everyday Jesus

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

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

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

trucks

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

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

Ah, the city life.

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

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

There is much more to tell.

weight

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

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

Makes me hungry. Call 911.

dialing for dollars

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

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

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

'nuff said.

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

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

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

Yet.

no mo'

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

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

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

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

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

mutha's day

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

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

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

excrement

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

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

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

sunday bloody sunday

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

So back to the future...

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

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

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

another saturday night

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

learning weather

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

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

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

privacy and descent

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

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

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

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

The bad boys are everywhere now... dispersed.

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

How to catch fish

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

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

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

Copper

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

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

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


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

Friday night

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

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

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

my streets

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

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

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

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

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

okay.

erudite

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

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

good morning

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

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

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

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

what?

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

I personally think he is the anti-christ.

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

dyin' on republican time

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

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

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

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

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

Dan Rather's Last Day

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

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

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

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

Well, I don't. Not at all.

popeye

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