By Beauty Damned

An End to the Insanity

I flew in to Portland last night from Newark airport. Darcie and Tom picked me up. Now they are both at work and I'm spending an extremely quiet and pleasant day in their house. I love their new apartment. Darcie has such an amazing decorative touch. It feels comfortable and bright and as if it has everything and anything you could possibly want or need to live happily. I made eggs and bacon and two slices of toast and it was really, really good. I almost felt like cooking it in her pans and in the light, spaciousness of her kitchen, made it taste better. The raspberry jam was sweeter, the bacon crispier, the eggs fluffier...The animals all watched jealously as I scarfed it down and followed the meal with a nice big cold glass of water. Darcie has some of the cutest pets ever. They occasionally growl or hiss at eachother, but mostly they just hang out and look really fuggin adorable.

I absolutely love the silence here and it's nice to feel Oregon wrapped around me again. I'm happiest about the fact that I don't have to do anything today except what I want to do and in whatever order I choose. That's a nice change from the past two weeks which have been dotted with little deadlines and at least one seriously spastic episode of anxiety overload.

Yesterday was a crazy day. I have spent so much money on Christmas presents so far that I could palpably feel the cash being drained from my bank account as if it were the very blood being released from one of my bodily appendages. I went to Target yesterday to finish up some final shopping and ended up spending $300, when I hadn't planned on spending more than a hundred. I didn't regret a single thing I'd purchased, but I did start to have a meltdown about the fact that I was about to travel across country in a couple hours and there were checks that hadn't been deposited that were needed to keep me afloat. I got home about two hours before I needed to leave for the airport and called my parents to find out who would be picking me up in Portland and driving me the 300 miles down to Ashland. I got my brother Josh on the phone. He said my parents have been in Spain for a couple weeks and haven't made contact once, so he was worried. This got me feeling extremely worried and stressed out too.

I tried not to think about where my parents were and why they hadn't called and if they were okay as I rushed to do my last minute packing and wrap all the presents that I was taking with me to Oregon, in addition to those I was leaving behind for Robert to deliver to our friends in NY. Then I started stressing about whether I was going to get to the airport in time and whether I'd packed everything I was going to need. I hadn't eaten a single morsel all day. In the final moments before the car arrived to go to the airport, I was rushing around, feeding the cat, cleaning the kitty litter, putting things away, checking on the internet about renting a car in Portland, rechecking to see if I packed everything...internally losing my grip on sanity. Aaaaahhh!!!! I lost it. Rob called as I was waiting for the cab and I literally fell to pieces, babbling incoherently about my parents and my bank account and all the presents and the cat and the cab and every other irrelevant thing imaginable. It was a definite meltdown.

The ride to the airport ended up costing me $70 with tolls and tip. That hurt. It took a lot out of me yesterday just to prevent myself from having a heart attack over finances. I got my bags checked and through the security pretty quickly, stopped for a salad and a sandwich at the airport diner, boarded my flight and got comfortable in my window seat. The flight was packed, but me and another guy in my row were lucky enought to have one of the only empty seats on the plane right between us. It was nice to have some room to move around during the flight. I slept about three of the six hours it took to fly across the entire length of the United States, and I felt refreshed and more relaxed by the time we taxied into PDX.

Now I am here within the calm, depressurized walls of one of my best friend's apartments, enjoying an almost odd feeling of weightlessness. I am still a little worried about my parents, but if we don't hear from them by tomorrow night, then I'll actually start to feel genuinely concerned. I'm almost sure they're fine and they just forgot to call.

So I think I'm going to catch a bus to Ashland tomorrow. I can't wait to see my sibs. As long as my parents come back soon, this is going to be the best holiday ever.

Posted by Maria at December 20, 2004 04:50 PM