Good Evening, People. I am here to report from the bowels of my life as it has passed since exactly one week ago.

I did go to the doctor, and boy was she pissed! Just kidding. That was supposed to sound like “God is coming, and boy is she pissed!” the feminist bumper sticker you could get back when feminist bookstores could keep their doors open, and their menu of sandwiches named after goddesses available. Back when a woman-as-tree painting done by someone who couldn’t paint was acceptable as wall decoration and greeting card. According to any feminist bookstore in the world, the ways feminists made themselves visible is by the bumper stickers on their cars, the magnets on their refrigerators, their books, and the patches on their sleeveless jean jackets and satchels. The patches often ventured from feminism into full lesbianism. It appeared that feminists bought a lot of locally-made greeting cards festooned with photographs or artists’ renderings of women living full lives, often in the nude. Often the two women living said lives were engaged amorously or in a way that blatantly exposed the interior details of their genitals. Naturally there were MANY photos of dogs and cats. The feminist bookstore: filling the hole in your heart since you can remember having one. But also, lest I leave the topic being a total dick, I should mention that these stores were an excellent place to hang fliers. And form drum circles. And find a new home with uptight hippies whose pantries contained an embarrassment of dried legumes and unlabeled herbs which probably at one point were meant to address menstrual cramps or fibromyalgia.

So anyway. I saw the nurse for the issue with my brain. My actual doctor is a gay man, and by my estimation, he is working with a gay lady nurse. Aces. She had me go through all sorts of machinations like that Tracy Ullman skit in which she is pulled over by a cop for drunk driving and has to perform many feats of physical excellence to prove she is not drunk. I had to walk forward heel-toe-heel-toe, then backward, then touch my nose with my forefinger from its greatest distance, then let her get intimately close to my face to check my eyes and ears. Then she took her little rubber hammer and banged around my joints to test my reflexes. If my brain had not felt so cloudy I would have laughed out loud but instead, like the other mask on your wall, I cried because I was so tired and generally emotional and mourning the potential loss of one of my basic assets, my brain. At the end she assessed that I had a minor concussion and advised that I take a little tylenol if I had headaches.

That was Monday.

I skated Potrero a couple times last week. Me in the bowl filmed by Bob Lake. The video looks like olden times, like my donkey is tied nearby and my musket is resting against the fence. Some people were there from the Exploratorium shooting footage for their upcoming Science of Skateboarding exhibit. It looks awesome and they were super nice. Again, I am racking up the adjectives of a literary great.

Saturday I drove down to Cunningham with a few friends and a couple of the early-teens who come with us. Per the usual routine, by the time we reached San Jose, Dean and Steve the Teens were slapping and harassing each other mercilessly in the back seat. Dean wanted Steve to choose their dates for Element camp (a skate camp in Southern California), Steve said he “doesn’t make the decisions around here” and had to wait on another teen for the final dates. More frustration and more hitting. A few trips ago one of the kids slapped the other and he had blood running down his face between his eyes because he got hit in the zit. The hitter said, “THAT’S why you’re supposed to pop your zits, dude.” and the victim said, “NO YOU’RE NOT, have you ever heard of scarring? GOD.” Today there was no blood, just emotional damage. They each repeatedly cried out in a sort of half-assed way that they were being hurt. We pulled into the parking lot at Cunningham and saw our friends Roger and Marty unloading their car. I walked up to the park with Dean and Steve just ahead of me on the short climb up to the office.

Dean: Steve has an anger problem.

Steve: Yeah I do. I’m angry because you’re being annoying.

Dean: I’m just sitting here, cool as a cucumber, and you’re freaking out.

Steve: You don’t even know what a cucumber is.

Dean: Yeah I do, it’s green and it’s shaped like a penis.

My friends Sophia and Lauren were already in the park, shredding the mini bowls. We skated for about four hours then went out to lunch at a place with VietNamese/Chinese/Thai food. We all sat around a large, round table, barely able to hold up our heads from the fatigue of much skating. I ordered a massive bowl of porridge and burned my mouth a thousand times trying to get it in my stomach. Then we went next door for dessert.

So many options

Then we went home. Sunday when I woke up I couldn’t figure out the time thing, and am still surprised I saw nothing about daylight savings anywhere previously. I called Sophia to confirm that daylight savings was real and happening. We all met back up at Pacifica skatepark and rolled for a few hours. It was a good weekend, but by Sunday night I was wasted and slept for ten hours.

Thanks for reading.