End of an Era & Punching Babies in the Fat Neck

After living at this house for almost four years, my roommates and I have received our 30-day eviction notice. Now, I haven’t really felt like home anywhere, this house is probably the closest I have ever felt to “home”. This girl I had been living with had just dumped me and I was moved in 72 hours later. I spent a long time thinking that this house was going to be temporary and that I’d find a spot not as far out, but as the months went by, I stayed. It was about a year ago that I started to think about making my room more permanent and comfortable, but now I must move.

I liked living up the road from my parents and my brother and his family. I liked living with Doug and his dog Oliver and I liked living with my new roommate, Chris.

Now I’m moving into my friend Theron’s house with his pit bull, Jasper, in North Portland. While the bus situation is better in North Portland, I still feel far away from where I work and mostly hang out. It is also Theron’s house, so it’ll take me awhile to adjust to his place and not feel like I’m intruding or feeling comfortable with it. It took me almost four years to feel comfortable at this house.

While this house isn’t like some of the other places I have lived, it feels like the end of an era. I’m sure it’ll take me some time to adjust socially to living somewhere else. I guess the benefit is more people live in North and Northeast Portland that I’m friends with than in Southwest and Northwest Portland. Who cares about Southeast Portland, that is a horrible place full of hippies, Russians and craft boutiques.

I started smoking again. I don’t know how to quit something that I still enjoy. I quit drinking and drugs when I was done using them and they had continuously betrayed me. Some of the people who give me advice and tell me how easy it was for them seemed like smoking never were their forte. I spent almost two weeks sick, hallucinating, having relationship ending mood swings, being filled with rage and even considering throwing a crying baby out of a window, wanting to punch most peoples faces in and felt like I was about to fall over from the ground swaying back and forth. I’m going to keep trying and I’m going to talk to a doctor about it.

Be warned – if you try to give me advice about how to quit smoking, I will give you advice about anything I think is wrong with you. I will go into great detail about the problem I am addressing and advising you to stop that problem.

People are starting to talk about softball again and I am fucking stoked. Softball is the highlight of my year and I’m already dreaming about walking on to the diamond and catching fly balls and hitting line drives. It is the only reason I look forward to warmer weather.

Getting ready for Dungeons & Dragons. I love setting up these encounters and trying to fuck with the players really hard. Last game I had these birds pick up the Gnome bard and brought him to their nest. Tonight I have something special lined up for our adventurers.

Saw Django Unchained. That movie was awesome. Not only were there great odes to old spaghetti westerns, but putting in your face about this time not that long ago we were okay with slavery and that it was illegal for a black person to ride a horse was pretty powerful. Christopher Waltz was the best part of the film.

The best part of moving is all the fantasies of how I’m going to set up my room, how I’m going to paint again, the art I’ll put on the walls, how I’ll do more writing and other crafts. I’m going to get my bike up and working again and I’ll have to find a local coffee shop to become ‘my’ coffee shop…I’m thinking Posies in Kenton, but I’m not going to commit until I’ve done more research. Because I’ll have such a nice space this time, I’ll be more comfortable by myself and won’t have that overwhelming feeling of loneliness. Also, I’ll have my books in my room and it’ll look like I live in a study.

I have thought about smoking a pipe.

I’m still in the wonderful beginnings of a relationship.