blizzard March 2 snowed in fer days

It's a monumental day in a number of ways:

Julie and I got out of the house for like four hours! We walked to the mall! We walked around IN the mall! We sat down to a lovely lunch!

It was cold but pleasant to plod single-file down the game trail of pedestrian tracks down Johnson St... sidewalks, curbs still totally invisible. As above, so below -- the sky and ground matched starkly white all day and still do. The opaque strip of the visible world seemed powerless to wear any colors today. Even the red car I see across the street now looks grey.

It was 11:15 when we made it to the parking lot of the South Gate Mall -- desolate, a VW Beetle parked apparently for days, covered in a foot of snow. We approached one of the ends of the mall, so all we could see was the bleakness of the great brown wall with its humongous letters spelling out, "Dillard's".

As we walked ever-nearer, I stared up at it, and felt the great windowless box of retail looming over us. We were walking up crunchingly across the lot, and it was very quiet, and I was amazed and thrilled by the post-apocalyptic mood of the whole scene.

Julie & I shared nervous laughter as we approached the main doors around the corner.

Soon, and IN we were, and it was juxtaposition to the extreme. Suddenly there were regular people milling about all around us, with babies and old folks in tow, juggling their DQ soda cups and shopping bags, and carrying on just as if the world outside hadn't already ended.

My new bestie and I exchanged glances that may be exchanged before people step off a ledge with bungee cord equipment tied to their ankles.
First item of business: Find a bench and un-bundle. Gloves, scarves, hats, coats.

We are not people who go to the mall, but we've been snowed in for three days, and it's the only thing within walking distance in this cold. We're people who make thrift-shop rounds. Malls are full of Top-40 music, aggressive sales associates, bedazzled kiosks, and the types of consumers that nearly incited panic attacks within me when I was twenty.
64-oz Diet Pepsi, the sort of consumers who truly believe that, "The more you spend, the more you $ave!"

For the first few minutes the sensory overload was apparent, but we were determined to enjoy ourselves and try to shrug off the sense that we were in a zoo. "People go shopping at the mall. That's what we're doing. We are people."

First: A big shop full of randoms! Horribly cheap, creepy clothing. Montana-themed gifts. Lots of cool kitchen stuff in the back.
Potato peeler. Garlic press. Grater.
Postcards of Missoula for the fam'.

Alright, we can do this!

We'd approach a shop and squint. "Do you want to check it out?"
"I dunno if I should. Maybe. Do you?"
"Meh, I dunno, I guess."

My inner 15-year-old giggled at the sight of Wet Seal, and it was so full of ultra-cheap fun crap on Super-Sale, I found myself leaving with a hat and a floral crop-tip.

Trying on various dresses was the best idea of the day -- I haven't seen myself in anything but layers for months. I've been bundled up and thanks to how my recent relationship disintegrated, I've felt my usual Zip and Zap reduced to more Meh and Bleh.

Summertime is COMING! and I am still allowed to be FOXY! Can't wait to unearth the bicycle and tie the laces on a new pair of purple Vans.

I had a great time feeling 25 in the some stores. I have absolutely no clue what the "Kids These Days" care about in 2014. It made me chuckle.

Then I walked past the Coldwater Creek shop and half-cringed. Julie and I had the exact same thought: We've thrifted their clothes plenty of times, but can't bring ourselves to set foot in there.

We ate at The Mustard Seed which wound up being GREAT. They even had a vegan/GF dessert option. We gorged on delicious food brought to us by a real, live Server. So much more grand and appealing than our dissolving supply of rations at the house. I think both of us were tired of opening the cupboards at home after the long weekend.

Marveled at the thought: This, for both of us, was the first time either of us as adults had "chosen to go Shopping At The Mall," without a Mom or a family-venture involved.

We spent a surprisingly long time at the Gap rummaging through sale stuff, and I got a great periwinkle sweater.

"Recessionista Chic," indeed.

We walked home quietly. It was a good excursion.




How else is today monumental?




Matt returns to Kalispell.

Flipping thru the previous journal for a moment earlier, we had SO MANY issues. He was horrible, and living with that brought out the worst in me. I barely wrote, didn't call my parents the way I usually do, I slept way too late, and got so depressed I quit my job.

From June to December, I held on to what I 'knew' of Matt from last summer and last winter. I held on to June '12 thru May '13... and June '13 thru Jan. '14 were, let's get real now: Disastrous.

I wanted him to be .. who he made himself out to be .. but none of that person really existed.

He was a different person, and I couldn't believe it. I kept vigorously shaking my head, blinking my eyes, blinking again, and repeating -- trying to shake myself out of the nightmare of a relationship that was... actually a nightmare.

Of course I'm doomed to be empathetic forever so I hope he'll be OK, and well, but I can guarantee he's incapable of feeling that way about me, or about anyone, because he doesn't have real feelings.

People may disagree with that statement and think I'm being a twat, but it's a valid statement. He "thinks he feels how he thinks he should feel" about any given situation. I know this because I spent every waking moment by his side for 8 months, which in retrospect were the most confusing, grueling, agitating, stunning and heartbreaking 8 months of my life.

Guess I'm still learning! Yippee for that..

That relationship... It was like I won the lottery,
but the prizes wound up being not worth anything, and even though I still felt congratulated, I'd go to bed at night with Nothing, and I kept thinking its value would increase, but zero times millions is still zero.

Quoth my big sister: "Make him the last loser you ever date."

tim-berrrrr

he's on his way home from work
               on foot
    cuz I found
          more vacuous sex videos
                   that he downloaded
            on Sunday, only hours
        after I opened up
             and told him
                  how much
              his legitimate addiction
         was destroying
             our relationship,
         and my psyche
                    as
                  his
               girlfriend.


If your boyfriend hides his insatiable habit for the xxx-files in your apartment when you aren't there to see it, does it still make you lose your mind? If a tree falls in the woods, Matt doesn't care if it makes a sound or not because he's too busy at his laptop if I'm not in the room. Time to get out.

A summary from Cheyenne WY

I haven't updated in months, and after this post I will be working in Glacier again, so this blog is perpetually on Snooze. Finally on the epic road trip with The Mom, aka Badger.
When we pulled on to the interstate to leave my hometown in VA, I flung my middle finger high up out the window and hit the gas hard.



So much driving.. Back roads in Kansas and Nebraska, checking out Oregon Trail sites of interest like Alcove Spring, California Hill...
Train trip from Denver to Sacramento where Dad surprised me by showing up; we three rented a car and went to Truckee and Yosemite - two nights and then back to Denver for us, back to TX for Dad.
Drove here to Cheyenne last night and we have decided to take Mother's Day off and relax, stay here tonight too.

Been on the road since May 2 and haven't spent the night in the same place twice since, so we are WHUPPED.

Coming soon: A trip to the Guernsey Ruts and to Register Cliff; a night in Buffalo WY, a trip to the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Miles City next, then I will drop off Badger in Missoula on Friday and will head up to see Matt before going to check in at East Glacier next Saturday.

WHEE!

I made it!
I didn't die back east!
I will stay west of the Mississippi for the rest of my days, I hope!

<3

Little darlin, it's been a long cold lonely winter!

...and with another several weeks to go of winter proper, The Beatles have resurrected my juju.

As any introspective existential gal should, I've been up to my eyeballs in considering what I could be learning from these months of stagnation in my hometown.

Monthly I've dipped beneath the frozen surface of the wintry world and dropped a few dozen feet into the pit of lolling despair, and last night it happened again. I have old friends here but whenever I move away, they never stay in touch. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess - so really there's nothing on the surface that I can get out of being here that will be lasting.

So I slip beneath the surface. Get down in there. Shimmy into it. Wiggle into the sand. Let the tide come over. Feel it cracking above me as I try to move.

I was just about to leave my cell phone charging and on silent downstairs last night, but right before I went to bed I decided to take it with me. After an hour's sob-fest with my mother, I was reminded that she can be perfectly stoic and can take my sullenness in graceful stride. She helped, which was unexpected. We are so much alike - I didn't even want to let her in on how sad I've been being stuck here and broke all the time, because I didn't want to bring her down after all she's done to help me.

Anyway.

My cell phone rang around 4AM - Whiskers Welch! Montana Matt! Calling from Portland with a buzz and a case of missing-the-Beth!

We talked for about an hour and reminisced about last summer and both of us counting down to almost the minutes we have to wait until our return to the St Mary Valley.

Rediscovering my love for The Beatles on the way to town today, it's been decided that Here Comes The Sun will be my anthem for the moment I crest over and into the valley from Duck Lake Rd upon returning in May. The mountains will return to view and I will probably sob and sob and kiss the ground, maybe even roll around on it before I go to check in with GPI for this coming season.

Hwy 89 at Going-to-the-Sun Road will be my address once again. Here Comes The Sun is an appropriate return song for this gal.

Eleven weeks and 5 days till I leave.
Thirteen weeks and 6 days till I check in.
Fourteen weeks tomorrow will be my first shift.

...and in 33 weeks, I'll still be there.


Whew.

I can doooooo thiiiiiiis.

everything sucked yesterday

I have learned a lot, dear bloggery!
Like, that I can still feel feelings! And that I can fall in love and that my fabulous and ferocious heart is still intact enough to be busted up! And that I was right in my superstitious decision to swear off the Pisces boys some years ago! I won't screw up that promise anymore, lord knows, and I don't give a single F regarding how adolescent that might sound.

He was about to get hired with me and we were making plans to go out west in four months. Travel, music, creativity, all the time this hipstery space giraffe watching over us. People we met in the beginning, they just assumed we were together. He says one night, "I'm falling in love with you," and I freak out and spaz for weeks because he lives with girl-of-three-years. Says it's flat-lining, he's not inspired anymore. Says I enrich his life.

Then, eh, he goes [essentially] 'Nevermind'.

There are more cheap shots I could take than all the rail whiskeys at the bar right now.

I am mad as hell. The worst part about it is that it wasn't my idea. It was his idea! It was a sticky situation from the beginning. And, yes, I have learned. Looking back it's funny that I didn't figure it out from the get-go. How could I expect him to be an honest person when everything about what he felt about me was indicative of dishonesty within his life?

It's this fucking small town, man. There's nowhere to escape, all our people are at all the same places all the time. I can't vanish.

I didn't gorge on ice cream and watch sex and the city marathons.

I woke at 4:40am, rose at 5:45, wrote till past sunup, and took a sick day.

If there's anything this gal can do, it's bounce back with a buoyant brilliance. Seeking shelter at a cafe in Harrisonburg where no one knows who I am.

mine one won 3rd place for ACC's annual collection!

I see my generation

in need of identification.

We are pioneers

directionless,

and without destination.

Our world is a snow-globe:

Unnaturally compact.

We look in, are cozily detached.

Our frontier is mental.

We take our love inside,

where we take our meds.

There's an App for this,

there's a pill for that.

I am too new

to feel so old.

I want to know a world

without excess.

Diagnosis: Blindness,

our eyes trained to screens

instead of to each other,

our faces illuminated

by laptops

instead of by

the brilliance of compassion.

Keep 'Being Back In Staunton' Weird.

Here's an aerial image of my hometown. It's on the list among Durango, CO as one of the top twenty small towns in America. So it goes.. 

Went to the usual bar downtown with a book the other day.

Girl from my high school graduating class was at the bar with her boyfriend of a few years. I’m sure we recognized each other in a flash, and both decided to ignore it. 

She was being shrill, loud, and at least seemed fake when she saw another alum from the class of ’03. After the ‘hello’s and ‘You-look-so-good!’s, the girl from my class started out on a rant about how lame and weird her [our!] class had been. She went on about how our class just wanted to get through high school and sell drugs, and how most had been to jail. Haha! Then she raved about the woes of adulthood and missing the freedom of being a kid.

I was sitting there in grungy garb reading the memoir of Gail Caldwell, a woman who dropped out of college and traveled and spent a night in jail… and she, this drop-out author, she won a Pulitzer prize.

I’m a literate drop-out jailbird nomad, and I’ll probably never win a Pulitzer, but I’ll also never be an accountant and I'll never stop examining my life.

At this rate I’ll also never have a boyfriend-of-three-years… but my patchwork romance quilt is forever brightly colored with the very real love I hold to myself for a small handful of people, TX to CA to MT.. even for Austin’s M.P., because I got to see him through the gauze of his triple-Aries confidence. I knew I saw him, and so did he, and that’s a secret that will remain unstated between us forever probably.

I hope that girl from my class is happy in her world. Listening to her judge our class (and taking it personally), and just being around the judgmental culture borne of Valley boredom… I hope it doesn’t turn me into another gossipy who’d-you-see-them-with? kind of girl.

When someone at the other night asked what my goals in life were, what I want to do, I explained how I’m only concerned with going back to MT next summer. I don’t have any goals beyond that. I just want to live a happy life, and so far so good.

PS – How do the birds know how to quit chirping, all at once? In flight, how do they move in unison? They’re the epitome of a collective consciousness, and proof that everything is one, and that we can work together to benefit the whole.