The Truth about the Rain

I was privileged to hear a recording of Amanda Palmer’s song Ampersand as she was just beginning to write and perform it. Several years later, she has perfected and polished it, but the raw emotion is missing from her voice.

The lines

I have wasted years of my life
Agonizing up at the fires
I started when I thought that to be strong you must be flame retardant

always struck a chord with me. Perhaps because of the truth in my own person. Starting my own fires. The lie, in particular.

This song, and those lines, have stayed with me for years. Perhaps when I heard, for the first time, Grapevine Fires by Death Cab for Cutie, it is why the song struck yet another chord in my heart. The destructive fire… is a cleansing force. We all live, we all must die. There are fires between. But, as the song says.

Everything will be alright.

The firemen worked in double shifts
With prayers for rain on their lips
They knew it was only a matter of time.

I had a dream last night that it was my birthday, and it was raining. I donned my bright yellow dress (the one that only exists in dreams, and only for dancing in the rain) and stretched my arms to either side, spinning slowly.

I’ve crossed the line, and the rain has begun to flow in fat droplets from the sky.

Truly, since my last entry, I have not been doing well. I allowed an internet roleplay game to swallow my life, as an escape mechanism. I didn’t leave the green house for the duration of the winter, except once.

He hands her the keys, as she demanded. Without another word she turns away from him, the icy silence settling into the room. Snow falls in strong sweeping winds, coating the mountains and foothills in a smothering blanket. Ice coats the roads, invisible patches coercing the cars to creep slowly forward, their ghostly eyes sweeping the muffled landscape. She backs out of the driveway, spinning her tires in the mud and ice. She drives carelessly, reckless, searching. She needs to go somewhere he won’t know to look. Somewhere that feels like home. She drives to the Center and parks outside, watching the bright coffee shop from outside. Can’t go in– no one she knows? She drives to Stephen’s house and parks outside, similarly uninvited. Then the dorms. She parks in the expansive lot, avoiding a view of her old window. The tears don’t come, the thoughts don’t come. She sits and she waits. She drives back to the green house. She wishes she were driving home, rather than to the place she lives. She climbs into his bed, and curls up close. She asks him if he wants to know where she’s been or why she left. He waits. She tells him that she– that she– meant to wrap the car around a tree, it simply didn’t work out. She couldn’t do it to him. He holds her, so warm.

I graduated from college.

At least, I thought I did. As diplomas arrived, I instead received a letter informing me that the maths department did not approve my minor for graduation. Investigation revealed that my Calc II challenge exam (Calculus? Really? Calculus? I know how to fucking -prove- all of calculus, not just crunch it. I know analysis, bitches.) was not, in fact, passed. I lost approximately 60% on each problem for not showing my work. I suppose I just considered quite a few things to be trivial, and skipped the steps.

I took care of that today, just like my big bad grown up self. Pay a stupid $25 reactivation fee, drop the minor… I still have a degree in chemistry, and I know in my heart that I have a maths minor. Just not on paper.

Bryan’s and my third anniversary is soon.

For our first anniversary, he gave me a Claddagh ring. The Claddagh ring is native to Ireland, and, as his family is highly Irish, this makes quite a lot of sense. He’d bought the ring when he was twelve, at a Feis in Boise (that is a competition for Irish dancers). He originally bought it for himself, but found out that it was bad luck to buy oneself a claddagh ring. He resolved to give it to his true love. I gave him syphilis.  You know?  The giant microbe.  Cute, fuzzy, pink?  Brainstem-melting?

This year, I’ve purchased him a Claddagh ring, from the wide and vast (and omnipotent?) internet.  It will arrive tomorrow or the next day.  I am excited.

                           

Currently I am house-sitting for my parents.

They have two dogs and two cats, each eats a different food.  One of the cats is diabetic.  He eats diabetic cat food and gets insulin twice a day.  One of the dogs is pretty old, and she eats old dog food.  The puppy eats young dog food.  The puppy is also quite sick, and has a batrillion medications.  One pill in the morning, four in the evening.  Both dogs also get a vitamin pill each morning.  Fun stuff.  Lots for keeping track.

I have been taking advantage of my parents’ Netflix account and their wide-screen high definition television to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  I’ve never seen it before, but all of my friends rave about it.  It is a very fantastic show.  Very fantastic.  Show.  Campy as camp, but very entertaining.  I bought Oreos at the store today ‘specially for pigging out while I watch Buffy.

Speaking of Oreos, I’ve gained 10 pounds in the last 3 months.  Can I tell you how fantastic this is?  I lost 15 over the winter.  (For my European friends, you know who you are, that is 4.5 and 6.8 kg respectively.)  I don’t eat when I’m unhappy, and let me tell you how unhappy I was over the winter.  Or, actually, just go back and reread this entry if you don’t remember already.  So, I’ve gained ten pounds.  This is really good.  I weigh three whole digits again.

I have also been working out.

I’ve been going to the gym regularly, as well as… now, this is a wee bit embarrassing… but I’ve joined a LARP.  This is… essentially… running about and hitting people with foam swords for role-play purposes.  There is a lot of running, a lot of hitting, and a lot of sweating in long, heavy costumes.  Wonderful stuff, really.  Wouldn’t trade it for anything.

I bought a piano.

With my graduation money.  Because I graduated.  *cough*  No one needs to know that it was half a semester late, honest.  But, I now have a piano, and I am so happy.  I played it for three hours the first day I had it.  It looks perfectly lovely in my apartment.

I say apartment, because I no longer live in the green house.  The green house had… two roommates (of four of us) who didn’t do the dishes, a landlord who wouldn’t answer the phone while the house fell apart, neighbors with a life of crime (two drug busts [that we noticed] while we were living next door), and just… bad joojoo.  Bryan and I have moved into our own apartment, just the two of us.  With one bedroom.  Oh, the scandal.

I suppose when we moved, there were three of us, as Porter came too.  Porter returned to the Guide Dogs campus on California in late June.  I cried for about a day straight, but as I find crying incredibly cathartic, it was good.  I was so proud to send my little guy off to become someone’s hero.  The instant he arrived in San Juan, he was given a thorough physical, before any guide training could begin.  Porter has cataracts, and can never be a guide dog.

-That- made me cry for about two weeks straight.

This is the first time that I’ve not gotten my birthday wish.

Spending a year with a dog– housebreaking it, caring for it, nurturing it– puppies are hard.  I poured so much work and effort into that little dude.  If he had graduated guide school, I would have been invited to the ceremony.  As Porter walked with me for my graduation, so too would I be there for his.  I would… also get to see him again.  It didn’t strike me until he was ‘career changed’ that if he didn’t make it as a guide, I would never get to see him again.

I will never get to see him again.

Hence, you know, the crying and stuff.

So I’m slowly getting over that.  It still hurts so much.  So much more than any animal dying.  (My cat, by the way, died about a month before Porter left.  Bleh.)  This is the first time in my life I’ve lived without an animal.  (Even in the dorms, Katrina had Peppe the goldfish and Kaylee the mouse.)  I dunno.  I miss going on walks with him every day.  Pure, unadultered affection.  Something warm and fuzzy that -needs- me to take care of it.  Something that’s required by pack law to hold still while I snuggle it senseless.

I miss my dog.

Bye, little buddy.

The rain has been falling in sheets, drenching the fires storming the city around me.

I danced in my yellow dress, a Stargirl in my own right.