It is nearing 3 AM and a car will be here at 7 to ferry me to the airport. Am I packed? No. Do I have laundry downstairs? Yes. So what am I doing? Writing to the cyber-world like there will be no tomorrow.

This week has been strange and long. My French class is pretty great. My teacher is already not speaking in English, although it is a beginner’s course, and I seem to be the only one who understands anything. And I only catch about a fifth of what she’s saying. Work is terrible, because it is restaurant week, which means that all of the people who ordinarily might not be able to afford to attend a hoity-toity restaurant now can, since we are offering lunch for 20.03 and dinner for 30.03. However, those people are not just only paying twenty bucks for what would normally cost a hundred, they are also thanking us by leaving ten percent. I cannot bear another moment of it. I should have picked up a shift tonight rather than playing pool in the Village, but I could not bring myself to work twice as hard for half the money. It’s a little birthday present to me.

I’m off to California, where I hope to once again figure out a thing or two about my life, where I will sleep ten hours a night, where I will dive into the sweetest swimming pool imaginable. My dad called me today to sing, “It’s a hundred and one degrees!” and then four minutes later, “Hundred and two- wait- three- four!!!!” But dry. No humidity. And, you know, air conditioning, unlike me here in the dark ages in Brooklyn. I’ve actually made an appointment to rent an AC unit, which means that in the next week I need to come up with $250, cash only. It is imperative to happiness, however.

I suppose I ought to pack.

Started French class this morning. Got call from people who want to harvest my eggs. Had lunch with Tessa and Jordi at Grammercy Tavern. Went to work where it is restaurant week. Did 270 covers and only made $120. Because it is restaurant week i.e. hell on restaurant earth. Must… sleep… must… have… big fat birthday party… must… go to… California… must… sleeeeeeppp…

I don’t think I even need to mention that today was the longest day of the year, but that the sun never actually appeared, and it was dark all damn day. Summer Solstice my a… I can’t help wondering when we as New Yorkers are going to get all of the good karma that simply must be headed our way. It’s been a really rough two years, starting in September of 2001, through the wars, through the economy, and then we’ve been cursed with the worst winter EVER. The worst spring EVER. And now it’s the first day of summer and damn it, we New Yorkers deserve some sun. And I’m not talking the 90 degree mugginess that it is supposed to be by Thursday- I’m talking about a week- just one week- of sweet, breezy, mid-70’s weather that is warm in the sun but you are glad you grabbed a wee sweater when night falls. We deserve this. We deserve nothing less.

There was a front page article in the New York Times that New Yorkers are actually more depressed. There are numbers to prove it. More people are going to see analysts and psychiatrists. Me? I’m just going nuts.

And yet… and yet… the only thing that gives me pause about joining the Peace Corps, the only thing save my worrying about my family, is that I will miss my city. I became an EMT because I wanted to be an EMT in New York. Even though I don’t work on an ambulance, I work every chance I get on the people who live and visit here and who need me. I became an EMT to care for my city and once again I am leaving, and this time not just for the summer. That gives me pause… for about ten seconds. I still feel like I’m sticking my head in the sand by leaving. I have this irrational, desperate hope that when I return, the goons will have left the office and people remotely resembling humans will have signed up. But, as my brother Ian points out, the goons in this country elected the goon in office. But I would like to make a few points perfectly clear:

1)Bush is anti-choice. Bush would take away every right to choose that ever existed from every woman alive. He is going to sign into law the first national abortion restriction since Roe Vs. Wade. Even if you are wishy-washy on this issue, please realize that it is one of many basic rights that he is dissolving.

2)Bush cares exactly nothing for the natural world. Of ten examples I will cite one: this past winter he allowed the use of snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park. Now, yes, I am a tree-hugging granola eater, but even if you hate the likes of me, please realize how lucky we are as Americans to have places like Yellowstone. If you’ve never visited, you cannot know the beauty of it. But I hope you will trust me, as someone who lived there this summer, that places like that make everything else better. Allowing snowmobiles 1) disrupts the mating habits and migrations of countless species of animals and 2) destroys wild areas. It creates unnatural trails. It scares animals. It sucks. Bush allowed this simply because he could. He felt like it. “Just cuz”.

2c) The simple use of the term “ANWR” rather than the full name- Artic National Wildlife Refuge- speaks to all the unthinking Americans who don’t care if he drills for oil in some far off place called ANWR. Perhaps if a few of those folks looked up what those letters stand for, a mind or two might be changed. But the Americans who elected him aren’t paying any attention.

3) He lies. That’s really the jist of it. He is a liar. He lied about the WMD, he lied about why he went to war, he lied and said that Saddam was behind 9/11, he lied that he gave a flying shit about anything ever. Sorry. I’m trying to be cool-headed here. But I simply don’t understand why the whatever huge percent of America that supports him doesn’t see that.

Wow. You know what I just realized? It’s not our administration that has made me lose hope. It’s the people who support it. The majority of Americans. My fellow Americans, you make me lose hope.

I got an email from the Peace Corps today. If I told myself, even two years ago, that I would be getting emails from the Peace Corps, well, maybe three years ago, I would have laughed out loud. I get these emails once a week or so that tell me that my application status has been updated. When I went to the website today, and logged into My Toolkit, it said that I’ve finally been mailed the medical forms. I’ll have to take these forms to my physician, my gyn, my eye doctor, and my dentist, and all of them have to complete pages and pages of paperwork all about my lil’ ol’ body. I will know more about my health when they are done than most people will know in a lifetime. Once I get all of those completed and mailed in, there really will be nothing left for me to do. It will be in the hands of the folks in the D.C. placement office, and I will wait each day for a packet or a letter to come in the mail. The packet will tell me where I’ll be going, and the letter, or email or phone call, will tell me they’ve found something wrong. Wrong how I don’t know but somehow something that would prevent me from going. I hate waiting games.

So, yeah, I, uh, went to the placement office for my French Class, and I thought I did pretty well on the test. I mean, I made some stuff up, but that’s all Sean and I ever did at Ridge High. Sean and I were in the same class, French 2, which he was taking for the second (of three) times, and when we all had to say our names, Sean announced that we were married. I really feel for that teacher. I went more often than not, barely, but Sean showed up, I think, three times, the last being the final where he curled up on the carpet of the floor and went to sleep. Granted, we weren’t sleeping that much that year, but… needless to say he failed his junior year.

Thinking back, I feel like that was so bold! I have degrees with honors, and Sean managed to squat at four colleges, and after all has been said he and I are not far from each other in our lives. In fact, I’m the one slaving away at a restaurant a billion hours a week and Sean has found a way to survive without being beholden to anyone other than those he loves.

I got my paycheck yesterday, and did a little dance for joy that it was $675. $675 measly bucks, and I need it so badly that I was happy. That little sum of money, barely half my rent, made in a forty-five hour backbreaking week, living in New York City. Times are hard for restaurant workers in this city, and my place is not immune. It’s weird to me that my birthday is next week. I know I talk a good game about Birthday Month and all, but it’s not shaping up to be much this year. Not that it should, or needs to, but I will admit that when there is not a certain person in your life who will make your birthday special, you kind of dread the day. Even when I’ve not had a man in my life, the last six years I’ve had my friend Hayley, who will be out of town this year.

I’m working with Sean today on our show, called “Rehearsal”. And really, I must stop writing this and work on that. It is to be a show about our musical lives, and it is a kick in the pants to go back and remember these stories. I’m really hoping everyone in the family will be able to get here and see it. And I’m really hoping that by the time this show goes up, I will know what I will be doing for the next two years.

It’s hard to write a blog while singing along to Nickel Creek, but I’ll give it my best shot. Another double at work yesterday, but I managed to talk to my Dad anyway who was out buying furniture for their new house in the desert of California. At least, I’m pretty sure it’s in California. But a belated and public Happy Father’s Day to my one and only father. I often wonder the percentage of people who actually enjoy days like yesterday- how many fathers are miserable on Father’s Day versus how may get loving phone calls or better yet, actual visits from their children.

I’m off to register for my French refresher course, and then to the first Braking the Cycle event. Free beer at the Brooklyn Brewery, and a first chance to meet the other riders. And my bike had ANOTHER flat. Yeesh.

I’m exhausted, so this will be unusually and thankfully short, but my brother Ian just wrote a blog about Animal Farm being read on the BBC. And how it is a perfect allegory for what is happening in this country. Remember the commandments the Snowball wrote, was it on the wall of the barn? And how each day, it seemed, the list got shorter and shorter… and the heartbreaking horse, whose name I cannot remember. He wasn’t smart enough to think for himself, but he thought if he just worked really, really hard, everything would be okay in the end? He didn’t know that Snowball was good and Napoleaon bad- he couldn’t differentiate, but as soon as he got too old to work, Napoleon sells him to be slaughtered for glue. His last scene, when he is loaded on the truck, and finally realizes what is happening to him… god, it haunts me still. He’s kicking at the walls of the truck, walls that in him prime could never had held him, but he is too worn from building the mill… and off he goes… ugh.

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

Man, I’ve got to say it, and I’m sorry if such language offends the like of my Dad, but FUCK GEORGE BUSH. Fuck him. I’m tired of this. I’m tired of sitting around and whining about this dorkweed in office. What exactly are we going to do? Are there really so few of us, are we really so wishy-washy that we cannot organize? Bush obviously stole the last election, but we are also to blame because we allowed it to get close. I believe we can actually change minds. If I sat my Aunt Donna down, my sweet Great-Aunt who truly believed that Saddam had WMD’s and that Bush was just defending us… I believe that if I sat her down with statistics and facts, maybe I could change her mind. What if all of us did that with one person. Would it really be hopeless?

I cannot write more. I’ve been out dancing to Brazilian music, a rare night of fun, and I have a double tomorrow. But I refuse to whine. Please, please let us mobilize before that stupid ignorant clown and his entire circus complete destroy our country. I am willing. I am all ears.

I want to change one person’s mind. Just one.

I’d just like to say that I’ve made a discovery. You know those Tofutti Cuties? Well, if you don’t, you are missing out. They are a prerequisite to any Williams freezer. They are these little ice cream bars, but without any animal fat, with ice cream made from tofu. And, like, they are so small that you can seriously eat two or three and not feel too guilty. Or four. Anyway, I’ve made a discovery, and it’s called Soy Delicious Lil’ Dreamers. Now obviously much has been stolen- sickly cute name, size, etc., but the thing with the Cuties is they don’t freeze very well. That is, they don’t stay very hard in the freezer, so you end up kinda eating the goop off the paper. The Lil’ Dreamers hold up quite nicely. I can’t say that I’ve actually made the switch, but I’ll tell ya that right now there is no battle in my freezer. The Dreamers are lined up and waiting for me.

So another amazing yoga class tonight… particularly because spring has come to New York only in the form of humidity. Overcast and wet. In the class, there was one lonely air conditioner doing its best in the back of the room, far far away from me. At one point, I came out of Downward Dog and into Warrior Two (I’ll spare you the Sanskrit names) and the rivulet of sweat down my back found its way to my toes. There is something simply primal and empowering about sweating that much. After class, Ms. B., her lady friend Meg and I had some tofu and beer at Sammy’s Noodles on 6th Ave, and just as I got to the train to go home the real storm hit.

I take the train home at night, even when I have my bike, because the bridges are no place for a single girl as soon as the sun goes down. The 2 train stops only a few blocks from my house, but Ma Nature decided to unleash all the heaviness of the day in a stunning downpour. My three-minute ride from the train to home left me so soaked that I was gasping from the shock of it- and trying to see through the rain flowing down my face. And now I’m home, with a cup of tea and a Lil’ Dreamer. Not such a bad day.

Walking back to my apartment tonight I saw into the apartment below mine. I looked at that apartment, but passed it up because the ceilings were low and it didn’t have the little window alcove that mine does. It does have these huge pocket windows that open fully so it almost feels like you are living outside. It also affords a full view of the apartment. This is what I saw: rumpled bed on right wall (just like mine), one chair near window (right where mine is), and an Ikea computer desk with a desktop computer (exactly where mine is), and man sitting at rolling computer chair (where I sit now, directly above my neighbor). He also has NPR blasting out of his stereo systerm (which I do NOT have). So alike, and so extraordinarily different. First of all, he doesn’t have two bikes and a huge kitty cage in his apartment. Secondly, I’ve heard him and his girlfriend doing the, as they say, nasty, in the shower (the duct vents in the bathrooms alert each of us to the other’s business. I don’t sing in the bathroom so much anymore). I’ve never done the nasty in this apartment, and certainly not with a partner in the shower. So yes, alike, but also, plus, different.

I rode to New Jersey again today, 40 miles, but this time with my very very good friend Ms. B. It was a terrific ride, and oddly, not too difficult. It actually was easier than the last time, which is good news. I was home by 2, and puttered, napped, stared out the window at the three-minute thunderstorm which was the only manifestation of the weather man’s predicted all-day storm. I was hoping to talk Ian into dining with me but alas, his tummy is still keeping him home. So I decided to explore Park Slope, since it quite suddenly was a sunny, beautiful afternoon.

I ate at a new little dive on 5th Avenue, which lured me by being entirely open to the outside, and also by having a portobello avocado burger on the menu. As soon as I sat down, a family sat next to me- mom, daughter, friend, and son. The kids were wired, and the mom apologized, and an hour later she and I were talking about our lives and our families. She is an event producer at a major New York magazine, and after we had been talking for about five minutes, no lie, she offered me a job. At her magazine. Her opening line was, “So you write, do you?” It was all very exciting until she told me that it would be full time except one weekend in September when she would need me to work double time as that was a weekend filled with the 50 events I’d be helping her plan. What weekend? September 19th to the 21st. My heart sank as I told her about the AIDSRide.

But we had a lovely visit, and her son latched on to me and insisted on showing me his little toys. We exchanged numbers and I told her that if I could help her with anything else to give me a call. Sigh.

After dinner I walked over to Ian’s where I threw myself on the couch and watched cable for two hours. Going over there feels like going to a grown-up’s place. Feels like being at home, meaning a home with parents. And a couch and TV, and space for a couch and TV, and for there to be many feet between one lying on a couch and where the TV is. I dragged myself away, knowing I would stay until the wee hours if I left the TV on, and walked home.

The night, outside, is fluid, luscious, wet, dark. I very badly wanted to open my mouth and let the night in. I wanted the walk back home to take an hour rather than ten minutes. It is so beautiful, so quiet over there, peaceful and alive at the same time. And then I crossed Flatbush, where I can(t) actually afford to live (versus the true Park Slope) and immediately the mood shifts. My block is beautiful, and certainly gentrified, but the undercurrent of crime and underworld still exists. There are drugs being sold, deals being made right under my nose and while I cannot see it, I know it is there.

I’m torn between wanting to live in Africa and work with my hands, and wanting to live in a big, beautiful brownstone and write all day. Guess which one I can actually make happen.

I’m cleaning my house which always leaves my mind to clear out as well. There are things that won’t leave me right now, things from my past that hover in the back of my mind, brought forward with great clarity if the smallest thing calls them. Right now I’m thinking about when my brother Sean got his laptop stolen. We were all living in Los Angeles, Ian, Sean, and I, and my mom was in town. Sean and my mom were loading something into my apartment late at night, even though I wasn’t there, and one of the loads was too heavy. So Sean put his army-issue backpack on the ground as he carried up a load. My mom asked him if he should leave it there, and he said it would be fine.

Minutes later, Sean came down, and his bag had disappeared. He saw, just down the block, a black-skinned man on a bike pumping madly away, Sean’s bag on his back. Sean screamed and took off after the man, running like hell on a knee badly in need of surgery. The man got away. My mom says that Sean stopped and howled. That howl, even though I didn’t hear it, haunts me. That my brother was so injured. This loss came in the same year as the disintegration of his marriage, and one of his worst financial years as well. I think of my brother at the end of the dark block, hands on his throbbing knee, watching all of the writing he’d done in years pedal away into the darkness.

I’m left to wonder what kind of person would steal that bag. And I rest just slightly more easy, knowing that my brother now sleeps next to his new fiancée, just a few feet away from the newest Mac laptop on the market. It’s just too easy to think back in Los Angeles, to think, what if we hadn’t left, what if we were still so far away from New York. Maybe I’m still back there, howling in the darkness, wondering what the hell I’m supposed to do now.

I tell you what, something very strange just happened. I wrote a bunch of stuff, hit what I thought was the return button, and everything disappeared. What a lesson in impermanence.

It is 2PM in the afternoon. I’ve been up for two hours, and have accomplished little more than a cup of coffee and a bowl of cereal. I just worked a “quad”- two doubles in a row- and I am spent. And I have to jump in the shower, jump on my bike and get back to work. I slept at the restaurant, on a banquet, between the shifts. You may be asking yourself, why on earth would I do such a thing to myself? And I tell you, regardless of how much I work, I currently have $52.23 in my bank account. Such is my financial life.

The National Guard is gone from the Union Square subway stop. How is it that the powers that be have suddenly decided that we don’t need them anymore? How did they decide in the first place? Do they really think that just because we’ve stopped bombing the shit out of Iraq that suddenly we are no longer creating hate and anger? I just don’t get it. I also can’t describe the feeling of walking past twenty Guardsmen with automatic rifles on my way to the Q train. I always have my bike, and they part like a sea when I make my way down the platform. These kids are younger than me by ten years, and each of them holds a weapon that could kill every person on my subway.

I don’t want to give up on my country. I don’t want to lose hope and run away. But it seems as though that is exactly what I am doing. I look out my window at this 74-degree day, the sun warming the leaves that now block my view of the apartments across the street. And I can’t help but think about… well, so many things. The other day, someone told me that I was the kind of person who needed to stay, to fight, to try to do something about our government. But I feel like I cannot be fully convicted in this fight without a true sense of perspective. And I don’t believe I can achieve this perspective without living somewhere that is antithetical to the U.S. I also, on a selfish note, would rather move to Africa for two years than stay in my current economic trap. I have no life. I am only a server who is too poor to do much but work and think.

I’ve had new thoughts on my birthday. I want books or classes on organic farming. I want help paying my $410 tuition for my French class. I want yoga. I want any clothes that wick. I want new eyeballs. I want books. Oh, yeah, and a wireless cyclocomputer. And a trip to California. And a pony. Yes, yes, I know, it’s ugly to say I want I want I want, but this may be the last birthday I have for two years where I’ll want something other than bug spray. It may well be my last birthday in America for two years. I want a party with rooms full of laughter… ten thousand tons of ice cream…