treatise

Campsite

Depot Bay

The dock at Waldport and row of seagulls

Heaven

We camp, therefore we are.

The evolution of my camping experience, like other parts of my life, has much to do with poverty. I have camped-out on porches--screened and unscreened, beside railroad tracks, next to rivers, lakes, oceans (ocean. one.) I have camped-out alongside creeks in many areas of Oregon while on the run from one bad act or another. This was not actual camping. This was avoiding responsibility, adulthood and inevitable consequences.

Growing up, my father dropped us off for the summer at McKee Bridge park and would visit each weekend and we camped the summer away in 110 degree Southern Oregon weather, renting painted orange innertubes that I was allergic to, but floated on anyway, covered with the beachtowel of the season, trying to keep my rash at bay. I learned to swim there, at McKee Bridge, when my schizophrenic uncle threw me out in the middle of the river thinking I knew how. I didn't know then that this would mimic my life to come. Was I afraid? I was. Did it stop me? It did not. I was neither brave nor courageous. I simply didn't die, and this has been my barometer. Set your standards low, I say. Nobody dies, its a good day.

So, the first legitimate camping had to wait until I had a job, because it isn't really camping unless you are on vacation, right? I mean, otherwise its just being homeless. Am I wrong? So when I was finally gainfully employed long enough to be paid to not be there for a week, I went camping. I knew nothing else. Its what you do. Its what we did, therefore.... So all I had was a car with a plywood backseat (see previous posts) and we had to camp in that. I don't remember the first year I actually had a tent, but I couldn't stand up in it, I know that. I cooked over an open fire using pots and pans from home and spent hours scrubbing the black off them when I got home.

The next evolution was the coleman stove. I never did like the pump up stove. I've never liked or trusted white gas. I knew too many hippies who didn't get it, who would blow up the camp and never be able to boil water on the damned things. Having learned early how to build a good fire and stack rocks to level the grill, I pretty much cooked that way, even when we had a coleman stove. Besides, wood was free and I could afford matches.

Next came a tent I could stand up in. Still, the bed was on the floor and year by year, getting up in the morning became progressively more difficult. From there: marriage and the combining of assets. Now, we have every conceiveable real-camping item: good tent, camper shell on back of truck for the bed, a small folding kitchen stand, folding tables, permanent camping-only pots and pans -- you know, the blue spatterware, and a two-burner propane stove. This year, a Mr. Heater was added to the mix. This little gem is a stand alone propane burner that blows hot air in under the pop up gazebo with a net enclosure. Did I mention the pop-up gazebo or the trailer we have to rent to haul all the shit? Ah, camping. The simple life. Back to nature. Turns out the only thing that got trapped in the net enclosure was me. With the bugs.

So there we were, in Beverly Beach, more of a Californian campground than I am accustomed to. Very organized. A nice campsite right on the ocean, and because it is right on the ocean, it is also right on 101. I didn't care (theme of blog). In fact, as I made the long trek to the bathrooms each morning (and hourly thereafter) and watched the little old ladies strolled by as I stood at my little camp kitchen doing dishes outside, I began looking at the smaller travel trailers, envy in my heart. Unfortunately, we don't have room to park anything permanent.

I've figured it out, the transition from tent camping to rolling home. It isn't only increasing financial capacity, it is physiological: as the female bladder gives way, the need for a self-contained camping unit increases. Men? They will piss on trees as long as they can walk upright, but women? We are condemned to the long walk -- the long cold rainy walk at five in the morning.

I'm thinking: rentals.

seattle

Daytrippers, that's us. We (he) drove up yesterday morning and had a ridiculously expensive and so-so lunch at the Crabpot, but it is what I wanted to do, so I did it. They bring a huge pot of boiled seafood, red potato and corn and dump it on butcher paper and give you a crab fork and a mallot and off you go. Barbaric.

My husband said next time, we'll walk over to Clay's and have them dump my salmon platter right on the table. That way, we'll save money and gas and the food will be better. But they did give us a huge piece of mud pie for my birthday.

Then, we walked straight up the five flights of stairs without stopping to Pike's Place and after I was hospitalized for cardiac pain (no, not really, but I did begin to get a sense of the "elephant sitting on your chest" that you hear so much about) we strolled on down to the market and looked around.

The guy driving the rainbow school bus was allegedly out to save souls, ranting about how you marry some person you don't even know and you go to church on Sunday and you still don't know anything about that person and how he just wanted "someone who's 100%." So, truthfully, I'm not sure he wasn't just going to extreme lengths to find a date.

The peppers were gorgeous, and paper cones full of sweetpeas and flowers and flowers and thousands of people crushing through narrow markets of perfect produce. We would have taken the ferry to Vashon Island like we did on vacation, but Sid was home alone.

It was a beautiful day in Seattle. See?

not sick

A blogger outage on my birthday??? Arrgghh.

Well, I'm not sick. I guess that's the good news. I haven't felt sick for two or three weeks now. I can hardly remember being sick, although I called asia and when I told her I wasn't working today, her first question was, "You're not sick again are you?" A reasonable assumption. Long freaking winterspring.

Nope, I'm fine. My garden is growing, I'm out supporting the economy for all I'm worth which is more than it used to be, and all is well with the world. I say these things when I'm not working. I was listening to some guy on NPR talking about how much he hated working and he's an actor making 35K a week for a sitcom and two lines and he doesnt' wanna. Doesn't, like me, wanna do anything. She asked him (Terri Gross. I can't stand her interview style. Gross.) Anyway, she asks him, "What is it then you'd rather be doing? Sitting home all day watching TV?" And his answer was, "No. I just would rather shoot heroin." Now this is a guy I understand. If there was only enough.

Anyway, not to wax darkly, but it WAS something to do on a sunny windy rainy snowy day.

So, the sun is sort of out. It is my birthweek and I want to go to Seattle for my birthday dinner. I want to go the the crabpot where they just dump out a bunch of boiled seafood on butcher paper and hand you a bib. Cave style.

Then, time for camping. We will start out at the coast and depending on the weather, move camp as desired. We pretty much have it down to a science. I own everything camping related. Today I bought a screen liner for our QuikShade. We can keep the bugs out ala West Nile. Swine, Westnile, Birdflu. Jeez. Its a dangerous world, and that isn't even talking about the maniacs. But given recent trends, the age group that should live in mortal fear is the fetal to seven range.

That was bad.

Well, Lula broke another hip. That's two. That's it. Still she wants to get up and go. You can't keep her still, but I will try. One more time.

dinner

My husband caught a catfish out of the Willamette and we had it for dinner.

There. That seems like a complete post. Bring on the digestive advice. I'll be sitting here glowing in the dark. It is a tiny bit scary, but damn good eatin'.

I only get one day off this weekend. This makes me cranky.

babies

Maybe its because asia had her little baby. Maybe I'm just a sucker. If there's one born every minute then there's no reason it wouldn't be me. So there I was at Walmarche, shopping for toothpaste and shampoo for all my little people, unsuspecting. I saw a sign that said, "Free Kittens." Now, I don't like cats. I don't hate them, but I don't love them and they try to sit on my paper when I write or read, so right there is a problem.

So I walk up to this guy, this crackhead who clearly hasn't done his part to spay and neuter, and they are so damn cute. I think, hey, we just had to put the cat down, good ol' Charlie who was allegedly twenty years old and he might have been. He used to belong to Rosetta but she died and we just kept him. I guess he got kidney cancer and last week we had to put him down.

Now it isn't like the resident's missed Charlie. They don't know who they are let alone miss Rosetta's cat, so that isn't the reason. I looked at the kittens, chose the cutest one, a female, and they crackhead says, "Nope, not that one. She's taken." So fine, I think. Dodged a bullet. I went inside Walmarche and shopped.

When I came out, I walk back by the box of kitties and they guy says, "Hey, they didn't take her." So I strolled over and there she was, a tabby with four little white boots. What could I do? So I said okay. But now I have to put my shopping in the car and go back in for food and shit. Fifty bucks later I came back with a bed and food and litter and a sifting litter box for little Bootsie, we'll call her.

I picked her up and she cried. I couldn't take her away from her brother, so I took him too. Two. Two tiny little adorable kittens. Two eventual fucking cats.

You should have seen Lula. She wrinkled up her nose and kissed them like anybody would.

visitors

When it rains, it pours. Just as I was revelling in having asha in the same town as me on the eve of her granddaughter's birth, Cooky and Tracy rolled into town from Montana. They had been visiting a neice in a twelve story house with six hundred bedrooms and three entire apartments, a former minister's wife. The minister is former. In heaven she thinks, and is still holding the town together with both hands leaving nothing for herself.

It was almost like having all of my friends in one place again, except lorretta, and she will come one day, or so she says. But there is still nothing like girlfriends. Nothing like talking until you fall off to sleep, like a slumber party only without the boys. Well, one boy. Mine.

I still haven't seen asha, but believe she is actualy here and will appear at some point. I have seen that sweet little baby girl, though. Oh it made me want to be a grandma so bad that I called my son. Nothing happening there.

Ah well, in good time.

yard sale review

I don't like estate sales. This much we know. I don't like perma sales or close-out merchandise pretending to be yard sales. But today was a good day.

I got a book about Collette, a woman who has, like Anais Nin, always fascinated me. European. I also found two odd shaped old-school terra cotta pots; an antique metal, hang over the side of our clawfoot tub, soap holder; and three crappy novels that I will read because I'll read anything almost and these were three for a quarter and you know how I feel about prices at yard sales. Once I start a book I have to finish, eventually. Even Nora Roberts, I'm embarrassed to admit. But these are murder-most-foul, and that keeps me turning the pages.

I don't like the sales that are obviously the girlfriend's stuff. One sale today was a college lit major with buckets of high-minded literature and one book on men by Dave Barry, so we bought that one. My favorite is "Dave Barry Turns 50." I remember reading it out loud to Joanne while we were driving down the freeway home from visiting the nuthouse in Salem and it was raining so hard she needed something to keep her from completely freaking out.

So, I got my way for the couple of hours that my husband didn't fish today. Then, I came home and had a coughing fit so bad I puked and now my legs hurt from the pressure. My lungs will blow up one day, just you wait.

d

Okay, look--here's my theory: I suffer from vitamin D deficiency. I can't figure anything else out. My doctor is too stupid to figure it out and won't refer me, so I'm getting some backdoor advice. One month to the day after my April 11th bout, I went under again. These lost weeks are running into lost seasons. I'm tired. I'm confused. I'm concerned.

So, I started looking at where I live now, in the darkish northland, in the perpetual gray of Portland, and began looking at the literature on old people who are now being prescribed mega-doses (50,000 iu/wk) for depression, immune deficiency, ongoing flu-like symptoms, fall risk, etc etc etc and I thought, hey. I'm indoors all day with old people. I'm old people almost. I'm old enough. I get the mailers from aarp for crying out loud. So, this nurse starts talking about D and how new research is showing how depleted we are in the NW and then, just as we are talking about it, an email pops up from this health nut scientologist friend of mine, and its about D and I think: hey. Synchronicity. You don't have to hit me over the head with a brick.

So I bought some good, high-dose vitamin D. All of the antibiotics aren't working very well.

I'm sick of being sick. I'm sick of talking about being sick and I'm betting you're sick of reading about my being sick. sickening.

You have my apologies. I'll stop soon. I got this card for my ex once that said, "Remember all the trouble I've caused you?" you open it up and inside it said, "I'm almost done."

So, I'm almost done. I'm done.

lula interrupted

Lula fell. This happens. They don't recognize furniture as obstacles, see shadows as holes, glare as solid objects. So her fragile long leg cracked at the hip and now they've fixed that, but not her, and she's in a cage. Like a fly in a web, scrambling at the edges, trying to find her way home. Again. I crawled part way in the cage and stroked her hair until she fell asleep.

I think I can't do this anymore. I think I should never do anything else. I think I've seen too much and then I imagine I haven't even seen the tip of the iceburg.

yard evolution

In some order: row of veggie pots; bowl of bulbs; sunset azalea just opening; back porch and pots.

good ol' warren

Warren Goines, hanging in the lobby of Francis Xavier Restaurant, Gresham Oregon.

addendum

And more pots, and then.... half the yard is gone. It went like this: Hey, this really gets good sun. What if we just dug up the grass another three feet behind the flowers... and now, a veggie garden in the front yard! Hooray!

So off to market for more plant starts: more basil, more green peppers, lemon cukes, regular cukes, zuchinni, pole beans, yellow zuchinni and one thai pepper, in honor of Ashland. Sid even got some of his shit space back. How great is that?

pots

Sitting in my place, sun streams into the living room, blinding me as I type. I will not complain. It could be months before I see it again. I keep planting things, assuming they will grow in the gray light of Portland's spring.

People ask, when my shopping cart is full of starts: jalapeno and green peppers, four kinds of tomato, lemon cucumbers and sixpacks of lobelia, pansy and petunia; if I am some kind of professional gardener and what is the secret to growing things. They don't have a green thumb, they claim. I tell them all they need is water--the seeds know what to do.

But that's the trick: follow through. Not my strong suit. But I do love spring, and each year I promise that come the blistering afternoons of July, I won't abandon my posies and peppers for the cool of my airconditioned life. I will water. I will.

As mentioned in an earlier post, I'm taking over the sidewalk in front of the house. Apparently you have to get the city's blessing if you make raised beds, so I'm just doing lotsa pots. My honey asked if I was concerned that people walking by would take the veggies. I hope they do. I can never eat them all. I just like to grow shit.

random universe

So there I was, having breakfast at Francis Xavier in Gresham with a group of professional women. In the entry they always have paintings by local artists. Today, there was a 6x6 foot painting of an old man's face. At first glance, I thought it might be Jerry Garcia only with all white hair, but looking closer I thought, hey! That looks like my old buddy Warren. I looked down at the title and it read: Warren Goines.

I didn't know what to say to my colleagues. It was a little too random for strangers, and really, how do you explain that the madman on the wall is an old acquaintence, really he is. They think I'm crazy enough as it is.

Rosi Oldenburg was the artist. I called her. If you want to see it, Francis Xavier is at the corner of 181st and Halsey in Portland/Gresham. I guess she's taking him to Ashland for the fourth of July if you want to see him there.

clamfest 09

Kurt and Sid walk down the beach in search of the elusive Razor Clam.

After a long day of clamming we went out to a crappy Italian dinner with bad service and small portions. A Taste of Tuscany is right. Then, out to see Sunshine Cleaning. I didn't figure Seaside for a large moviegoing community, but we actually had the entire theatre to ourselves. I could speak out loud and we danced through the credits to "Spirit in the Sky" by somebody from Portland, I forget who.

A walk around the promenade, the dead town, overbuilt for the money times, seemed to hold its breath in dread of a bleak summer season, hoodlums on streetcorners, waiting for opportunity instead of inspiration.

This is the morning rush of clammers.

fifth

Fabulous Sea Captain Art in our motel room.

We are in Seaside, catching clams and celebrating five years of marriage. Five years. I am so proud of us. We have beat the odds, sticking together through the learning curve and now, settling into a comfy groove. I'm sure there is much more to come. I was talking to the wife of one of my patients and when I told her of our anniversary, she said to her husband, "They don't even know what its about yet." And I'm sure she's right. She's been married 63 years. All I know is that I married the right guy after all those many years.

We are moving a bit slower this morning after an evening of harvesting 30 clams and cleaning them one by one. My knees feel like I imagine an eighty year old's feels. Sid is even injured by unlimited exercise. Unlike me, he doesn't know when to stop. Kurt says he has the heart of a hummingbird and will burn himself out early.

Later same morning: my hands are raw from digging barehanded in freezing surf, wind whipping my hoodie ties in my face. I skillfully captured my limit and headed up to the motel which overlooks the beach and the parking lot of mad clammers. They began arriving at 5:30 this morning. I know this because we were up, as usual. Guys in camo, which begs the question: who are they hiding from?

75 clams, 8:00 am

We have cleaned 75 freakin' clams between yesterday and today, and Kurt is cleaning ten more. We took more than our fair share. Everyone does. Does that make it right? No, but you can come over for clam chowder any time.

This evening, Saturday, we went down for more, but it was raining and nasty and there was a mentally ill guy following us around with a turquoise PVC clam gun, kicking over the plugs of sand pulled with great effort by me not by him. It was irritating because I am not at work and I believe I do my time with crazy people all week. Poor me.

So, we did laundry at the laundramat which was predictably reminiscent of days gone by at many other laundramats in Ruch and Central Point and Coosbay and Red Bluff and Jacksonville next to the Jubilee Club which always made for a confusing folding stage because by then I was usually hammered. And the machines used to cost a dime. But at least I finally washed my double-sized Coleman sleeping bag even if it did cost five bucks.

And, we took a drive down to Wheeler where I would happily live out my life staring out over the marshland.

hotline

Full sun all day at long, long last. We rode bikes up to Hawthorne to get coffee and a paper, then home to plant more stuff, a quick nap, and now, coasting into the afternoon. Ah, Sunday blessed Sunday. No wonder God wanted it all to himself.


Yesterday I was looking for my cell phone--not very hard because I hate my cell phone, but found that I feel pretty disconnected without it. I couldn't find it anywhere and when I called, it went straight to voice mail--a very bad sign. I was almost anxious while driving to asia's baby shower. I mean, what if something bad or unforseen happened and I needed help? I couldn't, for example, speak to another human being and request their assistance, right? I couldn't walk up to someone's front door and knock, unannounced, and say, "May I please use your phone? I seem to be in a jam." They would never let me in the house because I could be a stalker lunatic ax murderer child eater. I could be. However, I managed to get through the day without incident and decided several times that I don't need a cell phone, but by the time I left the shower (which was nice and the food was most excellent and I won baby gift bingo --who made that pizza?) I knew it would be ludicrous to live without one. Its like a car, once you have one, there's just no going back. I had to find my phone.

When I arrived at home, I was drawn to the back yard and my many as-yet-unplanted-plants, and there it was, not quite floating in about an inch of water in one of the starter boxes. I vaguely remembered tucking it in among the plants as I carried tray after tray from the car to the house the day before. Needless to say (and yet I say it) it was not only dead, but dissolving--the batterly leaking blue shit like fly guts, tiny metal parts decomposing in my hand. So that was that. I decided to truck on up to the AT&T store which is never closed and buy me a new red phone. My own hotline.

Now, you could find the search bar and type in "one good line" and find the story of how I acquired the present/previous phone. Its pretty funny. Anyway, I arrived at the store and there were probably ten unoccupied employees glomming onto me for my business.

Recall that I am very easy to sell things to. First of all, I like to spend money, have some to spare, and don't care all that much about anything. So, the guy didn't have to work nearly as hard as he did. Even so, it started out badly.

He says, "Oh, I see you're not an authorized user on this account."
"Yes I am," I countered.
"Actually you're not," he returned, smiling.
"...am too." I hate it when they say "actually" as though I am not living in reality. Pshaw.
Smiling still, indulging my obvious sense of entitlement which is rooted in years of history, he said, "You're just a user. The laws have changed. Now you have to be an authorized user. And you're not."

I'm just a user. Right.

"So call my husband," I suggested, ever so succinctly.
"He has to call 611 from his cell phone himself," he said.
"Well," I began, "Funny thing is, I don't seem to have a phone right now which is pretty much why I'm here so why don't you go ahead and call my fucking husband please. That way, He'll know he has to call 611 to authorize me. Otherwise, I'd have to drive out to Sauvie Island where he is salmon fishing, and that would delay this pending deal indefinitely. You do work on commission, right?"

I didn't really say fuck.

So, I bought a phone and an ear thing, which is called a blue tooth although I can't imagine why. It looks nothing like a tooth, but comes with its own little sticky pieces of wallpaper and I can customize it with leopard or splatted paint or six other slick little things that will roll up and fall in my ear when they get old. Why someone would need to customize something half an inch wide and an inch long, I don't know. I also don't know how to use one, and I'm sure if you know how, it makes talking on a cell phone while driving ever so much safer. But for me, the techno-impaired, its just one more fucking thing. But the phone has a HUGE display when you're dialing which was a quick sell for this blind woman. If I can see it, I'll take it. I don't care how tiny and sexy a cell phone is if I can't see shit.

Time for a motorcycle ride.

arrival

Sun is up early, which, in Portland, usually waits until noonish. Like lazy garage-sailors, they don't really get going until around ten. So an 8:00 showing is impressive, bodes well for the day. I will drop smoked salmon off for a potluck, off to a baby shower, then back to my garden for an evening at home and hopefully fresh salmon for dinner.

Husband tried to hang, to do the potluck-as-a-couple thing, but the call of the wild loon is strong in him, and he had to hit the beach one more time before fishing on the Columbia is over for this spring season. It will open again, later, but the run has been good for him -- 3 Chinook so far-- and he wants two more to equal his record in a spring season. I just want dinner.

frenzy

Spring is here. You can see it from out my front door. The orange runucculus is so beautiful. I'll try to get a picture of it loaded just for you. The camelia tree hangs heavy with flat pink blooms that will carpet the narrow sidewalk and be smashed into slick mush within a week. If I rake the petals daily, this won't happen, but you'll have to remember that maintenance never was my strong suit. Planting? Absolutely. I'm a great starter.

So far I've planted:
burgundy sunflowers
morning glory
nasturtium
yellow clover
aster
crystal palace lobelia
pansies
impatiens
a red shamrock-looking plant
creeping charlie
small cascading petunia
runnucculus
25 fuschia
bulbs
beans
lemon cucumber
yellow crookneck squash

...and my yard is tiny. I'm claiming eminent domain and taking over the sidewalk. No one will care, so long as a stroller and a wagon can pass in front of my house.

I am feeling better today. I have learned to value the days that I feel strong and healthy, and today was one.

The sun is streaming through the bay window, green and gold through the rhody, the sky beyond it bruised and brooding. Maybe it has rained for the last time.

posies for msb

I'm not much good at placing the photographs yet. I guess you'll have to just enjoy the pictures and try to follow the bouncing ball. Barb, these are for you.

There is nothing like the center of a poppy. When I was growing up, after my father died we lived with my Grandmother and my Uncle Alan. He was off by a few degrees and took great pleasure in his poppies. I was always fascinated by the circus-tent centers, knowing nothing of heroin at the time. Tissue blossoms of deep red, half of our front yard was knee deep in them. He'd stand out in the yard every evening, the hose spraying a fine mist, and he'd rock back and forth, back and forth, for an hour at a time. I admired his ability to be still.

When I found pink poppies, I was instantly charmed. I'm not usually a fan of pink, but this shade is perfect.

springtime in the northland

I couldn't wait. Sue me. Last week it was fuschia saturday at Freddy's and I got 24 fuschias for six pots. Then, I toured the beds around my unloved yard, determined to fill all of the empty spots for a riot of spring color. I bought
Runucculus
Trailing Lobelia
blue Columbine
Day lilies
yellow clover
two kinds of trailing purple stuff
geraniums
and there are still places for tons of stuff.

Sick or not, I planted. Last year I held my breath waiting for the Canby Master Gardner's Faire and ended up disappointed. Anything called a "Faire" is usually overrated. But they do have some fun stuff, and I'll go again, dragging my husband along for the heavy lifting, but I'm mostly looking for an Azalea for the front yard. I spent some time cutting back ferns in the rose beds. I think they do best with a good haircut just as the new fronds are unfurling their fuzzy little coils. I broke off two lilies I didnt' see. I need permanent markers for those guys, little sticks reminding me that something is being born again, just beneath the autumn detrius. They are so fragile.

Speaking of fragile... I am so fucking sick. I'm nearly through the zpack and still ill. Still very ill. Still as ill as I've been in months, and for those of you who follow this bouncing ball, I've been damn sick.

I tried visualizing wellness and abundance and all that, and I haven't abandoned the hope that positive thought has a role, but damn. I'm exhausted.

Tomorrow is Easter Sunday. We are staying home because I am sick. I don't get to see my son because I am sick. I miss Easter Baskets and hiding the eggs and always having one that never gets found until the heat of summer gives it away.

sunnyday

Like everyone else, I am happy to see the sun --happy to put my sunglasses on to drive, happy to press nasturtium seeds into the soil with my bare hands, happy to barbeque pork chops on the deck. It is Sunday, after all.

Sunday, which by rights, should be a lazy day at home. But I worked today. I was the manager of the day or MOD, a corporate decision that we should take turns hanging around on weekends to make sure everybody is in uniform instead of the weekend comefuckme clothes. So, I earned my keep. And now, my viable public, you have proof that I am capable of taking turns. And they said it couldn't be done.............. I am just happy to have a job. I've done worse things for money, you know.

But I do remember when the only control I had in my small life was not wearing the fucking uniform. It was all I could do about anything.

And my life is still small, but I live comfortably in it. Its all one uniform or another. I told them I'd love to wear a uniform just so I wouldn't have to shop for thousands of dollars worth of shit and still have nothing to wear.

Be careful what you ask for.

I've been connecting with folks on Facebook. I had to, and there are alot of people there, but the threads confuse me. I'm not sure where I am in it, or who can see it. I think I like email better, and blogging the best. There's none of that pesky back and forth. Just me blabbering away. What is the sound of one hand typing? I'm just not clever enough to keep up.

I've decided not to tell anyone I have a cold. I am into visualizing perfect health and may be just the teensiest bit nearsighted. I am dripping on the keyboards, coughing, running a fever of 101 and there it is: the negative. I live in perfect health I live in perfect health I live in perfect health.

lula

She follows me around, pushes my hair out of my face, certain I am the other half of her, the part she has lost, her memory. She clings and frets and tidies up the place -- our place now -- tsk tsk tsking over the mess. She doesn't know what all those other people are doing here.

Each morning it is like this, as this new little chick imprints on the first kind face of the day and follows it until sleep breaks the spell and everything is new again and she must find, once again, all she has lost.

I have a note behind my desk posted on the file cabinet. It says, "You can't have everything. Where would you put it?" Lula kept reading it, and finally, yesterday, she got it. She smiled and the words that came out were nonsense, but I could see it in her eyes. Kindred. And common ground appeared between us, fleeting and ethereal, disappearing as quickly as it had come. But in that single moment she knew who she was.

pompeii

Okay. So we're going to Alaska instead of Maine. It is, first and foremost, remarkable to me that I have this dilemma. Maine? Alaska? Alaska? Maine? Oh the luxury problems of my perfect life.

At any rate, we've settled on Alaska because I love Alaska and have never seen the southern part and my husband can kill something there. We could probably get a lobster in Maine, but in Alaska, ther are fish. Big Alaskan king salmon and halibut. I will also fish and send them home in great frozen crates to a freezer that I am emptying out as fast as I can.

So he books us for this cabin slash charter boat thing, four nights, three days of fishing and there it is. Done deal. Then... drumroll....

Our sweet little cabin is across Cook Inlet from Mt. Redoubt. We can sit on our porch and watch

A FUCKING VOLCANO ERUPT???
I DON'T THINK SO.

Now I'm as open minded as any neurotic, but don't you think its ever so slightly, just maybe a tiny bit, ABSURD to think: Oh, it probably won't blow while we're sitting in the boat in the shadow of the mountain. Chances are we'll get out alive. Here's the view from the porch>

I've voiced my concerns, and truth be told, the volcano is just kind of puffing away today. But I'm not as brave as I used to be.

Am I?

townies

I wish, and so should you, that I had a better memory. If I did, I'd remember to bring the camera with me when embarking on each new adventure. I've always used words to tell the tale, and I guess that's good, but I'd love to have been able to show you the steel grid canopy, the rusted pillars of the forest surrounding our new fishing spot beneath the Burnside Bridge.

Now, for the non-Portlanders, Burnside is known for derelicts and danger, the Mission district, Chinatown, places you don't go after dark unless you want some heroin, which I don't anymore so I don't go. Driving up Burnside in the early morning is a study in consequences. Later in the day, driving by on my way to one assesssment or another, it can look like freedom. Street people don't have much overhead, and when I'm buzzing by in my car payment and a five hundred dollar professional costume, it sometimes looks easier.

But I know better. I've lived on the roads.

Ah, digression.

The Eastside Esplanade is the brainchild of a former mayor, who took the east Willamette riverbank and turned it into a walkingbikingskating, and now, fishing, area that winds beneath the bridges, through homeless camps, up and over bridges and down the west bank through Waterfront Park. My husband has never fished it, but each time we go for a bike ride or a walk around the esplanade, he comments that he should try it. So he has for the past couple of weeks.

Turns out there is a sturgeon nursery under that water. Yesterday he caught four shakers (too young to keep, who shake the line, thus the name) and two adult fish, one too thin, one too short to keep. I guess pictures wouldn't matter so much here. You've seen one sturgeon, you've pretty much seen them all. See previous post.

I rode my bike five minutes down there, first ride of the season, and sat around for fish after fish. He threw away a skinny keeper, an act he is certain has changed his luck. I tried to tell him he makes his own luck by his words and thoughts, but he wasn't having it. He took me home, went back and stayed til dark in pennance for dissing the fishing gods.

It was a coldish day, standing under the bridge, industrial city-scape before us. I love Portland.

ides

This day always seems an appropriate nod to negativity or whatever it is I am once again or maybe for the first time attempting to outrun. I used to believe I was subject to the Hemingway curse, and now, even further, that my writing will lack substance if divorced from the beautiful beautiful darkness.

We'll see.

and better still

I feel like I am emerging from a dark cave. This morning, when a woman asked me how I've been, I looked at her wide native face and couldn't lie. "I've been sick for a really long time and I'm not talking about it anymore." Its a process, this getting well. I self-identify as a sick person these days. If I look back, which I am prone to do, I've been sick off and on forever. But that is the view through these eyes right now. I, like most adults who do not always make great health choices, have long periods of wellness punctuated by episodes of unwellness. But after a string of episodes, coupled with/caused by an untenable situation at home (read: stepmothering), it can look pretty dim in the rearveiw mirror.

Kari says: Birkram yoga.
Gwen says: Get sugar out of the mix
Lorretta says: the Secret
Sharon says: come with me to Mexico.

I'm willing to try anything at this point. Anything but Birkram yoga. But room temperature yoga? Yes. I'd love to give myself yoga.

We drove out to Newberg last evening. I tell my honey I like to drive out there because it reminds me of the early days of our time together, when each of us was a mystery to the other, but the truth for both of us is that we go to see brother Martin.. We go to see if he's still there, still at 84, because he knows God. Now, I think I'd be like him if I had 16 hours a day to spend contemplating the shape of the sun. Truth be told, I don't know if I could ever be that undistractable. I admire people who are able to shut it down and meditate, but I think also, sometimes, that they are into self-abuse. Denial and suffering isn't the path for me.

But neither is the treadmill of illness.

So, its kind of crunch time in my world. My home is quiet, but I still live here.

better

Alright. A bit lighter today. I finished the last of the poison I was forced to take or die, and as it clears my system, I am clearer and feel my feet on the ground. It would help that the sun is out if it wasn't so fucking cold. Will spring ever come?

Will it? I've always been willing to wait on the tiny green buds -- happy to see them, but still, willing to pass the winter with relative acceptance -- but this year, this year is different. It has been too cold, with too few false starts, too little warmth day in and day out and too much snow. With the blog, you could, if you cared, look back and see if I've bitched my way to the spring thaw, but I don't think I'm lying. I'd tell you if I were.

I have, as usual, enormous plans for my tiny yard. One, according to my honey, is further limiting the shit-space for Sid. He sees it that way. I see it otherwise: returning the front yard to its former shimmer. I can't stand dog-trodden grass, all piss-burnt and muddy. You get the picture. Ozarkian. So, I'm making a chickenwire fence to enclose the part that needs to heal, and sending the darling little dog to the middle of the yard, back behind the flower bed. That my husband would live in a mud hut as long as he could fish is one point of view. We live in a walking neighborhood and it matters. People look. 'nuff said. I will mend the yard. Sid will understand.

I am three days into seven days off. I had to take some time off to heal up: heal my heart and my head. I've always despised women who need to do self care, but here I am, caring for the self. So far it includes alot of sleeping, new vitamins and supplements, and quiet. I'd be off to the sanitarium were it not for liberal vacation policies.

downtown sturgeon

Life in Portland has its upside. Perhaps not for this dead fish, but for my happy husband, who gets to stroll a few blocks, drop a line in the water under the Burnside bridge and bring home a dinosaur for dinner. Life on the river...

I went online to learn how to skin and filet the monster, and assisted in the process of removing armour, strip by strip and taking the irridescent flesh to the sink. Eating things that feed off the bottom of the Willamette? A bit scary.

bart

This past week was a busy one at work. Not only did we lose Lulu--rare treasure-- but the cook walked out. The chef. So I had to make pancakes for one hundred people. One hundred twenty-five, including the staff. Also, we are having a Mardi Gras celebration on Fat Tuesday, and in our exuberance, decided we would make papier mache floats. Oh god.

My own very special design was to be the head of a joker. I always say yes to creative projects. Always. Yes is the answer. Do you know how to make papier mache? Sure I do. Do you know how to bartend? Sure. This is how I've gotten through life, one lie at a time. I did cover part of a balloon with newspaper and glue in the 5th grade to make a pinata, and I have poured beer from a keg, so where is the big fat friggin lie? Huh?

The trick is scale.

I said, in my wisdom and experience: "You just get some chicken wire and make a form. Its a snap." And I'm sure it is for someone with leather hands. So there we were, unrolling wire that much preferred to remain rolled. I needed fencing pliars and a cowboy in the worst way. I needed help. But I was the expert. I WAS the help.

I managed to created a sort of cylinder with the unweildy wire, about four feet high and three feet in diameter. I gathered one end of the cylinder together so it looked something like the bottom of a two liter plastic bottle, and formed a nose out of baloons and paper, a pointy chin out of cardboard and more paper. To create the jester hat of flopping points, I cut segments along the top edge. Over a three day period, I painstakingly covered the entire object with miles of newspaper strips and gallons of glue. I stood back and smiled:

I had created Bart Simpson.

I'll get a few pictures of him before he goes into the dumpster.

signs

There is a new sign, or a sign heretofore unnoticed by me, on Powell Blvd. at about 33rd. It says:

Restaurant

Husky

Maltese or Whatever

I had to drive around the block and make sure I'd read it right. I'm crazy for bad signs, and this, in my studied opinion, is among the top ten. Its a legitimate sign, backlit, acrylic, set high on a pole between other real signs in a small shopping complex. I wonder what kind of food they serve. Or if they serve food to dogs. I'll have to do some sleuthing to figure out this mystery. I don't think I want to eat there, but I'll try to get a look at the menu. Stay tuned.

Lost another one today. Lulu went to heaven. She was great -- from my neighborhood. Her "family home" was on Division, and is now one of the many trendy thai restaurants in the area. She told me that a streetcar used to run up and down Clinton Street back in the day, and she knew everyone in the neighborhood. She was a great lady, dignified, wealthy. This past year I had to print paper money for her because she thought she should have alot of it laying around. Thank god for the internet. You can download damn good money. Now I have a drawer full of it at work and nobody is interested. But Ernie is moving in next week. Maybe he needs some. Its one-sided, but Lulu never seemed to mind. They found Ernie sleeping in the laundry room and wandering in the parking lot, so sounds like his time has come. Heaven knows we have a vacancy.

the take

The last few weeks have been akin to carrying mud uphill in a bucket, but today is Valentine's day, and I am happy to be home, feet up, husband out shopping for flowers which are all I need. Flowers and a card. Did I say flowers? I meant white flowers. Nice white cut flowers, impermanent as snow. And the card: thoughtful but not mushy. My favorite Valentine so far showed a small dog sitting on a red pillow. Inside, it simply said, "Sit. Stay. Be mine." My husband is an uncomplicated man.

The clam trip did not go off as planned. Gwen, my sweet but unprepared friend, came along for the first lesson. She said it best: "If I am going to be standing in the ocean, I will probably get wet." I should have insisted she have waders. I love mine. Nothing like chest waders to give a false sense of security. There we were, wading out with the lessening tide, further and further still, in search of the elusive razor clam, when WHOOSH in comes a three foot wave. I'd call it a sneaker wave, but I don't think it was being sneaky. I think I just wasn't paying very close attention. I grabbed Gwen and we stood fast against the pull of the outgoing water, butt-high, and waited while her knee-hi boots filled with icy saltwater. Truth be told, we went out too early and the sea was rough. When it is like that, wave after wave pounding the sand, the clams pretty much stay down. We got a few nice ones, and I'm not sure what she did with hers, but we've had chiopino and fried clams. Chowder for Haley's birthday tomorrow.

I feel like I should make a blanket apology to the few who read this about my tone lately. I need a week off to remember that life is life and death is death. It is hard to take anything seriously when it is all so fucking serious. Sometimes I wish I worked at the coffee shop, complaining about customers and coworkers, blissfully unaware of gravity.

will and the living

February in the dementia unit and they drop like flies in August. Only not so fast. They live and live and live and live, hanging onto each breath like spoonfuls of honey. We say things like, "Here's your purse, you can go now." And, "Mike isn't coming from Alaska, you can go now." and we sing and strum harps and some who didn't know her very well will pray at her bedside and I can see her shushing them, sending them to holier beds. We mutter just beyond her hearing, whispering things like, "I hate to see her linger like this." But this lingering, this thinly tethered life, is all there is for her. It is the only thing. Lyla was born on Friday the 13th. One of her boys was born on her birthday, on Friday the 13th. Her sons expect she will die tomorrow. I think they've known this all along but didn't have the heart to tell me because they think I think I know what I'm doing. Lyla knows when to die. She'll go when she's good and ready.

On the other hand, Etta's children won't leave. She is two weeks dead and they are hanging around, retelling the story of her passing to anyone who will listen for the third fourth fifth time. It is as though Etta's ghost, and the ghost of her husband so recently passed, are still here. I saw them coming toward me this morning -- not the ghosts, the children-- arms flung in grief, tears still rolling, ready for a great big hug and the retelling of the retelling of how precious it all was... and it isn't that it wasn't precious, its just that for me, it wasn't. Little is.

"Its hard to leave, isn't it?" I asked. They stared at me as though I'd given voice to a secret. "When you go," I continued, "it will become real and you can get on with things." I wanted to say, "They're not here." That's what they needed. But I had said enough.

I'm tired. Survivor starts tonight. Time to lighten up a tiny little bit.

clamming for four

Off we go to Seaside. Four pairs of waders, four clam guns, four clam nets (three nets and one cut-out plastic bottle) four pounding sticks, four hats, eight gloves, eight boots, and one dog. We have grapes and cheese and apples and salami and sweet-hot mustard.

If the shellfish gods are with us, we will limit within an hour, bringing home 60 clams. The most clams I've cleaned at one time is 45, that was on our anniversary one year when we each got a limit and hubby changed his hat, put on sunglasses and went back as someone else to get another limit. It is quite a process to clean razor clams. They are nasty little things.

hopeful

It is sunny today. Tomorrow it will rain, or so they claim. Today I buy bulbs: a daylily I've never seen before, bright blue iris, anemones, daffodil and one other I can't name and although it is sunny, it is cold and I don't want to run out to my car to find out. I bought a big big bowl and will plant my bulbs in layers to have color all the way through summer or at least until we go on vacation and nobody remembers to water them. But first, must drill a hole in the bottom of the bowl, making it into a pot.

It is my first act of gardening, premature as always, but the sun comes out and I find myself at nurseries, wandering through row upon row of baby plants. They seem to be thriving, so why wouldn't mine? A clerk at Dennis' Seven Dees gave me a bunch of daffodil bulbs. She knows I'll be back with the big money come April. Last year, if you'll remember, I waited patiently for the Canby Master Gardener's Faire. It was beautiful but disappointing. This year, I won't wait so long. I've been to that rodeo twice now, and it is not really worth waiting for, except for the walk and towing my new garden cart around.

Also on the landscaping front this year: Dog management. Excrement. Lawn-killing urine. I intend to fence Sid out of his current territory, re-seed, and create a little wood chip-covered area just for him. I'm sure he'll adjust.

Lyla

Lyla is almost gone. Etta is gone. I am sleeping poorly and dreaming of the dead.

Yesterday, I sat in the room with Etta's body, listening to the harpist sent over by hospice but who arrived just a little too late. No worries... her children figured harp music could accompany their mother's soul as it finally rose to join her husband and just in time for Valentine's day. This is what they thought was happening, so how do I know? When they invited me, I joined them so as not to appear rude.

Me.

Had I any humanity in my threadbare bag of tricks, I would surely have leaned back in the chair and allow the music to wash over me. I would have taken in the gravity of my situation. But all I could think was: I really must tune my harp and start practicing again.

Selfless? Not this girl.

But Lyla? This is different. Mother to four wild boys, wife of a cop. She carried her purse everywhere, every day. It was the only thing left that made her a woman. The only thing she could remember needing -- not shelter, not sustinence. She kept all of her bingo winnings in it: squashed bits of chocolate and grimy poker chips -- the token economy of the dementia world where money means nothing and is as useful to wipe your ass with as it is to spend. Every night when I left work, I'd call to her as she sat watching television: "You're in charge," I'd say. She'd laugh and wave me away. She was cool. She never lost it. I should say she IS cool, in the present tense, because she is still alive, this moment she is. Still breathing, still small and adorable, still Lyla.

i see dead people

weekendless

If I had my way, nothing would happen. Nothing would be planned, there would be no pressure to be social or friendly or proper or improper. I would sit in my same place, tapping these keys and eventually, four or five crappy pages later, something would begin to emerge--an image in stilling water, wobbly and unclear--and I'd have a beginning. It would sort itself out, paragraph by paragraph, line by line, word by word, until three hundred and fifty pages were mine.

But I have to do the laundry, so this will have to wait.

Tomorrow is Super Bowl Sunday. I don't care about this. My husband will watch the commercials, but not care too much about the game, but because he is a man, we will sit in front of the television and submit. I will be here, and eat clam dip and BBQ potato chips, and slices of havarti and horseradish white cheddar and salami and grapes. We are invited places, but I don't want to go. Neither does husband, but he uses me as his excuse. I don't care. There's plenty of room under the bus.

Why is there always something that needs to be celebrated? By this time (post holiday) I am so over celebrating that I need a new word for over. I think we need to create a new holiday in celebration of nothing. It would go like this: You would sleep in, get up whenever you pleased, eat a bowl of cereal or something out of a can and use disposable dishes, hang around and watch old movies you love but don't care about and could sleep through, nap, read, go for a walk and out for dinner in a nearby restaurant that doesn't care if you wear your jammies all day, and wander on home. The phone wouldn't be allowed to ring and the most complicated thing you'd be allowed to do is peel an orange.

What shall we call it, this day in honor of inertia? Hmmm?

Etta is dying, by the way. She's pissed at her family because her husband dropped dead a few short months ago after he had pampered her for 63 years, and she was thinking the pampering would continue. Now, old and crazy, her family has left her in one small room to live out her life alone and befuddled, in the care of strangers. There is little comfort in that, turns out.

I shouldn't be so cavalier about all this. She is doing her level best to follow him. You see this, or I do, in long marriages. They sincerely have no intention of going the rest of the way alone. They made a deal back when, and she intends to keep it. Til death us do part, my ass.

day off

Not working from home or at home. The problem with my job, or my life, or both, is that a life spent caring for others eight to ten hours a day leaves very little for others. Very very little. Not enough, it turns out. From time to time I require a day absent teenagers, absent housework, absent all of the things that feel like pressure to me. I began the day saying nothing when asked. I had nothing to say and could have spent my five minutes proving it, but today is a good day to sit at the best fucking coffee shop in Portland and make my fingers do the talking. I have written four crappy pages and it feels good to be anywhere else.

To be fair, this is cabin fever. This is winter. I will wander home when the fog lifts, drag my bicycle out of its hiding place and tour the neighborhoods, winter-bare, and dream of my garden to come. I will prune my poor frost-bitten hydrangeas which are as beautiful in brown as in blue, and I will leave the roses for March. I will avoid dog shit and thorns and I will make an effort to welcome Spring because I know it will come. I know it to a scientific certainty, as someone in a movie said.

I hired a new girl after firing an old one. In my industry, no-call-no-show is an unforgiveable sin. I had to hand it to her though. She called about three o'clock in the afternoon of the next day and said, "Man. Sorry. I drank a whole bottle of Nyquil and just woke up."
"Oh," I said. "That's alot of Nyquil."
"Yeah," she said. "I was really sick."

So, I'm not going to think about work anymore.

Irene

We had a conference to meet with Irene's family today, to let them know we think "it's time." Time to move from one side of the building to my side. My side. The crazy person's side. We were all seated around a large conference table and Irene waltzed in, a too-tight silky blouse clinging to unhinged breasts that, in another time, were accustomed to riding considerably higher than her waist. At any rate, she joined us with an exuberant smile, sat down, and said, "Oh! And here I'd thought you'd forgotten my birthday!" She grinned, twinkle in her eye, stood to kiss her children, and sat back down. "We usually celebrate with, well, things (we filled in words like cake, candles, cards) and she said "yes, those things," as though she hadn't missed a beat. "But this is fine," she said, smiling, looking person to person as she (and we) sealed her fate.

It wasn't her birthday.

Her daughter was shocked but not surprised to learn of mother's nocturnal wanderings, her agitation at finding an empty box and damning the person who had the audacity to send her nothing and make her pay postage for it. She'd emptied it at Christmas, full of cookies and a snow-white sweater, but had no memory of it and cannot be reminded. So she will come to live with me for the remainder of her days, and we will find her a brassiere, because she would want one, and that is what she would call it.

clammy

Another day at the beach. We left around nine, and the low tide we were waiting for wasn't to be until nearly 7:00 pm. So, a slow drive to Seaside, stopping to get shellfish tags at GI Joe's, which is now just Joe's because I guess war stores aren't commercially viable or something. Tags in hand, we headed across the war zone of highway 26, downed trees evident as close in as Banks. Don' t you love the complementary strip of trees along major scenic routes? Creating the [false] impression that you are driving through dense Oregon forest, only you're not. Beyond the ever-thinning strip, light from the clearcut streams through. But, doomsayer that I am, it was a nice drive, and we were most definitely in the mood to get out of dodge. Cabin fever, stir crazy, you name it. I'd been inside too long. I'm almost never interested in leaving the couch, but after the snow and the endless sick, I don't care how shitty I feel, I just want to feel shitty somewhere else.

resolute

I'm thinking clutter would be a good target for my resolve. I'm not sure what I think will happen if I get rid of something I paid twenty bucks for and might still use one day in the distant future. The notion that I'm saving these things for my children is a lie worn thin as soup. I only have one son and he is grown, has one chair, a dish and a fork and is happy. My upstairs, downstairs and closet are proof if you think I'm lying. I have a yard sale every year and still I shop to fill the void. People ask me if I collect anything. I tell them yes. I collect things that cost money. Still I must have have have because I can can can. My new shopping mantra is: I need nothing. I need less.

So if I toughen up and fill a few boxes with some okay things, do I think the luxury police will come? Am I afraid that leaving perfectly good items in the Goodwill Box will call forth the anti-gods of poverty, that they will chatter amongst themselves, saying, "She has forgotten."? And what will the cost be then? Double? Triple? In the olden days, if someone stole from me, I used to take three times back before considering it even.

What does that mean?

I cannot resolve to use my treadmill. I just can't. That would be repetitive and embarrassing. And sugar, ah... sugar. That battle is not mine to fight or to win.

nine years of bad luck

Here we are, year nine in the new century. My husband started it off by breaking a mirror in the bathtub, his first act of the early morning of the first day of the new year. He felt it bode somewhat dismally for his future. I'm glad I don't believe in bad luck. Which is not to say I don't have any.

Caveat: I am still muddy-headed and cruising into week 6 of this funky headcold sinus infection flu cough common cold bronchitis walking pneumonia.

My great-neice is coming to stay for two weeks while she gets started in college. We will tuck her away in a corner and feed her vegetarian food. She's small and won't take up much space. And, as all children's plans seem to go, the apartment she was to rent is a myth and it is probably a better idea, according to her, to start school in March instead of January. It is cold, afterall. But, as I've come to learn, two weeks means two weeks, and I can return her, postage paid to her mother in Idaho, without question.

Living with two adolescent females is interesting. I do remember being eighteen. I was as full of hubris as either of them, certain I knew things -- important things -- things my elders could never conceive--things they had somehow passed by on life's journey, didn't have the awareness to pick up and could not go back for, like unredeemable coupons, outdated and worthless snips of paper. When I said happy new year to Nicole, she answered, "My new year began in September, on my birthday. This means nothing." Oh, how I wanted to remind her that, even as tragically unique she is, the laws of physics do apply to her.

Naw. They won't hear it. Not yet. And its not my job.

I wish I had learned, years earlier, that I am only one of many. And still it eludes me. It is true: I hate to be common... garden variety... but it is only when I can sincerely if momentarily grasp this fact that I have some hope of connection with the rest of the herd.

Plus, if you think your thoughts are worth recording, you're doubly-fucked.

Oh, well.

Yesterday was my son's birthday. I miss him. He is still the best thing I ever did. Happy Birthday, Marky.

requiem for a bad dad

Bishop died. He kept saying, "open the door" as his daughter sat bedside, singing him quietly into the next life. Forgiveness is a powerful thing. In the last months he had painted doors and churches and naked figures and yawning graves. He was a pompous and terrible guy, with an Irish tenor (is there such a thing?) when the rest of us were singing variations on "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain" he'd bust out with "Danny Boy" or some obscure 50's lounge tune. He was conflicted, closeted and guilty.

When the struggle for breath was over, Bishop's daughter quietly took his paintings down from the wall, and flew back to New York, where her ability to forgive the unforgiveable will serve her well, no doubt.

What I have always loved about crazy people is that none of that matters anymore. They have come to die, and we stand with them, haphazard guides, just this side of the open door.

review

Backyard art in snow.















Let's see... most memorable moment of this holiday season: some guy on a bus bench in front of Freddy's eating a fillet of raw salmon, snow caked around him like a seal on an iceberg, holding the fish in both hands, flesh-tearing face in the middle of it, styrofoam packaging lying at his feet. It was impossible to know at a passing glance, whether it was hunger, mental illness or youthful posturing that I was looking at. Only in Portland. He was eating well, or expensively. Or expansively. Get those Omega 3's, boy.

Christmas was nice. I got an MP3 player and have over 300 songs on it already. I didn't think I'd like it, but now have my own infernal playlist to listen to in self defense of AC/DC. I'm pretty happy to be able to listen to that one Moby Grape cut I loved when I was sixteen. I have everything from the Simple Minds to Dan Hicks to the not very obscure Rolling Stones. I'm a little surprised at the amount of country music, and eighties music. I am anything but sophisticated. I love songs I can sing loud with in the car alone. I'm pretty good. OH. I forgot Quicksilver. Shit. Gotta get some of that.

I also got a set of camping knives that has eight blades that lock into a switchable handle and wrap all up into a canvas bag and stay in the camping gear until time to camp, and then, because I have a crappy memory, its like Christmas all over again.

traffic update

I made it a block and a half to the corner of 28th place and Division before I got stuck. Now I'm home. Another casualty of the Arctic Blast. Dammit.

visitation

As you can see, on Clinton Street we actually have snow angels.

It is so cold and the snow so deep and my responsibility for my crazy people hangs over me heavily as I await the midnight call that somebody can't make it in.

But I can.

I have a new car, and a warm home, and a husband who helps me move heaven and earth and snow to do what I will always think I have to do alone. It is such an adjustment, such unnatural adaptation, for me to accept his help. It is my job, my burden, my people. I lay in our bed at seven, trying to sleep early just in case and he comes in and asks, "Do you want me to warm up your car and scrape the foot and a half of snow and see if the chains work?"

You'd do that for me?

He'd do that for me.

I have carried the responsibility alone so many long winter nights, waiting by the phone, taxiing my staff to and from in heaps of Ashland snow, yellowed christmas lights glittering through the plaza as I drove the night shift to work and the evening shift home. For so many years I have been on call in the service of the insane.

charlie brown tree.

I guess it isn't really fair to say I lack Christmas spirit, although the whole notion of decorating, preparation, making things just so-- has lost some of the zing, or I have. I am looking forward to December 26th --my favorite holiday-- and this is my tree to prove it. It was easy to put up, and will be just as easy to take down. Wrap the one red ball in tissue paper and call it Christmas past.

I don't so much think I've lost Christmas spirit as brought it into line with reality. I have held my family hostage to a myth for a long time, that the kids are still small, at home, and interested. They are grown, gone, and not. I'm sure this is just one more level of empty nest that I am adapting in my own messy way. The Charlie Brown tree is a symbol my intention to remember that holiness isn't about home decor. My beliefs pale in the shimmer of holiday possibilities: eight foot tall nylon inflated Santas on Harleys and black feather trees with black sequined bulbs. Aaarrgghh, as Charlie would say.

Give me one red ball.

In case you didn't know, or hadn't tuned into Portland TV stations where there is non-stop "Arctic Blast" coverage, we have just the tiniest bit of snow up here. It is dry, frozen on top like crunchy nut topping, and as slick as, well, ice. The city is at a standstill, Maxx stopped running, everything stopped, and only just three days until the big day. Very little shopping happening around here. We went for a walk in our neighborhood, then posted an extra set of chains on craigslist and delivered and installed them for a lady and her son. We do so many things, we do, while I sit in the truck and observe. I guess there are bad people who are offering chains for 150 bucks. I think its mean. Opportunistic. Tis the season.

My husband has a youtube going of janis doing summertime. Man. That chick could sing.

still

Sick of sick. sick to death. sick sick sick.

One time me and Cooky spent an entire evening creating the perfect epitaph, rather, what we would have on our respective headstones. Hers was, "I told you I was sick." Mine was, "I got here as fast as I could." At the time I was strung out on speed so it was a little funny. My all time favorite is listed in a book of western graveyard art: "Here lies the man who stole my horse."

Anyway, I'm not dying, but I am really sick. I tried to go to work today, but no luck. And I can't really hang around the patients when I'm like this. They would die of what I have. It may be the actual flu, which people often mistakenly think is a lower-end deal -- diarrhea and such. In case you didn't know, the true flu is an upper respiratory infection, which I have, and which has settled down and had a nice big family in my lungs. I am doing my level best to cough them up, but anyone who has known me very long knows how bronchitis goes. It levels me.

As most of you know, the holiday season is upon us, and as compelling as shopping can be, I am entrapped in winter ice--or the fear of it-- given the endless coverage of weather paparazzi. Yesterday, as sick as I was, I tried to arrange to purchase chains for my car and it wasn't even snowing. But the thing is, the STORMTRACKERWEATHERMORONS won't shut up. They were on the air from 6:00 am until noon with a steady barrage of nonsense and no weather to go with it. No snow, no rain even. "Look! There's a flake." It was cold, I'll give them that, but it is, afterall, December. They are Chicken Little at his paranoid worst. O MY GOD MY GOD the sky is falling!!! Its going to snow on Sunday and never thaw out again until February!! Run for your lives!! Stock up on food and water!!. My favorite part this time was the weather girl-on-the-street, holding up the gloves she had just purchased. "I got these at Fred Meyer where they have sold over 28,000 pair in the past two days alone." Now let us review: it is a week before Christmas. What kills me (besides the flu) is people responding like sheep to the barest suggestion of foul weather. You can't find a parking place at Freddy's for the mass hysteria over potential weather. As if there wasn't a store on every corner that we could walk to if something actually happened. The parental guidance aspect of newscasting is unique to Portland as far as I can tell. "I like to keep my gloves in my car, Jason, as well as an extra blanket. Back to you in the newsroom." And always wear clean underwear in case you get in an accident.

They cut into the Young and the Restless for THAT?

sick again

It seems like I have been sick for a hundred years. I have blown through an entire roll of toilet paper -- NOT charmin -- and an economy size box of Puffs, Vick's scented. One would think that would be enough, but no. I am full of snot.

I have a cold. It is common, and y'all know how I hate to be common. I've missed two consecutive days of work, something I usually love, but I am miserable. I've been laying in one place, blowing my nose, coughing up small animals, you get the picture. I want to get dressed and leave the house, but in addition to my deathly illness, the ice storm prevents any hope of escape. I am snowed in. We are snowed in.

We were so tired of TV that we played a game of Upwords last night. Upwords is okay but it isn't Scrabble. I am good at Scrabble. I know all of my 2 letter words and the Q words that don't need a U. Qat. See? Wanna play? Makes me miss Madonna. Not the real one, but my old friend, maybe exfriend, I can't remember where we left it... but she was a great Scrabble companion. When I was in chemo for Hep C, she could kick my ass, and took full advantage of my weakness. Who could blame her?

Survivor is OVER!!! I am so sad. But Bob the old physics teacher won, and deservedly. For those of you who have been instructed NOT to call me on Thursday nights, now you can call anytime. I love Survivor. I love it every time. Always in the beginning I am ambivalent, think maybe this time I won't watch, but I always get sucked in by the third episode. Sadly, we organize our lives around a reality show. THE reality show. The FIRST reality show. And I know it isn't really reality. I know I am manipulated. I don't care. We'll have to find something else to do. Maybe American Idol in January. O I hope not.

It seems like the biggest show of the coming season will be the innauguration of Obama. (spelling anyone?) I'm seeing more press about what Obama will wear than what he'll do. I'm tellin' ya -- watch daytime TV. It is mindnumbing. A great reason to have a job.

Well, I am coughing my guts out and need to lie down. Lay down? Lye down? Laid down? Layed down? I will never understand usage. Sleep. That's what I need. And a Zpack.

tag

When a person has dementia, so much is forgotton. On my list of most important things are not so much the wife's birthday or the children's faces or the sensation of thirst, but the awarenss of limitations, say for instance the ability to stand and walk without falling over.

As they come and go, it is always seductive to think the new one moving in as somehow easier to care for because they can walk. This is not always the case. Like I mentioned in an earlier post: it is winter, and as a group, they fail in the winter. All at the same time. It happened last winter, and the winter before. And it will happen again and again. The thing is, after the crop from last winter was finally in the ground, a whole new crop moved in, walking and talking, just not remembering. And as time passed, the whole crowd is essentially failing in many of the same ways at pretty much the same time.

As a community and an industry we have some clever strategies to deal with "fall risk" as it is euphemistically known. "Fall certainty" would be more like it. This may not be very interesting, but I am trying to tell you a story, and can only do it if you have a bit of background and theory.

So we have hourly checks. That is one way of dealing with people who don't know they can't walk. We check them hourly. The obvious problem with this practice is that they don't know when the hour is up, or that we are coming at all, or who we are when we get there for that matter. They get up when they have to pee, or hear a noise, or the urge strikes, which it often doesn't for hours at a time, a fact which is in our distinct favor. And when we do show up, they thank us and send us away, saying things like, "I'll let you know if I need some help." Which they won't because they don't. Know.

And then we have tag alarms. These devices, created by Satan, are magnets connected by string and clips that hook to the clothing and (hopefully) a stationary object such as a chair. When the person leans too far forward, the magnets separate, causing a screaming alarm that, in a perfect world, alerts the staff that the person is "on the move." Sadly, it is often just a scary noise letting us know Louise is on the floor again. And she said she'd let us know. Liar liar.

So, given winter, and brain failure, and the passage of time, eleven of sixteen of my people are at risk for falls. Six are on tag alarms. Three still have the presence of mind to use the "I've-fallen-and-I-can't-get-up" panic buttons around their necks.

These days, the unit sounds like an alarm factory, staff dashing one direction and then the other trying to determine where the sound is coming from, and like a baby's cry, they know each alarm. Apparently there are unique differences to each.

Anyway, I came to work on Thursday and found a note on my desk scrawled by one of my favorite guys, Robert. He sports his Obama button proudly and although he has no idea who Obama is, he knows he is a democrat and that something important happened in the election.

Robert had successfully made his way to my desk, found a flourescent green sharpie, and wrote on a napkin next to his tag alarm:

FOR SALE
This for 1 cent.
See Rob Huey

He knows who he is.

winter

I hardly know their names as the cyclic pattern of life and death plays out with seasonal predictability. Winter meets hospice and space is created for another nice lady who can't live at home anymore because the long fingers of Alzheimer's has closed her eyes and ears to all she has ever known.

Myrna moved in last night. I remember the faces of her three children and two grandchildren standing around my desk, guilty, lost, giving mother away to a stranger because in so many ways she has become a stranger. They bring her to my little community and hold their collective breath waiting for all hell to break loose as mom figures out she has been abandoned. One of them nervously laughs, they eldest, asking where is the nearest fire exit. One son says, "I can't watch this." I tell them they might be surprised. Nothing might happen at all.

So they wait, huddled around my desk as though around a campfire, while I walk down to her new apartment. I find Myrna standing with Susan, one of the staff. She says, "This is a nice hotel. I think I've been here before." Susan tells me she'll go ahead and stay a couple of days." She opens a cupboard. "My clothes are even in the closet."

"See? They thought of everything!" Susan says by way of comfort.

"How nice." Myrna says.

I returned to my desk. Her children were stunned. They asked, "So she agreed to stay for two days?"

I told them yes, and that we will do those two days over and over again for the next two years.

They ask when they can visit, thinking we might have a black-out policy like a treatment center. I tell them its her house. Come anytime. If the visits seem to set her back, we'll let you know.

This morning Myrna did set off the fire alarm thinking the hotel was on fire, but these are the details we'll work out. Together with the Portland Fire Department.

black shoes

I have been looking for a pair of black boots or black shoes for five years. I ordered a pair of keens from Zappos, but they don't fit. Same thing last winter. Order-return, Order-return. Today is it. I am tired of looking, tired of deciding and undeciding, packing pairs of shoes around the store for twenty minutes only to set them down, in the wrong place (sin) on the way out the door. I want a pair of dressycasual possibly fur-lined bootshoes that go with levis or sequins not that I own sequins but you never know. I just want to be able to put on my black shoes and dance the blues.

I went to this shoe store in Tualatin called DSW and there were so many choices I couldn't do it. I keep telling myself I'll know it when I see it, but I think I've seen them all. I chose three pair and walked out empty-handed. So, wish me luck. I am indecisive.

thankless

I should ask my doctor for a bucket of antidepressants. I think the time has come.
Naw. I hate antidepressants -- feels like wearing a too-tight hat that you can't take off.

So we did the long run, down and back drive-by-Thanksgiving, all the while entertained by Kurt's Infernal Playlist. Let me just say we don't appreciate the same kind of music barely at all. It was a long ride. The day went as days tend to go when they feel completely beyond my control. I don't usually see myself as a control freak, but control freaks rarely do. If you've been keeping up, you'll know we did not go where we usually do which is way way out in the woods for a family style Thanksgiving with a neighborhood of hippies. Everybody brings food and it is friendly and easy and we go for long walks and nearly purchase property it is so lovely there and at some point, someone offers a prayer of gratitude.

Not this time. We were in foggy, dreary Medford in someone else's house. The food was terrible and the company was inconsistent. The women wouldn't put my sweet potatoes in the oven. I hate them.

Oh it was fine. What I want does not exist.

What do I want? I thought you'd never ask. My heart's desire would be to recreate the holidays of my early childhood. I know most people can't say that, but we were pretty whitebread happy. No money, but lots of love and no visible dysfunction. But then my father had the poor timing to die.

The holidays of my late childhood and early adulthood wents something like this:

Thanksgiving: There was a turkey, everybody got drunk and the cops came.
Christmas: There was a tree, everybody got drunk and the cops came.
Baby's first birthday: There was a cake, everybody got drunk and the cops came.

So, during this holiday season, I feel like a stranger in my life. This feeling is very strong just now, and I'm not quite sure how to overcome it. Thus, antidepressants. I seem to be between families -- not in this one, not in that-- and this harsh realization that I have been free-floating, trying to re-create my family using whichever random people were at hand: friends, in laws, outlaws, and finally, my own child who has been hostage to my need for holiday bliss his entire life. But not this year. This year, he declined. Nicely but certainly.

I should have stopped the dinner to say grace. I could have done something to bring some light into the long day, but I didn't.

Today I went to Walgreens and bought a ten dollar Charlie Brown Christmas Tree--an actual replica with one red ball. It is exactly what I am capable of this year. A drive-by Thanksgiving and a No-Frills Christmas. You're invited.

southlands

As we prepare for the feast, as we bake pies, make cookies, make more pies, make yams, which is really only pie filling too, I look at the weather report and there are three special areas highlighted on the map of the northwest that bear mentioning as we consider travel tomorrow: around Puget Sound it will be windy, in the Columbia Gorge there will be wild weather of some magnitude, and in the Southlands, the region of my recent distant past, the land of my upbringing, our destination, there is a stagnant air advisory.

Yes. I'd imagine there is.

So, we're doing Drive By Thanksgiving to the land of stagnation. Home of the primal shrug. On the road at six, home by nine. Husband, wife, two kids and the dog in our shiny little mazda. And pie. Over the river and down I-5 to grandfather's house we go. Only not. One of the nicest things about holidays with my outlaws, the only nice thing in fact, has been the fact that they live off the grid in the midst of a beautiful forest along a deep green creek, with kerosene to light the way and wood fires to warm crisp mornings. But not this year. This year, for the sake of convenience, we are sentenced to dine at a step-daughter's house on the outskirts of Medford. In town. Arrgghh. In the Rogue Valley, one stays out of Medford unless absolutely necessary. One really should.

It'll be Thanksgiving either way. Here or there. Just another day.

I'm happy to have some time away from work. Frankie died. I think I can just say it outright. She's dead, she won't care. Her son won't read this. She was named after Frank James and was every bit as tough. She coulda kicked my ass if she wasn't 90, blind and in a wheelchair. She fired us every day. We'd hide around the corner, come back five minutes later and say we were somebody else. It usually worked. It sounds mean, I know, but it isn't. You do what you've gotta do.

This week was the long dreaded State Licensing Inspection. I passed. It is a relief to have it behind me and to get on with the day to day business of letting people die in peace. I am always so surprised when families, having just moved mom onto the unit, return a couple of weeks later to ask if she's busy doing things. Well, she is. She's busy dying. Its not easy, sitting around waiting for the reaper. I know it sounds awful, but this one new lady (she's so new she's still "the new lady." I haven't even made up a fake name for her yet.) Her husband just died. Just died. He really didn't expect to. I knew him. He was a great guy. He completely expected to take care of her through the end. But he got a get out of jail free card and now I've got her, and her family wonders if she's being social.

No. She's not being social. She's being devastated. She wants to go to heaven now to hang out with Herb for another 63 years. Not to Bingo. Sorry to disappoint.

I don't get mad at them. Not out loud. But these guys... oh man. They really don't see what's going on.

But its going on anyway.

groupie

My palm is feeling better since my Terrible Fall. It doesn't hurt to type.

I've become embedded in a small writing group, a thing I hate but end up pursuing because at least once a month I am comitted to producing something made of words.

I don't do well in groups generally. I don't do well when praise is part of the process. I fold up at phrases such as "you're such a good writer." They paralyze me. I grow cold and my fingers numb with expectation as I hammer out yet another spectacular paragraph (not HERE for chrissake. I mean my real writing, the stuff I worry over, edit, rewrite, rerererewrite. Not this shit. This is blogging, this is the vent that prohibits me from producing anything of substance. I blame my blog. I'll blame anything. Hold still and I'll blame you. Or decorate you. Depends on my mood.) It isn't that I don't think I'm a good writer. I do. I just find praise difficult and not at all the point. Criticise me. Help me out. Whip me. Beat me.

Geez I'm touchy.

Anyway, I'm in this group and we meet and I decided, after a few false starts, to write memoir style, a departure from the thinly-veiled autobiographical fiction I am known for. Fixion. I decide to take asha's advice for the twentyfirst time and write about my work. About Alzheimer's. About dead people.

I think I can I think I can.... Its always like this at first, chugging up the hill, gathering steam for the project, which, after four pages becomes the same fucking book I've been trying to write for ten years. Have, in fact, written. Nearly, in fact, published.

Dammit.