long weekend

Almost. I spent Friday driving a patient to a psychiatric hospital, but other than that, work free. The paucity of mental health services for the elderly is stunning. Back in the day, when I worked a different job that was pretty much the same only without the death factor, we used to marvel at what we could do if we lived in the metro area, where all things medical are possible. Wrong. So, by the time there was a bed open, I wasn't about to pass it up because of transportation problems. They wouldn't admit her if she couldn't walk in under her own steam, and she's nuts, so, if she was on her way through the doors with a stranger, and the door says: TUALITY CENTER FOR GERIATRIC PSYCHIATRY, she's no dummy. She'd have turned and bolted. I opened the door before she got to it, shielded the words, did a quick Halley's Comet diversionary tactic, and we were in.

Wait. She was in. Let's be clear about that. She. Not WE.

So she's in and I can rest for a minute.

Thanksgiving was fine. Real food, consumed in about twenty minutes.Mother in law hostessed with her ailing sister, who fell in her bathtub. "It has nothing to do with my age." she said before I even said anything. I swear, its that old Angel of Death thing. They see me coming a mile away. "She's coming for me." I can see this thought bubbling slowly to the brimming sludge that is what's left of their little grey minds. "She knows." It would be awful, I'll concede this much.

So its back on Medifast one day later, and I don't really care about food so much anymore. The dinner was okay, and anti-climactic, and I'm just aware of the focus I've placed on food for far too long. I remember Alan McLean, one of my very first nursing home patients, who, after a career in the CIA, had his mind scrubbed and was left with little else but a love of black pepper and a fixation for  Casablanca and  Joan Collins, who he had allegedly had a one-nighter with in his heyday. He was known to say, "I eat to live, not live to eat." Well, good for you, Alan. Good for you. Me too.

A movie review: we went to see Lincoln, and I loved the politics, the tragic silliness that remains today, the gamesmanship. I think James Spader should get best supporting actor for his role as an early lobbyist. Hysterical. But DDLewis, wow. Loved his voice, the frail, gentle Lincoln rang unexpectedly true.

Our new Dyson is sucking the carpet off the floor, quietly, as I type.

black friday

That sounds so negative. Kurt is at Costco now, purchasing a new vacuum cleaner for our happy home. A condition of marriage was that I never receive household appliances for gifts, so this is a non-gift -- a necessity - a Dyson power sucking pet hair eliminating monster. Sid's hair is a cross between a porcupine quill and  a corkscrew. Once embedded, it is there to stay. He rode in my car once. Once. And his hair is still there despite magic pet gloves and car wash power vacuums. His hair, not Duffy's. Not my darling Duffy's.

I ate regular food yesterday. I've lost 55 lbs so far, and am not fat anymore. I've always been fat. Always. I feel fragile and light and strange and cold. It is difficult to keep up with psychologically and I know why I've always managed to put the weight back on. Such a warm coat in the winter months. Such a reliable layer between me and everyone else who is not me. I am exposed and I understand vulnerability like never before. I am without armor.

My wax is on upstairs and I am producing items for sale. Do your christmas ordering now. I'm taking special orders. I'm usually kidding. Not now.

wax on

Another Saturday on Clinton Street. Duffy sits at my shoulder keeping an eye out for squirrels and wayward neighborhood cats who perch just beyond his reach, chirping and mewling, taunting, taunting.

This blog has become a maudlin account of death and doom. I need to find another topic. Another job.

one more

Charles never seemed old, but he turned 91 last week. He referred to himself as Charles Lorenzo Eduardo -- although he was that rural Oregonian shade of white that could never believe we have a black president. He died just now, they tell me. He paced the hallowed halls, looking for his car, a can of paint, the army, all the misplaced parts of his life he just couldn't hang onto -- or let go of. What will I look for? Cling to? We are what we do. I am a sofa. I am a keyboard. I am wax and housework and a frying pan over a hot stove. I am the sidewalk in front of my house that takes me to coffee. It is pouring down rain, finally, in Portland. I'm heading upstairs to turn on my wax. Therapy.

out loud

Pansy is dying. I've lost 52 pounds to date. People look at me funny, like they want to say something but are afraid, at my advanced age, that I'm dying too, or that something has gone seriously wrong. I'm not. It hasn't. I feel really good -- just ask my knees. We, the body parts, are happy with each other and the brain right now. It feels something like the opposite of cognitive dissonance. It might be contentment. I wouldn't know. The war, while not over by a long shot, is momentarily at rest. The brain is finding fault, however, with the legs: too thin, the ass -- gone. the gut, still not perfect, although the belly button that was inserted by dear Dr. Young, my plastic surgeon of days gone by, is nice again and my tits are still here.

I've claimed to have lost 50 pounds in the past, but I don't think it was true. I'd meant to be telling the truth, but I think it was wishful speaking. Find something that weights fifty pounds. Right now. Now try to lift it. Go. I'll wait here...... Freaking heavy, right? I've lost that much weight. No wonder I was so tired all the time. For now, I see myself quite differently. But, pessimist that I am, it all feels pretty mercurial. Dreamlike. Temporary. I'm fifty-fucking-nine years old and I have at long last lost the post-baby fat from my 35 year old son. It is frightening to say out loud, but there, I've said it. Its in the blog so must be true.

I don't know what to wear. I've been a long time fan of Flax clothing, plain linen tent-like garments, expensive and expansive, elastic "waists" held up by invisible suspenders over layers of extra me. Now that there is less extra me, I'm not sure what my style is. I may like simple things. Still prefer black. Still want to be invisible. Thankfully, I lived and shopped in denial most of my adult life, so already had bin upon bin of small clothing that kind of fits what is left of me. But even those clothes are a bit baggy. I hope I'm not complaining. I have boxes and boxes of leftover clothes. I got rid of what I hope not to wear again, but I didn't get rid of all of it. There's too much and this isn't my first rodeo.

So if you read this and need some 1-2x clothes, I'm your gal. Think black and white and menopause beige.

Well, that's it for now. I had to write this post eventually. I was kind of holding my breath. I should take a bunch of pictures now before it goes away.

what's in a name

Hellen has one foot in the homeland. "Two L's." Hellen was a big round beloved woman, a preacher's wife who loved a good deal. Her daughters, each equally well-heeled, came in the evenings, their most recent bargain in hand: a pair of Nine West shoes for three dollars, a silk scarf embellished with roses, just fifty cents at a yard sale. They whirled into their mother's little room waving the treasure and announcing the price. Hellen would smile with crinkled eyes, nodding from the bottomless well of her heart with a sweet, "Hey girlie, where you been?"

Now she's not so round as she once was and her crinkled eyes are closed. There are no sweet words carried to her children on her eternally hopeful breath. She will be gone before daybreak.

There are too many to take her place. A crooked line forms just outside my door, and they bang with gnarled fists to come inside, in full-retreat from the darkness that envelops them and steals their thoughts, pushes them down and breaks their bones.

Recently, though, as Hellen and Edna and Elsie and Myrtle have passed, they are quickly replaced by Janice and Eileen and Barbara and Susan. I greet them with uneasy familiarity, these younger women with names like mine.

I marched in the Alzheimer's walk. The Walk to End Alzheimer's. It won't end, though. You know that, right? But we march and we raise money and we pretend there is hope. But there isn't. Not like that. What hope there is lives in the workers I train, and others like me, who teach the young ones to carry the sick on their backs to the end of their lives.What works is not Aricept or Exelon Patches. It is kindness and understanding, clean hands,strong backs and open hearts.

I raised some money for the Alzheimer's Association and my name was put into a drawing. I won first prize. I won a 50 inch plasma TV. Kurt says we can put it in the neighbor's house across the street and watch it from here. I've never really won anything before. Its too big for me.

Addendum: this morning Harriett is gone. I planted hundreds of spring bulbs today in her honor. 

evening

The house is quiet, my husband playing his guitar on the front porch. Both dogs lay panting from a run in the park, and with their breathlessness offer a rhythm for my typing. I could meditate to it if I could meditate.

I wonder what my life will be like in five years when I am sixty four. The Beatles made it seem so far away, but I am just around the corner from being an old woman. I can feel it in my knees, my step, my intolerance of celebrity. In the way I view the pale sky; a sky I know I will never see again -- not in just this same way. Where I live now, I have to walk three blocks to get a good look at the evening sky. I used to stand on my deck with the whole of the sky sprawled before me, unaware that there would ever come a time that I would want for a view.

One night the Aurora Borealis dipped down into my backyard, swags of scarlet and purple light. I remember my neighbors pouring out into the street like marbles from a bag, some of them calling it the end of the world. “And the sixth seal was broken and read, ‘The moon became as blood.’ It is the end of days.” Voices either keening or drunk, it was hard to tell. I remembered my mother just then, how she would have quoted the same scriptures, how she would have feared for our souls. For some of our souls. For mine. 

more camping stories

 So we're finally home, back with the running water and electricity.

Wait. I had all that in the trailer. Here it is, My sweet little Aladdin, nestled in the shadow of the Wallowa Mountains, on Wallowa Lake. Staged perfectly by my showoff husband for maximum effect. We'd made reservations at this crappy RV place in Enterprise, Log House RV Park, certain there'd be no room at the campground so close to Labor Day Weekend. But there was. We hurried back to Enterprise where I begged for a refund and got it. I'm a pretty good beggar. At Wallowa Lake there is a tram that takes you 3500 feet straight up the mountain. The view was spectacular. I kept pointing this out to my husband as he clung to the pole in the middle of our tiny, metal gondola, knuckles white as a trout's belly, until he opened his eyes briefly and said, "You enjoy the fucking view. I'm hanging on to this pole," as though his grip would somehow protect us as we plummeted 3500 feet to our death. Once at the top of the mountain we had to walk to see the view. I was pissed. "I didn't come to exercise," I said. "I just wanted to watch." But he made me walk to the edge of the world. Actually the edge of the EagleCap Wilderness. Home of the Imnaha Wolf Pack -- more about that later -- and drank perfect clean water from a spring gurgling out of an iron cistern in the middle of nowhere. Well, clearly it was somewhere, but it was remote.

Speaking of remote. My xfamilyinlaw has had a piece of property way way up in the Wallowas since the sixties. It is a forty acre plot of mountaintop, an elk pack-camp, where my son's grandfather led pack teams to hunt elk each fall until his death. I don't think I understood my inlaws until, in 1987, I drove to the property to pick up my son after a long summer visit with his grandparents. I knew they were country people, pioneering types. I got that. But they told me: drive to Joseph, take a left and keep going. I remember I borrowed Vivian's little Escort station wagon, and when I turned off the Imnhaha Highway onto 4inch-minus rock and bounced straight uphill for nine miles, I began to understand their comittment to a certain pace of life. I finally arrived at camp with a punctured gas tank and stood among a forest of sugar pines and a hand-made lodge with four hunting cabins that are still there today.

So we drove up there to see Julie. She is so tough. She is living up there, "fixing the place up" in her words: re-chinking the cabins, cleaning out thirty years of rat shit and neglect since her father's passing. She is turning it into more than it was. People will still come to hunt game, but she is making a place for wounded warriors to heal.

"You like to help people," she said. "You can help me." I think I don't so much like to help people as it is my default means of support. She likes it, really. She has that kind spirit in her.

So we had a good visit. Her closest neighbor, a trail runner, was out for a morning run, and noticed the Imnaha wolf pack running alongside her, she on a trail, the wolves a few trees in. She bought a gun. Julie says, "I just carry my iPod in a bucket and turn it up really loud."  A bear left claw marks on her screen door. Okay.

So, we left Julie and went west. Way west. And found these guys and ate them all up. The end.

recant

I'm a whiner. Sue me. I un-posted my complaint. Then reposted it.

A social worker asked me, "If you worked in obstetrics, would you get sick of babies being born?" I just said yes. First, to be difficult, second, to appear right.

But it isn't the same thing. I didn't want to point that out to her because she was busy helping me. But I'm sick and tired of helping and helpers.

camping world

I like to think of myself as a country girl. I am. I am a girl from a country-ish place. Talent. Jacksonville. Ruch. The Outer Banks of Medford, Oregon. I've lived in log cabins, carried my own water, split wood for heat and for money. I know what a rick of wood is, and what it used to cost. But I like camping in parks. I like the running water and hot showers, the noise of other families trying to make music around the campfire at least once a year, kids learning how to play again: hopscotch, jumprope, the you're-it, if-you-don't-quit-it-I'm-not-playing-with-you-anymore, kind of games. I miss my son as a young boy, catching crawdads in the creek while I kicked heroin in the tent. ah. memory lane.

We have been on the road for a week, and I just wanted to take a moment to discuss campgrounds. Not the ones with the white trash ambiance, close enough to Leavenworth to service the townies, as though the meth lab just used up its two weeks and pulled up stakes: this was Tumwater Camp, a dry and crusted patch of firestarter nestled along a sweet little stream, dribbling past, unaware of the company it keeps. The Wenatchee River, I'll admit, is a fantastic river and maybe it was just too late in the year, but there was nobody else there hardly except for the people for whom camping is not a happy little vacation option, and that is scary to me. I'm not afraid of bears, I'm afraid of people. Maybe it was just too close to Leavenworth to make camping seem viable. Leavenworth looks like winter at summer's end. Scalloped rooflines, alpine trees and rocky mountainsides naked without their blanket of white. With shopkeepers that just can't let go of the inaccurate notion that everybody loves Christmas stuff. Like those yard sales with special areas for Christmas items such as melting faded pine tree candles, over-used silver garland and ceramic Mr&Mrs Claus with calico clothing. All of the tourists just seemed to be waiting for the snow and Christmas lights so a visit to the Nutcracker Museum would make at least some sense.

I love Wallowa Lake Campground. I love Birch Bay Campground. I love Beverly Beach. This is where the nice people camp. I have become, while I was not looking, a nice person. I have matching towels for camping. I know I should hate these places of rules and regulations and sale firewood and paved pathways, but they comfort me. The idea of roughing it no longer appeals to me. There. I've said it. That is not to say that all people who rough camp are not nice. I am just nicer.

Sid hates camping. He has no hair, bugs bother him, he isn't at home where he feels safe and knows what to expect. He'd rather stay in the trailer than roam around like an animal, calling into question whether or not he is really a dog. His skin breaks out, he shakes and stares at us, and the very mention of the word "home" is the only thing that makes him wag his tail.

I'm exaggerating.

Then there's Duffy. In the unbridled out of doors, he becomes even more dog-like and obnoxious, if that's possible. He waits at the window of the trailer and growls, stalking chipmunks. He plans his escape. He never forgets. As soon as he has an opportunity, he bolts, scrambling up a tree he has no hope of climbing. If he had any idea how impossible his hopes and dreams really are, he'd commit suicide. On a long hit list, Duffy's top two disgusting events while camping, are: 1.) Pissing down Kurt's leg and filling his shoe with dog urine, which is not all that rare for Duffy. (See previous posts.) He seems to equate the human leg with a fire hydrant or tree. It is upright, afterall. Besides, Kurt was standing on his leash to keep him from running off first thing in the morning. I know, I rationalize. And 2.) Drumroll.......... Rolling in human shit. Now, as profoundly disgusting as this is and was, do I blame Duffy? Or do I blame the bottom-feeder who crapped in the campsite? Well, Duffy was closest, so he got a pretty cold bath, me gagging through the whole thing.

We did bring him home with us though. 

Pansy Tulip Rose

Its been a long couple of weeks or years or something. I'm losing track of time, of people, of meaning. This is the litany of the dead.

In East Germany, Tulip's father carved a merry-go-round horse of ice and pulled it with the cow for his children to ride, but the Russians showed up and her family had to flee over the frozen river with all they could carry in a wagon. She was so hungry she ate mud. She finally made it to the states, but even with Alzheimer's, she couldn't forget the Russian soldiers and secured her door with gnarled fingers -- twisting and untwisting the lock day and night.

"I'm tired," Pansy said. "I don't want to live any more," in her sheer, Parkinsonian whisper. "You're a good girl," she said to me as we talked about her dying, her wish to be relieved from what her body, her life, had become. That I did not intervene, did not push food, water, medicine or hope, was my gift to her. It is the best I can do in the yawning gap between life and not life.

I went to Tulip's funeral and cried all the way to Damascus and Boring and back. For all of them. For all of them to come.

I'm tired.

river

Today we went to the Molalla River. I know that may sound like a normal day, but living in the city, it is no longer a part of my day to day life to head up the Applegate and hang out. I hardly knew what to do, what to pack. Around here, there are parks, no dogs allowed. There are scenic theme parks like Multnomah Falls, and the sheer numbers of people, the queuing strategies: stand in this line, follow this rope, stay on this side, it is hardly relaxing. The Molalla isn't like that. Nobody really cares what you do, and from the general absence of litter and unpleasant behavior on the hottest weekend in years, it seems to be a pretty much self-regulating place. Kurt couldn't exactly remember where the place was, but between him and gps, we found our way. Nicole came along. Out of practice, we didn't bring chairs, but had the dog's sleeping bag that we keep in the back of the truck. We are so accustomed to the "no dogs" mentality, we left the boys home. They would have had a great time, and will when we go again.

The water was warmish, not bathwater, but it took no getting used to, and there was enough current to make me swim. I wore a bathing suit for the first time in years. It felt so good to be in real water with rocks between my toes and sun on my face. I lived in and on rivers my whole life. I am a river girl. I don't like lakes, don't trust the sludge on the bottom not to conceal glass. A flowing river is a self-cleansing organism. The swimming hole was deep, with smooth rocks on the far side to lay out on another day.

T

iowa

Benny died. He told us he was going to. On Thursday morning he woke up and said, "I don't want any more medicine. I'm ready to die. I just want to do God's will. Do you think its God's will?" I told him I thought he had a pretty good line on God, that he and God would work it out. As for the medicine, that was okay. "Just for the pain." So he laid down to die.

By Monday, he opened his eyes and said, "Is this heaven?" I had the almost overwhelming urge to say, "No, this is Iowa," but didn't. Instead, I told him it wasn't quite, but that he had one foot over the threshold. I sat beside his bed and read the 139th Psalm from his tattered bible. "...if I take the wings of the morning and  dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there...."

Ben knew poverty like the back of his hand. He told stories of the Dust Bowl and couldn't forget it, couldn't forget the starving grasshoppers blackening the light as they gathered at the windows like pestilence, eating the curtains, the wooden sash. He couldn't forget the war and didn't tell those stories. Them that say do not know, them that know do not say. He loved soup and hash browns and his wife, who just passed last month. After she died, there was a family reunion to live for -- in Iowa, actually, which would have made it all the more confusing and unfair had I taken the self-indulgent opportunity to quote Field of Dreams in his time of transcendence. So he made it to the reunion, bought a cowboy hat in Iowa, came home and died in the arms of his beloved family.

the bee whisperer

So there we were, napping on the deck....


Let me back up.

The morning began, as mornings will, damned early. 4:00 am. My husband is the only person on earth who sets the alarm for 3:30 and wakes up ten minutes early. So off went went to Seaside for sunrise clamming. Its not like you can sneak up on them. The 1.6 minus tide determined our schedule. I didn't get a full limit for various reasons: my foot, my shoulder, sneaky clams. I think we got 20 between us. It was work, the clams small, not worth keeping. But the rule is that you have to keep them if you catch them. If you dig for a clam and it is tiny, you're not supposed to put it back, but I have my own ethic about this. It is not in line with the great State of Oregon's Fish and Game Regulations, but it works for me and I haven't yet been caught. This is my rule: If I harm the clam in any way, that is, if I feel even a tiny little crunch, I keep it. If I don't, I just slide the little baby right back in the hole he came from, cover him up and act like I lost the clam I was digging for. It's called "high grading" and you can get a big fine, but I think its bad to take all the baby clams. So there's my rationale.

Occasionally I would look up from my hunting and realize how beautiful the beach is at sunrise. 

We were home by ten-thirty, threw the clams in the sink and both of us headed to our favorite spots for a deserved nap. At about two p.m., Kurt calls me from my slumber and says, "You have to see this!!!"

I rubbed my eyes resentfully, wandered out to the back yard and looked where he pointed: up. A giant swarm of honey bees was collecting on a laurel branch about 20 feet above our deck. The forming cluster looked to be about 8" in diameter and 18" long, solid bees, with many many many bees still coming, swarming around it.

Neither of us are particularly afraid of bees, but we have heard of colony collapse and urban beekeeping as a local hobby, so we wanted to get the bees somewhere safe. Internet to the rescue. We located Ruhl Beekeeping after making one call to a guy listed under "swarm removal" who said 20 feet was higher than he wanted to go. So we called Elliott somebody, or somebody Elliott, on Ruhl's list, and he came right over on the 4th of July. A woman named Kit came with him. She has a hive over on Belmont and her queen just failed, or died, and she needed a new swarm. Elliott had a homemade bee vacuum cleaner that sucked the swarm and its queen right out of the tree and into a hive box. Apparently, where the queen goes, so go the bees. Elliott said it was a viable swarm.

This is what else we learned:

Bee 101 by Elliott

Honey bees are not native to north America. Indians call them "white man's flies."
Eventually, in a hive, another queen will be made or born and she takes half the bees and leaves, thus creating another colony. This is likely what had just happened.

So, we saved the bees on the 4th of July and gave Elliott and Kit each a jar of the new strawberry jam I made last weekend with berries from Silverton. If you want some, call me. I can't eat it right now. Or ever. But I'm not thinking of it that way.

Day two of Medifast: The food is Soylent Green. Just in case you're keeping up.

spurs

I got spurs that jingle jangle jingle.

In addition to the multitude of diagnoses on my own personal list, I now have bone spurs trying to fight their way out of my left foot. There's a movie called My Left Foot. Maybe I'll make a sequel. It would show me sitting in one place, then trying to put on the forty pound boot with five velcro straps that is supposed to help me, only it doesn't feel like help, it feels like hinderance, which may not be a word at all. Then the movie would show me taking the boot off, saying fuck it, and limping around.

Literally everything that is wrong with me can be traced back to obesity.

So my plan is to try a diet I haven't tried yet: medifast. I want to go on record here and say that all diets work. Most all. I'm a great dieter. I'm just no good at re-entry. Medifast may not be any different, but the beauty of it is that they send you the food and you eat it. Even I can follow that plan. The only way it could be a better diet is if they sent someone over to do the dishes. I even get a personal trainer. Coach. They recommend no deliberate exercise for the first three weeks. I'll try to hold back.

 It may sound like I have a mildly negative attitude about this which could not be further from the truth. I'm completely resigned to doing a year on this diet like time at San Quentin, then attempting to follow their re-entry program, which is also laid out pretty clearly. I diet well once my mind is made up, and this time, my mind, my intestines, my joints, my esophagus, my heart and my left foot are made up. All for one, one for all.

I spent the day primering the inside of my trailer. Kurt was out of town, taking his dad to see his aunt in Susanville who has lung cancer, so it seemed a perfect time to start the project. My hands are now covered with Kilz and I'm about halfway finished. I'll try to get it done tomorrow. There are many little nooks and crannies in that trailer and I am going to paint them all. Twice. Death by Kilz.

beyond mid-life

Nora Ephron died this week and I wanted to note her passing here. She spoke about aging from a woman's point of view. Her book, "I Feel Bad About My Neck," is one I have yet to read but could have written. She said that aging is something that we talk aout -- we, the educated, the non-vain, the worldly-wise -- but do not understand. Not really. We nod in intellectual acceptance as though aging would happen to everyone eventually, but not to us. Not to me. And I think that's what I've been experiencing. A certain mid-life denial. Not crisis. Heaven forbid I sink to that level of self-involvement. But truth be told, I'd been graciously accepting my fifties until the fifteenth of this month when I turned 59 and it occurred to me like new information that I am not only going to turn sixty, but that I am, as we speak, two weeks into my sixtieth year.

Its not that I didn't see it coming, but I didn't see it coming. I am old already. Waitresses call me "dear" and I hate them for it. I want a tattoo. I want blonde hair. Not white goddammit. Not  grey. BLONDE. I AM A FUCKING BLONDE. I want to wear my leather jacket and look like I'm forty again. I want it back -- my youth, I've changed my mind. I want a refund.Our adorable next door neighbor Abilene, a twenty-something hair stylist saw our new trailer and said, "You guys have everything." Kurt said, "Yeah, everything but youth and health." Too true.

We went for a Sunday drive (you know, like old people do) down to Sweet Home to find a vintage camp trailer rally (a campout) to see what the trailers were like and what kind of people do that stuff. When we left, after seeing some amazing trailers, "Kind of an old crowd," I said. My husband said, "They're our age."  I'm trying to understand this but it isn't easy. You can see one of the trailers at Flyte Camp the 1946 Westwood Coronado. This one was at the vintage rally, restored to mint condition. Amazing. I'm spending the weekend painting the inside of ours. Nothing too fancy, and I found an Aladdin's lamp at 3 Monkeys in NW Portland. Perfect for the Sultan's Castle.

once a beauty queen

"She was Miss Oklahoma 1952" her daughter told me. I went to visit her, determined that she'd be a good fit for the unit, and made the deal. After about four hours she warmed up to me and crooked her finger, calling me closer. She pulled a photograph out of her jacket pocket, an 8x10 black and white, folded and refolded until the print is quartered with cracks. She won't take off her jacket or her hat, keeps her arms folded across her chest. Says she's cold all the time. What she really is is ready. Ready to hit the road at the first opportunity and head for home. Only home isn't there anymore. All that's left is a bunch of junk in a small room, blankets and sweaters and teabags and one cup, nothing of value. Except this photograph. She calls me closer and I approach her cautiously. She has not allowed me this close to her yet. "Is this it?" I ask. She nods and unfolds the paper. I am looking at Marilyn Monroe, or may as well be. She is stunning, in a white Janzen bathing suit, a satin Oklahoma ribbon stretched across her once-perfect body. "Now I'm old," she said. "I see that face," I told her. "I can see you." And this is her treasure. She carries it with her, proof of perfection, and holds it out like a diamond in her palm after you've passed her test.

happy birthday to me

1967 Aladdin

The appliances are robin's egg blue. Ready to camp now, but I will make just the teensiest, ever so subtle, changes in decor. Now, I can yard sale all my camping crap, keep it all in one place and have a basement again. But where oh where to park it???

clam anatomy

I haven't cleaned clams for a year. A strange species. Each time I have to find my way anew, scissoring into the slimy innards as if for the first time, remembering what we keep, what we throw away. There is no part of the clam that looks like it should be eaten. And I insisit on doing this part if I am expected to eat them later, dredged in egg and milk and flour by turns, then into the oil for a minute or less, until they shrink. That's how I tell they're done.

Its been a bit since my last post. We sent my brother out to sea and since he wanted no part of a funeral, memorial, celebration of life, or wake, his wife honored his wish and called it an open house. So we drove to Port Orford -- Port Awful to those who know it -- ate good food, enjoyed his paintings, and his peers celebrated his life whether he liked it or not. His children and two of his three wives were present. Seeing his son was like seeing him, young and healthy, handsome and whole. His daughter, my sweet sweet neice, was there with her family. And my sister came. She and I are the last of my immediate clan.

I was sitting on the porch, the rare coastal sun glancing through thick white clouds to warm us, as some guy sitting next to me began to ramble about Doug. "Oh, yeah, he was a fighter, a boxer, liked throwing his fists around. Oh yeah, he did hard time. Prison. Yeah, he was tough." I turned to him, wanted to see who was telling lies of my brother's misspent youth, as if the truth wasn't story enough. The man, caught up in his nonsense, looked at me mid-sentence and asked who I was. "Doug's sister," I said, not elaborating, not calling bullshit as I might have. I just smiled and he stopped talking. I heard him muttering something like, "Well, he did like to fight."

I'm not sure whether he liked to fight or not. I don't think he did. I think he had to fight on occasion like most men do -- or that most men who drink too much do -- but he wasn't a boxer. He did play baseball. He was in the first Little League World Series and might have gone pro were it not for his love of booze and distaste for authority. He did go to prison, but like most men who have, he didn't talk much about it. To my memory, he entered prison with slicked back hair, wearing a sharkshin suit, with a pool cue in one hand and an ace up his sleeve; he came out a Buddhist fisherman who read biographies, wove baskets, painted pictures of the sea, and followed liberal politics. He still, to the best of my knowlege, did not acknowlege police authority and considered a boat at sea a safe distance from trouble. His paintings changed the way I look at water.

My husband, always looking to entertain himself brought along the crab gear, so we ate well, four dungeoness males slathered in butter and garlic, and good sourdough bread baked that morning by my sister-in-law, according to the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, also soaked in butter.

I love butter.

click your heels together and repeat

Happy mother's day. We're not moving. The past week was an ordeal neither of us were prepared for. First of all, I had to clean my house. Not my best thing. I had to keep it clean every day, so strangers could wander through and judge my every decorating choice.Pretty soon, it seemed like I was cleaning their house.

We were effectively homeless, albeit with vehicles and money. We couldn't let the relators just show up during the day when the dogs were home but we weren't. So we had to show the house in the evening: come home from work, grab the dogs and leave, eat something somewhere, wait somewhere, and come home. All the while taking calls at work from other agents who wanted to show the property. I know we hear about a slow housing market, but this was not my experience. My phone rang off the hook, people went in and out, all evening long. Every evening.

So finally, the pretty house we made an offer on was no longer available and we looked at lesser models. It was like trying the most expensive bed first: you'll never buy the cheaper one. Will we move one day? Yes. Just not today. We need to squeeze a little more out of this place first, and be able to get further out of town.

So that's the story. But here's what I learned: I like old houses. Ranch houses are made of cardboard. Planting a Japanese maple by the door makes it a well landscaped home. Slapping a granite countertop over existing cabinets is a major upgrade. 20 year carpet wears out in 2. The beauty of paint is in the eye of the painter. And last of all: There's no place like home. There's no place like home. There's no place like home.