Perspectives of Portland: M's Brush With Death

Portland: 8/28/09:

This was to be my first full day in Portland with L, C, and CD and I was excited for its potential. There was talk of going to the beach, a farm for peach-picking, Tillamook dairy for ice cream eating and watching the magic that is the creation of cheese, and finally a home-cooked delicious dinner ending with cobbler made from the fresh-picked peaches. Lot’s of activity, lot’s of fun. Unfortunately I should have known things could never be so easy, as my body tried to warn me when I woke up with a swelling itchy lip. To most this might seem like a run-of-the-mill allergy but I knew better: BAD OMEN.

Anyways after L roused CD out of his bat cave we got all ready to go and left in high spirits. A few errands later with Spoon playing in the car as the soundtrack to our fun times, we were off with CD driving, me in the passenger seat, and C and L in the back. Everyone happy happy as we started off to the farm….and then bam, a truck runs a red-light and t-bones into MY door as we are about to enter the freeway. Now my reaction time in a panic situation is slightly slower than a paraplegic so the fact that I had any foresight to move my face away from my window is amazing to me, even if it was only about a 10 degree move. Either way through some kind of miracle, possibly due to the accident happening in front of a church, no one was hurt. Well I did have tiny glass shards everywhere which would cause me to bleed tiny amounts on my hands and arms, but considering the guys grill was stuck to my door and my safety glass window popped all over me I considered it a no-injury accident. As L pointed out, the real tragedy was that C’s green tea latte spilled all over her pants, but that was the extent of the human toll.

Yep, this one picture of CD's sad looking car can tell a lot of stories...

The worst/best part of this situation was the fact that the Benadryl I had previously taken was now fully kicking in. While my lip was no longer swollen, I felt like I had gotten high after drinking buckets of coffee so basically I was completely out of it with a racing heartbeat, shaky hands, and over-active sweat glands. I think C thought I was in shock when she said “Are you ok? You look sad..” but I’m pretty sure it was the anti-histamine that created that appearance. Anyways a lot of other stuff happened with getting all of this taken care of and insurance stuff and blah blah blah but it was hard for me to hold a thought in my head for more than a minute let alone take in everything that was happening. Clearly Benadryl fucks with me beyond all reason. I know I spoke a fair amount and interacted with other people but it was all kind of a haze. In retrospect this probably made me the best person to come face-to-face with almost death in the passenger seat because I was completely out of it. I mostly felt like I was either dreaming or swimming through the air every time I moved, leaving the only time I felt any panic was when I had to cross the street to go air-swimming to a bathroom.

M's seat with all that crumbled safety glass

CD's seat with bits of glass that had flown to his seat. And RIP Starbucks drinks.

I know that CD’s dad came and very kindly drove us around and, as L pointed out, very charmingly spoke to us in a Scottish accent but I was still feeling loopy so my memory of all of this is kind of spotty. By the time I started to feel normal again we were out in Banks (?), the setting of CD’s childhood, and we were heading off in his parent’s car to go on with our day. I was thrilled with this development because for a while there I think we were all unsure as to whether everyone, mostly CD, was up to driving around and playing after the accident but at some point in my haze we had worked this out. Awesome.

The rest of the day went great: A farm stop where we were still spotted as city folk despite mine and CD’s attempts to blend in with plaid shirts; A Tillamook stop where we ate delicious ice cream and very contentedly watched cheese being cut and packaged for over 45 minutes while discussing which job we thought would be the best (I hold that weighing the blocks was where it’s at, but I was intrigued by the woman who’s job on first impression looked like she was only there to gently caress each block after it was packaged); An awesome drive to the beach where we played a surprisingly fun game taught to us by CD called connection in which C rocked; An amazing beach trip where we ran around in freezing cold water up to our ankles and then fearfully avoided a multitude of some dead and some half-living jellyfish; An even more amazing drive back where L taught us all that while she believes in magic, she also believes in cost-efficiency and pragmatism (i.e, while she will have a shimmering castle staffed by elves, their jobs will be limited so they aren’t paid as much (?), and she will not furnish all the rooms because that would be wasteful), and we saw tons of amazingly, beautiful, mist-covered forest that may or may not have reminded L and I of scenes from a shameful movie *cough* Twilight*cough* and may or may not have inspired us to pull over the car to photograph a particularly painful scene to watch and recreate.

Santa Cruz besties

So at this point we were all completely exhausted and having earlier realized we would be in no shape to make dinner that evening we had already eaten. After deciding the next day would go smoother if we purchased dinner ingredients beforehand, we drearily trudged through Fred Meyers collecting what we could for the fabulous dinner and cobbler that we would make the next day. After FINALLY making it home, L caught a second wind and decided that we would indeed make the “Fuck Yeah Fresh Peach Cobbler” right then and there, and I think we all ended up pitching in. What this made me realize is that L, C, CD, and myself clearly share what I like to call a Fatship. We were physically and emotionally exhausted, probably a hair away from all snapping at each other like bitches, and still the thought of a warm, sweet, gooey cobbler, brought us back together. Beautiful. I’ll let someone else describe the erotic throat rubs that the day ended on because this is too long as it is.