my summer vacation

Lewis and Clark got nothin' on us.

This will probably turn into a series of shorter posts rather than one boring travel journal. We travelled many miles in not so many days, stayed in awful RV parks and worse motels and I have the pictures to prove it.

This blue haired troll followed us. Sometimes he rode the motorcycle. But he always seemed pretty happy.

Here he is in the Tetons. As you can see, he hogged the photograph.

We took off on Friday and spent the first night in our first RV park. These are strange places, in the event you find yourself wondering. We are campers, and we are country folk -- in a way -- but not like these people. They are very friendly and they make everything out of wood and rope and barbed wire and from the looks of things they worship cowboys and Jesus, in that order. My favorite sign: "I'm so confused I don't know if I found a rope or lost my horse."

We pulled into the Mountain View Park in Baker City, Oregon at about 8:30 in the evening, hotter than blazes. A Lorretta Lynn or some country chick other than Patsy Cline, CD was playing on speakers loud enough to entertain the entire park, and it was skipping, and the woman at the counter, Barb, told us she hadn't had much luck using toothpaste to clean her CDs.

Really? No luck at all?

Yep, she nodded, "and that's such a good CD."

We dove in the pool and tried to forget where we were. At 18 bucks for a spot to sleep, a pool and a hot tub, it seemed like a good deal even though we rented the scenic basketball court because it was th only place left because the entire park had been reserved by Shriners, even the clowns in the tiny cars. But they have full size RVs let me tell you. Next morning off we went after I scrambled some eggs on the free-throw line.

Not really. You should know by now how I exaggerate.

So, our destination at this point was Yellowstone. Well, not actually Yellowstone, but a spot beyond it, Shell Canyon, in the Bighorn mountains. It is a place Kurt passed through on his way to Sturgis and one he has tried to show me for years. And believe me, if you're hauling a big black bike, everybody asks if you're headed for Sturgis. We were not. I'm pretty sure I'd never go unless he bought me a sidecar. One with a/c and a pool. The thought of Sturgis irritates me. I love motorcycles but can't stand bikers. I speak from an informed point of view. I can't imagine standing six bikers deep to use one of sixty outhouses.

But I digress.

One of the education points of this vacation, and there were a few, was the unreliability of memory. Not just his, mine as well. He had blown through the prior trip at 90 mph, eyes forever on the center line until it turned to one long white stripe, on a mission to complete the male right of passage that is Sturgis. Turns out he missed some scenery along the way.

Shell Canyon made quite an impression.
So many birds: swallows and wrens and hummingbirds darting in and out of juniper and

sagebrush. I'm getting the order of things mixed up, but as we left Yellowstone, we came through the beautiful Shoshone River Valley lined on either side with red rock formations that went on for miles and miles into Cody, Wyoming. He hadn't remembered seeing this at all. In his memory, Shell Canyon went on for miles when in fact, the canyon is a blink, a mile at most.

I realize I have said nothing about Yellowstone. I know I was supposed to love it but it just made me sad. The forest there is dying of pine beetle infestation, caused, I have no doubt, by something we did to help it along, as though it wasn't doing fine in the first place. And what isn't infested was burned in the 1988 fire. And I'm thinking another big ol' burn would be really good for the problem in general. Start over. We saw pine beetle damage far up into Montana and across much of Idaho.

So, we went through Yellowstone and saw animals and paint pots and the black toothpick forest.

and then we went to the Tetons, but that's another story for another day.... In case you're wondering, I took the last photo. I'm not great at it.

late friday

I should be writing. This is always true. You may say: you are writing. And you would be correct, in a wrong sort of way.

It was a long day, it has been a long life. I don't know any 90 year olds who are looking to extend their warranty. None who would go longer, given the option. Maybe with a new body, maybe then. But as is? Nope. When there is a rare open apartment in my unit, I spend the day touring people, doing my dog and pony show, being the expert on dementia. Which I am, in case you were wondering. Even so, it is hard to be the cheerleader and the angel of death in the same breath.

I should retire.

Ah, now back from a friday supper of grilled salmon, garlic sauce and home fries, collards with pecans and corn salsa, at Clay's, I am refreshed, ready for the weekend.

not duffy

Enough about Duffy the little white dog.

We've lost seven souls on the unit since February 26th. I'd say seven souls from seven seas to wax poetic and be a little bit like Janis Joplin, but this is serious. Its been a bit heavy, a lot hectic, and they are dropping like flies in August and its only July. And it isn't even like July almost at all. It is rainy rainy rainy, sky pressing down like a flat sweaty hand, clouds as dark as nightfall. I had to turn my headlights on a four o'clock. Its the end of the world.

Oh, they come to die. I don't mean to seem surprised. I'm not. Its just that each life leaves a bit of a vacuum, a space to fill, and they come to fill it. There is a queue like a movie theatre of people who need what I provide: a nice safe place to lose it completely. Heck, I need that.

Anyway, today, Delphinium's daughter came by. She's a world famous musician and can only come once a year, so we had to have the sit-down talk. The end-of-life talk. I had to tell her that, from my point of view, Del probably had a year or less left in her. Now, I don't have a crystal ball, but I've been keeping my eyes open, and I know what the end of this path looks like. I never promise anything -- I've learned my lesson there. But Del's daughter had spoken with another family member, and she told her this story: judybluesky said my mother would die in less than a year, then she said she'd be gone in less than a week, then she said she'd be gone by the end of the day, then she said she had about twenty minutes left and she was right about each one of those things for my mom.

Its wierd what you can get good at.

two

Duffy's first haircut

exorcism

I composed a post three pages long describing the past four days of projectile vomitting and other niceties, but pulled it in a rare act of humanity. I felt like a parentless child in need of someone to hold my hair and tell me I'd be okay, but my husband, who is not a nurse, was away at work and school, and I had only yapping dogs to comfort me. It was really hard. It was norovirus. I think its about over. Whew.

But while waiting for my head to spin around on my shoulders ala Linda Blair, I managed a good deal of editing. Managing, for example, a 393 page find/search of the following: all "ly" words (I think they're called adverbs: morosely, fanatically, tragically, joyously, frankly,); the word 'had'; the action 'nodded,' as in: 'she nodded.' (Turns out people don't nod that much really. But in my manuscript, the characters are nodding fools); the words 'that,' then', and 'when.'

I hate my manuscript. But press on.

So, in rebellion, I offer the following sentences:
(original)"Yes," I had nodded enthusiastically. "She had been vigorously vomitting."
(eidted) She puked.

hillsboro day

We picked Rainier cherries this morning, alot of them, so now I have to can cherries. I think I'll make pints, and this time, use a cherry pitter. I've hand-pitted cherries, but it was labor-intensive and I'm not. These are not my favorite cherries, but they are Kurt's, so a-canning I will go. I prefer bings. mmmmmmmmmmm. The sun is out, Saturday market busy with shoppers. We found a few good yard sales and then went out to lunch at a terrible hamburger place called "Five Guys Burgers." It was just what it sounded like, a greast nasty mess, except for the hand-cut-double-fried-fries. Those were tasty. But I don't like burgers, so no surprise. I fed mine to the dogs. Poor dogs.

Latersameday: The cherries are pitted and canned. One dozen pint jars of floating yellow orbs of deliciousness. You will get one for Christmas. Or maybe a jar of the real strawberry jam I canned last weekend. When I lay my head on my down pillow tonight, I may utter something like "Goodnight, Maryellen. Goodnight, Johnboy." That's how domestic I feel right about now. I could go for a barn raising. I may be Amish.

Naw.

sins and decisions

Gluttony. One of the seven deadlies. In my job, which has recently become bigger because my boss retired and the new boss isn't here yet, and the nurse, the second in command, is on vacations, so I am pretty much everybody, well, in my job, I meet people. They are typically in need, in crisis, at the end of their life or their rope or both, and I have to interview them for placement. Placement. What a word. In its wisdom, the Great State of Oregon has contrived a new language to make what I do a little more palatable. For example, folks are no longer admitted, they move in. They are never discharged, they (you guessed it) move out. They get move out notices, not evictions. But placement is still placement. There really isn't another word for it.


Jesus.


What I am getting at is not the language of long term care, but this fat fat woman I met today. I am working on placing her. And, as you might imagine, placing a 350 pound woman has its own set of concerns. You would want to consider, for example, where to place her, and on what? And for how long, and can she get up from there? And I was taking someone else's word for it, and I needed to see for myself that she could move because if she couldn't and we had to call the fire department because she was stuck, they'd get mad at us, and I hate that. But shit, sometimes, like a kitten in a tree, people have trouble getting out of places.


So I went to her house. "I need to see you move," I said.

She started struggling around with her robes and blankets and stuff, and I was a little concerned that she wasn't decent, so I just turned my head.

I asked her if she'd checked out the apartment she was going to be renting. I never go anywhere," she said. Never.

She has opted to eat rather than, well, anything else.

It made an impression is all.

noturpathic

I never did follow up on the naturpathic business. Well, to no one's surprise, I am not Noah. I could not hang with the HCG 500 calorie a day diet. I lost 18 pounds in 14 days and was so sick at that point that I bailed. She said I'm not the biggest loser, but the fastest. But then I quit.

Here's the problem. She was so nice. She put nice oils on cotton balls and taped them to my feet and playes swishy water music while I lay in the dark with needles poked here and there and that was fine. But really, who wouldn't lose weight like that?

And the cost was obscene. At each visit there were more and more supplements, more and more drops and oils and it all just makes me sick. Nauseous. I can't take multi-vitamins, let alone forty different things. I can't take ibuprofen or anything in that family. So, I got pretty sick.

I went to my knee/shoulder MD and told him the naturpathic thing was a flop. I told him I think you have to believe it for it to work and I just don't. I wish I did.

He said, fingers making the twinkly, do-wah sign: "You are not the Jedi they seek."

I love that guy.

random acts

I am in Cannon Beach, a swanky town by my standards, for a writing conference. I have my fluffy little white dog with me and we have a lovely room with a fireplace and a view of the beach.

I like this conference. It gets better each year: good faculty, interesting information. For instance, I found a way to organize my book that I have been lacking, given my general, habitual, genetic lack of organization. Excellent.

And, one of the presenters was/is a senior editor at a good publishing house and he offered to look at agent queries and first pages for critique. What I didn't realize is that this would be done in front of the entire conference.

He critiqued five submissions, each one worse than the one before it, saving mine for last. I was, understatedly, anxious. Sweating bullets. Was mine to be the final straw, so flawed as to hold a special last place?

I waited.

I had included in my query letter, by way of bio, my alma mater, a short story publication in an obscure literary journal, and having received the 2004 award for fiction. You do that in queries. You tell on yourself that way. It builds cred.

So he begins his critique of my piece by mentioning the fact that there are no page numbers. This irritates him. (Well, I think to myself, if it was a REAL submission, I'd include them.) Then he talks generally about the query, which was pretty good. Then..... then he talks about the bio. He says, "Now this bio shows us exactly why it is a good idea to include a bio."

Drumroll...................

"Turns out," he says, "I went to THAT alma mater, was the editor for THAT obscure literary journal and won precisely THAT award for fiction -- only in 2003."

I wasn't exactly listening, but when he got to the end of that last sentence, I realized he wasn't joking. I blurted from the rear of the audience, "Are you fucking serious?" But I didn't say fucking out loud.

He was serious. So, after the thing, I approached him and asked if I could send him a manuscript. He said, of course. I'm interested.

I means nothing, really. Not in the scope of getting this thing published. But each little push makes the work seem worthwhile.

Random? I think yes.

delilah

Well, after a very long haul, Delilah finally passed. Her funeral was a Catholic mass, which is always confusing for me, all of the standing and sitting and kneeling and drinking and repeating phrases that everyone but me knows about. I felt like the only heathen in the room, but my mother always told us that the pope is the anti-christ, so who's heathen now?

Anyway, it takes a really long time to die of just Alzheimer's and Delilah was otherwise healthy. She was a teacher, and she thought, because of my desk (and my commanding presence) that I was her principal. If we had a party -- christmas, you name it -- it would make her anxious. Parties make most people with dementia anxious, which begs the question: why? But I digress. When anxious, she would march into my office and say, "If you can't get these kids to quiet down, I'm getting the nuns."

Okay, Delilah. I'll deal with the kids.

She wore a wig, kicked the cats, chased my dog, tore down bulletin boards each night, and didn't sleep for years. Years. She made up anything you wanted to know. She wasn't a liar, but she didn't want to seem uninformed, so she'd just confabulate.

In the end, she went for a long sleep. Finally. At last. Her daughter was a wonderful advocate. She kept her wig washed and set long after Delilah had forgotten about hair. She understood the ravages of dementia and never missed an opportunity to speak for her mother. She cared what was important to her, not just what was important for her. Often those of us in the helping industry forget the difference.

noah

If he can do it, I can do it. I'm on day 7 of 40. Fifteen pounds and counting.

As much as I detest using my blog as a diet diary, I'm a bit consumed by what is happening to my body. I feel better most of the time, am not so much hungry as weak, and had accupuncture yesterday for the first time. It didn't hurt, and may have helped. The only lingering problem is leg cramps. I was having them prior to the cleanse/diet, and am trying some natural measures to stop them. Thanks to asia for her wisdom, and for running until she cramps so she knew what to tell me. There is always someone in front of me on whatever path I find myself on.

My conclusion at this point is that naturpathic medicine is still medicine, is pricey, and there is still alot to do about my once-failing self. I do feel better, lighter, and hopeful. Diets are for fools. Call them cleanses, call them what you will. I know this. But my knees hurt and I was so sick. I just wanted something like a zipper that I could unzip the last 5 years of stress and cortisol and fast food and step out of the fat suit I've acquired. The only lasting solution is movement, something I don't get with my current set of hobbies. Change. Ah. I remember change.

This weekend we will observe Memorial Day, or Decoration Day as we used to call it in the nursing home. We used to load all of the old women, they usually outlived and outnumbered the men, on the bus and take them around to local cemeteries because everybody pretty much lived and died in the same place. Most men went to war and were buried out at the Veteran's cemetery. My family did, and is. Women grew gardens specifically for Decoration Day, tulips and lilacs and daffodils and iris. Things that would bloom by May. My father is buried on the coast and he said he only wanted flowers from our own gardens. Never store-bought. I wish I'd known him better.

My former mother-out-law turns eighty today. We will celebrate her with a big party at Jackson Park on the Applegate River. She is a remarkable woman, the most influential in my life. She loves my son and I without reservation, even though his father and I never married except in a biker-sort-of-way. Her dignity surpasses anyone I've known. Her advice is sound and never given without asking and I've never heard her say a bad word about anyone -- and I can't say that about anyone else except my brother Doug. She is equally comfortable in a remote cabin cooking for a pack of men and mules or bringing out the fine china. I am blessed to be counted among her daughters.

Well, my wax is melting and I am working on a small piece for her birthday gift. Wish me luck. I'll put a bird on it.

elixer

Don't misunderstand. I'm still all for the natural way, however, I have now signed up for the diet program. Why, I'm wondering, are all nutritional specialists tiny? What do they know? Do they understand the intrinsic mistrust of the fat for the thin? Seriously.

Naw. She was nice. Just in a tiny way.

So I feel much like Jack in the hours just after he purchased the magic beans. I am hoping for a beanstalk outside my window tomorrow morning. I have purchased many magic beans in my lifetime, but, as usual, that's another story for another day.

So don't come for dinner for 40 days and 40 nights. I won't be cooking except for 100 gm. portions of meat and a plain vegetable. one. at. a .time.

cold feet

I'm complaining, formally, about the weather. I'm not complaining about the luscious lilacs in my back yard, or the sprouting baby grass where the dogs used to poop. I'm cold. I'm tired of being cold. I want to be warm now. I'm done. I am, to quote any teenager, over it. My feet are cold. They've been cold for months. I am grateful not to be in Mississippi right now. I'll give you that much.

So, anyway, back to my life on Clinton Steet on a cold and rainy sunday morning. The trucks were out today, two big metro vans of men on overtime hanging our new street art above our streetsigns, on our dime. I think the art is nice, bicycles, to indicate that Clinton is indeed a "bicycle boulevard" as if you couldn't tell from the volume of bicycles. Its part of the Clinton Street Bicycle Boulevard Street Art Project and costs 70,000 dollars. My husband had to set them straight, sign-maker that he is, and offer his opinion. I told them to ignore him. He's grumpy.

Speaking of grumpy, Duffy is guarding my bay window, warning of cats and wire-walking squirrels and crows that threaten our airspace. Kurt calls him Dick Cheney because of his continual grumbling. He still doesn't understand birds. He doesn't yet grasp the impossibility of catching something capable of spontaneous flight. Oh! to be so simple again, to cover my eyes with tiny hands and believe that what was there is gone simply because I can't see it. I hated learning the name for that: Conservation of Mass. I think there should be a better name for that kind of magic.

As summer approaches, sneaking up behind this vicious spring, I am not prepared for the heat that is sure to follow, but will welcome it with open, if sunburned, arms.

fine.

I am subdued. I finally think I understand the psychological underpinnings of my poor health. Fair warning: I am going to try to explain it to you.

As you've read, I grew up dirt poor. Not third world poor, but make your own clothes poor, no dental/health care poor, charge groceries at the corner store so your mother can have wine poor. See? Somewhere along the line I developed this notion that going to the doctor was reserved for the rich. That it ensured health.

So... along goes my life, then my child's life, and we are poor (not third world poor, but steal groceries so your mother can have heroin poor) and we don't have insurance. We have welfare, but that isn't the same thing. When you're on welfare, you're not encouraged to come back for the follow up care. They patch you up and send you home and you can't afford medicine so you do without.

The logistical leaps that follow are many and high. Stick with me. Eventually, my conclusion is that having health insurance is the key to good health. The beauty of this theory is that it requres nothing of the insured but insurance. It requires no lifestyle change, no running, no avoiding haagen das ice cream or creme cheese and crab enchiladas. Not that I eat those things. If you have insurance, you can make as many appointments as you want and fill all of the prescriptions you can get to treat all of the diagnoses that apply after a sedentary lifetime of resentment and unmet expectations.

I married up. I had finally reached the pinnacle of health: I had Blue Cross/Blue Shield full meal deal health and dental and vision. I was diagnosed with high blood pressure, high cholestrol, obesity, diverticulosis, interstitial cystitis, type 2 diabetes, asthma, chronic bronchitis and the great thing was that there were pills for all of these things. If I took the pills, I didn't have high blood pressure, ad nauseum.

But I did.

On occasion, my tiny little asian gynocologist would say, "whatever you eat, eat less; whatever you do, do more." I laughed. Great Idea.

But I kept taking the pills and getting sicker. And then I'd get more pills. Antibiotics. And more antibiotics. And I was getting sicker and sicker and sicker. And going to the doctor more and more and more and the guys at the pharmacy know my name. And the thing is, this made me feel affluent. Rich. Finally: I had arrived. I had healthcare.

But no health.

bummer.

So, on monday I had my first visit with a Naturpathic MD. We had a great time. I am now taking un-drugs: Pro-biotics and healing agents. I am going to the doctor not so he can fix me, but so he can teach me to fix myself. We hope to unwind the past ten years of passive consumption. It will take effort on my part. I told him he had a narrow window of opportunity that I call willingness, a condition brought about by exhausting all other avenues. Easier, softer ways.

Its just like being poor, only without the heroin.

seven years

The Canby Spring Garden Faire is this weekend. I bought eight Lucifer Crocosiums, three Spanish Lavenders, two Beefsteak tomatoes, one Golden Keriea and one Clair de Lune Clematis. I'm not certain of all the names, but, like my sainted mother, I'm willing to make up what I don't know for sure. There was so much to choose from, so many unusual plants and garden art. The art was mostly sharp and rusty. Some pieces looked like they should come with a voucher for a tetanus shot. Let me be clear: I'm not against rust, just sharp ugly rust. And dishes stacked and pasted together in a wobbly ornament of some kind. Not really sure if there is a use for these things or if they are of purely ornamental value. If I had some extra dishes, and I do, I'd just give them to the kids, or Goodwill, or, like my pig neighbors on the corner of 27th and Clinton, stack them on the sidewalk, put a free sign on them and be freegan/slothful/slobbish.

Today, all but the tomatoes are in the ground. Each year I plant and plant and plant. Some thrive, some fail. I keep trying. I don't care how much it costs.

Today is our seventh anniversary. We had dinner and fun last night at Montage, a great Cajun joint under the Morrison bridge. I usually have the flat iron steak and save room for Gooey Butter Cake. My husband of seven years has pasta, some spicy thing with shrimp in it. They wrap leftovers in foil sculptures and yell alot. Kurt orders oyster shooters just to hear them yell. Everyone sits family style so you get to know your neighbors. Its a rowdy, SE Portland kinda place. This morning we had breakfast down the street at Sub Rosa, a small, friendly Italian place who finally caught a clue and started having breakfast on weekends. The sausage is excellent and the eggs benedict was good.

This blog has chronicled our romance -- with the exception of the first twenty-five years. I have no wisdom to offer other than it is important to marry the right person. I'm grateful I did. I gave him a little glass box with seven copper beads in it. He gave me roses.

easter campfires

If you read this sad little column (put a bird on it ,Portlandia) and you skip the comments section, well, you really are missing the best in life. Those of us who thrive here in the blogosphere, or who once-thrived and now make guest appearances due to interlopers such as facebook stealing our thunder which wasn't so much thunder as rumbling in the distance, grumbling, more like it -- there remains a "campfire-ness" about us, around which we tell our timeless and irreverent stories, dropping in and out of topic and tantrum, past and present.

Ken Kesey said it would be like this. I saw him once in Ashland, learned at his feet. I signed up to learn about writing, which, some 60K in hindsight, cannot be so much taught as chased after and subdued (ruined). What I learned is that Kesey was a great storyteller, a great liar -- as I am, as any fiction writer is -- and when he referred to the internet as a campfire, I couldn't imagine the psychosocial detachedment that would make it seem so.

I know campfires like the back of my hand: the stink of old charcoal and of bootleather left too close to the campfire to dry. I own camping implements in triplicate. I love sleeping beyond the lights of the city, in campgrounds of likeminded souls who want to be alone, together. Except for those who bring radios. I hate them.

So, on this Easter Day, as I celebrate a passe faith with coconut anglefood cake, ham and chocolate bunnies, I am grateful for campfires, and for those who sit around them with me, wherever you are.

the news from clinton street

entropy and anomie live together in perfect harmony.

I've been deathly ill for a week now. Well, three years, but let's not quibble. I've been in my spot overlooking my street for many days in a row, now. since last Friday, really. I am so sick. I've been so sick for so long that I really think I'm going to not so much change doctors as investigate additional ideas.


I donated about a quart of blood this morning to find out what is wrong with me. One thing is that I am too fat. The other is that I get little exercise. I know these things. But when I feel bad I want ice cream -- mint chocolate chip is my current weakness and, as luck would have it they now make Klondike bars in mint chocolate chip -- and when I feel bad I don't want to exercise. Bad combination. I think this is true of most people, but most people are able to rise above their - well, their cozy little sofas and teaspoons -- and just do it.

The sun is out and I'm not planting flowers. That's how crappy I feel. If the Canby Master Gardner's Faire was today, I wouldn't go. That's bad. I think/hope its next week. It is usually the first weekend in May.

Addendum: one week later: I planted 47.00 worth of flowers today. More to come. On the mend.

livewire among other things

Let me apologize in advance for the apparent loss of the paragraph function in my blog. Not sure what's up or how to fix it. I like run-on sentences, but run-on paragraphs are a big fat blur to me. Well it was pretty fun to sit with my friend Athena in the OPB audience and clap when the sign was lifted. I've always wanted to see a live radio show like Prairie Home Companion, but Garrison Keillor is losing his edge (or so he says and I think when he says it he is kidding but in my opinion Lutherans have lost their comedic edge) and Livewire is up and coming Portland entertainment. I bought tickets because Anne Lamott was on the schedule. I haven't seen her in years. her schtick hasn't changed, but her dreds are gray now, and she is still an unconvincing Christian, whom I emulate. Her book "Bird by Bird" is still an important book for beginning writers. She's fun to listen to, but she was clearly very tired, on a book tour, and the annoying factor is that on my way home I noticed the marquee at the Bagdad and it said, "Anne Lamott, 6:00. Shit. I could have saved my money, walked down to the Bagdad and seen her for three bucks, earlier, when she wasn't so tired. Still, she is kind of my idol, and I really was happy to see her. I give a copy of her book to newer writers when I have one lying around. The mayor was there, and was giving a proclamation of some sort. He was a little funny, which helps, because he seems like a complete dick to me, at least someone with poor judgment. God, I can't stand people with poor judgment. Work remains difficult, challenging in a couple of important ways, and I am happy to have a job and money to spend on spring flowers.

tomorrow

I dumped all of the dirt out of many of my many pots because tomorrow is FUSCHIA SATURDAY AT FRED MEYER!!!!!!!!!! FREE DIRT. I'll stop yelling now. It is a great thing they do. I take all of my pots and plant the heck out of their little fuschia starts. I like "dark eyes" and "lena" and "pink marshmallow." but each year, I get what I can and I think that some years the fuschia elves go in the middle of the night and switch all the little signage sticks so you pretty much get a crap shoot of colors. But that's okay. My need for order is slowly giving way to the entropy of life in SE Portland. We (the royal we) are building a fence so the dogs have somewhere to roam. I'm glad about it. I want the front yard back. I'm tired of looking at chickenwire, sawdust and dogshit. Sue me. Even entropic living has its limits. Also, the fence will serve as a barrier for Duffy's enthusiasm to meet and greet passersby, which looks more like a desire to tear the throat out of passing dogs. Not that he could, or would, but his act is pretty convincing. I'm just wondering if the neighbors will care about the fence. They don't seem to care about much of anything. They are roommates that shift and change with the seasons; they all look alike and some of them come and go, so its hard to tell sometimes. My husband used to live in the house nextdoor, so he takes the "Toddler Property Laws" view of things. Look 'em up. Nevermind. I did it for you. Toddlers' Property Laws 1. If I like it, it's mine. 2. If it's in my hand, it's mine. 3. If I can take it from you, it's mine. 4. If I had it a little while ago, it's mine. 5. If it's mine, it must never appear to be yours in any way. 6. If I'm doing or building something, all the pieces are mine. 7. If it looks like mine, it is mine. 8. If I saw it first, it's mine. 9. If you are playing with something and you put it down, it automatically becomes mine. 10 If it's broken, it's yours.

art as livelihood

what if.....

eureka

They make gold encaustic wax. Just sayin'

requiem for a priest

Sometimes I think I know how things should go -- who, for instance, should get an easy death. I think my priest should have gotten a pass.

I don't know if I have explained in my not always succinct manner what hard work it is to die. Or how earnestly we hang on, for that matter, as our attachments, each one a thread, unravel in unpredictable succession.

We tend to focus on how hard it is for the family to watch someone pass (floating, skipping, slipping, wandering, marching, tromping by) -- when in fact -- because here at bluesky we deal in facts-- it is hard physical labor coming in and going out of this world.

Don't let me sugarcoat this for you.

I don't know much about priests. I don't know much about Catholicism except that they have nice windows and some good cathedrals. So it is difficult to know how to comfort a priest who is in unmanaged discomfort, spewing black vomit around the room. I thought I was on the set of the Exorcist only I was the girl and the priest's head was going to spin around. Do you say, "Its going to be okay, honey." ? Do you call the priest honey? Is that wrong?

And I thought about praying with him, for him, then remembered that Catholics don't believe mere mortals have access to God, big G, without an intermediary. But in this case, the middle man was dying so I had to improvise. I chose the 23rd Psalm.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want
He leadeth me beside the still waters
He maketh me lie down in green pastures
He restoreth my soul

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I shall fear no evil, for Thou art with me

And that's when it got me. He was sitting in that valley. And he struggled and struggled

And then came the social worker, one of those well-meaning sorts who wants so badly to assign spiritual meaning to physical events. She didn't know my priest. She didn't know that he would thank you graciously if you stuck a needle in his eye. She watched as my priest was touching his mouth and reaching out his hand repeatedly, smiling and nodding, and she was certain he was giving everyone a final blessing, but as the outcome showed, he was just looking for a place to puke.

encaustic images

Encaustic painting (painting with melted, pigmented beeswax) gets to that place in me that always wrecked the candles, dripping layer after layer, color after color, until the candle was no longer a candle, wax spent, morning arriving too early, again.

So this is what my busy little hands have been doing. Please buy one. The wax is expensive.

They are titled, top to bottom: Solitary Crow, A bird in the hand, Four Little Blackbirds, Old Paper, Red Ball, Crow on Barbed Wire.

pneumonia

I should get healthy. But to do this, I need to get well enough to leave the house. So I stay home and paint wax pictures and write books. This is my epitaph: I tried.

Seriously.

The encaustic work is going well. It is the perfect combination of image and language that has always appealed to me. Layers of color and words, graphic images, a beautiful mess. the real draw for me is that I don't have to clean the brushes, just buy new ones. It speaks to the degree of sloth I am capable of.

Gosh. This sounds so negative.

gold star

I like to think work doesnt' really matter, that my job is just a means to buy books and new colors of encaustic wax and nice pens for writing and valentine presents for my own true love. But this week the great state of Oregon showed up and graded my performance. I was so happy when I got an A+ for working.

My husband just finished watching Men Who Stare at Goats. He thinks we should drop acid and get back to our roots. I reminded him just where our roots come from, what they look like, gnarled and rotting, even in the considerable distance of retrospection.

Then, after I got my gold star, I started feeling really shitty again, went back to the doctor and learned it is not a virus or sinus infection that is torturing me. I have pneumonia. I am such an invalid.

zealots

I'm not crazy about zealousness. Not about anything. My mother was a Christian zealot. I was completely surrounded by zealots at one time in my life and my soul was nearly consumed by them. They meant well. Really, they did. They had my salvation in mind when they sought to control my behavior. I'm not mad at them. I get it. What pisses me off is when zealots, who do not believe my eternal life is at stake, who only have an opinion or an axe to grind, take my weekend in their busy little hands and grind it to dust. I can never get it back.

homesick

I am home and I am sick. I have something like a cold, but not really. My head is pounding like a baby chick is trying to get out my right temple, or sometimes like it is full of mud, or some other metaphor I can't quite grasp. I can't think, and I will spend the next few minutes proving it.

I am trying to work at home without a brain. I got up this morning, took two Extra-Strength Excedrin and a baby aspirin kicker, pretended to feel fine and left for work. I dropped Duffy at daycare and went to work for two hours. I couldn't trick myself into feeling better, so I gathered up some work and took it home with me. Portable work. I'd rather be asleep.

When Duffy was a puppy, he needed daycare on days I couldn't keep a close eye on him. Now, he is a big boy, fairly well-mannered, and still I take him once a week. I don't take myself to a spa once a week, do I? I don't pay somebody to make my day fun once a week, do I? But this little white dog.... he gets all the breaks. There is a new inside dog park now, Fido-Land or something. They have a pool and lifeguards. Lifeguards for dogs. So Portland. Do they teach them how to human-paddle? Really? If the dog can't swim, well, I just won't say. My PETA friends would be horrified.

So, I'm killing time for a 1:30 conference call, which I will take on my home phone and I hope it is able to do that sort of thing. Not so sure.

monkliness

I keep thinking, what with my general lack of people skills, that I would do well in the monastic life. I would, I think. Of course there are a couple of caveats: first, I'd have to be allowed to decorate. And it would have to be a nice monastery with, like, Pottery Barn candlesticks and dripping wax and great calligraphers to take notes. And nice monks. Nice, quiet monks. Second, they'd have to leave me alone. I wouldn't want to be bothered all the time. I'd make bread or garden or whatever their gig was, but beyond that, I'd want to be left alone.

Peace and quiet. They are not the same thing, but they do go nicely together.

opine

NEWSFLASH!!!!!!!!!!!
There is some groundbreaking news from the world of alzheimer's research: if you are nice to people with dementia, their behavior improves. If you let them have their way, they act better.

Stunning.

This new buzz is being touted as "emotional memory." I have it. You have it. They have it--only a little bit differently. While you and I can refer to the specific insults of any given shitty day and report, ad nauseum, who did us wrong (often leaving out any fault of our own), people with Alzhiemer's no longer have the ability to recall specifics, or to cope with the residual negative feelings that bounce untended in the growing white space of shrinking brains. This inablity to process and compartmentalize negative emotion results in "sundowning" or late-day agitation.

So they act out: Busy. Destructive. They wander. They pillage. They prowl.

But here's the thing: I shoulda written this book twenty years ago, this book about being nice. But like so many afterthoughts, I didn't. I was busy. Yet another story for yet another day.

But don't you think its apropos, on this day after another mass shooting, that being nice is a lesson lost on most Americans?

We have thrown billions of dollars at Alzheimer's research to find a medication that will cure what I think is pretty much just brain failure -- like heart failure. I am over simplifying, I know. (Alzheimer's disease is its own monkey, unlike some of the vascular dementias, etc. and could possibly benefit from these curative efforts.) But most, if not all of those resources, are being scooped up by and for the pharmacological arena, lobbied for by the health insurance monster, which, in my lengthy experience does not operate on such diffuse concepts as niceness. We have never paid more than peanuts for the front line work of caring for people who can no longer care for themselves. Old people. The future us.

Personally, I'm all for letting the inmates run the asylum. Its so much easier. So much. If they think its breakfast time, cook eggs for heaven's sake. Who cares? If they think its Christmas, sing Silent Night. If the diabetics want chocolate, let them have it. Christ. We want them to live forever but don't want to take care of them. What? The trick is to find the right people to do the simple work of caring. And, oh yeah, pay them peanuts. Simple. David Troxel coined the concept of "knack: the art of doing difficult things with ease," referring to caregiving for dementia patients. I thought of it first, but like I said, I was busy. Even Patrick Swayze said it in Road House: "If somebody calls you a son of a bitch, be nice."

So, now that Gabby what's-her-name is head-shot and the boy, who pulled the trigger on the gun that Palin aimed directly at her, is in custody-- if we don't take this time to review simple manners at the congressional level, I think we are missing an educational opportunity.

Be nice.

vaca

We are off to the coast for a much needed vacation. For New Year's Eve. For fun. Half the challenge will be getting there, as the crack Portland weather crew fortells of winter snow storms to rival the east coast. In the coast range there might be an inch or more. An INCH of snow. In Oregon. Can you imagine it? In December? Christ almighty.

Anyway, we are staying in Netarts at this funky little oceanfront motel called Happy Camp Hideaway. How could we resist? We've crabbed here before, and my husband intends to crab in the ice and snow. We'll snowshoe to the beach and rent a snowmobile to get back to the cabin.

Naw. Just kiddin'. Its beautiful over here. Sunny and windy, cold and gorgeous.

Duffy almost got swept away in a multi-directional surf on a high, outgoing tide. Boy was he ever surprised! Once he'd saved himself, he hopped around until he was dry. He may be smart enough to remember what happened. Not Sid. If the frisbee was out there, he'd be after it, til' death do they part.

Today we drove to Cape Mears Lighthouse which is no longer operational, but beautiful nevertheless. (I didn't know that lighthouses are typically made of iron. Sturdy.) Then we went into Tillamook for crab cracking implements. I can't just chew through the claws like my mate. He's captured four dungeoness and two rock crab with huge claws. He didn't bring crab pots, but those small, flat traps you fling out with a fishing pole. So, for New Year's Dinner we will have rib-eye steak, crab with garlic butter, sourdough rolls and steamed broccoli and cauliflower. Will we wander down the beach and dance with the Netarts locals? Will we stay up past nine o'clock? Will we blow something up in honor of the simple passage of time? I can't say. Anything is possible.

So there's the little guest book in cabin #5 where other happy campers have recorded something profound about their travels. As the resident writer, I feel compelled to do my bit, to elevate the discourse, blah blah blah. But I'm not feeling all that wise or profound. Just relaxed and lazy and happy to be away, watching the water go in and out and in and out as though something or someone other than me is in charge.

christmas day

Started the day with Sunrise and eggs benedict, homemade hollandaise. It took us all five hands to get breakfast happening what with answering the phone and promising to call back. Julie sent us these fantastic english muffins from Harry and David, where I worked when I was seventeen, where I sat in a large carboard box and blew dirt off the crocus pots with an air hose; where I sorted through embryonic amaryllis bulbs until I vomitted and the line boss slapped me for sitting down on the job. I know I've complained about this before. -- anyhow, the benedict was great, a bit lemony for me, but tasty. Then came the presents. Lots of presents. I got a lap desk to rest this laptop upon. Its an old school style, a wooden student desk with lift-top for my papers and pencils. Makes me think of LeeAnn, this girl in second grade who peed her pants, sopped it up with that little packet of tissues they make your parents buy, and hid it in her desk. ew.

I got a beautiful framed photo of Duffy, some body butter, some original art by Haley, some Barnes and Nobel money, a little monkey, a tiny swallow, a book I've already read and a gift certificate to stay at the Columbia Gorge Hotel. Whee.

Dinner was great, stuffed pork roast with baked apples, all the usuals, with pumpkin cheesecake for dessert. mmmmm.

Bing

I have spent the past few weeks imbedded in Christmas past, spending time with so many levels of family, family that has changed with the passage of time, marriage and death, separations and reunions, and really, not much changes at all and is still changing.

Clearly, I am having a difficult time expressing my thoughts.

Here's the thing: Taditions are gravity. They remind me who I am, who I have been.

I married into a family with different traditions. In the beginning I said they have no traditions. Then, I think I downgraded the description to crappy traditions. Now, I just like mine better, and have spent the past seven years trying to teach these people how to have Christmas. Not because I think they need to learn, but becasue I want to have Christmas my way. Slowly but slowly my enthusiasm is wearing them down. My husband asked me if he ever gets a voice in decorating the tree. I told him when he stops trying to put bats and devil horns on it. This is some serious shit. I have little patience for athiests, agnostics and pagans this time of year. I am willing to share the holiday, but not to accomodate religious differences. So. To quote Anne Lamott, I'm not exactly Christian, I'm Christian-ish. I love the baby Jesus. Bad Santa is not a Christmas movie.

We just walked up and down Peacock Lane and watched White Christmas, my holiday favorite. (And Elf. I love Elf.) My husband used to leave for a couple of hours -- but this year he watched it with me. I love the whole commercial mess -- well, not the whole mess, but I love giving trinkets to my friends and family, love shopping the shiny aisles, thinking of someone else for a change.

At work, it is the busiest time of year, as long absent relatives show up and ask, "Why is the lady across the hall wearing the sweater I got grandma last year?" And I try to explain, in the nicest possible way, that Alzheimer's disease improves a person's ability to share; that personal property has little meaning. Finally. That I, personally, look forward to forgetting what is mine. They don't always embrace my philosophy.

We always have a Christmas Cookie Party. Family members bring in a plate of cookies and the recipe and we sing Christmas carols. It is a sweet time. It has become a pretty big deal. I am not nearly good enough at singing to be in charge of entertainment. Next year I'm hiring a singer.

This year, a new man and his wife moved up from LA , and as always, their children are torn over the decision to move them. The upheaval has been difficult, but the wife, (we'll call her Marigold, he can be Harold) has Alzheimer's, so she pretty much goes with the flow. So, they come to the Cookie Party and I'm leading the singing, and Harold says, "Do you think we could sing "White Christmas?" I said, "Well, none of us is Bing Crosby, but sure, let's give it a try." So he starts singing, and Harold IS Bing Crosby. He has this deep, resonant voice, obviously well-trained pipes, and Marigold leans into him adoringly, the absent glaze of dementia or pure love, and I'm thinking pure love. And just as he gets going, his daughter comes around the corner and sees all of this, and I think it made leaving them a little easier for her.

Then, we all tell stories of our favorite holiday memories, which doesn't sound fair, I know, to ask in an Alzheimer's unit, but there you are. And they do have those long ago memories. Anyway, the chef comes over and shares his favorite memory of going over the river and through the woods to "Old uncle so-and-so's house." And how he was very rich uncle so-and-so and getting old and wanted all the family together and they drove across California and all that to BelAir or something and when they get there, Old uncle so-and-so is Bing Crosby. And he sang White Christmas.

I wish I could tell you all of the amazing things families do for their folks this time of year. I think there is a common misconception that nobody comes, nobody visits. This is not true. Wednesday night, one of my patients who is on hospice, who is 95, her seven children came in and sang carols for her. Seven grown children, older than me, who have, like so many families, scattered to the four winds, gathered together for a party in her room.

And for Ella, who no longer understands leaving and coming back, her huge family will visit her where she is, two by two, and she has a new Christmas every couple of hours, and she can handle that. ...and apple Stollen for Inga, and chopsticks for Miso; and rolled flat cookies from Norway for Betty who can't stop eating them and won't save any for her great-grandchildren; and for Laverne, Fred will come and eat lunch with her every day and every day and every day and she will never know why they arent' at home.

This year I bought two boxes of ziplock bags for people to take cookies home so we wouldn't be stuck with all of the chocolate in the world. The pharmacy rep, a delivery guy and the mailman all took bags home with them.

white christmas

We spent the weekend in Southern Oregon -- actually, Northern California. (Is it necessary to capitalize directions?) at the outlaws. We found time for everyone. We stayed in the cabin and woke this morning to a dusting of snow, a winter wonderland. That is what it looks like, for a minute. We were the first ones on the road -- it is now a gated community -- JoBar, three miles north of the Blue Ledge Mine, which is superfunded for cleanup. Arsenic and no lace. As another car passed us on the road, the pristine wonderland was sullied and nasty, spoiled.

The lock on the gate, cold and finicky in the snow, clanked open and released us. Being out of contact for the weekend was wonderful, but heading for I-5, it was unclear exactly what we were in for, weather-wise. As we left Grants Pass, it was snowing on Sexton, really coming down and beginning to stick, fat flakes of wet snow, warm snow, that had no intention of staying the night. We (he) took our (his) time, and made it home in one piece.

It is so good to be home and to have the driving portion of Christmas done with for this year. Now, we turn on the heat and begin to wrap our gifts, one by one, and wait for Christmas morning.

I spent a portion of the trip home explaining the meaning of the phrase "round yon virgin," which my husband thought was "round young virgin," which is wrong, and, well, wrong.

The tree is up, cards are written and almost ready to post. I didn't make them by my own little hands this year. I took a year off. Sue me. I'm writing a book. I did like my cards last year, and will do them again, no doubt, but I can't seem to find enough time to pursue all of the creative endeavors I want to in the time alotted after the job and the house have taken their respective pounds of flesh.



We will head south at some point during the holidays and visit the various fams, make time for everyone, not enough for anyone, and return home glad to have done it, and glad to be home.

thanksgiving day after

After dinner, most of the food went home with the kids, packed in little plastic boxes that were also nice to be rid of. Food was great, company pleasant and it was good to be home, nowhere to go, nothing to pack and unpack except the bird, which was small. The kids did the dishes. Yay kids.

I don't like turkey. Stuffing? 'nother story. Gravy? Worth fighting over. But as for retaining the carcass, boiling it to bits and making turkey soup? Pass. Turkey soup smells like dirt, like poverty. I think it was all those pots of turkey and rice that we ate for months, from Thanksgiving until Christmas Eve when we cooked another one and ate it until New Year's Eve. Then, it was onion dip and potato chips on a good night.

Oh, I'm not bemoaning poverty so much as I am tired of cooking traditional food. Any food. I think I'll become a raw food person just so I don't have to do dishes anymore. A fruitarian. I will not murder any food, but wait until it falls dead from the source.

This will limit my consumption, of course. Will bring this unruly body under some control.

I wish. But I have about as much control over what I put in my body as a tourette's patient has control over language. I have dietary tourette syndrome.

This year I made a mince pie. It was so good. And my motherinlaw took home the carcass. She won the prize for frugality. I waste. I want.

coming apart

I am a listener. All day I listen to people who are coming apart, who don't know where they are or why, or who knows them or doesn't, and they are surprised when I do.

"Its a miracle!" she said. "I have so much less to worry about now."

She was right, but didn't know why.

So when I come home, I don't want to listen, for instance, to other people's health problems, or problems of any kind. I don't want anyone to have problems around me. I don't want to have problems myself, will deny having any if you ask me. I have no problems. Just luxury problems. Like having to listen to people.

I just want to type. It calms me down. It is much better than, for example, watching National Geographic Channel about an exploding whale in downtown Taiwan.

I was watching Oprah earlier and she had this thing on about nuns and their ceremony of becoming brides of Christ. One of them, when renouncing posessions, referred to her laptop as a ball and chain. I've seen it that way, but not today. Today it is my link to sanity.

If you read the last post, the last line. I was right. Sometimes it sucks to be right.

as he lay dying

Sometimes I get too involved. Sometimes I care about the living as well as the dying. I am always interested in the deathbed experience, and it is difficult to talk about it here, here in cyberpublic. But I love this old woman and her husband was dying and she wanted to be alone with him and she, like most, has some kids. And some of them are, shall we say, a little Ozarkian? A daughter with under-developed social antennae and two grown sons, both of them meth cooks if I do say so myself and I do. So the good daugher asks me, as the ruler of the Alzheimer's Universe, to make the cast of Deliverance go home, or at least back under their rock. What a pure waste of subtlety. I couldn't really just tell them to get the fuck out of there. And the old woman couldn't do it herself. So, I guess I did it. You can tell when somebody is there for support, and when they are doing deathbed time to earn something. You can smell it.

The first time I met her she was wheeling down the hall with an irridescent blue hydrangea in her hand. I commented on it and she told me, with tears in her eyes, that it was hers. She had grown it, and they had moved from that home into Assisted Living and she couldn't stand it and she had driven her car back to their house to pick a flower. "I don't know how you women do it," I said. "I really don't. I couldn't." Leave my house? My garden? My stuff? Are you kidding?

So, I helped her husband on his way to heaven. She'll be right behind him, I got a feelin'.

new monkeys

There are two new monkeys in the monkey clan. Nicole took a photo and will hopefully upload it for me.

We are in the Indian part of the summertime. It is too warm for fall, mornings not yet crisp, still leaving the bedside window open at night -- which I would do if I lived in Antarctica -- but anyway, no need for the bed warmer just yet. I sleep with the window open and one foot out from under the covers as though trying to escape, and given my history, it wouldn't be entirely senseless.

My husband fears the dark days of our long northwestern winters, sees them coming mid-July and begins to fret. Not me. Bring it on. I do regret the absence of light, but not the heat (yes, even the wimpy heat of Portland as compared to Southern Oregon's blast furnace), and wish that the laws of physics did not apply to me and I could banish one without losing the other. I wish no laws applied to me, but as ever, another story for another time.

appointments

I've already missed one appointment. I have this burgundy leatherish appointment book at work. I keep most of my schedule in there. I forgot a hair appointment for today, but when I made the hair appointment, I'm certain I forgot that it was the day of the Memory Walk. Memory Walk indeed. I have no memory.


So, this morning I wandered down to Pioneer Square in the pouring rain -- actually, my husband dropped me off -- and stood around until our whole team of walkers arrived, then I begged off due to cortisone flushing like fire under my skin, and found a bus home, plunked two dollars and five cents in the slot, and hung on.

This gives me cause (and pause) to purchase an iphone. If I had an iphone, I could sync all of my appointments into one place. Into one thing.

But would I?

healing

I'm not good at this. Self-care. As I was lying on the narrow gurney, head turned right to expose my cervical spine to the needle, the surgeon says, "What do you do to relax?" I said, "Watch soap operas." He said, "Think of something else." I couldn't. So this tells me that I have to consider things like meditation that I have never really put any energy into learning about. Slowing my mind has always taken second (third, fourth) to trying to speed up my body -- not my forte either. I'm screwed. Or, at this point I feel screwed. First, I know, is to bring food into perspective and the rest will follow, dominoes one and all.

Tonight I am tired and sore, but willing. We'll deal with tomorrow, tomorrow. I have a week to pull my shit together. Yeah, that's a stress free plan. Yup.

professional bum

I think what I'm getting at, after all these years as a professional something, I should rather be paid to sit at home and think. I think pretty well, and know some stuff, and its just that now I've dyed my hands brown and have to go to a convention on Monday, and I just can't figure out what to wear.

I just wish I had to wear a uniform and that the condition of my fingernails didn't matter. I don't want to have manicures, like some women who seem to think it is part of getting dressed for work. My husband simply chooses from navy blue or orange T-shirt. It is what makes prison appealing. I have to get up and think. I have to try things on. I have to decide what looks passable for that day. I have to remember what I wore the days before. I should have gone into, oh I don't know, painting or construction or something. Anything but the industry that thinks sterile conditions are important. I think sterility leads to illness, personally. I think the reason we have these nasty flu bugs is because we can't fend off normally occurring bacteria. I think Clorox wipes should be outlawed.

As usual, I digress. The thing is, I got this new blouse at Target and I like it but I wanted it to be brown, so I bought some brown dye and now my hands are shot. I hate to go to professional events looking like a farmer. I'd rather be a farmer. I don't think they have conventions and if they do, they'd be outside and you could wear your overalls.

I'm just tired of working and there's eight (I'm counting) years to go until Social Security will allow me to be the bum I was destined to be. You know how I see it. I've said it a million times: Those guys with the shopping carts have very little overhead. And if I didn't know better, I'd think it was freedom.

billy goat story

I'm a storyteller: a liar by trade. I love stories, always have. Some, if not most of the stuff I take the time to type right here, is true -- at least true in my memory which is faulty by anyone's standards.

But today was staff appreciation day, and we boss-types made breakfast for the crew. Picture me, sitting with my coworkers around the breakfast table, talking about goat meat. I think the general topic was greek food. It seemed like the perfect time to tell the only story I have about goat meat. I mean, wouldn't you? If you had a story about goat meat you'd tell it, right? I don't think everyone has a story like that. So.

When I was a hippie, living way up Yale Creek in a somewhat communal setting, there was this guy we called Hippie Dennis who was passing through the Applegate Valley. He lived in his big navy blue delivery van and had a billy goat. I don't know about you, but I can't stand billy goats. They jump on your car hood and suck their own genitals. Right? So this goat was all over the place, getting into our gardens, over any fence, unmannered as his owner who he co-habitated with in the big delivery van. He couldn't keep track of that goat anymore than he could perform his own personal hygiene.

It was high summer-- the perfect time for many outdoor festivities, a big BBQ would be one example. We invited everybody from Sterling Creek on up to Dog Fork and McKee Bridge. We even invited Dennis. It was a beautiful day and we had a really nice time. The meat was a little tough and Dennis kept asking if we'd seen his goat, but we'd just offer him another plate of food.

So this story may have worked better among less civilized sorts. The problem is that most of the people I hang out with these days are pretty civilized or at least politically conscious, and it left me feeling, well, criminally insane.

Personally, I think the story is kind of funny. I found myself defending the community act to kill the goat. But in retrospect, I suppose it was wrong. Okay, it was wrong. Sue me. Situationally and culturally, it didn't seem like it at the time. But once again, after I told my little story, my coworkers had that look about them -- that look that I've learned is a subtle form of fear -- or at the very least, psychological discomfort, the kind of look that made me want to say, "Jesus, its not like I shot the fucking goat myself, painted my naked body with its blood, danced around the fire and still carry the gun in my purse or anything..." but that would be little comfort to my nervous workmates. Geeez. You can't kill anything these days without somebody jumping up in righteous protest.

They should hear the stories I don't tell.

jacksonville

The trip South felt nostalgic this time. I don't regret moving north -- I never will. I've hated that Rogue Valley hot weather my entire adult life. Walking the streets of Jacksonville is always memory lane for me -- for us. My husband reminiscing about the time he bashed his head through the plate glass window of the JVille Tavern on purpose. Ah... those were the days. But walking the barely paved streets where houses used to be, my house, where split-rail fences have been and gone, where I lived and others lived, and lived and lived.... where our black lab Jodean pulled Marky out of the middle of the street when he was not even two years old. I remember these things.

And in this, age is a blessing. I've seen so much. Driving past barns, once standing and red, now decrepit with age, leaning into the decades with the same dependency I feel sometimes, that will fall. Are falling. We don't make wood barns anymore. Not really. There are a few, but more often I see these ungodly compounds, industrial in their scope, lacking the Amish bones, the neighborly customs of having been raised rather than built, of pie and lemonade in the hot august sun. I know these days are gone -- and truth be told, I missed them, mostly, although there was some civility even then, even in the mimicry of the sixties and seventies when we ached to get back to the land, whatever that meant. I did. I got back to it. I carried water, dammit. I cut my own wood. And when I walk the familiar streets, I wonder that I got to be a part of old Jacksonville. That I am a part of its history, just as it is part of mine.

facing fear

I know you're probably thinking that this is it: the big face off, face down, face it head on kind of thing, but really, its just that I went out in the boat on the Columbia. Now seriously, that river is huge, with swells as high as the boat, the possibility of getting swamped very real. But it turns out that the Alumacraft people thought this through and filled the seats with foam, so the boat won't sink. Well, still, its scary. Still, I got in the boat. I remember my fisherman brother Doug saying, when I asked him if he was scared when he was out to sea in a storm, he said, "When you put out to sea, that's when you make the decision. Live or die. Once you're underway, there's too much to do to worry about that shit."

So, it was an okay day in the boat, but I didn't pay to park, didn't see the sign, and parked in a double space that was only for trucks and trailers. So, rather than pay an eighty dollar fine, I made a short day of it.

Well, its labor day, the last day of summer, the last day to wear white.

do si do

Today I leaned down and whispered in Stella's ear: Go on, now. Your husband is waiting. Your children are fine. Go on now and squaredance in heaven. I'll bet it will be really fun.

So she did.

Stella loved to squaredance. She loved the company of men, and touted the benefits of vitamin D long after she'd lost track of time and family. Every day she would ask me if I'd seen her people. I'd lie, like I do, and tell her they were coming, just before dinner or lunch or whatever came next. She had pink gingham squaredance dresses with layers of tulle under-slips that spun when she did, and a husband who wore one of those string ties, texan ties, with a fishing fly embedded in resin for a clasp. Stella had perfect white hair and piles of costume jewelery. She always matched. Knee deep in Alzheimer's and still had her manners.

The girls say they go in threes. They say it happens on the full of the moon. I don't know if any of this is true. They all die, and the moon is full sometimes. Stella makes two. Or two hundred. They, the girls, the women who work in the trenches, have to make sense of it all. To me, it is both random and predictable. An even hand doling out pain and justice in equal parts. Life is fair, misery optional. It seems about time for death to take a holiday.

death in the time of hypochondria

Aubrey's heart is dying and she knows it. Today I sat down next to her and she said,

When is this service going to be over?

Me: Are we at a service?

(Nodding) The funeral.

Me: Oh. Who are they burying?

Anyone who stops by.

Me: Ah. Well, I can't hear them. I didn't know.

Well, they don't talk in words you can hear.

Me: Oh. I see.


It is hard to know when a hypochondriac is sick. Even harder to convince a family who has grown tired of the chronic complaints, suspicious of symptoms, reluctant to even answer the phone.

But she was sick, and with bluing fingers and a rapid heart, she slipped away. The cry of wolf echoing in the hallways.

poem

My cousin Darla sent me the poem below. I love it.

Last night she and her guy and me and mine had dinner at our house: a seafood boil. It was an experiment in trust. Us to make it, them to eat it. We layered red potatoes, broken corn on the cob, fish fish fish, 5 lbs. of steamers, 2 lbs. of shrimp, 2 dungeoness crab --

(Crab is plural for crab. Like sheep and sheep. You wouldn't say "crabs." Crabs is only proper usage such as in the following sentence, "He has the crabs." Its something you might hear around Charleston in the winter. But how would I know?)

--and andoullie sausage. So anyway, you cook it all in this broth of seasonings: 1/2 bag of louisiana crab and shrimp boil, 2 lemons, one beer, an onion and a head of garlic. Boil the heck out of it and let it set. The longer it sets, the spicier it gets. Yum. The corn was outstanding.

It was good to get together for something other than a funeral.



I Confess

I stalked her in the grocery store:
her crown of snowy braids held in place by a great silver clip,
her erect bearing, radiating tenderness,
the way she placed yogurt and avocadoes in her basket,
beaming peach like the North Star.
I wanted to ask
“What aisle did you find your serenity in,
do you know how to be married for fifty years,
or how to live alone,
excuse me for interrupting,
but you seem to possess some knowledge
that makes the earth burn and turn on its axis—”
but we don’t request such things from strangers nowadays.
So I said, “I love your hair.”

Alison Luterman

elemental

I was driving home today, trying to figure out what to make for dinner and Bad Moon Rising started playing on the radio. I have had the best last few radio days, B-52's Love Shack, Don't You Forget About Me (Simple Minds), but Bad Moon Rising, that was pure Joyce. I knew immediately that she was controlling the music and playing it for me.

I don't really believe that, but I could.

So I thought of her, fondly, remembering the time we crashed head-on into an Ashland cop while listening to Credence Clearwater and anyway, she went to jail and I didn't. And she died and I didn't and my brother died and I didn't and my sister is strung out on methadone and I'm not and I know I've made some unpopular decisions and walked away from my family to survive, and there is guilt in that. Survivor guilt.

and an element of grace.

fake berry picking

When my honey hooked the truck up to his new boat and trailer and said, "I'm going to take you blackberry picking," I knew we were really just going on the maiden voyage. A boat ride. Nevertheless, I wore my overalls, the painting ones, the ones that are more patch than pant, and a red cami underneath. It is so hot. Too hot for me. But I won't pick berries in my good clothes. I know better.

So there I was, looking like a poor farmer's wife, waiting to climb in the new boat. Now during fishing season, this wouldn't be such a big deal, but this is high summer and Willamette Park was packed with every million dollar race boat, every hot babe, male and female, in the metro area.

Its bad enough to be old and overweight in public, add to that bra-less and in paint-spattered, quilt patched overalls, with a brim-only straw sun hat. If my sun hat had a price tag hanging off it, I could have been mistaken for Minnie Pearl. Only she wasn't fat.

It was not a good self-esteem moment. Note to self: always dress for success. Get new berry-picking clothes.

Naw.

So, I'm coming down off the family death thing. Joyce's funeral was nice. My sister didn't make it because she was in the hospital, and the wierd thing is, when Marc died (Joyce's husband-my brother) my other brother went into the hospital the day after the funeral and was diagnosed with Congestive Heart Failure. Turns out this is the same thing my sister has. I'm not surprised. I rarely am.

stolen poetry

Thanks to K&F Coffee Shop for this one, torn thoughtlessly out of the June 7 New Yorker.

A Maxim

To live each day as if it might be the last
Is an injunction that Marcus Aurelius
Inscribes in his journal to remind himself
That he, too, however privileged, is mortal,
That whatever bounty is destined to reach him
Has reached him already, many times.
But if you take his maxim too literally
And devote your mornings to tinkering with your will,
Your afternoons and evenings to saying farewell
To friends and family, you'll come to regret it.
Soon your lawyer won't fit you into his schedule.
Soon your dear ones will hide in a closet
When they hear your heavy step on the porch.
And then your house will slide into disrepair.
If this is my last day, you'll say to yourself,
Why waste time sealing drafts in the window frames
Or cleaning gutters or patching the driveway?
If you don't want your heirs to curse the day
You first opened Marcus's journals,
Take him simply to mean you should find an hour
Each day to pay a debt or forgive one,
Or write a letter of thanks or apology.
No shame in leaving behind some evidence
You were hoping to live beyond the moment.
No shame in a ticket to a concert seven months off,
Or, better yet, two tickets, as if you were hoping
To meet by then someone who'd love to join you,
Two seats near the front so you can catch each note.

~ Carl Dennis

sister joyce

In my family we die too young. We barely make sixty, if that. It is usually because we drink.

There are certain people who have geographic weight. I can't explain this. Joyce lived in Central Point and now she is gone. It is hard to know why I would go back there now. She tethered our family for over forty years, a family that was fractured by her presence. She came to stay when I was thirteen and we were never the same. She is not to blame for our undoing, that would not be fair or true, but sins and decisions being what they are, we were changed by those things.

I drove around Central Point and Medford today as if in a dream, lost in time, memories so dense I had to brush them from my vision, thick as cobwebs, driving to and from the hospital as she died. I had to come back to say goodbye, to thank her for taking care of me in the years before I decided to save my life -- to let my life be saved by the outstretched hands of others, hands she would not hold onto. Could not.

I just wanted to keep standing in her house among her children and her belongings, little things we had gathered at yard sales, had packed and repacked, moving to house after house: gnomes with green hats, red spatterware spoons, fiestaware, small oval rag rugs, a glass scottie dog, a sock monkey, a framed picture of Christ in Gethsemane, endless earrings and candles and fifteen tiny bags of weed here and there, forgotten in the clutter of life's ending. As long as I stayed in the house, it wasn't real.

But I am home now, and she is gone, my sister -in law and out,-my friend of so many many years. I miss her already. Rest in Peace.

yard sales

Saturday was the Division/Clinton Street Fair(e). We walked up Division looking at all of the booths and I am always intrigued, and frankly, bored, by the similarity of all the crafty offerings. We drove from Ashland to Nevada City to Yosemite, to San Fran, to Tomales, to Fort Bragg and to Port Orford, and everything is pretty much the same. Not the view. Not like that. But things that are for sale. Used to be you went to the coast and found coastie things, went to San Francisco and got, well, you know. Sourdough. But now, the homogeneous nature of saleable items is tiresome. I was looking for candlesticks. For those of you who know me, you'll recall my former habit of going to yardsales to find the best candlestick I could for five bucks or less. Now, willing to spend almost any amount of money, I can't find anything unusual. I found some at Pottery Barn that I liked, but I wanted something unique, not some yuppy factory that pumps out the good life in cookie cutter perfection. So I looked and looked. 2000 miles later, I came home bought the Pottery Barn candlesticks.



I am so predictable.



But what, you'll ask, of all my old five-dollar candlesticks? Well, I have some of them here and there, but I needed black ones for this one special place. So now I have them. I hope I'm happy.



Between the trip and camping, we had a yard sale. It was huge and I sold things I swore I'd never part with. I hold out and hold out and think I know what will sell and what won't and I'm always wrong. I keep stuff until the yard sale people don't even want it. I wonder what it is about stuff, about shopping for stuff, about the way stuff catches my eye and I must have it. Must have it. Like the bird at Twist that costs 264 dollars. It is not a live bird, let me clear that up right quick. It is this kitschy plaster thing that I could probably make, and may try, but it is so cool and as my darling husband says as he drags me whining and drooling from the store on his birthday, it'll end up in a yard sale two years from now.

I hate it when he's right.

So... yard sale over, we were able to locate the camping gear. We packed up and camped up the Clackamas at Indian Henry for a couple of days, only a couple, because my neck broke again. We canoe-d on Lake Harriet which was really fun and beautiful. Carrying the canoe may have been the straw that doomed the trip. I don't know. I was picking moss out of Duffy's coat for days.

So, yard sales and vacations over with, I'm back at work and beginning physical therapy tomorrow.

more and more

Now I prepare to camp. I am always pretty much ready, but lacking a memory, I must forage through pre-packed boxes and make sure I don't get far from home without a coffee pot. And coffee. Let's not forget the coffee. And matches, all safe in baggies, and dish soap. I own everything one can own for camping with the exception of a camper, which, the older I get, the more appealing they are. Was a time I thought it was a sin to use anything but a tent -- akin to the lead pencil society and those good women who still use cloth diapers and serve nothing but turkey on Thanksgiving, but I digress.

We will rent a trailer -- an open one this time -- and head up the Clackamas for a couple of days. It ain't Yosemite, but it is nice and green and cool, and I will finish typing my book if it kills me.

It won't kill me, right?

parks

There is alot to be said about National Parks, and OPB did a fine job of it last year. Their piece on Yosemite inspired this vacation. This part of this vacation anyway. At this time I am back in my (90 degree) house, dogs as happy as we are to be out of the truck. We've travelled some 2000 miles since last Friday, and I only drove for 45 minutes. Men.

So, Yosemite... As a writer, I should be able to come up with something at least descriptive, but adjectives fail me. So far it is probably the most remarkable geological sight I've seen. I'm so glad we went, so glad we could go... that is, had the resources to play, spend, etc. Our fabulous vacation has been dimmed by the knowlege that two family members are losing their homes to foreclosure, both trying to save them, but probably not going to swing it. I am acutely aware that this could be me, could be us, and we discussed considering a plan B should we find ourselves out of work or otherwise unable to earn. We do earn our pay, my honey and I. We both do stuff we'd probably rather not, every day. I don't feel guilty, but I am grateful.



So, back to the parks. I loved Glacier. It was so surprising. And Ansel Adams had already sort of pulled the cover on Yosemite, but still, being there doesn't compare. We drove to the top of Glacier Point and looked down over Yosemite Valley, cars like ants, and looked through a scope of some kind at Half Dome where there were a bunch of people standing who had climbed up there. Climbed. My visit to Yosemite was pretty much a drive-by. We did walk up to one waterfall, but we all know how atheletic I am. (See post on Devil's Churn.) Still and all, I prefer the Redwoods to anything. Anything I've ever seen. It is heaven to me, tall lacey trees, dense fern undergrowth, fog hanging in the treetops. Dappled sunlight blinking through the curves. Yep. That's the one for me. Fortunately, we also went through the redwoods.

So we exited Yosemite and spent that night in Mariposa, an armpit of a town, and left the next moring for San Francisco. It was another drive-by because the point was not the city, but the drive up Highway One. The Whole Thing. Again, searching for adjectives and modifiers: very curvy. We spent the next night in Fort Bragg after stopping for oyster shooters at Tomales and enjoying the cool of the coast as we learned that inland it was 100. We debated going back into the valley (Rogue) to visit family on the way home, but phoned in our apologies: we are hugging the coast as long as we can.

Tonight I will sleep in my living room with a fan blowing on Duffy and me, and await the coming of fall. Pictures to come

from the road

Sutter's Mill

4th of July Parade, Nevada City

Sutter's Mill Three tin buildings in Nevada City

Stone house in Nevada City, Downtown NC

Castle Crags where Kurt didn't want to go but I insisted because I was absolutely certain the view would be better but it wasn't.

Spent our first night at Shona and Bobby's house in Ashland, breakfast with Cooky and Tracy at the Talent Cafe where I used to breakfast on weekends and on the road to Nevada City a day early. Stayed 2 days at the Northern Queen, a great spot for the dogs and for us. Sid and Duffy get to poop in special places and sleep on motel beds. The 4th of July was a small town parade in Nevada City with an enormous Tea Party contigent, no doubt sponsored by the Republican Party. We returned to our room and the pool. Put on a movie for the dogs and swam for the first time in a long time. I bought an awful boob-fest of a bathing suit at Walmart, but now that we are in Sonora California, I'm damn glad to have it, splashy hibiscus flowers and all. When we checked the weather before we left, I packed for the low eighties, but being a Portland resident, with access to sunlight only via the consumption of liquid vitamin D, I am in Southeast California and it is hot.

Damn hot.

So like the natives, we hide in the daytime, beautiful room in Sonora with a nice pool and AC. It is dangerous for the doggies, and at this point, I could be resentful that they are with us, but I don't even want to be out in it. Tomorrow we will see Yosemite and stay at the lower end of the park and head for San Francisco Wed. morning.

Nevada City is beautiful, and like all beautiful places, I think I could live there, given a huge advance on that novel I never seem to write. Sonora is too hot for me.