Make Another Day

I like this song.  I like it more every time I hear it.  And every time I hear it, I am reminded of our incredible journey and the amazing people who opened their homes, told their stories, and basically made this a damned fine summer.

I also like that Kris Kristofferson looks as high as a fucking kite.

When I was about nine or ten years old, my mother was a Girl Scout troop leader, my troop leader as a matter of fact.  Because of this, we often had lots of crafty items laying around the house.  Googly eyes to glue on styrofoam balls.  Pipe cleaners, beads, assorted yarn, you get the idea.  She also had various items to properly memorialize any given holiday; pumpkin stickers, turkey table top decorations, santa hats, and American flags.  The flags were small, hand held, with a sharp point at the end.  I used to march around the house with one in impromptu parades. 

One such parade day, I decided to kick the flag waving up a notch, and run as fast as I could.  Bad idea.  I slipped on the carpet and fell.  The sharp point on top of the flag jammed into my mouth, scraping the roof of my mouth.  The dumbest injury ever, but important for this discussion, as I was actually impaled by America.

Watching the president on TV last night, I felt just about the same. 

AmericaSaysNO.org

For the past three months, Matt and I have been living in style on the 17th floor of a downtown high-rise.  View of the river, convenient access to public transportation, and it has the added bonus of being completely free.  It would be the perfect situation if we could just stay here for as long as we’d like, but unfortunately, Portland is having a love affair with the condominium.  Every square inch of land (unoccupied or not) is being converted into trendy urban palaces.  We even saw some being built on what is perhaps the loudest street I’ve ever been on, and across the street from a sheet metal shop.  Nothing says “I’ve finally made it, ma” than the smell of solder and the roar of trucks as you sip your morning coffee.  But, I digress.

In the process of the Great Condo Conversion, many people have been leaving behind items that for whatever reason they don’t want to take to their new homes.  And I dig that.  Every few days, there’s a new crop of furniture in basement, begging for a home.  It’s like the pound, if the pound were run by Target.  So far, we’ve gotten champagne flutes, wine glasses, a subwoofer, a computer desk, a TV, TV stand, and a DVD player.  But the shining jewel in our crown of free stuff has got to be this.  So vintage, so large, so bass-a-licious is this console stereo.  (more…)

According to two local grocery stores, grits are not available outside of the south.  The majority of my life has been spent in New England, and many days of that life were spent eating big, buttery, bowls of grits.  Perhaps, it was all a dream.  Or maybe CT is really, secretly the south.  Whatever the reason, we did not have a hearty breakfast built on the cornerstone of my favorite hot cereal. 

It’s hard not to feel like the bastard child of the new year here on the west coast.  Everything on television tells you that the New Year has been fully and completely rung in without your help, thank you very much.  12:00 am in New York City means 12:00am worldwide apparently.  So once the initial excitement of 9:00pm wore off, we were able to fully step into the new year.

Helping us ease into the unknown of 2007 was one Sean Hannityof Fox News (Just in case you were wondering, America rules and everybody else drools, the news crawl says its true).  One thing about Fox News, they can even make a clock turning from 11:59 to 12:00 into a jingoistic loyalty oath.  That 12:00 is good ‘ol American 12:00, and I for one, feel prouder for having experienced it.

At precisely 12:00 we popped the cork on our bottle of Prosecco (Italian champagne) and watched as the city of Portland welcomed us to this new, potentially amazing year.  From our view on the 17th floor we saw so many fireworks.  They crossed the night sky through hazes of smoke, from every corner.  We held our breaths and tried to decide which part of the sky to focus on. 

As I write this, I can hear the distant rumble of a hundred celebrations, a hundred new beginnings.  I can see the smoke slowly start to dissipate, and rise above the river in hazy, thinning clouds illuminated by the city lights.  I hear the low horns of the boats sailing past us.  And it feels like home.