adrienne maree, the luscious satyagraha

last night was my first going away party, little intimate thing with the ladies (thank you to kat for the hosting and the cooking and da muzak) - i just realized we’ve all known each other since college. 10 years now. these little odd ways to flip and observe time can make it seem so long. i’ve only been on my own a third of my life, and yet already feel so independent. no looking back except to smile.

mia herndon brought her baby, the little miracle name asani. she patiently let us ask every sort of question about her nearly 50 hours of labor and as we had some journalists in the midst it got pretty deep. but then there is this very serious and alert and focused communicating tiny girl. miraculous.

i texted myself this the other night from my new sidekick (which i just downloaded sudoku onto!!):

"I love like anyone else does. Madly. Anything else cld be rt in frnt of
me and I couldn’t see it if My Love is near.
I had a mmnt recently where I thought of love I had received w/o meaning
to, w/o prpr shame and humility…with no knowledge how to.
wht if i mssd the lv of my life? Now I see all this love evrwhr, and i see it, I feel it. I have a frnd,
our main activity is fndng amzng exprncs and shrng thm w each othr. Bt I
nvr ntcd ths love ths wy b4, nw I am so grateful."

if you can decipher, enjoy!

i have started the packing process and here’s how it goes:

first lets take down all the decoration, to help with emotionally disconnecting from the place. then…lets go through all my clothes and get rid of stuff we don’t want to wear. now bedding. i have an unreasonable amount of multicolored jersey sheets. maybe i should take a nap.

mm.

ok now…let’s put shells into ziplock baggies. throw away some buttons. lets take the blankets off the windows and reflect upon this rather mild winter. now my jewelry.

now. that’s all i really care about. i can’t really consider getting rid of any books. or dvds. or vhs tapes. or cassette tapes of me singing when i was 14. or oh my god is that my paula abdul cassette? i can’t seem to get rid of pretty things

a couple of thoughts i noticed today…

- i love people en masse, but very few specifically. this seems healthy to me.
- can black people handle it if this political moment is not about us?
- i love my own company…

am off to see my sis become a catholic now!

when i facilitate something, generally, its as if each participant is hooked into me, pulling in their directions, and its my work to feel who is strong and weak and sensitive and brash and keep a balance throughout, know when to push and when to hold back. i learn the most about facilitation in reviewing a situation that is particularly difficult.

we finished three days of organizational strategy and development with the new orleans network today, and it was a great session, made a lot of work very clear, but i can’t remember the last time i was this exhausted after a session.

to get people in the place of vision again is to ask them to find a middle ground between trauma and dispair for some optimism, to remember how to love their city in this groundbreaking way - knowing that hurricane season is right around the corner…to take a little space when there’s not enough space anywhere and people are rumored to be sleeping in moldy abandoned cars under a bridge painted with the memory of trees.

what anyone person can do feels so small - here is some structure in the chaos, a reminder to hold each other and feel things, and for what’s worth - you are amazing. this is the echo in my head, sheer stunned amazement at the humble, deflecting nature of these beautiful folk who have chosen to come be here when the understandable choice is to run; who choose to work when the understandable choice would be to lay down and just sleep…who laugh when anguished screams ride the wind, still.

tonight my coworker lee, a fundraising wiz with the look of a 70s pin-up girl, sat with me as i got lost after our dinner (and after i found the credit card i’d left behind two night ago and only noticed the absence of today). a wrong turn and suddenly we were coming over a familiar odd bridge into a zone of darkness and i remembered the lower 9th and i tried to hide it from lee but oh i got spooked, all that darkness and spirit there…i 180′d and we had to wait for a drawbridge, a boat crossing, i could feel this pressure behind me, i felt weak by it. here there is katrina cough, and then katrina brain - no short term memory - and i felt, today, katrina soul, the collective spirit of a murdered people, a domestic genocide.

i had to get home and get alone, which for me is turning on my music and put on my head phones and there i am, safe in sounds that fill the cavernous dark and chase out the ghosts. after all, knowing the ghosts are all around and the mold is near and the time is short and the work is hard changes nothing - a good day’s work is all you can hope for. supporting the work of new orleans folks for self-determination and the power of owning their own information is a humbling honor.

tonight’s sleep pulls my eyelids down. do something nice tomorrow - donate to the network - www.neworleansnetwork.org/donate -

love love -amb

we just finished our second day of organizing and storytelling in new orleans. everytime i come down here i want to just stay for months and just toss myself into the work. nothing i’ve ever seen in a space quite compares, this doesn’t have the sense of totality that a hood has, its a random, neighborly chaos. everyone here says hello, keeps moving forward…but i can’t overemphasize how little desire there is to think about exactly where to, to think too big. the idea that tomorrow isn’t promised, but that there is a good and honest way to exist today permeates this place.

and there’s a numbness, and under that a great seething sense of the many many layers of wrong. looking at the sides of the buildings there are multiple water lines, layers upon layers of evidence that this city was drowned in a toxic flood. that sense of toxic lines crossed, residue…resides in people, so that if the door opens into the room where injustice is being piled up, things start pouring out, pret-a-porter. each small story i hear, in a normal world, would be its own incident to organize around. immigrant day laborers abandoned and unpaid, insurance denied, abandoned empty miles of projects barbed wired against homeless squatters, rushed ridiculous elections, and the MIA black folk…altogether it is becomes a wall, and moving forward requires flying, or leaps and bounds, or some other kind of magic. so i am here, organizing some humble magicians, falling in love with some more people.

in the backdrop there is work to finish for the league, and  i have to figure out how one moves across a country anyway. i am almost too excited about ruckus to start thinking about it, and then last night i slept with a CAT. i’ve always been allergic, and thus a dog person…but if i could do the cat thing then maybe, just maybe, i could have a pet again!

{note to self: single with cat is not something to jump for joy over!!}
{self to notetaker: f-u! i want a pet!}

the league here is going to do a voter guide, so we pulled out all the old ones, and i felt really nostalgic for the early gritty work we did, when no one quite knew what to do, to look at all these community owned voter guides. shana and i had some reminiscing to do - remember the first this and how that happened and then remember l’il sarah? and naina! and jen and keisha! we agreed that birthing is the only word to describe any of it…

i have a full day tomorrow, may it be some of my most focused and productive work ever.

i am now listening basically nonstop to a country classic women’s mix - emmy lou, dolly parton, loretta lynn, then gillian welch and lucinda williams - calms me.

sleep come easy!

checking in before i pass out completely.
am in new orleans, doing a follow up strategy session. there’s not much to think about here, you have to just sort of plow forth with what’s in front of you. anytime the discussion goes wider, a feeling of hopelessness starts to creep in.
had tasty tapas tonight, and this conversation in which this woman who is also staying here was making the case that it was no easier for wealthy people to break free from their experience than for anyone else, and to have empathy for that experience. i was making the case that resources make it easier to have a variety of experiences, and that i have empathy to a point and then i get impatient at the impact wealthy peoples’ learning experiences have on others.

i think it was the first time in a long time i’ve had anyone encourage me to have more empathy. generally i think i am a sucker for that shit…

i might have had more patience for the conversation, but i feel like of late the impact that wealthy peoples’ guilt and learning curves have had all around me has been glaring and upsetting. i have perhaps plenty of empathy, but just no room at the inn right now…and am glad there are others, others from similar experience who know what that whole breaking free of the burden of privilege and figuring out how to give back, they know what that’s like.

there’s a very cool cat here, which makes sense to be the cat that found shana and abram, who never fail to set new standards for natural cool. i am allergic to cats, but can’t seem to send this one away.

i am getting to spend a bit of time with lee, a co-worker at the league who is quite remarkable. i like when that happens, unlikely time to build…

and now, to build with the bed!

this morning i heard my alarm go off - i glared at it, squinted at it, pushed snooze, fought with myself, threw an arm out from under the covers, spent about ten minutes in this battle with myself. it wasn’t yet 5 am. when i got out of bed i did some early morning math and figured i needed to walk out of the house in no less than half an hour. might as well take a shower. oh god that’s warm. i just want to stand here…that’s me, thinking and leaning into the hot water for at least 5 minutes too long. then coming out i decided i should change all the bags i had packed to a different set of bags. and grab my vitamins. and spend another 5 minutes literally standing confused and half dressed in the middle of the room. i rushed out, now ten minutes later than no-less-than time. i realized then it was bad math, and i need at least ten more minutes to do this comfortable. but no use getting troubled, that will only make me clumsy. i get to the c train, got, whatever grammar it was is then, and sat reading octavia butler while precious minutes slipped between the tracks, until at least twenty had come and gone. finally, an a train comes, cause its not yet 6 am, and its the one to the airport. this might just save me…i thought zen thoughts, i moved briskly but not breakneck cause experience has proven (literally) that i am more likely to sprain an ankle or fall on my face than make it quickly. not to mention that the baths + personal trainer + fire yoga + dancing + om yoga (LEAH IT WAS SOOOOOOOO GOOOOOOD) has my thigh muscles and hip flexors screaming for mercy…i got to the jetblue desk and tried my usual:

HI!! i am running a little late…
what flight?
new orleans!
the 7:15?
yes
do you realize it’s 7am now ma’am?
no way! the train was…well - can i run through?
no. it’s closed.
i can’t run? i have no bags to check.
yeah but its closed.
if you rush me through security maybe…
ma’am its 10 minutes till it takes off. the doors? of the plane? they are closed.

(i know that tone. i use it with people i think need the old kindergarten try.)
(dang.)

when’s the next flight?
let’s see - that’ll be 2:15 ma’am!
that’s 7 hours from now.
yes ma’am. i can pre-check you through now, you can’t check in till four hours before.
is there wireless?

and that, my friends, is how i came to be sitting here with four hours left on my wait for the afternoon flight to new orleans.

there is an insane and beautiful 5 year old next to me. his mother seems mostly shocked at his behavior and he ignores her - not maliciously, just completely. so far i have watched him run into 17 people and break two people’s plastic utensils which they were about to eat with and didn’t see him creep up. his mother, check that, she just told me she’s his grandmother - is this decked out black woman - a thong flasher.

one funny aspect is watching the judgement ooze from the white family next to us, who have their wild ones in matching harry potter stripes on leashes. there is also a set of hasidic badasses running around with their little yarmulkes on while their daddy’s curls flow back from his face. apparently ‘brat’ is a universal language!

the grandma just told me he acts like this ’cause his white momma don’t know to train him. he only listen to his dad, his dad in texas and make him cry, i’m right here but he don’t listen. that’s bad training. i would beat his little ass.’

last night i was sitting with one of my favorite mamas in the world while she contemplated variations on discipline, what works, what doesn’t, what she won’t do. her kid is hovering on a cloud compared to what i am seeing here, but overall i am sooo convinced i am not having babies till i find a stay at home writer-papa.

update - i left this blog and did some other stuff and now me and the grandma are best buddies and the kid troy - we’re working it out - he is so cute! omg! he just came over with big wet eyes (long crying phone convo with his dad) and told me that his dad is in texas and that’s where he is going but he is ‘not really’ excited because ‘he is going to give me a really big spanking with a belt.’

i let him cry on my shoulder.

grandma said she doesn’t want him spanked, just sometimes ‘what is a woman to do?’

thank god i have tons of backed up work to do, because the perky jetblue folks just told me i am only on standby, so i may wait here all day and still not get a flight. i am thinking back to the battle in bed. to that hot water over my scalp. curse this fresh feeling.

OUCH!! the most severe cameltoe i’ve ever seen just walked by. i still haven’t mastered my sidekick to get it fast enough to get a picture. GROSS. how embarrassing for the crotch height children.

this isn’t even what i wanted to write about, i wanted to write about how lately a lot of people, including some close friends, have been asking me for advice on ways to compromise with being miserable. i am just not the right person to ask.

i think people feel that because i am a broke pleasure activist, that i am casting judgement on whatever they do. on some level, i’m sure i am, instinct…but on most levels, live and let live. i do what i do because it makes me happy and i am good at it. i am mostly past the naive beliefs i once had, that mine was somehow a noble career. its grimy, its part of the balance, so far its part of the non-profit industrial complex, and its beholden to the same dynamics as any other career in this capitalist imperialist racist patriarchal system. everyone i talk to in every field is facing the same shit, complaint gets cyclical - its about finding good work to do and good people to do with it.

my goal in life is not that every one does what i do, its that everyone find joy and uplift those around them in whatever they do. do what you are meant to do and find real satisfaction in it, be the best at it that you can possibly be.

as with most things i say, this is all in my self interest. i hate watching brilliant minds overcome by bitterness, people who think that some outside forces are converging to make them miserable. especially when its people whose existence brings me such joy. i hate when i get stuck in that rut. when i look outside myself for answers, for backbone, i only ever feel lost and spun around. then i put that energy into the world and it manifests. when other folks bring me their self-imposed broken dreams, it’s hard to shake off, i find myself speaking with a bitter tongue, the hater in me comes to the surface.

my boy bryant keeps affirmations all over his house. i used to go over and see them and in my little virgo head i’d be all: ‘who needs those, just do what you’re going to do!’ but more and more i am thinking this type of thing is necessary, some little hooks for the soundtrack in your head, which lift you up to where you are meant to be, wherever that is. homework for the week, put something up in a private place in your home that reminds you of your dreams.

my sister april quotes steve prefountain to me, ‘i don’t run to see who is fastest, i run to see who has the most guts.’

how’s that for californication? at least i am laughing at myself every yogic chakra’d step of the way

that’s what i meant to write about.

ok i was told last night that i can tell people officially my new title, but i had to sit with it, sip a whiskey over it, meditate about it, lean into it, giggle about it and dance around. i had to tell my family and close friends, my folks at the league…

i’m going to be the next executive director of the ruckus society, in oakland!
i’m moving to california!

do you ever have the experience of standing in a room and someone puts on an album and the music is so tender and right that it feels more like coming home to a new sound than being enlightened to it? or is that what enlightenment is?

anyway i recently had that experience with emmy lou harris’ album wrecking ball - the sound of her voice and these songs. i heard it and felt faint, felt like i wanted to make those sounds in my throat, felt exposed. i love music when it does that.

that’s the only way to describe the experience with ruckus over the past year, going from a place of distance respect and awe to being invited into the family, joining the board, trusting my instinct as my instinct fell in love. hearing the values of the organization, the history, the challenges it has faced and the fearlessness of good intentions, the desire for order and stability. it felt like finding a home. the organization is 10 years old and focusing its resources in on people of color and poor people, folks who most need the capacity to act strategically. the biggest challenge is letting folks know what ruckus is now, and how it ties back to its enviro roots through environmental justice work in communities where that is priority - particularly indigenous communities in the mid-north and southwest…and they are doing peace work through the not your soldier campaign, which brings me to the root in many ways of where my need to organize comes from, my military childhood, my recognition of the impact poverty draft had on my life and that of my loved ones. can you hear me spinning about? how happy i am?

and, in what once seemed impossible, i am leaving the league on good terms. anyone who knows me knows it has been a beautiful struggle from the beginning, but what i have learned is that it is the appropriate struggle for a birthing process. it was like that, grunts and groans and bitter resentments and then ebullient joy at the sight of the beautiful thing you couldn’t have imagined, then the terrible twos!!, but now its walking and talking and has opinions and is making friends and being lauded as a genius child, and its so big you can’t believe it was once just in the hearts and minds of individuals. i recently got an email from billy articulating my role in the organization and it made me cry. its easy to forget how hard you worked once the pace picks up and the team grows, its easy to forget how it felt making space for that.

the enlightenment feeling also happened these last couple times i was in california, liking all the space, the pace, the emphasis on health i saw everywhere.

i have been in new york for ten amazing years, i chose to come to new york when i was 9 and we drove through to visit some of our displaced southern family in queens, and i saw all the people and a mcdonald’s with a grand piano inside it and i just knew i wanted to throw myself in. then i had to wait till college and my only choice was columbia cause i’d been told it was the best school in new york.

i love new york, and i miss it and i expect i will be back, but it isn’t the best place to transform your life towards health, that even sounds like a cali phrase. a true yogi could do it anywhere but i am a child in this effort, the energy here is so desperate for achievement, its so easy to find nights of joyless debauchery. this last little time here has been the best, hermited in my studio, having brunch, my sisters and close friends nearby and a weeky visit to jalen’s 5-year-old viewpoint, daily gym ritual and keeping plants alive for the first time ever. oh i’ll miss it…

but i’ve got my sidekick and very few belongings that i need and i am on my way.  i feel breathless with excitement.

i even had drinks with my number 1 intellectual crush last night - how satisfying! the crush is fully intact, and if we can have drinks like once a year indefinitely then i’ll be able to maintain my faith in the charm and wonder of black power phd types.

fire - aren’t you in cali? can we kick it when we’re neighbors?

ok must run to the girls congress conference and talk about organizing and politics.

some things that never fail to amuse me:

1. me!

yesterday i went to the russian baths and in a freak accident this other chick broke the glass container holding my favorite sea jelly from carol’s daughter - which, to be honest, is the only thing from there i like. (cd is a block away from my ft geene studio, so i go in there and then feel everything is too expensive and smells kind of similar. the anita baker of personal care products, you know? is it anti-black to even utter these words? am i uttering them by writing them? but i love the awesome sea jelly, which feels like perfumed vaseline! mmmm!) so it breaks and me being me, i am going to try to use the rest of the jelly. i put a lot in my hair, and later rubbed it, glass and all, into my skin. on the walk home i had to repeatedly reach down into my pants to pull a sliver of glass out of my thigh or buttocks. HOT!

today, the jelly is still in my hair after two washes. here’s a limited edition pic of me with jellyhead and a clay mask on (top 10 reasons working from home is awesome: i. can. wear. a. clay. mask. and. nothing. else. atall!)

2. the power of capitalism. there is now an ad in my blog (see below). i can’t figure out how to get it out without paying some money to friendster, which defeats the whole purpose of me starting my blog on here, which was to have it be free and thus indicate that i am not invested in my self-absorption. also, if you pay then there are stats and you have to see how few people are actually reading. ugh! the conundrums!

some things that never fail to amaze me:

1. my landlord! today she wants to look at the chimney and may need to see my ‘fireplace’. my fireplace is a tender place that is bricked up and covered with a precarious gate that falls into four pieces when touched the wrong way (much like me!), all tucked behind a plethora of books and my gorgeous coffee table and pillows (also much like me!). when i got the message i glared, thinking of the work i was going to have to do to let them see this dead fireplace. now i am sitting here glaring through the door as the landlady and chimney sweep systematically go thru the other apartments. more passive than aggressive, i do not plan to comply with this unnecessary viewing.

2. the connection between how productive i am and how many orgasms i have in a day. if it was quantified i think it would be a one to one ratio. i think i have struck upon something! (top two reasons working from home is often: unlimited. breaks.)

some other things i just want to draw your attention to:

www.thebreastcancersite.com, thehungersite.com - i just love going and clicking those…

Lake Champlain chocolate - Raspberry Truffles! Might be the best tasting thing ever.

and then - do you ever get the sense the news you are watching is bullshit? IT IS - check it:

Read the report here:http://www.prwatch.org/fakenews/execsummary

And then tell the Federal Communications Commission that fake news must stop, by clicking here:http://action.freepress.net/campaign/fakenews

 that's all today sweeties...

y'all BETTER be at bryant and anna's book release tonight, 6:30, Coliseum Books.

it snowed today, and then it was all - balmy. march had no real lion moments that i recall, wen out like a punk, and now april is all lamblike but…we might have to put the environment on meds. this AIN’T RIGHT!!

today i went to the baths and then to therapy - then i had to take a nap. today ny looked a bit grimy and gray to me, a bit overwhelming. i can’t stop smiling in life right now, but ny sometimes acts like it might sully your shine. i am happy that summer is coming.

i am looking around my house mentally preparing for the spring/summer cleaning that is coming. i want to get rid of things right now. books that i liked and will never read again, knick knacks i only partially like, collages i made when i was a little depressed. hats that are only cute in theory. postcards of places that no longer conjure calm for me, just remind me i am long overdue for a real vacation.

the only things i have i want to keep all of are musical instruments, my cds, my extensive collection of sex toys, my collection of soaps and delightfully smelly things, and some of my clothes. oh and my rainbow collection of jersey sheets. they just feel better.

anyway - i just put half my shoes in a bag, and next is going to bags of other stuff that i can give to goodwill. i highly encourage anyone and everyone to do this 4 times a year. it makes whatever is in your home much more manageable.

annimout! make sure to check and recommend folks to the league blog - www.indyvoter.org/blog - and comment, trying to bring it to life!

le horror!

that’s all i could think today as my personal trainer did the measuring thing - it was the time for the measuring. he measured me. i have been measured. the thing about measuring that makes it even more excruciating is that they wrap the tape around a part of you, and you send shrinking vibes to that part, then they adjust to find the widest point of whatever part they are measuring. amazing. THAT is the shit that will have you eating fish and naked salads instead of oreos for lunch!

now because david is the Best Personal Trainer Ever, he then told me that my form on the leglifts was ‘immaculate’ and that i had the ‘best motor skills’ of any of his clients. he had another client wrapping up as i started and she kept quitting at stuff. then he would be like - watch, see how adrienne pops her hips off the ground? like that.

ahem, besting someone at hip-pops? i’ll take a little more of that sir! i even overpopped one of my hip flexors which i thought you could only do while…thinking…really fast and hard. later i had to grimace through the hip stretches. pain becomes a point of pride! honestly, i do a pout-lipped grimace which probably looks hella sour, but part of the whole dynamic with David is he can see the fierce inner moi.

oh the pain.
but was it worth a Superior Physical Moment?
YES!!

I don’t know if y’all know this but…other than cheerleading, I was always on JV or second string - in volleyball, basketball, soccer. i just wasn’t real competitve, but i think largely because i was already kinda screwed in the head about my body by then and didn’t want anyone looking at me, so i couldn’t really abandon myself to a sport where things might be exposed, or jiggling/bouncing/moving. which is deep cause i look back at pics of then and i looked fabulous! but anyway, physical insecurity was set early.

now i do squats in front of a mirror and think of my ass as an objective thing to lift and tighten.  watch out now! my goal: brick house with actual bricks in the trunk.

speaking of which: http://www.theultimatefatlossguide.com/index.html

my friend hipped me to this logical thing to help health and i say, go for it!

in other news, i am in talks with all the people, the white people. who love the whole ‘whiteous’ thing. they want to start a site. possible names: www.whiteous.com. www.ithinkimightbewhiteous.com. www.whiteoussupportcircles.com. its really a fun and love-filled project. i think i have coined a term…let me check wikipedia!

woah! i just took a harmonica break.

yup. that kind of harmonica.

so i am also now ON myspace. i have been on there for a while with no passion, but jessamyn convinced me to really commit to trying it and…its so fun! its like the early days of friendster! when you’re just finding people! i am finding all the same people i have on friendster but…still. its a fun distraction.

i started reading fledgling today - octavia’s last book. problem: it’s about vampires. reading about any blood suckage makes my stomach turn. still, its here last book and i must thus read it. FUCK!

to relax relate release the nausea, my girl leah sent me yoga passes. thanks darling leah!! leah is this stunning redhead doing yoga in the far north of california. i am going to fire yoga tomorrow. its ALL conNECted!

oh, bryant is going to be here for his and anna’s book release party thursday - let me know if you want to roll wit me. or lean wit me. or rock wit me. they are about to shift the whole food movement!

also - i am enjoying the option to buy single songs on i-tunes. what is your favorite favorite song you think i should download?

that’s all for tonight…next post: intellectual crushes and should you ever actually have a drink with them or keep them in the boys-with-perfect-brains box?

took the redeye from oakland last night. i am not so secretly falling for cali, it appears resistance is futile…

but my plane ride was slightly annoying cause there was this Crotchety Jerk Asshole next to me with bad breath.

you know how you have to share armrests with people? but if one of the people is an old CJA then you can end up in elbow wars? that is exactly what happened last night.

i was in the middle seat, gorging on the ‘flavor of the month: after the loving’ and ‘the gauntlet ii’ reunion specials on my jetblue personal tv, but every time i put my arm on the the armrest, within a few minutes i would feel him trying to push my elbow off. sometimes he succeeded, giving me that little bounce balance moment which is always awkward, even if no one sees.

i gave him disapproving looks, but he didn’t look up from his New York Times. the next time he elbowed me, i emitted loud sighs to no avail.

then, the seatbelt sign came on right as the woman in the window seat realized she had to go bafwoom. i tapped CJA indicating we need to let her out and he leans his onion dragon breath over me to say: ‘the seatbelt sign is on.’

window woman got a look of extreme sarcasm right around her left nostril: ‘are you telling me you aren’t going to let me go to the bathroom?’

inner child adrienne: ‘mud fight! mud fight!’

instead, a burst of passive aggression took over everything and the woman squeezed out over us with lots of sighs going in every direction. then…THEN CJA DUDE followed her and went to the bathroom with the seatbelt sign on!!! hypocrite!

THEN he came BACK and commenced pushing my arm off the arm rest. now we were all seated and watching our tvs again, with him eating the Doritos snack pack as crunchily loud as possible and then sucking his fingers between bites! funky tongue medina. his remote control was in the shared  armrest, which was a small armrest, but its like take the front or the back and stop TRIPPING!!

so finally, about three hours into it, i said ’stop pushing me!’

at which point he pulled way over on his side and was like ‘you are coming into my area every time you fall asleep!’

playing the victim, eh? i glanced over at window woman for some shared sarcastic nostrils with a little necksnapping eyebrow action too, then countered on factual grounds:

‘let the exhibit show that i haven’t fallen asleep yet once. what is happening here is that everywhere i put my arm you start pushing me and you need to stop it. which part of the arm rest do you want?’

‘none of it!’ his tone was roughly 7 year old boy saying ‘FINE!’ or ‘I Hate You Mommy!’, and i realized that most likely he had that going on inside of him. empathy overwhelmed me, and tho i spent the last hour and a half or so with the whole armrest to myself while he cringed in a repressed ball in his chair, i left the remote control area clear. he was having none of it, and was thus stuck watching and listening to the map which shows how close you are to home.

lucky me got to come home to jennifer kidwell angelically sleeping in my bed. the guy i share a bathroom with apparently spent the last week without toilet paper, or bringing it in and out when he went numero unodos…we’ve had a little note exchanging around the state of the bathroom. once i cut my hair in there drunk and didn’t clean up RIGHT away and he slipped a note under my door. i replied that we should talk about a cleaning schedule and tp-buying, he never responded. i am considering a pre-emptive strike, maybe slipping the receipt for my last 4-roll charmin purchase under the door…

all this to ponder and more!