I feel like that girl that gets pregnant and then only posts things about the baby.

But I'm having a bad month, so I only want to post about how miserable I've been.

My head and heart have begun a spiritual pilgrimage. I'm already one foot in Montana, with one arm around my Mom.

I feel like as soon as I get there, and Mom hugs me, everything will be wrenched back into place and I will be the Bry I think people know and love.

I'm dreaming of the open skies, fried chicken and rhubarb crisp. The river, the stars, my first 4th of July with family in 8 years, and a chance to see my dog.

The Book Exchange. Lolo Hot Springs.

Oh, please let it be Wednesday.

 

What a crazy week of craziness. I don't think I've had a moment to myself in more than a week. I've been visiting with friends from out of town, dog sitting, working, quizzing, and working and barely sleeping.

 

KT had her 30th birthday, which was a few days of super fun times. I can't believe we are so freaking old. It is hard to believe we've been friends for 12 years!

 

I went to the coast again, drove to Eugene, and managed to not see my roommate for an entire week. Now he is off to Boston and once he returns, I'm headed to Montana. I swear, we really do like each other.

 

Along with my scandalous endeavors and general tomfoolery , I managed to squeeze in the time to see a great one-woman show at the Portland Center Stage. I believe we went on the last night, but Bust was great and you should see it if you ever get the chance. It is the semi-autobiographical story of comedian Lauren Weedman's time volunteering in a Los Angeles jail. A really great, solid performance.

 

I feel like I could sleep for a week. This is my first night free in weeks and I am going to take advantage of it by cleaning and then going to bed early.

 

Also, Happy Birthday to my Mom.

I haven't been home for a few days and therefore haven't charged my cell phone since Sunday.

I did briefly borrow a charger from B-- which allowed me to juice it up enough to play a scrabble word and check my messages. And then, what do you know, dead again.

I would like to say it has been annoying to be without my cell phone but it has been sort of refreshing.

The other night I was dinking around on Facebook, changing my privacy settings and what not, when I came across the option for canceling accounts.

I can't really explain my logic behind doing so, but I went ahead and deleted my Facebook account.

A funny thing about Facebook accounts, you can't actually delete them. Just log back in and restore. Like you never left.

I'm sure one day I will be back, but the past three days have been awesome.

A summer of peace and social-network quiet.

That sounds appealing.

Adventures in Nerd-dumb

I like to pretend I'm wicked smart, but the truth is I only know enough to be dangerous in a drunken conversation at the bar.

 

One of my favorite memories of my college roommate HB occurred post-graduation, but pre-real world, during that magical summer you say is your time off because your earned some fun after spending 15 years in school.

 

HB and I were sitting in some now defunct bar in McMinnville, OR and were approached by some drunk dudes who bought us drinks and got us, eventually, into a conversation about politics. HB and I, just off four years of political science classes and full of vim, let 'em have it. The full force of our righteous indignation and anti-Bush sentiment poured out of our mouths faster than the beer from the tap.

 

Later, as we left the bar, I remember feeling satisfied I'd bested some townies at political discourse.

 

In retrospect, 8 years later, it reminds me of the scene in Goodwill Hunting when Will calls out the douche in the bar for making fun of his friend.

 

"...is that your thing, you come into a bar, read some obscure passage and then pretend - you pawn it off as your own, as your own idea just to impress some girls, embarrass my friend?"

 

But we were the asshole and I much prefer to be Will. I'm scrappy like that.

 

For about four months now, I've been regularly attending a weekly pub trivia night. For about four months now, I've regularly felt dumb on a weekly basis. 

Here is a list of things I know nothing about:

 

geography

presidents

capitals of states and countries

science

space

Animaniacs

 

 

Here is a list of things of which I know too much:

 

80s rap music

anything ever published in People magazine

strangely, famous paintings

TV

reality TV

 

Everything else is a dark hole.

 

Because AA is a Quiz Master for Quizzy trivia, we wrangled an invitation to Testicide. Testicide is a city-wide quiz competition that is supposed to be the best of the best. I think there were between 150-200 people competing in teams of up to 7.

 

There were nerds as far as the eye could see.

 

That dude sitting to the very far right, with the plaid shorts, and probably hitting on a table full of straight dudes, is AA. My roommate and gay house husband. 

A funny thing about nerds, they are all perverts with perverted team names.

 

Push, Push, Spit.

 

Gross.

I am sad to say we didn't win. The $200 prize for being the smartest nerd at the bar would've been nice. 

I am happy to say, we also didn't come in last. 

Middle of the pack. 

How do you like them apples?

Whenever Dad gives me advice, it sounds like a country-western song.

 

This is not surprising from a man who watches NASCAR, drinks Coors Light, and sees no problems voting for Newt Gingrich.

 

Last night's conversation sounded a lot like a "know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away."

 

This was the second piece of advice I received from a man yesterday, the first being "Just get drunk and get over it."

 

Hah.

 

I am quite enamored with the movie You've Got Mail (YGM).

 

Fact: I once got the Meg Ryan haircut.

 

Fact: I like to imagine I work at the Shop Around the Corner when really I work at Fox Books.

 

Fact: The one and only time I've met someone I met online, it was someone I met through AOL chat.

 

The real reason I like the movie is that I love Tom Hanks and I like that he is a bit of a dick in the beginning of that movie. Plus, I just really love books.

 

During our conversation, Dad used the sentence "I've got a project that needs a little tweaking."

 

This immediately brought forward the scene in YGM where Kathleen Kelly wants to meet Joe Fox and he puts her off because she doesn't know she has been chatting with Joe Fox and he knows who she is and knows that she hates him, Joe Fox him. He tells her he can't because he has a project that needs tweaking. 

T-w-e-a-k-i-n-g. 

Tweaking. 

Then I stopped listening to Dad and continued on with the rest of the movie in my head. 

There was a pause in the conversation where I realized Dad asked me a question. 

"Uh. Sorry. Dad, are you... do you ever chat on AOL? Are you online dating?" I ask.

"What? I can't figure out how to get on the computer."

Which is true. Once when I lived in California, my dad drove 20 minutes into town to get me to Google "tractor tires" so that he could find some replacements for his John Deere. 

I kinda like the idea of Dad being off the Interwebs grid. Mostly because it saves me from getting crazy right-winger email chains. 

Oh Dad. How I love you. Happy Father's Day (early). 

I will print this blog and mail it to you.

 

I'm not one for scary stuff. I'm not one for the occult, the ghost story, or a silly horror story.

I don't care what you did last summer and I know spending the night in an abandoned cabin is a bad idea.

I do not want to watch Saw.

I could care less about Paranormal Activity.

Scary movies and stories give me sleepless nights and eat up my thoughts until I can focus on nothing but the ideas that A MAN WITH NO FACE IS LIVING IN MY CRAWL SPACE.

My fear of scary things reaches as far back as my memory and I'm not sure the source.

Perhaps due to watching Silence of the Lambs and being scared witless by my brothers immediately after.

Or watching Candyman alone at age 12.

The idea of aliens has always scared me. They are gross and ugly and do mean things. The idea of being murdered on an abandoned road in the middle of nowhere in the dead of night seems too realistic.

Why subject myself to this for entertainment?

I get it. I'm a baby. But I've managed to avoid the scary and not make it a big deal.


And then I heard about this movie.




And I'm pretty sure I will never sleep again.

A crazed person sews human beings together, mouth to anus, to form a centipede.

I heard the plot, I saw no pictures, I knew no further details.

And now I can think of nothing else.

I can't sleep. I certainly can't eat. And I'm pretty sure this will haunt my nightmares forever.

Please prepare the straight jacket, I may need to be committed.

The only solution is to watch nine hours of continuous Jane Austen adaptations and hope I develop Alzheimer's.

My new favorite feeling is the ache in my gut from laughing so hard it hurts.

 

 

Last night, I ran through the forest in the dark and mud, screeching like a crazy person as B-- chased me with the flash light off. He was growling like Sasquatch and I was Girl #2 in every B horror story ever written.

 

 

Should we have been hiking in the dark? Probably not. But going into the woods to sit in a tub of hot spring water is the best feeling on earth and totally worth the exhaustion I've been fighting all day.

 

 

For two hours, I felt like I was home again. Home in Montana. And it was lovely. The sky was pretty, the rain light. The water hot. The company, hilarious and relaxing.

 

And I've had the biggest grin on my face all day. I feel so happy and light.

 

Spontaneity has been absent for too long.

 

Last year I had such big plans for the summer, plans that went astray because I lacked the ability and funds to make them happen.

 

But I'm not going to let that happen this summer. If I want to go camping, I'm going camping.

 

If I want to go hiking at midnight with a bottle of wine and a dozen candles, then hike I shall.

 

What's the point in being unencumbered if you don't take advantage of the independence it provides?