My friends are suggesting I go back to Defensive Dating (TM).



(Let's just say, all is not magenta sunsets and ephiphanic moments of happiness here in "I'm-so-in-love!"-land. What goes up must come down. And then go up immediately two days later. But that's a discussion for another time.)



But, I ask you, how am I supposed to do that when I've given all my cutest backups to GalPal #1? Hmmmm?



I knew I should hoard!

Last night, I rode my bike home from work in the velvety dusk and watched a magenta sunset streak the sky. There was a slight chill in the soft air, a slant to the light that meant my favorite season was coming soon. And I realized I was happy.



Then I remembered I was on drugs. Lots of them.



But no matter. I’ve learned to accept those moments of happiness, drug-enabled or not, and let them wash over me without trying to hold on too hard. Because they don’t stick around.



Not an hour later, in fact, I was desperately throwing clothes, sleeping bags, and other assorted luggage around my apartment, looking for my wallet (never found); so I would have my driver’s license to bring to the tow lot to which my NEW car had been towed this weekend while I was camping on the Olympic Peninsula.



Unable to find my wallet, I then had to search desperately for some other form of ID. When I realized they wouldn’t take a check with anything but a driver’s license, I tore through all the mail piled on my hall table to find the new credit card that luckily, had not yet been assimilated into the now-lost wallet, and that would let me pay the exorbitant towing fee.



Anyway.



It’s hard to shake the idea that happiness is something that’s just around the corner, instead of something that comes to you at odd moments. You think:



When I write a book, and they turn it into a movie, and I get to hang around the set chatting up Jake Gyllenhaal and Johnny Depp, I’ll be happy. When I finally trust Indie Rock Dad, I’ll be happy. When I get married, I’ll be happy.



You don’t think, When I’m riding my bike home on a Monday night, and there’s a beautiful sunset, I’m going to be happy.



Sometimes, if you’re especially lucky, you get a series of happy moments in row. Usually this happens when you’re in love, which means the karmic payback is that later on, you’ll get many miserable moments in a row, but still – you can’t think that way (though, of course I do). My life has been like that lately. Lucky.



So lucky, in fact, that I’ve hardly even noticed the fact that GalPal #1 has appropriated South African Boy, he of the sculpted torso, whom I was keeping in reserve for myself.



So lucky that I have photo after photo of me smiling somewhere in the Cascades, surrounded by peaks and lakes and sunshine, with the arm of a heartbreakingly lovely boy around me. One who says he loves me, even.



It can’t last. Something bad will happen. Remember Loser? Remember how much he claimed to love you, remember how much you trusted him, and then remember (how can you forget?) how he turned on a dime and treated you like the most lowly piece of garbage until all your trust and love was destroyed?



Right. It can’t last. Nothing lasts. As Sly but Philosophical Russian Boy is famous for saying, “We all gonna die sometime.”



All I can do is try to enjoy this beauty while it lasts.



And, of course, remember to take my meds.

Please! Don’t lose any more sleep! I made it down from the mountain alive!



Phew. I know you have been thinking of nothing else, and I want to apologize for letting you dangle for so long, ignorant of whether I survived or whether my life was taken in the jaws of an icy crevasse.



Yes, I, Breakup Babe, survived the toughest endurance climb in the lower 48 states. Not only that, I made it to the top. Not only that, I wasn’t even tired! Well, a little, teeny bit. I was too busy being terrified to be tired!



I mean, how can you be tired, for crying out loud, when you are standing on the side of 14,000-foot mountain, staring down at giant crevasses? Or walking across a foot-wide ledge with a cliff on one side and a chasm on the other?



When the terror would momentarily give way, there was room for exhilaration too. At the sight of the Northern Lights at 2 a.m. Or the snaking line of headlamps coming up the mountain with a pink and purple sunrise behind it. Or a bergschrund curving its giant edges delicately over the trail.



And the guides! My! They were a sight in themselves. Breakup Babe may have a b-b-boyf—well, you know what I’m trying to say – these days, but she cannot help but notice such spectacular specimens of manhood!



Anyway. While most of you probably imagine me as some glamorous model type gadding about town in the latest fashions and sipping designer cocktails at the coolest bars, there is another side to me too (Gemini, remember?), and that would be the Earthy Crunchy Outdoor Girl who loves nothing more than to spend whole days and nights climbing mountains. Preferably steep, hard mountains. Preferably with a cute boy who has lots of stamina.



And if ever there was a poor match for BB in terms of boys with stamina, it was Loseur. Oh he tried to keep up with me, I’ll give him that much. In the beginning, he desperately wanted to impress me. He spent lots of money on lots of fancy gear. And in fact, we went on some great bike rides.



But the truth is, when it came to the mountains, he was tres wimpy! My God! That man would not have made it five steps up Mt. Rainier before whining that he was tired and sick; turning around; then getting mad at me later for not offering to turn around with him, even though 1)he didn’t ask and 2)it was my fondest with in the world to climb Mt. Rainier.



Hmmph. Lucky, then, that I found a boy who likes to climb mountains as much, if not even more than me. IRD (who has already climbed Mt. Rainier) is currently trying to convince me to climb Mount McKinley with him. Fat chance of that ever happening, but I’ve been a long time looking for a boy who would even ask such questions.



So, this summer continues its amazing run. Do you think it can end without anything bad happening?



The only thing that would make it a little more perfect is that if my father were still alive. I so much want to tell him about Mount Rainier!

Remember how Davy, from the Monkees, used to get all sparkly-eyed when he saw a girl he liked? They would put him in soft-focus, and show actual stars shooting from his eyes? That's how I feel when I see IRD -- soft and sparkly.

Oh dear Breakup Babies, don't seethe with jealousy! (Well, maybe do just a little.)



I am not sitting around on a chaise lounge feasting on the fact that I'm in "L;" in fact, it's quite the opposite. I'm pacing around wondering "Is this real? What have I gotten myself into?"



Because wasn't it just, oh, four days before he used the word that Indie Rock Dad (IRD) told me he was worried that he "wasn't in love with me?" That, in the past, when he was "in love," he always thought the object of his affections was "perfect," and he didn't think I was "perfect," and therefore, he was worried that (see above).



I haven't thought any of my lovers were perfect unless they ignored me. Let me wallow in my Air-Supply-fueled fantasies about them; maybe toyed with me once in a while, or had amazing s*x with me (and isn't the s*x always better when you're anxious?), then dropped me like a hot potato. Then I worshipped them endlessly.



But when someone really let me into their world? How could I think they were perfect then? They wanted me, for one. If I could get over that, well, there were all those little things. The ridiculous look they got on their faces during s*x. The loud snoring. The stupid jokes or the social handicaps or the complete lack of appreciation for foreign movies.



Because isn't love about truly knowing a person, in all their flawed glory, and accepting them?



I think IRD's got his head screwed on straighter than he thinks. But only time will tell. As we've said before, seething (but adorable, sexy, brilliant) mass of contradictions.



Note to self: must stop looking down mountain as climbing up. View much better up ahead.



Meanwhile, go on some dates for me, will ya? Have some raunchy one night stands, throw back a few tequila shots, flirt til you drop (or you're dropped like a hot potato)! Crushes are all about endless possiblity and love is about reality, so feast on the possibilities while you can, babies.



And speaking of mountains, if you don't hear from me til next week, it's cause I'm climbing a big a*s mountain called Mount Rainier. I might not make it down alive. If not, I heart you all and your many imperfections.



If so, well, I'll tell you about it. I can only hope that my rope leader is a hot babe.

Big developments over the weekend.



The "L" word was exchanged.



How do I feel about this?



Well. We all love the love drug. And baby, you know I've been jonesing for it.



But that love drug, it's heavy sh*t. It takes you higher and drags you lower than anything else. And when you're comin' down off that baby, you gotta pump yourself full of all kind of other pharmaceuticals just to survive.



Am I ready? Don't know.



Do I have a choice? Don't think so.



Funny this should happen exactly on Breakup Babe's one-year birthday, isn't it?



Happy Birthday BB! Maybe it's time to change your name and put the past behind you, eh?

OK, it is the moment you’ve all been waiting for, or perhaps the moment you’ve all been dreading.



Breakup Babe has a friend that is a boy. No, no. That would not be a boyfriend. It will be months, years, perhaps before I can ever utter that word again with the same insouciance that I used to in my young, carefree days.



Things with Indie Rock Dad get lovelier and lovelier and I expect them any day now to blow up in my face.



Did we catch the train?



I don’t know.



Maybe? I feel the wind blowing in my face and the sweet smell of adventure coming my way but I feel like this baby could derail at any second.



Or, to switch metaphors, I feel like we’re climbing a mountain, ice axes in hand. It’s a gorgeous mountain, and when you look up, there are glaciers and meadows and waterfalls as far as the eye can see. When you look down, it’s a sheer drop. Thousands of feet. So if you look down, you get scared. You lose your nerve.



And we look down a lot.



But we’re still climbing. And that's something.



Meanwhile, GalPal #1, newly single and on a rampage, has demanded that I hand over South African Boy to her, as a swing dancing partner if nothing else.



When I protested, she said I was making “double dibs” and that it was "unfair. "



He still doesn’t know about me and IRD, despite the fact that we drove right past him on the way to work today. (My heart, needless to say, went to my throat).



But nothing is happening on that front, platonic dating relationship aside. We’re good friends and that’s that. We’re hallmates and that’s that. He wore a tank top today and I lusted after his muscles but that’s that.



Must let go. Must share. Must not hoard. After all, my own life is pretty full.



But isn’t hoarding a survival instinct?