Welcome to Chaos !!

Today I had borsch at Hawthorne Asylum, an outdoor food court place that has yummy food. So in Polish we say barszcz not borsch but the recipe calls for red beets since it is beet soup. This is my absolute favorite soup, I grew up eating it and my Mom's barszcz is my favorite, of course. I prefer Polish style barszcz over Ukrainian or Russian.
I need to find a Polish food cart in Portland. I will come back for a barszcz review if I can locate some.



I have been in bed since about 8 pm - so a super savage Friday evening for me. I was actually thinking about something today....I started going out "clubbing" at 12 1/2 years old. A wild child. I had to be home after the "club" or disco closed and it closed at midnight
(I think I remember that correctly) so I would go home straight after that. And then I would be out on a consistent basis throughout my teens into my twenties, sometimes several times a week. Then there were raves all over CA, Utopia in Vegas (BEST club EVER), plus other clubs in Vegas, I've had my share of clubbing. So I might be kind of done. Except for Burning Man of course but that is not clubbing, that is a whole experience.
I went to a club in Portland a few weeks ago when my two girlfriends were in town, they are in their twenties. And it was awful (so I thought at least). I now enjoy being at home on my nights off. Peace and quiet.....soooooo nice.

I am tired and unmotivated. So tired mentally that I rather stay in bed all day and alternate between reading, watching Netflix and sleeping. But I can't sleep all day so I have to force myself to get up and do what I have to do because I have responsibilities after all.
I make a mental list of things I would like to accomplish for the day and try to at least do that. The worst part is in the morning when I wake up.....I just want to continue sleeping because everything on the to do list that day feels like a heavy burden and that leads to me feeling anxiety. Even the thought of brushing my teeth and brushing my hair feels overwhelming at times. Getting dressed. Once I am up and get out of the house, things almost always feel easier. I just have to start with getting out of bed.
But right now it is just a lot, lots of stressful things going on. For me.
I even got stress hives a couple of weeks ago, for the first time ever. The back of my upper arm broke out in a red blotches. It was gone the next day. The blotches were gone, not the arm.....
Me at work the other night. It looks like the sweater I am wearing in the picture shrunk in the laundry......so let's jus go with that explanation.



I can actually relax at work, well at one of the clubs the other one not so much. It is so chill there and I know that for the five hours I am there I am in like a cocoon of relaxation.
I bring my laptop and I just unwind. I totally understand why people go to silent retreats, I would go to one if I could bring my laptop.
I need to have at least one month of NOTHING. I think. Or perhaps a week of nothing.
To end this sad feeling entry, I did make some progress today on a task that I have been putting off for about two weeks. And I feel good about that.
So while writing this I looked up silent retreats and there is a place less than two hours away from Portland.
A Vipassana ten day course. It sounds intriguing and I would have no problem following most of the program. You have to be there for ten days, no sex, no talking, only eat vegetarian meals, no killing any being, no eating after noon, no drugs, no alcohol, no reading and no writing (now the two last ones would be hard for me).....there is a list of rules. Again, sounds intriguing. Except one thing. Bedtime is 9 30 pm and I can deal with that but you have to rise at 4 am. Dealbreaker! I seriously love sleeping, I enjoy sleeping.....and 4 am is painfully early. I just can't.

A hectic Sunday today but I did find some time to sit down and breathe and take in the gorgeous weather. It has rained a lot in April and it even snowed but I think there will be more and more sunny days now.
I got some elderflower lemonade, I love elderflowers.



And since it is Sunday.....



I need to take a bath, wash my hair and squeeze in some reading before I go to bed.

April 22 Earth Day 2022! The situation at the planet is terrible right now, wars, people starving, animal extinction, deforestation and it goes on - it is not a good situation at all. So we all need to do our part, to the best of our abilities to care for this planet. Appreciate what we have.
The flowers are about to bloom any day now, one of the first right here at the park I go to.



Also at the park I go to.....little faerie doors. Or gnome door perhaps?





Ladybugs. I hesitated at first but then I decided to bring two little containers with ladybugs with me.



I brought them to the lilac tree in my yard. And released them.
They soon made their way up on the branches and leaves......but I am a bit concerned that I took them from the safety of the store to the outside. But then.....how long were they supposed to be trapped inside small plastic containers? I hope they are OK.



So back to Earth Day. Please DO NOT litter. Leave no trace, if possible. ❤️

Thursdays and Sundays is when I volunteer. Been doing that for some time now, not EVERY Thursday and Sunday but most.
On Thursdays I am a receptionist at a very esthetically pleasing place with focus on Scandinavian culture. So it is a big plus that I speak Swedish. I answer phones, talk to people that come up throughout the day and ask questions, I prepare letters for mailing, do data input, organize for events that we have etc. I like it a lot, fun and great people. The only negative is that I have to get up early (for me), 8 in the morning. I am not a morning person and I like to sleep.



On Sundays I give out dog and cat food and pet supplies to mostly low income and/or homeless people that need to feed their pets. So I pick up donations, bag up the food, get to know people and their pets so they get greeted by a familiar face and somebody they feel that they can trust, I pick trash (I have a certain knack for trash picking). And of course I get to meet dogs and cats - I love animals.



And then I do this. Not really volunteering but sometimes I feel like it is. I encounter lots of needy people needing all kinds of attention.
If I won a lot of money I would still volunteer, volunteer more actually and probably dance once a week for another year or two, just to go on stage and hang out with the other dancers because we have so much fun together.
I know I will miss that aspect of the dancing when the day that I hang up the Pleasers arrives.
I say another year or two because there are days when I am so over it. Not the dancing but the talking and giving people attention. That can be exhausting (more often than not I think) and way too repetitive.

Ok.....time for in the club part 2 for the people that are curious.
Money. Do the dancers make money? Hopefully yes. I wish I could say that we all make a lot of money every time we work but we don't and the reason vary.
You just never know, the only way to increase your chances of making something doing this is to show up for work. Sometimes you go on stage and make a decent amount. Other times not. Below is a picture of a good stage set (for me). I do not work in those clubs were dancers get "rained on" by some rapper and sit and straighten out thousands of dollars in stage tips every night. Those clubs are not located around here and if they were I am way too white for those clubs, so I would not be there anyways cause they would not have me. My twerk don't work to put it simply. I do as little as possible. My fave clubs for stage dancing were in NYC, no floor work and you just kind of prance around, flip your hair, smile and look pretty. I am good at doing just that. Unfortunately the clubs in Portland are far from as upscale. In my opinion dancers do WAY too much here and try much too hard.



But one evening I got showered with so many hundreds that I went out and put a fat cash downpayment on a house the next day. Not. This was actually fun. Those were fake hundreds and I knew it but another dancer just could not comprehend that those were fake bills. She got upset and she was intoxicated and super confused trying to understand that the bills were not real. It was actually quite hilarious.



My mermaid broke her tail. That is what people think I look like the most, a mermaid. I am good with that.



New outfit.



This is what it looks like on.





Another outfit.





And this is what I do a large chunk of the time while in the club.
Read in the dressing room. Can I just get paid for reading instead? Talking to random people (men) in the club is barely tolerable to be honest. That is why I sit and read.