I love all of you so very, very much. In fact, I’ve written you a poem about my feelings. I wrote this whilst in the bathtub, surrounded by candles, and listening to Sarah MacLachahahalanannlach. Here it is:

BJ and the Bear was a really great show
But not as good as Simon and Simon,
Do you want to know which show I always hated?
Eight is Enough
And yet…
Eight is enough to fill our house with love
most accurately describes my feelings
about all of you.
Except the number is wrong maybe
because there are more than eight of you (I hope)
and I hated that stupid Nicholas
because he burned their house down.
Please don’t burn my blog down
with your love for me.
Butterflies.

Number two:

We got kittens!

On Saturday, we adopted two kittens – one for each of us. Dane and I have wildly different ideas on what makes a cat cute so therefore two kittens are what we now have. Dane likes the little short haired, skinny girl kittens, and I like the VASTLY SUPERIOR furry fat big headed boy kittens.

Here is Zelda

Cute, but inferior kitten

And here is (the good one) Whiskey

The clear winner

They’re both four months old but Zelda is half the size of Whiskey. He’s going to be gigantic. I am so excited for this I may start force feeding him like they do to geese. (Ha!I’m kidding SPCA!) Whiskey actually had some kind of disease as a kitten which he’s still being treated for with antibiotics and he has some weakness in his back legs which in no way stops him from chasing Zelda from one end of the apartment to the other at three o’clock in the morning. And then pooping really smelly, kitten poop somewhere near the ridiculously expensive new cat box we got them.

So, to sum up….I had the best birthday ever because of my perfect husband and the exceptional fantastic magnamaliciousness of you guys and also, we now have two kittens who may or may not be the worst idea we’ve ever had. I’ll keep you updated.

In other news, I am now old and I had a dream last night that when I smiled it created a black, diagonal crease on my face starting at my hairline and running all the way to my chin. So, if anyone needs me, I will be spending the rest of the day in the bathroom staring at the mirror and crying.

UPDATE! More kittah pictures. What? Shut up.

I’m really glad I went because I won’t get many opportunities to see Melissa, Barb, Alison, Zoe, Intern Meagan™, or Intern Nathalie™ before we leave for SF. Dane went with me, because he is supportive and because he really likes those girls. And they like him. And now I feel sad, thinking about all of the friends we’ve made in the last year who we will probably NEVER SEE AGAIN.

Excuse me.

BOOHOOOHOO *Blows nose* BOOOHOOHOOO *shakes fist at “God” or whatever* BOOHOOHOOOOOO

Moving on….

The brightest, sparkliest, moment in my Backfence evening was getting to meet Beth Lisick who wrote Everybody into the Pool and Helping Me Help Myself. She was just terrific. And incredibly gracious to me – a shy, goofy, awkward, shiny haired stranger asking for her help in a new city (she lives in SF). Plus, I thought her jacket was super rad. I wanted to touch it. Well, fondle it. I wanted to caress it. KEEP IT TOGETHER KIALA.

Did I mention that I was sober at this thing? Well, I was. And it turned out just fine. Not, you know, awesome, but fine. And no hangzieties. The Effexor still makes me feel sedated so I’m not sure this really, truly qualifies as being sober, parfait.

Finally, last night, the stupid Effexor kept me from going to a fun thing at our friend Erik’s. (I am keeping a list of these offenses, Effexor, and when it gets to ten I am KICKING YOU TO THE CURB) Instead I stayed on the couch, not drinking wine, and watched Stylista on the CW. It was not as much fun as going over to Erik’s. Meh.

I reserved the moving truck yesterday. I can’t believe this is really happening.

Seriously, though, thank you. It means a lot. And we finally got the hang of giving Arthur his shots, we think. The vet assured us that if we do accidentally hit a vein we won’t kill him. Bathed in relief.

To lighten things up a bit I thought I’d post this old photo of a photo of me and my best friend, Sy Parrish. This was taken when we were both about 21-ish, I think? Sy looks gorgeous and I look well, at least I look young. And skinny.

Clearly, we were both of us going through a pretty heavy Henry and June period – a movie I believe we watched approximately eleventy billion times together. Well…that and The Newsies. And Swing Kids. And Reservoir Dogs. And Until the End of the World. And Romper Stomper.

Moving on!

in other news I will be liveblogging the Prezzy debate tonight with the Merc peoples! I’m pretty excited about it. And also confused as to why they would need my expertise on ankle boots and shiny hair for a political whatchamacalit but whatevs – I’m down as the kids say.

I hope they know I’m a Republican.

Anywho, I was at a screening today and I ate one of those huge pretzels with salt the way I like to do because I am on a diet and that was stupid because it had the nutritional value of a salt lick wrapped in styrofoam peanuts. Delicious. So that was lunch and I am all puffy and lethargic now. Decisions. I am no good at them.

Tonight we are going to dinner, probably at Le Happy because we fear change and also because it’s right next door to Slabtown where my new friend Ned’s band Beluga Whale is playing and also my old friend, Matt Daby’s band The Bugs of Lightning is playing. I plan on playing some air hockey and maybe a little table tennis although it’s right in the middle of the room and I don’t like doing things unless at least one part of my body – preferably the all of it part – is visible to no one. It makes me feel safe. Actually, I’m feeling a little anti-social and shaky today so I might just sit in a corner and let people come worship at my feet say hello. I blame the pretzel.

And because I know you are DYING to see the earrings my mom unwittingly bought me and because I can’t stop vimeo-ing stupid expressions on my face and mostly because I pronounce “earrings” as “earringshtth”, here you go. (Please ignore the dirty dishes on the counter. They are never always like that.)

I can drink alcohol just as easily at people’s homes as I do in bars. Maybe more easily. Maybe easily peasily japaneasily.

Huh? Ok, I’m a little broken today, sorry.

What this all comes down to is that I am a terrible poker player, but I’m still an excellent drinker and that’s something, isn’t it?

First we went to The Screen Door for dinner with Justin and Megan and Dane ordered the largest plate of fried things any human being has ever ordered. Then he woke up this morning, stepped on the scale, and sobbed softly to himself for about an hour before I yelled at him to be quiet – I was trying to sleep off my hangover.

No. Dane is my favoritest.

After dinner, we went over to Jiro’s house to play the poker. He and his wife, Ellen live in a big house in SE Portland and are grown ups. Megan and Justin live in a big house in NE Portland and are grown ups. We live in a small apartment in NW Portland and they think WE are grown ups. I’m starting to wonder if any of us know what a grown up really is.

So we sat down to play and everyone was very patient about my total inability to understand rules or directions or retain information for longer than 30 seconds and Megan won all the money in the world because she is some kind of rogue card shark – like James Garner in Maverick only way prettier.

Which would have made me love her even more than I already do except for the fact that my love parameters had been exceeded by her bringing along these slippers for me to wear while wandering around Jiro and Ellen’s wood floors.

And then she gave them to me. Because she is now a millionaire and giving away slippers to The Poor alleviates her affluent white guilt.*

*Megan is my other favoritest.

Vegans.

And these

Not Vegans

I also went with drinking three and a half vodka sodas and either making three new friends or giving three new people a lot of ammunition if they were ever to, oh I don’t know, write about me in a slambook or just stand in the hallway at work and make fun of me. Because that is what I would do if the situation were reversed. I’m kind of an asshole that way.

So it was super fun last night and I hadn’t been to Club 21 in a million years which made feel decrepit but I am used to that. I don’t know why it bothers me when I’m older than people now – I’m older than Dane by a good five years (he’s 29) and that never upsets me. To make matters worse I end up saying mildly offensive things like, “I haven’t been here since I was 25 and I would usually end up crying in the rain around midnight because that is what 25 year olds do”…to the 25 year olds sitting next to me.

Goodness.

Anyway, Matt and Alison and Erik (and Melissa, of course) were all very charming and funny and fun (although I believe at one point Matt tried to talk about sports with Dane, who knows nothing about sports, which resulted in Matt calling Dane a girl nine or ten times – and I think this completely endeared him to Dane) and we laughed a lot and I learned about the King of Cocktails and the jiggling Guinness machine – although I have yet to see the jiggling Guinness machine in action so as far as I’m concerned it’s still a myth, like narwhals or the holocaust or global warming – and Melissa taught us all how to write a book using mathematics and we learned that Erik knows a suspicious amount of plot points concerning Sweet Valley High.

Oh, and Matt smoked the shit out of a cigarette.

And in the end, I lost track of how many times I put my foot in it. At my age, it’s all I can do just to stay upright after Final Jeopardy is over.

UPDATE – Oh! The vegan potluck was really fun and we had tequila shots and met many nice dogs and ate guacamole and now I am hungover and I just found out that this is following me on Twitter which just pushed my hangover into the suicidal region.

Apparently, I am going to be introduced to “The King of Cocktails” which I can only assume is a bottle of tequila waved lovingly around a wedge of lime. I’m probably wrong about this as I am about oh, so many things.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to both of these events and I’m sitting here – four hours to go – trying to figure out what I should wear even though I shouldn’t care because I’m all cerebral and erudite and learned and crap.

Jen’s friends are all Eastside vegans with vegan tattoos and vegan hairgel and vegan babies and the new happy hour writer friends have never seen me in person before and I would like to underwhelm overwhelm them with my presence so I should probably put some thought into you know, deoderant and fashion maybe.

I was thinking I could wear something kitschy and indie like Miranda July

but it would probably come off more like this

And maybe that wouldn’t be so bad, actually. That jumpsuit looks like it could hold a lot of snacks and mentos and things.

Still, I want to put my best foot forward prior to putting it in my mouth as I will almost certainly do and I am ready and willing to take suggestions for wardrobe choices. Also, makeup and flossing techniques.

Bring it on internet.

So we sat down in the booth and Megan and I were ecstatic at how hidden we were from the prying eyes and judgment of sullen twentysomethings and then our waiter came over and smacked us in the face.

Ok, to be fair, we were sitting at a table with dirty glasses on it which is a restaurant sin and we were SORRY but it was the only booth available and I don’t think you can put a price on privacy, am I right?

Anyway, he was pretty peeved at us even though we apologized and looked chagrined and everything – and then Dane realized that he used to work at The Alibi (or maybe still does). I think we were both about to say something to him but when the lasers shot out of his eyes and his hands morphed into machine guns, we decided it probably wasn’t the right time for a reunion and maybe we’d better just do what he says and let him wipe down the table. So we did. Also, we may have given him all our cash and valuable jewelry. I can’t really remember. It was kind of harrowing.

And when he asked to see our id’s, we all heard him clearly except Justin who was busy sleeping with his eyes open because this was his second night out in a row and when you get to be our age that becomes a logistical impossibility.

So we all got out our identification and Justin saw what was happening and said to no one in particular, “Oh, I’m so glad you all knew what he was saying because I just saw everyone reaching under the table and I thought maybe we were all taking our pants off and wouldn’t I have been embarrassed to be the only one at this table without any pants on?”

And just like that, our waiter’s mood experienced an abrupt sea change and I swear to God if he could have hoisted Justin up onto his shoulders and paraded him around the restaurant, he would have.

And I would have taken pictures, I promise you. With the flash on. DANE.

This at first made us feel like this.

And also like this.

But then something happened.

Those kids were having so much fun and we wanted to have that fun too and I don’t work for Nemo and I only knew about five people at the party and yes, ok, the entire thing was videotaped and I’m sure will live on in Youtubeness forever, but we got out there on the dance floor and dropped it like it was hot and those kids loved it.And by “loved it” I mean they were very kind to the old people. I’m fairly certain we were more embarrassing than well, whatever is more embarrassing than thirty year olds dancing awkwardly with adorable nineteen year olds – incontinence maybe? – but they were honestly, the most gracious and friendly kids I’ve ever met.

OR… maybe they were super high on the Ecstasy.

Or maybe I was.

photo credits:Justin Spohn

No, I do not have a baby arm.

Best new friendsies!

I think we’re all meeting up at the mall today and then maybe we’ll play some impromptu rugby and get vegan tacos and after that we’ll, you know, do art and shit and maybe browse some new facebook apps.

I’m excited.

photo credit:Justin Spohn

After the dancing, Your 33 Black Angels played a set. They were really, really very good.

Talented, even.

Around midnight, the place got really crowded so we all headed over to The Hutch on Holgate for karaoke.

I was a little inebriated. I’m not sure if this is apparent or not.

We had just eaten a bunch of pizza which is why I look pregnant.

photo credits:Justin Spohn

This is what is known in the business as “hitting the wall”.

So we went home and now I am sitting on the couch, waiting for spicy foodstuffs to arrive in my mouth and save me from this horrendous hangover.

Parties are fun.

I think we’ve all learned a thing or two in the past day or so about my, er, inability to function in polite society due to a penchant for what my friend Dave calls, “Books about wyverns, beholders, and wizardwood”.

So today Dane and I are going out into the world to buy clothes and shoes and maybe drink some cocktails around now five and then tomorrow we are going to a party at Nemo with Justin and Megan and I will pretend to be well adjusted and to like snowboarding and house music.

But inside, INSIDE, you will all know that secretly I am thinking about Children of Dune and Spacehunter and things of that nature.

The worst part about shopping today (and don’t get me wrong, I’m female… I LOVE shopping) is we probably have to go to American Apparel and based on my past experiences with how upsetting that store can be, I’ve got a small stomach ache beginning in my appendix area which is becoming angrier and more acidic by the second. I feel like every time I step into an American Apparel, the eight foot tall beautiful hipster elves judge me for I don’t know, liking things I guess, and exercising in a gym on purpose and here I might go off on a mild tangent because last weekend I was running the stairs in the west hills and a kid wearing old corduroys and a ratty yellow sweater and pumas went jogging past me. And he wasn’t just jogging to the bus stop or something – he was WORKING OUT. In his indie uniform. I am so glad I wasn’t the one sitting next to him at Ron Tom’s or wherever later that night.

Hipster bashing aside, (and isn’t it sooo telling about my insecurities and my secret longing to be accepted and blah blah blah) I’m kind of excited to be social this weekend and the people at Nemo are always interesting and Dave (Allen, not the other Dave although that would be awesome too) will be there and Justin and Megan, of course, and we might eat dinner at The Farm tomorrow which will upset Dane because they don’t serve meat and he might accidentally ingest something with vitamins and then The Farm will be sued by a 29 year old lead interactive developer with a cheese fetish.