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I’ve been a terrible blogger! And I apologize! Because I love talking to you guys (and about myself, let’s be real) and miss it immensely! (I also just miss BLOGS so much. I love EVERY POST I see from Rae and Kimmie and the few other people I follow who still get out there and share about their lives! DAMN THE MAN, SAVE THE BLOG!)
Anyway, Crystal and I get married in TWENTY-THREE DAYS which means that we leave to make the drive to Vegas in just EIGHTEEN DAYS so I’ve been basically losing my mind once every hour because I am very ready to be MARRIED, but I am not ready to have a WEDDING even though I am super amped and L-I-V-E to host parties tbh. I guess when you get married you’re supposed to like, pay attention to your partner and be in love and stuff and probably not perform and try to make everyone ELSE love you the whole time? What’s the point, man?
Also! My sister HAD A BABY and it turns out falling in bananas auntie-love with your SUPER ADORABLE NEPHEW can be really time-consuming. Who knew?
So aside from wedding planning and trying to be a Serious Adult about skincare so that I can look passably attractive in my wedding photos* and taking lots and lots of aquacise classes because they are my FAVORITE THING I’ve done this year, I’ve been reading a lot and traveling a bit and getting tattooed and watching documentaries because I’ve officially become an old person and it’s WONDERFUL. I’ve had ALL clear biopsies since my diagnosis in February of last year (which rules!) and I’ve bought a bunch of jeans (some of them in an actual brick-and-mortar STORE like a PERSON) and a giant new cellphone that’s almost obnoxious enough to be embarrassing and also lots of make-up and I have SO MANY favorites to catch-up on with you it’s probably embarrassing.
I’ll leave you with a short list!
RIGHT NOW:
Reading: Falling Into Place by Amy Zhang & Vengeance Road by Erin Bowman & A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. (Let’s be friends on GoodReads!)
Hearing: Spotify because I’m still riding out my 99ยข three month trial period & lots and lots of our wedding music (No DJ! Curating my own pre and post ceremony playlists! Terror!) & The Weeknd because I am alive in 2015 like the rest of you.
Seeing: Several of Kimmie’s documentary recommendations including Iris and 20 Feet from Stardom & Grav3yardgirl on Youtube & iZombie.
What have YOU guys been up to?! I miss you!
*: If you do any eyebrow grooming, do you find that that you have one good and one bad eyebrow? My left eyebrow is so good, but my right’s a dumb jerk. What’s that about?
I am missing Disneyland today.*
Well, to be fair, I am never not missing Disneyland, but today is wielding a particularly powerful ache for it around my ribs. Sort of haunting and cold and sad.
 
This is partially because I spent a couple of hours last night reading posts about Disney projects that never came to fruition in their original forms — Port Disney, WESTCOT Center, Disney’s America, and The SS Disney — and partially because I am just a person who is subject to flights of whimsy, nostalgia, and misery.
» more: an overlong ode to disneyland
On the eve of the momentous day that marks exactly one year since we arrived in North Dakota, let me explain you a thing, friends.
North Dakota is very small.
 
Physically, this isn’t true. It’s 19th in the country with almost 71,000 square miles. That’s, on a technical level, like, pretty big. I mean, it’s not Alaska or anything, but it’s big. But population wise? It’s a whole other story.
Okay, so this involved a lot of convoluted math and ratios that I’m not TOTALLY sure I didn’t absolutely screw up, but I did it a couple times and I feel pretty solid about the whole deal?* Regardless of its actual accuracy, I think it’s an accurate representation of how genuinely tiny this place is. And it doesn’t even really capture it because even though there are 16,000 people here† there aren’t more people nearby. There are almost 50,000 people in my hometown, but the adjacent suburbs have even larger populations — like 50,000 and 100,000 and 149,000 — and then eventually just turn into Los Angeles. Here, we have to drive two hours to reach a city with a greater population than ours and that’s a whopping 40,000 residents. Minot is the fourth largest city in North Dakota.
  
Most of the space between what passes as a city here looks a lot like this:
 
Hell, even the area just beyond our neighborhood¤ starts to look like that.
Anyway, what this means is that North Dakota is devoid of things to do. I recognize, accept, and openly admit that I am spoiled to here and back for activities. I grew up in LA; I spent 2009-2012 going to Disneyland at least twice a month; I grew up a half a mile from the largest movie theater in Los Angeles County. I did not want for things to do. We drive those two hours to Minot to go to the movies here‡ and if we’re not seeing something opening week, we’re seeing it in a dumpy closet theater from hell.
There’s nowhere to eat here. Nowhere particularly good at least and there is very, very little variety. There’re steak places and “bar and grill” places, a good fast-ish non-chain burger place, and one decent Chinese place (What up, Rice and Spice!) but even after a year of being here, most of the food options feel like a punishment. And it’s all crazy expensive. Everything is here. The cost of living is bananas and the grocery stores’ idea of fresh chicken is defrosted chicken. It blows. A lot.
But even without Disneyland and without Thai food (It’s been more than a year since I had Thai food. Or good Mexican. Or decent pizza.) and with little to do here but dick around on the internet and look at clouds. day to day life seems not so bad.
 
 
People make do with very little all over the world all the time. And I don’t say that in a “Oh perspective will fix things” kind of way but in a “Humans are amazing” way. And they do more than just make do, they live full, happy lives. And maybe I’m not happy here and can’t wait to get back to California, but I’m okay and for now, okay is, well, it’s okay.
*: The first two times I did it, I did not account for the translation to a square, so I at least feel okay about this even though I had to do it four more times after I did start accounting for the square. Sorry if it’s wrong. Sorry I’m not sorrier. Sorry I am terrible at math. Sorry it’s what kept me from going into astronomy. Sorry you have to tolerate my second choice.#
#: Writing.
†: This is in theory actually closer to 25,000 currently because of the oil boom, but there are no current, accurate figures on the internet as far as I can tell.
¤: When we tell people where we live — a new development on top of what is considered a “hill” here which is actually, like, a twenty foot rise in elevation just outside of the city limits — they often go, “Oh, you live in The Hills” as though it’s Hills, Beverly or some shit. 9021NODAK.
‡: Williston does, very technically, have a theater. Unfortunately it has not been updated in some time and thus has no moveable armrests. I am not going to jam my fat ass into a seat and be miserable for two hours of the only experience I treat as reverently as faithful people treat church. I’d rather drive two hours. Plus there’s a Target there.
Epping, North Dakota is a really, really small town 20 miles north east of where we are here in Williston. It was founded in 1905 along the Great Northern Railway.
 When I say “small town,” I really, really mean small. Like, unbelievably small. Small like it has a total area of 0.38 square miles. Small like it had a population of exactly 100 in the 2010 census. Small like for the entire twenty minutes we were driving around the whopping three blocks that make up the city, we saw one other human being.
 The Buffalo Trails Museum was closed just like every other business we saw. They’d just had their annual Buffalo Trail Day event which includes a pancake dance and church services and an ice cream social. We figure they must have been recovering.
 There isn’t much here except a grain elevator and oil storage. This is where most of the oil pumped in and around Williston goes to meet the train and head for processing because despite the massive amount of oil coming out of the Bakken formation, it’s all got to be shipped to refineries elsewhere.
 
People in North Dakota are very serious about their Scandinavian heritage. I didn’t know the US was so into their viking-ass history until I got here. Seriously. Wait ’til you see the pictures of Minot.
  Epping is weird as hell. The weekend we were there it looked abandoned. It didn’t just look like, you know, people were inside or out of town, it looked like the remains of a city after war.
Western North Dakota is really just like that though, a series of wheat and oil fields dotted with places like Epping, places like Zahl, places like Van Hook. It’s hard to believe there’s somewhere in the United States today with so few humans in it.
North Dakota is the third least populous state in the US and the fourth least in population density. There are more populated areas, even areas that are growing so rapidly that there aren’t enough homes — I know, I live in one — but there are less than ten people for every square mile of North Dakota territory. And trust me, when you live here — even in a place that seems crammed with people — you know it.
Okay, so here’s an announcement:
The girlfriend and I are moving to North Dakota in three weeks.
I’ve already posted about my parents moving there and now, for a variety of reasons that we have spent the last few months avoiding/denying/trying to fix, we to are North Buttkota bound.
We both have really mixed feelings, a large portion of which are borne of the fact that we’re moving in less than three weeks, basically. Have you ever tried to pack up your whole life on three weeks’ notice? It’s dumb. It’s so dumb. I don’t know what happened in our decision making process — we’ve been mulling this over for months basically — or if we thought my parents would change the schedule — they’re coming home to move their stuff and we’re going with them — when we decided to move or if it’s just because we were in so much denial and the final decision just came so FAST. I don’t know. But three weeks! And packing sucks so much. OH MY GOD. Packing sucks.
We’ve packed six boxes so far and they’re only books and movies and only ONE SHELF of books at that. THERE ARE TWO MORE FULL BOOKSHELVES that have to be packed. DO YOU KNOW HOW HEAVY BOOKS ARE?! WHY DO WE OWN SO MANY BOOKS?! And for the first time in my life — I’ve only moved three times before and two of those were to college and the other was to a furnished apartment for an internship last year RIGHT AT THIS SAME TIME LOOK AT THAT — I have to move FURNITURE. How does that even work?! FURNITURE! Oh god.
Anyway, I’ve been not-typing this post for the last three hours, instead dicking around on Tumblr and generally doing nothing of any use to anyone because I can’t sleep normal hours anymore, so don’t even talk to me about accomplishing anything. And also because what do I say?! I’m moving from the best place in the world — PERSONALLY, god don’t start a fight with me about how wherever you are is better, DON’T DO THAT TO ME — to the middle of nowhere! I don’t have anything more eloquent to say about it.
It’s an ~adventure~ and a chance for us to probably pay off some debt and save some money and live pretty comfortably (we get a whole giant finished basement to ourselves, I mean, that’s kind of okay even if I’m 27 and moving 1500 miles to literally live in my parents’ basement) and see some new places and try a new thing. A really new thing! Crystal and I are nothing if not creatures of habit, so, you know, trying something new is good. And it’s TEMPORARY. A year. Or two. Then back home to California where we belong.
But it still means I have to leave my beautiful, wonderful friends and family. Which is the hard part that I’m not ready to dwell on yet. So instead, I am going to focus on the fact that I have to leave all this:
And also this aka my favorite place on this entire planet:
I’m legitimately more upset about leaving Disneyland than anything else. My family and friends can continue to communicate with me and share wonderful, fulfilling relationships and shit at a distance. Me and Disneyland can’t exactly keep up our serious relationship as an LDR. Check in on me about a month into my North Dakota residency and you will find me listening to the Main Street music loop and staring at the HoJo Mattercam and shaking and crying on the floor of my new basement home.
Plus I’m going to have to keep paying my $40 a month through NEXT APRIL for my pass even though I’m not here to use it. >:(
And don’t even get me started on what a disaster it’s going to be when it SNOWS.
But I guess I have this to look forward to?
 
And I guess my parents or whatever. Plus the dogs are totally ready to go. (The cats are, of course, another story. And that’s who Crystal and I are in charge of. Of course.)
So wish me luck! I make no promises about blogging for the next three weeks, but I may very well panic-procrastinate a million and nine posts between now and our departure time. And I’m going to make Crystal make me blog our trip, if not here than at least on Tumblr because I had all these great productive plans for last summer and I didn’t follow through on any of them and that sucked. But, I’m stronger than her, so. No promises on that one either.
Oh yeah, two unrelated final points:
I dyed my hair! Like a long time ago. Yay.
And:
 A PSA, free of charge, from me to you: ALWAYS WEAR SUNSCREEN NO MATTER HOW EXCITED YOU ARE ABOUT GETTING INVITED TO SWIM. ALWAYS. SPF 1,000,000. SUNSCREEN. I haven’t been burned this bad since I was a TWEEN.
Also, sunglass tan lines. >B(
I guess… no pool-related-sunburns are a North Dakota bonus?
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disclaimery
The products I talk about and link are generally purchased by me or my partner. The recommendations are 100% genuine and all opinions are honest. You should never feel pressured to make purchases through any of my affiliate links, but it is always appreciated greatly. If I ever review, recommend, or write about something given to me or in some way paid for by a company, I promise you'll know.
Also, it should go without saying that I in no way represent or speak on behalf of any company I currently work for, have worked for in the past, or may work for in the future. My terrible opinions and poop jokes are mine and mine alone.
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