Skirts Are for Girls, Pants Are for Boys (and Other Lessons)

My friend Julia, whom I met in my study abroad program in Australia, came to visit this past week. She's getting her Masters this summer at the University of Oregon in Eugene and was hanging out with me until she could move in to her house. As I usually do with my longer post topics, I will give you the highlights, more or less in chronological order. (Side note: The title of this post has nothing to do with anything you will read below. It comes from an episode of 19 Kids and Counting that we watched one evening). Okay. Here we go:

1. Julia arrived on Sunday afternoon. On Monday, which was miraculously beautiful, we packed a picnic lunch and headed to Gas Works Park on the northern tip of Lake Union. It was abuzz with activity: a man in full army garb; a ripped, spray painted couch at the base of the hill; a topless dummy chilling in the boatyard. 

2. After Gas Works, we paid a quick visit to the Fremont Troll and got ice cream at Molly Moon's in Wallingford. Then it was over to Pike Place to see the Gum Wall and three impossibly gorgeous men dressed in suits, standing in front of the fish market singing Beatles songs. We walked to the sculpture park and then over to the Moore where my dad gave us a tour, including a climb up onto the fly rail and into the dome. We also toured the Paramount. It was a very theater-centered afternoon. Oh, and I almost forgot the man we saw at Westlake Center, holding up a sign that read, "Ron Paul for President 2008." You're a little late for that, pal.

3. We took two separate trips to the skate park near my house to spray paint on the graffiti wall. Here are our masterpieces from the first visit:

Renegade Julia was responsible for the boat windows on the left and the heart and camera on the right.

 

 

 

You can tell I have no artistic talent because I just regurgitated lyrics from "Live Here" by The Lonely Forest.

The next day, we drove past the wall and noticed that my lyrics were still up, as were Julia's heart and camera, but someone had painted over her ship windows. As in, only over her ship windows. And it wasn't like they'd painted anything cool. It was white. They covered her art with a coat of white paint. We got our revenge the next afternoon by painting this over the white:

 We also extended our artistic prowess onto the other side of the wall (after replenishing our dwindling supply of spray paint). This was the result:

Finished product.

Julia in action.

The green light is supposed to be a globe. Again, I'm not very skilled.

When our fingers were sufficiently paralyzed from spraying, we scaled the climbing wall.

4. It was entirely necessary for us to reward our rebellious behavior at the graffiti wall with a trip to Theno's Dairy for ice cream. I then took us on a very circuitous route to the Redmond Trader Joe's where we needed some groceries, including a watermelon. Julia grabbed a basket and was toting the melon around the store. I kept joking that she "carried a watermelon" like Baby from Dirty Dancing. Julia didn't think it was very funny.

5. The next day we woke up early and headed to Orcas Island to drop off pottery for my mom. The weather held out while we were there, and after delivering the pots, visiting with a couple family friends, getting drinks and snacks at Teezer's Coffee House, bread at Rose's Bakery, and chocolate at Kathryn Taylor Chocolates (what more could you need?), we drove up to the top of Mt. Constitution. On our way down, a mother and baby deer crossed the road in front of us. Neither of us had ever seen a baby deer before--it was so tiny and adorable, prancing around like a rabbit!

I know I'm omitting a ton, but I think this pretty much covers the highlights. It was great to have Julia here for a while. I'll have to nag her to send me the photos she took. Actually, she's probably going to read this before I get a chance to ask her. So Julia, will you send me your photos?

You Probably Don't Care

Welcome to "You Probably Don't Care," my latest blog segment wherein I will regale you with useless facts about my life. I decided it was high time I became an expert on myself, considering I spend so much time researching and writing articles for my internship that I have turned into something of a Seattle savant. (I'm kind of a big deal here.) I could tell you that the Evergreen Point Floating bridge is the longest of its kind in the world, or that Lake Union is 34 feet deep and its houseboat population of over 200 is the largest in the world outside of Asia. Here are 11 more things I can tell you:

1. I collect poetry book titles.
2. I collect greeting cards of elderly women with their mouths open and hands to their cheeks.
3. I have over 70 names for my cat.
4. The only time an unsanitary word escapes from my mouth is when I'm watching soccer. Actually, it doesn't so much "escape" my mouth as it does sledgehammer its way out.
5. Listening to "Pumped Up Kicks" by Foster the People makes me feel like I'm one of the cool kids.
6. Proof that I am not a cool kid: I use the phrase "cool kids."
7. Reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin just made me bitter.
8. I use a beautifully bound collection of seven Jane Austen novels as a doorstop. I mean no disrespect to Ms. Austen. And I am just now realizing that I have quite a hefty selection of Norton anthologies that are all thicker and heavier. I use the Norton Anthology of American Literature as a doorstop.
9. I listen to "Live There" by The Lonely Forest whenever I need to feel a little Evergreen State pride. I get all verklempt when they sing "I just want to live here, love here, and die here."
10. You know I mean business when I whip out the Yiddish. (That's almost a slant rhyme, right?)
11. I'm sure I've mentioned this here before, but it bears repeating: If a house fire were to trap me upstairs with my cat, I would, in less than a heartbeat, sacrifice myself to get her to safety. I am well aware of how crazy this makes me.

I Miss You

It's 11:45 pm. I've been lying in bed watching Sports Night for the past three hours. I should be tired. I should sleep. 

Instead, I want to talk about something I've lost. Or, more appropriately, someone I've lost. One person. One of the truest, most loyal friends I will ever have. And I doubt she even remembers my name.

She's never going to read this. She's never going to read this because we've barely spoken since our high school graduation. She's never going to read this but I'm never going to stop wishing she would--never going to stop hoping that every morning when I check my email there will be a message in my inbox from a girl who used to flood my inbox daily with one-sentence updates in ye olde days before texting. She's never going to read this but I'm writing it anyway, because I waited too long to say this to her face and I lost her before she could hear it.

She used to live down the street. In junior high we would sit next to each other on the bus and lament the fact that we had brothers. We would walk to high school together, or sometimes she would get a ride and pick me up along the way. At the end of the day we'd sit on the bottom bed of her bunk and talk about what scared us. I was in awe of her. I am still in awe of her. She knew exactly where she was going and exactly how she would get there--a gift that, at 16, was like a treasure map that only she could see. We watched Chicago on repeat in her living room while her younger brother learned the lyrics to "We Both Reached for the Gun." We took her dog on walks around the neighborhood. We discovered a bush that only flowered at night.

We used to write long notes to each other--all the time, really, but especially when we went away on vacations. She once took a road trip with her family to South Dakota and wrote me a letter using an entire legal pad, complete with a running tally of every cow she saw along the way. We giggled about our crushes. We pulled what would turn out to be my only all-nighter to finish a project for social studies. She wrote quotes from Office Space on my whiteboard. We walked each other home at night. We dodged an egg that someone threw out their car window. When an old mattress was blocking the sidewalk between our houses, we concocted an elaborate story about how someone was probably murdered on that mattress and the perpetrator was disposing of the evidence. We scared ourselves so thoroughly that the person who walked the other one home would literally sprint to back her own house and immediately call to say that she'd made it--that no egg-hurling, mattress-dragging lunatic of the night had captured her before she could brush her teeth. 

I think about her a lot. I doubt she does the same. I know I am not a part of her anymore, and there's not a feeling in the world worse than knowing that someone else can serve your exact function and then some. It hurts too much to think that I could disappear that quickly and that completely. 

So if you ever read this, HSMM (if you even remember what these initials stand for), know that you were my constant, my eternal better self. Know that I miss you. Know that I love you. Know that you will forever be my hero.  

And please, someday, come back to me.

So That Happened

It appears that I'm making a game of introducing segments to my blog that I promptly forget about. (I'm pulling a TBTL, if that means anything to you. Which it probably doesn't.) Considering my recent hiatus, you'd think I would have a veritable cache of awkward and embarrassing moments stored away for self-exploitation. Is this the case? Absolutely not. Am I going to share my lack of news with you anyway? You betcha.

1. During the Sounders/FC Dallas game on Wednesday night, Dallas earned a questionable corner kick off of what should have been a foul against Seattle. As the player positioned himself to take the kick, you could hear one man in the stands screaming, "BOO! BOO! BOOOO!" I immediately squealed. Why? Because the exact same thing was shouted by this woman:

Romantic comedy nerds will know her by name as the Old Lady in The Princess Bride Who Shouts "Boo!" Though I have just added the entire FC Dallas roster to my mental hit list, I am grateful to the conniving player who elicited such an exclamation of hatred from my fellow Sounders supporter. I am also considering adding the rest of this woman's jeer--"Rubbish, filth, slime, muck!"--to my repertoire of sports insults. Maybe I'll toss it in after the requisite "You suck, asshole!" following a goal kick by the other team's goalie. (I don't make the rules, I just abide by them.)

2. I went to put on my exercise shirt the other morning, which I so sanitarily keep crumpled in a damp ball on my floor until I use it the next day, and out of the left sleeve crawled a gigantic spider. I let out a yelp and dropped the shirt, but managed to snap a quick photo before the satanic arachnid scurried away: 

 

3. I have now watched this movie four times in the past week and a half: 

I'm not going to explain what "this movie" is. If you are reading this and have even so much as passed me on the sidewalk, you should already know. You should also know that I plan on watching it again tonight.

4. I have just learned that Christopher Meloni, aka Elliot Stabler on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, has retired from the show. He is done as of last week's season finale. I texted my friend Lindsay, with whom I made SVU fan t-shirts in high school. Here is the gist of our conversation. It's edited; I couldn't help myself:

Me: Christopher Meloni is leaving SVU. I am beyond consolation.

Linds: Now I'm miserable, too. That is a waste of my 11-year dedication.

Me: Seriously. We made shirts!

Linds: I'm about to draft up an angry ass letter!

Me: Please do. And mail it to Dick Wolf.

Linds: I'm gonna send him his horse's head in a box. A big box.

Me: Make it a series of tiny boxes. Don't have the decency to keep the head intact.

As you can see, we're serious about our SVU. What makes us the angriest, though, is not that Christopher Meloni is leaving but that he's leaving before his character develops a romantic relationship with his partner, Olivia Benson. Move over, Shakespeare--Dick Wolf is the new master of tragedies.

5. I have a map of the world hanging on my wall with pushpins indicating the states and countries I have visited. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (my fish) live on the shelf directly below the map. Because I'm extremely paranoid that my cat is going to jump up onto the shelf and swat them out (which, if you've ever seen my cat, is a complete joke), I have a square of plastic mesh attached to the top of the bowl by a rubber band. Occasionally a pushpin will drop from the wall and get caught in mesh. It's a convenient system. Except when I remove the mesh to feed R & G and accidentally knock a pin--or two four--into the bowl. I'm pretty sure my fish hate me.

6. I just shared this with Lindsay (aka half of my readership), but I will share it again because it has quickly become my favorite dream, narrowly edging out the procession of Sesame Street characters marching through my house during a fire. Last night I dreamt that Mariskay Hargitay (pictured left) and I were paddling through a salt marsh in dog costumes. We docked, deciding we wanted to explore the nearby outdoor grocery store. As we were weaving through the aisles, Mariska spotted a group of co-workers from the office. To avoid being seen in our canine costumes, we snuck into the arctic penguin exhibit at the end of the aisle. (Because you often encounter zoo displays in outdoor grocery stores.) We snuck away from the store and headed down the hill to our rowboat, but not before some man in hunting garb commenced to pelt me in the neck with foam darts from his quiver. Evidently I found that an opportune moment to ask Mariska if she was in love with Elliot Stabler, to which she responded, "Of course. But he doesn't love me." My heart broke. I woke up.

Blue Cheese in the Bathroom (or, Cous Cous Graduates!)

My cousin Naomi is now the latest member of the Gibbs clan to earn a college degree. She graduated this past weekend from Whitman in Walla Walla, and my parents and I drove down for the ceremony and a mini family reunion with Naomi and her parents. Way too much happened for me to regurgitate everything, so here's an abbreviated version:

 1. Wine tasting at Dusted Valley Winery. We must have sampled eight wines and posed for close to 8,000 photos with Graduation Bama, who dug his old graduation gown and cap out of his closet for the festive occasion. (I realize I managed to pick the one picture from this outing that does not feature a wine glass.)

2. Thai dinner. Here we are singing one of the songs, probably "Sisters," from White Christmas. We also paid homage to the classic movie with renditions of "Snow" (complete with sound effects), "Gee, I Wish I Was Back in the Army," and "What Can You Do with a General?" That was also the evening of the Great Water Mishap--allow me to explain: our waitress supplied our table with a single carafe of ice water. There were six of us, so we finished the water fairly quickly. We asked for two more carafes, at which point we were told that they didn't have any more. Toward the end of the meal--I'm talking right as we were paying the check--the waitress appeared with the extra carafe that they supposedly did not have. (Our existing one was half full at that point, so we weren't exactly parched.) Not only did she leave the second carafe, but she came around with another pitcher and filled all our empty glasses...and then left the pitcher.

3. I don't have any photographic evidence of this next one, but it's the namesake of this post so it must be included. Before dinner at the Thai restaurant, we had hors d'oeuvres in our hotel room. The previous weekend I had gone to the Cheese Festival at Pike Place Market with my friends and had been given strict orders by my mother to purchase a "nice" blue cheese to take to Walla Walla. I am not what you might call a connoisseur of blue cheese (in fact, I hate it), so I had my friends try various samples and help me choose. Fast forward to the hotel room. My mom opened the plastic wrapper encasing the wedge of vile cheese, and immediately the room was ripe with its odor. I find the smell nauseating, so I insisted that the cheese be located not on the desk with the rest of the spread, but in the bathroom with the door mostly closed. When my mom was explaining the food (because apparently a plate of wasabi peas and a bowl of rice crackers require an explanation), she announced that there was "brie and mozzarella on the desk and blue cheese in the bathroom." My extended family, bless their hearts, didn't even bat an eye.

4. Naomi (Cousin Gibbs, Cous Cous) graduates! While we were waiting for the ceremony to begin, we were serenaded by the musical stylings of the Walla Walla Orchestra, who cycled through all the requisite songs for such an occasion: "Sweet Caroline," "Hallelujah," "Build Me Up Buttercup," and everyone's favorite quintessential graduation ditty, "Poker Face."(Seriously. I have video.) Aside from the remarkably bizarre commencement speaker who dedicated her speech to female gangs and the prevalence of women in prison, it was a lovely ceremony. 
 
5. Dinner at T. Maccarone's, where Naomi and I went for brunch when I visited her in February. Because it was a Gibbs/Margoshes outing, chaos was bound to ensue. First, my aunt asked for a glass of prosecco. They were out. Then she ordered carpaccio (I forget what kind). They were out. Then my uncle ordered a spring salad because it advertised having a soft boiled egg. When the salad came, there was no egg. He asked the waiter who said--you guessed it--that they were out. When we'd finished the meal, the waiter brought the dessert menu. "You can have anything you'd like," he said, "but I'm told we're out of..." and proceeded to list each one of the six desserts. "Just kidding!" he said, and left us to our decision. 

I'm trusting that my dear cousin will inform me if I've neglected anything of note. 

CONGRATULATIONS, NAOMI! I LOVE YOU!

Lilac Season

Sun is once again taking up 15 minutes of the evening news. Correspondents are approaching sunbathers at Gas Works Park and asking them how they feel now that it's finally above 63 degrees. People are wearing shorts and tank tops in weather that would be considered frigid anywhere else in the country. They're neglecting sunscreen. Their skin is on fire.

They're happy.

And me, I'm spending my days sitting under our lilac bush with my eyes closed, inhaling the fragrance of everything beautiful. It's finally lilac season. There is nothing lovelier, nothing more perfect, than this flower--delicate, aromatic clusters of purple sagging from their branches like springtime grapes. Life is unfurling. I am surrounded by golden evening sunlight and air so sweet I wish I never had to exhale. I am discovering the perfection you can't see. I am allowing myself to breathe. 

I am happy.

That Toddlin' Town

I've often thought that if something is good enough for Frank Sinatra, it's good enough for me. This time, that something is the toddlin' town of Chicago.

I want to move to Chicago. I have never been to Chicago, but I want to move to Chicago. My parents have tried to subtly suggest that perhaps I should reconsider. My mother doesn't think I would like Chicago (direct quote: "I don't think you would like Chicago.") My dad wants to know if I'm planning on visiting before I move, to which I respond that I didn't visit Melbourne before I moved there, and that was the greatest year of my life. (I have no qualms about broadcasting this on my blog because I happen to know for a fact that my parents won't read this until I'm dead.)

I love me a good coastal metropolis. That alone is a reason to move, but I've got more. Everything wonderful in this world is in Chicago: Ira Glass; Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!; an elevated train (which, in my opinion, is the most astonishing advancement in public transit ever); the tallest building in the western hemisphere. Oh, and a giant reflective bean in the middle of the city. It's like Chicago was built to my exact specifications.

I have spent the past month or so absorbed in daydreams of what my life would be like if I were to pack up and move across the country. I would go running in each of the city's 552 parks. I would attend at least one live taping of Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! every month. I would ride the El every chance I got. I would retrace the steps taken by Sandra Bullock and Bill Pullman in the romantic comedy While You Were Sleeping (which I may or may not have watched three times last week). Also, I would take up yoga. 

I went to the library the other day and checked out a guidebook to Chicago. I read it front to back. Twice. And then I checked out two more. I've researched jobs and apartments on the Chicago Craigslist. I even--and I consider this the most blatant pro-move indication--knew the answer to the Thursday crossword's clue: "The heart of Chicago, with 'the'."

Nevermind that I don't have a job. Nevermind that my life has collapsed into a by-the-minute routine in which I make sure to finish my breakfast before 8:00 on the dot and then sit down to read for an hour so I can be fully digested in time for my run, which lasts from exactly 9:10 to 9:40, unless of course I have chosen my short run that lasts until 9:25, or my medium short run that lasts until 9:31 and 30 seconds, or my short long run that lasts until 9:34. Nevermind that you couldn't even use binoculars to see the time in my life when I might potentially be in a position to move. 

I am going to move. 

I am going to move.

I am going to move.