babies

Maybe its because asia had her little baby. Maybe I'm just a sucker. If there's one born every minute then there's no reason it wouldn't be me. So there I was at Walmarche, shopping for toothpaste and shampoo for all my little people, unsuspecting. I saw a sign that said, "Free Kittens." Now, I don't like cats. I don't hate them, but I don't love them and they try to sit on my paper when I write or read, so right there is a problem.

So I walk up to this guy, this crackhead who clearly hasn't done his part to spay and neuter, and they are so damn cute. I think, hey, we just had to put the cat down, good ol' Charlie who was allegedly twenty years old and he might have been. He used to belong to Rosetta but she died and we just kept him. I guess he got kidney cancer and last week we had to put him down.

Now it isn't like the resident's missed Charlie. They don't know who they are let alone miss Rosetta's cat, so that isn't the reason. I looked at the kittens, chose the cutest one, a female, and they crackhead says, "Nope, not that one. She's taken." So fine, I think. Dodged a bullet. I went inside Walmarche and shopped.

When I came out, I walk back by the box of kitties and they guy says, "Hey, they didn't take her." So I strolled over and there she was, a tabby with four little white boots. What could I do? So I said okay. But now I have to put my shopping in the car and go back in for food and shit. Fifty bucks later I came back with a bed and food and litter and a sifting litter box for little Bootsie, we'll call her.

I picked her up and she cried. I couldn't take her away from her brother, so I took him too. Two. Two tiny little adorable kittens. Two eventual fucking cats.

You should have seen Lula. She wrinkled up her nose and kissed them like anybody would.

visitors

When it rains, it pours. Just as I was revelling in having asha in the same town as me on the eve of her granddaughter's birth, Cooky and Tracy rolled into town from Montana. They had been visiting a neice in a twelve story house with six hundred bedrooms and three entire apartments, a former minister's wife. The minister is former. In heaven she thinks, and is still holding the town together with both hands leaving nothing for herself.

It was almost like having all of my friends in one place again, except lorretta, and she will come one day, or so she says. But there is still nothing like girlfriends. Nothing like talking until you fall off to sleep, like a slumber party only without the boys. Well, one boy. Mine.

I still haven't seen asha, but believe she is actualy here and will appear at some point. I have seen that sweet little baby girl, though. Oh it made me want to be a grandma so bad that I called my son. Nothing happening there.

Ah well, in good time.

yard sale review

I don't like estate sales. This much we know. I don't like perma sales or close-out merchandise pretending to be yard sales. But today was a good day.

I got a book about Collette, a woman who has, like Anais Nin, always fascinated me. European. I also found two odd shaped old-school terra cotta pots; an antique metal, hang over the side of our clawfoot tub, soap holder; and three crappy novels that I will read because I'll read anything almost and these were three for a quarter and you know how I feel about prices at yard sales. Once I start a book I have to finish, eventually. Even Nora Roberts, I'm embarrassed to admit. But these are murder-most-foul, and that keeps me turning the pages.

I don't like the sales that are obviously the girlfriend's stuff. One sale today was a college lit major with buckets of high-minded literature and one book on men by Dave Barry, so we bought that one. My favorite is "Dave Barry Turns 50." I remember reading it out loud to Joanne while we were driving down the freeway home from visiting the nuthouse in Salem and it was raining so hard she needed something to keep her from completely freaking out.

So, I got my way for the couple of hours that my husband didn't fish today. Then, I came home and had a coughing fit so bad I puked and now my legs hurt from the pressure. My lungs will blow up one day, just you wait.

d

Okay, look--here's my theory: I suffer from vitamin D deficiency. I can't figure anything else out. My doctor is too stupid to figure it out and won't refer me, so I'm getting some backdoor advice. One month to the day after my April 11th bout, I went under again. These lost weeks are running into lost seasons. I'm tired. I'm confused. I'm concerned.

So, I started looking at where I live now, in the darkish northland, in the perpetual gray of Portland, and began looking at the literature on old people who are now being prescribed mega-doses (50,000 iu/wk) for depression, immune deficiency, ongoing flu-like symptoms, fall risk, etc etc etc and I thought, hey. I'm indoors all day with old people. I'm old people almost. I'm old enough. I get the mailers from aarp for crying out loud. So, this nurse starts talking about D and how new research is showing how depleted we are in the NW and then, just as we are talking about it, an email pops up from this health nut scientologist friend of mine, and its about D and I think: hey. Synchronicity. You don't have to hit me over the head with a brick.

So I bought some good, high-dose vitamin D. All of the antibiotics aren't working very well.

I'm sick of being sick. I'm sick of talking about being sick and I'm betting you're sick of reading about my being sick. sickening.

You have my apologies. I'll stop soon. I got this card for my ex once that said, "Remember all the trouble I've caused you?" you open it up and inside it said, "I'm almost done."

So, I'm almost done. I'm done.

lula interrupted

Lula fell. This happens. They don't recognize furniture as obstacles, see shadows as holes, glare as solid objects. So her fragile long leg cracked at the hip and now they've fixed that, but not her, and she's in a cage. Like a fly in a web, scrambling at the edges, trying to find her way home. Again. I crawled part way in the cage and stroked her hair until she fell asleep.

I think I can't do this anymore. I think I should never do anything else. I think I've seen too much and then I imagine I haven't even seen the tip of the iceburg.

yard evolution

In some order: row of veggie pots; bowl of bulbs; sunset azalea just opening; back porch and pots.

good ol' warren

Warren Goines, hanging in the lobby of Francis Xavier Restaurant, Gresham Oregon.

addendum

And more pots, and then.... half the yard is gone. It went like this: Hey, this really gets good sun. What if we just dug up the grass another three feet behind the flowers... and now, a veggie garden in the front yard! Hooray!

So off to market for more plant starts: more basil, more green peppers, lemon cukes, regular cukes, zuchinni, pole beans, yellow zuchinni and one thai pepper, in honor of Ashland. Sid even got some of his shit space back. How great is that?

pots

Sitting in my place, sun streams into the living room, blinding me as I type. I will not complain. It could be months before I see it again. I keep planting things, assuming they will grow in the gray light of Portland's spring.

People ask, when my shopping cart is full of starts: jalapeno and green peppers, four kinds of tomato, lemon cucumbers and sixpacks of lobelia, pansy and petunia; if I am some kind of professional gardener and what is the secret to growing things. They don't have a green thumb, they claim. I tell them all they need is water--the seeds know what to do.

But that's the trick: follow through. Not my strong suit. But I do love spring, and each year I promise that come the blistering afternoons of July, I won't abandon my posies and peppers for the cool of my airconditioned life. I will water. I will.

As mentioned in an earlier post, I'm taking over the sidewalk in front of the house. Apparently you have to get the city's blessing if you make raised beds, so I'm just doing lotsa pots. My honey asked if I was concerned that people walking by would take the veggies. I hope they do. I can never eat them all. I just like to grow shit.