july

Today is the 4th of July. We took the boat out, put in at Willamette Park and drove over to Sellwood to see some friends. That was boring. Then we took the boat up to Oregon City along a stretch of river I hadn't seen before. I love to look at the homes along the water. I love the houseboats, each one a work of art. The Ross Island houseboats have one that is like a nautilus shell, wood and copper with lots of windows. I like to pick out the original homes along the river, among the McMansions, the little shingled cottages and river houses that preceeded the conspicuous consumption of these days. The houses are side by side now, each worth millions, I'm sure, each with a deck and a boat house and a long floating ramp meant to weather even the 100 year floods. I wonder. On the Willamette, 100 years passes fairly frequently. I was living in Portland in the flood of '64. I was in the 5th grade, Mrs. Jones' class. I had a peach colored umbrella that blew inside out in the wind and acutally lifted me off my feet. I remember newsreels of one of the bridges over the river that buckled and swayed and collapsed with cars on it. I could be making that up, but I think it is true. I remember bringing a scrap of newspaper to school that year. It was about the Beatles. I was the first person in my school to know about them. Even then I was tragically hip. We moved to Portland when my father died. Actually, I think we were visiting, and just stayed after we found out he was gone.

The other day I drove by the house I lived in when my father died. I'd tried to find it before, but I guess I went down 66th place rather than 66th. It is in felony flats. Was even then. I was surprised it was still standing. It is a tiny hovel, with narrow stairs and burgundy flowered linoluem and I could see my bedroom window that overlooked my uncle's huge garden of poppies. He had the whole yard planted in them, towering red tissue-paper thin flowers with circus tent seedpods in the centers. Even then there was the occasional pale flower, a gray or white throwback, that caught my eye. Its no wonder I loved heroin. I recall him standing in the yard in his overalls, a great fat man, watering those poppies each evening. When I water my yard, I recall his patience, and try to give my flowers as much attention. He lost his mind, finally, and went about watering even the flowers on wallpaper, which caused some problems in the family. I guess he was probably mentally ill -- schizophrenic, best guess, and had a big heart. I think I've said before that he rode his bicycle up and down the west coast in the final years of his life, finally coming to rest on a boat in San Francisco Bay where he died alone on Christmas Eve. The yard is different now, and the big field next door where we built a fort beneath a huge cedar tree is gone, of course, and the big lilac is gone. There used to be a narrow cement walkway that cut through the middle of the poppies from front gate to front door. My brother rode his skateboard down it too fast, put out his arms to stop himself and broke both of his wrists. Mrs. Wallace lived next door. She was 80 and could do handstands. And did. Every holiday she brought over a fake can of peanut brittle that was actually full of spring-loaded snakes. The first time it scared the shit out of me, but then I was on to her and had to fake it.

I remember the day the phone call came about my father. I don't recall crying, which doesn't surprise me. I remember confusion and disbelief. He was a good man. A happy man. He would have liked my husband.

I suppose we will wander down to watch the fireworks along the East Bank Esplanade. I just hope I don't have to stand near the very scary statue of Vera Katz. If anyone makes a bronze statue of me, I hope they use a picture of me when I was five. I was much cuter then.

Here's a shot of Sid on the patio. Is it a patio? Is that what we call it?











The blues festival wraps up today. Each year we bring the requisite cans of bad food and a couple dollars down there and brave the throng. The thongs. Actually, it is a rather gray crowd, all of the age-resisting boomers who continue to defy fashion but not time. We take the bike down and park easily, which is the hardest part, really. And each year I yearn to be among the boat people, listening to the blues from the water's edge. This year we did it. We put in at a strange little ramp up river, cruised by the fabulous Ross Island and Sellwood houseboats, and finally wound our way cautiously, paddles in hand, through the yachts and speedboats. Front row seats. The sound was good, but alas and as usual, I had to pee.... When sitting up on the lawn the day before, I had noticed an outhouse floating among the boats, so my darling husband, keeper of my comfort, said it was no trouble. He's great that way. So once again, we threaded the gauntlet, bobbing and weaving, until the yellow plastic oasis was in sight. We pulled up alongside the dock, hopped out and peed. My husband decided to jump in the water to cool off and suggested I do the same. I just really wanted to splash a little and not get my hair wet (I can't stand women who don't get their hair wet) but it didn't quite work out in my favor. I slid in, and under, and couldn't get out. My shoulder, you see, isn't quite what it used to be, and heaving my bod out of deep water just isn't something I can do. So, Kurt tries to help me, and as he is helping me, yells, "the boat!!!" which, as you might imaging, is floating away. So he dives in to save the boat and I am left to save myself for awhile. He rescues the boat, ties it to the dock and by that time, I have located the big rope tethering the dock to the anchor. I stand on it as best I can, and he pulls me up enough to get a grip and haul myself out. It matters what you wear in these situations, and my wardrobe malfunctioned in a big way.

It was the second time that day that I flashed Portland. That same morning we rode our bikes to Sellwood park and I was wearing one of my favorite short sarongs tied around my upper half. Turns out it flaps in the breeze of a downhill bike ride. I was horrified, but I'll never see those people again. I've managed to survive worse shame in my life.

summer cold

I'm sick. I remember one night in a bar, in the Jubilee Club to be precise, when Cooky and I sat around thinking of epitaphs. It seemed like an appropriate activity given our suicidal lifestyle. Hers was going to read, "I told you I was sick." My favorite epitaph was written by a cowboy in the very old west. It read, "Here lies the man that stole my horse."

I don't think I'm facing imminent death, but I am sick of being sick. Last week I was puking, this week it is a summer cold. It sounds so innocuous-- "summer cold"--all mint-julepy and sweet. A minor inconvenience at most-- maybe a moment or two napping in the porch swing will clear it up. Not this. I can't swallow, can't speak, can't think. It is invading my ears. My head is full of mud and it is hovering at the base of my throat, threatening to invade my lungs. And that scares me. My lungs are so weak from years of bronchitis. I am so susceptible. I am beginning to cough.

On to nicer subjects.



This is my husband spreading sand where he is about to lay pavers for a pool pad in the back yard. Every year we put up the pool and kill the grass. We decided to make it more pool friendly. Its either this or A/C.













The stones we chose are called Roman Dominion. Sounds serious. They look like an old roman road and are just about as easy to build.














mountain of dirt, or, if you wish, free sod. U Haul.














So, it is 100 degrees in Portland and the newscasters are on it. Extreme weather alerts. I love Portland.

birthday

I started puking at midnight on the 14th as if in celebration. I puked through my entire special day. I haven't puked that much since I was a child. Buckets of bile. As a failed bulemic, it was kind of exciting, but overall, not that much fun. I did lose eight pounds. It is now, I think, the 17th, and I have missed two days of my life. The symptoms went south yesterday and another day devoted to rest and repair. Whew. It is not the norovirus, just in case you were wondering.

I am some better now.

For my birthday I got a diamond band to go with my wedding ring, which is really an engagement solitaire. We wanted it to look more like a traditional set, so added this band. It is sparkly. I love it. And a card covered with pink roses that said, "Beautiful as always" and I know he wrote it while I slept, puke in my hair and on my breath as he kissed me goodbye. Its good to have a husband.

My ailment is from working in a place with old people who catch everything, and young women with children who bring in bugs by the b'zillions and can't afford to stay home sick. A bad combination. Add to that, I always get sick at a new job. I think there are new bugs at each place, and I need to develop immunity to them. It takes time, and one hard hit at least. This was a doozy. But it is not bronchial, which is a huge relief. That scares me.

Time to wash my hair and try to leave the house for the first time in days. There are garage sales waiting.

Back now... got a bike in Boring. And strawberries. A flat for 15 bucks. I'll make freezer jam today or tomorrow. They are pretty good, but I think needed a little more sun to up the sugar content. So, I'll up the sugar content my own self.

OH! Big news. My son called and told me my house is gone. My first house in Talent. As I suspected, the bitch I sold it to was just a schill for a developer. Scooped it up and tore it down. My kitchen. My tile countertops. My sweet little cottage. I'll always think of it as Spencer's house, I think. His yard. His deck. His grave. I should have taken my mother's Peace rose, and the big hunk of rose quartz that Marky got for me. I should have taken more pictures. Ah, should have. What words.

Truth is, I didn't want anyone else to live in it. It was my house and now it is gone. I guess it is actually pushed to the back of the property awaiting demolition. Oh, well. I knew they were trying to put a road through from Talent Avenue to the highway, and that they'd go through Totem Pole trailer park to do it, and my property was one of the only things standing in the way. They would have forced me out sooner or later anyway. Progress. Sprawl. I'll never forget the view, or sitting on my deck of a spring morning, drinking cinnamon-laced coffee, listening to the meadowlark in the sycamore trees and petting my old dog. I thought I'd be there forever. I never thought I'd be here.

But, here I am.

transparent

This is my window. Isn't it pretty??

dropping betty

Last night the pager went off. I was riding on the back of our motorcycle in downtown traffic. It is the kickoff of Rose Festival week and everyone was beating feet to see the fireworks, or trying to get out of the city to avoid traffic, which creates traffic. Its endless. There are a lot of cars, and you just gotta get your best zen goin' and sit it out. I learned this commuting 3 hours a day to McMinnville. Do not rush hour. I listen to the drone of public radio and occasionally hear something of worth. Mostly I listen to the syntax of OPB reporters who say rad-i-O (emphasis on the third syllable) rather than RAD-i-o. Like most people do. They are so very very "this-is-Chris-tian-Fo-den-ven-sil" Everyone has an accent, accentutated, and I always love to listen to the social elite reporting oppression.

So there I was, in traffic, pipes rattling as we progressed light to light, and the pager went off. It is loud, thankfully, and I called in to find out what was up. "We dropped Betty." "Oh," I say. "Well, this happens." If you are uninitiated, humans are slippery when wet, and from time to time, they just get away from you. I don't want to live so long that someone has to bathe me, but if I do, I hope I understand. But the girls.... they work so hard, and care so much, so much more than is useful or productive, and get so attached. And dropping a whole person on the floor is astonishing. Whoosh, and there they go. And they are so breakable. Betty didn't break though, just a little tear on her paper skin. And Betty doesn't have the disadvantage of memory any longer, so it was over as soon as it began, for her.

We had dinner at Dan and Louis Oyster Bar. It was good to be downtown among the lights and noise and throng of humanity.

decoration day

A long weekend of nothing. I love nothing. I'm good at it, have had plenty of practice. I am meeting with an editor friend this morning and hope to uncover the origins of my writing discontent. She may not know this, but I am. I know it was always good to connect with other writers before and she is one. Just published another book on fiction writing. Due to my near-death-experience, which we will heretofore refer to as my NDE, I am invigorized, as those things are prone to get you. I am common.

But alive.

I hate writing about writing, but here goes.

I live in a house with other people and cannon find sustained time or space. It is not their fault--as much as it would delight me if the problem were that simple. It is logistic. It takes me four pages of crap before I even begin to hit my stride, as these pages prove beyond doubt, and that takes time, and they use the computer. So, do I get my own computer? A simple fix, but the house is small and the same troubles apply. Do I learn to write in the basement? Its coming along -- kind of an open and more inviting space -- do I write amid the camping gear to the sounds of the tumbling dryer? Which reminds me, I need to put the clothes in the dryer.

And a. will say, "Fuck the clothes. Write." and she is absolutely correct. I will. But I am a better housekeeper than I used to be, and it is not as easy to fuck it all off. I have witnesses, remember?

So I am writing. And the good and the bad thing about a blog is that it does maintain the flow-- does hold that energy. But it is also like a steam vent for a volcano. It never really blows because of the continual release. Not that my productivity ever reached volcanic levels... but the metaphor is the thing.

I can't seem to get next to a storyline. They all seem idiotic. And I am a fiction writer. I am also a poet, but poetry, while rich, is a vent. Do I write about all of the crazy people I've cared for? One? Do I travel back down one of the dark alleys I've been down and illuminate the rubble for the sake of posterity? Do I -- gasp -- make something up? I've said many times, I'm not a writer, I'm a liar.

So, my coffee is ready: french press with tons of cream and it is Memorial Day.

Used to be that Memorial Day was called Decoration Day. At the nursing home a bus would come to take people out to the cemeteries, bouquets of picked or purchased flowers, some with flags, some not so patriotic, just remembered. I don't think it was about memorializing only the war dead. It was celebratory. It was the reason for family plots. Nowadays you'd have to have to spend days finding the various cemeteries my family is buried in. My father is in Coosbay, brother and mother in Eagle Point, one brother floating eternally down the Applegate River where we played as children. He wanted to be sprinkled in the Rogue River, but my mother was afraid of the undertows. I didn't have the heart to point out that he wouldn't drown. A mother shouldn't have to bury her children.

Decoration Day. It was a nobler time and I'm not sure why. Maybe because it was before the Gong Show and the end of civilization as we know it.

conspiracy theories

On wednesday night I was in the bath and noticed a strange spot on my right breast.
As I began to write my eulogy, which I will discuss later, a long couple of days ensued.

Its funny what you imagine, and, how if you don't say it outloud, it isn't real. I didn't tell my husband right away, and that is one way to keep it away. Once I said hey look at my this, it was on. He made me go to the doctor. I am so happy to be married to a pushy man. Most of the time. So, I am fine. It was just a wierd thing. But mortality... quite another.

My bio says:

"judybluesky writes."

my eulogy would be as follows:

"judybluesky wrote."

clear?

So it was a wierd day. And got wierder. I don't know if I can tell this story, but I'll try. Its pretty x-files.

To preface -- my husband's son David is in trouble sometimes. Currently, he is trying to outrun the trouble by heading south and staying with his grandfather. At first, these are seemingly unconnected phone calls.

First call: Tracy (to my husband) from the police department saying they had Dave's ID. He tells them Dave's down south but can he pick it up. Tracy tells him he can. When he got there, no ID, no Tracy that had made the call.

Second call: (to me on my cell while I am at work. I don't know about the earlier call) Someone looking for grandpa's phone number. I tell them Grampa lives off the grid, no phone. Can't help them. They tell me they need to give him medical information. I can't help them.

Third call: (to my friend Lorretta at her work number at a hospital down south.) They tell her they are looking for David, that they need to deliver a medical package to him. She emails me this information, thinking what an odd coincidence that someone looking for David would randomly call her number at work. and I still didn't make any real connection...

...Until we started reviewing the day. We got home. We talked about our day. Husband tells about the first call. I say, oh by the way, tell about the second call. Then Lorretta calls, tells about the third call. We are beginning to sense a pattern developing.

Next morning... call #4. My ex-sister in law calls. The same people have called her telling her they need to deliver the medical stuff -- this time for David. They give a call back number and a tracking number, but there is no website.

We ask sis in law to go off the grid to see grampa, tell him what's up. Haven't heard from anyone since.

I don't know if you can follow all that. What is so random is that there would be no way to connect David, my friend and my ex-family unless they had my phone records.

Creeps me out.

nuthouse

There is a time and a place for everything. Even Haldol.

Granny and Irene

They call each other
"that old woman over there"
and I know I will be the same way
never as old as I am.

They wear beads and bangles
strings and strings of shiny things
terrible beads that don't go together
over layers of sweaters, flowered dresses
small wool blankets
that someone threw in the dryer
but didn't throw away
like gray-headed doll babies
wandering in and out of each other's rooms.

They feed each other
bits of sweet cake and cantaloupe
with ginseng root fingers
that remember everything
but cannot find the way home

j.

yard sale

We sold the farm. The cheesy yard art john deere green windmill, everything. I sold shit all day, and I am sunburned and my load is lighter. When we went to drop of the remnants at Goodwill, I stole two pair of shoes out of one of the bins. What's wrong with me? L. they will fit you and I'm sending them down. We sold the old girlfriend's set of black dishes and the red hassock. The signature item. I'm ready for a new bigger one. I'm lazier than ever and need more area on which to prop my feet. I sold the printer cabinet.

Its a story.

I bought my house in Talent, and a. came over to visit me. Have I told this story before? Anyway, she comes over, takes one look at my printer's cabinet, and announces, "That's mine." I disagreed, but she was right. It had been hers. a. had apparently started an indie newspaper long before indie was a word. Cutting edge.

So, I sold it. It is still here, but I have the money. An odd man with an antique business called "the Needle" bought it. He seems to be a conspiracy theorist, but who knows. It could be a conspiracy.

So, lots of shit is gone. It is remarkable how much crap accumulates over two years. I knew, when we had the first post-wedlock yard sale that more would come, but this much. The sidewalk was lined end to end. Books and blankets and clothes. Even the outfit the nearly homeless lady next door gave me. She thinks I'm a snappy dresser, so one day she brought over a white denim pants suit with gold buttons and open weave braided denim down the arms and legs. Elvis in Las Vegas. Nobody bought it. It would have been a great Halloween costume.

mother's

It is Mothers Day. I am three hundred miles north of my son, but never far. Last week he called to scold me for not sending him an easter basket. He'll be 29 next year. It never ends. I rise this morning to anxiously await some form of recognition which is as likely to come as not.

In my family, it is so difficult to celebrate. I'm sure this is true of many families, but for us, the Drunken Waltons, the air was permeated with expectation of a life and familial bonds we just couldn't keep up with. We were too busy lowering our standards to raise our children.

So, I raised a boy who feels the weight of yet another generation of children, umbilical, wanting, and not knowing how to be part of something that has fractured, that is lost. They avoid celebration. They dread. And sometime's the phone call comes, and sometimes it doesn't.

I love my son. He is the best of me. I was cleaning out an old purse (yard sale...) and found this poem. There was a time it seems I didn't:

Ending Motherhood

Cutting what's left of the cord
not cord to my belly
not cord to my heart
but
cord to the phone
the MTV set
the fridge
the lights
the heat
the comfort of all that I provide
for him
and me
but not for us
not for a long time now
If he would only come home
I could tell him he doesn't live here anymore
and womb screaming rage could replace
the emptiness of this unfinished severance

Happy Mother's Day

another katie story

Katie thought I was the greatest. Her brother, also a Russian-doctor-turned-lab-rat, thought I was great too. Katie lived at the end of Portland Street in Medford and I was homeless, pretty much. I had lived out my welcome at Renee's house, good old Renee, Renee who didn't even see me coming. It took me, oh, 25 years to pay her back, but that's another story for another time. Anyway, I needed a place to live, and as luck would have it, Katie had a house she didn't need. She told me I could live in it. "Aiee dunt ci vhy naat," she said. That's what she sounded like. Her brother thought I should be rewarded for my good deeds as a caregiver and they thought it would be a good idea for the house not to stand empty while Katie was in the nursing home. They thought it would keep out "de badt paypl."

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking I'm the bad people. And in so many ways you are right. But that's not the point of this story.

So the brother, we'll call him Ivan, takes me over there to check out the house. It sat at the end of a quiet street with two huge cedar trees in the front yard. Centinels. Ivan tells me its furnished. Good, I think. I need stuff. What he didn't tell me is that it is furnished with priceless Russian antiques. "Are you going to leave all of this?" I ask. "Aiee dunt ci vhy naat," he answers. I could think of a million reasons why not. I hadn't the foresight to count my brother Doug among those reasons.

I know I haven't talked much about my broher Doug. Ever, really. He's my eldest brother, the only one still standing, and his drinking problem was one of revolutionary proportion.

So, when I found out about my new house deal, of course I wanted to share my good fortune with my family. They'd be glad because I didn't have to sleep on the couch anymore. Doug was especially supportive. He thought it was great. He asked where it was. The part I forgot to mention -- to Doug-- is that the deal wasn't quite done. I wasn't to move in for a couple more days.

I pulled into work the next day, happy to be 22, happy to have a place to live. When I got to Katie's room, Ivan was tapping the toes of his Russian shoes, looking at the floor. "Der vas a man in de haus."

I was horrified. A MAN? In MY HOUSE? "Oh, no!" I exclaimed in utter disbelief. "That is terrible!"

Well, as the truth descended on me like Russian shade, I realized de man was de brudder. Sacked out on the priceless sofa, drunk as a dog.

So much for the freebie house. But then, that was just one in a long line of near misses. For me and for Doug. I may still be mad at him.

Soon after, I began having what I call "the moving dream." Its a recurrent dream where I have agreed to give up the place I live and rent a different house. It is perfect and full of priceless antiques. It seems too good to be true. As I move from room to room, however, it seems as though something is wrong. The rooms run into one another like one unfinished room with half-walls and suddenly the ceilings are too low and it is dark and I notice things like an old hairbrush and a silver mirror: things that belong to old women. And I realize I've rented a house that is already occupied and when I get to the last room, there is an old woman in a rocking chair wearing red long-johns.

Any dream interpreter would tell you I fear death, that the old woman is my crone, but I know better. It's just Katie.

chuck barris

I almost forgot to post about Wordstock, the fabulous writer's wet dream. It was really not fabulous at all, just a bunch of book sellers and vanity publishers and actual publishers and none of them were selling MY book so why would I care? Anyway, the point is that Chuck Barris was there.

I loved the Gong Show. Try as I may, I can't remember when it was... I think it was the mid-seventies, but I was there and it entertained me, loaded as a rat. So, when I saw that Chuck Barris was going to be there, of course I couldn't pass it up. I saw Confessions of a Dangerous Mind in the theatre, which means I was really happy to pay money to see it. Anything about the Gong Show interests me. And there I was, sitting in the middle of a bunch of empty chairs waiting for the host of the Gong Show to entertain me one more time. The creator. The first reality TV. Blamed in large part for the decline of modern civilization.

There are predictable questions that an audience of would-be writers asks of established-if-not-really-successful other writers on the speaking circuit. One is: why did you become a writer? If they are honest, they say, "Because it looked easier than having a real job." But they usually claim to be motivated by a higher force-- they write because (in the immortal words of Rilke) they MUST. Barris answered honestly, to his credit. Another question often is: What do you want to be remembered for? And typically, the author will speak about a certain book or selfless act like childbirth as though giving birth were selfless. Chuck said this: "Hands down, I want to be remembered as an author, but I'll never be remembered as anything but the guy who created the Gong Show." And this is where I lost my question. Because I am guily of remembering him as just that. And I am sad that it is not his best memory. Mine is tainted because of it. If I had created the Gong Show, I'd wear a t-shirt that said it every day.

My question was going to be, "Are there any Gong Show tapes?" But obviously, it would have been a crass thing to ask in the face of his need to be seen as an author. The book he was promoting was a reprint of something he wrote in the seventies. See? Not memorable.

glee

Friday of my second week.

I remember when I used to work in an activity department in a nursing home. Years and years ago. I remember Katie Bolhivitzen. She was a Russian doctor who imigrated during the cold war and her credentials only allowed her to work as a nurse. My job was to make old people have fun; to create the illusion of gaiety, of propriety, life in the face of marching death. It was not an easy job, but to do it at all one had to believe in it and I did not. Could not. Had seen too much by then. Too much by far. When I finally told Katie she didn't have to do anything anymore -- didn't have to come to the party, didn't have to make the macaroni-covered bleach bottle vase -- it wasn't really my idea. She just said, in her little Russian voice, "I'm ninety six. I shouldn't have to play Bingo." And in that moment it was over for me. I could no longer, for the sake of the daughters -- because it is always the daughters and never the sons who pick up the pieces at the end of a life -- stall.

It is always like that for me: okay one day, gone the next. I don't think its because I'm not paying attention and I just look up one day and everything has gone to shit, and I don't think its because I have a low tolerance for crap. Quite the opposite. I believe I am tortured with certainty, and once I know, I can't unknow it. And the terrible thing is that it keeps changing. Which, in retrospect, makes me look like an idiot. Or it is as simple as this: I am willing to do just about anything for a buck for awhile, then, not.

The work is different this time, but is never different, not really. They are still dying and we are still hanging on. We no longer insist that old people have fun, but still we cannot endure the silence, the disengagement, the paper crackling absence that is the sound of life ending. We want music, dammit. We want cake. We want cheese and crackers and slices of spicy salami, we who have teeth. It makes us feel better. But those who cannot see and cannot chew and cannot hear and do not care... what of them?

Oh, who cares? I dig this job, and think I am probably old enough to finally appreciate the notion of stalling death, of masking the grim reaper and letting him pass them by for one more day. I won't let him in the locked doors. Not just yet. Not on my watch.

clamming 102

Before I get to the new clamming information, I want to talk about lilacs. Our back yard is bursting with them, purple and white (my favorite) and with this rain, they are so heavy with blossoms they are about to snap.



So, here's a new trick about cleaning razor clams: when you get them home, dip briefly (4 seconds) in boiling water, then into ice water, and the shells will pop right off. This beats the hell out of hacking them out of their shells -- shucking. I suppose it is shucking either way. And I can't imagine that either way is easy for the clam.

four

Gardening with Margaret. It is a silent endeavor, as is much of my day these days. She, like so many others, has lost her words. She can't find them anymore. And I panic with the writer's block that I have allowed for this long, which seem utterly self indulgent in the face of this distant possibility. Losing words. And I can't decide whether it would be tragedy or peace. Peace in not knowing, not having to search the cobwebbed backrooms, the attics and crawlspaces, for just that precisely descriptive modifier that no one would have thought of-- black as a bible, rabid neon halflight, the great flat hand of God -- these words that have entranced me my whole life. If I didn't have them, if they were lost to me, what would be left? Margaret can still pull weeds. "There is something..." she says, pointing to a sprouting bit of green that I overlooked on my side of the waist high bed. I don't make her say the word. I don't even embarrass her by knowing it myself. I just pull it. The something.

I like the quiet of it, the job, and in the words of Graham Nash, "... some of my actions remind me of me."

day three

I work therefore I am.

They are all named Doris, with halos of white fluff and watery eyes. They can't place me. Whatever they were, this is what they are now: the great undoing. It makes the methodic accumulation of my life laughable.

Ashes to ashes, Doris to Doris.

the weight

I pulled into Nazareth....

My body is my enemy. You could stand me up in front of a firing squad blindfolded and it wouldn't scare me as much as this ten pounds that is preventing me from buttoning my levis. If I had the power that I give this little bundle of unexpressed carbohydrates I could rule the world. And it isn't just ten. Let me be clear if not honest. It is ten on top of ten, which sits resistively atop the twenty I carry on a good day.

I will never be small. I want to disappear. It has been a long winter.

It is not the first time I have faced this demon, but it has been a long, long time. I knew peace for years, and now I am consumed with the desire to eat, to eat badly and in secret. I don't always succumb to my thoughts, but it is not so much the actual eating as it is the thinking thinking thinking. It seems the height of self centeredness, that I could live a blissful life and still find myself wallowing in the toilet of self-pity about am I pretty enough.

What is true:
I have been off work for two months.
I have been in pain for five months.
I can't ride my bike yet.
I eat when I'm bored.
I'm bored.

So, my little asian doctor says what she always says: Whatever you eat, eat less. Whatever you do, do more.

I'm sure she's right, but I am inclined to complicate things. Surprising, I know. I want a rigid diet to follow, something that I won't follow, that I can use like a baseball bat to beat the shit out of myself. It is a vicious and predictable cycle, common as ants. And I so hate to be common.

So, that's my happy thought today.

I am studying my Alzheimer's workbook. Its funny, (not Alzheimer's) each corporation designs a particular product (specialized dementia unit), with cutting edge thinking embedded into a physical setting, then markets it as the industry standard, all to care for people who do not and have not changed. We change. We worker bees. We caregivers. Over time (and I have been around the world of dementia care since I was a teenager) the provision of care has changed slowly. But they haven't --the little shell people, the vanishing, the subtle disappearing act that is Alzheimer's disease. They call it AD now, as though AD doesn't stand for anything else. And I suppose, politically, AD has been replaced by the acronym CE. PC, eh? I'm looking up acronyms for AD and medically, it is the term for the right ear. So, I think the Alzheimer's Association (AA) should keep on spelling it out or people are going to be mighty confused. Now, in relation to time, AD stands for what? Anno Domini? Something Gregorian like that. I don't find it on the list. I found After Death, and Agnus Dei, and a list a mile long that has nothing to do with the death of Christ, or the deliniation of time. What is it now? CE for current era? PD for present day? The lists are long. It gives me Alzheimer's to think about it.

I'm hungry.

casablanca

I'd never seen it before. Like Apollo 13, I should have but didn't know how it ended, didn't know Bogart was Rick Blaine, didn't know the WWII intrigue or the Moroccan setting. Didn't know he didn't get the girl. So we sat around, watched the old movie, stunned that so many lines were so familiar that it pulled me out of the story and made it impossible for the story to take me anywhere. It is the task of the writer to be invisible, and by history, this one has become sadly opaque. We'll always have Paris.

On Good Friday we watched scary movies: The Haunting of Hill House (1950) and the first Poltergeist. As a child, I watched The Haunting almost annually, like The Wizard of Oz, in the days when movies came to town for a week, at the single theatre, when there was no guarantee you'd ever see it again, when the likelihood of a movie showing up on TV were slim to none. But The Hauting did. My mother, my pentecostal mother, disapproved of scary movies. Wicked. The Haunting scared the shit out of me, and I wanted to share the fear with the girls, new girls, urban girls, desensitized by the modern slasher mentality, bored with the genre, interested in what came before. I promised them they'd have to read faces rather than watch special effects, that they'd have to imagine. One of them left, one stayed, and stayed awake. That's good. I love that movie. My favorite line: "My dear, you confuse wickedness with foolishness." I spent so much of my childhood consumed with wickedness, seeing evil where none lurked. Foolishness, that.

Easter Sunday. Mother in Law, children, food. I am learning to moderate my cooking, let her help. Let someone else be fabulous for a change.

Here's the eggs, colored by me and my honey. The girls were too cool to participate in an undeniably mid-american ritual. I searched the house for all of the leftover egg dying kits left from years past and put all the same colored dye buttons in each cup. It went well, except that the kits were so old that I couldn't tell green from blue and got two pots of teal, which I hate, one a little bluer, one greener. I love colored eggs. I don't care who helps me.















Here's the eggs again. Thanks to Nicole for the photos and the graphic work. She's good.

pre job jitters

It is a quiet weekend. Husband fishing in the rain: in the boat, on the water, water falling all around, no roof. And sadly, no fish. There really are no fish this year.

I am madly shopping for patio furniture in the rain. It is, much like my husband's fishing, an exercise in hope. The sun may come out eventually. I always get ahead of myself this time of year and think I'm behind, but the Law of Gardening is this: Don't plant tomatoes until May first. Period. So it is not May first and there is no need to worry. Yet I do. I have nine more days, or eight, depending if you count today, to lose 15 pounds and finish the back yard. If I finish the back yard, I will lose 15 pounds rain or shine.

Hey. You may have noticed I'm not whining about my shoulder or therapy. It is finally getting better. It doesn't hurt all the time anymore. I have my moments, but they pass and I find that if I stay busy, it is less troublesome. Thus, the shopping. It beats Vicodin.

I found an expandable willow fence, which I love so I bought two. A small patio table which I will probably take back because I really want the wooden one. I should know by now to get what I want. I am searching for pots, large planting pots, and I don't want to pay 70 bucks for one. I just don't. I may try to find cedar pots. That's what I used to have. They dry out fast, but I water every day.

So, I go in Tuesday for my orientation, then off until the following Monday. I am not panicked, but conscious of a potential shift in my world.

Here are some things I'll never know once I go back to work:

1. If the Abbotts ever find out if Gloria secretly tainted the new face cream with cleaning solvent to sabotage Jabot Cosmetics resulting in the untimely death of one of their buyers.

2. If Nick and Phyllis really call it quits, if Sharon forgives Nick for sleeping with Phyllis, of if Phyllis' son Daniel ever forgives her.

3. If Meg and Paul ever get together, if Dusty lives, if Emily is convicted for kidnapping him, and if Paul's fake marriage to Emily is ever consummated.

4. If Dr. Phil ever shuts up about his role in Scary Movie 4.

5. If daytime TV actually diminishes intellect.

You see the lengths I'm willing to go to to make a living? And give up all this???

gypsies

I think Russian gypsies painted this house and I'll tell you why. You may have been worried that I wouldn't explain myself, but not to worry, I'll get right to it.

I am not attempting to sterotype anyone. I don't even know if there is such a thing as a Russian gypsy. I know there are a damn lot of Russians around here, and that Russians painted this house, but I don't know if they were gypsies. They dress kind of like gypsies, painted scarves and long skirts. I haven't seen any gaily painted wooden wagons or be-ribboned tambourines and mad dancing around a blazing camp fire, but I happen to know they hide their camps.

My husband saw them paint the house and said they did a shitty job, but that was when the old German woman Elizabeth owned the house and he lived next door. What could he do to stop them? All I know is that gypsies are known for fly by night work, for summer driveway repaving that washes away with the first rain, and this house was painted with a thin coat of yellow waterpaint. Not laytex. Just flat yellow paint. I know this because I've been scraping it off for the past couple of hours. It isn't difficult. There is only one layer. It peels off easily, really only yellow dust when hit with the wire brush. I'm not complaining so much as commenting. I hate hard work, and paint that falls right off, well all the better. I said I'd never paint another house, and here I go. I am limited, happily, to one area, about 10x10, that was never completed by the Russians. They stopped when they got to the climber rose. Not me. I ripped it down, wound it up and laid it on the ground. There is only one way to paint: thoroughly. You can scrape a little here and there -- hit the bad spots, but eventually, if you're me, you end up going back over the whole damn thing three times, and I'd rather just do it right the first time. I'm probably breathing lead based Russian paint, but its a small job if I keep to my boundaries. I've inhaled worse. Pam spray. That's way worse. Airplane glue. I remember this guy named Tom Brown who always had bits of brown paper bag stuck to his face and gold paint all over his hands. Huffers. Whaddaya gonna do?

So, I'm doing my project to the best of my ability, weather be damned. My husband is having white Hammerite paint tinted "not quite white" for me. It makes me nervous to leave color decisions in his big rough hands, but there was little else I could do. He went to the paint store yesterday and asked if they could tint the rust proof paint. The guy said no, it only comes in these colors. I didn't like that, so I called the 800 number and got a guy who said the same thing. So, I looked at the swatches, called them back, and said what about if I tint the gloss white with the almond to get off-white? This time I got a woman. She said, yeah you can do that no problem, but also, you can tint it, but you gotta use this certain kind of pigment.

So I call my husband back, who was at the paint store, and in the meantime the guy has admitted that you CAN tint it. AHA!! I knew it! So he's having it tinted.

Men.

gainful employment

I got a job. I got the job. I am employed. When they asked me when I could start, I gave myself one more week off. Ahhh. Springtime. I start the 24th.

I am scouring nurseries, finding the clearance rooms. At 7Dees, they used to sell wire hanging baskets that were really wire, not kitchy little wannabe cast iron numbers with scrolling and ivy and shit that are already lined with coconut matting that sheds like Sid and never looks like anything but coconut matting. I just want wire baskets I can line with moss and plant flowers. I found them finally in the 40% off shed out back for a buck apiece and the moss was out there too. I got two leyland cypress for a visual barrier between us and the homeless shelter next door.

The dog house is gone. A big thank you to craigslist and the tasteless bastard who bought it. My husband kept the money. a. wondered if I'd split it with Sid, but I never saw a dime of it. That's okay. I'm certain he is the one who paid for it. Fair is fair.

It is time for Wordstock in Portland. A 3 day or maybe 2 day extravaganza all about words. Whoopee. I'm excited because Chuck Barris will be here. I don't know if he writes, but I just want to know where all the lost Gong Show tapes are. If I could get them, I would. I spent the better part of the (I'm guessing here) 70's? Watching that show: Gene Gene the Dancing Maching, the fish out of water, the singing chinese lady, the birth reality TV. I loved that show. And if you haven't seen Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, you should. Maybe he was a CIA assassin. How would I know?

Now that the deck is done, Sid can get a better look up into the tree next door and can finally make eye contact with the squirrel that has been fucking with him. I don't know if Sid has poor depth perception, but he seems to think the squirrel (and birds and low flying planes) are within his sphere of influence. He launches into the corner of the yard as if... as if this time it will be different. Sid and I have alot in common. He seems to like the deck. I think he was as glad as I was to see the plastic doggie condo go. He much prefers my furniture.




So, I have one week to finish the back yard. This involves scraping, primering, and painting a wall of the house, putting the big trellis back up, re-winding the climber rose into it, potting the plants, hanging the baskets, installing paving stones, finishing the edges of the deck, making a flowerbed off to one side with the dirt that comes out of the paving stones spot, which will be a buttload of dirt, painting the blue chairs white. Off white. Not quite white. Creme. Cream. And there is some kind of industrial strength paint called hammerite that covers rust -- no questions asked -- and it only comes in white white, and I want to tint it, and I guess it is some kind of industrial sin to do this. But I don't want gloss white chairs. That wouldn't do.

I can only do this project if it stops raining, so the good news is, I may get to lay on my ass for a week.

deck

We have one now. A deck in the backyard. A deck in one day. I carried lumber, slowly, methodically, carefully. That was my only contribution. I wish I could have done more, but had to consider my shoulder and the impact of hammering or lifting giant concrete blocks would have had on my general well-being. That he finished it in one day is a mystery to me, as is carpenter-like ability in men overall. He eyeballed the whole thing. He says it isn't perfect, but it looks good to me. After the top was on, my husband pulled my vintage metal patio chairs down off the fence and placed them carefully around Sid's plastic dog house.



As I attempt to edit this post -- get the words in the right place -- I look at the photographs and it occurs to me that someone, albiet someone with poor taste, might object to my vintage chairs. I intend to paint them after I figure out how to remove the rust, but the words of Antiques Roadshow linger in memory: don't fuck with the original finish. (They don't say fuck. You probably know that.) But I love these chairs. I stole them fair and square. Two words: they bounce.


Here's a closeup of the doghouse, so you can feel my pain.




Form vs. Function. An age old conflict. I think it is the basis of the battle of the sexes: It still works vs. it is made of plastic. If you go to craigslist, portland, pets, you'll find it there. 20$. Please buy it.

day to day avoidance

I am avoiding my shoulder terrorism. I need to go to the bank. I need drain cleaner for the kitchen sink, but the way I see it, I don't have to do dishes until it is fixed and we can eat at Clay's Smokehouse on Division. I have to get concrete blocks from Home Despot so we can build the deck this weekend. And lumber. I didn't know until I was married that it mattered that they were straight. I mean, I knew that, but I didn't know they sold bent boards, warped. Like me. And that you have to pick through them. You don't just go get some. I need some boards please. I can't lift anything anyway. One armed bandit. That's me.

Avoidance.

Sid is staring at me, knowing we will go somewhere today. He heard me say the word "go" on the phone this morning, and he does not forget. He will stare at me, lay at my feet, follow me room to room until we GO. He will not become manic until I put on my shoes. That is the giveaway. He has become my daily travel companion, sitting in the passenger seat like anybody, watching passing motorists, keeping his balance. He watches TV. He likes Drew Barrymore, probably because she is blonde and he thinks she is me. HE WATCHES TV. When TV laughs, he looks at us to see if we get it. I have ruined my dog. He is not a pitbull at all, but mommies still run strollers to the other side of the street when we go by, and pro-pitbull people ask if they can pet my dog, like they are doing something dangerous and heroic. They are not.

So, Judas has a new book out. Cool. I want to read it.

(Jan, if you are reading this blog, send me your email. Get mine from Lorretta. I miss you.)

more

Snowdrops, poppies. More of each. Its like The Wizard of Oz. This year I've decided on poppies. I keep trying different flower combinations to see what I like in front of the house. This weekend, we begin to build the deck in the back yard, then I can decorate that.

I'd decorate Sid if he'd hold still.

I have some job hooks in the proverbial water. Had an interview today and one tomorrow. The nursing home I went to today didn't even use computers. I couldn't work like that. I have to be able to email if not blog on my breaks.

The other job sounds better: managing an Alzheimer's Unit. That sounds like fun. Now that the industry has evolved to the point where they have stopped trying to control the residents. Controlling Alzheimer's patients is like teaching a pig to dance: it doesn't work and it annoys the pig. It's like herding cats. Now, they just build nice soft rooms with low beds you can't fall out of; group closets and big playrooms. I suppose the families would be the most difficult part. The parent/child relationship morphing into something much more fluid than most families are comfortable with... that's hard stuff. As Mother librarian rediscovers her long lost (if ever found) libido and dear old repressed Dad finds new uses for his tools .... acceptance takes on new meaning.

But losing my mind early in life, I have little to look forward to.

planting

Fuchsias, lobelia, begonias, poppies, snowdrops.

So far.

I love dirt. I buy it new, use old stuff, pick through leaves to get the real shit. I wear gloves now, protect my shattered and splitting nails. It wasn't always like this.

.

fuchsia saturday

I missed it! Aargh. One saturday each spring Fred Meyer has the big event: free dirt if you buy their fuchsia starts. I'm so bummed I missed it. My dirt from last year will be fine, I'm sure. We got buttloads last time. I think we may actually have spurred them to set a limit. We had BIG pots. Huge. And they grew so well. So, this year, they should be fine.

I'm headed out to get flowers. Nothing will stop me. Not my therapist, not pain. Yesterday I thought I was well again, but no. She tortured my scapular area (isn't this interesting?) for the first time, and I was fine after, but shit. By evening I was in worse pain than ever. But I'm okay now, and headed out. I'm going. I'm bored to death. I've applied for jobs -- that's how bad it is.

prose house

unstrung thoughts
days run together
marking time with minus tides
weather is shifting sand
dark clouds gather like gossips
fat bellies hanging low on the horizon
ripe with rain for another town
not this one
not this time
sun slips away
fingers of silver light
rays like heaven
escape evening's grasp for a moment
as night falls
windlessly
on Prose house

j

So, maybe all I needed was time at the beach. It is always a crapshoot, renting a beach house online, but we really lucked out this time. I only picked Prose house because Sid could come. He loves the beach. We crabbed. He crabbed. I drove the boat, more successfully this time. I maneuvered it slowly beside the marking bouys, and pulled and pulled the rope. No crab. All girls. K crabbed non-stop, and finally got five, which we ate up last night like little piggies.

Prose house had a crate & barrel kitchen, very go mod, and all new cabinets with swing-out wire shelving, round and shiny, nothing hiding in the back. Not yet anyway. Made me long for new appliances. new yard. new house. new stuff. I can have anything I want, so my honey tells me. I will. But it, like anything, will all be obsolete one day.

There was an old photograph of the house at the top of the stairs. When it was built, it was the only house around, and two narrow lanes between it and the beach. Now, there are other houses, and one of the roads has been taken by the sea, or global warming, or erosion, or whatever. I guess if I live long enough, this will be oceanfront property. Not long if you listen to the worriers. I know, I know. It is bad.

I wrote that poem in the guestbook. Everyone else wrote exactly the same thing: Hey, thanks! Great kitchen! Great view. I guess it just took me more words to say that same thing.

I am verbose.

I am not verbose enough.

You pick.

continuance

My shoulder hurts. I am still and will be in pain for awhile. My doctor says I won't be happy for three months. I don't want to break the news to him about me and happiness. He's such a nice person. It (the pain, what else?) seems to go like this: I have a couple of days off, then therapy, then its on again. And during the couple of days off, I think, "Ah, its over." And it is in that moment, or those moments, that I set up my downfall. My need for certainty in an uncertain body. When the pain returns, which it always does, I am devastated. Capital D. This is a D day. I understand it will improve, has improved, is improving, but I can't see it from where I am at this moment.

There is so much on my mind. Family crap, the declining razor clam population,low salmon runs, laundry, the absence of big trees, writing and not writing. I open Microsoft word and it is like a dead thing compared to this, this living breathing blog. So, I close it again, no words to prove I had ever been there. I re-read my poetry. I review my fiction, detached, dispassionate. I hold a yellow notebook in the palm of my hand, grasp the pen--the perfect black, microfine roller pen, and like a unpenitent hobo, my thoughts are off again. I write nothing. I can't gather the words like I used to, in rough baskets and manilla envelopes, sorted by topic: romance and madness, fragments of captured memory, the eventual quilt of my life. My thoughts are mercury these days, they are liquid and wind and all of the things that won't hold still -- that can't be contained, that do not form words--

That won't behave.

It is as though I have never written.

The things I know to be true are so few: I love my husband. I miss my son. My friends and family are generous and forgiving. Life is better when I am conscious. I am better when I write.

I probably need a job, but Gwen says I need to let my arm heal. I'm not big on healing. So, I'm not working. And I am okay. I looked at my bicycle today. It is so beautiful. Sleek. And I want to vomit and take laxatives until I am. The monster is awake, I fed it cookies. It won't shut up.

Bob Dylan said it best: Been down so long it looks like up to me.

I'm being hystrionic. Don't worry. I know.

job

If I could do anything, I'd hang out a shingle and use my master's degree. I'd open a writing space, with genuine quiet, not like the quiet you find in your own home, where dishes and dust bunnies whisper among themselves, where skeletons rattle and the unmade bed calls your name in a voice only you can hear. Deep quiet. Stolen quiet. The kind of quiet that you have to steal from yourself, that no one else can give you, that does not keep and will not wait. I'd charge by the hour. I'd host writing groups, poetry readings, spoken word fests, story hours. I'd encourage crappy writers and good ones alike, I'd edit the shit out of things. I'd tell the truth in the nicest way. I'd launch the next Hemingway. I'd give the next Bukowski-wannabe a sober place to collect his scraps. Anne Lamott would speak on Friday nights.

I'd call it "Write Here."

And the thing is, everybody has one -- a story to tell. I think madness is the pressure of untold stories, unspoken words, unexpressed life. You'd come, right? You'd pay, wouldn't you? Solitude for money. I think its an idea whose time has come. We buy water and light and dirt and sunburns. Quiet? Its the next bottled water. It wouldn't be a coffee shop or a library, but something in between. BYOC. (coffee) BYOF. (food) You could curl up on one of the many sofas, or cushy chairs, and bring your laptop or your legal pad and perfect pen, and write the story. Tell the tale that is your life.

Yup, that's what I'd do.

clamming 101

Once again, we headed for the coast, in search of the elusive Razor Clam. This time, armed with a new aluminum gun, our hopes were high. I got to use the new gun because it is lighter, and I have a recovering shoulder. And yes, I probably shouldn't be clamming, but shit. I am so bored. And it isn't like you have to wrestle the clams from their little hidey holes. Well, sort of.

There is so much to know about clamming. The big boys use a small slanted shovel with a long narrow blade. They say it is a challenge. But I don't want a challenge, I want clams with a minimum of effort. And without getting wet. That's the part I never really talk about. Clamming would be so much easier without all that water rushing in and out just when you have one in your sights. Freaking waves. And as we cursed the monotonous unpredictability of the sea, the damned spring sun bouncing off the glittering sand, rich with pyrite and bits of white shell, blinding us, we managed to get about 15 between us: me 5, him 10.

Clamming 101

What you need:

A shellfish tag.
A clam gun. Screw the old school guys. You can get them at Razorclams.com. (the guns, not the guys.) or GI Joe's.
Get a pair of waders, waist high, and rubber boots. And a coat and hat. Get the hat in Carson City and you too can look like "Heidi goes clamming." you can visit a. while there.
A shovel, or just take a long heavy stick with a rounded end. A shovel is best for the weight. This is for "tamping."
Get a stylish black fishnet clam bag, or strap a gallon jug to your belt, but its way cooler to have a net.
Ask around for a good place to clam. We go to Gearhardt Beach by Seaside.

This is all by way of preparation. Now, this is how it is done:

Check your newspaper for tide tables. Find the lowest possible tide, a minus tide is best.
Make sure the minus tide is on during the daylight hours. (People do actually clam at night, with lanterns. It's eerie. We've done it, but it was cold and scary and really flies in the face of that old time honored principle about never turning your back on the ocean.)
Start clamming about 2 hours before low tide.
Get as close to the water as you are comfortable and begin searching.
Walk slowly, tamping the sand with your stick (bouncing the bottom round end about every foot or so), carrying the gun in the other hand.
Look for little spouts of water -- really little -- and a dime sized hole that drops, like the sand is sinking suddenly in that one spot. This is called "showing."
Quickly, position your clam gun over the spot. Quickly. The 5 inch circle of the gun should be placed so that the "show hole" is at the point of the circle nearest you.
Slant the gun slightly toward the ocean. (you are trying to catch the clam. The clam seems to know this and begins always to run under the sand toward the ocean, so you want to position the gun to get him as he moves that direction.)
Shimmy the gun straight down (little slant) over what you hope is the clam, as quickly but carefully as you can. If you hear a crunch, it is the clam, back off and adjust. Go again.

The gun works by suction. Somewhere on the handle is a small air hole.


Once you have pushed the gun into the sand a foot or so, and you think you have the clam, put your finger over the air hole and pull the gun up and out of the sand, bringing the plug of sand, and hopefully the clam, with it.
Slowly, release the sand from the gun, holding your hand over it, ready to catch the clam as it comes out.
The clam will be anxious to get back into the sand, and will make a quick getaway if possible.
Rinse it off and stick in the net bag.

One down.

You can only get 15 clams each. That's the limit.
You have to keep any clam you get, so if you get a little one, you have to keep it anyway.
If you crunch one, you have to keep it.
Be honest.
There is like a 500 dollar fine to help you with the honesty part.

I'll post about cleaning them. This is nasty. It will take awhile after learning this to actually eat them.

brother marc

For those of you who missed it, the blog was black for a minute. I changed to this parchment-like template because everyone uses the black and I AM DIFFERENT. I do wish, however, that I could make the title "bluesky" blue.

My fucking arm hurts fucking bad. I just got home from therapy. It is helping. My range of motion is much improved, but jeez.

Back to moving (see previous post.) My brother Marc always let me live with his family. He was big on the Waltons, and I think kind of viewed himself as the benevolent John Walton. My father died when I was eight, and Marc was pretty interested in replacing him -- or so it always seemed to me, the much younger sister. He was bossy, but mostly drunk, so it came off not all that seriously. It is nearly the third anniversary of his death, death by whiskey. He lived the last year and a half of his life whiskey-free, but it was too little, too late, and his liver finally gave up the long battle. I remember the last months of his life, taking him for long, methadone drives, listening to Southern Man, and Down By The River, and best of all, Wooden Ships. When I lived on his porch, or in his garage, or in the spare room, or on the couch, we'd sit all day long, playing acoustic guitars, watching the Gong Show and smoking weed. We did not have jobs, we had children and welfare and free cheese and canned pork and bulgar. If you don't know what bulgar is, you missed the commodity food era--standing in line with other people's children, coaching them to call you mommy to get more food, filling the van with lentils and pinto beans and real butter and powdered milk enough for a month. Pre-food stamps. We fed the spam-like canned meat to the dogs.

darkness darkness

Well, I have to admit, this is a little dark. How can I be my ebullient self when suffocating in this cave? Its like the proverbial dark night of the soul. I have enough trouble as it is. I'll try out a couple different themes, and y'all can let me know whatcha think. It'll be a contest. I will win.

My husband is cleaning out the refrigerator. I'm not sure why. These are things I only do when I move, and since I'm not moving, he may have a point. Cleaning the oven and the fridge. Not my gig. I've moved more times in my life than I can count. I tried once. I counted 48 moves from the time I left home at 17 through my 33rd birthday. Random, I know. But 48? That's alot for anybody. Some of them were porches, but they counted. Anytime I had to pack it up, I counted it.

daytime TV

Kenny Rogers had plastic surgery. No one says anything about it, but there he was, singing like Kenny Rogers, but looking kind of like Keanu Reeves with gray hair. Little beady eyes, taut skin. He didn't look anything like Kenny Rogers. Now, I never thought anything about him, never thought he was hot or all that great except when I was 13 and that first song, "I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in" was launched, and I was just starting to take acid, and it was very deep. I've never been deeper than when I was a teenager. Everything was so important, and I'm sure it still is, and I'm glad there are still teenagers who think so, and adults who give a shit, but I don't. But then Kenny Rogers jumped the hip ship over to country music without missing a beat, and Ruby Don't Take Your Love to Town was the big hit of the Satin Slipper crowd -- or the Sit 'n Slapper, as we called it. So, now Kenny Rogers, prematurely gray, is postmaturely young. I'm not against plastic surgery, have had my share, it is just so wierd to look at a famous face, and go through the mental effort to make sense of it all when no one says anything. I have a great friend who had a face lift and she was so out front about it. I mean, why wouldn't you be? Its your face for crying out loud. Why act like nothing happened? Like, "No, I've always looked like this. What's your problem?"

And, as always, who cares what Kenny Rogers looks like? Not me. Maybe it wasn't Kenny Rogers at all. Hey, maybe it WAS Keanu Reeves. Shit!

I love daytime TV. I love not working. I almost got hired yesterday. Whew. It was close. I sat there in the interview doing what I do, impressing the hell out of them, and when it looked like I had the job in the palm of my hand, I said "No, thanks. But if you have something that is, like, no work for a lot of money, where I can come in at, say, 10ish, and leave whenever I feel like it, I'm your gal." No, seriously, I'd come in at 8. ish.

The View is on right now. I don't like it. The Young and the Restless (which Dave Quick used to call, "The Hung and the Rest of Us,") will be on at 11. I have therapy at 12:30 so will have to record "As the World Turns," and "Guiding Light." I don't watch Dr. Phil much, and only catch the dancing monologue of Ellen , but that's it. Seriously, it can suck the life from your whole day. I lay on the floor, do my exercises, my personal shoulder torture routine, and listen to tips on how to organize your garage, how to color easter eggs, and how to braize beef. Martha Stewart has a great attitude if you ask me. She looks like she's having much more fun now that she's done a little stretch in the joint. She is very organized, as we all know, and was talking about the importance of making a monthly calendar. As we, the TV audience, watched, she showed her own personal calendar for last month, the dinner party on the 12th, the sailing date with Mick Jagger and his family on the 15th. Cognitive Dissonance. "They are SUCH a nice fam-i-ly," she says in passing, her prissy little face speaking the grossly improbable with New England precision as she moves on to the next date on her calendar with plans to wash all of the wicker baskets in her house and reupholster the garden furniture in awning stripe. oh. a day in the life. Nothing unusual. And like looking at Kenny/Keanu Rogers/Reeves, I simply suspend disbelief and move on.

KR/KR?? Do you think they might be the same person?

maiden voyage, NDE

First of all, let me remind you that I exaggerate. NDE stands for Near Death Experience.

That being said, we did find and purchase a new boat (pictures as soon as I learn to use the camera). A 14-foot Hewes Craft, a plain ol' aluminum fishing boat. Open top with a good trailer, easy in and easy out of the water. An old man owned it, an old man who is midway into Alzheimer's. He did some built-ins along the side, little wooden compartments to stash stuff and holes for an improbable umbrella stand. I'm sure it will work fine, but I want a Bimini top for shade. Its the sun that kills me. It has three bench seats and a couple of cushy folding chairs mounted to the front and rear (fore and aft) port and stern, ahoy matey, damn the torpedos, and that is sort of what I was doing when I nearly killed the boat and drowned us both. I was damned-the-torpedos-full-speed-ahead and I know I shouldn't have been driving with my left arm not three weeks out of surgery. I know this. It makes no sense to me in retrospect, but when my honey said, "Wanna give it a try?" I wanted. Now here's the thing: Unlike the Wacanda, this boat doesn't have a steering wheel. It has a stick on the motor with a handlegrip gas pedal. If you push the stick left, the boat goes right. If you push the stick left while cranking on the gas, the boat goes right really fast and there's the bank oh, shit and it seems okay to use my arm muscles to crank the gas ON and push the stick, but when I tried to pull the stick back the other direction, which is to engage my shoulder in a way it is not yet willing to consider, well, it wouldn't. It just wouldn't. And nanoseconds are passing, and we are going in sort of a circle, but not really, and the bank is looking rocky, and looming ever closer, and I am going to crash our new boat. Then I think, "Slow the boat down." Now, it may have been my husband screaming. I'm not sure. I shouldn't take credit for thinking, because I wasn't. I was acting. So I released my deathgrip on the throttle to allow it to slow down and the boat stopped just short of the bank. Just. K was really pleasant during the whole thing, but I don't think I get to drive until I'm all better. Shit. But I'm glad it has the stick to drive with, because that means I get to sit in front and fish.

It was the maiden voyage of the unnamed boat. We didn't fish, but we did cruise around Ross Island and under the bridges downtown, which is kind of Venice on an urban-industrial scale. It is absolutely one of my favorite things, the people on the esplanade looking over the railing, waving as we pass. We are boaters. We are the leisure class, or at least we float along in the wake of the leisure class. There are some big damn boats out there.

I went to a job interview this afternoon. It sounded like a great job, but they wanted me to work some weekends and evenings, and I just don't want to do that anymore. I don't. So I was happy to decline, and they were unhappy and want to find something for me to do, and I guess I hope they can. I must work eventually. Eventually. I was scared to death they'd hire me, so I got the important stuff out of the way after making a fabulous first impression: how much money? (not enough) what schedule? (no go.) So there you have it. I may eat my words.

another week nearly gone

I think it is March 16th. The way I know this is the green activity on television. The morning show guy had green hair already and the 17th isn't until tomorrow. My mother and father had their first date on St. Patrick's day. We're Irish and Scot. It has never been a big deal for me, though I do love Celtic music. It gets me in my bones. Green beer always reminded me of Mickey Big Mouth, which I got sick on as a kid, so never a big appeal. None of the major drinking days --New Year's, etc.-- held any great power. Every day was a major drinking day in my world. Tuesday for instance. Tuesday was good.

Anyway, the point is not so much the drinking or the Irish, but the fact that I have finally lost track of time. I have been off work one month today. Hooray for time off. I would rather have had a pain free vacation, but whatever. I love having a job, and seem to need the identity that comes along with it, but I hate working. I hate anything that impinges on my day to day life.

AARRGGHH! My soaps have been cancelled in favor of college basketball!! This is a tragedy!! Dammit. Who gives a shit about college sports? Not me.

So, I'm thinking about writing. I'm writing, also, but thinking about writing on paper again. Back to the Lead Pencil Society. Blogging seems inauthentic sometimes, just the lack of editing alone would make my professors turn in their -- their... .whatevers. I pound on the keys and press "publish." And I am. Published. If I don't actually write something, I may not get published again anywhere but here. And no offense, but this is not my best stuff. I got way more.

So, I'll see if my fingers can still hold a manual instrument. My poor old fingers who never thougt they'd release the pen for the keyboard. It was a brief if emotional battle, easily won, but I always wonder, what if Blogger dies? What happens to all this shit?

I know I'm saying shit alot. That indicates the need for a job, for socialization among the improved. I revert so easily. I am so susceptible.

therapist

Did you ever notice that "therapist" is spelled, "the rapist?" I was just wondering.

My physical therapy started yesterday. My therapist is a 12 year-old girl named Anna. Anna the Barbarian. I had visited the surgeon on Monday and he gave me the go ahead to begin therapy because my movement is good for someone two weeks out. Well, it hurt. It hurts still. It hurt anyway, so what's the problem? It felt good, in a masochistic kind of way, to feel blood flow in the area of my shoulder and neck, but still... Damn.

So, on Monday, I applied for 5 jobs. Got a call back from one within 15 minutes of faxing it, complete with a near offer. The money wasn't what I want, so I had to pass. Two more responses throughout the day. But I should note here that I couldn't work yet if my life depended on it -- that I don't want to work for a couple more months -- I was just testing the waters. When I moved up here in spring of 2004, I intended to be off work for 6 months and then reach out and pluck the perfect job from the low hanging branches of the job tree. They would see my resume, think, "My God, She's Here!" and offer me buckets of cash. It wasn't so easy as all that. After 6 months off I began applying and experiencing rejection for the first time in my life. After a month of that, I scrambled and took a job as a social worker for less money than I've seen in awhile. So now, I'm a little nervous, two years older, and my body a wreck. A wreck. And I don't want to wait until the last minute. But my dilemma is this: What if somebody offers me a great job?

I have spent the better part of my life just saying YES to the next thing, and it has worked out pretty well so far: Yes to the boys, yes to motherhood, yes to whiskey, yes to heroin, yes to more heroin, yes to NO more heroin or whiskey, yes to education, yes to homeownership, yes to the sweetest marriage proposal, yes to this life. So, yes has worked out fairly well for me. I'm gonna stay with it, only be choosy about the job thing. I don't settle easily or well. Like I mentioned a few posts back, I don't like to do what I don't like, so the job must have some appeal.

In my world, we are considering a weekend at the coast to spend with my outlaws -- my ex-never-were-really-inlaws, but the closest family I've been part of since mine went to shit which was a long time ago. My son's father's family. He is dead--my son's father. I danced on his grave. But I love them. My ex-mother outlaw has been more of a mother to me than my own. My ex-outlaw sisters closer than my own sister, sadly. So, we will locate a place to stay where Sid and the girls and maybe Marky can hang with us. cool.

Sid -- He'd die left to a weekend alone. What a baby. We got him a new toy at a yard sale, a stuffed dog, not lifesize, but bigger than usual. I'm not confident of the wisdom of buying a pitbull an animal-shaped thing to thrash, but at least it wasn't a baby doll. Anyway, we got him this dog. He thrashed it around for awhile, but not like usual. Ordinarily, toys are consumed in a matter of moments, thus the need to shop at yardsales and Goodwill.... Sid's ritual is this: Each morning, he listens for the sound of the furnace revving up, then he gets off the sofa to lay in front of the vent until he is toasty. So yesterday morning, we get up. The heater comes on. We walk into the living room and Sid has placed his dog in front of the heater vent and he is laying on the loveseat watching this dog. His friend. He is such a failure as a pitbull.

The boat search continues, and we are looking for a bike for Lorretta. I appreciate her aversion to gears. She is my best friend for a reason.

hobbies

My husband is looking for another boat now. "Looking" may be too timid a word to describe his quest for the perfect vessel. He is a man obsessed. I have watched with great joy the metamorphosis of his hobbies over the past couple of years.

With bikes, the evolution went something like this: we want cruisers. We want the perfect hawthorne cruisers. Then, we want to go faster, and uphill. We don't need mountain bikes, we need road bikes.

We bought the Cruisers new, and, together, they probably weighed 75 pounds. It was about that point that I said, "Hey, have you heard of craigslist?" And it was on.... He found that not only could he find bikes for us, for the girls, but that he could repair bikes, old bikes, and people would love them, and both seller and buyer could buy them for a fraction of their worth. Initially, the bikes were 15-20 bucks each. From childhood he knew he was a Schwinn man, a classic. He wouldn't buy or sell a Huffy if the profit margin was 200%. He surfed craigslist daily, made mad runs to be first come-first served for each fixer-upper. As the buying and the selling progressed, the quality and initial investment increased. He began to take calls on things called Treks, Bianchis, Cannondales. He was laying out significant piles of cash with increasing risk. But the sales continued. Woven in and among the sales was the evolution of my husband's own personal bicycle. I remember a beautiful Trek, orange to red (color is important to me) sleek and simple.



He paid some guy 100.00 for it. It was the first "high-end" bike. When he called me, as he does, to report his current expenditures, he said, "I've finally found it. This is the last bike I'll ever need." Famous last words. If I had a nickle....

Currently, our garage houses my bike, which, I'll admit, is nice. (A black Marin with a fat tractor seat and a gold bell that looks like a buddhist temple and great road gears.) And his: a billion dollar Jamis with razor thin racing tires and a seat that would get lost in my ass, a brand new Raleigh crossover and a beautiful lavendar Bianchi (currently for sale on craigslist). Oh, and a vintage tricycle that some woman asked him to find handlebars for. He'll fix it eventually. And, a big motorcycle. And, until we finally tired of cramming it in there, the Wacanda. The Wacanda had been parked curbside for the past 9 months.

So, what's my point? I know I'm digressing like mad here. Here's the thing: Now, its boats. Do you know how big boats are?

Really, when you live in a city, and have a classic Portland sloping driveway and an underhouse garage that was probably perfect for a model-T Ford, and now he's shopping craigslist for boats? I'm a little nervous. I'm learning about boats, which is fun. But the real fun is watching him, seeing the light in his eyes, the smile I live for. But BOATS?? I envision a somewhat slower process, one boat at a time, two tops. Keep in mind that the cost of the Wacanda was 600.00, sold for 1000.00 after having exactly that much into it. It was a great boat, and sold to someone who is into classic fiberglass. Now, he's dreaming about new boats. And when he said, "I'd never need another boat," I knew I'd heard it somewhere before.

Yesterday was an education. We raced madly to Vancouver for a 14 footer which turned out to be a 13 footer; to a new boat store in Beaverton where yachts are parked next to camouflage fishing boats that I'd lose in the morning mist; to 139th and Powell for a 14 footer that would NEVER fit under our house; and finally, to 71st and Sunnyside for a sweet little 13 footer with a suntop (my personal requirement).

Usually, when shopping craigslist, there is somewhat of an honor system. If you're the first to call, the seller will give you first shot, within certain timeframes. But this guy needed rent money. He said, "Two other people are on their way, but if you get here first, its yours." We were outta there. I liked the boat first sight, but like I said, I'm learning. When we rolled up to the house in felony flats, a man came outside. I should rather say the ghost of a man came outside. A meth-monster, reeking of booze, nearly transparent, unaccustomed to being out in the light of day. Making eye contact was too hard for him. He needed to sell that boat like I needed to sell my son's Christmas tricycle the day after christmas, or the Kirby vaccuum cleaner, or my soul.... So, I'm thinking, okay, the boat is sweet. He needs money, we need a boat. Contributing to his delinquency whispers in the back of my mind, a minor discomfort--I am an opportunist. Then my husband does what he does, he asks the magic question, "Do you have clear title?" The guy nods, sort of. Or maybe it was just a twitch. We look a little closer, see that the grass it sits on is undisturbed. It hasn't been there long at all. I see this. I know. I'm a thief. Still, though, I want the boat. I am capable of overlooking other people's faults. This does not make me a good person as I hope it will work out. It IS, afterall, the last boat I'll ever need.
"Okay, let's have a look at that title," husband says.

The ghost replies, "I'll just write you a bill of sale. That's all you need in Oregon." The unuttered "Trust me" passed his thin blue lips, falling soundlessly on the undisturbed lawn beneath (probably) his landlord's boat.

"Gonna need to see that title." says husband. We're Oregonians. We know better.

And that's where the sale ended. It may have been his boat. He spoke unconvincingly of salmon and sturgeon, but his voice shook and he had to keep his hands in his pockets to keep them from flying from his shoulders in frantic neurological distress. I know the pose.

It is difficult to hope he got his rent paid. I hope he gets some help, and in retrospect am relieved that we did not contribute, altruism not a factor.

Today, Sunday, I am home. K on the beach. My arm hurts bad. I know it is better but wish it was over. Back to the surgeon tomorrow to report my progress. I am doing great, but it is every other day that I am comfortable. I guess that is twice as often as pre-surgery. Whine. And its freakin' cold around here. I'm pretty done with winter, so, it could start warming up now.

Wacanda

We sold the boat. It's a '58 Wacanda. Still looks like a Buick to me. Some guy who used to live in Ashland bought it. Now I hope K will search for another one. I loved cruising around under the bridges of Portland. It wasn't a fishing boat, wasn't meant to be... but we'll find the right one. I want a sun cover, a lid of some kind.

Here's my diet plan (in case you were wondering): chocolate soy milk all day and a -- what do they call it? -- a sensible dinner. Sensible. I'm sure that's the part of the plan that will undo me. Me and sensible never did get along. I will make homemade pizza tonight. But really, I do like Soy Slender. It is sweetened with Splenda and is rich and yummy and only has one carb. I only eat meals to find my way to the sweet stuff anyway and this will short circuit all that chewing. I hate lettuce.

I have gone this long without talking about pain. I'll keep going.

So, its back to beach fishing on The Mighty Columbia with the beach boys. We saw one caught last weekend -- one -- but hear that they (Dept. of Fish and Wildlife) are closing the season due to low fish-counts. So salmon fishing is pretty much over anyway. We'll try for sturgeon. They are big and fight hard and you can only keep certain sizes, like, between 4 and 5 feet long. What the hell am I supposed to do with a four and a half foot long fish that looks like a prehistoric monster? I'm not cleaning it. I just want to be very clear about that. Catching halibut out on the sea is another thing. YOu come back in from the trip and there are fish maidens awaiting the catch who gut out and filet the halibut for a price you are more than willing to pay. Coastal women, wind-worn and harsh, who look better at closing time and know good jokes. I used to be one. I know.

My fucking arm hurts.

There.

It snowed. It is not snowing here at this moment (you should see the news: "Its snowing out here in the Cascades!! Two days in a row now!!" This is in the shadow of Mt. Fucking Hood for Chrissake, of course its snowing.) Anyway, I was planning to charge out this morning and do stuff in spite of pain. In absolute rejection of pain, of this invalid season, this supine lifestyle, flipping side to side on a sofa that will not cooperate, like a too-round piece of meat, always just this side of comfort. I have visions of health, but rather eat myself into a carbohydrate coma with two pieces of peanut butter toast. Why would you have one when there are two slots? I am so susceptible. I am so tired of tired. So sick of sleep. So ready for spring.

Whhhhiiiiinnnnneeee.

But it snowed, so my visions of walking Sid in Laurelhurst park are delayed for another day, or a later time. But really, I can't see sitting here a whole lot longer. I am bored, watching the same striped hat pass my window this morning as last, thinking about my own hat, my many-colored Carson City Heidi Hat that my husband got me matching mittens for last Christmas. And a tall bike just went by, three bikes tall, and I can't show you a picture of it because I don't know how to use a digital camera.

Life goes on below me, around me, and this is time off work. I want to embrace it and have only one arm. Time takes time.

dv

Yanni was arrested for domestic violence. Is nothing sacred?

not working

I'm not. I'm bored. My arm is better now. I need a job. Or, I could write a book again, get it published and be rich. er. I wish I had the nerve to live on my creative wits, but so far, I have opted for a paying job.

My arm is not really all better. It hurts, or rather, I am usually aware of the recent surgery. But I am, like most bad patients, in a hurry to regain the lost season. I guess the fact that it was winter is something to be grateful for. I can think of many other things, such as my ability to heal.

And now that I am not sedated, I am not sedated.

I must quote a. of ashabot when she told me (of being medicated post surgery) something like this: "Once you go under you begin to drown, and pretty soon, air doesn't sound so good anymore."

That tiny little jones behind me now, I want air. I want to gulp it, to slurp it from the giant juicy peach of life, to never have to know sedation again. I want it all. We speak of moments of clarity... I want a lifetime.

It is good to be healthy. And like James Spader said on Ellen today, "...besides my lines and world events, the only thing i think about is my weight gain." So, on to the gym. I decided to wait for the physician's release before charging out to re-injure myself, but soaking in a spa sounds good. My tub works.

birds and banners

yesterday morning the birds were singing in my back yard. the sun was out for a good part of the day. i left the doors open. the pain wasn't so bad yesterday. yesterday... all my troubles seemed so far away. not so much now. wow. it is the only near expletive i can think of that really sums up my experience this moring. WOW. fuck is useful, dammit--not bad, but wow really kind of encompasses the wide-eyed wonder of the ongoingness of this condition. i don't dream in pain, thankfully, and waking up to it is such a stark and unpleasant contrast that it catches me off guard every time. like i said last post, i always think its over now. i really believe i'll go to sleep and wake up and be clear and jump up and make coffee and write for awhile, and wham. I guess this is evidence that pain meds work on some level. every day i believe it is over now. I'm better. And I am. I'm another day through this one. I am deeply apologetic for whining over such an extended period of time. I've had 3 pretty major surgeries in a year: tumor under my chin, exploded appendix and now, shoulder repair. its no wonder I'm depressed. and i know i am.

back to the birds. i used to dread the sound of birds in the morning, proof of another night spent, another chance to sleep lost, another day when my sleepy-eyed little boy would wake up, innocent of my sins, and i would hear him stirring and scurry to my unmade bed to pretend to wake up as he crawled in bed with me. I am glad i maintained the illusion of sleep, but it was thin, and he saw through it eventually. "remember when you never slept and all we ever had was peanut butter and crackers?" we think they don't know.

Birds in the morning, sign of spring, evidence of god, of hope, the world turning, the end of pain. my personal pain. I will make my bed, begin my day in the dark of my bay window, overlooking clinton street and the waking others who share my world. I love spring. I am grateful to be alive.

Nicole came over yesterday to see me. Just to see me. I like being her sometimes mother. She went to a punk show the night before and a band called WWPRF played. the PRF stands for Punk Rock Faggots. apparently the queer community got ahold of it and protested the name. See the portlandindy site for an exhaustive discussion. exhausting. it provoked a lengthy discussion of PC behavior, punk theory, who gets to wear which banners of oppression, the definition of faggot. me? i think many things: queer adults could find a larger battle than 15 year olds who are all about shock me shock me shock me with that deviant behavior.

banners. so many to choose from. mine are: woman, mother, wife, writer, artist, junkie, drunk, criminal. they hang in my closet, rattle like the skeletons they are. useful in a pinch, but costumes one and all. distancing mechanisms. this dialogue provokes in me questions about banners and epithets, slurs, internalized oppression and the apparent competition for who is the most oppressed. why is it that I, as a straight adult, should probably say "the gay community" while gays can now say "queers", why blacks can call themselves niggers again, why I have to say the inconvenient "native american," rather than indian. I like the word indian. it slips easily from my western tongue. I have my own bags to carry. As a white woman, raised in Southern Oregon, I am born racist, even though i was not raised racist and do not knowingly participate in discrimination. I benefit from white privilege with or without my consent. I don't see myself as homophobic, but I am deeply homobored. The whole notion of PC language is discouraging to me, especially as it evolves and seems little more than fashion. I hate to be censored, regardless the cause. Were the kids right? No. They rarely are. But they do love attention, and this was certainly galvanizing. I'd like to say to the guy who spoke for the queer community, "this isn't about you," but he wanted it to be, so now, apparently, it is.

the thing is this... no one owns the word faggot. pc language is about exclusion, about separation and entitlement. our collective life is suffocating under the great flat hand of neocon powermongers who use fundamentalists (whether hamas or gay activists) as the puppets of separation. the soil beneath us all is shifting, is on fire, and we are attending to our crotches? please tell me there is something more important, at least more INTERESTING to defend, than what humans suck on in their private moments.

my contribution to the dialogue is this: choose your battles. divide and conquer was never more visible or pathetic than the squabbling of well-fed liberals when competing in the "most-oppressed" category. It is the single, most powerful tool of the oppressors. and in my overblown opinion, the only voice that should be louder is that of the environmentalists, although truthfully, i don't think we'll live long enough for global warming to be an issue. we'll be too busy warming our feet at the cold chemical campfires of an urban wasteland.

premature

here's the thing.... i always think i'm going to get off light. i always think the worst is over just before it hits. in the immortal words of crosby stills and nash, its always darkest just before the dawn and i always think i can see the dawning from where i sit, think i am already in the dark, and then, it gets darker.

every time.

my freakin' shoulder hurts. they told me it would. but then, he pulled the pain pump out and told me i was probably through the worst of it, but shit man. it may have been the worst of it, but i had the pain pump in. see? So i get all hopeful, and think i'm on the happy road, and wham! the party starts in earnest. Now, the good news is that this may mean i am not a pessimist afterall. it may mean i am easily seduced by the carefully chosen words of physicians. it may mean i'm rebecca of sunnybrook farm or an idiot. you decide. so, i hurt. but it is a healing kind of bone pain, not the torture that came before.

anyway, asia from deconstructionist came by and brought me thai food which was yummy. Jill brought me roses and a young women's fashion magazine called Jane which was thoughtful and maybe a little edgy. Jill's a little edgy --alot, really-- and she thought it wasn't "too gap". in reference to the store i think. But it looked a little gap-ish to me.

Lorretta just wrote. my old house in talent is empty. that breaks my heart. you should have seen the kitchen. i designed it myself, with open shelving and tile countertops with terracotta colored grout. it was perfect. and a dishwasher and garbage disposal for the first time in my life. that is one thing i did give up to get married and still want. And while i miss my little cottage in talent, it was an empty sanctuary at the end, and i hope whoever lives in it loves it like i did.

breathing

i cannot capitalize with one hand.

it is sunday morning on clinton street, as everywhere, but this is where i am. my husband is fishing on sauvie's island and i am healing slowly, staying ahead of the pain which is the center of my world for now. it is a footrace i am sure to win. healing is a beginning, and if i abandon my traditional apathy and wax philosophical for a moment, forgive me.

i will do yoga. i will do something. i am willing, at long last, to move, to bend, to stretch, to inconvenience myself, in hot pursuit of a more comfortable future. i am INTO comfort, and it seems that long term ease requires routine periods of physical distress (exercise). i don't like it. i don't like to do what i don't like. and in the past, the next phrase of that logism would have been: i don't do what i don't like. but i believe it is that very thought, that single attachment to short term comfort, that has, with lazy hands, placed my aging body under the surgeon's knife. my bones have been whittled on, and the resultant ache, deep and unreachable, was utterly avoidable. it was, on a deeply important level, an elective surgery. had i NOT been so utterly deconditioned, sid would not have yanked my arm from its socket so easily or with such far reaching effects.

i've wanted to do yoga for years. many years. i've wanted to do tai chi. i actually LIKE to lift weights. it is a gift i have the power to give, and yet, for reasons weak and transparent, i withhold it. i am an episode of oprah. i have misused the whole female talk show ethic (be good to youself) to my detriment. and it is a lack of self worth, not time, that denies me any attachment to the maintenance of my physical body. of many, many trite sayings, one that so often rings true is this: awareness without action is insanity. now i know a bit about insanity. a good bit. and as i lay in my sick bed in the middle of my wonderful life, i hope i can remember this moment... that as i heal and life normalizes once again, that my resolve does not dissolve -- that i make time to be better in the one way i refuse to face: the physical. bob earl said it best. "my mind thinks it can kill my body and go on." now granted, he was speaking about addiction, but this is an addiction: to ease, to laxity, to passivity, to pretending it doesn't really matter.

so, don't indulge me. don't tell me to put the bat down. don't tell me to take it easy. i have. i could, perhaps, be less dramatic, but what fun would that be?

enough. time will tell. for now, i heal. back to the couch.

morning after

ouch

stillness

Home. I wouldn't have to be rich to just stay here, day after day, watering the plants, sweeping the floor, folding the laundry. It may get old after awhile, but I am a homebody. Haley was telling me of her teenage angst, her wanderlust, her desire to hop trains and hobo her life away. My son wanted to travel, to see Australia and Amsterdam and any other place he perceived as permissive, any place but home. But all I've ever wanted was to make a home and stay in it. I've worked, always, and God knows I've moved my share, but home is where my heart is. I think if it were not for work, I wouldn't know how much I appreciated these periods of downtime, these episodic failures of body and mind that make it impossible for me to leave home for awhile. When I got here -- two years ago now -- I didn't work for months, seven, and I was so wrapped around getting settled and finding my way around that I never did relax. And now, pain denies me full appreciation of time to myself, but I am home, and it is still, and I am happy to be here, watching soaps and feeling no guilt at all.

The pre-op guys just called with all the pre-op questions and surgery looms ever closer. I have a coupon for a free milkshake at Burgerville and will stock up on Vanilla Swiss Almond Haggen Das, or plain vanilla. Did you know that Haggen Das means nothing? It isn't a real word or name or anything.

So, one more day and my arm will be repaired and I will do my therapy like a good girl and get my life back.