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.