I think I am dying.

Actually, I know I am. Very slowly, every single day. But so is everyone else.

Please play this at my funeral (as well as the rest of the songs in the playlist I’ve entitled “I felt a funeral in my brain” in my personal journal.)

Who knew it’d be this easy?

For one of my creative writing assignments thus far I had to emulate an author we had recently read. Sherman Alexie–perhaps you’ve heard of him? If not, please read this before you read the following. Believe me, it’s worth your time. Here’s me writing in the style of Alexie. Yikes!

Tenth grade and the air was crisp that morning; I could see my breath. Your mom dropped us off on the Melrose side of campus. As we walked up the grassy hill, you asked me, “How many aspirin do you have to take to kill yourself?” I went numb.

“I don’t know.”

“Well I took 35 last night and nothing happened.”

My heart sank.

I’d like long hair now, please.

So, it’s not as if I don’t have anything to write; it’s just that I haven’t the patience to write it. But I’ll give it a go…I just don’t know where to start…

This past month has been…different. Obviously, I’ve been dealing with the fact that I’m leaving San Francisco; the place I’ve called home for the past two years and that’s been an ever changing struggle in itself, but one that I feel I’m handling quite well (now that I’ve pretty much gotten over the denial). For practically the first half of this month I’ve been out of state. At first I had only planned on being gone for about 4 days, but then decided to further my denial about leaving and going away for 10 days instead; making moving out of SF out of sight and practically out of mind. Clearly I enjoy putting off the shit I don’t want to deal with until I absolutely have to.

So, as you may (or may not) remember, I made a small post about my last trip to Minnesota: Misuse of drugs and alcohol before the flight, hangovers, petrified cats and insomnia. It was a quick trip, so I didn’t really get comfortable until the last day I was there. This trip was a little different…

Now, I know you’re thinking, “Minnesota?! What a joke! What could there possibly be to do there?!” And you’re right, there isn’t much. However, it was a nice break from the city. To start, I hung out on my brother’s yacht on the Mississippi for the first four days I was there. From airport straight to yacht. It was fantastic. I relaxed, I swam, I ate, enjoyed time with my family, I took in the scenes. There was live music and fireworks every night.

Once we got back to my brothers house, my week consisted of sleeping in, going to the pool and swimming laps, drinking coffee, reading, writing and exploration. All of this I did with my new BFF Rex:

Rex the MinPin aka TinyWonderDog.

He was pretty awesome. I honestly didn’t like him much when we first met–he was tiny, pea-brained and seemed to have zero personality. Turns out, he was just shy. We seemed to have a connection and it was sad when I had to leave.

Now, I’m sure this all sounds relaxing and easygoing, but this is where that all ends; because on the last night of my trip I was fairly positive I was going to die! And no, I’m not joking. I was sending out text messages to those near and dear to me letting them know that I love them because I was 99.9% positive that it was all going to be over after that night.

Long story short, I got in the car with someone I trusted, but didn’t know well, who also turned out to be drunk. He was driving 110+ mph on a windy, two-lane highway in the rain, drunk. And the Camero we were in didn’t have airbags because they had already been deployed at one point or another. The driver had also totaled his truck just a few weeks prior because he was drunk (go figure) and hit a tree.  (My brother is under the impression he hit a deer that ran out in front of him, I didn’t get the real story until I was already in the Camero going 110 down the highway.) Anyway, the next thing I know, there’s a sharp turn in the highway and we’re doing 360’s all over the highway and land in a ditch (that we almost weren’t able to get out of). I felt as if I was in a video game or bad action flick. I kept envisioning us flipping over and burning alive or spinning out of control into another car or tree next. Either way, it was going to be painful and I was going to end up dead on some podunk highway in rural Minnesota. I kept trying to think of a way to escape the situation, but all of my solutions left me alone in the near dark, in the rain, in the middle of nowhere. Let the text messaging ensue.

To be continued…

So what?! I’m still a rock star!

Something worth watching…

Enjoy!

http://www.veoh.com/browse/videos/category/entertainment/watch/v12272529WMNAK6WW

I danced on a float during LoveFest!

My roommate, Kiss, tried to starve me to death recently. If you ask her, she’ll tell you it was my idea, and I’ll admit it was, but she was the one looking for an eating disorder, not me. Actually, we were both just feeling a little fatty that day and were looking for a quick fix when I remembered a little something called “The Master Cleanse”! I suggested it to her, and after some quick internet research (no, we didn’t even buy the book) decided it was exactly what we needed. Here are the deets:

For 10 days you drink nothing but (water and) 2 liters a day of a concoction of water, lemon juice, cayenne pepper and maple syrup. It sounds kind of gross, but it just tastes like liquid hot Cheetos or that Mexican candy Lucas. And the longer it “ferments” the spicier it gets. The diet calls it “lemonade”, we just ended up calling it “spicy water”. Along with this, you’re suppose to also drink a laxative tea and a “salt water cleanse” once a day.

The salt water cleanse or “SWC” scared me. You have to chug a liter of salt water (which isn’t actually digestible) and wait for its after effects which I read weren’t very pretty…I read that after chugging this “cleanse” you’d end up spending quite a few hours in the bathroom…on top of that, people that had actually done this on a daily basis said they felt as if they needed to puke half way through it. This was not at all something I was looking forward to. Honestly, who has the time to spend up to 3 hours on the toilet?

Now, people that do this Master Cleanse claimed to lose up to 20 pounds–water weight and intestinal waste, mostly. But it sounded promising none-the-less. However, at one point during my internet research I found a cute little paragraph that compared this cleanse to those suffering from anorexia…Kiss said she wanted an eating disorder, right?

So, we made our spicy water in preparation for our first day on the cleanse. Kiss had school, and I, work. The next morning, I took a back pack to work with my 2 liter jug in it because I was too embarrassed to carry that thing around. Now, the office I work on takes up three stories of a building downtown, and rather than taking the elevator up and down, I take the stairs. It’s usually faster and I enjoy the exercise. Not on this day though. I found that I couldn’t run up the stairs at my usual pace, and when I finally reached my destination, I was usually a little dizzy and lightheaded; more so during the end of my work day. And apparently it showed on my face because a friend/fellow employee who knew I was doing this cleanse told me so. By the time I got off of work, I had turned down both chocolate and gourmet coffee, drank almost all of my spicy water, started to get a headache and felt about 3 times slower than usual. It was a long day.

I felt like a crazy person as I finally reached my house after that long, undernourished day at work. I crawled to my room, dropped my things and crawled to Kiss’s room where I collapsed on the floor in a hazy delirium. She was laying in bed, but seemed to be in better shape than I was. Despite the increasing intensity of my headache and the hunger pangs, I was still on the fence about giving up. We weighed the options and decided to keep going and see how we felt the next day.

We went to the living room to hang out and be around eachother for moral support. I ended up passing out on the couch with a pounding headache hoping I would not wake up for the following reasons:

1. I didn’t want to have to drink anymore spicy, lemon water. Just the thought made my stomach turn.

2. I couldn’t handle the headache.

3. I really just wanted to eat.

4. I was scared to death of the “salt water cleanse” and its after effects.

Unfortunately, I woke up. And not only did I wake up, but I woke up to the smell of my other roommate making himself dinner. At this point, I just couldn’t handle it anymore. I started begging to be allowed to eat; and although no one was physically holding me back, I just couldn’t abandon Kiss. So instead, I took it upon myself to convince her that eating was much more fun than not. However, it was our other roomie, the voice of reason (the one eating dinner) that finally convinced us both that we were being completely ridiculous, and thank goodness too. When he left to go to his room, we were still hanging on to the cleanse idea when I finally just chucked it and went for the kitchen.

The first thing we dove into was the peanut butter. The most delicious peanut butter I have ever had in my life. While eating spoons of peanut butter we made the best pasta I’ve ever had in my life; making this one of the happiest times of my life. Food had never tasted so good and to this day, that’s probably the best pasta I’ve ever had.

The next morning, we both woke up chipper and in a healthy and productive mindset. It was wonderful. Since this near death experience, we have decided that starving ourselves at least once a month will make us appreciate eating in all its glory. So that’s the plan.