It started a few months ago. I’ve sold 22,000 Snarky Cards since I started, and most of those I’ve sold to Portlanders. So, around September, I was starting to feel like I was old hat. Old hat means overfamiliar through overuse. Or, not fresh. And that’s exactly how I was starting to feel.

I wanted to go somewhere where I was fresh, where Snarky Cards was new. I like going into a city and spreading my own version of The Good News. -As opposed to my mother’s Good News, which is that Jesus died for our sins, and whosoever beleivith in Him shall have everlasting life.

My Good News is that you don’t have to have sex with someone who bores the fuck out of you anymore. I can help you dump them! Or: sometimes hate-fucking is a good alternative to fighting. I like to think that both my mother and I are doing God’s Work. Just my work for God is more fun.

Seattle’s always been a little charged for me. It currently houses one of my most despised ex-boyfriends and my sister. Whom I have been fighting with on and off again for the last ten years. Mostly on. It’s a weird kind of fighting too. We’re either at each other’s throats, trying to kill each other, or we are on the same team, reading each other’s minds, finishing each other’s sentences, laughing until we piss ourselves at our own jokes. Maybe it’s always that way with sisters. I don’t know. She’s the only one I’ve ever grown up with. In our teens, we were so close, I thought we were the same person. In our twenties everything in our lives exploded and we started resorting to emotional trench war-fare.

I knew if I went to her city, I would have to try to make-up with her. (The ex-boyfriend is out of the question. I may hold that grudge until I die. I hope he gets a very painful cancer. I know it makes me a bad person, and I don’t care.) So, I called, and I tried to apologize, and she apologized, and we yelled a little, and then we cried and slowly things have started to get better and better between us. But I wasn’t sure if we could handle a weekend together.

In my head, I am always more succesful than I am in real life. So in my head, I came to Seattle, and stayed in a hostel, and spent a few hours with Joy at a time, and we got used to each other slowly, and I had an out so that if we ended up fighting, or I couldn’t stand her, or she couldn’t stand me, we could retreat to our seperate places. But in real life, the week before I came up to Seattle I made enough for a train ticket. Not enough for a train ticket and a hostel bed. It didn’t matter, because Joy seemed sure that I should stay with her anyway. So, I got on the train, with my cards and my boobs and tried to hope for the best.

Joy and Emily. I know, my sister (the blond) and I look opposite.

When I got to the train station, there was a hot girl there, holding a sign that said my name. How rad is that? I’ve never had anyone hold a sign with my name on it. “Alisa?” The Hot Girl said “I’m Emily. Joy asked me to come get you!” I was so struck by how nice that was, that my sister sent someone to get me, and it set up a precident of niceness that Joy and I stuck to for the entire weekend. Emily did her best to buffer between us, and she was necesary and important as a buffer. Joy and I still got on each other’s nerves, but we really tried to figure out how to be nice to each other. And somehow, the effort of kindness, is as good as kindness itself. I really liked both Joy and I that weekend. I took a lot of deep breaths, trying to figure out how to say something important to me without hurting her feelings. And I think she did too.

So, we drank and I sold some cards, and I discovered the Wild Rose and The Comet and they discovered that they liked my cards. And my boobs, and my stories.

After the first night of selling and hanging out, Joy and Emily and I went to a Karoke bar, and partied down. I did not sing Karoke. I don’t sing Karoke, unless my friend Kay announces that we’re going to Chopsticks. I’m a sucker for their sweet ‘n’ sour chicken, and when Kay gets up to sing, it’s almost always something awesome like Alanis Morisette, “You oughtta know”. If Kay’s drunk, and I’ve had some yummy Chinese food, then conditions are perfect for me to sing in public.

So, conditions were not perfect for me to sing in Seattle. But I sold cards and schmoozed while the hot bitches my sister and Emily are friends with sang their asses off.

Seriously, how hot are we?

We stayed and sang and it was hilarious and awesome. And afterwards, we got greasy mexican food. Which is not better than Chinese food. But it’s hard to find greasy Chinese food at 3am in a city you’re unfamiliar with. So, I settled.

 All in all, it was a righteously good time. That was about two months ago. Since then, I’ve been back twice. I didnt’ want to say anything until I knew for sure, but so far, Seattle seems to kinda dig me. And I have to admit, I have a medium sized crush on Seattle.  And if we can keep up this flirtation, it might culminate in sexy-time for both of us!