We rattle this town

I am working hard this week to try to accept that I live in this city and I just have to deal with it.
So yesterday I went to a “Women meeting for friendship” happy hour from meetup.com, and there were 6 of us and 3 of them moved here in the last month, so the 4 of us went for another drink after it was over and talked for a couple hours. One of them was living in Myanmar for the last year; another was in the Peace Corps in Paraguay where she met her now-husband; the third is from New Mexico and spent the last 5 years in Brooklyn and is glad to have finally escaped but she still doesn’t think this is her final resting place. It was really good to have a conversation outside of the insular Portland population, because apparently after living here for even just a few months everyone is convinced that this is the best city in the country, full stop. It’s weird. You see someone walking down the street wearing a weird costume and they say, “You only see things like this in Portland, that’s why I love living here.” But just yesterday one of my friends in Lawrence tweeted, “Just saw Dennis walking down 23rd street in a bunny costume, that’s why I love Lawrence,” so it’s not like Portland is this unique snowflake of a city.
A friend of mine from the theatre back home drove through and we had brunch; she said, “I love cities with great music scenes, with amazing food, that are really accepting, but… I don’t like that this city is so aware and proud of itself.” She’s right. Portland is really accepting of whatever your weird is, and there’s amazing food and fantastic music and great local shopping, but it’s SO PROUD of itself for having all of that.

But it was really nice to have a couple drinks with girlfriends yesterday, and today it’s beautiful out so Ryan and I walked over to a local food cart, and I spent the morning cleaning the kitchen, and I have 2 emails in my inbox from people wanting to schedule a shoot with me, and I’m about to go out and try to find a purple lipstick. Today is a good day. I’m trying really hard to have more of those.