In love with Love

Last night bordered on magnificent. I’ll never think of Friday the 13th the same again. I arrived early for my volunteer shift at the Love Show, and got to take a spin through the whole building and see all the art before any of the public arrived. Then a magical night began. Amazing art everywhere I looked, great connections with people I hadn’t seen in a long time - Kaj-ann, Vicky, Bruce from the PCM class that certified me as a producer, Richard who literally GAVE me the coat off his back, Jules who made an amazing 3D piece for the show of two kissing suspended jointed figures (I’m going to her bday at the Florida Room Monday night), S.I.D. (the artist formerly known as Jona) who wants to buy a copy of my book, Kjerstin who said she liked the Art Police script enough to want to help us film next weekend, Haberman who is always very affectionate, Ben Pink himself (I really wanna grab that guy and say, “Dude, RELAX for a second,” but I know the mountain of responsibility he has makes that impossible). Just truly a fantastic night and the most fun I’ve had at a public event in as long as I can remember. I was in love with Love. And aside from shoring up old friendships I made a bunch of new friends, including a very friendly dark-haired skater boy who was, shall we say, NOT UNATTRACTIVE, and said he wished he could take me with him when he left to smoke a bowl! (But I was stationed at the front door making sure no one left the building carrying an alcohol receptacle.)

I discovered a precious young maiden who had climbed into the middle of one of the installations (photo above).

I did my double volunteer shift (Leigh greeted me in the volunteer lounge afterwards with “The best alcohol monitor ever!” and gave me a sip from her flask of whiskey), got my two drink tickets, but by that time the bar had run dry and I was pretty tired anyway, so I bailed, but not before giving Vicky a big hug, because she is certainly in the top 10 of people I care most about in Portland, and now she’s made the most amazing offer to take care of Lucy for me (despite already having four cats!) until such time as I have my own place in San Fran and can take her back! Plus she said, “I’m always looking for an excuse to visit San Francisco,” meaning she might even be able to bring her down to me when I’m ready to reclaim her! This is nothing less than a miracle for me. My excitement about the future and the great things awaiting me was alloyed by sadness at having to leave behind this girl with whom I have bonded so strongly over the past few years. She really is a little person with as much personality as a human being, and I don’t care if it makes me a crazy cat lady/dude or not, I love her, and the prospect of never seeing her again was hard to bear. And now, because of the friendship of someone who empathizes with and understands my bond with this animal, I don’t have to! Everything is coming together beautifully. I’m still going to make an attempt to find someone else with less pets already to take Lucy until I can have her again, since Vicky already has so many pets, and her husband is opposed to it, but it’s so good to know there’s an option in the background in case nothing else works out. I’m going to sleep easier, or happier, from now until I leave.

I figured out my taxes today in about 20 minutes (so far the 1040EZ form still takes care of me nice and simple), and the IRS owes me $210, except they’ll just take it and apply it to the money I still owe them from years ago, that one weird year where I somehow ended up owing them over $1000. (I still wonder if I figured that wrong and screwed myself over, but it’s too late now.)

Made my weekly call to mother tonight, after a lovely dinner of stuffed bell peppers, asparagus, broccoli, lemon bars and sparkling juice with Scott, Meghan, their dad, and Meghan’s friend Brian. Dear Mother is her ever-lovin’ loopy old self. “I’m getting into younger guys again,” she told me. “I think the Jonas brothers are really cute.” So we’ll both be watching SNL tonight: her for the Jonas brothers, and me for Alec Baldwin. I bought some brandy for hot toddies to celebrate the occasion.

Anthony said he coined the word “murse” for a man-purse and it made it all the way onto The View! He’s paranoid about people stealing his ideas so I won’t be blogging about our titles and ideas for the book until after it’s all ready for public consumption.

I had nothing in the planner today, but decided to make a lazy day productive by going to the media center and doing some editing on “Monsieur LeTigre Speaks,” the short film I shot with Emie a while back, the night we went to Slabtown for Sam’s birthday (or was it Audra’s?) To my surprise I found that we’d shot 45 mins. worth of footage, and some of it is quite hilarious! It’ll probably be about 10 mins. long when finished and I’m going to try to have it done for viewing by next weekend so we can watch it before filming Art Police, and hopefully I’ll be able to put it up on YouTube by then too.