Here is a drawing of a stapler:

I have tried for three days to write this blog post.

Here are the things I ‘ve wanted to write about: cooking with Allison, Lion King sleepover, waffles, miniature ponies, loganberry wine, aggressively loving strangers’ puppies, the decaying pumpkin patch, Mo’s front porch, and the times everything feels easy like childhood only effortless. But every time I sit down to examine these thoughts it’s like my zoom function is broken.

Sometimes I’m too far away, struggling to describe an Overwhelming Hugeness. Everything feels looming and vaguely out of focus. I just want to describe these events that have occurred in my adult life. I want to describe them concisely, humorously, and a bit poignantly. Seriously, like one pinch of poignance to lend the whole human experience a sense of depth. But those starts and stops read like a Dane Cook stand up routine, which is to say nonsensically with a lot of implied yelling.

Or I’m delving too deep into each minute detail. There’s no big picture or overarching theme. Just a menagerie of images parading together in paragraph form. For example, this morning’s attempt:

“Late afternoon pours through the skylight, puddles on the wood floors. It sticks to my feet in stringy swathes of gold. Allison juliennes vegetables, hacking matchsticks from the whole. Carrot, pepper, cucumber. She presses fat bulbs of garlic into the mixing bowl because my hands get so sticky wrenching the cloves from their papery binding. I hate when my hands are sticky. But at the stovetop I could be a machine or maybe a god. I could grow extra arms; I have no limits. I am creating a feast, prepared with precision and impeccable skill: crisped Andouille sausage rounds, Monterey jack hewn into soft, white cubes. Translucent skeins of sticky rice noodles. Tangerines’ overripe pulp tears away from the fragrant rinds. Citrus smell stains our fingertips…”

And so on, and so forth. Though I do spend plenty of my waking moments thinking about food, I don’t find food writing particularly compelling. You guys, this is not a food blog.

Which warrants the question: what the hell is it then? I consulted the Oracle, who told me two things.

• "Is kitten a thing you say now?  Is kitten a thing all Portlandians call each other?  Like you guys are all a bunch of baby cats, romping around in a make-shift play pen in the living room of America?  Strike that.  Portland is more like America's garage.  Get it? Cuz grunge and also grey.  I know Nirvana/grunge is a Seattle thing, but Portland took Seattle's dirty angst and made it dirtier and angstier so the metaphor holds.”(Note: ‘kitten’ is a term of endearment used by ULOL… I merely appropriated it.

And also:

• “I say write something different.  It won't be shitty because people will be able to read it and it will provoke thought.  It is also likely to be grammatically correct.  I feel like a thing missing from your blog is a thing you care a lot about.  Or really hate.  What matters to you? ...you started writing because YOU wanted to be a writer.”

So I write. I write to process the world around me; to explain my thoughts/feelings/etc, to myself as much as the people outside of me. What I write might be 80% autobiography, 10% journal entry, 8% grocery list, and 2% gratuitous pug pictures…  But it’s always as honest as I know how to be.

And honestly, I have tried for three days to write this post. I wanted to write about re-lived childhood experiences and the ways we expand into adulthood. The harder I pushed that concept, the harder it became to view those experiences clearly; to frame them coherently. In some respects, writer’s block acts like insomnia. The fear of being unable to write hinders my ability to write, which makes me more fearful about writing. The whole negative impact cycle builds on itself to become this crippling self-doubt monstrosity. This is my effort to break that cycle.

Today all I can write about is not writing.

All my love, you dirtiest/angstiest kittens.

-b

Tips for house sitting like a boss.

·         Feeding yourself while house sitting may prove a harrowing endeavor. Especially when your delivery options are bad Thai or bad Chinese. Rise above these obstacles by walking 0.3 miles to the nearest grocery store. Purchase an entire rotisserie chicken and a 6-pack of beer for dinner. Eat the chicken with your bare hands. Nobody will judge you. Nobody.

·         Charm the neighbors by dramatically lip-syncing 80s rock ballads every time you leave the house. Your performance will be most theatrical at dusk, when you can accidentally trigger their motion-sensitive porch lights. Complete your performance with fist pumps, high kicks, and drum solos. Preferred playlist:

Total Eclipse of the Heart	- Bonnie Tyler
Love is a Battlefield	- Pat Benatar
Bohemian Rhapsody	- Queen
Faithfully	- Journey
Desperado	- The Eagles

·         Your friends may start to worry when they haven’t seen you at several group outings. To assuage their fears, take an inordinate amount of pictures. Forward these unsolicited photos as proof of your physical and mental well-being.

·         Maintain a sense of normalcy for the animals in your care by singing exuberantly in the shower. Sing so loudly the dogs feel obliged to chime in. This noise making session reinforces pack solidarity, and definitely won’t alarm the cat.

[Sidenote: I opted to sing Blackstreet’s “No Diggity”, though I only know the lyrics from the riff-off scene in Pitch Perfect.]

·         Should you become lonely while house sitting, shamelessly interact with the movies you watch. By “movies” I mean The Goonies.

Listen. When fictional characters make really terrible life choices they deserve to be berated. That’s just a fact, Mikey. Don’t try to argue with me. I know, I know. “Goonies never say die”, but next time you plan a plunge into a subterranean cavern searching for pirate gold, at least bring a damn flashlight.

·         Sometimes when you let the dogs out at 7am on a Sunday morning, children will see your tits. Embrace this as a valuable learning opportunity. You didn’t scar them for life; you educated them on the importance of sleeping in on the weekend.

·         Never turn your back on the Chihuahua that lives across the street.

·         Personal space ceases to exist after 3am. Don’t panic if you wake up with 100+ pounds of animal on your body. Passive aggressive affection is how pets say "I love you".         

I hope you weirdos had a fantastic and restful weekend.

All my love. 

-b

but I will not everywhere be real to you in a moment

“A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.”

—Stephen King

My dad took me overnight fishing when I was seven years old.

Or maybe I was older. Wasn’t that the trip with my sister and the Moose? We still have the pictures somewhere: a toddler bundled up like a pink marshmallow, propped against a fallen tree. About ten feet behind her and to the right, a 1,500 pound moose browses contentedly. My mom snapped five or six artistically angled pictures, trying to fit my sister into the frame with the sunrise backlighting the knob-kneed creature.

Fact: Moose are taller than horses, outweigh grizzly bears, and can run up to 35 miles per hour. They kill or injure approximately 304 people per year. Granted, 300 of those injuries/fatalities are due to automobile collisions. But still, they’re dangerous wild animals. I don’t even know. That’s a different story anyways.

I was approximately 7-9 years old the first and only time my dad took me overnight fishing. We were camping next to Georgetown Lake, or Flathead Lake, or It-Doesn’t-Really-Matter-What-I-Call-It Lake. Here’s what you need to know: there was a campsite, a lake, a boat, a moose. We loaded up the boat at sunset. We brought: three fishing poles, two tackle boxes (hooks, sinkers, lures, smelly orange caviar balls, extra line, knives, slicksilver rubber fish), a styrofoam container of dirt and night crawlers from under the apple tree, a package of marshmallows, a family-sized bag of teriyaki beef jerky, one Disney princess-themed sleeping bag, a red cooler of assorted adult and non-adult beverages, my dad’s friend Dan, one industrial strength spotlight.

Once we launched we were primal; nocturnal predators trolling for Rainbows, Bulls, Cutthroats, Browns. Remember the glint of fishing lines tangled in moonlight, stretched away into the impossible dark like kite strings mooring us to something solid. Remember stars splayed like a roadmap my father taught me to read. See there? Orion, Cassiopeia, the Pleiades. Remember marshmallows bobbing in our wake, white markers on a roadside; a trail of ghosts or maybe tears. No, too cliché. Remember those men. Those rough men drinking domestic beer, offering me my first sips. How my father taught me to slit a fish’s swollen belly, taught me to precisely end a life.  

No. None of that happened.

My hands were cold. Everything smelled like damp. The boat made me sick. I fell asleep early, far too early, burrowed deep in my sleeping bag. I woke up pre-dawn to a slick smear of scales and bloody innards, heads and guts strewn across the bottom of the boat. While my mother propped my baby sister against a fallen tree, while a moose nosed through campsite debris, while my father reeled in feet and yards and miles of line, while the waking sun evaporated heavy sheets of fog, I cried. I cried for the heaviness of morning dew and the stained purples and pinks of my sleeping bag, and how one life can end, precisely, with a fish’s slit belly.

This morning I woke up with that bitter blood throbbing in my throat.

This morning I dreamed thick slabs of fish garnished with lures.

This morning I pricked my finger on that hook and sucked history from my veins.

This morning you pressed your kiss into the hollow of my throat. You slid your child’s pose into the cradle of my pelvis, said Baby. Good morning. And goddamn, those words sound like a promise in your mouth. Please keep them under your tongue for the next time reality feels a little loose around the edges. Say Baby, baby, baby like a mantra. Like a litany. Baby. Baby.

I love you.

-b