today

I am so glad to be home. I really am. I love seeing my family but home is where I belong. I was called a "lady" today at work. I love Seattle. So much better than being a man on the east coast. I don't have much to say tonight because I am tired. But, I love home. I love friends. I love my family. I love my dogs, even though Suzy shit all over my room and my nice clothes. I love Charlie, he's a carebear and a bear cub and has become my friend. I love the wild yard and how I'm going to tame the shit out of it once I'm done flying all over the effing country. I'm going to mow the grass and plant a garden and paint that fricken fence white again. I love those trees we planted out front and how big they've gotten in the past two years. I love the patio and it's stupid divet that is not perfect. I love our shitty beer pong table and the one I am going to replace it with. And the mountains and dogs and rivers and goal posts that will be painted on top of it. I love Lake City and it's shitty stores and dive bars and the weird awesome people who live in them. I love not hating and thinking that most people and things are good, even if I talk shit in the meantime. The bad makes the good, you know? I am learning to love the grey, along with the black and white. I am learning to love the middle ground and its vastness and possibility. I love that every piece of clothing I love is covered in stains. I love taking long showers even though it kills the environment. Isn't water all over this damn city anyways? I love my big red truck even though she also kills the environment. I love that she appeared just like I knew she would since I was a kid. And that's she's shinier and louder and more perfect than I imagined she would be. I love getting compliments from old men in parking lots and they are probably unclear as to my gender and why I own such a badass truck. But she's mine and always will be and I will love learning how to fix her myself and make her life long and important. I love that The End plays good music again and that I can listen to it in my truck because it's not raining much so my radio works again. I love that stupid radio and how I have to smack it (with love) each time it cuts out and that it's cheaper and better to just keep it, even though it sucks. I love the way the dogs look when they are sleeping. How it's peacefulness at its most perfect and their dreams are probably wild and full of creatures and sticks and mud. I love when my dreams are like that too. I love sitting in an inner tube on a hot river and drinking a beer and then dropping my can in my tube and cracking open another one and probably flipping over later even though the river is calm and I'm just drunk and happy. I love the way it feels to take off a heavy backpack at the top of the mountain and having to pull your sweaty shirts off your shoulders because it's stuck there and you feel like you could float off the top of the mountain because the air is thin and quiet and the best thing you've ever put into your lungs. I love the big hearts of strangers and their good ways. And I love fishing, even though it scares me to kill creatures that think they are just gettin' a delicious snack. Surprise! No snack, just a barbed hook and a quick trip to the surface and a hungry human. Shocking and exciting for all involved. I love how brief and violent the blooming season is, all the colors and falling blossoms and pollen. I love how it turns into the greenest you've ever seen until August makes the grass hard and mean and something you don't need to mow anymore. I love the smell of Value Village and how it means that they probably don't wash any of their donations and you are just putting on another person's clothes that they are too fat or skinny or old or young for. I love the ridiculous potholes and bumps in all the side streets and how you can ride them just right so you feel like you're offroading in the city. I love that the city is just the country condensed sometimes and you're in it with a lot of other people and that's okay to share this space together. I love the quietness of the real country and how it will be the way it is long after we're all gone and it'll remember us the way you remember being barefoot as a kid. I love the trees that want to be climbed and the old ones that have pulled their branches twenty feet off the ground because they're done with climbing and our foolish monkey ways. I love the brambles and how picking blackberries is like eating hot fried food because it hurts but you can't stop because you just want it and the pain is an okay trade off. I love that. I love the smell of leather and how you can turn something old and dry back to soft and functional if you just use the right amount of soap and water and time and you have to use your hands because sponges are for fools. I love the smell of horses, like hay and breath and sweet grass in the spring. I love that they let you just stand with them, almost better than riding them because they're into it to. You just stand there and that's it, you and them, and they are probably twitching their ears and flicking their tails and you aren't doing any of that but they're okay with it because you give them grain that's appreciated so you can be a part of the herd for a couple minutes. And something will probably spook them and they'll gallop to the other end of the pasture to stand there with their ears and tails ticking like a wristwatch. I love johnny jump-ups that will grow in a driveway or a bed of roses because they just roll like they, calm and cool as purple cucumbers and okay with who they are. I love that. I love the way your blood feels when you really love a song and how you listen to it because it makes your heart beat stronger and with such honest purpose. I love drinking out of glass bottles and jars and how real and heavy and good glass is when plastic is so much cheaper and already taking up too much space in our oceans. I love driving up a driveway and being excited to be at that place and I love parking on a hill and putting the truck in first or reverse and turning the wheels to the curb and the sound the emergency brake makes. I love remembering to turn off my lights every time because I've killed many a battery for not remembering that simple task. I love the challenge of breaking into a car I've locked myself out of and all the different things that can be used to unhitch that lock. I love the smell of fire and its loyalty the next morning. I love that this was supposed to be a short post and it wasn't.