i want to thank everyone who was so kind to me on my Two Days of Shittiness.

it sucks that it coincided with my birthday, but whatever.

i have to say now that i believe it was hormonally charged, lack of sleep insult added to general existential crisis injury.

that doesn't make it less real or anything, just that much harder to talk down from the ledge.

LET ME GIVE YOU A RUN-DOWN OF MY BIRTHDAY! YEAH!

first first, my family sent me this awesome pot of flowers. it has like every flower ever in it! tulips and roses and a star gazer lilly that smells awesome and gerbera daisies and snap dragons and all sorts of stuff. i'll take a pic of it tomorrow when it's sunny so you can see how nice my family is.

first second, let me say that the lady from work who took me out for the day is generous and kind and funny and i like her a lot even though there's a lot of places on in our venn diagram where our circles do not intersect. that's ok by me. the older i get the less i need to be in your circle to understand (and if not understand then at least care about) where you are coming from, and i think that has made my life much nicer.

she has dogs! and i got to play with them! she has an iguana! and i pet it and it blinked at me! and she had a cat that sat on my lap and let me pet him for EVER and then he would put his nose up to my mouth, and i guess that's when i am supposed to open it so he could stick his lil face in and smell it, AND THEN HE PURRED AND RUBBED HIS HEAD AGAINST MY CHIN.

stuart, why don't you stick your head in my mouth? don't you love me? don't you care?

and i took over every piece of laundry ever to her house and now i don't have to do more laundry for like a month, BECAUSE EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD IS CLEAN! that was the best part of my birthday.

but that's only the beginning! she took me to a japanese buffet that was actually good, and my meal was free because it was my birthday. wasn't the best sushi i have ever had, but it was decent (surprisingly so) and i drank so much iced tea i thought my head would shoot off my body from the caffeine and start flying around the restaurant and land in someone's pile of gyoza.

and then we saw eternal sunshine of the spotless mind and i got my wish of not having to talk to anyone about it afterward. it was nice how she just kind of let me sit with my thoughts. and we drove around all sorts of places in suburban seattle that i had never seen before.

and you know what's totally weird? lots of the places i saw looked exactly like cedar rapids, but prettier because i wasn't alone and because the trees were nicer.

but lots of cedar rapids was real pretty. i would drive around after work sometimes and just pull over on the side of the road and look at stuff. sometimes i took pictures. i haven't developed that film yet, though. i should. but i'm kind of scared, for some reason.

anyway, the places i saw on tuesday were very iowa. in the nicest way.

then i came home and was still totally emo, and had my birthday cake alone. and i blew out the candle and made a wish.

my wishes generally come true, but that's because i never tell them.

and plus, i know what to wish for.

but you know what? i went to bed "early" last night and all night i had really positive good dreams. so i woke up feeling refreshed and awesome and i went to work and it was a nice easy day and sometimes when i am at work i feel really good and think about things like making a career and it's nice because people support me and don't say shit about me wasting my potential.

except for that one time i was telling one of my old supervisors, whom i love very dearly and who is one hell of a man to have a conversation with, that i have a degree in philosophy from uc berkeley and that my sister is getting her PhD in physical therapy and my brother is this amazing writer/artist and my mother is an artist and that my father is a doctor and he looked at me and said "what the hell are you doing here?" and i said "honestly i don't know" and he said "don't ever tell anyone any of that ever again because they will get seriously pissed off" and i said "shut up, dick" and then he said "we have to get you off the phones" and i said "i know, kill me" and then we shared a Look That Knows.

anyway. it was a really good day. i felt good all day. and a little less lost. and when i drove over the i-90 bridge on my way back into seattle tonight the water looked perfect slate purple grey.

and i think i am going to go to the tulip festival and just stare at fields and fields of tulips.

i probably wouldn't be able to lay down in a field of them. but i'll do my best to lay next to them. spoon them a little.

and i'll take pictures!

and i'm listening to jimi hendrix and really really enjoying it.