked shit for a while in the car (one of my favorite locations to talk, ever).
I then realized I was running late to a swim event, so I peeled out of there with the sound of burning rubber (jk I peeled off responsibly and safely) and then I was on my way to my next event of the day.
All in all, I have found that these kinds of days mentally stimulate me, but sometimes it's really just too much. When I get home after having a lot of days like this in a row, I lay on my bed, unmoving except for a single finger scrolling Instagram. I'm like a zombie or a husk. I need to learn how to balance, and how to not get to the point of exhaustion. And wear my gold puffer and look good doing it. Hah! So much to do! So little time!!!
Finished: 3/5/2024
I take so long to write these but I'm glad they get written. Sometimes it takes a while to find the statue in the marble and get it out.
XO Kate
"Used to burn Cds full of songs I didn't know, used to sit in my bedroom puttin' polish on my toes" - Rewind