Life and Times of AlieMalie

In the past several months I’ve been experiencing an awesome rollercoaster of a life.

Now mind you, when I say “awesome” I mean in the sense that’s it’s pretty incredibly varied and huge and the continuum that goes from incredibly wonderful to downright hellacious is about a hundred miles long.
Back to the rollercoaster. I’ve gone from sad to incredibly happy to extremely depressed to total elation and back again. And again. This isn’t easy as there are some days when I wake up in the morning and I honestly don’t know how I’m going to feel later that day. Trying to tell myself to be happy doesn’t always work as there were things that I just couldn’t seem to overcome and get over. There were other days that I would wake up and be on top of the world and have a glorious day. If it was difficult to know how I would feel myself, I can only imagine what it was like for my friends and my mother – even my blog friends who were reading funny, happy posts one day and then pissed off, angry posts the next.

I didn’t want to feel the way I did, but there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it. To be honest, I wanted to be happy but I didn’t want the mania I seemed to experience when I was feeling good – it’s exhausting to be ON ON ON. I knew I felt “good” since I would head to the gym and have a ton of energy and be chipper and excited and friendly. But if I stopped to think about things in my life for even a moment, I’d know I wasn’t truly happy, I was just experiencing mania. And I knew I was depressed, there was no denying it, but I was feeling manic at the same time.

According to the DSM, mind you, I am NOT self diagnosing, nevertheless, according to the DSM, manic depression experiences cycles of mania and depression that tend to come in lengths of months, not weeks or days or hours. Or in my case, minutes or correspondingly.

There were literally times where I felt nearly suicidal and depressed all the while totally manic and full of energy and ready to face the world, to take it on. I don’t exactly know how to fully explain this. I’d do a bit of research, but at the moment I’m confined to seat 26D on a flight from Atlanta to San Antonio and I can’t exactly visit the library or search the web at 35,000 feet.

Does any of this make sense? Feeling completely manic at the same time as being depressed? It sounds like a conundrum, but I felt it day after day after day and I don’t ever want to feel that again. Thank god I finally have health insurance.

The emptiest bank in the world, maybe second emptiest after Iceland.

I’m writing this as I fly home from DC, a place I fell head over heels in love with last June. We’re somewhere on our way to Atlanta where I’ll get on my flight to San Antonio. I know I make a point to almost never reference what city I live in, simply because I don’t want there to be an easy combination of words that someone could put into a search engine and find my blog as I try to keep it semi anonymous.

It would seem that this will be coming to an end, obviously. I’ve been trumpeting that I’m moving to Fargo as is evidenced in the past few posts, but I felt like I had to get my thoughts out of my head about this impending move, and what better place to do it than on my blog?

So here we are: I live, for the next 36 hours or so, in San Antonio, Texas – at least when I’m not off gallivanting around the country or world in search of my next great adventure. I’ve given this city a pretty bad rap in the past, at least when I’m actually talking with people in person, and until recently I never really thought about the fact that I said some of the things I did.

I’m writing this because I’m already feeling homesick. And I should add that this will be the second time I feel homesick in the span of a year. For me, that’s odd. I felt homesick when I was back in Oregon for Hillary’s campaign and had the boss from hell and all I wanted to do was go home, flee the campaign and leave that asshole behind. But I couldn’t as I was committed to my candidate and at the end of the day, I had to remember what I was fighting for: affordable healthcare. And trust me, I’d rather have the boss from hell and say that I had a part in the fight for comprehensive affordable healthcare for all of us than have to say that I gave up because I couldn’t deal with an asshole for two months. Because I can and I did.

So, back to San Antonio. I pulled out the in-flight magazine and the first city it profiled was San Antonio. Of course the pick the touristy sorts of stuff to write about, but nevertheless, when they mention a restaurant that I used to live around the corner from, a lounge that’s just down the street from where I live now or a bar where I have a bunch of fun memories with friends from when we learned to swing dance … I get a bit homesick knowing that in a less than a week, I’ll no longer reside there.

Back in the day, I used to slam San Antonio and in particular Texas because I had this idea that people there were a little bit backwards, a little less educated and a lot less cultured. I didn’t like being lumped into the “Texan” category because when I think of that, I think cowboys out on horseback who are misogynistic and have barely a high school education. Or weirdos who go parading around Europe getting drunk underneath the Eiffel Tower and letting their undies blow dry in the hot, dry air of Florence. But I obviously have an erroneous image of what true Texans are.

We’re everybody. We have the music capital of the United States, if not North America, in Austin which means we’ve got some world class musicians – and not just for pop or rock, let’s not forget the amazing symphonies we have in Houston, San Antonio and Dallas. We have the most gay friendly city in the United States after San Francisco in Dallas if you can imagine that (in addition, they were the first major American city to elect an openly gay mayor). We are the only state in the union to have five distinct geographic zones: prairie, desert, hill country, piney woods and coastal plains – all of which allow for a gorgeous state that is ever surprising in its uniqueness. We have the Alamo in San Antonio that is steps away from the Riverwalk which attracts people from all over the world.

It’s an incredible place, and I’m lucky to be able to call it home. I’ve realized in the past year that I’ve taken a lot of what Texas is to me for granted. It’s not just my home, it’s the place where I have some of my best memories of being groovy in Austin and being coaxed up on top of a bar to dance with friends. It’s where I cut my teeth in organizing. It’s home to Fiesta every year, a party like no other. It’s home to my selected family of friends who, though I don’t see nearly as often as I’d like since they have their own families with children, have offered to let me celebrate Christmas with them in Minneapolis this year since I won’t have time to fly home. And their kids who never fail to light up my day with a huge hug or a sad smile to hear that I’m happy to have a new job but sorry to see me move.

While I’m happy to leave and have the opportunity to meet new people and develop new relationships, I’m sorry that it’s taken me moving 1,500 miles away for me to realize that Texas isn’t all that bad after all.
I say this straight to Texas though: the next time you decide to share a politician like George W Bush with the rest of the world, please think twice. Really. I don’t think I could handle that again.

That said, I’m happy to call Texas home. Just don’t call me a Texan, I’m not sure I’ll ever be fully comfortable with that term. Just call me Alex, that crazy girl who was born in Texas to travel the world, stir the political pot and love every minute of this amazing adventure – even if it’s total crap sometimes, it just makes the good that much better.

I’m going to scream if I hear one more comment about the fact that it’s flooding in Fargo. Do you honestly think I don’t know this already? Because everyone who remarks on it seems to think they’re breaking the news to me. People, this has been brewing for almost a week, I’m moving there, I’m pretty sure I’m up on what’s going down in Fargo. It’s even worse because 99% of the time someone makes a comment about it, they laugh afterward – after they laugh about the fact that I’m going to Fargo to begin with. It’s funny the first time in that, “Wow, I never would’ve seen that coming in a million years,” sort of way. But the 10th or 20th time later? Stop. And having a fellow organizer refer to me as, “The poor sap going to North Dakota”? Well screw you, too. Thanks for the support.

I’m already anxious about having to move to a place where I know absolutely no one and to have people laughing about it doesn’t make it any easier. And to know that not only am I going into a place where I know no one, but to know that there’s a major environmental disaster happening RIGHT NOW that I’ll be going into the MIDDLE OF doesn’t make it any easier. I mean, I don’t think anyone would put that on the list of things to look forward to when going to live somewhere new.

But, to the fellow organizer calling me names? When I’m on the short list for a job in DC because I organized the shit out of the state and made a name for myself and you languished on your ass thinking that X state would organize itself because you have thousands of members and I have less than 100? I’m pretty sure you’ll be lamenting about how it wasn’t you going to the frozen north.

I was inspired to write an ode to gelato after chatting about it with Tina the other day – and then as I saw it everywhere in the Charlotte airport yesterday morning, it just furthered my wont to write.

I’ve written a bit about the two month back packing trip I took during the summer of 2002 to Europe. It was on this trip that I completely fell in love with gelato. I was in Italy towards the end of June and it was unbearably hot – so hot that all you wanted to do during the heat of the day was sit around and watch people, head to the beach to get into the water or find a church to read a book in since the stones keep the inner sanctum oh so cool.

Or eat gelato.

It was in Venice that I discovered the cooling properties of lemon gelato – it is so light, tart, not very creamy and instantly makes everything that much more bearable. I remember leaving the hostel on the Lido to walk to the beach and seeing this tantalizing stand with all sorts of colorful flavours staring back at me, but the white lemon beckoned my taste buds. I was hooked. It was the only flavour I’d eat. Piazza San Marco as the sun was setting and while listening to the amazing jazz bands? Accompanied by lemon gelato. Walk back from the Tower of Pisa before a 2 hour unairconditioned packed train to Florence? Eased by lemon gelato. Everything was better with lemon gelato.

Until I got to Florence.

I went into town one afternoon with a couple of Canadians I’d met and as we were meandering around the squares, we stumbled upon this tiny corner gelato shop on the Piazza della Signoria. We decided that it was the perfect evening to grab some gelato before dinner, so we popped into the shop. I speak little to no Italian and the woman who was serving me spoke about as much English, so I figured I’d just point to the size of the cone that I wanted and we’d go from there. Now, pointing to a cone might seem relatively simple, but when there are tons of different sizes that are stacked upon each other so they start leaning in curves like clown hats, well, it can get rather difficult. I went with the flow. Yes, that monstrous cone is fine, sure, whatever, it was easier than trying to get a different one. I started looking for lemon, of course, it was the flavour of the trip and pretty much all I ever considered. But wait! What’s that?! Raspberry gelato? Anyone who knows me knows I have a love for all things raspberry. I will eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Raspberry cheesecake? Nom. Raspberry gum? Yum. Raspberry tea? Slurp. Even the word, “raspberry” enthralls my tongue as it rolls off. So when I saw raspberry gelato, I knew I had to get it. But wait (again)! My scooper was insisting that I choose a second flavor because that came with the price of the cone. What the hell. Lemon! No surprise there. As I approached the cash register, I started pulling out my euro coins and was surprised to learn that my little cone of gelato came to €8. EIGHT EURO. How in the world any sort of ice cream could be EIGHT EURO I have no idea.

But it ended up being worth it.

We wandered through the Piazza over to the Arcade of the Palazzo degli Uffizi and on to the Arno river. So there we were, near sunset, eating raspberry gelato that had been drizzled with the quickly melting lemon as it liquified in the sweltering heat of the day while gazing on the sun drenched Ponte Vecchio. Gelato became dinner that night, and rightly so – we had such generous amounts of it, we were too poor to afford anything else, we were stuffed and who would want to follow up the best ice cream in the world with anything else?

So now, when asked what my favourite ice cream is, this is it: Florence sunset on the Arno river while eating top notch raspberry and lemon gelato. And I’ve been ruined forever.

When I was talking with a good friend who was assisting me in my job search last week to tell him that I’d gotten a job, he made this comment,

Union organizing is GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!

And it is.

I arrived here in DC a little after 2PM after a fairly pleasant couple of flights – aside from the wrenching turbulence which to most people would probably feel like a mild rocking of a ship at sea but to me feels like great drops in altitude which will make flight attendants go flying and me grab the hand of the stranger sitting next to me, apologizing that I’m just terrified of flying.

That aside, I checked in and went wandering around the city. The Cherry Blossoms are gorgeous as are another bloom on some sort of tree – I can’t identify it other than to say the blooms look like miniature magnolia blooms tinged with pink. The whole city is just gorgeous. After saying I was going to bring my SLR, I decided this morning that I just couldn’t; it would’ve meant that I had to check a bag because I would’ve had three bags including a camera/camera paraphernalia bag, laptop bag and suitcase and I could only take two on.  I should’ve checked my suitcase. Should’ve, should’ve, should’ve. The blooms on these trees are just crying out for macro attention. AAAAAH.

This just means I have to come back another spring. Or live here throughout a spring. Or something. I’ll be back.

Anyway, aside from all of the amazing benefits that come with the job, I arrived to be in a super duper 4 star hotel along with a complimentary bottle of wine to congratulate me on the job. I’m not sure 18 months is long enough, now that I think of it. I could do this. Hell, I AM doing this.

(Though I will say that if it doesn’t work out? I totally know my dream job involves cherry blossoms, macro photography and meandering around DC – in total.)