Tidbits

Here are some scraps, poems, pictures, the detritus at the bottom of my purse :p

I AM A COLLEGE GRADUATE!

 [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. 

Pony babie circa 2021

This is the barn kitty I think his name was baxter..
barns always have cats it's another perk

[didn't write for sooo long]

    

    It's now 5/27/24, I love taking over a month to write one post smh. I've started my internship at Rose Haven, and have had a good time so far because they're having me continue my thesis research, and post about it blog style on their website!! Getting paid to write a blog post about something I'm passionate about... dream come true...

    

    I'm in Cali for a week, I drove down with Fiona and Kaylee and have been loving the perfect blue sky. It's like the best thing about california I don't know how they get it so blue but it does something to me.

Mt. Shasta (i think)

Yesterday me and Evie got philz (thank GOD I was dying without it in portland) and then drove to santa cruz. We hung out on the beach and frolicked in the waves in our wetsuits like otters. The water was so cold but so refreshing and genuinely snapped me out of the anxiety spiral I have been in for the last like two weeks. Figuring out housing and also packing up my room, starting my Rose Haven position, hosting a party and immediately driving home was sending me up the wall a little bit. But when I got in the water, manually breathing because it was so cold it was like my brain had been taken out of my head, rinsed off, and put back in. It felt so good. Being in the sun and the wind and the water was so rejuvenating. Sometimes I go a long time without swimming and then when I swim again I'm like omfg this is what I've been missing this is why everything feels wrong. I need the water, maybe it's because I'm a cancer or because I've spent so many hours in the pool but whenever I am submerged I am reminded that it's my favorite state of being. 

    We had the ultimate norcal day because that same night we drove up to Evie's place in tahoe with nick and luna. Being in the pacific and the mountains in the same day is so special and I don't think I've done that before. It's memorial day, and the last day of the spring ski season at Palisades, so while they hit the slopes me and luna hung out at a cafe at the base. We got lunch there too and then when we were back at the house I tried to ride a bike I found in the garage with luna on a leash attached to me, and right before we started zooming down a giant hill I realized that the brakes were disconnected. It was so scary I immediately put my feet down and somehow managed to not make us wipe out but that could've gone sooo different (extremely bad!!!!). We just went for a walk down to the lake after that and it was really nice. It's super warm out today, but there's still a ton of snow around, which I haven't really seen before. Tons of snow melt runoff everywhere, and luna would tromp through it in such a cute way.

    

Getting ready in the parking lot..

Gorgeous grin

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)

Supportive high five for moving all my shit out

We opposite matched on accident.. so good

serving..

Me and charcoal sparkle <3

[9/14/24]

Wow ok so this post has taken literally the entire summer to write... from the end of April until mid September. Since our last update, I've been working at my internship at the County, twiddling my thumbs and doing some cool stuff but mostly getting paid to look at the wall. I went on a big roadtrip with evie to boston, and am working on a youtube video of that experience. I saw both sets of grandparents, got really settled into my new place with teeks, and am now applying to jobs and whatnot because my internships are ending. I got a speeding ticket and a couple of different haircuts. I'll be reading my "seventeen" piece at rosalind's zine launch party later this month, which should be really fun. I carry a little notebook with me everywhere now, and it has been really productive for poetry, journaling, and compulsive list making. I mostly stay off instagram and still don't have a therapist. Life is alright.

Love you thank you for reading xxxxx Kate

Songs about Seventeen

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.

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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. 

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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. 

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seventeen by ladytron

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.