Cha-cha-CHANGES!

I'm moving into my new place on Friday or Saturday. It's got an open kitchen and garden tub. I'll finally have my own space here in Las Vegas. I start my new job on Monday and part of the training includes going to yoga classes together. Finally, things won't be organized in boxes on the floor but scattered around until I get furniture and places to put things.

He's staying here for a little while so we can try and work things out. After you break things down all there is left to do is build it back up. And that's what we are doing. We ate at the Sizziler for his birthday. I got the fillet mignon and he got steak and endless shrimp. We drank beer and talked about how much we missed each other. How things had been different since I flew out to Vegas. How much pressure we had both been under to see if things were going to work. Now, without pressure, we were back to having fun with each other. That energy was back but out here, on a playground across from the apartment complex we've been living in for the past two months. It was on the yellow tube slide and the sprinklers we ran around in.

The problem with telling people about your struggles is they get protective, and don't always understand the choices you make. The difference now is I know I can pick myself up after a fall this time. I made the choice to stay in Vegas thinking he was going back to North Carolina. I can make those hard decisions now. And with everything settling down, I won't feel like I'm relying on my friends so much for support. I've felt like I haven't been a good friend these past couple of months, and I can finally start to really be there for the people who have helped me recently.

I'm glad he's staying. We can explore this crazy city together.

It Rained Last Night in Las Vegas, Nevada

My friend from Charlottesville sent me an email today talking about how things aren't as haphazard as they seem, that something stronger is keeping me here in Vegas instead of having me move on to LA or Portland or Chicago. I'm looking at an apartment later tonight to see how far away it is from the Strip, which is where I'll be working soon. I accepted a job with the yoga clothing company, and even though I'm excited about the job, the idea of living out here alone scares the crap out of me.

Once things settle down, you realize people are just people. There's no way around it. And there's no way to explain why we treat each other like we are expendable or that there's something better on the way. But when timing isn't right, there's nothing that can be done about that. There's a chance he'll stay here for a little while. He's looking at cars in both Vegas and the coast of North Carolina. Either way, I'm looking at the whole transition alone. Which is why I started all of these life changes in the first place.

Some days I feel excited and others I feel suffocated by the heat. I really don't know what I want out of this, but I do know that I couldn't move to Portland or Chicago just yet. Because doing the comfortable thing would make things easy at this point. At least that's what I'm telling myself.

Set Out Running...

Before I moved out here to Las Vegas I would listen to this Neko Case song Set Out Running because it reminded me of him. Of driving around D.C. and going on movie dates. How the air seemed electrified with energy between us and I couldn't help but think that this was something real and good. Neko Case sings: if I knew heartbreak was coming, I would have set out running... Her voice is thick with those lyrics.

Sometimes you push and push and push up against something until it breaks. And when you live in an apartment complex surrounded by boxes and looking at the parking spot where his car used to be before it was stolen, unemployed and trying to find a new place together, you think: this is the hard part. Because one minute you are cooking dinner and watching Deadwood, and the next you are threatening to pack up and move to Portland, and that you can't take it anymore. And he calls your bluff.

Part of me wishes I hadn't come out here at all. That I had kept him in this place, in late nights in D.C. and playing pool in Boone. But without exploring things you are just stuck. You can't figure anything out that way.

I slept on an air mattress at my sister's friends place last night. He had towels and clean sheets ready for me. He just took me in and helped me realize that this was the worst of it and it will soon be over. Things had gotten too hard, and after crying all day and trying to explain how alone I felt and how much this hurt, he just looked me in the eye and couldn't give me anything. We are dealing with things differently, he says, whatever I knew of him gone from his voice. It is cold and distant, because he says he has shut down and will deal with things later. And every time I saw him yesterday I would try to act the same way, but in a minute I'd be crying, because suddenly everything was misplaced.

I should be thinking I have all the options in the world. I could go to Portland for real this time or Chicago to be near good friends. LA seems to be out of the question now that I am running out of money. Once I hear back from the job here in Vegas I think I will really know how I feel. Right now I feel alone here, but that's because I have nothing connecting me to this place. When we were talking yesterday he mentioned going back to North Carolina to stay on a friends couch. And I thought: you'd give up? Just like that? But I would be doing the same thing in Chicago or Portland or LA. It seems I can't make a decision for myself, either.

I really don't want to do anything today. I feel like leaving to go to yoga is even going to be a struggle. My sister has told me to not make any decisions yet, but I feel like I've become transient in Las Vegas and I'm itching to get out of here. Would it just be stubborn to stay? Like all big changes, I made this move for myself. And now all I have to worry about is me. It is the first time in a long time that I've had that option. It's like I don't know what to do with it.

I wish I had that Neko Case song on my computer. The CD itself is in a bag at the apartment, waiting for me to come pick it up. I want to go pick it up and replace the stereo in my car and blast it as I drive around Las Vegas. Because I think that now is the time to be dramatic. To just swim in it. To really think about things in the moment, now, so that in time, I will be able to completely move on. Because that's what I'm going to do.

One Word

I'm reading a book right now that my sister-in-law handed to me before I left for the West. It's about a writer who travels for one year after a painful divorce to discover those parts of her that were missing in her seemingly perfect marriage and career suburban life. It couldn't have been a better gift at a better time.

There are days that all I have done while here has been to hide out in an internet cafe and obsessively look for the right job that's out there for me. Even though I have more time I haven't been writing as much as I could, and there are some days where time just slips away and I find myself missing my yoga studio in Charlottesville rather than going to the new one here.

I haven't really made any friends while in Las Vegas, but stayed contented with relationships over the phone and internet while discovering this new, changing intimacy with my new boyfriend. There are mountains that stick up into the hot, beautiful, puffy-white, blue sky. It serves as a backdrop to my Honda, Virginia plates, a new, vibrating muffler barely attached by a wire to the back of the car that I can clearly hear over the empty box that used to be my car stereo. Two boxes sit in my trunk over a pile of clothes and the quilt that my grandmother made for me. There's no room in the bedroom my boyfriend (yikes!) and I share with the two still-strangers we call roommates.

I had a second round job interview this morning with a yoga clothing store opening up in the mall on the strip here in Las Vegas. It was more of a conversation than an interview, and to my amazement an organization that values, trusts, and expects from its employees actually exists. When I walked into the interview from the mall, Hootie and the Blowfish playing in the background, I began to imagine the mall during the holidays, a Hootie Holiday Special CD playing, people everywhere buying gifts, and thought to myself: what am I doing here? But when I met with the woman who is going to be my new manager if I get the job, all of those concerns disappeared. I knew this organization was different and that it lived by the principles that governed it. We even discussed a goal of mine: to open up a store in Asheville. I felt this goal come alive as we talked.

I'm not sure I can call Las Vegas a home or that this is the city I will discover myself in. But I do know that I've found something big and life-changing. For the first time in awhile, I'm starting to feel like this risk paid off.

So I'm going back to LA to wait and hear the news about this job. I'm going to relax by the beach and celebrate a friend's birthday. What I didn't realize about quitting my job and moving is the time I would be given for my thoughts. This can be both a blessing and a curse. I've used my time to find job opportunities and even though it has paid off I plan on relaxing, writing, and traveling during these next few weeks.

In the book that I'm reading she writes about a conversation she had in Italy about cities. And that there is one word that can describe each city. I tried to apply this to the cities I know, then to myself, as she begins to in the book. My word for Las Vegas: TRANSIENT. (I thought about HOT and GREEDY but decided to go with a friendlier word.) My word for Washington, D.C.: STIFF. My word for Charlottesville: PASSAGE. (This is for two reasons: there are many back ways of getting around traffic in Cville and it takes a little while to find these passages and Cville is a liberal city right in the middle of rural Virginia which I see as a passageway to other towns and cities as well as a haven from abstinence-only sex education programs and Virgil Goode (yes, that is his name).

Like the book, I haven't thought of the word I think describes me. Some that immediately come to mind are DIFFICULT, RESTLESS, and FELINE (my best friend always says I'm like a cat: I like to be touched when I want to be touched and left alone when I want to be left alone). I once asked my mom to describe how I was as a child; walking around in the handmade Easter outfits my grandmother would make for us. Without hesitation she answered: determined. You've always been so determined.

Football! Yes, I said football.

My junior year of college I did a report in my Business Writing class on how the current students and alumni at Appalachian State would benefit from a fifty million dollar football proposal. The chancellor said that intramural sports would benefit, which in turn benefits most of the student population. Turns out, all that money was just going to one thing: football. Walking to my English classes in Sanford Hall, where budgets were being cut and money was tight; I couldn't help but feel resentful. Does anyone even give a shit about football around here? I had gone to two football games in Kidd Brewer Stadium while at App State.

When I woke up late yesterday morning and heard one of my friends from App State who is in town say that we were leading against Michigan in the third quarter, we decided to go out and find a bar. The night before we had been out in old Vegas playing the penny slot machines and black jack. Nearby were the huge sporting screens where people can bet on upcoming games. I think we were all wishing we had put at least five bucks on Appalachian to win that football game. But then again, who knew what was going to happen.

It was humid and hot in Vegas when we all three got into the car in search of a bar that was playing the game. He remembered seeing a sign about playing all Michigan football games, and on the way to finding another sports bar we saw the sign. The Inn Zone: a smoke-friendly dive bar in a commercial space. We walked in to a dark, smoky bar full of Michigan fans, nervously watching a football game that they were about to take over at the beginning of the fourth quarter. We sat in the front row with no real identifying colors, but when App State intercepted a pass in the fourth quarter, we all sat up and clapped in excitement. We just couldn't help ourselves.

Here we were, in Las Vegas, walking into a dive bar during the middle of the third quarter, surrounded by Michigan fans who don't even know where Appalachian is, much less expecting alumni to show up to watch the game so far away from North Carolina, and we were sitting in the front row cheering during their disappointment. Then tension at the end of the game was so cold it was almost laughable. We stayed as Michigan fans quickly and quietly filed out of the bar. We stayed to watch the coach talk about the player's hard work and dedication. We stayed long enough to see the bartender turn off the recap of the game from the big screen.

When I tell people where I went to college they do a couple of things. First mispronounce it, then they ask where it is (Boone? , they say) then ask if it's a private school (to which I reply Appalachian State University), then they ask how big it is and are always surprised that 15,000 students attend the school. Even though the state wants it to grow, those mountains keep it enclosed and protected.

I don't generally watch football. In fact, aside from tennis, it is my favorite sport to fall asleep to on the couch. But yesterday was great. It was a little piece of them mountains in a smoky dive bar in Las Vegas, Nevada.