The Good Times are Killing Me.

[Note: I just woke up from 5 hours of Nyquil induced coma. I had dreams about butterscotch pudding and flying. I still feel a liiiitle zany, and also like there are tiny marbles rolling around behind my eyeballs making them hard to focus]

Hi weirdos! Did you miss me? I missed you... The time has finally come to write about that most sacred event: Maggotfest. For the record, I am currently sitting on my couch having been sent home from work 7 hours early, eating popsicles and nursing a cup of tea. I sound like Abby Lee Miller after smoking a carton of American Spirits. I feel like a grown ass woman who drove 20 hours to spend four days running around half-naked, drinking free beer. Whilst wearing a cape. I’m also incredibly overwhelmed by the prospect of how much information I have to share with you all. So I’ll probably just breeze through this and go back to browsing Animals Talking inAll Caps like any normal human being would.

Before I go any further: this is a shout out to TALULAH (name verified and spelled correctly)! This weekend Talulah shamelessly promoted my blog, which feels a lot better than when I shamelessly promote this blog, since she actually takes time to read it and I mostly just vomit it out into cyberspace. I believe her exact words were “b is really poor! But she writes an excellent blog! Give her $2 or $3”. She made me $8 and the hopeful promise of two care packages. The rugby family takes good care of me, and I am bursting with gratitude.

Speaking of my rugby family, everyone was in top form this weekend! Betterside won all three of their games. I saw two people fall down stairs, one eat a brick of cheese with her bare hands and I nearly murdered one fish. Accident you guys! I was trying to be a good citizen. Shevel Knieval owned the town of Missoula this weekend. Seriously. They made it their bitch.

Shevel Knievel. Boom. 

Maggotfest 2012 Highlights:

1.   Dancing myself stupid to Queen, Buckcherry and Paula Abdul hits with at least 35 Knievals in the parking garage. All while randoms milled through going about their normal daily lives.  

2.   Friend telling me exactly how she would whip Jennifer Lopez’s dance crew into shape, if she were to participate in ABDC. Because those bitches don’t know J-Lo like she knows J-Lo!

3.   Scooping up Little Bird and zipping her wee little boots after she stumbled at a dead sprint out of the Oxford and into the street.  

4.   A friend stumbling up to me in the middle of the Bodega to let me know she checks my blog every morning, and has deduced exactly who everyone is (bad naughty!).

          5. This picture:

6.   The Bear being serenaded with “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” in the middle of the jam-packed Mo Club on a Sunday night.

7.   This really great thing that I want to tell you all about, but I can’t because I’m afraid I’ll somehow jinx or ruin it, and I absolutely don’t want that to happen. So I am going to mention it here briefly and maybe in like 5 or 10 years I’ll be able to elaborate and I’ll link back to this exact paragraph and say “Aren’t you glad we’re still here and I didn’t fuck everything up?”

I’m going to stop there because seven seems like a lucky list-making number. Luckier than nine, which was the number of my last list. I’m sure there are more things to mention, but that’s what you get because I honestly can’t contain the emotions/thoughts/feelings/experiences of an entire Maggotfest weekend in one post. Most of you were there, or have been in the past. You know how it goes. I’d like to mention this was my very first Maggotfest spent moderately sober. Definitely a big deal for me. I like enjoying the details of my weekend instead of losing them to the drunken indistinct mess my past Fests have been. I like remembering who I saw, who I talked to, what was said.

Friday morning, sitting in the sunshine with M and S. Sometimes you just need to talk to your friends about life and love and your new job, and that’s ok. Sometimes you don’t need to talk at all, and that’s ok too. Making capes with the Velvet Fog and S, and Lo busting out the sewing machine to ensure we didn’t look like damn fools. These are the things worth remembering, and the first things we forget.

Over Sunday 2am cheese fries down at the Oxford, while M brutalized a bacon cheeseburger and I thought about remembering what sleep looked like. AK started talking about how scary it can be. Growing up and moving away. She said something like this:

It’s weird, isn’t it? How you get so nervous? Like maybe nobody actually likes you and they’re just pretending. Like once you show up they’re going to show their true colors. Like you’re going to be “that girl” who everyone trash talks. But it never happens that way. These people really do love you, and 12 people will text to see when they can pick you up from the airport. You get here and nobody can wait to see you, because you’re “That Girl”, the one everybody loves. We just make it up in our heads, how unlikable we are.

Still, by Monday I was ready to come home. Some things about Missoula still give me the big heavies, still make me want to curl up like a little fetus and die. Like forcing myself to leave your bedroom after the clothes were folded and the bed was made. Or standing in a field of potential dandelion wishes, wanting to free the seeds from each bulb. You said you wanted them to grow everywhere, and I loved you and the sunshine. I wanted to fill my ribcage with those potential wishes. I have hot sauce and pralines in my backseat. I have a new postcard for my collection. I have two less stamps and a lot less certainty than when I set out. We’re going to be ok. We all have to be ok, or else what's the point?

I don’t even know, you guys. I’m working on this whole self-improvement-live-a-better-life montage bullshit. The funny thing about attempting to enact your own montage is that the movies never really tell you how much time those things take! What flashed by in 30 glorious seconds of transformation could actually take years and years and years. I catch myself thinking that a month or 6 months or a year is a long time. But really? Is it? I guess we’ll see.

“& I don’t mind

if we take our time

cuz I’m all yours

if you’re all mine”

A few things I'm realizing: I'll never be perfect. I know, I know. This news comes as a shock. But the people who love me will love me in spite of that fact. And they respect me for my imperfect honesty over my polished lie. They may be hurt, and I may be hurt, but hurts were meant to heal. Eventually we all heal, and we can all be in a better place together. A more honest place at least, a place where we can all sit in the sunshine with our little bandaged hearts and just breathe and it won't seem so hard. I feel like the universe is slowly converging back into the shape it’s supposed to be. Slowly. Because this isn’t a montage, it’s real life.

Tiny ginger cat says you've got this

You told me the thing about grand gestures is nobody actually ever does them. They only happen in movies. Give me time, mon petit chou.

Sending you all my love!

-b