mel to the issa

Thursday, Mar. 27, 2008 | 11:53 PM

since this week is spring break, i emailed melissa on monday, asking if we could hang out. she replied on tuesday, asking me when i wanted to do it.

i was finding myself really really wanting benadryl and doxylamine that day, but i was out. i ran out much faster than i should have, so i couldn't ask my parents to buy me more. i'd have to go to the store on my own, while they're at work, and buy some myself. i was thinking about doing this the next day, on wednesday, so instead, i asked if we could hang out that day. i said i'd be ready around 3ish.

i had a really hard time waking up, and didn't even get myself out of bed until 3. i got ready as quick as i could, and called her around 3:45. she said that joel was sick, so we should go somewhere. when she arrived, we discussed where to go. she was thinking about movies, i was thinking about parks.

she headed toward mt. tabor park, which i guess i went to once when i was little, but don't remember. she stopped at a little theater, but minors weren't allowed there without a parent, and i don't think melissa could pass as my parent. so on we went to the park.

she wanted to drive to the top, but oddly, they don't allow you to do so on wednesday. haha, isn't kinda funny? so we walked to the top, along a muddy path through a wooded area. i loved it. i was glad it was wednesday. it was uphill, and i was out of breath in a matter of a minute, but i knew the exercise and fresh air and stuff was good for me. it reminded me of powell butte, which for a chunk of my life, got a daily visit out of me.

and oh my gosh, i just had a brilliant idea. we should totally go to powell butte sometime. i haven't been there in ages. that would be so awesome.

anyway... i don't think melissa was loving it as much as i. she was afraid of slipping in the mud.

as we reached more leveled ground, and a park area, it began to lightly rain. i told her that the rain didn't bother me, and we walked over to an area where i guess the volcano had erupted. it was a lava-rocked wall of blackness. then we walked along to a sort of a ledge, with trees bending over it. there was one that looked absolutely prefect for sitting on. i was thinking to myself that i'd really like to sit on that tree, and then melissa was like, "i want to sit on this tree."

she sat on the tree, and "butt shuffled" her way out onto the overhang. before i joined her, i said, "i should take a picture." so i took this picture of her sitting on a tree...

i then joined her, and we sat there for a while and talked. i talked about how tara and i used to play in trees, and she talked about pretending to make soup out of grass, and i told her that i thought the sidewalk looked like a face, and she thought about jumping off the tree but was afraid of ripping her pants... she also asked if i wanted a picture of me in the tree. i said no, and made the excuse that pictures of me suck.

i don't know. as much as they suck, i do like having pictures of me, but i guess smiling on command at melissa holding a camera would be too hard for me. it's kinda awkward. i can do it with my parents and tara, but i really prefer to take pictures of myself with the timer on the camera. it's easier to smile on command when someone's not staring at you through a camera. i would have liked to take a picture of both of us, using the timer, but i didn't see a good place to set my camera.

we sat in this spot until i said that i wanted to climb a tree, and that none of the trees there looked climbable. we walked off to look for climbable trees, but all the trees around there were the huge christmas tree like trees. they're always sappy, and hard to climb...especially when the lowest branch is like 50 feet up.

she wanted to swing, so we sat on the swings for a bit and talked some more. she invited me to her graduation, and to a choir concert.

she asked me if i wanted to keep looking for a tree, or walk back down. i said there would probably be a tree on the way down. i remembered seeing good trees on the way up. when we reached the path we'd walked up, though, she said wanted to take the road because she was afraid of slipping in the mud. so i agreed, and i never found a good tree... but that's ok, i'd have looked stupid anyway.

while sitting on the tree, she had talked about the hawthorne area street place thing, which i guess is more than just a street...

haha, look at this:

"Hawthorne Boulevard was named after Dr. J.C. Hawthorne, the cofounder of Oregon's first mental hospital. The road was originally named Asylum Avenue."

...anyway...

she offered the idea of going to this area with its shops and restaurants and things. i said i didn't wanna walk around the people with my hair as messy as it was, from the wind and stuff. so we went to her apartment, where i used her brush and she asked joel if he wanted to come with us. he wasn't feeling good enough though, so the two of us went out again and off to this area street place thing.

first we went into this bookstore, that i guess was in two sections, and the section we went into was kinda gift shopish. we walked around and looked at things and stuff.

i hesitated to agree to a restaurant, because restaurants are scary, but i was so very hungry, so i finally consented. we went into a place that has these cajunized tater tots that melissa likes. i was nervous at first, but we didn't have a bunch of tables around us where we sat, and i was in a "safer" place between melissa and the wall.

i know it's the most stupid irrational fear. it's not only at restaurants, of course. it's all places with lots of people. i don't know what there is to be afraid of, it's not like they're gonna jump on me and attack me... i mean, it could happen... but i'm not really afraid of that happening. i don't know, maybe it's the fear instilled in me from the kids at school, and the scariness at home with my parents... but what i do know is that people are so darn scary!

there is a huge fear that i don't have to have anymore with her in restaurants though... well actually there's two. i'm not really afraid of eating around her anymore, and also the last time we went to a restaurant (which i never did write about), i told her that i'm really afraid of talking to the waiter or waitress, so she said she'd order for me.

anyway... she ordered a pizza and some tater tots for us to share.

as we sat waiting, she wanted to talk about the tiny purpose driven life book that i read. she was asking me about things that were in there, but the thing is, i was so out if it the night that i read it.

i actually read it two nights in a row. it only takes about ten minutes. i was gonna keep doing this every night, until things actually sunk in and stuff, because sometimes when i'm reading, i have a really hard time focusing. i also thought that if i kept reading it i'd become convicted enough to get back into reading the bible regularly. unfortunately, it only lasted two nights...and i took ten benadryls both of those nights. when i do that, it confuses me so much, and it brings on short term memory loss and i can only carry on a thought for like five seconds.

i felt bad that i couldn't talk about it, because she seemed to be somewhat excited about it. maybe i'll read it again saturday night or something. or maybe i'll even read it again tonight.

so we ate our pizza and tater tots, and i confirmed my belief that i don't like ranch dressing stuff, and my tiredness became hard for me to ignore. after leaving the restaurant, we went into fred's to get soup for joel, and then melissa took me home.

so, it was a pretty good day for me. it kept me from getting that benadryl, and it sure was a whole lot better than that benadryl too. i even felt like i could last through today without it, so i didn't go get any today. i don't know about tomorrow though. hopefully i won't be able to get myself out of bed early enough or something. if i can keep myself from it tomorrow, then i have to wait until at least tuesday, because i won't be home alone on saturday, sunday or monday. then maybe something will keep me from it on tuesday, and so on...

...we'll see.

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