Yee haw. More fitness fun and games.
But I can't get excited about it because of the slovenly state of my studio apartment. The studio is such an easy place to filthify up. You eat and sleep and do all your leisure stuff there; of course the newspapers and tissues and clothes are going to pile up (I pick up the dishes after I get home from work. Even I have my limits). But when I have been going to meetings every night or doing fitness stuff I don't come home all chipper and ready to wash dishes or do laundry. If anything, I come home desperate to encounter the sweet anaesthetic of Frosted Mini Wheats and cable teevee or the internet. Ahh, sweet internet.
So I'm living in filth and my chances of getting out of it are looking kind of grim, because I gots to go get a haircut tomorrow at 9 a.m. in Renton. Yeah, Renton. That's more than halfway to Seattle. And it's a driver's hellhole. It's like Conway, Arkansas. It's a town with a city council that saw the bright lights of strip mall developers and just drank the Kool Aid with everclear and in a fit of raw desire, optimism and neediness, got in the backseat with the ones whut got 'er drunk.
"Baby, you give me street access for my parking lot every fifty feet and I promise it'll be awesome and I'll bring you flowers and tax money." "But ... you can only get access points 100 feet away from each other!" "Man, what the hell? I thought you loved me and here you are making an issue out of fifty lousy feet?" "But it'll make it hard on traffic, especially those curvy parkways the city engineers built." "Hard on traffic, baby you're making this hard on me. (Huffs) Look, baby, I know what you're thinking, but I'm only thinking about you and the needs of your residents." "I don't know." "Look, I don't need this, I'm going to Tukwila. She'll appreciate me and all the commercial property tax assessment." "No, baby, I'm sorry, look baby don't be this way!" "I don't know that you understand me. I mean, I really love you and you deny me my needs." "No! I understand you! I do, I really do, I understand! Look, if it means that much to you I'll give you that access you want." "I guess you do love me."
Awww. What a love story. I'm sure they'll have lots of other terrible compromises, abusive arguments and snot-nosed bastards (like a Wal-mart that cuts and runs as soon as the neighborhood it helped destroy goes downhill) to keep them company.
So, since I get lost every place I ever go (I have witnesses) I'm sure this salon will be a breeze to find what with the mapquest and all.
Anyway, the plan is for me and Beth to get new dos and go to Ikea. You know, the store where people got trampled in London. Since I live in a studio my actual furniture needs are scant. I'm pretty sure even buying organizers would help my place look shabbier. But I'm going because, well, it's so cute. It's a city block of what would be urban blight if it weren't for the fact that commercial Renton is a freestanding geographical blight.
Of course, Renton might not have been so quick to compromise if the airline industry was any healthier EVER and Boeing wasn't so quick to lay people off. And move to Chicago (ouch! The weather there is so much colder. And hotter!). What would you do with that campus if it were ever abandoned? Whatever it was, it would cost a bunch of money.
In a sense, the West is really, really fortunate to not have the kind of massive cities and old-timey sprawl that inhabits all places East of the Rockies; the problems with inner cities and abandoned 60's-style strip malls is not really a huge issue out here. However, development is happening at such a rapid clip that the problems seen in a town like Little Rock, where there are long streets of abandoned commercial areas and other long strips of soon-to-be-abandoned commercial areas (drive West on Burnham Drive, and once you pass Rodney Parham I dare you to count the vital businesses before you hit Bowman curve. There are still plenty, but the cancerous bits, like the ever-revolving restaurant that was Pavarotti's, the Puffs $12 Zoo, the whole Michael's area —— the place where Wal-mart used to be and the failed Books-a-Million I briefly worked at that crashed and burned — are far more present).
It isn't that development is bad. But the way it has been marching apace in this country seems analogous to our expanding waistlines. We all got fat real fast, we do things like create "University Village" diets to mitigate the damage we've done, but we can't cover up the fact that the whole thing isn't organic or natural. Being thin and having healthy, people-centered development takes work — conveniences must be shed. The car is not our natural ally for the battle of the bulge or Burnham Drive. Plus, oh crap, being fat causes cancer; what other analogy is there for an empty box store?
Somehow I'm sure all of this is to blame for the fact that I am in a veritable sty right now. I have three bags full of recycling that need to go out. I have a sink full of dishes that must be washed. My jeans are all dirty. I have no milk in the fridge and I'm jonesing for the sweetness and soothing texture of My Lord Frosted Mini Wheats.
Honestly, I have Ramen, I have a frozen pizza, I have raviolis, I have marinar, I have three boxes of Kraft deluxe Mac n Cheese, I have packet upon can of Indian food and rice that I can boil up, I have bacon and eggs, I have cheese sticks and granola bars and cans of edible soup in my pantry and all I want are those FMW. What is the matter with me???
Frosted Mini Wheats, I think we have an unhealthy relationship.
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