Epiphany time!

Having just watched "Nick Swardson's Pretend Time", Season 2, ep "Flying Stripper", I have realized something. A certain style of long hair can make any guy look hot. To me. I hate to be so shallow. And I know I'm not, upon further reflection. I have known tons of dudes with long hair that I have no desire for. Most of that is personality based. Hair don't make the man. But apparently it don't hurt, either. SMH

If I had sucked my thumb as a kid..

Knowing the way my brains have worked thru the years, I'm sure at first, it would have been second nature. Slowly, I'd grow increasingly more ashamed of it. "Not in front of company!" "Not at the dinner table!" "Take yer thumb outta yer mouth an' SPEAK!"

Not to mention "God sees everything you do, and knows what you're going to do before you do, and could snatch us up at any minute! With Rapture! With Violence and Death! With a Flaming Sword, or a chariot with wheels within wheels!".. You get the drift. Nowhere would be safe to just be myself, happy and content with the world.

So now as an adult, I'd want to be able to reclaim myself in so many ways, and now I'd realize I could do it again without fear of penalty. And feel whole again, comforted and calm.

What if there was a pill to get that feeling back again? Without having to suck my thumb? Would I do it? Would you?

Phish is my new religion.

There's no doubt about it, Phish gets me to a spiritual place. So much of the music has a peppy, "everything is awesome" feel to it. Imagine listening to the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey, but all funked out. No, don't imagine it. Watch it. If you happen to have an awesome flatscreen to watch it on, so much the better. If not, sit real close to your monitor, turn it up super-bright, and squint. Similar effect.You are surrounded by a sea of happy, dancing people. Whenever the song goes into the chorus, it's like Day Dawning in your eyes (especially if a light happens to be directed at you, that can be blinding). People sing and sway to the music. You don't know hardly anyone, and there are thousands of people in the throng around you, but you feel perfectly safe. Everyone takes care of everyone else. Someone dancing near you is dying of thirst, can he have some water? Of course! You get hit on the head with a glowstick, that guy will snatch it up from the ground and hand it to you to throw back into the crowd. You're walking through the crowd to go to the bathroom, and some random girl stops you and hugs you and puts a tiny ladybug sticker on your sleeve. It's just such a good time.

On FB, I linked to a Youtube clip of the entire show, but there's no video, it's just a stationary graphic. But the dude at the "Watch it" link above has a really good view and made multiple videos. So you can see exactly how it is, why I love this band so much. And no, Mom, I'm not "worshipping" a band. I just imagine that the feeling I get at these shows is how I'm supposed to feel in church. Totally happy, not needing anything, just having a "we are all awesome" moment with my fellow humans. (Ooh, I need a shirt that says that!)

I miss living in an apartment.

Not some things about it, of course. The lack of privacy, the trying to be quiet or having to listen to other tenants, the price of utilities (especially these days!), misdelivered mail, the list goes on and on. But living nearly exclusively on the second floor, it's almost like living in a treehouse. Of course, this is if you have trees in the yard.

I really loved that about the apartment in Taftville. The back windows dropped to an alley of a backyard, then that dropped another 12 feet or so to the street below. There were more mill houses on the other side of that street, which all had alley-like backyards that then dropped yet another 12 feet to the main thoroughfare. Across from these two terraces of mill houses, was nothing but a wooded waste, probably one of the furthest-back territories of the old Thermos plant which had gone out of business when I was a kid.

These trees weren't anything special, and in fact weren't very tall. I'm sure they were just recent growth from the last 20 years or so. Among them were tons of vines. It was a beautiful, green wall that rippled and whispered and sang in the night wind that came along and chased down the main road at the bottom of our terraces.

In the front yard, mere inches from the kitchen and dining windows, were the greatest old oaks you've ever seen. They had to be at least two hundred years old. When that same night wind was chasing down the main road, it also visited the road out front, which butted up against yet another 12 foot wall. Above that was a sylvan wild hill, the steepness of which I'd only been eager to climb when I was a child.

The oaks out front danced and stretched in the night wind, shaking their leaves and letting loose any dead limbs. The cars were safely outside their reach. To have the windows open on both sides, front and back, to hear the wind breathing through the leaves, and be surrounded by it, was something just completely magical. Safe in a brick house, with wind tunnels blowing just outside my windows... I loved it.

I think of that apartment fondly now, mostly because of those trees. Sometimes I wish I could live in a second-floor apartment again. I miss the feeling of being up off the ground, tall as the trees, listening to the night wind, and watching the squirrels' frenzied runs up and down the trunks on a sun-dappled day. I even kind of miss having to go to the laundromat. It forced me to be just a little bit social, even if I did bury my nose in a book most of the time.

I don't miss the inconsiderate downstairs tenant who'd play loud music all day and all night, and who continually filled my trash can before I ever got to throw anything out for the week. I don't miss the stinky gas heater, or the teeny linen cupboard in the bathroom, or the separated Hot and Cold faucets. I don't miss having to hang clothes all over the place to dry after going to the laundromat because I had to bring them back damp. I don't miss the carpenter ants in the kitchen, or the moldy state of the kitchen sink right before I moved out. I certainly don't miss the toaster oven that browned out the power every time we used it.

But there were advantages, especially on a fall night with the scent of mouldering leaves on the air, the wind pirouetting through the last dry leaves...

Homeless... not yet...

So there is a very real threat that I will become homeless in the next year. Now, I've often thought about it before, thought of what I'd do if I had to live off the land, or if there was an apocalypse of some kind and my house was rendered uninhabitable. I have a couple of houses picked out that I would squat in, if that was the case. Then there are the ideas of camping alongside the highway, among the trees in the median. Or living in the tunnels under certain cities.. Or finding a nice cave or stone hut and just knitting craploads of little squares, like leaves, to keep warm with.

Doesn't really help as far as eating or anything, but we are only talking about the home right now. 

So. These are all unreal ideas, not helpful to my situation, really. I need to find somewhere to live that I can afford (and get a job first to pay for it!), a place that will accommodate 4 bookcases at least. I need to pack all my shit and figure out how big a place I'll need, too. 

I would love to find a place with utilities included. In this general area still, I have all my medical and therapy and whatnot here.  I refuse to pay for oil again, so either utilities included or gas or electric heat... 

And I don't want to rent a room or necessarily be a roommate.. I like my privacy, I want to be able to have everything my way and not feel guilty if I don't get to the vacuuming right away or whatever. Or worry about my food going missing or accidentally eating someone else's. Maybe that makes me selfish. Some would say that refusing to have babies makes me selfish too. Screw them.  

Just a test at the moment.

This is going to be a place to dump everything that's been going on lately. If you find your way here, bravo....