The Everywhereist

Spoiler: this skybridge will get you NOWHERE.

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This WTF Weds takes us back to London. But I start out with a little anecdote about Portland. It’s cool if you get confused. That’s how I spend most of my life.

Last weekend I was in Portland, and despite being a city that I know and can navigate quite well, the following happened:

• I walked four blocks in the exact opposite direction that I needed to go, and didn’t realize it until I literally collided with a posted map of the city and saw that I was no where close to where I needed to be.
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• Despite Rand telling me to “Keep going straight”, I kept asking him if I should take every single turn that we passed. At one point he just stared at me and said, “You are joking, right?” I wasn’t.
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• We’d been to our hotel so many times that the valets recognized us. I still required directions to get there.
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• Even while in possession of a map on which directions had been traced out for me in black ink, I got lost.
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• I forgot where I parked the car and so our friend Matt had to drive us around for 20 minutes in the middle of the night trying to find it. Even though I knew the name of the street where I’d left it, I still couldn’t figure it out.
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Years ago, my friend Rachel was telling me a story about her then-boyfriend (and now husband) Adam. I can’t quite remember what it was about, but she paused halfway through and said, ”Do you ever have those moments where you look at someone and realize how much you love them? Well, I had one of those moments.”

I, of course, knew exactly what she meant.

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I know this picture is blurry, but it’s still kind of magical. My mom was angry because I was doing dishes in her house.

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Dear Mom,

Please don’t read this post, okay? No, no, it’s not because I talk about how crazy you are. Sheesh, mom … Yes, I know you aren’t crazy. Yes, I realize I make you out to be crazier than you actually are on the blog. The reason I don’t want you to read this post is because it’s about your Mother’s Day gift. We don’t want to ruin the surprise, right? Of course we don’t.

So go browse some other site, okay? Like Facebook! You love Facebook.

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Note: all of the links below are safe for work, but they deal with some pretty serious issues. I read through a lot of the articles and can tell you, it fucked with my head mightily. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t read them. If anything, you probably should. I just wanted to properly prepare you for what lies ahead: it is not funny. It is not lighthearted. It will not make you feel warm or fuzzy inside. But it’s a discussion we should nevertheless be having.

A road in one of the townships outside Cape Town, where rape is an epidemic.

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I loved South Africa. I really did. I had a lovely time there, and I sincerely want to go back to both Cape Town and Bushman’s Kloof. I’d like to see more of the country, and, if possible, more of the continent of Africa as a whole.

But I feel like I’d be doing everyone a disservice if I didn’t discuss the issue of rape in South Africa.

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Going through my photos from South Africa, I noticed that a large number of them featured our friend Kurtis. Sometimes this was intentional. Other times, it was not:

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Rand, just prior to our miracle berry dinner.

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The other day, I was lamenting to myself (and by extension, to my long-suffering husband) about the death of wonderment in my adult years. How there were now so many known variables in our lives, so many answered questions. There were very few decisions to make. Very little was new.

“I just remember high school, and thinking I had all these opportunities in front of me, and all these choices to make. And now those choices have been made. And I’m not upset how life turned out, you know? I’m happy with the decisions I’ve made. I’m just sad that I don’t have all of that in front of me anymore.”

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Warning: before writing this post, I spent waaaaay too long listening to NPR, after which I devoured some poetry, and then chased the whole thing with a few swings of prose. The result is … whatever the heck is going on below. It has nothing to do with travel. Sorry.

Rand and I have a shower in our bedroom.

I mean, in our bedroom. Not in a bathroom in the bedroom. No. It is IN the room. At the end of the bed.

Pictured: the end of our bed, and our shower.

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It’s about as ridiculous as it sounds. In the two years that we’ve lived here, we can’t really make sense of it. The doors are glass, so you have absolutely zero privacy if someone is in the room. When one of us has to wake up early for whatever reason, we’ll shower with the lights off, so that we don’t wake the other person.

Have you ever showered in the dark? It’s really weird, and yet strangely familiar. I’m pretty sure it has to do with some pre-memory of being in the womb.

And then I start to feel guilty for not having called my mother in a while.

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Cape Weaver nests.

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Rand often tells me that it takes a lot to please me. I argue that this isn’t exactly true. I require very few things to be happy.

I’ve explained time and again that I require little else in life than a cupcake or four, his undivided attention, and a really comfortable couch.

The problem is that I need those things constantly. All the damn time. I want them all right now, even though none of that would be feasible, since I’m standing at my computer and Rand is still at work and our couch wouldn’t even FIT in my office and if it did, oh god HOW would I get any work done?

See why I eat so many cupcakes? It’s because it’s the only one of my constant demands that can be met easily. You’ll note, too, that “looking good in skinny jeans” was not of my list of things required to be happy. I’m not entirely unreasonable.

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