This morning I woke up, took a deep breath, ignored the hangover, loaded up the Hooter and hit the open road.

The drive up to the Bay Area was much nicer than I expected. I took the 5 rather than the 101, because it is purportedly shorter. The 101 hugs the coastline, and it's a stunning drive. I expected the 5 to be ugly and industrial, I suppose, like the 5 between Los Angeles and San Diego.  Well, I was pleasantly surprised.

The 5 runs through central California, which basically consists of undulating hills and verdant flatlands. I passed a humungous cattle ranch--really, I've never seen so many cows--and the lovely San Luis reservoir. I saw a whole bunch of farmland: olive trees, and stalks of corn, and strawberry fields. (I'm making this up. I saw farmland, sure, but I couldn't tell a grape tree from a peanut bush. I have no idea what they actually were.)

Places to stop are few and far between, and each contains a McDonalds and a gas station, amusingly enough. It's a drive I won't mind making frequently. Best of all, there was almost no traffic. There were plenty of tractor-trailers toodling along in the slow lane, but for the most part, I could speed along at 80 and never have to slow down. I listened to Les Miserables, and my old Tommy Page and New Kids tapes.  Here's what I wrote:

It's impossible-- physically impossible-- to be depressed when you're listening to a tape full of Disney songs. "Chim Chimminee" and "Zip-a-dee-doo-dah" and "In the Tiki Room"... and now I'm writing in my Disco Girl notepad, a gift from Jen, and starting to feel... if not hopeful for the future, at least INTERESTED in it. 

And I'll take "interested" at this point.

So, I followed the directions and drove to the motel. It's in an adorable part of Fremont, with a Jamba Juice right on the corner. The town is loaded up with huge chain stores, which made me feel right at home. I started thinking it might not be so bad. And then I walked in the door. Home, sweet... ugh.

My mother, bless her heart, did her best to make things home-like, mainly by writing "Welcome, Mo!" on the mirror in pink lipstick. She also affixed a picture of me and Abby to the same mirror. She loaded up the mini fridge with Diet Coke and apple juice, and left an orange tootsie roll on the bedside table. 

This should tell you everything you need to know about my mother.

Thanks to mom, a bright purple bathmat covers the brown linoleum, which is stained (as promised) with white paint. But honestly, there's only so much one woman can do, and I was simultaneously touched by my mother's efforts and revolted by the room itself. 

The walls are flecked with black spots of god-knows-what, and giant stains of questionable origin. The paint is peeling right off the walls. The TV set is probably 30 years old, and has no remote control. The shower has no water pressure. The towels are the size of kleenexes (kleenices?), and the soap has the shape and thickness of a credit-card. The décor is in the "ugly, brown" motif. The shower is paneled in this hideous brown color. And the less said about the toilet, the better. This place has maids?

The whole place is like something out of a porno. A cheap porno. A "we can't afford a room at the heart shaped bed motel" porno. It's an atrocity of epic proportions. It's the most squalid, horrifying place I've ever had to stay.

And it costs $300 a week.

I decided to spend as little time in the motel as humanly possible. I went and got a Subway, and drove down to an internet café I found, to scribble a quick letter to the list. The letter was, unfortunately, eaten by hotmail.  However, I did get some phone numbers of apartments to see, and made several appointments on the spot. 

I then went to go see the apartment of a guy named "George" and I should have known better. I got kind of a creepy vibe from him over the phone, but I thought maybe that was because I had seen The Cell again the night before. So I headed over there and saw the place. 

The apartment was nice, but George was, indeed, creepy. He kept staring at my tits. (As I said to the notify list, I would call them breasts, but the way he was looking at them, they were definitely tits.) I also saw his porn collection and the Sleeping Beauty books on his bookshelf. I decided to extricate myself from the situation graciously, so perhaps he wouldn't kill me.

The next day, George called me and said he had rented the place to someone else. "But you should call me," he said, "so we can be friends."

Shudder. Vomit.  Blech.

I headed back to the motel and watched TV, and fell asleep, in a big lonely bed. I didn't cry too much.  Hardly at all, really. 

The next day was registration. I walked to the BART station (my mother said "a few blocks" but it was actually a mile and a half), and then took a BART ride over to my school. The neighborhood is kind of scary and overwhelming, but I braved it. After all, I'm not some country girl from North Dakota or something. 

And, like I mentioned in my previous entry, this marked the real turning point. I met Joey, Deb and Laurie, and I registered for my classes. This is my schedule:

Monday, 3:00-6:00, Keats: This Living Hand.
Tuesday, 3:00-6:00, Experiments in Poetic Form.
Wednesday, 3:00-6:00, Revolting Romantics.
Friday, 10:00-1:00, Poems in Sequence.

I'm looking forward to them. The first one is, obviously, an in-depth study of Keats. The second one allows us to experiment with forms like the ghazal or the pantoum (or, dare I say it, the rengu). The third is about romanticism, and it's tied in to Keats somehow, I think. And the final class is a writing class, where we study sequences of poems by several authors, and create our own sequence.

You'll be hearing a lot more about these classes, I'm sure. Interestingly, my Monday class actually takes place at the instructor's house in Berkeley. So, depending on where I live, that might save me a lot of problems. 

I'm looking forward to my classes. I can't wait to buy books and school supplies and everything, either. This is a good thing.

That night, I went to meet Leah and Jane, a married lesbian couple who live in Richmond. This is the place that I really, really want to live. They have a two year old son, and a dog, and a cat. They have a hyphenated last name, and they inseminated again last week, so Leah might be pregnant. How wonderful!

Leah is an extremely talented photographer, with a darkroom downstairs. My room would have its own entrance, and a simply charming bathroom. I can't talk to much about this place, because it's so perfect, I don't want to jinx it. This is the place I have my fingers crossed about.

I also went to check out another potential living situation on Wednesday. Unfortunately, it's a house in San Jose. But the room is amazing, with these high ceilings, and the family is wonderful, too.  I'm not going to tip my hand on this one quite yet by saying any more. 

The problem with the first living situation is that I won't be able to move in until October, or possibly the end of September. This means three weeks in the motel. 

The problem with the second one is that it's a long commute. An hour and 20 minutes on the Cal Train, and then an as-yet-undetermined venture on the bus/on foot. I don't know the neighborhood, either, and it's possible I'd have to walk late at night. 

However, whichever way it pans out, I know I'm going to be happy. Each of them has a long list of good points. And despite the drawbacks of a long commute, it's a huge relief.  And really, the commute is only three days a week. And what else do I have to do with my time? 

It could be far, far worse. 

I had an appointment on Wednesday to check out one more place. Of course, I wanted to cover all my bases.

I met Darlene, who is all wrong for me. Her apartment is four flights up, which sucks ass. I do not fancy hiking up four flights of stairs on a regular basis. And her apartment has a nice view, but that's about all. It's decorated in ugly earth tones, for one thing. When I complimented them (being in Hypocritical Suck-Up Mode and all) she showed me her professional color palette, which she uses as her interior design and wardrobe bible. Like I give a rat's ass about Darlene's professional color palette.

Then she talked about how she likes to get up at 7 in the morning, and am I a morning person? (Answer: no way in hell.) Then she wanted to know if I'd be willing to "trade PG&E for cooking". She wanted to trade off cooking and eat together every night. For one thing, I don't cook. For another, I definitely did not want to spend any time communicating with her in any way that was not strictly necessary. This is largely because Darlene has the unfortunate and annoying habit of...

...pausing for no reason in the middle of sentences. I should have figured this out earlier. When she was giving directions, I kept thinking that my cell phone was cutting out. But no, she just has to strain to fish the ends of sentences out of her brain. Is she stupid, or just mental? I guess we'll never know.

I have to wait a few days to hear about the lesbian house. (My car is a lesbian, I am going to be a lesbian... it's perfect.) It looks like I'm going to have to live out of a suitcase for a while. The only problem with this situation is Cassie. I have no idea how she's going to handle it, and I really hate to keep her in the motel. But I see no alternative. I must take her with me. Matt won't take care of her, my parents have a cat, and I can't leave her in my grandmother's house, alone. 

I have to try and organize my stuff into categories. "Take to the motel", "Sell", "Store at parents and move when I have a room", "Store at grandma's house indefinitely." It's a daunting job.

No wonder I haven't started yet.

And by the way, if you have never eaten fruit during sex, you should try it. During lovemaking, it is interesting to engage the sense of taste, which is usually an innocent bystander.