Frosty pause.

I’m Bill Paxton and/or Helen Hunt unrealistically tied to plumbing by leather drive belts in that farm pump house.  The tornado is fabricated!

Other than nearly losing my semi-firm grip on reality here in Austin, things are sensational.

I acquired a job almost immediately which actually surprised the hell out of me.  I must’ve said “Oh, it can’t be that difficult to find a job!” one hundred times while sweating a machine gun magazine full of bullets in every direction while family and friends looked on in secret horror.  

I won’t say much about it other than I did find barefaced joy in naming a file “dog poop letter template” the other day.  I work right on the UT campus with a sunlight and squirrel friendly office overlooking several walks of shame per morning.  I’m only on the second story, so the clip clop of their burnished lady shoes stabbing the concrete mercilessly with every step stops me right in my tracks.  I really can’t help but study them a bit.

Last weekend I was proposed to by a heavyhearted, Bukowski type fella who literally peed in his pants a couple stools down from me.  I’m not used to being in a bar come witching hour and it’s damn near frightening.  From my perspective, women are not unlike the gasoline in Mad Max 2.

It’s been truly spectacular to reconnect with an old friend that doubles as my current roommate.  She gave me the room with the view of the Capitol Building, and that’s just one of those inane things I find myself repeating when someone asks how I like it here. 

“It’s great!  I can see the Capitol Building from my bed.  Seriously, I can lie all the way down and its nipple is still peeping at me.”

As it turns out, not many people are as dazzled by that fact.  It reminds me of the time I moved to an apartment I’d never seen before in Chicago all because it was right next door to a prosthetic leg factory.

I was finally able to bring my cat home, too, and will admit that I pulled a Britney riding a few hours with him in my lap.

I’m okay.

Sharing is caring.

I absolutely couldn’t keep this e-mail from my bio-mom to myself.

“i had a bad dream about u last night. u were about 12 years old and i found you kissing 2 boys. one had blondish brown hair and the other had dark brown hair. one was a bit older than the other too. you were all sitting next to bicycles and u just kept taking turns kissing them. then i swooped in and threatened the oldest one with statutory rape charges cuz he was over 18 and told him i had a gun and i wasnt afraid to use it. then i drug u home by ur ponytail and grounded u for life.”

Famileaving.

Life has been on a peculiar pause here in Dallas while I recover from a depleted savings account and in one week I’ll finally be in Austin.  I’ve spent all of my time with family who’ve helped ease that stubborn cork out of my fermenting bottle of emotions.  Whether they’re all aware of that, who knows, but there’s something about my mom and dad’s respective kitchens that impregnate me with a litter of tear babies.  I’ve (conveniently) lost count of exactly how many I’ve given birth to over the past few months.

One of those evenings we were all gathered around the island at my dad’s, elbows resting while discussing what we’d like to order from the take-out menu and apparently the “I’m going to die alone!?” I was craving wasn’t in season.

I forgot what it feels like to unleash that mammoth of sorrow in front of family members as opposed to strangers in public (because that’s where it inevitably seeps out).  They hug the absolute shit out of you and order you a hefty, soothing styrofoam box full of piping hot monosodium glutamate.  Not once has anyone here made me feel like a total dolt for letting it all hang out.

My dad placed a box of complimentary tissue in the middle of the living room the night we all watched My Sister’s Keeper because I may or may not have residual cancer scare whimpers buried way down deep behind my toenail beds.

My Mormon family didn’t even flinch the night I almost said “fuck” during a heated game of Catch Phrase.  I swiftly changed it to “fuh-art” , but I have a feeling they’d have let it slide because my grandpa (a Priesthood Holder) moments later said “damn” and we all laughed so hard we cried.

My little brother even gave me the permission to share a snippet of our conversation the other night in which he admitted to making love to his giant teddy bear when we were kids.

My older sister called me to apologize for always putting me in the middle of her ongoing battle with our biological mother.  I will call her later this week to atone for not fully appreciating the many nights she let me curl up on her bedroom floor after a nightmare where she and Joe Elliott would sing me back to slumber.

My ex-step mother welcomed me into her home and onto the unlimited family yoga account.  Her boob popped out the other day while she demonstrated a sun salutation and I’ve almost executed bakasana/crow pose properly because she makes me feel less afraid to land on my face.

My current step-mother truly completes my dad and has never once made me feel like an asshole for being a stereotypically terrible teenager.  We’re talking wasted high school football players smashing her sculptures after one too many glasses of Jim Beam and Kool-Aid terrible teenager.  Selling your Badmotorfinger c.d. for ecstasy terrible teenager.

In one week I’ll actually know what it feels like to be homesick because this time I’m not running away.  I’ve chosen to build a new life for myself a few hours away because honestly, any more than that and I’d be making Claire Danes Chin Crinkle Cry Face in every job interview.

Wish me luck, will ya?