american idolatry

I admit many of my shortcomings here on the blog, and TV is one of them. Since I moved to Portland I have watched American Idol. I refused to watch it before, but it has been standard fare for... this will be the third season. It is my decision. I time my life around it. I tape it. But it has changed. Used to be there was the occasional crappy singer in the mix of people who were really trying, or an occasional geek that was seeking national attention with some schtick of some kind, but now... now the line-up is nothing but retard after retard trying their damnedest to belt out some hot new song like "Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me?" I mean really. It is easy to take potshots at the idiots who are passing judgment, and they certainly bear some responsibility, but it is me, it is us, we, the viewing public who thrive on train-wreck TV, and the trainwrecks are getting worse. I know, and my husband is quick to point out, that there are larger issues on which to take the moral high ground than reality TV. He is absolutely correct. They are easy targets, those poor retards. And admittedly it was hard to see Jewel doing something for money and being a part of it. But shit, she could be a 24-carat asshole and I wouldn't know it, she sings those pretty little songs and I assume she has some integrity, that she is Sarah-fucking-McLauchlan. She may or may not, but there she was, knee deep in it, making fun of nutbags.

I wrote a letter to the editor of the oregonian thanking her/him for putting an article on the front page.

If one of them ends up on top of a building with an uzi, firing at random, it is very unlikely they will hit Simon-- who is only the most visible asshole telling them their sad little lives are even less liveable now that they have been told they are ugly and they can't even sing. How mean is that?

weather, interrupted

I know this will shock you, but the crack team at First Alert Storm Team 8, Winter Blast 07--didn't call this one. So, as they cry "eminent domain" and usurp my taped episode of The Young and the Restless for an endless forcast, which is really more like the weatherperson's version of a late birthday card, I am annoyed, but not surprised. Five days ago they had the entire tri-county area on call, forced overtime, for a storm that never showed, snowplows at the ready, schools closed in advance, just in case the little kiddies might get wet.

Score one for weather! Sneaking one by the team. Go, God.

Driving this morning at 6:30 was silent and beautiful. Driving home, not quite so lovely, although it requires a certain level of meditation to stay with it, 15 miles an hour for 15 miles. It always surprises me that people really don't get how to do it-- how to drive in snow... to just go real slow and cruise on through. Avoid hills. Avoid steep places. Avoid using your brakes or, well, pedals in general. Its kind of like a stick-up: Just aim the vehicle and don't make any quick moves. When I got home there were cross-country skiers on Clinton Street.

I am a little surprised that no one has commented on my garret paint job. I will assume it means no one likes it. Well, that's okay. Nicole says it looks like a shabby child care center. She has a point. I love it. I still do. I am ordering a fatboy because I can't really get anything else up the stairs (see previous posts) and I'm not sure I could force it up, but it is more likely. And I must have something to sit on.

It will look better with furniture, and carpet.

misplaced grits

The cook at work decided to recognize the day with catfish, hushpuppies, johnny cakes, mustard greens, black-eyed peas and missippi mud pie. The thing is, I work in possibly the whitest part of Portland with ninety-some-odd, ninety-year old people who stood in line asking if there were any peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches to be had.

It seemed like a day not to work. I was reminded of the days when I, a child of 13, campaigned for Bobby Kennedy on the steps of Medford Mid High School. I have read that Decency died with the Kennedys. I don't know. I know I live in an indecent world, with cameras recording heineous acts with disturbing nonchalance, distributing unspeakable images for the masses to devour at their leisure. We are hyenas. All these centuries of evolution gone for nothing. Nothing at all. For leisure. I remember this bad movie -- a Jack Nicholsen movie called "The Crossing Guard". John Morris (I think) played a drunk driver who got out of prison after a long stint, and when asked at a party if he missed freedom, said, "if all freedom means to you is entertainment, then its over-rated." We have sold the collective soul for entertainment.

So, I worked... on this day of mourning for a womanizer who had a good speech at the right time.

pics

I decided to do a catch-up posting and get all the pictures out. Hope you enjoy them. I've finished painting the garret, pretty much, and I love it. We put some carpet down just to cover the floor and will find some pieces to go with the new look. So far, it is so frigging cold up there that I can't move my fingers. And the stairs are so narrow there is nothing to sit on. I'm considering bean bags. They make huge bean bags now. Sumo bags. Fat boy bags. Look it up. I think that would work well for me. Lounging is my natural position. I am supine.



New additions to the monkey clan














My new harp. I just got it today. I'm considering a career change to thanatology. Actually, my husband found it for me. I love that he sees me that way.
















Sid makes the catch













The landing














Sid trots away with the only thing that matters to him















Haley and Sid on the way to the park.


















Looking down the stairway from the garret













The attic













One corner and the door













The window.













the opposite corner













The window again

haves

As I walk away from the unit, I usually take the time to say goodbye to anyone who is paying attention, kiss Alene, hug Rosita and make some hysterically funny remark as I type in the secret code that gets me through the keypadded door and out of there for another day. Last week, I did what I always do, and upon leaving, turned to Bonny and said, "You're in charge."

It was a joke.
She has dementia, you see.

She can't remember that the clothes she is wearing are her own unless they are red, or that the fruit rotting in her little apartment isn't treasure (oh, poverty... thy shadow is long) but she remembered that she was in charge. And she's been complaining ever since.

Or is it every since? Ever. I think I say ever since.

At any rate, Bonny's been showing up at my desk each morning, exhausted from keeping an eye on things. She tells me how lazy the girls are when I'm not there. I know this already. Job security, I figure. For both of us. But then her daughter called and said Bonnie is distraught. Worried sick. Too much responsibility for her. So, tonight, I led her to the med room, introduced her to the med aide and told her that Jeanette is on duty and if she has any questions, Jeanette will be in charge until I get back in the morning. She was relieved. She didn't want to let me down.

I hope that when I stop working, I stop.

I went to my writing group, and will likely go back. It is of some value. It may work. I am not inspired. I have not written. I was criticized, which I love, and she had a point. One. Two women showed up, and were serious about writing, although neither write like me. They are more like real writers. Not just liars with pencils. And there was a point in the conversation when I knew I was not like them, a point at which the difference between us narrowed to one bright point. They were talking about retirement: how long have you been retired? Since 02. Oh, I've just been for two years. They turned to look at me. I looked back and forth between them, knowing a comment was required. I couldn't just smile and nod. This was get to know you day. Show and tell on the first day of school. "I'll work until I die," I finally said. And the clincher was this.... they said, in unison: "Why?" And I, other shoe ready to drop at any minute, think to myself: I could lie, say I love to work. I love my job. It gives my life meaning. Instead, I went with the facts. The fact. One.

Money.

I said it simply and with as little shame as I could muster. I will work until I die because I have to. Because you, you retired ladies, are looking at the working poor-- a fingersnap from under the bridge. I know the distance between me and the shopping cart women and I know that they are cold tonight. I was one. No. I wasn't. But I've lived in the back of a pickup truck and in a burned out cabin and on my brother's screened porch next to the train track and in Joe Estramada's logging yard. (I didn't tell them all that last stuff. I just said money.)

And that separated the haves from the have nots in one fell swoop. But I'll go back anyway.

I was listening to a woman this evening and she said when she writes, her soul opens-- or her core or some such shit-- and what I know is that it is very difficult to write a lie on paper. Not without an eraser nearby. I know this because I am a fiction writer, and the truth leaks out around even those lies. It can't be helped. It is especially difficult to commit untruths to paper if you are a criminal trained in the old school: where men were men and women were scared... (you thought I was going to say sheep... but you didn't go to my school.) where you don't cop to shit, baby. Not on paper. Not in your outloud voice you don't. So lying is best left to the wind, the unproveable singular voice. If a lie is told in the forest and nobody hears it, can it still be used against you???

The room is coming right along. One of the walls is done. What my husband doesn't understand (and doesn't really care about all that much except that my ways with paint are curious to him) is that each wall is a separate painting. It is as fun as it gets for me. The first wall is terra cotta paint with a mocha wash over it. Gorgeous --like my bathroom down south only richer color. I bought a turquoise vase made of papier mache and a small turquoise bird with its head tucked under its wing. I will bring in the entire monkey population of this house when I am done. We brought in two new monkeys over Christmas: a cowboy and a cowgirl. I really need to post some pictures to photobucket and load them so I can get to them from this computer. We have some shots of Sid actually in flight, catching the frisbee.

Nicole dyed her hair purple today and cut it in a pixie cut. I couldn't get away with it. She looks just right.

friday

A woman came into my office today to discuss her sister in law moving onto the unit, and when I asked her what she usually wears, she said "waltz length gowns." I'm not sure what that means, just like I'm not sure what "tea length" means.

What does it mean? And when did the length of things relative to mealtimes and dance steps stop mattering? Go go boots, for example.

It sounded elegant, spending those golden years lounging around in waltz length gowns, sipping mint juleps on the porch. I picture waltz length as very long, sweeping the floor, dustballs forming at the hem if you are in my house. But I think I am wrong. I think it is nearly ankle-length. Same as tea length.

Oh god. Who cares. Sometimes it seems like it is all just a death sentence. They all die. And we all die. I know this.

But in the give and take of it all, on Tuesday I got to throw one back. Audrey. I liked Audrey, loved to have her live with us and hated to let her go. She is very anxious and fixated, but she is not demented. Not yet. She shows some wear for 93, but all in all, she is still more organized than I will ever be. So I sent her to the other side.

Picture this: An assisted living facility with 90 some-odd, 90-something people on the one side, blissfully imagining that life will continue much the same as it always has, that leisure has meaning, that death will come in the night, "on little cat feet," like winter or fall or dark of night that Sandburg described, leaving a tidy corpse; and that madness will remain on the other side--my side--mannered and forgiving, touching only strangers and the unclean.

So they don't visit us very often--the 90-somethings--because they fear what they could easily become... are in fact becoming... but occasionally, one of them loses her mind, slips through the crack and stays with me. They cluck among themselves when this happens, those who remain, and they make sense of it all, and bring her leftover donuts from bingo for a week or two, and blame her daughter in Texas for visiting only at Christmas. Then they stop coming and repair the crack so they can't see it anymore. But it is still there, yawning and hungry, waiting for a single missed-step.

So it isn't often that one returns from the dead as Audrey has. She returns to the living with the stain of the untouchable. The old ones point and stare as though dementia were contagious. It may be.

my bad

I'm ba-ack. My fault for loading the computer with msn. I told them, No, I didn't do anything stupid, but I had.

dead

The laptop died. It'll be back by close of bizness tomorrow, or so they tell me.

I have finished the primer coat up in the garret and it sucked up almost two gallons. Gallons. But I slopped it on good and heavy.

I fired somebody today.

My husband is playing Moonlight Mile on his acoustic guitar in the background. I love that song.

She didn't see it coming. Not one bit. A real managerial coup. Bummer that it feels like shit to do that. I shouldn't be a boss. I should be bossed. I need bossing.

another one down

For those of you who may have seen it: I took my picture off. It was too wierd. I never let anyone take my photograph. Well, hardly ever. That one was okay, but I am too self conscious. Blessed anonymity. I do not seek fame. Infamy is more my style. Happy New Year to y'all jus the same..

We didn't do much. Just the trip out to the island and a couple of gatherings. I brought cookies in an attempt to rid the house of sugar. There are a few lingering and I guess I'll have to eat them myself to get rid of them.

Excuse me for a moment.

Okay. So this laptop is pretty nice, but it takes 10 freakin' minutes from the time I push the start button until I am here and typing. That is actual time. I am unfamiliar with wireless, but is it that slow? Once I'm on, I think I have regular DSL speed, but hooking up takes too long. It may be the computer. I'm still working out the bugs.

I am avoiding painting. This is nothing new. I bought the colors I want: turquoise, cornflower blue and terra cotta. Perfect. It will be a tribute to Diego Rivera, Frieda Kahlo and Mexican art in general. I am typing and the letters aren't showing up very fast. Is that wireless also? Fuck this. The icon says "signal strength good." Okay. What do I know? So, I will paint an undercoat of all those paints I mixed together, let that dry, then decide if I want to go with a colorwashed wall or straight paint.

You'll see what I decide. And soon. Very soon.

New Year's Resolutions: Quit saying fuck out loud, but it is still okay to write it. Spend less money-- after I am done turning the garret into Havana Northwest. Lose the same 15 pounds I have been losing every three months for the past year. Paint the outside chairs ivory and the underside of the tub copper. Water the yard when it is hot without complaining. Think of others. Write a book.

Oh, did I say write a book.

Great. I'll get right on that.

texture

The walls are uniformly un-uniform. I slapped joint compound here and there, just so, and I really like the effect. At this moment, I am not able to load the pictures, but I will when I get off the couch and onto the pc. We are watching Sunday Morning. Even they are showing almost all of the hanging video of Saddam. It is so Salem witch trials, so exhibitionistic. The internet videos on the big channels who damn internet videos.



Today we drove out to the river so Sid could run. Sauvie's Island... it is a magical place for me, for us. A perfect place to spend the last day of the year.


This is Sid on Sauvie's Island.

blessed saturday

Today I will paint. I will. I will choose turquoise and cobalt and rust, with a red door, and not for reasons of eastern belief, (or southern... isn't fung shui Californian?) but because I have red paint that needs to get used. I have many cans of paint that I will pour together to make a primer coat, but not the red or it will all become pink. My sweetie tells me I can stir some joint compound into it to create texture. But I don't think I want uniformity. I may just slap some on to create the ambience of war-torn Germany, my personal favorite. I do love shabby. Why then, when it is already so shabby, don't I just leave it alone.

MY GOD. Haven't you been listening? I am Martha fucking Stewart and I leave NOTHING alone. If YOU hold still I will decorate you.

I love this laptop.

Why is it the next shiny thing that always holds my attention. My life, as compared to my life say.... 12 years ago.... is perfect. I have a life I never would have dreamed possible. And of my life 10 years before that?? My life is unimaginably rich. I did not have the language to hope for my life as it is today. And yet it is that I am on a steady quest for improvement, for change. For the next shiny object within, or just beyond, my reach. I am on my sofa, married to the love of my life, the actual love of my whole life, and we are living where I've always wanted to live, in a house I love in a neighborhood I would choose over any, and I am typing on my laptop, wirelessly connected to the internet, on my blog, and I don't have to work until Tuesday. And still I want to make that fucking little upstairs room different. Stasis as death. I think that is it. If I stopped decorating, what would happen? My husband shakes his head and says, I thought you were going to use the room for storage. But there I am, online, looking for rugs and pillows and mexican vases and rusted wall hangings and more and more and more and I realize there is no end to it. More as a lifestyle.

I remember living in Jacksonville in a little house that was 60 dollars a month and we didn't pay it. And the landlord was Marcel Poudois, and he was letting the house, like he let everything, become one with the blackberries. If you don't know my position that blackberries will eventually take over the world, you do now. So there we were, me and my baby and his mean mean father, and when he threw me through the wall I just decorated the hole. It was shaped like me, like in a cartoon only not so funny. I exaggerate. I didn't go all the way through the wall, just the sheetrock. The studs stopped me. So I painted the wall baby blue. I was really all about blue for a long long time. And I thought blue was as good as it got for color. Blue, purple and black. Bruise colors. But if you know bruises like I know bruises, you'll agree that they are red at first, and at the end they fade to green and yellow. Full spectrum bruising.

Memories. I suppose it is poverty that drives my need to beautify my world. The memory of poverty that I will never really escape, never outrun. Or it is much more simple than that. I am American, thus, excessive.

Anyway, I wonder about that house. I could never get the grass to grow in the front yard and Marcel would never let me plow under the blackberries.

I am sad about Saddam Hussein. That guy never had a chance. We are so brutal. They are so brutal. It is so brutal here in this small world.

laptop

Here it is. What I have to get used to is this giant cursor. I will fix it. It is a large black box and I can't tell where I am. I am lying on the sofa, reclining, my natural position.

I have no access to photographs at this time, but I love the feel of the keyboard and it is so quiet. Type type type.

It is my father's birthday. He would have been 87 I think. He died young, when I was eight and they didn't know what to do about bad hearts. The thing was, his heart was so good. I remember that part. I was blondie to him, and he called me by my middle name, not when he was mad at me, but because he picked it and I think he liked it. He was happy. A sailor and a hoodlum who married my cheerleader mom and became a father of five. Happy birthday, Daddy.

I kind of like this cursor. Maybe I won't be so quick to dispense with anything new.

There is nothing I can do but type to justify the expenditure. I am hoping the inspiration will follow. We installed wireless, and it is magic. I am online and not hooked to anything. I don't understand it. When buying this thing, we kept asking about the router. "But what if it isn't wireless? What if it doesn't work?" But it does. As you see.

rock paper garret

Before shots (taken with our new digital camera):

I wanted to enter these pictures in a certain order, but it doesn't seem like I'm savvy enough to get it done right. The picture of the white door and green wall is looking out of the garret into the attic, toward the back yard.


The picture to the left, I think, is a view of the right side of the garret. The window looks over Clinton Street.

This is the left side, same window.

This is the door heading up the stairs to the garret.

These are the stairs. Now you know the exact width of my ass, plus some wiggle room




Christmas rocks. These are called earth crystals, but are really basalt spikes. They are drilled in the bottom with a piece of rebar to stake them into the ground. The tallest is over 3 feet. I love them. They were first on my Christmas list.

This is the new garden rock. We had one made for the outlaws as well. It is carved in Applegate Jade, a beautiful rock native to the Applegate Valley, where both of us misspent our youth (s).

Okay. I did it. Now, I'll look at the blog and see how it came out. I agree, this is much better than the old blogger where you just had text to work with.

Well, clearly there are some problems. Anyway, a good Christmas, overall, and I will now go upstairs and begin the work. I'm thinking Mexican colors, kinda Frieda Kahloesque. NO menopause beige.I ordered my laptop today.

I rock.

celebrations

All is unwrapped and the demystification complete. I got rocks. Wonderful, beautiful rocks. Large ones for my yard and small ones for my ears. I got a huge flannel robe. Maybe too big, but that's what I wanted. We now have a Wii. My husband already threw his back out bowling or batting or swinging a golf club or something. It isn't his.

I had a long talk with my son. Longest of our lives, perhaps. He is loved, and he loves. He is so like me in his need for privacy within a relationship. He said he was as happy alone for three days as he is at a party, and yet he loves this girl. I apologized for the genetics. I know it is mine. It is good to be loved, and a difficult thing to allow. I know. I allow it. Day after day. I don't think it is related to self-esteem so much. Not the way I used to. I just think we are cautious.

He talked to me about my nephews and meth and crack cocaine and all of that. Apparently it is still not all that lucrative to sell coke. He told me of a suicide attempt by one of the boys and a one day stint in the mental ward. Like that would help. And the theft of time from their children. And the family disease keeps on keepin' on. I know my son remembers his childhood and my absence and all we didn't have. So, I wrote a long Christmas letter to my nephews this morning, telling them what little I can about our family's religious beliefs and its relationship to addiction. It is a letter of hope, and of experience, and maybe a little strength. But it is only a letter. And they will do what they will do. We have a particularly virulent strain in my family. Deadly.

So, I will plant my rocks, and my herb garden, and my sporty new baby blue jacket my son sent me, along with a framed picture of him in a raft on the Deschutes River. And I am so proud of him, given who we are, to get up every morning and do it again. He is the greatest gift of my life.

Merry Christmas to all who read this. I am grateful for this day, and any other.

eve-ning

All is calm, all is bright. I would show you pictures, but again, something has changed and I can't figure it out. There are tree and house pictures, and upstairs room and firelight. And I can't find them.

Haley just walked on my back and it feels better. I've been cooking all day, again, and it gets tiresome. I want to get some year end writing done, but really, all I want to do is lie down and sleep. There was deep fried turkey with all the trimmings, apple pie, chocolate pecan pie, pumpkin roll, a mince tart that was so good. I hadn't made mincemeat in so long, and I forgot how much I like it. It is old food, antique food, real Christmas food. I cooked cranberries and dried apricots, dressing with walnuts and cranberries, sweet potatoes with brown sugar, butter, pineapple and pecans, green beans and fried onions, and no salad at all. None. All heart attack food.

I am happy to be home. Not loving the season, but understanding, once again, my place in the world. And to the extent that I choose things, I chose this. I jumped in the river that was headed this direction and was carried away with the rest of the rubble. The customs are different here, the religion strange, but I am here, and I bring what I can with me.

My son sent me a package and it arrived Friday. A Christmas miracle. I couldn't get it THAT together until I was, oh, 45 or so. I would be proud of him, but know that really, it is just evidence of a woman in his life. We do organize.

I have spent time in the places that keep me spinning upright, and I am feeling fairly level this holy night.

creme puffs

I love those little things. I love the squish of just-thawed whipping cream through puff pastry, bite size, bite after bite. My mother made creme puffs about once a year. They were remarkably good. It is one of those pot-luck things that shows up on the table, and I can't stop going back for more. They don't hit me for about 45 minutes, and then I am sick. Gwen, if you read this, you took the high road and I wish I'd been on it with you. Me? I was aiming for moderation, a concept that has always eluded me. In every category, but especially creme puffs. They, as a food group, are so tied to childhood deprivation, of having three older brothers who always got more, and first, and this is the nature of my eating disorder: that boys deserve and girls do not. So when it is a room full of women, the allowance is overwhelming.

But as the recently deceased Peter Boyle would say: Stay out of my psychosis.

I'm full. And home. And now it is decorated inside and out. He hung the outside lights. We're ready.

friday night

The tree is up and the lights are on it. I have tackled the boxes and drug them down the stairs. The stairs that are exactly as wide as my ass. I'm sure I've mentioned that before. So, it is about *that much* narrower than the plastic bins. (Hold your fingers almost together. Picture it. Work with me.) Now, it is wide enough to bring the boxes down WITHOUT lids, but what is a box without a lid? But that is precisely what has to happen before I can get the fragile shit out of the attic. It didn't go so well with the lights. They tumbled down the stairs without me. And still work.

After the meltdown last weekend, I trotted up the stairs to the room Nicole hated. It is a garret to be sure, but I looked at it and saw nothing but possibility. I will take some before pictures so y'all can watch the process. I am a writer, I should have a garrett. Is that the right word? An attic room? Wait. I'll check.

Okay. Here it is:
gar·ret1 /ˈgærɪt/ Pronunciation[gar-it] –noun: an attic, usually a small, wretched one.

So, there you have it. It IS a small, wretched room. But it has a great window that, like this one, looks down on Clinton Street. My view of the world. And when I get my laptop, it will be perfect. It is perfect now, but for paint, rugs, art and a chair that will fold up and fit up the stairway, then fold out into something Cleopatra might have enjoyed.

Today, the Dicken's Carollers came to entertain. 4 acapella singers who transformed a ninety-something audience into children for an hour. The beauty of Alzheimer's: mine sang along.

displacement

Sunday bloody sunday. I've moved out of the women's room and now am in the basement with all my shit in boxes. Not fun but necessary for now. I am displaced and missing my old house where everything was all about me, but I do not miss where it was or all that did not go with it. Sanctuary is a funny thing. It is portable, but something hard to find in a family, and too much of anything is too much, even sanctuary. And we know that too much was always my strong suit.

And it is Christmas, and I miss my son.

And it is not so much my son that I miss as it is his childhood, and the Christmas morning when he was 14 and got me that Joan Osborne CD and we played it full blast and he knew I'd love that one sappy song. And I still like it. Or the one when I gave him the sock monkey. Or even a couple of years ago when I surprised him with an Xbox. I love Christmas. I've decided to give him a scrapbook this year. I've been hanging onto pictures of his father for years. I found his scrapbook when he died, and didn't want to give it to Marky quite yet. He was only 15 when his father died, and although I danced on his grave, his son, obviously, did not. And it has been a long 12 years now and Marky is older, and wiser, and less illegal, I think. Less inclined to land in jail than he was there for awhile. So, I've been going through the photographs and trying to figure out how to tell him the story of our life, and their life, and all the inbetweens of those years, and who his grandparents were, and and and... And like other attempts to explain, it is easiest for me to go by place: when this happened, we lived _______ (yale creek, jacksonville, red bluff, coosbay, eastside, north bend, ruch, central point, ashland, talent, on my brother's porch, behind the railroad tracks in gold hill...) And what I know for sure is that whatever story it tells will me mine (like this rant). So, beneath the picture of the campground up on Salt Creek, the caption should probably not be: "this is the place where your father stabbed me." It is an emotional undertaking, and letting go of anything related to my personal terrorist has always been difficult for me. I spent years outrunning him, literally, and then years living up to him and even more living it down. It is so much of who I am. Was. Who I was. It is who I was and maybe if I keep repeating that over and over again, my subconscious will hear it and change the way I view the world. But for now, it drags me back into that place of review -- not regret -- I do not regret that shit.

So, on with the project. And on with the holiday.

moving day

We have been storing Nicole in the attic for about 6 months and she's finally getting tired of it. You can tell by the way she leaves little piles of crap at the foot of the stairs. Little piles full of sharp things to step on. We finally got the hint. It is, after all, December. We are trying to find a way to co-exist with a messy teenage girl in a Victorian house. The thing is, I have way way too much shit. Way. I have more clothes than I will ever wear, more art supplies than I will ever use, more baskets, more fabric, more paper and scraps of precious words-- strung together in moments of impulse and imagination-- that may never find each other, that may not even be related, but will someday, dammit, be a book.

Or not.

I hate writing groups. I hate the fact that I keep going around in this circle. But what the hell. Its my circle. I know where it goes. Around. I have, we all know, been in worse circles.

So, the computer is repaired, the keyboard is sticky and needs to be replaced. But it works, and the new monitor is nice and crispy.

We decorated the unit for Christmas. It is all red and sparkly. I tried for a serene winter blue, but the old folks said it was drab. Boring. They like red and green. So, red and fucking green it is. It is actually very nice. At home, we are negotiating the tree deal. My husband says it is his turn to pick out the tree. I said "Why would you think you get a turn? Its not a turn thing." And he didn't like that. But I know him and his frugal ways. He'll drag home something on Christmas Eve from the Safeway parking lot that has been run over a couple of times and never was much to look at in the first place and bring it home and decorate it with devil horns and other Halloween stuff. And I know there's no such thing as an ugly Christmas tree. I've seen the Charlie Brown special. But I want full creative control and I am not going to get it. Marriage. It has its pitfalls. Its all that pesky thinking about the other person and letting them have a vote that I keep forgetting about. Ah well.

I started a special lunch and dinner group on the unit. So many have died, and we grieved, and had hospice grief support come in to help us buck up and do what we do, and in the middle of it all, four women needed some place safe to live. They are all walking and talking and crazy as loons. So I said, hey. Let's have them all sit together at the same table, away from the others who no longer come up for social air, and let them have a tea party, day after day. And the conversation goes something like this: (it doesn't matter what their names are).

When I was eighteen, I was sent to China to be a companion to my spoiled cousin.
Oh? I'm norwegian, you know.
I don't really belong here. There was a mistake.
Oh! That is so funny! (breaks into christmas song in a high soprano)
Oh, you like to sing.
Oh, do I?
She's always singing.
You know my son will be bringing my things here any time now. I should be going home.
When I was in China, I was a companion for my spoiled cousin. She had the same name as me.

And that is how it goes. Every day.

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Computer has been dead and is now alive. We're back. I still want a laptop, but this is good.