another saturday night

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

learning weather

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

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

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

privacy and descent

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

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

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

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

The bad boys are everywhere now... dispersed.

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

How to catch fish

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

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

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

Copper

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

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

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


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

Friday night

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

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

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

my streets

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

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

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

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

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

okay.

erudite

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

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

good morning

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

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

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

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

what?

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

I personally think he is the anti-christ.

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

dyin' on republican time

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

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

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

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

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

Dan Rather's Last Day

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

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

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

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

Well, I don't. Not at all.

popeye

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

sauvie's island this year

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

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

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

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



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

spring

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

tripe

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

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

beautiful day

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

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

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

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

I am not making sense.

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

That's marriage.

the history of my hair

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

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

I am blonde.

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

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

synchronicity

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

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

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

This stepmother thing may not be so hard after all.

come saturday morning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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