My dog has been spending time with my dad, who is typically rather indifferent to animals, while I’ve been out and about these past few days. They have totally bonded. My dad won’t admit it, but he secretly loves Leo. And normally whenever I’m home Leo follows me around the house, but tonight my dad was in the living room and I headed up the stairs to my bedroom, and Leo stood in the middle of the living room looking at my dad and then looking at me, trying to decide who he should stay with. He eventually followed me up the stairs to my room, but you could tell it was a stressful choice for him. And when my dad and I are both in the living room, he hangs out on top of my dad. You can tell they are falling in love. And I’m like “Daddy, you looooove little Leo” and my dad’s just like “Eh, he’s a good dog,” like it’s no big deal to him, but you can tell he adores the munchkin.

This afternoon, I went to lunch with one of my best friends and her parents. I lived in Arizona for a spell early this year, when I was going through something of a mental breakdown. I spent time with her parents while I was here, basically because everyone who set eyes on me back then wanted me under constant supervision, and whenever my dad had to go to work people stepped in to watch me. Most of that period is blurry to me, and I think it’s better that way, but I have a feeling I reminded people a lot of Britney Spears in her umbrella attack phase. I was not okay. So it was good to come back and do lunch with them, and they both kind of hugged me after lunch and said how wonderful it was to see me looking healthy again. It’s easy to forget how sick I was back then, but being around people who haven’t seen me in the interim, as I got healthy in Seattle, is reminding me. Everyone keeps commenting on how much better I look, how it’s so good to see me healthy again, and I’m like, “Oh, right, I was fucking nuts for awhile there.” I still refer to it as “my Britney phase,” and I laugh it off, but I realize now how scary it was to the people who loved me, and I’m so grateful that I’m better now.

Nothing makes up for a loooooooong day of family like a night of catching up with the friends who have known you since you were five years old.

I love the friends I have in my life now — the people I see day in and day out. They are kind and loving and loyal and smart and fun and caring and honest and just generally amazing human beings, and I am so grateful to have been blessed with such wonderful people in my life.

But I don’t think I will ever again find a group of people like the kids I grew up with. When I was living through it, I hated the tiny, exclusive, hyper-competitive private school we all toiled in for thirteen years. I resented the inescapability of all of them. We were at the same desks and soccer fields and birthday parties day after day for thirteen years, pushed harder and harder with each successive year, casually expected to be superstars in the classroom and on the field and on the stage and in the social arena, to vault higher and higher to clear a rising bar that, I see in retrospect, was suspiciously tall to begin with. But the pressure of it melded us, so that today we’re inextricable extensions of one another, unerringly loyal, communicating volumes with a glance or a gesture or a quiet French quip. No one knows us like we know each other, no one understands exactly why we are the way we are, and I’m not sure that anyone ever will. Tonight, for the first time a long time, I felt like I belonged.

Every holiday season, I swear up and down that I will not be going home the next holiday season. And then I somehow con myself into thinking that I need to go home for the holidays.

Please, I’m begging you, if you’re any friend to me, do not let me do this again next year. Sabotage me in any way possible. Tie me up if you have to. Please, please, please do not let me go home for the holidays ever again, no matter what I say.

I didn’t think it was possible for this trip to be even worse than I’d imagined, but it is, and how!

Kill me now.

PS - Does anyone know where you can buy heroin around here? Leave it in the comments.

Once I got to the game I decided I absolutely had to have a Cardinals jersey, since everybody else had one and it’s Scottsdale so you can’t be different. My jersey cost $75. I’m serious. A few years ago, you could buy the entire Cardinals franchise for that kind of money. My friend Kevin, who is a boy and knows about sports, was like, “Sasha, please don’t get a Leinart jersey. Please.” And I was like, “But, Kevin, he’s the best player in the NBA!” and Kevin was like, “Oh my God, Sasha, this is the NFL, and he’s terrible,” and I was like, “But, Kevin, he’s hot and he’s the only one whose name I know!” and Kevin was like, “I really don’t know what to say to that. Get the jersey.” So I did.

Another observation: It is exceedingly difficult to find vegan food at an NFL game. I settled on a veggie platter.

After the game, I headed up to my mom’s house, and we went together to pick up my sister from the airport. Having thusly logged my family hours for the day, I headed out to meet up with my gorgeous and talented friend Tiffy and her brilliant and charming boyfriend Miles. Also there: our old friend Spence and his articulate and enchanting girlfriend, whose name eludes me now, but she had this fantastic British accent (she’s from London!) and we talked about celebrities all night long and I just adored her. Later we were graced by the presence of the stunning Kate, who I’ve also known forever and ever, and old friends Tim and Mark. Tim, because of his close friendship with Kate, was a fixture in my life when I lived in NYC, so it was good to see him again, even though I’m fairly certain he dislikes me for reasons I still can’t figure out. I do much better with people disliking me for reasons that are clear. When it’s like, “Dude, it’s so obvious you don’t like me, but I can’t for the life of me puzzle out why,” it just kinda sucks and makes me paranoid. And Mark is like 23 and I knew him when he was six years old and probably haven’t seen him even once in the interim, so that was crazy.

Spence and his girlfriend live in Dubai now and work in banking, and they jet-set all over the world closing huge deals. Kate works in long-term strategy for a major network in Manhattan. Tim, if I understand it correctly, does high-end management consulting, also in Manhattan. Miles used to consult for Goldman in Manhattan and is now finishing up his MBA at Northwestern. You couldn’t pay me enough to work in that world — despite the fact that I was at one point qualified for it — but I was shocked at how far out of touch I’d become with all of it. How far out of touch I am, really, with any aspect of the world unrelated to Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan and their comrades. My life is so focused on celebrity “news” that I pretty much completely fail to internalize any other type of news. I’m afraid my job is actually making me dumber.

Oh and then we were leaving the restaurant and this totally random guy in the parking lot looked at me and was like “WOO HOO! GO CARDS!” and I was like “Yee-haw?” and he was like “But why are you wearing a Leinart jersey?”

Additional observations: Leo is back to peeing on people. He hadn’t been peeing on people for a really long time, and now all of a sudden the peeing is back. When he’s excited and you’re playing with him, he just pees. I have decided this is indisputable evidence that Scottsdale causes all lifeforms to emotionally de-evolve.

Lastly, Tofutti makes a product called Better than Cream Cheese, which is a vegan cream cheese, and it is, in actuality, every bit as good as cream cheese, if not better. I’m so happy to have found it.

It rings every bit as true today as it did in 1995.

I know we’ve been over this ad nauseum, but it never ceases to amaze me how where I am can change who I am. Or at least who I feel like I am. The freeways from the airport through Tempe, then taking Rural up to Scottsdale. The smells of my father’s house. The people in the grocery store. They look so different from the people in the grocery stores in Seattle. Blonder and thinner and taller. Faces more angular, polygons of lips and cheeks and chins and eyebrows. Faces are rounder in Seattle; their edges curve. The songs they play on the radio here are different. They’re the songs they play on the radio in Arizona. They’re the songs your friends played in the car when you were driving in a pick-up to shoot rifles at the cactus or you were driving in a Beemer to get wasted out in Old Town or you were driving in a Hummer to drop acid at a docker. They’re the songs we play in Arizona. They don’t play them on the radio in Seattle.

I’m still sick, and I’m having trouble putting together a cohesive thought.

But I just have to say that I’ve been here for less than two hours, I haven’t seen a single person, and I’m already stressed out. Like I swear the worst part about having divorced parents is trying to make time to see both of them when you come home. And trying to see all your friends on top of that. I know it’s something I should be looking forward to, but I just end up completely stressing out, certain that I’m going to let someone down, and that, worst of all, I will not be taking care of myself at all. I think that’s a big part of it. For some reason, in Seattle, far away from my family and my past, I’m really good at putting myself and my needs first. But plop me down in Scottsdale and all I can think about is what everyone else wants from me and how I can keep from disappointing anyone. The things I need to do to take care of myself — the things I know to be effective — fall by the wayside.

I dunno.

I need to sleep. I’m praying this feels more manageable in the morning.