eat light:

so evernanon and doug's move to portland went well on saturday. we got them all packed up by about 2pm, then ate lunch at roxy's in fremont, and headed out of town. (glaucon and i first made a ~half hour stop in west seattle to walk and feed my friend L's dog.) all people, pets, vehicles, and objects made it safely to portland (hillsboro, actually), and everything was unloaded by like midnight--with a break for pizza in there, too. there was a late-night acoustic jam session with guitar, mandolin, and rhythm section, then everyone found a place to crash and crashed.

yesterday (sunday) the crew went to NW 23rd ave in portland for an awesome deli lunch. as i was getting dressed, prior to this jaunt, i made an unpleasant discovery. i had packed a nice, lightweight wool sweater i bought last winter, thinking it would be a good layering thing in case the weather was cool...which it was. so i put the sweater on and i was all..."hey! i don't remember that hole under the sleeve. wait, i don't remember that hole either; or that one. shit! my sweater has been eaten by moths!" i am a wool-o-phile, so i'm dreading what i'll probably find when i pull out the rest of my sweaters for an unexpectedly much-needed inspection today.

now i need to research moth control measures. wish i still had that cedar chest my ex-husband gave me...but my asshole ex-boyfriend joe, in vermont, decided to confiscate that in our breakup, as part of my punishment for moving to seattle instead of staying there and squeezing myself into the wife/mother hole in his life. fucker. LOL. i know i sound bitter, but i'm not. i got off cheap. it's just that a cedar chest is the perfect thing to prevent moths without having to use fucking naphthalene. (hmm. apparently they don't use naphthalene for moth balls anymore...)

last night i went to that salon with glaucon. most of the time it was too crowded and busy with laughing and ass sniffing and karaoke to be a "real" salon, but toward the end it thinned down to 10 or so people, and several of us read things. i read a sharon olds poem about a girl who survived a horrific crime that left her best friend dead--they were 12; the poem is based on an actual crime that happened in essex junction, vt (i used to work very near where it happened). it was a little out of place among the other pieces read. everyone else (except glaucon, who read a robert lowell poem and one of his own) read more upbeat, inspirational stuff. i find this particular poem inspirational, but it goes through heavy terrain on its way there. i also wonder if it commits the poetic sin of too much-ness. it's definitely on the edge of that, in my opinion, but i think it somehow narrowly misses being excessively melodramatic. it's interesting, though, because a couple of poems i heard at the slam the other night did veer into excessive melodrama, and they made me cringe and even laugh because they were too nakedly traumatic or tragic, and i'm not sure i could articulate where those poems went wrong and this one doesn't. i guess i could if i put my mind to it, but my prospectus needs that part of my brain more urgently. triage. dig?

( here, you be the judge (poem behind cut) )