sunday bloody sunday

The boys are out in the boat. George is a Texan idiot. A genuine southern gentleman. He says things like, "here fishy fishy," which is the manly equivalent of suicide on the water. He wants to hug when they catch one. A real friendly fella. I am home, obviously, four girls littering the house. three vegans plus Hazel. Hazel got in a little trouble a few weeks ago and is on a short leash. She allegedly stashed booze for some kid and attempted to bring it to a "show" (a small, in-bar concert) and was caught by her parents. Consequently, it all came out and one of ours was in the mix. So.... it begins. I remember being arrested at 14 for drinking wine I'd stolen from Woodland Heights Market. A trunk full. There were six of us -- 5 boys and me. or me and 6 guys, I can't remember. All I know is that we were plently drunk and noisy when the cops showed up way out in an orchard above Jacksonville. They chased us, we scattered. I lay face down in a ditch (something that would be a recurrent theme for me later in life) and pretended I was invisible. They found my purse and began to call out to me in that sing-song police voice. "we know you're out here... there's Mexicans in the orchard.... they'll raaaaaaaaaape you." This surprised me, but I didn't come out. (Ah.... the raisin' of a Southern Oregon girl. I've been terrified of singing roadside Mexicans since, those gentle brown men who love my particular body-type.) But they found me at last, and thus went my first ride to jail in the back seat, slick brown leather, handcuffed, sliding side to side around unnecessarily sharp corners. I sat in the police department and waited for my mother, a drunk herself, who said, "I'll bet you think you're pretty smart." She was never more correct. For my punishment, I had to write a 5000 word essay about my behavior. Always the rebel, I wrote the words to Donovan songs: "First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is..." Ode to the sixties. Initially, I wrote something short and sweet, something like David Crosby might have written: "Sorry I drank, thanks for the liver." However, as you may suspect, this, my first in a long line of attemped corrections, was no deterrent. Party on.

So back to the future...

I've always noticed signs. I painted signs for a long time. It could have been lucrative, but it typically took me about 300$ worth of crank to paint a 200$ sign, so you can see the discrepancy right off. I, unfortunately, could not. Anyway, I've been here a year now, and want to report some bad signage. This will take awhile, and I'll just fit one in here or there.

1. A chinese restaurant in Scappoose: Lung Fung.
2. In Milwaukee: Jer' Bear's Bed Mart. (You gotta see Jer' Bear.... Any sign with a likeness of the owners face is considered for a place on the bad-sign list.) Any adult who allows themself to be called Jer'Bear.... I rest my case.

Okay, that's it for this morning. It is nearly bicycle time.

another saturday night

The girls are vegans now. This week. An adjustment for this carnivore. But I can make burritos out of anything. What I haven't been able to find is my favorite tofu stuff: Tofu Man Burrito Mix. Its the stuff they use at the Burrito Palace or whatever its called at the Country Fair. It is so good, and I want to turn the girls on to it. I love that stuff. What cracks me up is that there are vegan substitutes for different things, but the one that is disturbing is the hamburger substitute. I mean, hamburger, in its real state, is only a substitute for food anyway. It is terrible. Why reproduce it. Very Soylent Green. My question was: is this for health or a philosophical position. They are pretty sure it is philosophical. They are keeping twinkies in the mix. So, it is a process, like so many things. The burritos I made were good, but I couldn't eat the Soylent Green.

learning weather

Where I used to live, I could stand outside and know which way I was facing. Landmarks meant something. I knew the color of the sky and could predict the weather without listening to the news, which, in my view, has taken the fun out of it. It is true that only fools and tourists predict Oregon weather, but admit it, all of us real Oregonians do it. We know the sky. But here I am, in the great North, and the sky is different-- Mt. Ashland no longer defines the direction "South." I know the Willamette cuts the city East/West, but I cannot yet stand in my yard and know which way I face. The morning sun, the same sun that blazed through my papersack curtains and woke me for work, hides in the morning clouds and doesn't dare show its face until noon. It is spring in Portland, and the sky is gray. And this is the way it has been for eons before I got here. I wake up and if the sun isn't blinding, by my experience, it isn't a sunny day. But making such premature judgments cuts the promise from the day. If only I could apply that to my life. I am quick to judge. Whap.

I quit my job. I will be the anti-social worker for about 25 more days. I'm going back to bossing people around. I'm better at that anyway. Overall, the nursing home experience was a homecoming for me. I spent the first 15 years of my worklife in old folk's homes, and it helped me remember who I am. And, I suppose, who I have become. I am going back to what I know, humbled, in awe of social work. When I accepted the sw job, part of my rationale was that I was going back to what I know, back to more direct contact with the patient. What I didn't know is that the past 10 years have changed me. Hubris to think they would not or could not. So my movement to the next thing, the same thing as before, feels at once forward reaching and stagnant. The whole be-here-now of it escapes me.

Fishing: The Columbia closes for the springer season at one minute before midnight tonight. K will be out on the bank, spin glow's a spinnin', hoping for one last chance. Last year we caught 2 on the last day. Pray to the fish gods for a fat catch.

privacy and descent

In our neighborhood, it is quiet but for the clank and bang of trash being thrown from the rooftop of Susan's house. She doesn't live there anymore.

The story goes like this: Susan, her husband and her son lived on Clinton Street in one of the big houses for a long time. They were across the street and one block down from us. Her son, Chris, went all through school with the girls. He was a smart kid, a geek. They went door to door for good causes, Run for the Arts, things like that. The husband got sick and died of something, and his life insurance policy was huge. Susan looked like an old hippie woman, was friendly enough, very quiet. When the money rolled in, the first thing we saw was a 78 Corvette parked in front of the house, the 13 year old son sitting in the drivers seat, where he would have to wait a long time for a license.

It was insidious... and I think all of us feel bad, feel guilty. I know I do. We tried a little. I'm not sure when the bad kids started showing up. August maybe? I think the rush of popularity, the appeal of acceptance by the bad-boys, was more than the kid could resist. And Susan, wanting so much for Chris to finally have friends, made room.... Soon, there were hoardes hanging out atop the over-garage deck, shooting bb guns at passing rivals. We called the cops once. They came. We told them what was going on from our point of view, but our point of view was distant. I found Susan at the coffee shop just after, and told her it was us that had called in the complaint, and that if she needed anything, that my husband would help her. If she wanted the boys cleared out, we would do what we could. She never asked. I guess she couldn't. After that, we saw her less often, and there was a forty in her hand where there used to be a coffee cup. Grief, I thought. I had no idea.

I came home from work last week and cops were everywhere -- the house being boarded up, stickers all over it. Susan is in a local psych unit somewhere, Chris in foster care. The money is gone. Someone drained her bank account. The inside of the house has been gutted. There is not a surface that isn't tagged with "Clinton Street Villians" all over it. A motorbike blown up in the kitchen, burned out cabinets. All the furnishings, all of her belongings, slashed and destroyed. All of the windows broken out. Everything is being tossed into a huge bin. Nothing is left. The house will be sold at auction.

The bad boys are everywhere now... dispersed.

It is tough to know what to think. We are all in shock. All of her neighbors.

How to catch fish

Blood in the boat. Finally. My husband caught his first springer of the season. It is late, the run scarcely noticeable, fish counts far less than half what they should be. I say this knowing very little about it. I'm repeating what I hear at the boat launch, around the lunch room, from boat to boat as we troll the Willamette. It is an education. Apparently, the fish counters look back 6 years to determine what the run will look like. They had projected a strong run, but it has not panned out. Perhaps because of the low rainfall this winter. But we did get a nice one and had salmon sauteed in butter for dinner. Catching the fish is fun, killing it-- not so much. Slippery little devils. We catch them on frozen green label herring (blue label are bigger males and don't work as well). Greg, the fishing god from Scappoose, says to make sure the herring don't have white eyes, which, to me, a neophyte, makes absolutely no sense because you cut the heads off anyway. K ties three-hook mooching rigs with a corkie between the second and third hooks. See?? Its another language. Me? I just like to ride in the boat. Depends on the depth of the water how you actually fish. If we're in 15-22 feet, we hold the poles and bounce along the bottom, just keeping the gear out of the muck. If the water is deeper, apparently the fish hang out at about 15 feet depth and we stick the poles in pole holders and wait for the bite. (a great invention, the pole holder. second to the coffee cup holder.) It didn't make any sense to me at first... but I guess its about vision. If they can see the bottom (consider water turbidity, sun out, and depth) they go for the food on the bottom. If its deep and they can't see down there, they hang out in the well-lit water down to about 15 feet. How do they figure that out? Not the fish, the fishermen?? It does make perfectly good sense.

But more about coffee cup holders... I got up as usual at the butt-crack of dawn and made a huge thermos of coffee. Somehow it was shattered on the way out, and we had no coffee all day. ALL DAY. I am so hooked.

And about boat ramps (you don't care about all of this, do you?) we headed out to the Willamette Park Ramp which is out across the Sellwood Bridge, and it was full. No room at the Inn. So we drove down-river (which is hard for me to figure out... which way is up??) to Swan Island and put in there. It was industrial fishing. Not the scenic route by any means. But I like the seedy underbelly of industry. I find beauty in rust and rotten pilings. Boat hulls in dry dock like carcasses in the wasteland. The bone yard. We fished alongside barges and tugs, rolled in their wakes as they blew past us. The Mock's Landing boat ramp is not as pristine as the other one.... kind of like the difference between NE Portland and Sellwood. I'll just say this: I measure all locations by the bathroom. I am diabetic and I pee more than you do, I'll bet. So my travels, while circular, are many, and the facilities, compared to others were sub-standard. I can pee on command in a snowstorm. I can pee standing up, almost. But this was nasty. I peed, but bathed shortly after. You get out of a boat, you gotta go. The bad part was that I was wearing overalls. My twenty pound Carhartts. You have to watch where the suspenders land in nasty outhouses. My husband, handily equipped as men are, peed in a baggie in the boat. The worst accomodations I've ever seen were in Bridge, Oregon behind the general store on Hwy. 42. I would not pee there. No Way. Memorably bad. I found a tree. My favorite? Across the street from the old Copper Store before the Army Corps. levelled it and built Applegate Lake. I have a poem about it somewhere. Ah, here it is:

Copper

the lake
was not always there
was a river
was warm
was too low to swim in after August
but we did anyway
like bath water

the dam holds it all back now
great cupped hands that
save it up and let it go
when the summer comes
keeps the river cold

there’s a town under the lake
Copper
was a town
not much to look at
just Guy’s store and some houses
a two-seater outhouse across the road
diamond shaped notches carved in thick pine boards
where you could piss with a friend
on the way home from swimming
sunburned and drunk
happy
to know the secret places
of deep green water.


Okay, well, that's the story of my life: The Ranking of Substandard Pissers in Oregon, by someone.

Friday night

We just pushed the boat uphill out of the garage for another fishing saturday. heavy boat.

Spaghetti for dinner and the girls are here. Nicole cut her hair and looks like a pixie. Haley already did. As they leave for punk rock heaven, somewhere down on Burnside, we will rent a movie and stay in.

Today I told a wife her husband will never get his mind back. I do it every day. It's as though I have a crystal ball and wield it indelicately. Somebody has to say it, and turns out its me. They thank me. That's the wierdest part. Thank you so much for telling me my life will never be the same, that I need an attorney to protect all we've worked for from the great State of Oregon. It will be a long road, I tell her. A long and expensive road. And it only leads to the end, anyway. Best to stay off it as long as possible.

my streets

I have been here one year tomorrow. It seems significant. I remember staring in awe as the fragile spears of the lillies of the valley began to pierce the soil beneath the rhody out front. This year, I know them--crabgrass of the flower world-- that invade cement and travel for miles underground to choke the life from lesser species. But don't lose heart. Not every single thing is demystified. Not every ounce of magic is gone from my world. A year. There are still the wire-walking squirrels, the Clinton Street hunchback, and now that the police have cleared the homeless folks out of downtown, they are here... thirsty hoardes who roam the hill that is my street in every manner of shopping cart filled beyond capacity with all of the treasures Clinton Street residents are known to abandon to the night. (I still have one flamingo. I don't think it will last long after the sun comes out. It is just too attractive. It is bait.) Today, three cart-people came by as we were working in the yard, shouting to us how we are missing out, how our chains to mortages and car payments are the only things standing between us and the bliss of homelessness. (Ah, beer. It is so good at first.) The woman, the lone woman, lounging atop the refuse in the cart, was pushed along by her three companions like royalty in the midst of human decay, her gender a fragile commodity, no doubt. Her eyes were closed and she was already sunburned on this, the first day of warm weather. I have looked at the cart people before and seen freedom. I have looked at them and seen the bondage that I know it to be. Its a half-full, half-empty thing for me. Low overhead can be appealing.

Today, Fred Meyer was having Fuschia Days. Free Dirt. I love free stuff, so we (I) dumped all the dirt out of last years pots and anything else I could find, and trotted them on down to Freddy's. You had to buy plants to get the free dirt. They took the starts and potted them for us. We brought huge pots. Old crab boxes, hanging baskets lined with sphagnum moss. You name it. I planted about a million fuschias, half a million geraniums, five hundred ferns and a big pot of honeysuckle. I figured if I plant the honeysuckle around Sid's pen, we won't smell the dogshit so bad during barbeques this summer.

And besides, as words go, honeysuckle is a great one. I remember playing a game with a bunch of people and one of the questions was: what is your favorite word? For most of the people there, it was an easy question. For me, not so much. I finally caved and wrote: river. It was a hard question to answer. But I digress.

Today, I saw two men loading two gigantic buffalo heads into the back of a pickup truck. What do you suppose they were planning to do with them? They were huge. I mean HUGE. They were as big as, oh, say, an overstuffed chair. For those of you who know me: the red wine chair. They were each that big. Can you imagine how massive an animal would have a head that big? And to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street.

Boat Update: Since I am an idiot and too lazy to figure out the picture thing, you can see our new boat on craigslist. See portland, fiberglass boat. check the postings around march 21, 2005. Like any new habit, it is expensive to get it right. Additionally, I am accustomed to beach fishing, and there is a bit of a learning curve to boating. For instance: coffee. The whole notion of gyroscopic movement is at play, and the need for a.) a lid for the cup, and b.) somewhere to put it when you are trying to: steer the boat, reel in the line, check the depth finder, pull up some line, pull out some line because the bottom of the river is its own mountain range... Anyway, I'm sure you can imagine my dismay when the whole bring-a-book-to-lounge-in-the-boat thing didn't pan out. And I love to fish, but the passive beach fishing, the long wait for the bell, is a thing of the past. This is an action packed event. And, the boat floats, which is good. We haven't caught any fish yet, but I hear that when the dogwoods are in bloom, the fish are in the river.

okay.

erudite

I want to write a poem in words no more than five letters long.

new boat
first day out
the buick
the orca
the old '58
wide river under us
wave upon wave
water not just blue
no big fish on
just bread and tuna
buoys will be buoys

good morning

Go Terry Schiavo go... She should be gone soon, and her parents will finally experience the grief they have been avoiding all these years. That is, unless they, as I suspect they will, dive headlong into rage over their selfish loss and continue to avoid it. The lengths we go to to avoid sadness...

Bulemia... If you look in an odd little book by Louise Hay called "Heal Your Body" she describes bulemia as the ultimate in self-loathing. The refusal to feed the self. That is not a quote, but it was something like that. It is the physiological manifestation of the barbie-syndrome. And what a paradox... to tube feed someone who induced vomitting to the point of cardiac arrest.

I do know a few who have chosen tube feedings over death, but few really know what they are choosing. They are choosing "not death." And the amount of care and maintenance required to prevent pain and decay is astoundng. The social cost, because money always runs out, is monumental. Life at any cost is a technological travesty. It starts with the ER (to simplify a complex argument, it really goes much deeper and into the religious fabric of this nation...world...universe....) The ER, the ambulance, the paramedic zeal, is where quality, not quantity of life, should begin. Their decisions are far-reaching and based in protocol that is imbeded in a health-care system that is based on belief. Everything is. Life IS precious. Mine is. I sit in conferences daily and review the code status of people who are a b'zillion years old and still, in the face of ongoing nursing home life and all it entails, want to be resuscitated... brought back to do some more time. And I guess that's the thing: It looks like doing time to me, but that's probably because I'm not doing it. But to experience the bone crushing reality of CPR in the elderly is barbaric. It is not life-affirming-- it is death-denying. We all gotta throw off this mortal coil at some point. (what DOES that mean???) I'm for dying whenever you like. I don't object to euthanasia, as long as it not state-funded or legislated. I won't vote for sex or death. It is nobody's business and like JoAnne says (or would say if she could figure out how to post comments) ..."for every complex question, there is always a simple answer which is usually wrong." or something like that.

Well, here's how superficial I am: I'm heading out to spend 200 bucks at Home Depot. In my world, that's a good day. My big plan is to get plants for my garden and paint for my metal outside chairs. I need a sandblaster and good paint. They are bouncy old blue chairs, and worthy of maintenance.

what?

Well, Bill Mahr is saying Bush may not have got it so wrong after all... that democracy is taking off like a brush fire in the Middle East.

I personally think he is the anti-christ.

Bush, not Bill Mahr. But it is an interesting turn of the talking heads. Pictures at eleven.

dyin' on republican time

Well, I say let the Schaivo chick go. Is that her name? She looks like any number of long-term tube patients I've cared for over the years. Vacant. I remember Mark--what was his last name?-- who's mother Janet came in day after day, drunk as a dog, and fed him the pureed meat of nursing home fare. He, at least, retained a sick sense of humor, but nobody knew he could even think for about five years after the car wreck. I guess someone finally said, "Blink once for yes, twice for no." and he did. For twenty years. He wished he was dead. There was this one guy named Jerry who kept pulling out the tube, so angry, so enraged by his life. It was a failed suicide. And they, the big medical THEY, just wouldn't take a hint, so, hands bound to bedrails, he lived until some too many years later, pneumonia took his side. That's the thing about these guys, these human preserves, they don't die. They live a long and often fairly healthy life because they are monitored for every sniffle. They never miss a flu shot. They are protected like the national trust.

Speaking of national stuff... do you think Jeb Bush will be the next president? President Jeb. That is so terrifyingly possible that when I heard it announced on the news as a casual segway from the Schaivo debate, the Schaivo Stunt, that my stomach, and that of my husband's, did flipflops. The right to live. I just want to go on record to say if that happens to me, pull the plug. I'm alright dead or alive. I'll just go on blogging...

And speaking of husbands, I guess the Christian Right has a stronger marriage deal. Covenant marriage. You have to stay in it unless... abuse, adultry, (let me try to get these in alphabetical order) alcoholism, liberalism, not wearing clean, pressed khakis to church, you just plain don't like the guy. I don't know. The list seemed ridiculous. And it turns out you can now upgrade your current marriage. You can do a Covenant add-on. The thing is, you could divorce. They could.

Personally, I've never held alcoholism against anyone. Why start now?

Hey!!! We got a boat. A 1958 Wacanda. It looks like a buick-- or an orca. Watch for us on the Willamette.

Dan Rather's Last Day

I should be watching his news channel, but I'm not. I never did like him that much.

St. Helens blew up. We were driving up Powell and saw the plume. It was happening just then. Right then. It was great to be aware at the same time it was happening. There have been other monumental events that I was unaware of--the seventies come to mind--and the first half of the eighties. Anyway, we dashed, as did half of southeast Portland, up to Mt. Tabor, which, it turns out, ain't all that great of a view. But the thunderhead-like cloud of smoke and ash had mostly dissipated anyway, and we went on to look at a fishing boat.

My husband wants a boat. We have nowhere to put one, but that doesn't seem like much of a barrier to him. He'd carry it on his back, I'm thinkin'. Greg, the fishing god, says that the fish are biting now because of St. Helens. It shook them up, he thinks. I think its just that he finally caught two springers. Big ones. My husband will be impossible to live with until he catches one.

There are a million things to blog about, but I'm exhausted from giving bad news to good people. Remember Ruby Miles? The one who called me and said she was lost in California? Well, today I had to tell her that she had to try harder in therapy or her Medicare benefit would run out. Try harder. She's ninety fucking years old. Try harder than what? Than she did when she was eighty? Come on. She examined me with the watery gray eyes of the weary, and said, "Do you like being a social worker?"

Well, I don't. Not at all.

popeye

Today. I read asia's flirt with separation from all known things and consider my own departure. This is no flirtation, mine (not that hers is... just her language always feels that way to me.) I'm here to stay. Cataclysmic change is good. In the midst of bliss I am up against myself though, and this time there is a witness to all that I would maintain in secret. I am whaddiam. Ask anyone.

sauvie's island this year

First day on the beach this year. I love it out here, sitting in my director's chair wrapped in a sleeping bag, gloves on, trying to write with dinosaur fingers, fingers that competed with Sharon Thompson in second grade for best penmanship. She won, but hers was boring. Mine had flair.

It isn't all that cold on Sauvie Island, on the Columbia, mist rising from warming water. 41 degrees now. The fish like it about 45. Who knew they were so particular? Anyway, the mist is a-rising, bad moon still in the sky, slowly giving way to the sun, red around the edges. Sid is with us, his first trip out, his first sand experience, sniffing and snorting like a pig. He is as fun as anything. I swear. I layered my clothing, and by noon am down to one long-underwear shirt. and, of course, pants. I got my fishing license yesterday so we could have two poles in the water. The water is flat, silver, with reflections of leafless trees on the far bank some 300 yards away. Big freakin' river, the Mighty Columbia. Lots of river traffic -- fishing boats, tugs and barges so heavy they cut the water so deep it pulls the water from shore and releases it, slapping in its wake, rolling along the beach so strong it rings the bells on the fishing poles. I think I've talked about how the beach fishing goes out here. They sink pole holders in the sand, stick the pole in the holder, dangle a bell from one of the eyelets, pull up a chair and wait. It doesn't seem to matter who's bell rings. They all go wild for a real bite. And you can pick out the uninitiated right away when a barge goes by and rings the bells. They run for their poles, certain the clever salmon has chosen this moment to strike. Then, sheepish, return to their chairs to wait all day for probably nothing. They usually only do this once.

The same people come out, day after day, year after year. The season starts earlier, but gets rolling in March. There's the boys from St. Johns, a whole batch of relatives who set up camp each time, and they have women, so I like them best. They put up a pop-up shade thingy and line it with tarps and inside is a woodstove. Always make friends with the people with heat. They bring "the Pacer," a mentally ill brother who likes to fish. He sets up his pole, then marks off his area -- about 15-20 feet of sand-- and paces back and forth in front of his pole all day. Not fast and not always, but its his spot. Its what he does. Then there's Oxy-boy, an idiot with a bad beatles haircut and a running script for Oxycontin. Now we call him the announcer because he never shuts up. When somebody has a fish on, he runs back and forth, shouting every move: "He's getting the net!!! Its on the beach!!!" Annoying.

And this is my life. I sit in my chair, watch my husband reel in the poles and cast for the 4th time today, once each hour, and realize this is my third year on the beach with him. His fourth. I remember the first time he asked me to go, and I said, I love to fish, and he was so surprised. And I sat right where I am sitting and watched him fish, and fell in love. I could have watched him fish forever. And I remember thinking then, way way back then, a lifetime ago, that if I could have any life, any life in the world, I would have this life. THIS very life. And now I do. It is my life, now. And I still prefer sheets with a thread count of 250 or better, and real Fiestaware just that shade of yellow. Sid broke one of my oval Fiestaware platters this morning and he (K) doesn't understand my need for matching plates or just that color. He doesn't have to. And in the middle of my perfect life, I am still myself. Eternally.



The moon may have been full Friday night. I don't keep track.

spring

This is the first day this year that I've felt my socks--you know? That feeling that they are just one layer too much. And its not like they are heavy socks. Just light little things, but my feet were ready to feel dirt. It is so warm. Some Portlander's are worried, but I suppose it'll work out. It'll be wet before we know it. Hard to say. Maybe I drug the dry south up when I came. Anyway...

I met a woman at work today. I was sitting at my desk, drinking the third cup of coffee, arriving like I do at the butt-crack of dawn. The phone was ringing and ringing, but from a distance. I walked up to the front lobby and answered it. She had called from her room. She asked if I was missing a patient. She didn't know who she was calling -- thought she had made an outside call. She asked, "Are you missing a patient by the name of (we'll call her) Ruby Miles?" Well, it was early, and to tell you the truth, I never really know whether somebody may have made a break for it during the night, so I took the cautious route--my least favorite, but most useful when liability is at issue. I said, "Well, anything's possible. Who's calling?"

"Ruby Miles," she answered, her voice crackling like paper through the line.

Ah. My critical assessment skills spring into action. "She's nuts," I tell myself.

"Hi, Ruby," I say. "Where do you think you are?"

California. And I've got to get back to Gresham."

Oh. okay. I tell her I will find her. She tells me I couldn't possibly because she is somewhere in California. Trust me, I tell her.

I walked down the hall and around the corner and into Ruby's room. I introduced myself as the person she had been talking to on the phone. She was just lost. "But I'm in California," she insisted. "Well, I'm in Portland," I said, ever observant. "How do you explain that?"

She couldn't. But she tried. It was a long story, beginning in childhood with a mother who wouldn't be happy. Wouldn't have dinner out. Would rather wait at home for a husband on a three-day drunk who would come home with bargain jewelery, a handful of magic beans, hoping to secure forgiveness, which we all know is free, but damned hard to come by.

She said, and kepy saying, "I have a good education. I'm not like some of them. I love to go out to dinner." And she told me her story as she fiddled with the remote-- a strange creature to the elderly-- with bent fingers like tree roots.

tripe

I hate it when I get abstract. Who gives a shit about my life? It is Sunday now, and I feel just a little less entitled than I did yesterday, having had enough TIME to myselves. We didn't do much. Left to our own devices, we rarely do. We sit, we consider, we are so deep.

Anyway, you should check out L's blog soulwake. She doesn't write often, but I usually like the drift. I forget

beautiful day

I'm sitting here with two cups of coffee because that's the kind of girl I am. Too much is not enough. Bacon frying in the kitchen, dog at my feet, husband out on the beach waiting for the bell to ring, and I have time to myself. In a marriage, this seems a little rare. Time with no one else to consider but me. The girls will be here soon enough, and time will be shattered again, split in several directions, and I am self centered. I took half of Thursday and all of Friday off just to have some time to do self preservation.

When I was alone for so many years, I pushed against the edges of lonliness, tried to find the way out, and could not. It was lonliness for a long time, but the eventuality of that kind of resistance is acceptance or death, and I accepted my own company. I became alone instead of lonely. It is a little fracturing however.... When people claim they have come to terms with a single life, that they enjoy their own company, what they don't tell you is that it becomes essential -- that time, those voices, that company of critics and supporters who live in the cobwebs of the fine, fine mind, and who, in the presence of happiness and marital bliss, will shut up for awhile, but not forever. Well, they're back. They tell me my life is only about housework and tripe and that I've lost myself.

To make their point, I had to turn the bacon. I love bacon. That's all I'm having for breakfast. Just bacon.

So, back to the abstract of my life. The point is, I was perfectly ready to lose myself, to start over. All over. Square one. I didn't even see it the last time I passed it. And now, I am finally finally not alone, but I live with the mind of a woman who has made alot of pretty important decisions without considering anyone else. I don't share. I don't play well with others. And its a damned good thing I am nuts about my husband, because I am nuts. Anyone will tell you. And slowly, slowly, I am learning to risk the unveiling of my terrible secrets. They aren't even secrets. That's the terrible thing. There is nothing. And I guard it like Buckingham Palace.

I am not making sense.

Anyway, the bacon is done. Eight pieces. I will eat four and save the rest for my love. I hope he catches a big fat springer. My valentine said: Sit, Stay, Be Mine.

That's marriage.

the history of my hair

The sun is out and the come-hither, finger-crooking, insinuation of spring is in the air. We are (read: he is) cleaning up dog shit and building a pen. We're taking the yard back, Sid. Fair warning. We were having a standoff about the shape of the pen relative to the yard, and I guess I won, although it had little to do with the dog. It was about effort, and whether to sink another post or angle the fencing and hook it to the existing fencepost, which would have looked like fucking Oaklahoma. My husband, who I adore, and who indulges the Martha Stewart part of me, sunk another post and the pen is square with the fence and all is right in my world. Order. If I can't have it inside my head, I'll take it anywhere else. And I got some stepping stones to tiptoe out to the pen, and teach Sid to tiptoe back in. He is a great dog, but had turned to digging in the boredom of our long work days. It will be an adjustment for all of us. I moved a huge fern over under the lilacs. I hope it likes it there. Should be better, its out of the sun,

Well, I'm blonde again, and for those of you who missed the parade of passing colors over the past couple of months: too late. I'm blonde. I'm very blonde. I'm blonde to the bone. I've tried to grow up, and grow gray, and let it all go, but I'm just not there yet. I should explain that this is a process. No. I'll spare you. The thing is, I want my hair back, and it just isn't going to happen. I am a blonde, actually. I always have been. And when I was laying on the beach five days out of seven, and living in the trees, I had streaky golden curly blonde hair down to the middle of my back. Almost. And its just gone now. Gone. It didn't happen all at once. I remember the first time I frosted it. And RAVE perms. The first edition of spiral waves. And it is ridiculous that I did those things... but not these things. You can't go back. Lorretta knows it. She never did anything to her hair after she tried to go blonde when she was twelve or something. Once you apply the bleach, its just a matter of time. And the real thing is, while I was frosting and playing and messing around with my hair, some of it turned gray. Gray. Me. And its okay for Asha, but I don't know how to have gray hair. Hers is silver anyway. My biggest mistake was starting to straighten it about two years ago. When Maria said, "Jou need a makofer." and I did it. I fried it. So, about a month ago I tried some dark blonde, which turned kind of pinkish gold. It wasn't bad. I kind of got used to it. But I still had this plan to recapture that sunkissed hair of my former life, and I wanted the underhair darker and you get the picture. So the pink wasn't enough contrast, so I just lived with it for a month. People said they liked it, but it wasn't me. Then, yesterday, I dyed it darker blonde, which really means brown. And it looked dyed brown. I panicked and broke out the bleach. I pulled it through a cap and did a really heavy frost and now I look like myself again.

I am blonde.

I have a dilemma: they're putting American Idol opposite West Wing. Shit. That's how superficial I am. I swear I've never watched American Idol before, but I got hooked.

So, the sun is down, I'm baking chicken cordon bleu with asparagus, and it is the night before Valentine's day. A year ago I got my diamond ring. A year.

synchronicity

Haley's birthday party. She's fourteen and too cool to breathe the same air as adults. She knows the words to more punk songs than I ever did. She is cool. And so, it is hard to be a stepmother. Makes me miss my son. We had come far beyond the birthday parties of childhood -- when I could get it together, his birthday so soon after Christmas -- and through the discomfort of adolescence when it seemed nothing was enough, and into the adult phase, where we admitted to liking pie better than cake and mexican food better than that. And we found a little Mexican restaurant down there that we liked and had dinner there each year, just him and me. It was our celebration. Our family of two. It seemed insensitive for us to slip away and celebrate like that -- there were lots of family who would have liked to join us -- but it was my time with my son, and the time was running short. I just didn't know how short, or how much I would miss him.

So I make my husband celebrate for his daughter. They don't know how. And I shopped for her--just little things... a sketch book and a wooden model for figure drawing because she, like me, appreciates Varga; and colored pencils, and because I couldn't resist: an aquatic frog and a vase and a plant and rocks. Don't ask me why. I had to do it.

So in she comes, after school, carrying the package she bought with her own money. And she had purchased a fish bowl and a beta and a plant and rocks. We looked at each other and smiled.

This stepmother thing may not be so hard after all.

come saturday morning

There are girls littering the furniture and the carpet and there is nowhere to sit but here. I am forced to write. The silent saturday morning-afters, when the ladies are sprawled until noon -- proof of the wild night life of adolescent girls in Portland. They were out at the Paris Club at a punk show. All ages. No booze. Hard to believe.

I am sick again, with a cold that I am protecting like a baby I don't want to ever see grow up. I fear bronchitis like a sword hanging over my head, capable of taking a month or two from my life without asking. I am taking Zicam and looking for Airborne, that new thing that is supposed to make you not get colds. It may be a little late. I am headed for Nature's to get immune restorer, but I am exposed to snotting and snorting people who are dying of viral pneumonia day in and day out, and I am so susceptible. SO susceptible. I hate feeling weak. I hate buying medicine.

Well, its tax time and I'm married. One of the conditions of this arrangement was that I file my back taxes before I moved. Well, of course I didn't. I hate paper. I really do. Before I got sober I didn't even open my mail. Ever. I think I 've admitted that in this running commentary on the truly mundane. "Hey, you should read Someone's blog!! Its all about mail and death!!" Anyway, I used to have these paper bags full of unopened mail labelled "later" and "even later than that" and I finally had to have somebody babysit me while I opened them all. It took all day. Vivian sat with me. (God bless her. She taught me how to shop. She introduced me to debt.) But anyway, I opened all that mail and there were hundreds of bills, mostly meaningless, but there was money: rebates, refunds, etc. etc. etc.... and all sitting in the closet during the bottom of my life. I could have afforded one more hit. I didn't know.

So now, I just mailed off my 2003 taxes and paid the accountant for the 2002 taxes I sent in last spring, and now I am married. Now all the receipts I have saved over the past year will have to be sorted and added and I just hate this part. But I'm going to do it today. Mark my published words. I will not procrastinate. Not yet.

At work it is so heavy every single day. Geneva died. I couldn't even write about her husband. He was so odd. Maybe I did. But I learned so much from him. He was insane, actually a zealot. A religious fanatic. Married to a woman 20 years his senior. May-December romance, I guess. More like November-December, but you get the drift. Well, she was dying and he couldn't get it. His faith, a difficult thing for most to manage under the circumstances, prohibited him from seeing it. He was waiting for a miracle. As far as I could see, it was a miracle she was still breahing. And it isn't that I don't believe in miracles so much as that I see them in the day to day of rising suns and full moons and green buds sprouting through winter soil--now there's faith-- but he was praying for his own personal miracle so he could keep his own personal wife. He was so self-centered. It was all about him. He asked, "Who will hold me when I am wailing in the night." And I thought: Jeez. Can't you just hang out with her and hold her hand and cut her some fucking slack? But of course he couldn't--he still wanted to have sex with her. And oh, boy. Did the staff eat that up. Nursing home sex. It just isn't easy to explain. And here was the thing for me... in order to protect the patient from her humping husband, I had to counsel him, and in the counseling, find compassion for this very odd man. Consent is such a funny thing. Must a wife, albeit a dying wife, consent? Is it understood within the bonds of marriage? So I said, in my limited institutional authority that substitues for wisdom, "If you believe she is consenting, you should at least close the door." And that opened one for us as he began to cry. He told me about his beliefs -- ad infinitum-- and I listened. I tried to find a place in the conversation where I could deliver the bad news--because it is seeming like that is my job these days. The physician's don't seem to want to do it. And really, nobody knows. But you do know. You do. And the families, as much as they don't want to know, want to know. Finally, he said, "You think she is close to death, don't you." And, faithless whore that I am, I said, "Yeah. I do." Simple. Simple. And like JoAnne's computer screen says: "for every complex question there is a simple answer and it is almost always wrong." Yes. So yeah, Geneva died. And he wailed. But by that time, we kind of knew each other, and we were not strangers and being a Christian Scientist, he is grinding against his belief that he will now be forever damned because he allowed medical intervention while he waited for his miracle. "You don't think God would fault me for that, do you?" I told him I didn't. But that's me.

Sometimes I wonder if everything we believe is true, just by virtue of belief. That whatever we think will happen after this life, will be manifested for us. That for each of us, it is all true. Everything. And we believe some horrible things, we humans. Horrible things.

bubblewrap

Stressed? Try bubblewrap...

One Good Line

Another day on death row. We used to laugh at the lowering of our own standards: "If nobody dies, its a good day." Well.... they're gettin' lower. It was a pretty good day.

Last week we went to get new cell phones. One of the great things about being married (there are so many) is consolidation. He puts both phones on one lower bill and pays it. How can I go wrong? I know there are those of you out there who disavow (well, you'll disavow almost anything. admit it) the loss of womanly independence and the right to fuck up your own credit, but I'm loving it. I married a responsible man. And those of you who know me can relax now. Quit worrying. I can't sink the ship. I'm not driving.

So anyway, there we were, in cell hell, the ATT/Cingular phone store. If it was Safeway, there would have been a mass exodus, people would have mutinied in earnest. Take a number my ass. My husband, bless his sweet unexpecting heart, said, "We'll just run by and pick up the phones on our way to the meeting." "Okay, Honey" I said, knowing--knowing all along how it goes. He tells me, "I did this all over the phone already. It will be a breeze." I smile. I know we'll never see the meeting. He says, "Don't worry, I even have the guy's name I was talking to. Sergi." But I know we'll spend the evening looking at ear buds and lime green disco phone covers and leather phone holders and god knows how many different kinds of the same damn phone. And there is one chair for a bzillion people, and I keep thinking of Asha, who says don't lean on things... if you stand without support you will have better balance and be more graceful, and I know she's right, but I'm so tired after a long day among the old and older. But I do it: I stand. And I am all the more graceful for it, if you can imagine that.

Back in cell hell it finally became our turn. OUR TURN. Then its all fun and games, shooting the shit with the twenty-something kid who tries to explain the difference between analog, digital and gps. The shape and frequency of radio waves. Remember: I don't care. But we sit there like a tree full of owls as he explained ad nauseum about how there are no long distance charges. And it was like being in the dollar store. It's how much? a dollar. how 'bout this? Dollar....

Sergi says:

There's no charge for long distance
NO charge?
Yeah. There's no long distance.
What about when we're out of the calling area?
Yeah. Then too. NO long distance.
What about...
Nope...
But...
No.

And on it went. It was all one dollar. NO LONG Distance.

But then came the part I want to talk about. We started to talk about guarantees and bringing things back and what do we do and (as Cooky says) who shot Willy. I'm sure you know what happens when you bring back a cell phone without the box. I don't have to explain that do I? It's as though the box was the single most important feature of the purchase. "Oh, I'm sorry, we can't return it if you don't have the box." Now, let's not even talk about how impossible it is to get the damned thing out of the box in the first place, let alone back in. And to maintain the box in its pristine original condition. You'd think it was a first edition Hemingway. But you gotta have it. That's gospel. I'm tellin' ya.

So, the guy, his name was actually Sergi (Sair-gay) tells us about the phones. We ask, "How's the reception?" And he says the thing I'm writing this whole goddamned post about. He says: "None of our products are guaranteed to work. That's why we have the 30 day guarantee."

I had to hand it to him--he kept a straight face.

I didn't.

I used to sell drugs. I'll admit it. The statute of limitations is up. But I sure as shit wish I'd thought of that line. I really do. "I'm sorry, none of my products are guaranteed to work." To amuse you, this is the best one I came up with after many years of practice: "This shit's so clean you won't feel it until about fifteen minutes after I'm gone."

See. There's a reason I have to be a social worker for two more months. It's pennance.

tributes

So, my theme has changed from apathy to, well, whatever is a step up from that. The primal shrug. It isn't so much that I don't care, as that I can't care about everything as much as it seems to need to be cared about. There you have it.

I'm so happy for Mark that he finally made it out of there. Another one. Another in an endless line of lives that have, six degrees of Kevin Bacon, touched mine. He was so smart. The history is this: Mark cracked his head while four-wheeling at 19 years old........ then, died at 45ish. Long damn life. He should not have lived. Quadraplegic, mostly deaf, half of half of one eye. But you gotta hand it to the guy, he could still appreciate Victoria's Secret catalogs. God bless testosterone. He could hand spell, and so could I. That was the basis of our friendship. That, and I had the rarely respected authority to boss around the people who took care of his body. I tried to take care of his mind.

He wasn't a very good speller.

Or driver. He had an electric wheelchair -- one of those giant red Jazzy models that take up more room that they should and weigh as much as my house. But the thing about Mark was he never really got it that he couldn't do stuff. He kept a very high opinion of his abilities, all evidence to the contrary, and was fearless.

He thought he could roam the streets in this wheelchair--no eyes, no ears-- and we just couldn't let him. I wish we could have. I wish I could have just opened the door and let fly. But better judgment won out and he remained imprisoned. Cared for. If we had care about him rather than for him, we would have locked him in a room with scantily clad women drenched in hot mustard and barbeque sauce and let him indulge himself to death. He did love mustard. I tried to explain to him, time and again, the importance of safety and my burden of protection. But he didn't get it.

The place where he lived, where I lived from 8 to 5 monday through friday for years and years, sat on top of a hill, with locked doors and window alarms. One day the locked door was just open, just barely, and he charged it in his electric wheelchair. He made it as far as the curb, tipped and fell into the street. As I ran out behind him, righting the ten-ton chair with six other staff, his fingers were madly spelling "I- l-e-a-r-n-e-d." I don't know if he did or not. We took the chair away from him. It wasn't safe. It wasn't. Still, I hated doing it. But he was running over people, and that wasn't okay.

With the old people, tributes feel different. With Mark, it just seems a long time comin'. There is no life to review. There is a State system of care provision that is imperfect and easily indicted, and Mark was a victim and recipient of it. It is better than nothing. Idealists would not agree with me, but fuck them. Idealists don't want the Mark's of this world free or visible. They think they do, but they haven't been to the circus. They haven't seen the man behind the curtain. Mark was not pretty. His life was miserable and expensive, and I can't speak for him, but it looked too damned hard from where I sat.

Some tribute, eh?

daughters

There's more. There always seems to be more. Once you begin to see the story of it all, the willingness of the aged to tell the tale, there is nothing but story, and in between, paperwork. Frances Lee's mother sits in a wheeled recliner during her waking hours. She yells, over and over again for her daugher and for water. She can only drink thickened liquids, so her question is never answered, her thirst never quenched. Her daughter visits almost every day. They are from Kansas, the Kansas of long ago, with prairie-straight hair, parted in the middle and wound into braids that sit on either side of her head like Danish. If you listen, you can tell their hair used to be red. She was telling me a story about her mother becasue her mother is sitting in the chair dying, and I'm new, and she hasn't told it to me yet. She warns me that she never shuts up, but living among the dying, I've learned to end conversations. She tells me about her grandfather, on mama's side, and " his big cavalry moustache and long red hair." How he fathered thirteen children with an invalid wife (ya think?), and raised them all. She tells me about all of the children in her mother's family, how one of the 13 was murdered while she was walking home after a bingo game. I was kind of surprised to learn that they played bingo during the depression, but I guess life goes on. They shot her through one eye and she lived for awhile. She reminded me that back in those days, they didn't keep you in the hospital if they expected you to die--they sent you home. And they made her mother sleep on the sofa so Mary could die in her bed, and all she remembers is that the cat had kittens that night. That's the story Frances Lee's mother told her, handed down to her, and she tells me so I'll know a little of her mother, the woman she was before she was taken by Alzheimer's. She's back-woodsy--Frances Lee is. Could have stepped out of the cast of Deliverance. She doesn't understand medication. Calls them magic pills. She's old herself. Her mother must be a hundred.

So that's the story for today.

one teensy little lie

I lied today. I have said for a long time, and this by way of literary bio: I'm a liar, not a writer. Truth be told in these few pages....

But there I was, hard at work among the dyin'. I was in Ardith's room, asking the "20 stupid questions." They range from, "Have you had any hospitalizations in a psychiatric facility," which almost no one answers ambigously; and "Are your bowels regular?" But my favorite by far is this: "What is your lifetime occupation?" My favorite answer to this question so far is this: "Oh, honey. Get a chair. This is going to take awhile." And it did. It took me awhile to find a chair, because I was in a hurry, and I only had 12 spaces to fill in and I tried to pry the one fact out of her. Just one word. Sum it up. Snap it up. I have work to do. And then, as the moment settled around me, as I saw the longing of her unexpressed story, the madness of not being able to say it outloud, of having to play it over and over again in the waning light of a vanishing mind, I sat. Impertinent. Stupid. And she told me of her husbands, and her life as a model. A model. As her body spread around her like shade. And just a little about her children. And this is the lie of it all.

Ardith died this morning.

You can't judge families. I know this. If there is one thing I've learned about dyin' is that there is no right way and no wrong way. Everybody does it different. Some teach us how to live, some how to die. Ardith's daughter hadn't visited her very often at all and the staff judged her for it. They had a tough relationship, from what I hear. And I don't know anything. But she showed up this morning--the daugher--and she was the way daughters are upon the death of a mother: Orphaned. Lost. It doesn't matter what went on before. The gaping wound of childbirth and all the years between lay exposed to the neon halflight of the hospital room, her mother's trinkets lining the shelves above the single colonial maple dresser she had hung onto, stautes of dancing dolphins and stuffed valentine bears, precious trash, dollar-store bingo prizes, all packed and moved in an instant. And the staff was mad at her. She was desperate to know if her mother had asked for her, if she was mad at her, if she loved her. She asked that: "Did she say she loved me?" No one could answer the question. What can you say? They are all good Christians, and I'm the kind of Christian you'll find in Anne Lamott's book Travelling Mercies. Barely Christian. Just barely.

So I made up a story. It wasn't a whole lie. I had let Ardith tell me the story of her life. I just made it a little bigger, a little sweeter, a little more of what she was looking for. A little more about her.

She thanked me. It was that easy. Then it was over. And I let the rest of them think I made the whole thing easier on her, but really, as always, I was just making it easier for me.

barbies

Mae died. I'm not sure when. It doesn't really matter. It hardly mattered that she lived at all. I was only one of many who cared for her, who lifted her from bed to chair and back again with the help of many other paid people. But I cared about her. She was odd. It was her psychiatric diagnosis: Funny Looking Kid Syndrome. Look it up. It sounds awful, but it seems that the endless barbs of the young and insensitive take their toll. Her appearance, however, did not keep her father from fucking her, or shipping her off to the nuthouse when she delivered an 8 pound tumor at the age of 11. Oh, I know I'm not supposed to tell these stories. But they are an enduring part of the medical record and I just don't want them to die with her. Who else will tell them? She was sterilized. Probably for the best.

To look at her was to view the work of an unskilled sculptor-- a haphazard face, eyes too wide set and off by several degrees, big and round and accusing. Her hair, thin feathers around her face, had no color really at all. Her body didn't work very well. I don't know that it ever did. Like so many, she found comfort in food, in the food from her own metal tray and the trays of nearby, less observant, inmates. Rolls of Mae spread around her like shade, and as she grew ill toward the end and the fat began to go away, and she began the long process of disappearing, her skin simply stayed, stretched like pizza dough over bones as pourous as sandstone, subject to gravity like the rest of us.

The thing is.... she had this Barbie collection. Looking back, it seems unusually unkind to have purchased Barbies for Mae. Shit--it seems mean to buy them for me. It seems mean to make them at all, but that's not the point. I wonder what happened to them -- those skinny dolls, the gold standard of body types. They must have been worth a mint. She had boxes of perfect, unwrapped barbies, guilt presents no doubt from dear old dad. But I don't want to focus on the legends, the hospital stories, handed down like nasty treasure from one shift to the next, morsels of sexual myth that keep the interest of underpaid caregivers, and which may or may not be true. They seem true. They could be true. She did give birth at 11. They did call it a tumor. She came to the nuthouse and stayed... long before the trend in therapy was in full swing. She grew up there. Then, we brought her to live with us.

Living with Mae, which is what you do if you run a residential unit, was sketchy. Its funny. In her chart -- the location of pure truth-- it said things like: suspicious... does not trust caregivers. Hoarding behavior. Well, no shit. What they don't say is that the people who come out of those places, those warehouses for the undead, are crazy if they aren't suspicious, if they don't want to keep all of their worldly goods in plain sight. She wasn't nice -- that much is true. But she was consistent. She didn't like anybody. We coined the word "snarky" to describe her, then, when State surveyors said it wasn't a word, we found it in a british dictionary. She was snarky. She embodied snarkiness.

Oh hell. Mae is dead. It's not that I wish she wasn't. I wouldn't have wished her life on anyone. I guess I just want to say out loud, in the only way I know to say things out loud, that she lived, and in the living, enriched my life.

I just wonder what happened to the barbies.

blame

Whew. Well, I'm feeling better and a little less shocky today than yesterday, yesterday than the day before. We got up Saturday morning and my husband is a guy not to leave things undone. Get on the phone to the insurance people and get it rolling. So, it is rolling. From the moment of impact, however, it now occurs to me, it is all about controlling the information -- the assignation of blame. It starts from the first comment, when she gets out of her car and says, "I was trying to run it. Were you?" I did not answer that question or any other in a natural manner. Insurance keeps me from the real truth, which will come out as I allow it. "I'm not sure." I hedge. "I just stood on my brakes as soon as I saw you." You. Your fault. You should not have been where you were and now we are where we are: standing in the middle of Division during rush hour, the cold hard street slick with sleet. Say that three times fast. And I control my human impulse to care about her. If I care about her, if I commiserate, I will have to pay my deductible, I think. So I maintain my distance, make the appropriate calls, and control the flow of truth. A bit at a time. Leaking out like truth will. It begins to dawn on me that it is okay to go through yellow lights. That this accident, may, in fact NOT be my fault at all. I look at it from her lane (at this point I am still wandering in traffic. The policeman not yet curbing me.) I look up and see the sign: Left turn yield to oncoming traffic. That would be me. I was oncoming like a _________ (you decide.) But not very fast, or the wreck would have been worse. So I begin to adjust my perspective. By morning, the wreck was indignantly not my fault and the insurance company -- hers, not mine -- had better come through. Its funny.

So, blame momentarily assigned, we got a little rental car, a kar, a toy, a KIA. And I am so jumpy. Jeez... If a light turns yellow, god forbid I am anywhere in the vicinity. So, we decide we are due a trip to the coast in a cheap little car with cheap gas. So, off we go to Bi-mart to buy me a pair of waders because it is winter and we are going night clamming. Sneaking up on the damned things in the dark, waves hopefully not sneaking up on us, off we went. The road over there was beginning to get snowy and I was a little concerned for the trip back, but it was such a good diversion from the wreck that I didn't really care. We got a dozen medium clams-- me, the lady with the lamp, K digging like mad when we spotted one.

Now, it is Sunday night. We've eaten the clams, the truck is in the shop, and our world is spinning on its axis, as well as it has since the Tsunami.

mother trucker

Well, I wrecked the pretty red truck. Broke it bad. Some woman tried to do what so many Portlander's try to do: make the left turn off Division and 60th before the light changes. It is the strangest feeling, one I don't really remember because I've always been so drunk when I've crashed, and I've crashed bad in times gone by. But this was so slo-mo. I kept thinking, oh, I'll stop. This won't really happen. But it did. She did not yield. I locked up the brakes and just fucking sailed into her. T-bone style.

I handle things so well. Not things like happiness or success, but car wrecks, disasters...?? I'm your gal. I was a little shakey, but it was so cold and rainy. All I could think was to exchange information (not something I used to do, oh... i want to tell a couple of stories!!! the 76 El Camino!! the hit and run on the Allegheny Drawbridge) but my hands wouldn't stop shaking, and I realized about ten minutes into it that I was standing in the middle of Division in the rain on Friday at 5:30 and everyone passing hated me. I was in grave danger of being smashed like my shiny red truck. So the nice police-boy asked me to stay in one place, which I could not, and finally (trumpets sound in the distance) my husband showed up in his shiny white charger -- I mean truck. God was I glad to be married just then. He picked up a crow bar and extracted the fender from the front tire so we could roll to the body shop I had conveniently wrecked in front of. They took a torch and cut off the fender that was in the way (at no charge -- I recommend them) and off I went.

What surprised me was how hard it was to call my insurance company with cold fingers and a tiny cell phone. And the help line was hard. Too many choices. It should just say: "Did you have a wreck? I'm sorry. Find the first warm spot you can and go to sleep. We'll make it all better." But having my husband is almost that good. He just took care of biz and got us out of there to die another day.

Then, Jane and Chris came over for dinner. I tried to cancel, but decided it would be a good diversion afterall and it was. It was good to see them both. Them and their rocket racket. I wondered why I was so compelled to prepare enchiladas last night for tonight. What do they say? Always cook casseroles ahead in case you have a wreck. No, that's not it. It's about changing those panties.

Well, my honey is playing White Stripes in the basement and I'm all tuckered out. Glad to be breathing.

It has been a busy day.

dyin'

There are things I will need to record as I spend my days in this place. In the mission statement (any company has one nowadays) it says: "nobody wants to come here." I spent some time today with an old woman who wants to go home. She wants to go home so bad that she's losing her mind. And she doesn't get it that she can't. She can go to somebody else's home and be a foster person. She can go somewhere else. But nowhere else is home. And the trouble is, she has no idea where she is, but she has just enough left to know where she isn't. And it isn't really even there anymore. Home. The farm. She spent 60 years in the same house and I can't convince myself to convince her that this is okay, that this alternative living is a little like home. The only thing that is like home is that she's there. It is not not not home.

I sat with another woman today who said, "I look down the hallway and I see the line of old women in chairs and my body won't do what I want it to and I wonder what is next for me." We wonder together which is better, to lose the body or the mind, and neither of us know, but she is closer to knowing. She used to be a hairdresser and vanity left her a long time ago.

And they are dying, one by one by one, and I didn't want to do this anymore and I don't know how long I can.

yesterday's news

Advancing across this spectrum. We went on a boat ride last night, the Portland Spirit. My expectations weren't huge, but I did expect it to be more like a boat ride than a floating restaurant. But I guess that's exactly what it is. I'm glad it was new year's eve and I was all dressed up because it was pretty fancy. The music was a piano bar of standards played by "the very handsome and wonderful [somebody] Goldberg. " We were up on the top deck and ran into him and I asked him if he knew any blues. He said he did, then went back to his piano and put a little spin on Danny Boy. I like Danny boy. I like Moon River. But we were a captive audience unless you really like to swim, in the rain. The rain. K won the trip by being the guy to take the most alternative transportation in Hillsboro (the Maxx) and so it wasn't much money and the food was great. We just should have taken it in the summer. The starlight deck was awash with puddles deeper than my clogs (don't wear clogs on boats). Our waiter, our personal waiter, was Gherrralll (emphasis on the final sylabal.) He and the rest of the crew could sing too. They had to. It was part of the job. The gay community was well represented, and an old woman sitting at the next table from Roy, Utah was horrified. After we docked, we drove back home, let the dog out, and went to a dance. It was awful. Every song sounded like "Achy Breaky Heart" and I longed for a good blues bar. We won't make that mistake again. We came home and played scrabble. That was the funnest part. I kicked ass.

So it's 2005. I'm going to bake a ham.

tenants

Back to the notion of a feudal lord....

I approached the Talent exit with some foreboding, some expectation of unwelcome emotion sneaking up on me. I am so glad to have moved that I experience a certain sense of guilt over my lack of regret. (I'll always find the dark side of happiness.) I loved that house, that kitchen I designed by and for myself with not-quite-white tile countertops, open cupboards and twig drawer pulls. I expected to feel like I was returning home, rather than visiting my property, and that the sense of abandonment would be overwhelming. Tracy had warned me that the photinia hedge was thirty feet high, but as I pulled into the driveway, it wasn't. It was high, but manageable, and the guy who lives there fully capable and willing to take care of it. It is part of the contract. They live there, my tenants. They live there like I did, with mountains of stuff. They are there to stay, for at least a couple more years. They aren't just camping out, waiting for the garbage bags to pile up so high that they have to move. I've done that before. Replaced by trash. Forced out.

So be it. It was my first house. But not my only house. When I left, I was going home.

women

I am posting this here, hoping those who don't email might read and know how much I appreciate them:

I received an email from my sister in law that inspired me to acknowledge my women friends at this time of year. Thanks Julie, this will not do your letter justice, but here I go....

As my life has changed so dramatically over these past couple of years and I am three hundred miles away from everything and everyone I have ever known (except my husband, who, it seems, I have always known) I have missed little and regretted nothing. I miss my son most of all, but lingering in the corners of my busy busy mind, among the cobwebs and misplaced ideas and unwritten books, are my friends. The women. The sisters, buddies, in-laws, nieces, cousins, coworkers and path-mates.

Julie spoke of the impossibility of naming, at this time in life, (halfway already, can you believe it?) a "best" friend. You are all the best. I am blessed to count so many among those who have been willing to put up with me over the years.... and, having lived in one place for so long, I have the great advantage of having people who know me, who I have allowed to know me, for a long, long time. Not everyone has that. You have seen me through this life, drunk and sober, rich and poor, single and married and all that lies between. You have watched my foot-stomping resistance to change--always for the better... eventually. Many times, you had to believe for me, to push me, to see my little sanctuary in Talent as a beautiful prison, empty without someone to share it with. But that sanctuary had to be built -- and torn down in its own time. Creating it allowed me that time that so many women are denied, to come to know who I am, alone. But Lorretta said it best (as she so often does) "...its like learning to play an instrument from a book. You can't hear the notes. Eventually you gotta get out there."

I wish all of you just some of the happiness and depth of experience I have known. I wish the next year would open your heart like ripe fruit, that you will take the time to see who you are, at you most essential. I have spent a great deal of time and money to know what Dorothy knew at the end of the journey: that it was always right here. And the shopping was fun along the way, but my life today, my sweet and simple life, needs little decoration. It is whole.

merry christmas

Bably blue topaz ring with diamonds, empty book, spa day at Dosha, Curious George Jack in the box. That's my haul so far. Nice.

I'd like to make this a serious end-of-the-year implosion, but I'm not there yet. I'm happy. I have so much, and so many. I'm making an apple pie, waiting to put the turkey in. I'll include a recipe for something eventually. We did the thing: got up and opened gifts. We leave tomorrow for parts south to see my son and check on my property down there. The hot water heater blew up last week, so need to see what's going on with the tenants. The tenants. Makes me feel like a feudal lord. Fitting for christmas.

Happy Birthday Jesus. An unpopular diety in my world. May you not get lost in the ribbon and paper.

moments

I have these moments. I record them here, in the relative safety of obscurity, friends and strangers reading my mind, or what's on it. And I think I end up looking like a sentimental moron, a bleeding heart, which I may be, but not today. I called my son, once the love of my life, and he didn't give me enough attention, so now I'm mad. Mad about Christmas and all the memories I carry alone. Alone. He tells me he is golfing. "We don't golf," I tell him. "People like us don't golf." It's funny. It's like when my friend Madonna told me I should buy a house. I said, "I'm a renter" as though it was a social category. I thought there were two kinds of people: people who own property and people who rent from them. I didn't know you could move from one social strata to another. And, I maintain, golf is reserved for the upper crust, of whom, I maintain, we are not. The Big Book described them when they said, "...that impeccable coat of tan one sees upon the well-to-do." I don't know what page that's on. The leisure time, plaid pants crowd, the flat chested women and short haired men, the days at the club. My son, MY SON, knows how much an annual membership is at the Rogue Valley Country Club. Well, he is white, and could, I suppose, get in. But once they knew his name, his father's name, I guess my fear is that they'd reject him. Now that's codependency at its finest. Kurt Vonnegut said it in Cat's Cradle: there are two kinds of people in the world. People you know and people you don't know. We'll, the people I know don't golf.

So he plays golf now, my little boy who hid in the cracks of some junkies attic while bullets blazed downstairs. Does this mean he's overcome the tragedy of his upbringing? I put too much emphasis on the past. I know. I know. But I was there. And sometimes, I want him to look backward in horror like I do instead of blythely skipping through his good life, drunk as a dog.

I said, "Isn't golf kind of an expensive sport?"
"I make quite a bit of money, Mom." he said.

OH.
Really.
Pay me.

So, he's doing okay, golfing the winter away, and I'm in a puddle up here in happily married land, missing my baby. He's not a baby anymore. He's golfing. He's a golfer. I guess there are worse things. He could be in therapy and tell the stories of his life. Maybe, just maybe, there will be a God who lets the stories die with me, and he can not know what happened to us for so long, and he will have a happy life.

shiny things

We got the tree today. A noble fir, 7 feet tall, for money. We thought about taking the girls up in the woods to murder a tree, but decided not to. Haley was horrified. "you were going to make us cut down a tree?" she said, as though it were hunting. Killing. Perhaps there is hope in the young. I didn't point out that the one we will purchase was killed. But the argument against sneaking up on trees is so hard, and its Christmas, and I'm lazy. So, we bagged a 7 footer down on Powell and 42nd, from the boyscouts, and drug it home to decorate. It is pretty. It was interesting, the blending of the ornaments.... I don't know if I've felt quite that married yet. His and mine. Ours and ours, and then I found Marky's football. And the little wooden horse he hung when he was two and I have a picture of it, standing in the light of the little christmas tree in that house on 4th and Oak in Jacksonville, that house of so many tragedies, so many troubles. And I shed a tear for all that is now behind me. I miss my son, but what I miss is gone. I miss that little boy who hid under the covers with me, silent and hoping, trying to disappear. I miss the 7 year old who hadn't lost the magic yet, who questioned me, saying, "Tyler doesn't believe in Santa Claus, Mom. Isn't that stupid?" and I had to say yes, but he was on the cusp of knowing. And the 15 year old-- I said I'd never miss him, but I do-- that christmas morning when he had actually bought me a gift, the first time he thought to get me something on his own since he was a child. It was the first CD by Joan Osborne and he played the cut "what if God was one of us?"
really loud, and I pulled his new snowboard out from under the sofa, the used white sofa, in the last house I ever rented. And now I am here, in this house that is my home, with this man who is my husband, these girls who move around me curiously, watching, waiting for me to go and leave things the way they were. K put up lights outside. He thinks its hokie, but I think they are beautiful. So far, we are the only lights on the block. I think he is secretly proud.

The tree is beautiful.

slices of pie life

Well shit. Just lost my whole post. Was talking about pie, and the holidays and all. I baked two pumpkin, a lemon meringue and a huge NY cheesecake which beat out a Costco one by a mile. The taste-test was patently unfair, I'll admit, but my crust is the best:

graham cracker crumbs

cinnamon

brown sugar

real butter

That's it. Use reasonable portions of each. Better than any I've had. I do love pie, and just can't quite NOT eat it until its gone. So my belly is full and I slept in. Carb hangover. Nicole is on the couch and we are lazy today. K went to work early and is doing half a saturday to suck all the leaves off the streets of Hillsboro. Next weekend is the toy run and the Kershaw knife show. Big Weekend. Anything to wear my jacket. I guess I could wear it any time, but it seems excessive. Weighs a ton.

The day was okay (Thanksgiving) and as much as I loved being away from the tensions I always experienced within my family, I missed Marky. We called him and told him that no matter what, next year we would all be together. He assured us he'd have his license by then and would come up here. We had lots of people over, some wanted, some unwanted, but you gotta feed 'em. Tom cooked the turkey. I'll give up his recipe. He'll never know. I doubt he can read. And for the unwanted: I just pictured them as Indians and it was like the first Thanksgiving all over again.

Tom's Turkey

Weber BBQ: get the coals going.

one turkey: 12-16 lbs.

Sit the bird, legs up, in a disposable foil roaster

cover legs with foil

Fill roaster 1/2 full of water

Squirt lemon and lime juice in the body of the bird. (I think he squirted at least half of each little plastic thingy. So, I think probably 1/4 cup of each.)

Tent the bird well

Cover and Wait. Our 15 pounder took 3.5 hours.

Tom says you can use the remaining liquid for gravy. I didn't. I wish I had. My gravy was shit.

There are so many stories I could relate about the holidays. Several for each. My top contenders for Thanksgiving are:

1. The Damn Ham

By now, following this blog, you've gotta know a little about my family, such as, any event was cause for dark and ongoing celebration. The police showed up about half the time to quell our spirits-- all in vain. Eventually however, our spirits, and some of our lives, were quelled.

Anyway, this Thanksgiving wasn't long after I got sober. And in my family, electing not to drink was an act of such disloyalty as to ostracize me for years. Looking back, it is more likely that I ostracized myself out of fear-- fear of the power of family to pull me back, vortex-like, to the center: a bottle of cheap whiskey and a mason jar of water.

So, there we were, me (about three years along) and my son, 12 or so. We had been invited to my brother's home in Gold Hill. I asked, like you do upon being invited, "what can I bring?" "Nothing." came the reply. It was a hollow sound, and the permafrost of my sisterinlaw's mood, the neverending anger at my drunken brother, crawled through the phone line like a snake. "nothing." Hissssss.

So, I made devilled eggs. When in doubt: cook.

I dressed up. This may have been my first and maybe greatest mistake. I was excited to be alive and sober back then. (Oh, hell. I still am.) But it was so new to have clean clothes. To have clean levis that had never belonged to anyone else. I wore a pink blouse. I don't think I ever wore it again. Pink satiny fabric with swiss dots. My skin crawls now.... I know now that being in my family was largely about disappearing. Don't stand out. Don't get noticed. Its why I wear black and little else. Blend. God forbid. (God, don't you love these glimpses into my psyche? Isn't it fascinating?) Anywho..... There we were. All dressed up and nowhere to go. Trapped in Gold Hill with a family who, upon arrival at about 11:00 was already engaged in the favorite family game: "Guess What I'm Mad At." Its that game where you don't get to know the rules until you break them. And they really had a head start on the party favors.

So, in we walked with our shiny pink, squeaky clean lives and a plate of devilled eggs. I could hear cupboards slamming in the offing, my sister in law, no doubt, expressing her dissatisfaction with her lot in life, knowing she could have done better. Its hard to sit down and go throught the pleasantries at times like this. Harder still to brave the kitchen door and face the dragon, but for the sake of the story....

I placed the eggs on the kitchen counter, and pushed through the door to ask the question women are supposed to ask: "Is there anything I can do?" (Pay for three years of therapy?) As you might imagine, there was nothing I could do. In the first place, we were having HAM, a travesty, a departure from tradition, which, in my mother's view, was just further evidence of wrongdoing by my brother's wife, who she despised. My mother, long banished from the kitchen by this daughter in law, sat seething on the sofa with the rest of them. The whole room seethed like ocean waves, resentment writhing below the surface, kept in place only by the thinnest of social norms which were even then being slowly eroded by the booze.

Dismissed, I joined the rest of the family in the living room where all sat in silence. Eventually, my sister in law came out of the kitchen with a small saucepan of steaming corn. (Another demerit from my mother: "The only vegetable that woman ever cooks is corn! Can't she serve anything green?) Now, ordinarily (or rather, in the past) we had done things like: iron a tablecloth, set the table, get some flowers for a centerpiece.... but such is the progression of alcoholism, holiday customs tumbling like dominoes in the wake of the death march.

She set the hot pan of corn on the bare wood table.

We all glanced at one another, waiting, waiting. We are good at waiting. Soon, the main dish arrived. My sister in law burst through the swinging doors into the dining room with a huge ham impaled on a huge meat fork, supported only by her oven glove and slammed it down in the middle of the (bare, wood) table. "There." she cried, and bolted from the room in tears, swinging doors swinging off the hinges.

Most of us hesitated, but not my nephew. Not Tyler. He stood up from the row of spectators and walked to the table, plunged his fingers into the side of the ham, came back with a fistful and started eating. Just another dinner at home.

************

STORY # 2: What Did You Do For Thanksgiving?

I'm tending bar on Friday night, the day after Thanksgiving. A guy walks up to me. I say, "Hey, what did you do for Thanksgiving?" He says, "Spent it with you."

bossy

It's not that I liked being the boss during my former life, its just that I didn't have to do so much when it was up to me. I am lazy, after all. Nowadays, I kind of tow the line for a really nice person who is in charge of me. If you don't know me, really, really, know me, I'm a little hard to be in charge of. Its not an ego thing so much as it is a matter of attention, or more precisely, inattention. Remember: I don't care. And now, in this job, I have a buttload of shit to do all the time. ALL the time. Not a moment passes that life doesn't hang in the balance for some little gray headed elder who is counting on me. Now, those guys... I do care about them. But the rules? Not so much. I attend to what I care about. So, I'm adjusting to life in real time, life in the nursing home. Seeing the humanity of it all. We admitted a poet the other day. Nobody really knows this but me. And when someone says they are a poet, its potluck: you never know what you'll get. But she is a good poet. She let me read one of hers, a beach at sunset thing. And while it was ordinary, there were some nice images and I could feel the wind in my hair. I told her so, and honored her poet-ness. We shared, commiserated actually, the rarity of gifted folks like ourselves, and I moved on to the next new one, coccooned in the electric bed of old age, hair no longer coiffed, reduced to the lcd of what it is to be an old woman. skin and hair. Those things we cherish too late and too little. The things that do not keep.

on my own again

First, I decorated the office. Then, I could work. I hung the usual wall hanging where I can see it, colors that soothe me, soft textures that remind me of home. I began the uncertain task of organizing. I can't begin to explain why it doesn't work for me. Well, I'll try. You know the whole thing about short term memory. Well, I don't know if it was all the drugs and staying awake from 1976 until 1987, but somewhere along the line, I lost whatever thing it is that enables filing. For instance, one day I'll file an employee accident report under A for accident. The next day, I look under R for report, then E for employee, then the mindfuck of it all is that everything is a report and its all about employees and then I think screw it, I'll file everything by the first letter of the first word unless its "The" and then I won't have to remember one word, but then I forget I decided that and it all starts over. Then, I make one giant E file and try to put everything about Employees under THAT tab, and then I realize there are too many employee-related things, that, in fact, all things are about employees, and I'm screwed again and have only an E file and no others, and then what to I do with the bazillion color-coded file folder with contrasting plastic tabs??? WHAT???? Then I try to go by topic, but once you start splitting hairs, there is no end to that shit and there's not enough tabs in the world to sort it out and there is only one piece of paper in each four-dollar folder. And the old learning kicks in and the memory of some driven bitch in a red suit and cropped hair is standing in front of a too hot/too cold/too big conference room in the basement of the Windmill Inn with burgundy tablecloths folded into fans and pitchers of ice water and she says: if you only have one piece of paper, you don't need to file it. Oh, great. Its like making an outline: if you have a A you have to have a B. Well I never do. I always end up with A I a i .... you get the drift. So, I don't know how in the hell I'm going to organize this office. What I ended up doing the last job was hiring someone who hadn't spent the better part of the seventies and eighties in a coma. And the sixties. Let's, at the very least, be honest.

Honestly.

Well, Sid is growing like a little weed. He tears the shit out of anything red. He loves to play. He can sit and is learning to lay down. Sort of. He's pretty manic right now. More fun than I've had in years. We take him to the dog park and he just gets rolled by the big dogs. He runs up to me, hides in my shadow, then takes off again. He helps me understand love. He comes into the room and finds me, first with his eyes, then launches himself through the air in my general direction. Once we've made contact, he can do anything. Once he knows I am here, or there, as the case may be, he can run with the big dogs or lay in his favorite spot next to the heater and be away from me. But first, he has to know he is loved. I helps me see who my son is, and why it took him so long to go away from me. But he has. Finally. He is a good man, and all the better for the love he can be certain of. He knows who he is. He runs with the big dogs. I miss him so much.

Monkey See

It was Monday today. I know it was Monday all the world around, but it really hasn't been Monday in my world for a long time. And even over the past week as I went the distance back to work, it was new, and a little fun. Now it is just Monday, and I am expected to perform like a trained monkey. I am trained. The 23 year old who is training me is so pleased when I get it right, when thirty years of training (do the math) perform their alchemy and I know stuff. Stuff she didn't even think to tell me. Its magic.

She is very good at her job. She is the best there is. Ever was. She is so good, no one can take her place. And she has made certain that is not a secret.

I remember being the best there ever was. I remember making it my business to be better. I remember Mable Butts and her bedside table full of mints; and Cleve Walker, a drunk who got caught and landed in a nursing home, and when confronted by the resident zealot, said, "if people in heaven are like you, I don't wanna go." I remember Eudora Hood and her poem, "Those Golden Years Are Really Tarnished Brass." I was the best for them and to them. No one could do what I did. No one could do what it is paid people do for old people, which is to live their lives for them, like I did. I won prizes for it. I got employee of the month. Of the fucking century.

Then I quit my job. And I didn't even try to tell them how someone could take my place. I'd spent years convincing them no one could. They believed me. I forgot to tell them I wasn't staying. I forgot to tell them I mostly didn't even want to be there, would rather have been at the bar. That's how good I was. Liar Liar pants on fire....

plumbing

Well, it finally happened. My laziness caught up with me. It seems so innocuous while its happening. I make coffee in a french press almost every morning. Sometimes I use the drip pot, but usually we prefer the thick, high powered muck of caffiene, water just squeezed past, black as a bible. But the thing is this: there is no filter -- no tidy paper to catch the grounds in, to package them up like a soggy christmas gift and toss away neatly in the trash. So, in the morning fog, my own personal fog, it just seems too hard to take a spatula and scrape the grounds into the trash, or harder yet, the compost bin outside in the cold back yard. So sometimes, some very foggy mornings, I take a risk and rinse them down the sink. They usually go. Its intermittent reinforcement at its best. Sometimes its a little sketchy, a little lag time passes, but then the water goes on down the pipes to wherever water goes, and I am still free. No one knows.

Well, they do now. I am so busted. To my credit, I admitted it right off. "Honey," I said, "I plugged the drain with coffee ground. I know you'll be mad. But I fixed it." He asked, like any man would, "Why do you do that?" and I told him that was not a conversation we were going to have. Just leave it that it won't happen again. He did, bless him. He stormed around a bit. I said, "what can I do to help?" He said, "whatever I tell you to do." So, I was a guilty servant. Then, in the midst of my nearly overwhelming guilt, he makes a phone call and says, "Yeah, between coffee grounds, grease and the chew I spit down the drain all day..." and I was released. Released. It was his fault as much as mine, which I, of course, was quick to point out. I didn't belabor the point, but it did get me off the cross.

He got it fixed. I love men. Have I said that? I love their willingness to climb up on the roof and stick that nasty old snake down drains of unknowable destination and drag muck out with bare hands as I stand gagging in the background.

One of the nice things about plumbing problems is that I got to clean out under the kitchen sink.

So, life goes on here in my new world. I can't imagine living anywhere else.

late pumpkins

Just another day in paradise. I forgot to mention our pumpkins. We downloaded patterns from carvingpumpkins.com, the kind of patterns that are not carved all the way through the flesh. K carved one of Frankenstein and one of Gollum. They got lots of attention from the passing parents with kiddies and my favorite was when I asked one woman to guess who they were and she said, "John Kerry and Ghandi." Well, close. I don't know about you, but carving a Ghandi pumpkin seems somehow wrong.

But that was then. This is now. Still sick, still working at the new job. My head is clearer but I miss my mind.

Sunday morning

All the girls were here last night and the Rocky Horror thing is becoming a weekly event. The sisters aren't speaking to each other, so they each bring a friend they are speaking to, and it goes fairly smoothly. So, it is a quiet morning, kids laying everywhere, forcing us to have breakfast at the kitchen table for a change. I slept in. I have been so sick, and am on the last dose of antibiotics now. I hope it passes soon. I have the kind of head cold that is alot like having one of those sand windows in your head, you know, the layers of colored silicone that shift like thick water trappepd between thin panes? The sludge moves with changes in elevation, like, if I bend over to pick up a towel, I stand up and spin for a minute. It isn't a bad or unfamiliar feeling. When I was a very young child I liked to spin around and around until I fell down. The whirlies, we called it. And just so you know, if you have children who truly enjoy the whirlies... its a bad sign. Its sort of the same feeling as when you mix wine with, say, tequila, and do that for awhile then lay your head on the pillow (or the floor, depending on your level of organization or where you find yourself landing for the night, or day) and the whirlies begin. Typically a precursor to puking in my experience.

Wow. what was that about?

Anyway, back to my head cold: it's kind of like breathing through a straw in a thick milkshake, there just isn't any air exchange.

Anyway, I'm sure there is alot to write about, but I really can't think right now. I am over the election. The hopelessness in the wake of all that is considerable, and I don't want encouragement or hope for the next guy. This is America. The land of the mediocre, home of the mundane. Maybe Prozac? It is depressing.

trauma

I hear the four horsemen of the apocolypse are resigning: Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Powell and Dopey. I barely wonder or care. Honestly, I'm having a hard time caring enough even to watch the Daily Show. I think I'll just turn off my brain, erase my education and become a moral republican. I could use the morality, honestly, and that education really hasn't been all that beneficial. Maybe they would reverse my student loan debt. That would be nice. Then, I could ease into the last half of my life slowly and without the uneasiness that comes with knowing how truly dangerous this country has become. I consider how my day to day life is relatively unaffected, and how innocuous the religious right is. It is the analogy of the frog in boiling water. I'm sure I've told you that one. The story goes like this: you toss a frog in a pot of boiling water, he jumps out. Put a frog in his own pond water and heat it to boiling and he'll stay there and die. The water is boiling.

I got a Wilson (Castaway) volleyball for my 6 month anniversary. I love it.

workaday

He called. George W. He called me. It was chilling to hear his voice over my phone assuring me he had the enthusiasm to go the distance. He refers to himselves as "BushCheney", as though it were one person. And it is, I suppose, as much as anything. It is a multi-headed beast for certain. Cut off one head and two more pop up. I don't know if Good Ol' JK can bring it to its knees, and if he does, what net effect that will have.

Well, the first day of work was fine. I am an employee again, not a boss. I have to show up and I accrue time-off slowly, like in the old days, not the 4 weeks a year of my recent past. I will adjust. Not running the world has its down-side fer shure. But the trade off is there. For me. I can leave work at work. I don't care. And now, it can be not only the theme of this blog, but the theme of my life. I was interviewed by about ten women and two men. One of the men was a blind priest. He has a working dog that we don't get to acknowlege as a pet unless he is off his harness. The priest, Frank? Fred? was asking why we didn't have donuts at the meeting. The maintenance guy said maybe we did. How would he know? So, there is hope. Its a pretty seriousl outfit, and I will adjust to the solemnity of a nursing home as opposed to my life in a nuthouse. As always, grist for the mill.