Last week was my birthday, and all throughout the week awesome things kept happening. My dad had this awesome barbecue for me and my grandma, whose birthday is the day after mine. He made tons of delicious steak and ribs and swordfish and my new step-mother made me a pineapple upside down cake with cherries in it. My boo, T, spoiled me all week, taking me to movies and out to eat, and even to the Body Shop where I got creams and potions and lotions and things to make me feel pretty.

On Thursday we went to the California Academy of Sciences. You get in free if it’s within 7 days of your birthday, and let me tell you there are a lot of birthdays in February. Tons of people were getting in free. It was a steal too, since regular admission is $25. Since it was my birthday, and we went during nightlife, which is only $12, we made out. Also, they enter you into a birthday raffle that gets you two free drinks and tickets to the planetarium.

When we got there, I went directly to the planetarium because I knew the tickets went quickly. We caught the first show of the night, which was fraught with technical difficulties and had to end early, but it was still awesome to see. Just being in the planetarium made me dizzy. The huge curved ceiling made you feel like you were no where. It felt like what I’d imagine being in the middle of the ocean on a cloudless day feels like. You don’t know where anything ends or begins.

After the show we went to the Rainforest, which is awesome and full of little creatures and butterflies. Halfway through it, there was an announcement that I’d won the birthday raffle! It was so wild, and we were having such a good time, it felt like the gods were spoiling me or something. We went to claim our prize and then spent the evening sipping martinis in the atrium before getting to go to the planetarium again and seeing the whole magnificent show in completion, no interruptions.

This feeling comes every so often, though I haven’t had it in a while. When I was in college there was one booth in the dining hall. It was in a little alcove made of stained class. It was my favorite place to sit. One fall semester I’d come to a meal and every time it was free. For weeks, every time I entered the dining hall I could sit at my favorite place. This might not sound like a big deal to you, but it made me feel like I was magic. Like I had this amazing streak of something that wasn’t even luck. It was like the sun was shining on me while it rained all around. T calls it “universal flow”. If you can learn to flowwith the universe, the universe will provide you with everything you seek and everything you need.

As it starts to become spring, I’m trying to get into the flow more and more. I am telling the Little Haters in my head to shut up their chattering. I’m replacing the negative voices with little encouragements. I’m trying to will myself into being strong, capable, confident, and outgoing, instead of giving into the part of me that wants to hide in my bed and never talk to anyone.

I’m trying to take care of myself. Stop doubting or being impatient or injuring myself and start being organized and getting on track. I have a long way to go, but every time I feel that I’m in the flow, it gets easier. It makes me feel like good things will happen, and that all I have to do is float along and recognize it.

It’s a good way to start a new year of being me. I don’t know what I thought I’d be like at 25, but now that I’m here, I’m doing my best to make it better every day.

My boo and I went out last night. We drove through dark residential neighborhoods, looking into the lit windows of people’s houses. We drank tall boys on the sidewalk, listening to hipsters name drop and out-cool each other. We drank coffee at our favorite cafe, listening to a lady sing and a man strum his guitar. We listened to Journey in the car and when we got home we watched a movie about an epidemic wiping out 90% of the population of Earth.

I love my boo and I love the apocalypse.

A few months before I met him I was writing a column for  Sustainable Style. I had been watching all these documentaries about peak oil and energy and 2012 Mayan Calendar end of times junk. Sometimes I like to fantasize about the apocalypse. Usually I skip the bad stuff and end up somewhere safe with everyone I love. We build shanties and cabins and grow gardens and live this amazing communal-hippie anarchist-back-to-the-land existence where it’s always spring and everything is wonderful. When I think about all this I look forward to is as a time where I will be released from the confines of having to actually work for money and instead I can just build and grow things and do that whole mutual aid thing, which I’m totally into.

Then I met my boo, T. When he asked me out I invited him to this potluck series I was doing. Every month I would find 6 strangers and invite them to a potluck at my house. I’d sit in the kitchen, serve their courses one by one, and record the conversation they had. So our first date was really me listening to him relate to 5 other complete strangers about life, existence, humanity, philosophy, and experience. At this point, T was a stranger to me. He worked across the street from my shop, and whenever I saw him I got totally drunk by his charisma. Not that he really did anything special, but to me being in his presence was like being next to a pop star I was really into. Like Billy Corgan when I was 13.

In the kitchen, I heard him talk about jumping out of planes, traveling the world, talking to shamans. He whistled the sound of a hawk. He spoke of seeing visions while sick with ameobic dysentary. He talked about the philosophy of the Tao and traded lessons he’s learned about society and human nature with those around the table. It wasn’t just him, everyone at the table had their own piece to add to this night. At the end of the evening a pipe was brought out, all the wine was drunk, and people sat on the stoop smoking and literally singing with each other. It was the best potluck of the summer.

He stood out. We moved in together after a month. It was magic. He would bring me wild flowers and we would sit on the porch for hours looking at the stars and talking about the dragon that appeared every night in the bush across the street, under the streetlamp. He told me about all the different lives he has had, all the things he’s learned and seen and suffered. He even helped me build a shanty in the backyard one Sunday, and we spent the summer living in the backyard, watching movies, eating, sleeping, listening to music. When we didn’t have a barbecue, he made one using a pitchfork, a few bricks, and the rack from the oven. When we got locked into a park all night, he built a big fire and we spent the night talking and watching the trains go by. And when it came time to move, he spent the day cleaning the gutters, washing all the windows, and loaded the truck down the windy staircase all by himself.

And in the back of my mind, I knew. He was the person I wanted with me when the shit hit the fan.

Right now, we live in the city, struggling to keep a roof over our heads and food in our mouths. We spend days in front of our computers, learning, stressing, dealing with clients, and reading. But I dream of the day when the population is wiped out and we are stuck on our own, surviving on what we can do with our two hands.We will be the ones to build a safe haven for those we love. We’ll be really buff from chopping wood and gathering wildflowers and swimming in creeks. We will have an amazing hand built house, delicious hand-grown and gathered food, and all our friends will finally be in bucolic harmony.

But even if that day never comes when the apocalypse strikes, there is still the catastrophe of everyday to manage. And it’s so nice to know that no matter how little or big it is, he is always there, making it a little easier.

I’ve been reading The Gift: How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World by Lewis Hyde (Download it free by joining Canongate Publishing’s website). It has got me thinking about gift giving a lot, especially with the Holidays and everything. I’m super broke and was brainstorming gift options for my peeps. There is so much pressure to go and buy shit for all the people you love. It doesn’t matter if they have everything they could ever want, somehow the gift seems to become a symbol for how much you care about or love a person. The more expensive and thoughtful, the more you love them. But even if people spend all the money they can and think really hard about it, how many gifts in your life do you actually treasure and keep forever? How many become the sentimental tokens that sincerely emanate the givers love to you for all eternity? Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate all the gifts I have received over the years, but how many of them have grown to symbolize the love my family and friends have for me, the love we have for each other?

I think we’re going about this all wrong. It’s like we have Christmas because we need something to bribe us into spending time with our families. But what if instead of stressing out about the right gift or giftcard, we did something that was meant to bring us closer together?

I’m not sure what this could be. Maybe it’s making up traditions, like playing charades after dinner, or going for a walk (if the weather’s not to bad). Maybe it’s singing karaoke, or something corny like sharing a memory of holidays past. Maybe everyone can plant a seed together, take their charge home and watch it grow all year.

Whatever it is, I’m craving some continuity in these holiday gatherings. I want to be connected to all those people who have drifted in or out of this celebration over the years. I want to know what my ancestors did for Christmas Eve. I want to look forward to the one thing or activity that will make us all realize, together, that we are awesome and lovely as a unit.

I think we need to beat on some drums and call our ancestors to the table. I think we need to make some myths, break out the headdresses, find some traditional colors to wear. Let’s make some hand signs, lets make a family crest and all get tattoos of it. Let’s give each other all one necklace and pass it around every month. I want singing and dancing and giving back to this great earth mother. I want to wail for the sadness and dance for the happiness of last year and tomorrow. I want to tell the tale of how our people came to be here and now. I want to be thankful for us. For the tribe we have formed. For the masses we have gathered together. For those we have lost and those we have found.

Because it’s this togetherness, this place, this time, these people, this love that is the best gift. And if we’re all staring at our iPods or shaking the boxes under the tree, I’m afraid we’ll miss it.

T hadn’t been home to see his mother in 6 years. Ridiculous, I know. My mom freaks out when she doesn’t see me for two weeks (it’s good I like her). Not having been to Texas for that long, he not only hasn’t had the opportunity to see his kin, but it has been 6 years since the holy grail of food items (according to him of course) has graced his lips. Really, for him, he was going to Texas to eat tamales. Oh, and see his mother.

In preparation, she ordered 4 dozen. On the way home from the airport, we stopped in at the famed Donnelly’s to pick them up and get some immediate gratification for T. These tamales are equivalent to mother’s milk for T. He’s been eating them since he was 6 months old when someone decided to break off some masa and feed him a little piece. Since I’ve met him, he hasn’t been able to shut up about them. Every year my family makes tamales from scratch. We stand around all day assembling them, and have a feast at the end of the night. We like to make them pretty big and meaty. His were always skinny and round, and I totally made fun of him for it. But that’s the way they make them at Donnelly’s, and for him, it’s the only way.

I have to say I thought that was basically going to be the exciting food high point of the trip. Little did I know that this was to be the start of a complete tour of T’s hometown’s finest dining experiences, and the start of a week full of bloated bellies, siesta sleepiness, doggy bags, and some very stretchy pants.

I kind of wish we had one of these. First of all, there’s a store in the front full of old time candy and toys and hand lotion and clothes and mini-carousels that play christmas music and Jerry Lewis DVDs and Dolly Parton CDs and jars of things they serve in the restaurant like fried apples, which are like apple pie filling without the crust part. The front porch is full of “military rockers” that you can sit on and buy, and there’s a sign in the foyer that proclaim’s Cracker Barrell’s (or as T likes to call it, Honky Bucket) dedication to providing equal opportunity good food and good service regardless of race, creed, age, affiliation, gender, etc.

This good food and good service is no small gift. I mean that literally. For around $7.50 I got a huge chicken fried steak with my choice of three sides (out of like, 12 options. I got fried okra, mashed potatoes, and fried apples), biscuits, iced tea, corn bread, and two kinds of gravy. It all barely fit on the table or in my stomach, and I definitely had the extreme urge to take a nap afterwards.

At the Olive Garden we eat salad and breadsticks before the main meal comes, and tip the waiter well for extra salad and breadsticks to take home. After that it all kind of becomes a food coma induced blur. Margarita brain freezes, velveeta/chili dip, popcorn shrimp with fries, iced mochas from McDonalds. T’s mom’s house alone is stocked with Cracker Barrel pies (pecan chocolate chip and apple strudel), toaster strudel, frozen pizzas, chips, 6 different kinds of dips, 17 different kinds of soda pop, pour-over-butter microwave popcorn, and dishes full of snickers, peanut butter cups, and kisses, not to mention all the leftovers we couldn’t find room for when out to eat. We watch blue ray movies on the 55 inch LED flatscreen that makes it look like you can reach out and touch Sandra Bullock.

Today we got up early to play a couple games of Skip-Bo with three generations of T’s family and work up an appetite for a Texas staple: barbeque. We eat dinner salads while they cook us arguably the most delicious steaks I have ever had. Juicy, tender, salty ribeye steaks you can cut with a butter knife. They come with a baked potato that’s practically the size of my head, stuffed with five different toppings. I have never had a baked potato like this. I was always happy with a little butter, salt and pepper, but here the toppings transform the potato into something else completely. Like crack, only worse for you. Cheese, sour cream, green onions, butter, bacon bits. T’s aunt ordered more “stuffin’s” to make sure we have enough for the bottom half of the potato. Seriously, these people have taught me a whole new revolutionary kind of eating. This is serious.

T, who has been skinny since a nasty bout with amoebic dysentery a few years ago, has been happy to report his steady weight gain over our stay. He doesn’t know what he started at, but he’s gained two pounds in the last day. I try to avoid finding a numeric value to assign to my heavenly indulgences of the past week, but I will say that I started trying on jeans at Old Navy the other day and decided halfway through my stack that it would be better to stick with a couple pairs of stretchy pants. I can already eat more than I could when I got here. I think my stomach is actually expanding to accommodate the visit, which is rather nice of it, I think.

When I get home, I do feel like I’ll have a keen interest in eating wedges of iceburg lettuce and taking up some kind of regular aerobic activity. The good news is that I figured out that the best way to work out is to get T to walk around me in a circle while I kick his ass repeatedly. He’s tall, so it’s almost like kickboxing!