An explanation of my first 5 seconds of consciousness

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On the weekends I have more time to contemplate how much I hate being woken up in the wrong way.

To most people my ailment might bear the same characteristics of the minor discomfort they too feel each morning. But for me, it is much more than that.

It’s an irrational feeling of abandonment in my most vulnerable moment that catalyzes disdain, anger and vengeance . The emotions that feel like they’re erupting from my chest and seeping into my arms and head are so loud and bright I have to squeeze my eyes tightly just to get through it.

My body declares war against the transgressor. She convinces me this is treason, punishable by things I can’t even summon in my mind yet because I’m barely processing how to walk again.

If the body didn’t need it, I think I would rather not sleep. Maybe once a month.

When you’re a child, fairytales and magic are promised in dreams. That’s where they live and you can only visit. That’s why babies giggle so much and their cheeks are so rosy. Happy dreams are an elixir and children are drunk all the time.

But just like healthcare, it all gets taken away or changes when you’re around 25.

You’re dreams are more often nightmares, if you can remember them at all. I had an incredible imagination as a child and its evil sister reigns over my sleep-thoughts now. Lately she’s been incredibly stressful and if my dreams were really a person, I would have taken out a restraining order already.

Every morning is different. It’s like getting off of a plane and not knowing what awaits me at baggage claim. The suitcase could be full of sadness, of loss. Or it could just be discomfort. I really hate that one.

I know I can’t have it both ways. Mornings can either be mundane or exciting. At least this way it’s always different and I start the day with an acute self awareness.

Maybe that’s really why I’m so picky about how I’m woken up. Because those first moments of consciousness out from under duress are like rain on the skin or gasping for air. I want to have enough time to process what has just happened to me without getting swept up in where my other sock went or how late I am.

I think those close to me will still picture the head on the cave of wonders when they wake me up. But if anyone else exhibits these symptoms upon waking, you’re not alone.

The people and city of Los Angeles

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This past weekend I was in Los Angeles cheering on a great man in the LA Marathon. To see blubbering photos of said man go here.

We  biked around a lot of  downtown Los Angeles. It made me miss home. There’s just something about a big city that makes me deeply happy.

cold pop man

hot dog vendor

banana

train

waiting

pinata

food trucker

girl

brb

tree and birds

night art

last

Duke who loves to fish

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I met Duke at the park today. He was by the lake with some friends. I perched my bike on a tree and watched them cast their lines.

Seeing people fish in the park is still odd to me. Theoretically you could live there. They have grills, soft grass, and enough brush around to start a fire with the butt of a cigarette.

“Nice bike,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Do you fish?”

“No.”

“I love to fish. I fish a lot.”

We talked about mundane things like where we lived and how long we had lived in other places and how we haven’t lived there in quite some time.

“A lot of people don’t know about fishing here so you’re not elbow to elbow with people. And it’s free. You have to have a fishing license and that’s it but they don’t come bugging about it,” he told me. I asked him if he ate the fish he caught.

“No, I don’t eat them. I just do it for sport. You could eat them. You could eat anything if you cook it long enough,” he said.

duke fishing

And then I asked him if there were any interesting places I needed to check out around town. I’m convinced someone will eventually tell me of a really cool, secret place to go.

“I don’t really go out anywhere. I fish. That’s about it,” he said.

“Anywhere? You don’t go anywhere?” I asked in disbelief.

“It’s a really long story. I’ve lived, you could say, a fast life.”

When he was a teenager he got in trouble with the law. I can’t remember now but I think it was for fighting of some sort.

He was put in foster care after that.

“But I’m thankful for foster care. We actually did things, we learned in there. It wasn’t like you’re just in the system now go off and do whatever. I used to have anger problems. I took medication for it,” he said.

He told me his younger brother went to jail when he was just a kid for grand theft auto.

“It broke our family. My mother would smuggle in drugs for him but then she started getting into it too–the  drugs. Methamphetamines.”

Duke said his dad used to work at a company where he made a lot of money.

“Up in those nice, rich, rich neighborhoods,” he laughed.

But then he got on the bottle. He started drinking and became an alcoholic.

“My mom started to cheat on him and he would beat her,” Duke said.

This  was all happening after his brother went to jail and that’s when he went to foster care.

A couple of times Duke would stop and say, “There I go just talking again.” But I ignored it. When I go out on bike rides or walking around, I always hope to meet someone who can’t help but talk to me about their lives. I tried not to ask him as many questions as I normally do when I harass other people and he didn’t need them anyway.

“So I started working for the city at 18. Never got in trouble with the law again. I work for the public works and waste management department. I’m a garbage man basically,” Duke said laughing.

“I had this idea to start my own line of fishing polls. We have a lot of really great lakes here. I have a name for it already, Bassafornia.com.”

I noticed the wedding ring on his finger halfway through our conversation. I usually pay more attention to detail than that but I had to look at his face a lot to make sure I wasn’t missing any of his emotions since he was wearing sunglasses and I couldn’t see his eyes.

“I met my wife at a wedding. Her cousin was marrying my cousin and now we’re married. We have a 5 year old daughter named Jacqueline. People say she looks just like my wife but she looks like me,” Duke said as he pulled out a photo of her to show me.

In his wallet he had a photo of his daughter and one of his baby photos to prove she looked like him.

“We’re working on getting my wife citizenship. She’s from Mexico, Guadalajara,” he said.

Duke was nice enough to let me take his photo. I told him in exchange I would promote Bassafornia.com more once he had the site running.

He says he’s out there all the time. I might go back and bring my laptop. Maybe help him get his website going. He said they taught him to feel in foster care. He used to get angry and now he just gets emotional.

“I wouldn’t cry like in front of you, but when I get emotional, I cry,” Duke said.

Duke was a pretty incredible guy for the 30-60 minutes that I knew him. I loved his story. Made me a little emotional you could say.

I’ll take politics for 100, Alex. America’s oldest stall tactic. What is the Filibuster?

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Have you ever heard or said to someone, “you’re talking that to death?” That saying paints a pretty accurate picture of what a filibuster does.

“Using the filibuster to delay or block legislative action has a long history,” describes the United States Senate website.

filibuster
For decades, members of Congress have used the filibuster to stop legislative action that they fiercely disagreed with. There are two types of filibusters, silent and spoken.
THE SPOKEN FILIBUSTER

So how does it work? When a senator wants to get a piece of legislation passed, it is presented on the Senate floor and voted on. It must have a simple majority of 51 votes to pass. You can imagine how much lobbying and convincing a group of senators must do to pass a particularly controversial bill. But that’s not all they have to worry about.

“In the [..] Senate, unlimited debate continued on the grounds that any senator should have the right to speak as long as necessary on any issue,” describes the United States Senate website.

Which means that a vote can be delayed as long as any senator wants to debate it or simply take the floor to speak.

The record for longest spoken filibuster was by Senator Strom Thurmond (R) in 1957. He spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes reciting the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and even President George Washington’s farewell address.

You can take a look at the text here but I doubt you would want to.

It can all sound a bit romantic when you think about it. I mean, don’t you want senators who truly have their constituents best interest in mind to the point that they will talk for hours just to stop a bill from passing?

mr smith goes to washington filibuster

In the film “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” A senator carries out a filibuster by reading baskets of letters from schoolchildren to stop a corrupt bill from passing. He dramatically collapsing from exhaustion at the end.

Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. Remember Sen. Thurmond? He spoke for more than 24 hours to keep the Civil Rights Act of 1957 from passing.

That freaked you out a bit, didn’t it?

With senators spending less time in Washington however, the spoken filibuster has been used as a last resort, for the most part.

The most recent filibuster took place Wednesday March 6, 2013 when Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) held a filibuster of President Obama’s CIA director nominee for nearly 13 hours.

“I discovered that there are some limits to filibustering, and I’m going to have to go and take care of one of those in a few minutes,” said Sen. Paul, reported by USA Today.

As far as recent filibusters, they haven’t been killing legislation as much as they have been bringing attention to the issues around those bills.

But a silent filibuster can be a deadly one.

THE SILENT FILIBUSTER

A silent filibuster is a threat to delay action. A simple threat. It can be in an email for crying out loud. These are the ones you don’t really hear about on the news or see video of because senators don’t even need to be in the room to invoke one.

However, there does need to be a supermajority of 60 votes to override a filibuster of any kind and this is called a “cloture.” The record for cloture motions filed was between 2007-2008 at a whopping 139. Last year it was 115 but only 41 of those clotures was invoked. That’s less than 40 percent.

“Too often over the past four years, a single senator or a handful of senators has been able to unilaterally block or delay bipartisan legislation for the sole purpose of making a political point,” President Obama, a former senator, said in a statement to Politico.

The good news is, the wheels on the filibuster reform train are already turning. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) are working on a reform deal that will curb the use of filibusters and amend some of the rules for the way filibusters currently work.

They’ve made some headway by reaching a deal to limit any single senator’s ability to stall a bill. With Sen. Paul’s recent performance, we’ll be hearing a lot more about this in the months to come.

road

About life and driving, and which one needs better maps

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When you’re on the road, you find you have a lot of time to think.

You have a lot of time to think when you’re on a trail, too.

You might even find that you have a lot of time to think when you’re taking the trash out.

You don’t have as much time to think when you’re avoiding rocks in the road.

Or when you’re avoiding sharp spikes.

You don’t have as much time to think when you’re trying to figure out how to climb over something.

And sometimes there is something interesting in your way that causes your mind to be led astray by imagination and you find there is time to think after all.

But beautiful things can be distracting. So you have to find your way on the road again.

You think about a lot of things as you go down this road.

The beauty and wonder of life.

And maybe how fragile it is and how quickly it can be taken away.

I get lost a lot when I’m driving. But there always seems to be a map or a sign letting me know where I’m headed.

Unfortunately, life doesn’t come with maps. So you just kinda have to keep going. Until you run into something so great, you don’t have to think about it.

Moving and meeting memorable Marys

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There are a lot of memorable Marys in my life.

My mother’s name is Mary. There’s Mary Bo Peep. That Mary all those people pray to and that sometimes appears on trees.

But today I was quite fortunate to have met another memorable Mary. We only spoke on the phone 15 minutes and seven seconds but I haven’t been able to forget the things she said to me.

Mary is 63 and was diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago. Around the same time, her sister was diagnosed with colon cancer.

“I am really pleased that this horrible experience with my sister and I having cancer at the same time has brought our family closer. We’re all so far apart geographically,” she told me.

It’s not often you hear the word pleased and having cancer in the same sentence. But she told me at the beginning of the interview, she has always been an optimistic person.

“I don’t really think that I’ve changed a whole lot. I’ve always been an optimistic person and I still am. You tend to value each day a little more than you used to. You get the possibility of mortality every day and that’s frightening but then you realize you can certainly still fight.”

This sort of positivity is truly impressive. And it reminded me of my cousin’s. She was the exact same way. I swear this girl would pretty much have parties to cheer her friends up about the cancer she was fighting. She basically had a “beat cancer” campaign that politicians and vegans everywhere would be jealous of.

In a year, I’ll be her age.

But she inspires me all the time. In the same way, Mary inspired me today.

I felt a bop on my head and like the lights had finally come on when Mary was talking to me about going through chemo. How she had to go through it for six months in the beginning, and then on-and-off after that. She talked about the things you realize.

“Chemo is very hard. You don’t know what tired is.”

I asked her what advice she would give to new patients. At the very end of her answer, it sounded as if her tone had changed from giving advice to new patients to just giving advice.

“And I would say, do as much physical exercise as you can do. If all you can do is walk to the mailbox, then you walk there. Because the day after that, you’ll be able to walk to the corner. And the day after that, you will be able to walk around the block, and that helps a lot with your mental outlook.”

I just moved to Riverside, California for a new job and I hadn’t written since my move. I had thought about it a lot but picking up your life and moving to a new city where you have never been and you don’t know anyone and starting a new job in the same circumstances, well. That makes a person tired. Or so I thought, until today.

I hope some Mary inspires you someday.

A letter to my upstairs neighbor

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I’m sorry.

It doesn’t have to be like this. Dodging each other in the parking lot, crossing through the grass to avoid close proximity to one another, constantly staring at something ever so intently on the ground so eye contact never occurs.

Enough.

You seem like a decent guy. I saw you with your daughter the other day. I feel like you said hi to my dad one time he was in town. We’ve both lived next to each other for a year now without any issues. So you might be feeling like what I did was uncalled for and maybe it was. Maybe I should have just called the complex and let them deal with it.

But really, can we just be real about this? If I can Shazam your music from my dining room, I think I have the right to ask you to turn it down. And not because I don’t like the music from the decade that saw the end of the Cold War and the beginning of AIDS. I just don’t feel like listening to the artist formerly known as Prince at 8 a.m. on a weekend.

See, even he thinks it’s too loud.

And to be honest, it wasn’t all you. You were really just the straw breaking the camel’s back like a freight train would break tracks made out of glass.

Sleep is a very crucial thing for me. It has been ever since I lost the ability to stay awake for days at a time like when I was a foolish girl in college wasting precious sleep time by watching marathons of Arrested Development and texting my friends about how much I hated my new roommate because she only cleaned the apartment when she was drunk. I know, it didn’t make any sense to me either.

I’m not saying I need eight hours of sleep every night, but waking up early in an unnatural manner or without purpose just does something to me. Almost to the point of physical pain.

Recently, I was listening to a Radiolab podcast where they talked about measuring pain. It’s not an easy thing to explain to someone else–the pain you’re feeling. One woman they interviewed said she put it in terms of what she would do or trade to have the pain go away. Shortening her life span to make it stop was a bargain she would have taken at the time.

And I know you don’t know me, but just imagine for a second what could compel me to put on pants (yet another thing I hate doing), venture out into the horribly blinding brightness of the sun, hike up the tower of stairs to your apartment, and ask you to please relieve me of the pain I was in. If you think about it like that, it makes total sense and you shouldn’t hate me anymore.

But I don’t know if you will ever know.

Hopefully, I can make you muffins and a mix CD of the best of the 80s and we can put this behind us.

Until then, just know, it wasn’t you. It was the pain.

Obama does IAmA on Reddit, Romney makes Myspace page in retaliation

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Okay, not really.  Mitt clearly made his page  a while ago since he has 21,782 friends already. Yes, Tom is in his top 12, but sadly Paul Ryan doesn’t have a Myspace, so Gary Sato gets his spot. I think it’s because of his profile picture, but that’s just me.

Unfortunately, Mitt hasn’t updated his playlist but he does have one featured song, Elvis Presley’s “A Little Less Conversation.”

I wonder if he added that after Todd Akin’s speech.

Anyway, if you still haven’t discovered the awesome sauce that is Reddit, you may not have heard President Obama did an IAmA (Ask Me Anything) yesterday and crashed the website. Surprise, surprise.

For those of you who don’t want to leaf through comment after comment of cat questions, I’ll summarize for you.

Hi, I’m Barack Obama, President of the United States. Ask me anything. I’ll be taking your questions for half an hour starting at about 4:30 ET.

Obligatory photo to prove it was him. He also tweeted about it.

Questions he answers:

What are you going to do to end the corrupting influence of money in politics during your second term? -suzmerk

Money has always been a factor in politics, but we are seeing something new in the no-holds barred flow of seven and eight figure checks, most undisclosed, into super-PACs; they fundamentally threaten to overwhelm the political process over the long run and drown out the voices of ordinary citizens. We need to start with passing the Disclose Act that is already written and been sponsored in Congress – to at least force disclosure of who is giving to who. We should also pass legislation prohibiting the bundling of campaign contributions from lobbyists. Over the longer term, I think we need to seriously consider mobilizing a constitutional amendment process to overturn Citizens United (assuming the Supreme Court doesn’t revisit it). Even if the amendment process falls short, it can shine a spotlight of the super-PAC phenomenon and help apply pressure for change.

What was the most difficult decision that you had to make during this term? -FifthSurprise

The decision to surge our forces in afghanistan. Any time you send our brave men and women into battle, you know that not everyone will come home safely, and that necessarily weighs heavily on you. The decision did help us blunt the taliban’s momentum, and is allowing us to transition to afghan lead – so we will have recovered that surge at the end of this month, and will end the war at the end of 2014. But knowing of the heroes that have fallen is something you never forget.

We know how Republicans feel about protecting Internet Freedom. Is Internet Freedom an issue you’d push to add to the Democratic Party’s 2012 platform? -SharkGirl

Internet freedom is something I know you all care passionately about; I do too. We will fight hard to make sure that the internet remains the open forum for everybody – from those who are expressing an idea to those to want to start a business. And although there will be occasional disagreements on the details of various legislative proposals, I won’t stray from that principle – and it will be reflected in the platform.

What is the first thing you’ll do on November 7th, win or lose? -daveforamerica

Win or lose, I’ll be thanking everybody who is working so hard – especially all the volunteers in field offices all across the country, and the amazing young people in our campaign offices.

Are you considering increasing funds to the space program? -ormirian

Making sure we stay at the forefront of space exploration is a big priority for my administration. The passing of Neil Armstrong this week is a reminder of the inspiration and wonder that our space program has provided in the past; the curiosity probe on mars is a reminder of what remains to be discovered. The key is to make sure that we invest in cutting edge research that can take us to the next level – so even as we continue work with the international space station, we are focused on a potential mission to a asteroid as a prelude to a manned Mars flight.

I am recent law school graduate. Despite graduating from a top school, I find myself unemployed with a large student loan debt burden. While I’m sure my immediate prospects will improve in time, it’s difficult to be optimistic about the future knowing that my ability to live a productive life — to have a fulfilling career, to buy a house, to someday raise a family — is hampered by my debt and the bleak economic outlook for young people. I know that I’m not alone in feeling this way. Many of us are demoralized. Your 2008 campaign was successful in large part due to the efforts of younger demographics. We worked for you, we campaigned for you, and we turned out in record numbers to vote for you. What can I say to encourage those in similar situations as I am to show up again in November? What hope can you offer us for your second term? -hmlee

I understand how tough it is out there for recent grads. You’re right – your long term prospects are great, but that doesn’t help in the short term. Obviously some of the steps we have taken already help young people at the start of their careers. Because of the health care bill, you can stay on your parent’s plan until you’re twenty six. Because of our student loan bill, we are lowering the debt burdens that young people have to carry. But the key for your future, and all our futures, is an economy that is growing and creating solid middle class jobs – and that’s why the choice in this election is so important. The other party has two ideas for growth – more taxs cuts for the wealthy (paid for by raising tax burdens on the middle class and gutting investments like education) and getting rid of regulations we’ve put in place to control the excesses on wall street and help consumers. These ideas have been tried, they didnt work, and will make the economy worse. I want to keep promoting advanced manufacturing that will bring jobs back to America, promote all-American energy sources (including wind and solar), keep investing in education and make college more affordable, rebuild our infrastructure, invest in science, and reduce our deficit in a balanced way with prudent spending cuts and higher taxes on folks making more than $250,000/year. I don’t promise that this will solve all our immediate economic challenges, but my plans will lay the foundation for long term growth for your generation, and for generations to follow. So don’t be discouraged – we didn’t get into this fix overnight, and we won’t get out overnight, but we are making progress and with your help will make more.

Who’s your favourite Basketball player? -karlfranks

Jordan – I’m a Bulls guy.

What’s the recipe for the White House’s beer? -silent1mezzo

It will be out soon! I can tell from first hand experience, it is tasty.

How are you going help small businesses in 2013 and 2014? and what if any bills are you going to implement for small businesses, in 2013, and 2014?

We’ve really focused on this since I came into office – 18 tax cuts for small business, easier funding from the SBA. Going forward, I want to keep taxes low for the 98 percent of small businesses that have $250,000 or less in income, make it easier for small business to access financing, and expand their opportunities to export. And we will be implementing the Jobs Act bill that I signed that will make it easier for startups to access crowd-funding and reduce their tax burden at the start-up stage.

How do you balance family life and hobbies with, well, being the POTUS? -gobearss

It’s hard – truthfully the main thing other than work is just making sure that I’m spending enough time with michelle and the girls. The big advantage I have is that I live above the store – so I have no commute! So we make sure that when I’m in DC I never miss dinner with them at 6:30 pm – even if I have to go back down to the Oval for work later in the evening. I do work out every morning as well, and try to get a basketball or golf game in on the weekends just to get out of the bubble. Speaking of balance, though, I need to get going so I’m back in DC in time for dinner. But I want to thank everybody at reddit for participating – this is an example of how technology and the internet can empower the sorts of conversations that strengthen our democracy over the long run. AND REMEMBER TO VOTE IN NOVEMBER – if you need to know how to register, go to Gottaregister.com. By the way, if you want to know what I think about this whole reddit experience – NOT BAD!

If you don’t know the NOT BAD meme. Get it together.

I was happy to see that a lot of users responded to each other’s questions that Obama did not answer.

President Obama, why didn’t you close Guantanamo Bay as you promised you would? -sheabd01

He signed an order closing it, and Congress denied funding to put it into effect. -aggie1391

Maybe I romanticize education too much. But it’s literally the reason I am the person I am today. Maybe it’s why I love Reddit so much. Because it tells me things I don’t know and should know.

Anyway, I hope this was informative and interesting for you.

Side note: Reddit co-founder, Alexis Ohanian (kn0thing) and possibly love of my life was lurking as well.

How the hell did you guys pull this one off? -TheAtomicPlayboy

This is reddit. You all pulled this off by becoming the front page of the internet.

edit: I’m also hoping the administration was so responsive because secretly they’re all redditors. -kn0thing

My Saturday and road trip to Corpus Christi with Chicano hipsters

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This entire day was unreal.

I woke up in bed with a gay man and my dog. Luckily, I didn’t over sleep. I was supposed to give a class that morning and had stayed at my friend Louie’s place the night before watching bad movies and drinking wine. I gathered my things and went home to get ready for the class. I should have made coffee.

I didn’t expect many people to show up. I meant to print out flyers and put them up around town but it had slipped my mind completely. When I arrived at the library, I saw a former intern unpacking what appeared to be camera equipment.

What are you doing?

Oh hey, I don’t know if you remember me I used to intern…

Of course, I remember you. (you sat three feet away me for months)

I’m with the local station now and we’re filming these library sessions for the public channel.

Great. Because I wasn’t nervous enough. In retrospect, this was great because if no one showed up, at least there was a chance someone, somewhere would see it, even if by accident. After the class, I threatened him.

If this makes me look bad, I know where to find you now.

He laughed and said he would make it look great. I asked him if he could shop in clapping after my presentation and perhaps a glow around my entire body. He thought it was a great idea, too.

I left the library feeling incredibly accomplished for a Saturday. The local pet store was having free teeth cleaning and nail trimmings for dogs so I went to pick up Orbison. I’m pretty sure the girl who works there thinks I am the biggest freak because I always go take pictures of the gerbils and bunnies. She watches me though which makes me a bit uncomfortable but I think it’s mainly because she is kinda bored.

I feel like that dinosaur scares the crap out of him

I texted Louie when I was on my way back.

Are you alive yet?

Barely.

What time are we leaving? That is, if Caro ever finds her keys.

I know! I’m looking for them but I don’t think they are here. My apartment is a wreck.

I found the keys in my car and an hour later we headed out. Louie immediately took over the music situation because Caro is an NPR addict and he just wasn’t having it.

This is not road trip playable!

We listened to an a Capella band do covers of contemporary pop songs. We had this book in the car, the name escapes me, about sex in Chicago that Louie was actually published in. I read a story from it out loud and it sounded like the gay version of 50 Shades of Grey.

This car ride still wasn’t awkward which was nice. You really take a chance signing up to be stuck in a compact space for an extended period of time with people you haven’t known that long. What if they say something really crazy and you can’t walk away from it?

What are those Jewish quinceañeras called?

Are you talking about Bar mitzvahs?

Yes.

And thus, #shitcarosays was born.

We were headed to Corpus to do some shopping for tax-free weekend. Once we got into town Caro actually called someone to ask what mall we should go to. We all have iPhones.

But I guess it is really refreshing that she does this. Side note: on Sunday she discovered the cadillac of laundromats in Victoria by asking the woman at the customer care center in H-E-B what place she recommended.

Once we entered the mall, we realized we had not mentally prepared ourselves for tax-free weekend. Just passing by the food court may have been one of the most traumatic experiences of my life. There were children, preteens, pregnant woman and obese people everywhere. If I had a penny for every time I saw a teenager wearing a shirt with the words “swag” or “yolo” on it I could hire someone to burn down the factories where those shirts are made.

After the mall, we wandered around downtown. Downtown Corpus is actually pretty neat looking if you ignore all the closed store fronts and the faint smell of fish.

Louie is always talking about Caro’s “hipster nonesense.” He is the poster child for the Chicano hipster.

The day ended with the three of us spending $180 on sushi and specialty cocktails. I ate and drank things I couldn’t pronounce, judged people, talked about my feelings and my friends talked about theirs.

Why isn’t there a place like this in Victoria?

Because people wouldn’t know what to do with it. Look at us, we can’t control ourselves.

Can I live here?

Then Caro gets all Caro and says, “I want to move to Paris. I want a cat named Bernard.” #shitcarosays

The ride back was wonderful. Caro and I bonded over random tejano music. We listened to Girl in a Coma, they’re an indie band from San Antonio that does covers of Mexican pop songs. We passed through a bridge illuminated with trippy lights and rolled down the window to take photos, marveling like children do at bubbles.

I poked my feet out the window. I always find it gross when I see people do this but this evening I understood.