1. I love my new job.  Like, LOVE love it.  I’m all hopped up on creativity and drama, and I know I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be now.  THE AGENCY can suck it.

2. I love attending board meetings with people who are theater nerds at heart.  They can sing and dance and project real loud, but they cannot run a board meeting to save their lives.  Luckily for them, I can.  It’s such a clusterfuck, and it cracks me up.

3. My new house is pretty dang swell.  I have a big blue room, some crown molding and hardwood flooring, and a transom of my very own.  Rocks.

4. My roommate B took me on a Mission Vacation this week!  Crazy club, great jazz, and a driving tour of B’s life were on the agenda.  It’s just a Wednesday night in the city, and I love it all.

5. I cut off all my hair, and now I have a jaunty ponytail!  There is something about a jaunty pony that takes off about twenty years.  Why did it take me so long to remember that?

6. A man’s social security card ended up in my shoe on the bus this week.  I have no idea how it got there, but when he said “Excuse me miss, but I think my social security card is in your shoe,” he was right.  I think he is David Copperfield the Magician in disguise.  And now poor Anthony Fujita/David in disguise’s important paperwork now has my toe prints on it.

7. I’m going on a trail run tomorrow, and then I’m going to yoga.  I go to yoga almost every day now, on account of how I work 9:00 – 5:00, just like Dolly said.  Have I mentioned my new job is swell?

8. I’m meeting Olympia Dukakis next month.  That is definitely going to trump my current brush with celebrity to date: a cameo on Blinky’s Fun Club, circa 1989, for my fifth birthday.

It’s a chilly Bay Saturday, and I’m cleaning.

Cleaning, as you know, is the precursor to packing.

Packing, of course, being the precursor to moving.

And moving is generally a first step in the direction of changing your own life, in both small and large ways.

In an effort to become in the smaller way, AKB and I hit the gym this morning, and took a nice long walk afterward.  After a shower, I slid into my favorite pair of jeans.  The pair that has holes in awkward places and small frays at the ends.  The pair that always makes me feel skinny, no matter what, and the pair of jeans I cannot wait to throw on as soon as the weekend hits.

Only there is a problem.  Because I actually attempted to slide on my favorite pair of jeans, and it didn’t work.  Because after 26 weeks, or about six months of living in San Francisco, walking everywhere – including the massive hills – my thighs are too big.

Yes.

Too big.

For my favorite pants.

If that’s not an uncomfortable thing to admit to the Internet, I don’t know what is.

I could whine about it a little bit, but why?  As LP always says, you can whine to make yourself feel better for awhile, but nobody really wants to hear it, so get over yourself.

So instead of mourning the loss of said pants, I have gotten over it.  New pants, new attitude.

I’ve found that motto has served me well for the past few tumultuous weeks.  Roommates moving out?  New house!

Job still horrendous and panic-inducing?  New job!

New pants, new house, new job, new attitude.  The new decade is starting out with a bang.  Or a bitch slap to the face.  It all depends on how you look at it.

Part of me feels like I’m being shoved out of my life in all directions.  After all, I was basically forcibly pushed out of my apartment as it currently exists. I have an incredible job offer dangling in front of me, and a job that is awful enough that taking a massive pay cut in order to do said job seems like the best idea I’ve ever had.  The cosmic forces are at work in the world, and I feel like I’m stuck in the middle.

But not really.

Because it’s all about attitude.  If you choose bang over bitch slap, and choose to look at everything new as being a good thing, you have nothing to lose.

Or rather, I have nothing to lose.

So that’s how I’m looking at it.  2010 is starting with a bang, and I am breaking free.

From more than just my old jeans.

The city is so many things.

Sometimes this city is really lovely.  October comes to mind: sunny days, stargazing on the roof, Scrabble in the park, root beer coolers by the pool.  And a particular breeze that comes from the Bay, sweeps up the hills, and catches the back of your neck and the flip in your ponytail as you turn around on Fillmore Street in Pacific Heights, after having spent five minutes looking at the view, pinching yourself because you live by water now and oh.  It’s lovely.

Sometimes this city is really hard. There have been some hard days recently – the kind of days that cause little tiny cracks in your soul, and cause you to question what the heck you’re even doing here, not just in the city but in this life in general. I’m getting better at dealing with them, because that’s just life, but I have begun to equate difficulty with the city, because life just didn’t seem all that difficult before now.

Sometimes this city has a weird smell about it.  A funk, if you will, that will churn your stomach and cause you to recoil.  I experienced just such a funk yesterday, and I almost threw up in my mouth a little bit.  Yes, it’s true.  I almost did.

But always, always, this city is weird.  At least, I think so.

My lovely roommates don’t agree.  They think that I somehow attract the weird, as though there is some magnet for awkward encounters embedded deep inside me, somewhere near my pancreas perhaps, or a frequency that broadcasts out from the top of my head and only the crazies are picking up the signal, like dogs and high pitched noises, because nothing weird ever happens to them.

I think it’s just because they don’t pay attention.

Last night on MUNI, we were stopped outside the Patagonia store near Ghiradelli Square.  A man got on the bus, sloooowly, inching his way up the two bus stairs, holding on to the railing so tightly the knuckles on his left hand were white.  His right arm was crooked under, and a blue windbreaker was draped over it.  There were raw scratches on his face, and his nose dripped like an old farmhouse faucet, one drop at a time down onto his worn sweatpants.

“Well are you comin’ are aren’t ya?” The bus driver asked.

“I’m coming,” the man labored out.  ”It’s only just that, I’m very sick.”

“Well take your time then,” the driver said, “just take your time.”

The man finally reached a seat, and puddled down into it, pleased to finally be sitting.  I stared at him as the bus pulled away from the stop, and I noticed his eyes were bright and red.

As we began to pick up speed, suddenly, the man’s demeanor changed.  He straightened up, wiped his nose, shook his head, and pulled his arm free.  He was carrying a jacket.  A really nice jacket.  A jacket that is $499.95 worth of really nice, actually, tags on, from Patagonia, but no bag and no receipt.

It was clear this jacket was stolen, and it was very clear who had stolen it.

What was unclear was what, if anything, I was supposed to do about it.  Or about the horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach when I realized what he had done.

The man flashed the jacket around for the whole bus to see, except there was no one on the bus but me.  ”My new jacket!” he kept saying to himself, or maybe to myself. “Look at my new jacket!”

The thief and me.

He opened his mouth and was whistling loudly, impressed with his own ingenuity, when a large woman boarded the bus with a rolling suitcase.  She instantly eyed the man and he eyed her, and they sized each other up quickly according to some bus hierarchy I don’t know.

For some unknown reason, the man looked at the woman, and inexplicably he stuck his tongue out at her.

“Sir,” she said, revving up for something, “you need to put your tongue back into your mouth, because that is not cute.  No, it is not.”

“Fuck you, bitch,” the man said, almost pleasantly, as though he had just asked for the time or for directions to Fisherman’s Wharf.

“You are not cute at all,” the woman said again, as though she were talking to a small child who was misbehaving.  ”Ummmm-mmmm no.”

“Really, fuck you,” the man said again nicely.

And on and on it went, for four more blocks.  She’d insult his cuteness, he’d tell her to fuck off as pleasant as can be, and she’d rear back and insult him again.

The thief, the bully, and me.

It was finally my stop and I got off the bus just as the language was starting to get creative.  As I stepped onto the curb, I could hear them screaming at each other, the thief and the bully, gesticulating wildly, warping slightly through the wavy plastic windows of the bus.

And I walked up the hill toward home, just me.

I have spider juice in my hair.  Or guts.  Or mangly arachnid half-legs.  Whatever.  Whatever it is, it’s in my hair.  Right now.

And that’s not even the weirdest thing that happened to me today.

—

8:00 a.m. I spot a woman wearing a yellow terrycloth towel as a shawl.  It was draped artfully about her shoulders, over her pinstriped pantsuit, and secured with a jeweled brooch.  I know I did not mistake it for a towel when it actually was a shawl, because I’m pretty sure “Egyptian Cotton Handtowel” is not a brand of shawl.

Where was I, you ask?  Where else: China Town.

Dear China Town,

This is America. Get a shirt.

Annoyed,

Hilary

—

6:45 p.m. I shove myself onto the bus like the last clown in one of those tiny circus cars.  I stand in the stepwell, and get off and back on the bus no fewer than four times, so all my fellow financial district clowns can disembark without knocking me over.  By the time we have made it all the way to my stop, I am the only person left on the bus.  As I collect myself and begin to walk out the door, the bus driver yells after me, “Merry Christmas!”

Dear Bus Driver,

And a very happy Fourth of July to you, sir!

Festively,

Hilary

—

8:00 p.m. I take a house tour of a lovely old residence in the Presidio, San Francisco’s former military base and my dream location for housing.  I quickly realize that the Presidio is everyone else’s dream location for housing, and that we are going to fight this out like those fake boobed bimbos on The Bachelor, only with fewer sequins involved.  Fighting over a man is one thing, but fighting over a room is something else entirely, and these people were out for blood.

“I like to cook!”  one girl says.  ”Yeah, I like to cook AND bake!” says another.  ”Yeah, I like to cook AND bake AND clean!” said a third girl, entirely too desperately.

That third girl may or may not have been me.

Dear Self,

Low point.  Really, low.

Ashamedly,

Hilary

—

9:30 p.m. I leave the house tour.  I am strolling through the forest, keeping a sharp eye out for raccoons, but also for any for rent signs.  I sit down on the bench at the bus stop, and then I hear an engine roar up behind me.

“Hey, do you need a ride?” says a man in a shiny sports car.  The man is wearing a suit, and his car is really nice.

I very briefly entertain a Pretty Woman fantasy in which he looks like Richard Gere and I look like Julia Roberts, but am not actually a prostitute and instead am a nerdy, yet charming librarian who has lost her way in the woods, Red Riding Hood style. And then I call out, “No thanks, I’m good.”

“Are you sure?”  he asks again.

I decide that he thinks he does look like Richard Gere, and maybe he thinks I am a prostitute who is dressed as a nerdy, yet charming librarian.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” I say again, and turn away.

Dear Fake Richard Gere,

No I do not want a ride in your car, as I am sitting at the bus stop.

Duh.

Obviously,

Fake Julia Roberts

—

9:45 p.m. I am on the bus, talking to The G, telling him how house hunting is like The Bachelor only worse, because in this case you end up homeless instead of unmarried, which, in my opinion, is way worse, when a frizzy haired older man punches me in the left arm.

“Yes?” I say, slightly freaked out.

“Um,” he stutters along.  ”Well, you seem to have a spider in your hair.”

“A WHAT?” I respond, quite loudly.  It wasn’t the crazy man’s fault I had a spider in my hair, but yelling is my default reaction when surprised.  He’s lucky he can still hear out of that side of his head.

“Yeah,” he says, more comfortable now that he has cleared his conscience and delivered his horrifying spider news. “Here, turn your head and let me swat it.”

“G, I’m going to have to call you back,” I say, hanging up on my brother immediately, as I submit myself to letting a complete stranger touch my hair and swat about my head with a MUNI brochure that was lying on the seat next to him.

He finally crushes most of it, though he assures me “there’s still some in there.”

He hands me the brochure, now wadded up and full of spider, and says, “Here’s your souvenir!”

I think I would have preferred a t-shirt.

Dear Presidio Spider,

Get the fuck out of my hair.

Disgustedly,

Hilary

—

There is a great cosmic shift occurring in my life. I have been here for six months, and all of a sudden I am finding myself in the midst of a potential new job, a search for a new house, a newfound familiarity with what I have already come to think of as “my” neighborhood in “my” city, juxtaposed with a recent trip home and a deep longing for the life I might have been living there.

What to do?

Like anything in the Capital R Real World, I have to make some decisions.  I need to make choices, sacrifices, informed decisions, and I need to do it soon.

Dear Real World,

Uh, help?

Respectfully,

Hilary

Part V: Candy

The pasta bolognese was spicy and steamy.  D had sauteed up a storm of sausage and parsley, while I primed the pasta, poured the vino, and protected the sauce from any stray particles of the mysterious substances that were wafting through the air from the dining room.

B and the ravers chowed down, their bites of bolognese interspersed with quick lines.  When you are gearing up to rave, it’s important to maintain a steady intake of carbs and coke to maintain both your buzz and your endurance.  Much like running, or an epic game of table tennis.

I surveyed the scene in front of me, and reflected on the day: five strangers, a new friend, and an old friend, and me were nestled in a jewel of a dining room, surrounded by soft candlelight and bottles of wine. Lines of crack had sifted gently down to one side of the table, like very tidy snow, and the ravers took turns tending to them lovingly, with the occasional nasal harvest.  Little drug farmers dressed as disco balls at a dinner party at three in the morning.

Laughter rained down as we discussed the concert, the festival, the food, and what exactly would protect us in case of zombie attack.  Rifles?  Shotguns? A barricade?  No one really knew, and no one really cared.  It was more about coming together to discuss the important things in life.

When dinner was over we meandered to the front living room. I felt it was time for D and I to officially leave the mansch, that much was apparent, but how?

“Are you like totally sure you can’t come with us?” said Kevin sadly. “I just think, like, it would be so great.”

“Next time,” I promised him as we gazed at each other from across the fringed ottoman.  ”Next time.”

“Well you better not forget us, and we need to make sure you don’t,” Kevin said, a little moist eyed.  I read somewhere that crack makes your eyes water, but I prefer to think that he was emotional about my departure.  Teary eyed, glassy eyed, there really is no difference, right?

“Give me your hand,” Kevin said, wiping away the tears. “Hold your fingers up to mine.”

I held two fingers up to his, like ET phoning home, plus one finger, and minus the creepy little alien guy.

“See?!?!”  Kevin said, excitedly through the tears.  ”We’re making a peace sign!!  For PEACE.”

“Uh huh,” I said, not entirely sure where this was headed.  I’m all for peace, but usually peace doesn’t come at me in the form of a walking fireworks display.  Between the crack and the carbs and the crying, I was a little afraid Kevin could combust at any moment.

“Now make a heart,” Kevin said, bending his fingers toward mine in a strange circle.  ”That’s for LOVE.”

“And now hold my hand,” he said, as we wove our fingers together. “This means TOGETHERNESS.”

“Great,” I said, trying to sound upbeat.  The most peaceful thing I could think of at that point was exiting the mansch in a timely fashion, and holding hands with Kevin wasn’t going to help my mission.  And forget about togetherness – I hadn’t been together since early that morning, when AKB spotted me in my altogethers making breakfast.  It was not my best day, and I think the word “together” was well behind several other words, such as “bizarre” and “poor judgment” and “hot hot mess.”

Over my shoulder I could see another raver had cornered D and was performing the same strange sign language ritual on him.  He was giving me the look, but there was nothing I could do to help: we were stuck.

I started to pull away and Kevin held on tighter. ”No, not yet – there’s one more thing!” Kevin said frantically as I almost unclasped our hands.  ”CANDY!”  he yelled.

And with that, he looped a bracelet from his own wrist over our woven hands, and slid some candy onto my wrist.  It was beaded blue and florescent yellow, and stretchy, like a drug store candy necklace from my childhood.  And then he twisted it to the front so I could read the beaded words: it spelled out L-O-V-E-L-Y in black lettered beads.

“That’s for you, because you are,” Kevin said. “You are lovely.”

And then he blew me a kiss and danced off into the depths of the mansch, twinkling madly, burning bright, never to be seen again.

Once out on the street, D and I walked home in the quiet chill of the early San Francisco morning.  We passed Ghiradelli Square and the crooked part of Lombard Street.  We heard only the slapping of the water against the wharves and the slapping of our feet against the pavement as we trekked the rolling hills.

“Can you even believe this life sometimes?”  D said quietly.  ”I’m pretty sure that was the weirdest day I’ve ever had.”

“Yeah,” I said, considering.  ”But I don’t know.  Despite the hippies and the contact high…and the lost Benz…and the dinner party…”

“And the drugs,” D cut in matter-of-factly.  ”Don’t forget about all the drugs.”

“Yeah, and the drugs and the candy…it was weird, but, I don’t know…I guess it was kind of a good day, too.”

And it’s true. Despite all the weird – and there is so much weird – sometimes this life, in this city, with all these crazy people, is just lovely.

Part II: Something plaid, something brewed, something illegal, something blue

We could tell we were in the right place the moment we got off the bus.  All we had to do was follow the horde – and the haze hovering about it – into the trees.

Our merry band and our accoutrements (“accoutrements” is the fancy way of saying “crap” in case you never took French, as I also did not) had not gone but ten steps before we saw our first nearly naked hippie.  It was a warm day, Saturday, and had I known pants were optional, I might have opted to leave mine off.  As it was, one nearly naked was followed by two, four and several more, darting in and out from amongst the foliage.  Scampering, if you will, in that special way hippies can only scamper down by the Bay, like small bunnies in tie-dye, or little deer with dreadlocks.  It was fetching, really.

Just as my eyes adjusted to the darkened light, searching out shafts of sunlight filtering through the trees, we came to the end of the trail and were thrust forth into a huge open meadow.  And that’s when it hit us: weed.

Yes, I said it – weed.  Pot.  Mary Jane.  Cannibis smokitess.  Call it what you want – it hit us like a bus.  A 1969 Volkswagon bus, to be more precise.  The kind with little curtains on the inside and shag carpeting.

We were incredulous as we walked into the field.

“This must’ve been what Woodstock was like,” D whispered to me, eyes wide.

“Yes,” I whispered back, “But I think at Woodstock, 4:20 might have been a time of day, not a constantly ongoing activity.”

We scanned the fields, looking for a place to sit down among the 750,000 other bluegrass goers.  Our cooler trailed behind us, our six pack of Fat Tire clinking innocently.  Like 14-year-olds at a high school party, our beer and trail mix had nothing on all the grass in this grass, and our little snacks and drinks seemed almost juvenile in their legality.

As we wove in and out of the encampments, we realized that, in addition to forgetting our gas masks (grass masks?), we had also forgotten a blanket.  As the most liberal member of the tribe, and therefore the one most familiar with Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, I was nominated to “scrounge something up” for us to sit on while AKB and D “guarded the location.”

“Guarding the location” is the fancy way of saying “we’re going to sit here and drink beer while you go pick through the trash” in case you never went to any concerts in high school, as I also did not.

And that is how I ended up alone in the forest at Hardly Strictly.

I bravely wandered out into the crowds to search for something to sit upon, fanning smoke away from my face and eyes as I walked.  The haze was hellacious, and it stung my eyes behind my shades.

“Hey hey pretty lady,” slurred a nearly naked, swaying gently near me as I stopped near a compost pile to get my bearings. “You wanna little of my lettuce?”

“Um, no thanks,” I said.  My oatmeal was wearing off, but this man was no Souper Salad. Besides, I didn’t have the time to toke it up – I was on a mission.

“Tha’s cooool,” he said, as he blew a cloud right into my face, even though I had just turned him down. “That’s juuuust fiiine.”

As I continued to hunt, I thought about stealing someone else’s blanket, briefly, but theft isn’t really my scene.  Just being at Hardly Strictly seemed felonious enough, and we had only been there for ten minutes. The last thing I needed was to be caught stealing a dirty blanket in Kate Spade sunglasses and a plaid shirt, at a pot festival masquerading as a music festival, which I, Hilary (see: Kate Spade sunglasses) was attending, while masquerading as a hippie who likes bluegrass (see: plaid shirt).  I, mean, I had already been caught doing a culinary dance of indecency that morning – the illicit activity had to stop somewhere.

About 20 minutes later, I finally found a clean, industrial-sized trash bag waving in the wind, and I toted back to camp like a good little hunter gatherer.  Using our keen intellect, and a set of house keys, we split it open so it was wide enough for all three of us poseurs and then we promptly lay down in its plastic embrace and stared up at the sky.

“The sun is so bright,” said AKB, brilliantly. “And the way it shines through the leaves is just, so niiiiiiiice.”

“Lucy in the skyyyyyy with diiiiamonnnnds,” hummed D softly to himself.

“I’m hungry,” I said, between mouthfuls of trail mix.  ”Do you think the food vendors sell Cheetos?  I could really go for those.  Or a burrito.  Yeah, definitely a burrito.”

Now I would like to go on the record as saying that I have never smoked pot, never once in my life. My mother reads this blog, along with half of Facebook apparently, and I would like to defend my own honor by saying that up until Saturday afternoon, Little Goody Too Many Pairs Of Shoes here has never ingested the wacky tobacky in any way, shape, or form.  Too many margaritas?  Check.  A cigar or three on the roof of my sorority house?  Check.  But never have I gone down the road to reefer.  And I think we can all believe that, especially when we stop a moment to recognize that I just used the phrase wacky tobacky. And I’m also not Ronald Reagan.

But as of Saturday afternoon, it seemed that, despite 24 years of careful planning and prevention, I had at long last, inadvertently made contact with the cabbage.  Consider the evidence: I was stuck in the woods with hundreds of thousands of high hippies.  I was craving Cheetos.  The lyrics to “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” were actually starting to make sense.  And then I sat up to see Steve Martin, playing the banjo.

Plus, I was wearing plaid.

Some things in life are hardly strictly even comprehensible.

Tomorrow = You + Me +Part III.  It’ll be niiiiice, I promise.  Reeeeeeal niiiiice.