calm before the story

I get up at the butt-crack of dawn to get things ready. I have to rush to Vet #1 to get Piper’s shots updated and her glands cleaned and her worming check done. Then, I have to rush to Petco to try to get her food to send with her for boarding. They don’t have it. I buy a lot of guilt-toys and guilt-treats. Then, I go to Albertson’s and get her food. Then I rush to Vet #2, where she is being boarded. (By this time, I’ve been everywhere from Aurora and 130th all the way down to SODO.) I can’t seem to bring myself to give her to the vet techs, and have this brief wiggins about the fact that I’m giving my dog to someone else.

I have an unpleasant encounter with a homeless man at the SODO Burger King.

I ditch out on an audition I was supposed to attend, because I just don’t have enough done yet.

I go home, and I pack. I am up aaaaaaall night, packing frantically and making mixes. My high school friends and I always give each other mixes as presents, and these are very carefully crafted works of art. There is a distinct science to the making of a mix the way we do it, and … well, there’s a whole bit about it in the movie “High Fidelity”. Watch that.

The CDs for this mix are spread out all over the living room floor. I’d originally intended to help PWe clean before I left, but I also left the all-important mixmaking to the last minute. Procrastination strikes again! About halfway through, I realize that I’ve forgotten to go to Laughing Buddha to get my conch piercing replaced. I call them, and they tell me that they’d be open for half an hour - and that they’d wait for me, if I liked. I say “You rule!” and split, leaving my Compact Carnage all over the place.

While in Capitol Hill, I buy myself a new ring (to replace the one that my ex-housemates flushed down the toilet) from that nice silver-selling lady at her little kiosk in Broadway Market. I buy myself a necklace I’d been drooling over for months (75% off! Woo!) at Urban Outfitters. I get Julia this gorgeous tin antique-y advertisement thing that has Marilyn Monroe on it from the cute gothboy working at Zen. (You know, that place that used to be the Electric Company or whatever. In Broadway Market. Y’know?) At this point, I am about to leave, having been thrice distracted from the coming home and packing that I know is imminent. However, at the last minute I duck into that little international shop, and find this cd of African Lullabies.

Let me back up a minute - my friend Megan just got this amazing fellowship to travel the world for a year and study lullabies, and for the past few months she’d been living in these tiny little villages in Africa. I go up to check out, and the woman who works there plays almost the whole CD for me. She knows most of the vocalists, and used to sing several of the lullabies to her own children. We have the most incredible conversation, and I leave the place wondering if I can bear to give the CD up. (I still have it. I’m weak.)

I get home and proceed to clean and pack ALL NIGHT LONG. I haven’t pulled an all-nighter in a long time, and I’d forgotten how not fun they are.