One month and counting...

It's really helped that September has flown by so quickly. It doesn't hurt to have so many visits from family, sweet friends and a bunch of outdoor adventures. Oh, and... maybe an all-around, very interesting boy... the long, late night conversations about everything and nothing have been refreshing (so, thank you for that, sir).

This comes to you at just over one month of complete "sobriety" from someone I finally (after two years of trying to do it half-assedly) outlawed. Well, I guess save the "message" he had a friend deliver me, the two notes he dropped in my mail boxes and the one time he rang my doorbell at 8:30 in the morning (which is the funniest, because I opened my window, yelled out "Hello?" and when he appeared below, my only response was to yell "NOOO!," slam my window and crawl back in bed. I haven't seen him since).

All in all, I'm not so utterly full of hate (ok, i guess i'm still pretty disgusted with all of the lying), but dammit if I haven't had some extremely fond memories pop up. This time of year begs for constant company. It's too bad his company would inevitably end up a crying, angry mess - and anymore, it's just not worth it.

So while driving back from the mountains yesterday, a Mirah song popped onto my ipod and it so perfectly summed up how I am feeling. I'd bold certain lines, but the entire song hits dead on the mark. I am thrilled I am seeing her live in just a few short weeks...

You can go listen to it here:

Mirah - The Struggle

And i hope you find
The magic on the floor
That i left behind
And i forgot to close the door
The careless gestures
That made it all so rough
What could i expect from
The great mystery above
It's uncontrolled
All the hate and all the love
The blame that i place
I'm never proud of
I'm never proud of

And every time i pass a place of trouble
I recollect the violence of the struggle
The struggle
The struggle
The struggle

An angel i was
Beloved by everyone
The devil you were
Just what i made you become
And i don't regret
This way it's gonna be
I just hope she gets
Treated better than you did me
You should give what you find
And not tread so fearfully
If you felt good inside
You wouldn't be so scared of me
You wouldn't be so scared of me

And when the light comes down you know it's gonna be a strong one
If we're still both around we look into the face of the sun
Of the sun
Of the sun
Of the sun

We could try to bury the hatchett in the cold, cold ground
But it's sure to heat up when the spring comes around

Some people really suck

Mostly my ex. Double-life-living jerkface. Thanks for constantly telling me how wonderful I was to my face only to talk about how awful you thought me to be behind my back so everyone would hate me. Didn't you know that when you're with someone you represent them as best as you would represent yourself? Lord knows I stuck up for you a million times while you wee calling me unmentionables and punching me in the face. Sucks for you now that everyone sees you for who you really are and you're alone and have nothing and I am sitting here with the entire world in front of me. Thank GOD i cut my losses and let you go.

No, i don't apologize for sounding cocky. I went through HELL with you and am better for it (this is a small amount of anger and hurt I have left for the three and a half years I poured into someone so terrible). "You can be bitter or better." I choose better, and you're still sitting there rotting around in your stupid lies and crap world you've built out of tissue paper and cotton. Hope its created a soft place for you to land, because in the end, you're still going to be alone and miserable. 

I hate you. 

Day #2

For some reason, I see fit to stay awake until 5:30am, browsing Craigslist for apartments (why, I don't know) and finally fall asleep to a $2.99 iTunes purchase of Steve Martin on Saturday Night Live.

At 10am, my alarm sounds and I feel my cat, Holiday, scratch at my left hip, as if to say, "please make that awful noise stop."  

I hit "snooze" and lie there for 15 more minutes and three more wake-up calls, then stand up out of bed and decide to skip a shower in order to make it to Littleton in time for my car appointment.  I don my repeat apparel from yesterday, brush my teeth, wash my face and throw on a pair of heart-shaped aviators. 

Twenty minutes later, I hand my car keys over to Dodge service support and beeline for the waiting room with my book. I check my e-mail and find a message from my mom.  I read, then laugh until I cry. I want to share the joke, but it seems inappropriate, so I keep it to myself and continue to giggle at random intervals.

Later, spring cleaning ensues. My cats stare at me dumbfounded, trying to understand why everything is not in its original place. I make six trips to basement storage and I finally feel better in my own bedroom. 

I feel dead all day, but never take a nap. It's now 1:34am and I finish The Time Traveler's Wife, which I think is the first book to make me cry - ever.  

My second cat, Maynard, is curled up at the bottom of my bed, feet twitching like he is chasing something in a dream, which is strange when he runs for no one and Holiday's stretched out on a throw blanket on the back of the couch. I hear a thud and see she has slid, with the blanket,  onto the floor. This makes me laugh.  

My attention darts outside to an alley cat that has been crying for the last two hours. A quarrel between it and another outside cat ensues. It's clear who is winner, because the other is now wincing in pain. I don't know whether to run out and help or leave well enough alone, but decide on the latter because alley cats have reputations and I'm sure battle scars look handsome to the ladies. 

Full day of Funemployment #1

Aside from the poor start at 6am, things get better after the peanut butter toast and four-hour nap.  I spend 45 minutes on the phone with the coordinator for the Black Hills Fat Tire Festival, who has a slow drawl and pleasant demeanor, then bike down to the bookstore for 30-30-30 brainstorming, the worst $7 sandwich I've ever eaten and a vanilla chai.

Afterward, I walk the mall to deposit my tax return (finally).  Caleb, a shaggy-haired, tall blonde boy pulls me aside while pointing out a girl taking in a magic trick in the middle of the mall. 

"I bet that girl's parents would be extremely unhappy she is smoking a cigarette with all of that beautiful metal in her mouth."

"What?"

He repeats himself and I finally understand what he is saying. Another representative for Greenpeace. I mention I have already donated to another guy I spoke to at length in WashPark last week, and he gives me a hug - then instructs me to raise up my left hand,  similar to Hitler, and reposition for a "heart-to-heart" hug. I think he is nervous. The hug lasted less than .2 seconds. Apparently, we should be less comfortable hugging strangers, but I'll never turn one down.

Further on my walk, I am accosted to donate to the homeless twice, three more times by Greenpeace  (only receiving sub par hi-fives from each) and heed warning to a tall african american, who nearly grazes a white civic in oncoming traffic. When the road is clear, he skips around to the front of me and asks for $.50.  I say I have no cash, which is sad, because he wants to beatbox for me.  He says, "no problem" and proceeds to drop a two-minute beatbox collaboration - SO AWESOME. I shake his hand. I can't remember his name, but he brightens my day.

Later in the evening, I bike downtown once again to meet a friend for some brainstorming on the coming months. He buys me dinner and we walk the "50 miles" back to his hotel. On my way home, I pass three tour busses, all for Queensryche. I plow through the fan barricade that has gathered outside of the bus and observe slightly, then end up in front of Apaloosa Grill, where the doorman asks for a ride on my cruiser.  I stop and chat with him for a bit and decide I need to come back another Tuesday for the hip hop inside. Maybe for the cute boys inside, as well.

I pass something on the corner of 13th and Marion near a coffee shop I despise.  It's a black bra. I ponder how it may have gotten there, but don't care enough to stop. I'm a block from home and anticipating a bowl of the $6 cereal I purchased at the store not 25 minutes ago.

It's been a good day. 

In the treehouse

Walked into my treehouse bedroom and floofed onto a big white bed. MY bed. Set up my new lamp next to the fluff which makes an amazing pattern on the ceiling and I have just the spot to set my laptop for bedside movies. This is all i need.  My apartment, especially my bedroom is beginning to look like a haphazard storage unit and I am starting to dislike all of my possessions. 

May will be a whirlwind, but it has been planned appropriately. I think reckless abandon is exactly what I've been looking for the last five years - I'm just doing it my own way -- Polly Planned and somewhat in order. Ha! Figures.

Wait and see...

Augosto Over

Praise every god imaginable.

It's been awhile since writing, because my August was bustled in with a bang and ended with an even more catastrophic event.

I've kept telling myself that the only thing that really makes me cry anymore are boys. Boy was that an understatement.

After having to deal with two major men from my past in one month, i have effectively cleaned out my closet of ex boyfriends. One isn't worth dwelling on because, well... why beat a dead horse?

The other, was scarily persistent - and even though my will to eject him from my life has been stronger than his will to stay - I never saw an end in sight.

Enter a protection order and a change of phone number.
Life is good again. Things are finally done and i left all the past 3-5 years in August.

I guess the biggest lesson out of all of that was that all of my life, i've always waited for people to give me closure. I have to figure out the desperate, "Why?" "Answer this?" "Analyze that?" I NEED TO KNOW... and now, it's clear that i've been the one in charge all along.

Tough to grasp, because closure is scary when flooded with that what ifs. But, what if you just keep on running a cycle that limits you from really moving on to a better version of yourself?

That being said, a close friend of mine decided to give himself some closure of his own.

Two Sundays ago, I was out shopping for some boots in the heart of the DNC when I got a call that collapsed me to the bottom of the junior sales rack. My most favorite Christopher, a "brother," someone i've grown up with since the age of five and have especially grown closer with in my four years here in Denver had taken his own life.

I can't even begin to wrap my head around this - because I've been in the midst of someone (now divided by the restraining order, mind you) who threatens suicide at the drop of a dime to try and bring me back into save him. It's been a fresh topic for the last three years, and then it becomes reality with someone I truly love and admire...

Christopher was positive. He always lightened the mood. He has coined a number of my nicknames and my favorite sayings that make me laugh from the bottom of my toes. He always came over with his super-smart electrician knowledge to make my home better looking and more efficient. He stole me away in his jeep cherokee to participate in haunted houses. We'd drive home to Sodak together to drop anchor and listen to Tool, Perfect Circle and other Chris music along the way, then talk about philosophical shit that you can only talk about on long drives. Every Sunday, we'd hit a Mexican DRIVETHRU for disgusting, gut-bomb burritos (his ONLY day off during the week) and feel sick after eating half. Chris always ate two, then we'd jump back into his jeep and go play pool, go on a movie date or ride the alpine slides up in Golden. The list goes on and on, but he always, always was a good friend, and always took care of me.

His best friend, and my brother Oakley said it best that there are just too many memories of him to just pick one. It's the overall sense of who he was and now it's gone. Being home and around our 'crew' was more theraputic than any where else I could have chosen to be - but man, I miss that kid.

One of his friends said it well at his memorial - "He fooled us all. He got us all together."

Cliche, but it makes you look at life differently. There's just no room for the trivial bullshit anymore. And with all of the questions this has provoked within me about god and heaven and all that other bullshit debated over years and years against science, all i can hope is that he is OK and happy and around all of us who loved him all of the time...

On that note - Chris was not only the kind of guy to go out of his way to help you, even if he couldn't really afford to - but a STELLAR musician.

Most girls in high school wanted to be my friend not because of me, but because I was in the little clique revolving around Amnesia - "the greatest alternative band of all time" during our formative high school years. :) I know all of those videos/audios/etc. are still being rounded up - but I do have this video, taped in the house I grew up in --- I had just driven home from college and brought a friend along. No offense, J, but Chris makes you look like a total tool :)

Circa 2004: (Chris is the one tearin' it up :))

Round Two [Ding!]

Despite some very fabulous people around me, I am definately going through round two of difficult situations, folks and well...life :).

On my drive home from work yesterday, my body kicked into survival mode - refusing to accept anything but sleep. I walked in the door, shut off my phone, and crawled straight into bed. I'm turning into Rip Van Winkle, and think I may, in fact, be able to sleep for 100 years.

Figure other people say it better than I do anymore, unless directly prompted, so here we go:

Trailed by a mess
Of masking tape construction paper
And the best of intentions
[She] tried to patch up every hole as [she] went
Back and forth and back again

And [her] friends half full of half concerns
Embarrassed looks and tired words
They burrowed deeper into the ignorant
Little lives they preferred
And [she] envied their distance
Their lack of concern
[Sh]e thought,
Once I shed the whole of me
Once I shed the whole of me
Then I'll be smiling

[She] cursed [her]self
And [her] instinct to nurse
Every idea to health
And all of the falls that [she'd] spent
Trying to coax [her] name from the mouths
Of success

[She] thought
Once I shed the whole of me
Once I shed the whole of me
Then I'll be smiling.

They litter me with small awareness'
Then they ask if I'm good enough
They litter me with small awareness'
Just to wake me up

Why do the fools wake me up?

Feng Shui and My Love Life

I had an emergency visit to my acupuncturist to work on my sinuses, since I have a fun weekend ahead and refused to let the pain setting into my head and eyebrows take over and ruin it.

Since I had arrived much earlier than my appointment, I nestled my nose into a Feng Shui book - which I've studied before, but never really put much into action - mostly because I'm not going to position my bed in a place that makes no sense just to retain some harmony in the workplace. I feel my home furnishings and "chi" flow just fine in my current city dwelling, thank you.

So I check the glossary and flip to the "romance" section. Lord knows I never try to understand this aspect of my life... nor try to get it working or... you know, make any effort at all, so I thought, "Hey... why not let a book tell me what to do."

I start reading. Just like any material of this nature, it appears I'm doing some things right, some things wrong, some totally made up for bull shit appeal.

"The Southwest corner of your house holds representation for your love live: both the current situation and romance to come."

I begin to map out my apartment in my head... South... West... Oh! My Southwest Corner happens to be the little foyer/closet that goes out to my roof deck.

I think...Oh good... I just re-organized and uncluttered this whole area. Things are looking up!.

Negative.

"Do not store a broom here, for that represents sweeping away future prospects. Do not put a trash here. Try not to have a toilet here (this never made sense to me.. how are you supposed to rearrange your whole home if the bathroom IS where the bathroom IS?!)"

Well, of course that's where I keep my broom, along with all of my other cleaning supplies, tools, drill, books, odds and ends --- as well as my kittie's litter box, because I have but ONE closet in my entire apartment, and I'm not storing that shit next to my clothing, bedding, etc.

So despite maybe adding some glowing light (which pours in from the back door anyway, or painting that little space a deep red, pink, etc., I've come to the conclusion that:

Sami's Love Life = Giant Pile of Cat Crap.

It all makes so much sense, now...