chocolate dreams and this is why I'm me

I spent most of yesterday pulling down an old raven cage (from when my mom used to do wildlife rehab) with my mom and my sister. You know, using the truck to pull it over and drag the big pieces out of the trees. Prying rotting wood apart with a crow bar, throwing it in the truck, making dumpster runs, that kind of thing.

It occurred to me, as I threw a piece in the truck and then ducked for my sister to throw another piece, that this is why I am myself. If I hadn’t spent my childhood building cabins out of the dumpster (literally, when I was a kid and lived with my dad we built a whole big house mostly out of the dumpster… we spent, like, $200 on the whole thing), chopping wood, cutting up fish at fish camp, living in a backpack, and camping in the snow, I would not have the confidence to be following my heart around the country like I am now. This is the difference between me and people who say, “I wish I could be doing x with my life, but…”

Last night I slept, in my van, next to a place I used to sleep under a little wooden platform for people at the park when I was like 15. Back then I kept my sleeping bag and stuff stashed up in the narrow end of under the platform, and people never messed with it. After a while, the security guy found me, which was my fault, and he let me sleep in a building where it was warm whenever he worked. That’s how awesome Alaska is.

I had the strangest dream, that I was working in a new club with my friend Susan (of rivercitykitty.com fame). There was this guy who had a lot of organic dark chocolate, and I was just stuck talking to him even though he wasn’t spending any money. Susan came by and was like, “dude, you need to get back to work, what are you doing?”

I was ashamed of my bad-stripperness but I said, “it’s organic dark chocolate.”

“For real, this guy doesn’t have any money, you’re wasting your time,” she said.

“ORGANIC LAVENDAR DARK CHOCOLATE, leave me alone!” I replied.

Then he gave me this huge sheet of it, like poster sized, and I was plotting how to get it back in the dressing room and hide it. I wanted to break it so it would fit in my locker and I could lock it up, but I was really worried about the other women breaking into my locker and taking my chocolate. That’s when the phone rang and I woke up.