I'm so tired, Part 1

I am so tired.

Brain tired, body tired, heart tired.

It's a good tired, the kind that comes from stretching all the parts of your life in new ways, the kind that leads to growth and change and unforeseen fortune. But it's still tired.

Which brings me here, to Amber, where I'm drinking a Bass and smoking a cigarette (Inside! Oh, San Francisco and its blatant disregard for the rules that govern the rest of the state...) and waiting to meet up with Blaine, the host of tonight's couch stay, because I've decided to let my hosts for this week, a married couple, have a night of peace and copulation to themselves.

And meanwhile, I'm running over in my mind all the places I've been - physically, emotionally - in the last month.

There was the L.A. goodbye, which I've written about.

Leaving the Nest

Then there was the Camarillo goodbye, a tearful ordeal not unlike the first time I left home for college. In fact, I wonder if this one was harder, since neither Mom nor me expected to have the experience again. After two months of her getting to be a mom and me getting to be a little girl, it was finally time to go out into the big, big world again - and this time, most likely, for good. (Though with the lifestyle and income of a writer, you never know...)

So I said goodbye to the bed where I spent so much time recovering from, well, the last five years. Goodbye to the Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches that spontaneously regenerated in the freezer, with no help from me (and maybe a little from Mom and her wallet), and that I discovered you CAN eat in 3-a-day doses, as long as they're not 3-in-a-row. Goodbye to the television I would watch from the bed while eating Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches (most often set, as it is in the photo, to VH-1.) Goodbye to the smoking patio connected to my room, where I smoked as a teenager and as a college student and, again, as an adult. Goodbye to Gary, the stepdad who has become my Dad dad: my rock, my patriarch, my giver of unconditional love and infinite hugs, the man who can withstand our boundless energy and loving pestering and daily choruses of "Gary, Indiana" and "Gary Gary Gary pants." Goodbye to my stuff, packed in the van parked outside the house, which will sit there who knows how long?

And goodbye to Mom, the Great Nurturer, my playmate and kindred soul, fellow tap dancer and Richard Cheese listener, the footrubber and movie watcher and conversationalist, my first and best friend.

So Long, Santa Barbara

And then there was Santa Barbara. After a brief stop to see Jenessa (and drop off a stuffed bee and an artist-made chair for little Olive from my Mom), I made my way to the other most significant home of my recent life. This strange land by the sea, all sorority girls and burgeoning underground art and love and pain and confusion. I stopped at Muddy Waters, the coffee shop that used to be Burning Man headquarters, home and business of my best Santa Barbara friend, location of numerous events and performances and fights and experiences, carpark for napping, and motel-stop for trailer surfing - all different now that Siobhan has sold the business and moved to (yup!) San Francisco.

There was a long and difficult and wonderful and painful and confusing, tearful (again) goodbye with Jeff - tea and sushi and conversation and open wounds that this move will hopefully heal.

Drinks with friends at Elsie's, my former place of business and savior from debt and destruction, and The Press Room, the second home to so many of my friends. But the group was small - so many of my friends have already moved on...

(...more to come...)