movie stars and yard sales

It has become our custom to rise early on Saturday and go yard saling. I read a zine called something like "trash to treasure," written by a yard sale enthusiast who attempted to describe various yard sale types, behavior of yard sailors (my term), and general what-can-I-expect? information. She missed a few things, but it was good overall, and I hope I haven't lost it. I'd like to include her url here. Well, maybe later. We are the classic yard sale couple: my husband looks at bikes and tools, I look at stuff. I love stuff. My favorite new saying:

You Can't Have Everything.... Where Would You Put It?

But this does not deter me. I try to follow the "one thing in, one thing out" rule of clutter management, but it kind of goes like this: One giant box of unsorted linens in, one broken coffee cup out. So from the perspective of mass alone, I fail. But if you've been reading along, I am no stranger to failure. I embrace it.

Okay, so what did we find on our tour yesterday? I know you're wondering.

The great thing is finding a real yard sale. By my definition, a real yard sale is one where you can get a Picasso for a quarter. Everything should cost a quarter. "How much is that?" A quarter. Now that's a yard sale. It's where the hosts are nothing but willing to make that deal. And negotiating the price is important. If they tell you the price is five dollars, and you don't ask if they'll take three, you're just not trying very hard.

The Find: For about 30 years I've been looking for a certain print. It is of a three-masted ship in a storm at night. You know the one. It's famous. And I've never found one for sale.

Until yesterday.

We drive by this yard sale in Sellwood, and there is cool shit strung from curb to porch: old shit. And I wonder if this is a yard sale or an antique sale. There is a big difference. In an antique sale they have the same stuff, but know its resale value. These guys had no idea. I always wonder why yard sales are held. There are, in my time-tested opinion, three valid reasons to have a yard sale: clutter, moving and death. This one seemed like death. A woman died, I'm betting. She, if alive, would never have sold this stuff.

So there at curbside is my painting. Now, it is not in mint condition, but I don't care. There it is. I love it. I must have it. It is in a cheesy gold frame that is held tenuously together with pink ribbon. We coast to the curb and I jump out of the truck as quickly as I can, before someone else will scoop up my treasure. Finally, I have it in my hands. My painting. My ship on a stormy sea. You can just see the moon through the clouds. One light on deck. I think they are coming home.

So I ask the guy how much for the painting. He considers my question, says, "Eight dollars." I would pay eighty, but he doesn't know this. "How 'bout five," I counter. "It's pretty trashed." He agrees. I hand him five bucks, squealing with internal joy.

I have so much shit that it is tough to make me this happy with material stuff. I have everything I want. Except this painting. And now I have it. My world is complete.

There was other great stuff, but not in the same category. And the painting is trashed. I'll have to reframe it. Clean it up a bit. No problem. I am inspired.

So off we went to Lake Oswego. Downtown Lake Oswego is the Rodeo Drive of the metro area. All of the well-tended people, just out of therapy, crowd street cafes, the lakefront. All too posh. We wanted to buy from the rich and, well, that's it. That's what we wanted to do. But it is such a protected community that they don't allow garage sale signs unless you use their own: a nicely designed, circular sign with print so small you'd have to slow down to find out where to go. We concluded that these guys don't sell, they donate.

So we left.

On the way out of town was a huge sale. They are identifed as such: Big Sale, Huge Sale, Gigantic Sale. I wonder what kind of turn out we'd get if I posted something like: "Smallish Sale, Okay Stuff That We Don't Want But Will Sell To You For As Much As We Can Get." I just wonder.

So there we were, picking amongst the ruins of someone else's life, going through the Christmas decorations and tupperware. We began to negotiate for a convection oven, the one designed by the Galloping Gourmet. It was only ten bucks. There were three women who seemed to be hosting the sale, one very old with Beverly Hills makeup: heavy too-tan base, false eyelashes and heavy liner. Her hair a Marilyn style platinum wig, her breasts high and firm. And very big. Looking great for an eighty year old woman. I don't know how we got on the subject, but she began telling us that she used to be the girl who held the curtain back for the Jackie Gleason Show. Turns out she was an old Hollywood actress, had hung out with Sinatra, had doubled for Marilyn Monroe. You could tell at a glance that she was once a stunning woman and had defied gravity to stall time. Her name was Lisa Hall. She need us, strangers, to know who she had been. And it made me think of all the people I have been, and how important they all are to me. I listened to her, and thanked her for her stories. I do love a story.

That is one of the great things about yard saling: The human beings. Like the guy who quoted the prices like this. "Two bits." I asked him what that meant. It is a quarter. I knew that, somewhere in my distant childhood memory. I could almost hear my father and my uncle, both long gone, who described value in the same way. Like the woman who sold us her radiant orange TREK while telling us about her back injury and subsequent use of Methadone. Or the old woman and her daughter Janice ("a little slow but not retarded") who sold her 6 speed bike because it made her nervous.

Anyway, there is so much to tell, but I'm tired of typing and the grandkids are up. It is Sunday morning on Clinton Street and there must be a sale somewhere.

closure

I don't know if it is true that you can't go home again, but I know that the times I have tried, it hasn't worked out that well. Transition is a funny thing. For instance, I swore I'd never marry the man I am so happy to be married to, then, suddenly, it was the only thing that made sense. I never believed (another example) that I could buy a house, that I was a lifelong renter, that I was in that category, that there are two kinds of people in the world: owners and renters, like lords and serfs, and I was a serf by birth. But I bought my sweet little house. I vowed I would never move, that it was MY HOUSE, my one and only house. I decried the real estate whores who buy only to sell again, who have no sense of home or place.... but love and distance combined and I have moved, only I then vowed never to sell. But now, I have sold my house, and at a tidy profit, and when I was in the valley this weekend, I stopped by for one last walk through while it is still mine.

I'm not sure now what I expected, but I think it did help me along toward closure of a distant-seeming period of my life. I walked through the house and looked at the kitchen, the perfect cottage kitchen that I designed on graph paper. I stared at the two perfect colors of green paint I mixed by hand because I just couldn't find the right swatch at Home Despot. I mixed the dark wall paint three times before I got it right.

I walked through the rooms where I spent the last years of my single life, the life I was certain would always be mine alone. And it was hard to be single that long. But the thing about the passage of time is that all of that banging against the walls of what is, what is, what is.... eventually finds acceptance. And that acceptance seems to be the key that opens the door to what is next.

And this is next.

Retrospect is good for the soul. I walked through my back yard and told Elinor, the girl who lives in my house, that my dog Spencer is buried in the far back corner and that if she plowed it up, there would be a gray wool blanket wrapped around old bones. I told her that the Peace rose in the opposite corner of the yard was planted for my mother and that the ornamental cherry tree was for my brother Marc when he died. I told her that my son built the winding rock path that leads to nowhere, and that the gardens weren't always there.

I needed someone to know. I didn't need her to care, but someone needed to know. It is how I am certain that I was there.

I have disappeared from that life, and selling my house makes it complete. But like deals are, it is not done, and the chickens are not counted.

sid

Today is Sid's first birthday!! We got him peanut butter dog cookies and a new cloth frisbee. He was the hit of the Hosford pack, as usual.

weekends

Weekend one:
My ordinary quiet Sunday morning on Clinton Street was punctuated by the high-decibel rant from the nutbag that lives next door. It had been going on all night, and by morning, I was ready to call the police. A drunk crazy man with a knife is what the police are all about. So they took him away in cuffs, and told me they'd only keep him for about four hours. Just long enough to really piss him off. He'll be back, I'm sure.

My truck has been keyed three times lately, and my neighbor Sarah (the sane one, on the sane side of our house) just had her car windows blasted out. We want to move to the hills. While talking to Sarah about crime in the neighborhood, I discovered that she designs Pendleton blankets for a living.

Weekend two:
We drove to the beach. I wanted to get out of dodge for a night, so we stayed with friends in Newberg, then headed out early saturday for the coast. I'm still in lots of pain, and things like riding in a car and turning while sleeping really get me down, so it was a short trip. There and back. Occasionally I just need to see the water moving in and out, mind of its own, to remember yet again, that I am an ant on a log, moving down a raging river. Occasionally, I believe I can steer the log, effect its movement in some way, but one glimpse of the ocean and I remember my place in the great scheme of things. I am here.

Some things I saw this weekend:
In Tillamook, the highschool ball team is called "the Cheesemakers." I think this is an unnecessary bow to industry. The least sporty team name I've run across. "Go Cheesemakers!!" Really.

We were walking on Hammond Beach and happened across a washed up bridal bouquet, lavendar ribbons and lace, tying lilies and has-been daisies into a sodden wad, washed up on the bank where the Columbia meets the sea. Now there is fodder for a mini-series if I ever saw one. I'll write it. My husband wants to move to Hammond and open a restaurant called Hammond Eggs, beside it, an all cotton clothing store called Cotton Fever. Old Junkies. Whatcha gonna do?

And speaking of eggs, we drove far and wide to find the perfect place for breakfast. Our goal was to find fare similar to that of the yuppie haven Henry's (down the street) with roasted red potatoes, perfect eggs, toasted hard sour dough, homemade freezer jam.... nestled in a cove on the Oregon coast. But we did not find it. We had bad ham, bad eggs and no choice in bread. White. White bread. Old white bread. In Garibaldi.

On another note: My son is legal for the first time in about 10 years. I've encouraged this, based on the Dylan (Bob) quote: "You gotta be honest to live outside the law." So, he can drive now, only it takes a breathalyzer to start his car. That brings the family disease into stark relief for me. Heartbreaking. He is trying to figure out now how many beers before it kicks in.... Of course, I have offered the unheardof suggestion: You could always NOT DRINK. But in my family, that is akin to treason. We Drink.

I bleached the shit outta my hair.

personal implosion

Well, I guess the good news is that I didn't die. Last post, I was happily poolside, bemoaning the pending sale of my first home. Not really bemoaning, just reflecting on the chimeric (a word?) nature of my life and times. Then, unannounced, unpredictably, there boiled a problem of surgical proportion....

It was a dark and stormy night. It wasn't. It was a fine day and my stomach began to ache.

Its funny -- I don't know if it is because I called in sick too many days at work, or played hooky too many schooldays, but any time I get sick, I just feel wrong and guilty. I am rarely able to assess my situation for what it is and go on home. I just keep working. And the problem now is that when I am at work, I am many, many miles from home or help. So, by the time it dawned on my that the ache was indeed a problem, I was shit outta luck and rush hour was on in Tigard. Me in my little Subaru, I pushed homeward through the pain.

I am so dramatic. But it hurt freakin' bad. By the time I got home, it was pretty clear that something serious was happening to my one and only bod. A call to the doctor confirmed my assessment and we were off to the hospital.

A ruptured appendix. Four days in Providence and three more scars. Its a collection now.

Notable events: Kitty the night nurse. What is it about night shift workers? I mean really. This biatch was so mean. She was more committed to my exercise program 4 hours out of surgery than Oprah's personal trainer. It was midnight for God's sake. Midnight in the hospital, me -- cut "from asshole to brisket" as my sainted grandmother used to say-- and Kitty was on duty.

I have had somewhat of a revelation about pain medication. And with my various surgeries and related and unrelated narcotic expertise, I think I would know. So, here it is (you might want to write this down) : It doesn't matter what you take as long as you like it. Nothing really works. Some just make you feel a little happier.

They started me off with morphine, which I hate, except that it was the impetus for the Stones' song, Sister Morphine, which I love, and it always looks like fun in the old confederate soldier movies on the battlefield. But it isn't fun at all. I read an article by (speaking of the Stones) Keith Richards, bemoaning (my word for the day) the absence of drugs that make you feel good. (A complaint aimed primarily at Prozac and other buzz-less substitutes for good ol' narcotics.) At any rate, there I was, armload of morphine and ... story of my life, it is not enough. When I have said this at various times during my drug-inspired life, I have been lying, but NOT THIS TIME. shit it hurt. So they gave me more. But that's the thing with morphine. There is not enough. It never feels good. And I guess I'd have to admit here that feeling good is in large part my goal. To not feel bad.

So we moved on to dilaudid (pronounced by many: dilotta). Now historically, this one has been on my hit list for years. My list of favorite all-time drugs. But that was back in the shootin' days. I remember selling them at a local bar (they used to bring 25 bucks apiece), and offering one to Jesse the Fly Fisherman. I said, "Hey. You want to buy a dilotta?" He said, "Dilotta? Is that like a buritto?" I said, "Yeah, only more expensive. A dilotta bell-grande." Poor Jesse. He had really long hair but really wasn't in the same junkie groove as the rest of us. Anyway, prior to this hospitalization, I don't think I had ever actually taken dilaudid by mouth. Pretty sure not, or I wouldn't have been so happy with their second choice. It made me mad as a hatter. Madness, not anger, tinged with agitation and verbosity. You can imagine. Anyway, they sent me home with sixty (count 'em) dilaudid, and like a good junkie, I took them as ordered for about 24 hours and finally figured out they were making me insane. Then we flushed them down the sink. 25 bucks apiece. I don't care how long you been clean... that hurts.

So I called the doctor back and said they were too strong. And this is the point of my story. We addicts DO recover. Was a time when the notion of a drug that was "too strong" did not exist for me. The closer I could push myself, my body, to that perfect edge where death meets life, the more successful I felt. The near-death experience was my goal. Daily. So, I backed up to vicodin, which I can take or leave, which makes me a little bit happy, and takes pretty good care of the pain.

And that's the story of july 21-29 in my life. I'm home, in pain, and healing.

There has been a firm offer on my house. And counter offers coming in. Whoopee. It is going to sell.

poolside

One time I was in San Diego and sipped a latte on the lido deck of the Hotel Del Coronado. I felt like a Kennedy, and do now. We put up the pool. I lounge beside it, paddle around in it, skim it with the blue plastic net, wait for it to pop and drain, flooding the basement and the neighborhood with pristine blue water. but not yet. Now, it is summer, in the high eighties, and I am a happy portlander. I have even let my husband off the hook for not buying me an air conditioner, a condition of our marriage. Or was that a dishwasher? I forget. I remember the deal was some major appliance and I get to decorate the house. Well I did.

I was just offered an opportunity to submit to an anthology called knockers. I will, I think. My dear and double-breasted readers, You can too. I don't know the url, but that will get you to the author's website.

So, the pool is up, the heat is on medium low (weather-wise) and I am loving it. There is so much to say.

I think what inspires me the most, as I sit on the slanted grass hill at Hosford and watch the transparent moon sneak above the city, is the ethereal nature of my life. I am no longer where I was. I am here. I was here a year ago -- two years ago, now -- when the man who is now my husband, lay with me on that same hillside and explained the quality of night in the city, how it never gets really dark. And my eyes have adjusted to this light, and this schoolyard, where Sid runs with the pack that are the Hosford Dogs, and we are a part of this neighborhood.

I put my house on the market, my house in Talent, the one I was going to live alone, grow old and die in. And I have so few regrets. The money helps with that. But if I could go down there, remove the twig-shaped drawer pulls from the kitchen cabinets, and put them in my pockets, I'd be good to go. They're mine, after all, and I am in a sort of reminiscent kinda space, where nothing seems real, the floor under my feet appearing only as I step forward into this still so new life.

It is mid-summer already.

july

Its difficult to believe it is summer when we haven't had a day above eighty. I love it here. It is the time of the Blues Festival in Portland, and we went to see Buddy Guy Friday night. There are some people who just needs to be seen in person.

Work: It is work. The building is beautiful, and the people who are moving into it, who have been incarcerated in the State Hospital for years and years, think it is the Hilton. They may be crazy, but not about that. My office is the last thing to come together, as it should be.

Home is home. It is difficult to find energy to write just now, so much is going on. I have my Subaru, and it is strange to pull into a drive-thru coffee thing and have to look so far UP to order my large coffee with lots of cream. LOTS OF CREAM. I am accustomed, in the narrow streets of my neighborhood, to round a corner and start up a hill and have other cars make way for me. Not anymore. I'm on my own. I am invisible. Silver bullet car. Tiny little miniature Outback. I am everywoman. It may not be sexy, but when I filled the gas tank and it was 26 bucks instead of 55, I was pretty darned happy.

My creative spirit has left me, it seems. She's done it before, and I fear the Hemingway curse, that I can only write drunk, then I remember.... HEY! I couldn't write drunk!! I talked about it alot, but accomplished really very little.

It'll come to me. It is me.

I got a rearview mirror on my bike!! It is so much better. I don't hear that well anymore, and never know when people are coming up behind me. In small towns, in other parts of the world, it may not matter so much, but here in bike town it really does. There are cyclists who are so competitive, so car-like in their manners.... They tailgate, they pass without signaling. They fly up behind me and pass within a hair's-breadth of my quaking handlebars, and whooooosh, they are gone. Leaving me in the rubble, clinging to the railing over the Willamette River, my choice at that moment seems either to be splattered on the metal gridwork of the Hawthorne bridge or swim for it, my bike so much nautical history. The Titanic Schwinn. I hang on for dear life and begin again. Commuters. They are rude and dangerous and wear stretchy clothes. I'm sure it feels better, but blue spandex on a 40-something man... not so good. But with thighs like cannons, you don't want to point out the fashion don'ts.

Okay. enough of that.

Life is good today.

long time gone

I am here. I am here. I am here.

It has been well over a month since I have taken the time out of the tiny slice of time left to me after this woman-eating job, to document my experience of this life--my interpretation of the things that happen to me-- the things I see.

I remember when I was new here (and in saying that, realize that I am no longer new here) we were walking further down my street and saw a raven perched atop a church steeple, and squirrels hopping tree-to-wire, and the hunchback, and it was all so new.

It is still different. I am still enthralled.

My husband sells bikes. He buys them cheap, cleans them up and sells them cheeep. And the reason I tell you this is because it is a story.

There we were, selling bikes on Clinton Street. Now, I don't sell the bikes, but I live here, and I see things, and I can only see them with my eyes -- my southern-oregon-small-town-eyes -- and this girl stops to look at the bikes. She is a biggish girl like me, redhead, hole-punched and inked like so many girls are here. or now. And she asks about the bike for her friend. And we have (he has) a pair of Peugeots, purchased from an older asian couple who still had the original receipts and the manuals and they are nice. And so are the bikes. So this girl is looking at the girl's bike for her friend whom she refers to as "him" and "he." And I inquire if she's wanting which bike, and she says he is short, so he wants the step-through model. And I learn yet another pc term about bikes. It is so fucking hard to keep up.

So.... when the friend shows up, there are three of them, and I can't tell what they are. They were so completely ambiguous. The ones who looked like guys had tits, the ones who looked like women did not. There were whiskers and sideburns where none should be, and we were so confused. And I'm thinkin', hey, buy them both. Have a girl's bike and a boy's bike for those day's when even you aren't sure.

Now saying this, I know I expose my provincial mind... my utter lack of sophistication... my age. But Jeeeesus. These were some odd looking characters. And I love a good story, but I was speechless. Gender-benders for sure. So, he bought the step-through bike, (the GIRL'S bike) and he was very short, or at least his legs were. Oh God.

Other than that, everything is still new. I had a birthday and am a year older, but, according to my honey-pie, aging gloriously. And wednesday I'll have 18 years clean, which, incidentally, seems entirely too long. We went to a yard sale yesterday (on bikes and I forgot money) and I overheard a guy say, "this book is full of those hideous 12-step affirmations," referring to a self-help book, the likes of which fill the bins at yard sales along with hardbound copies of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonomyous. And I hear this more and more, the joke of AA and NA, and I have been holding my breath, biding my time, waiting for the day when the program that saves my life a day at a time finally falls out of favor with the flavor-of-the-month-club. Seems we are almost there. But this is Portland, and everyone is just so hip it hurts.

I've missed y'all.

tongues

There is a Chinese Baptist church in Ladd's Addition. I wonder how you know if they are speaking in tongues?

Well, I am happily employed doing what I know, knowing what I do. They found me a car to drive back and forth. A 1999 Subaru Impreza. Imprezzive, eh? It is silver. That's the main thing. It is used. A ticking time bomb, according to the dealer. They all are, he says --used cars. It inspired confidence in me. At least I don't have to buy it. It is tiny and I can't tell where to put my feet. The clutch and brake are so close together compared to my truck. And I will miss my truck. I don't have posession of it yet.

The way I judge commuting success, thus far, is whether I hit any lights on the way. So far, I've made it to the end of Sherwood without stopping in the morning. Last Monday, I made it clear back through Tigard, all the way to the freeway before I hit traffic. A couple of lights, but it was smooth sailing. A rare event.

I am not writing. I miss the words. the page.

gravity

It is midway through my saturday morning and the laundry is started, I have bathed, the dishes await and my floors are nasty. Floors require more attention than I have energy and it is all because of gravity. It would be more difficult, I suppose, if all the little strings and crumbs and dustbunnies floated ceilingward. Brooms would be different. Mopping would be hell. I guess I'll stop complaining. I never was good at housework, and now that there is a witness (again) it matters more.

We may head down south to a Memorial Day thing at my former mother-in-law's place on the Applegate. I could see my son, which would be the main thing. He says they are catching the shit out of salmon down there, but I'm not sure what that means.

I just read a book called the The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. I am pretty sure that is the title. From the point of view of an autistic kid. Autism fascinates me, and I suspect we all have a smidge of it. I know that under stress, my filters get clogged and I don't think well. Anyway, you decide.

I gotta go do dishes, change the bed, and get at least the first layer off the damned floor. My husband is sick. He has had a fever for three days and I made him go to the doctor. What is it with men?

everyday Jesus

This polish guy walked by (really, no joke) and said to me, "You're the fisherman's wife." I said I was, and he asked, "So, is he a fanatic?" I told him no, he is an enthusiast. There is a difference. It is nice to be a fisherman's wife. It is nice to be known in my neighborhood. Known as something other than things I used to be known for, which could turn into a monumental digression, but I think I'll just leave it at that. I've been known.

So the patients at the new job are insane. But they are old, and over time, it blends. They are less active and more subtle, but, scratch the surface and they are all mad as hatters. We have a Jesus. Every psych ward should have one. He brings me Bible verses every morning and I appreciate them. I'll take what I can get in the way of guidance. Shit, he may be Jesus for all I know. He's tall.

There is a woman, paranoid schizophrenic, who believes that there are several versions of all her friends and relatives. I say all, just to be inclusive, but I'm betting there aren't alot of them. And with several versions of each, I guess there wouldn't have to be, eh? You do the math. But I'm thinking of all of my friends, and I am blessed with a few real ones, and they all have versions of themselves... and me? oh my. Another day, another someone.

trucks

The drive out to my new job is so beautiful. I'm certain that eventually I will despise the traffic and the time in the car/truck/whatever, but for now, the postcard landscape from Sherwood to McMinnville makes it a joyride. Cresting the hill into Newberg at six in the morning takes my breath away. I have learned not to see the powerlines and obstructions of human occupation and still see the green green valleys and white white farmhouses of rural Oregon. I am an Oregonian, rare breed now, and doubt I will ever find my way to the end of fascination with the geography of this place.

The return commute... not so much. Tigard sucks. I am really hoping for an automatic car for the long haul. The stop and go of rush hour wears on my clutch and my mood. There is a symmetry to it as we, the organism that is the batch of cars heading back into Portland from the outlands, move inexorably east, country to city, ease to disease. If we could just PACE OURSELVES. But somebody is always in a hurry. Somebody is always more important than the rest of us. And that's how it gets fucked up. Yesterday, some little commuter car, not unlike the one I intend to drive, gouged the side out of a Trimet Bus and took out about four other cars in its wake. This in The Curves. I slid by, barely threading the traffic needle, as everyone behind me was lodged in a two hour bottleneck.

Ah, the city life.

At work, I will try to explain: there are two nuthouses on one property. One is just completing construction, the other, up and running. Both are located on a flag-lot in one of those new subdivisions with tiny streets and many cul-de-sacs. Very neighborhoody. Yesterday, the furniture arrived for the new building and nobody seemed to know it was coming. And yet there it was, the call that said, oh, by the way, some furniture is being delivered tomorrow. What nobody bothered to figure out was how much furniture, and in what kind of a truck. Well, turns out it was ALL the furniture, in a big honkin', 80 foot truck and trailer rig. Joe Parker was the driver, from North Carolina and said he got a Driving Award on his way there for doing 66 in a 55 along the Columbia Gorge.

He made it into the parking lot through the neighborhood that is one of those new, contrived things with tiny streets as though we were in Europe and drove small cars. And, long long story short.... had to eventually take it to a storage unit for many reasons, mainly that the contractor is a whiny little biatch. But it was fun to listen to an old truck driver. He was used to waiting.

There is much more to tell.

weight

I didn't think I'd have to worry about this again, but here it is, one year and twenty sneaky pounds later. Maybe 15, depending on who you believe. I'm believing the most, and hoping the shock effect will move me to action. I love the zen way of thinking: if you want to lose weight, eat less and do more. But if you've been following the bouncing ball, I'm not all that zen. When my doctor, tiny little asian woman, told me that, I thought, WHAT A GREAT IDEA!! Hey, I'll try that. What happens, though, is that after a little trial and lots of error, I remember the big secret of my life: It doesn't work for me.

What happens in my mind is this: eat normally = eat anything. eat healthy = eat anything not white. eat less = tilt tilt tilt. I don't have a frame of reference for the concept "less." I just don't. I have starvation. I have deprivation. And these familiar things send me packing. So here I am, In that psychotic space just this side of denial, somewhere between stepping on the goddamned scale and hari kari.

Makes me hungry. Call 911.

dialing for dollars

Hooray for craigslist. Sold three bikes in three days, made a net profit of about 375, I think. And now we are down to one bike and hubby gets his new Raleigh. The bike culture is a trip. We still have a beautiful italian Univega for sale. Too skinny for me. Mint.

Besides wheeling and dealing, I am, once again, preparing to paint a room. I painted it once, two years ago, when I didn't know I'd ever be living here. It was Nicole's room then, and her color: Happy Camper Green. Very Kelly. Had I known... So, it should take about twenty coats of my favorite Not Quite White to cover it. It is the dressing room that I am painting. Because this house is so old, and a Victorian, the rooms are so small that there isn't enough room for all my clothes in our room. And I know, I have too much stuff. Way freakin' too much. My favorite sign right now says it best:

You can't have it all. Where would you put it?

'nuff said.

So, I'm going shopping tomorrow after I paint becasue I MUST have something new to wear to the new job. I'm the boss, after all. Gotta look the part.

I painted my hair again today. Brown. And will frost later.

okay, frosting done. Fried hair. Those who know me know that under stress, I color my hair. It hasn't fallen out yet.

Yet.

no mo'

I'm done at the nursing home. Outta there. I finished out my notice and am on my way. Leaving is something that I am good at. I'm not sure how I got that way, but the end is just the end. All of the flowery good-byes are for nicer people. Different people. More attached people. I figure if I'm gonna be gone eventually and forget about that place and those people (except to the extent that they made it onto the page) then why dally? Just bail. But to my credit (and I deserve credit, have credit, like credit, abuse credit, owe credit cards...) I did stay until they let me out. I trained the new guy, and sexist though it may seem, I don't think its a guy's job. This kid has hopes and aspirations of a career in the nursing home business, and the brutality of social work should give hime some insight in to what it is those places actually pedal, but I couldn't begin to teach him in three days what it has taken me 30 years to learn. So I just showed him my systems and went on home. In the final analysis (final for this piece of the journey) I am also not social worker material. I look at women who have done that stuff for years and they all have the lines of permanent concern around their eyes and mouth. It just never did fit with my mantra: I don't care. I had to seem to care for the past six months.

I did care. That was hard. They gave me a beautiful plant and said they will miss me. I will miss the stories, but am going to a nuthouse now, and should have plenty of material there. It's all about the stories. Life as fodder.

I may get the new office at my next job. An unlived in office. I've never been big on that, but it should be nice. I do like to shut the door. They are buying me a car to take the job, maybe a Honda Civic or something equally economical. I don't really care. The shiny red ford truck is for sale. Maybe. I love that truck. So, I'll zip back and forth, learning what it means to commute. It's like learning a video game. I've been all the way up and down Division every day, all the way to Gresham, and I've learned to look ahead, figure out where the busses are, whether people have their tail lights on, how traffic looks and if there are flashing lights to go around, and to pace myself. I've learned that if I leave at ten 'til -- traffic is terrible. If I leave at five after, I slide on through. I am an early riser, and will hit the road just after 5:30 in order to miss the mess. I like to drive. I don't have to start until next thursday, so have some time to paint a couple of rooms.

Today, I try to find my way to McMinnville on the most direct route.

I just visited and anti-aa webblog with links to anti-aa websites. It is interesting to me that someone would take the time and effort to be against aa. Maybe they were at the meeting I was at last night. That's enough to do it. Ah... but it works for me. That's all I need to know. I'm not drunk anymore, and I was drunk for so long. Wore me out.

mutha's day

Happy Happy to all you Muthas out there. I called all the mothers I could think of. The highlight of my day? My son called, unprompted, sober (as far as I could tell) and aware of the date and reason for his call. Planets thus aligned, I cooked away most of the day: bacon wrapped shrimp and scallops, asparagus with lemon mayonnaise, and pineapple upside down cake. I am way too fat. My Mother In Law is in town, so she was over for dinner. I cleaned house like I haven't for some time. Oiled the furniture, the whole deal. It cleans up nice.

My husband found a new bike on craigslist. A new old bike. A '75 Schwinn Double Deluxe Tandem. A bicycle built for two. A pain in the ass to ride, but we got it for next to nothing. For sale. You read it here first. It is an excercise in releasing control to take the back seat. Literally. There is nothing to do but pedal. Yet another microcosm of life.

...and when the girls left, they told me happy mother's day.

excrement

Somebody shit in front of our house. I go back and forth between compassion and outrage, knowing compassion is the only route to take. The other one is full of potholes I know by heart. What I can imagine, given my marginal history with homelessness, is how unbelievably long I would have waited before crapping in the middle of Clinton Street, next to a shiny new truck, hoping like hell a car doesn't come by until I'm done and far from there.... I remember having to wait too long. I know how to piss on command, thus has been my life. I'm not one of those women who can't pee in the woods. I can pee. Period.

My husband thought it was a huge sea urchin. Are you getting the visual? And when he figured it out, began screaming and jumping around. Oh God Oh No Oh God Human Shit!!!!!

Anyway, I'm leaving this job soon. And all the better. Next friday.

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.