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.

Sometimes you just have to cut yourself off.

As previously discussed, little Suzy Fat Ass came to San Francisco.  Little Suzy Fat Ass is my inner fat girl, and sometimes she is very, very hungry.  Like, for approximately the last ten weeks.

AKB, my favorite roommate, is getting a little fluffy, too.  And so, in an effort to contain the fluff, we decided to cut ourselves off.

For the last week, it’s been no sugar, no carbs and…gulp…the hardest part…no coffee.

So, no fun at all basically.

But that’s the point of a cleanse – to get rid of all the bad stuff.  All the toxins and the crap.

And come Friday at 3:30, I’m cleansing out another kind of toxic crap: I am leaving work early and heading to the airport for a trip home to Colorado!  I’m going to hug my family, sit on my deck, chat with my neighbors, cry at a wedding, play in the mountains, drive my car (sorry environment, but I CAN’T WAIT to rev up my SUV), and not check my blackberry at. all.

If you happen to be flying out of SFO on Friday afternoon, look for me: I’ll be the one with the huge cup of coffee and a smile on my face.

And if you’re at home in the square state, let’s chat, shall we?  I’m sure I can’t wait to see you.

So, as it turns out, I am not so great at writing a weekly column when the editor is myself.

I thought I would do well with this self-imposed deadline, but no.  I do well with self-imposed things sometimes.  Self-imposed wine drinking?  Check!  Self-imposed sleeping in on Saturday mornings for my health?  If you insist!  Self-imposed shopping at Banana Republic for sweaters to protect myself against the frigid San Fran summer?  Ah, well, if I must.

I also excel at external deadlines.  For example, that one time I had a weekly column for an entire year. I did well with that.  Or when someone says “come to my man fortress for I have fun things planned for us, and also, remember to NOT get off at the sketchy BART station!”  I always do come over, and always do not get off at the sketchy BART station.

But this self-imposition?

Not so much.

Ergo, I would just like you all to know that I am alive.  And I am working on a little project for all of you.

And for now, that’s enough.

It wasn’t that heavy, I rationed.

I held it in my hands, weighed it carefully, shifted it from one hand to the other, hoisted it up on my shoulders for a minute, and then held it in front of me like a pregnant lady cradling her stomach.

Only in my case, I wasn’t carrying a fetus, I was carrying shoes.  Yes, it was a box of shoes, and a few other things.  From my mother.  Sent to me at work, per my own request, so that I would be there to receive it from FedEx.  As previously mentioned, I spend more time at THE AGENCY than anywhere else, so I figured it would be easiest to have the box sent to my office.

Because I spend more time at work than anywhere else, I missed the bus.

Because I am too Lutheran to take a cab when I could just as easily walk, I decided to walk to a different bus station.

And because I am a bad judge of both distance and time, I carried the box of shoes from my mother across downtown San Francisco, approximately 2.4 miles, for about 32 minutes.

My box and I made it home from a 14 hour day, at about 7:30 p.m., and I promptly fell into a heap and cried.

My job is not going well.

I wish that weren’t the case.

I wish my blog were unicorns and cupcakes all the time, but that’s just not the truth.  My job is intense, overwhelming, and very stressful, and I have some coworkers who manage to intensify all of the above to the point where I would rather do anything than go to work because all day long I teeter on the verge of a massive meltdown and consider housewifery as a viable secondary option to my current job, despite the fact that I am neither home owner nor wife.

That’s just life in the big city, I guess.

That’s what my mom used to say to The G and I when we were little.  Don’t have cable?  Tough – that’s life in the big city.  Your brother won’t play Barbies with you?  That’s just life in the big city.

Don’t like your job?  That’s just life in the big city.

And indeed, it is.  It weighs heavily upon me, my terrible job, and I feel like I may crack under the pressure at any moment.

And so, I am considering my options.  Rationing, if you will.

Because right now, it’s up to me.  I am holding my own life in my hands. Weighing it carefully, shifting from one side to the other, and hoisting myself up, not on the shoulders of anyone else, but on my own two feet.

And right now, there is nothing else to do but carry the weight, however many miles it takes, all the way across this city.

Okay, so let’s be honest: I wasn’t that into it from the start of things.

Sure, he was wearing a hat.  Hats = cute.

And sure, he owned his own company.  Owning stuff = hot.

But there is no way possible that after three hours of conversation this man wanted to get to date five with me.  After all, three hours do not equal even three dates, let alone five, just like how three plus date does not equal five plus date, or three plus five dates does not equal marriage or even a weekend in Napa, or something.

I’m not very good at math.

Or dating, apparently, because here is what went down Internet:

He insisted on date one, I said okay.

He insisted on dinner, I said okay.

We made the witty banter, it was okay.

Then we watched Shark Week at his house, and it was freaking awesome because as everyone knows, sharks are awesome.

He kissed me goodnight and said he couldn’t wait to see me again, which was okay.  I mean, a little presumptuous, but okay.

He put me in a cab and directed the driver back to my house, which was okay.

And then we never spoke again.

Which was not okay, because here’s why: three little letters.

T.P.O.

If you are a CSU RAM or Kappa Delta, you’ll remember TPO.

If you know me even a little bit, you’ll know that I am always the TPO’er, and never the TPO’ee.

And Mr. Hat Company Owner broke all the rules and TPO’ed me.

And now I’m just PO’ed.

Because I wanted to do it first.

Have you ever been TPO’ed?

How did you feel?