#182: sinful Caesar sipped his snifter, siezed his knees and sneezed

A fire engine and the deputy fire chief just raced past the coffee shop window and it makes me nervous. Only 20 minutes ago I was in a stakeout next to the bank, spying on them until I could figure out if I needed to leave the warm comfort of my car and start reporting on something. But that was then and then was a boring medical call... Now where are they off to?

Oops, there goes another fire engine, but minus the lights, sirens and reckless speeding. So everything is probably OK. (Famous last words).

Oh, and here they come back. Yay. Absolutely nothing going on. I will continue to sit here and drink chai.

---

I have Thursday off from work and by a happy coincidence it looks like Thursday might be the only time we're going to see sun this week. My plan ever since I found out about this day off last week was to go hiking -- come sleet, come hail, come all the powers of hell. I even broke down and finally bought heavy duty, gonna-go-out-to-do-some-commercial fishing quality rubber boots. XTRATUF! They're are going to last forever...or at least 6 years, according to Marta. (Also, I bought a hardhat, but that's a different story. The guys at the store looked at me in wonderment, trying to figure what on earth I would need with rubber boots and a hardhat especially since I was mostly communicating in grunts and hand signals. Industry makes me uncomfortable. I become acutely aware that I work in a pansy profession and the only calluses on my hands are the ones on my fingers from playing guitar and that I couldn't gut something if it jumped into my lap begging me to and that I'll likely call something a ship when it should be called a boat and fake my way out of that sort of situation by calling everything "a vessel").

Anyway, I'll likely still need the boots to deal with mud, but maybe I won't need layers of garbage bags and multiple knit hats and maybe I'll get some sunlight on my mushroom-white face, cause my cells to swell with vitamin D happiness.

---

Christmas was lovely. I feel...sanctified. Something like that. I needed some love and good food after the madness last week and I can say with surety that I'm more sane now and can remember things again. I went shopping last Thursday for a few remaining Christmas presents and honestly can't remember very much about it all. There were Christmas presents at the end of it, as if by magic. Well, we're past that sort of crazy now, I think.

It's really quiet this week in the courts and the county. Cops hasn't given me much of anything recently either. Almost all is well with the world, I guess. Chaos can't reign forever. It also needs frequent naps -- chaos and I are the same that way.

Most of the Wilson Children (and Brother Benny) Go for a Christmas Walk

Part 1: After a jumping over the city-erected trash can liner-looking fence and trekking through the wetland woods, they arrived at the suburban ghetto.



Part 2: Others had been there before them, and surely others would follow. The smell of fury lingered in the air.



Part 3: The stillness of death surrounded her.



Part 4: Forces of freedom unite!



Part 5: They didn't know what it was, so they kicked it.



Part 6: It was time for them to let go of the hate and bring the band back.



Part 7: But then tragedy struck.



The end.

eves

I might have frightened the front desk people on my way out of the office this morning. I was yelling to no one in particular, "Ohmygoshohmygosh I'm gone from here FOREVERrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!"

I still don't really know what day it is and time has been confusing (for instance, I know it's day...like, not night...but whether we're going forward or backward is what I'm wondering and 5 a.m. looks a lot like 5 p.m. and who's to say there's any difference anyway? Who died and made you God? And who says we need to conform to modern calendar and clock systems? I'll go off the migratory patterns of the local elk herds from now on).

This is why: waterfront fire.

Regard:


Hmmmm. I was going to write about this, but my soul is starting to protest, sobs and gnashing of teeth (actual guh-nashing). Short version: I got the call after one hour of being asleep Thursday night. I didn't sleep again until 3 a.m. Saturday and then slept only for a couple hours before working the rest of the weekend and into this week. I thought my kidneys were going to explode on Tuesday so I bought yogurt and that's what I've been living off of for the last two days. And I was surrounded by either fire-related people or the Christmas naysayers of Astoria (i.e. the youth I've been befriending). And all I've done is type type type type FIRE type type type. I called the fire station after hearing a report of a chimney fire over the police radio.

"Did that turn out to be anything?" I asked the guy on duty. He'd been at the two big fires last week too and he laughed a little crazily and said, "No." And I laughed a little crazily and said, "Oh good."

But now I'm home and none of it matters and I bought a bottle of champagne and my breakfast this morning between getting off work and hitting the highway was olives, cheese and a swig of champagne. My heart went forward singing. No I did not drive while intoxicated.

Merry Christmas, my dears. If you get a chance, go check out the "2010: The Year in Pictures" at the New York Times website. Kind of breathtaking in so many ways. Make sure you go to full-screen mode or, yes, not so breathtaking. Mostly just difficult to see.

179: gender politics

It was a slowest news day in America apparently on Monday because this picture I took for the paper made the rounds in TV, regional papers and (reportedly) a copy of USA. Today Kels Grabow picked up while on a work trip in Arizona (she called me). This other media, in a fit of ignorance and misinformation, referred to it as a sinkhole and blamed the rain. Nope, not a sinkhole. Sorry. Just a lot that shouldn't be exposed to the elements and that's rotten through beneath the pavement crust. Nor was it a city block...as in "GOOD GLORY, MR.MAYOR! An entire city block has caved in and the city engineers have found giant broken egg shells in the grim depths below and clawed footprints leading toward the vibrant and heavily populated city center!!!"

---

In other news, I've logged oodles of stories this week and am feeling fat and satisfied on a glut of news. The collapse of the old lot was only the beginning. That day there was a vandalism report and mayhem of all sorts and I ended up driving all over the county, camera and a notebook in tow. Hung out with a reprobate middle schooler who gave me the inside opinion on one case. Bothered some busy deputies. Information disseminated!

Here's some of today. Just a little thing we call The Death Penalty. Did you know it was legal in Oregon? Now you do.

In college, I took a class about the history of the death penalty in the United States. It was from the history professor who taught history as if it were a literature class: stacks and stacks of books, novels and first-hand accounts and trial transcripts and documentaries. Next to Professor D., he was one of the best professors I had...just the sheer amount of STUFF he could jam into my head. He was also, how do you say, a passionate lecturer. There was pacing and bobbing on tiptoe and wild hand gestures and extremely effective and eloquent pauses while we all squirmed at our desks, wallowing in our ignorance. Sometimes I think history is a study in guilt and how we feel guilty about what isn't in our control, what is done and what WAS done. Thank goodness I was born a woman. My sex perpetuates few wars, genocides and mass enslavements. Or so it seems. But our wombs are the reason everyone gets born. So there's that.

offending lord peter...

who said boring people tell other people about their dreams. But I had this dream last night where I was at a local thrift store and was carrying a baby around and the baby was hyper intelligent and had the ability to cause me emotional damage with one damning look from his (indiscriminate color) eyes. And this baby was not mine. It belonged to someone else and the whole dream, people kept telling me that this other person was going to show up and I (for my part) spent the whole dream hoping he/she never did because, darn it, I was keeping that baby. I knew it would abandon me if it even got a whiff of another parent-figure. It was a disloyal baby. No fidelity whatsoever.

---

It's the weekend and I'm reading "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy who writes things like this: "Then they set out along the blacktop in the gun-metal light, shuffling through the ash, each the other's world entire." I want to leap around screaming about this sentence. What could be more simple and declarative and then (like the saucy minx he is) McCarthy switches what we expect by writing "world entire" instead of "entire world." Instead of sentiment, we get something that edges closer to...bones? The wages of truth? I don't even know what I'm talking about obviously, but such a simple thing and it makes his language remote, knowable and yet infinitely vast and frightening. He frightens me, literal chills.

Also, his career is based around a private war against punctuation. Commas scar his soul, I assume. Or, oh wait, he's modeling it off of James Joyce. I'll try not to make fun of this because the man is a god and he should model whatever he wants with impunity.

---

Goal for today, or goals:

1. Decorate the tiny, prickly Christmas tree B. slaughtered in the woods and dragged back to civilization for me. I have no ornaments and only an old string of blue lights which may or may not contain high levels of LEAD (poisoning), depending on what report you read.

2. Wash dishes.

We're going to repeat that goal again:

3. WASH DISHES

It's time to stop living like a hobo monkey and instead be more like the adult of a more graceful species.

177: the lion king, also watering holes

Very few terrible things happen outside of grocery stores. This should be some kind of truth universally acknowledged. But to be clear: Everything bad in my life (including the death of the family dog) is probably linked to a grocery store, if did not in fact happen INSIDE a grocery store (Brother 1 running away and hiding in empty cardboard boxes, for instance. Remember that one, Mom? So much fun) Anyway.

Somehow, as God is my witness, grocery stores are disasters waiting to happen. Let's call it Watering Hole Syndrome. Everyone (except this one guy I know, apparently) goes to grocery stores, rich and poor alike. In more populous areas, the rich and poor can frequent different grocery stores and thus strengthen the dividing ditches. But in other places (here, for example) where there are really only two grocery stores (plus the co-op), rich and poor, dirty and clean, chained and free, all mingle in one messy human rat trap, jostling shoulders, exchanging communicable diseases. If you live here and you want to leave your work at the office, you should never go to grocery stores. You should plant a garden and raise your own food and never need anything like heavy whipping cream or cream of tartar or anything requiring you to go to a grocery store because a trip to the grocery store only ensures a continuation of the labor you thought you'd left behind at the office.

Grocery stores are fascinating places, like how the edges of cliffs are fascinating or state hospitals or roadkill or rainbows. I like grocery stores best when terrible things happen and I'm feverish or otherwise extremely ill.

Here's a story. It's not terrible. Just symptomatic of the Watering Hole.

I went to the grocery store. For reasons known only to someone else (not me), I went at 5 p.m.

5 p.m. is a magical time. It's the hour when everyone looks at each other, winks slyly, and says (in unison): "Hey, let's buy food." EVERYONE. AT THE SAME TIME. For real. This is why you never go to the grocery store at 5 p.m. It's generally accepted to be a Bad Idea. But I did. So be it. Also, there's this thing that happens sometimes when I'm in grocery stores. It's that I get really distracted and wander around and around and around the store, which was what I was doing when I turned down an aisle and heard:

Female voice: "WHAT? (expletive deleted) I didn't know you had a warrant out on you! (expletive deleted)"

Male voice: "I...(expletive deleted) When was this? (aside) I didn't know."

2nd Male voice (a little wearily, and trying to extricate himself from the conversation): "Now you know."

I came around the corner and a man and woman were furiously muttering at each other and moving away with a shopping cart and a second man was turning on his heel. I knew the second man. He works with parole. He saw me, smiled and gave a little wave.

"Do you ever get to leave your work?" I asked as I passed him clutching my laundry detergent like a Bible.

"Not really." And then, with a look of bemusement: "I have to find my cart. I'm not sure where it is. It's somewhere around here. I just had it."

On my way out, I narrowly avoided a slew of county employees and several secretaries from various agencies, plus a stream of petty criminals. Approaching the check out, I opted for the crazy-but-infinitely motherly cashier over the pretty young one who once sold me wine even though I didn't have my ID on me and she thought I was 17.

december

This was my Friday after-work-hike. I hope you're all appropriately jealous.

Idaho, Day 2, Several Weeks Later

The sunset struck so brilliantly into the travelling carriage when it gained the hill-top, that its occupant was steeped in crimson. "It will die out," said Monsieur the Marquis, glancing at this hands, "directly."



...But there remained a broken country, bold and open, a little village at the bottom of the hill, a broad sweep and rise beyond it, a church-tower, a windmill, a forest for the chase, and a crag with a fortress on it used as a prison. Round upon all these darkening objects as the night drew on, the Marquis looked, with the air of one who was coming home.

+ & -

Positive: The Book Bench blog on the New Yorker website.

I have love/hate feelings about The New Yorker. Some of their stuff is just so rad and life-changing and then the rest of it is peddled, over-edited garbage written by people who probably want to be Henry James but haven't quite achieved his level of mind-numbing blandness. Don't worry, though, they're working hard.

The Book Bench, however, is fantastic. I love it. I want to marry it/be it. They find these crazy articles and snippets of web-news and disseminate it to the masses and they give you quick hits about books and publishing and snotty literature gossip.

God knew what he was about when he made you, Book Bench.

Negative: People who make "tsk tsk" noises. The "what a shame" noises. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Positive: Good short and long conversations with various friends who are all involved with different writing projects.

I need peer pressure to function productively as a writer. Deadlines don't cut it -- especially for my personal writing which has no deadline right now except for death which doesn't count as a deadline since I have no idea when it's going to hit. Also, once it happens and I turn in my project and resign my body to the earth, I won't get paid.

Basically, I need to know other people I love/respect are out there accomplishing writerly stuff and if I don't hustle, I'm going to be left behind...know that I, in fact, am already far, far behind and I need to start sprinting seriously or find another life purpose. If I were any good with numbers, I could weave. Unfortunately, numbers and I get on like Hannibal and the Alps: elephants are forever dying in the mountain passes and nobody's very happy.

Negative: Other people.

Positive: At least you'll never have to be them.

I wish you'd just drop dead, Hemingway!

Oh wait...

Hmmm. Nevermind.

the thrilling purchase of wool socks

Coupons. You know how they're evil, right? Like you see the coupon and this warm glowing haze descends. You're going to save money today! And with those savings you'll buy a piece of earth, call it Tara and protect it with your flesh, blood and bone for fifty generations until the troops sweep through and burn your house to the ground, but you know what, the land is still there and as long as you have land you can stand up tall. On BOTH feet, son.

But it's not that simple. At least it isn't for me. There are six things, yea, even seven I cannot abide. One of these things is picking grocery lines. I'm so bad at it. I always pick the line with the coupon lady (the one who has coupons instead of hair and her breath smells like newsprint and her eyes leak CMYK ink schemes instead of tears). You know the one. Or I get behind the repeat felon who tries to pay for everything with pennies and nickles except they're not really pennies and nickles, they're Canadian money and let's not even get started about Canadian money. Or I pick the line where the register breaks suddenly and for no reason, or the line where someone dies suddenly and for no reason. I try to use self-checkout whenever possible. In my opinion the best invention ever was the self-checkout machine. It allows me to shop in a smooth, safe way and avoid all human contact (and thus all human judgment) at the same time.

One of the last times I went through a grocery store line (the "express" line) I got stuck behind, yes, a repeat felon who was drunk when he shouldn't have been drinking (as per his parole agreement) and jingling car keys in one hand when I also knew his driving license had been suspended for life. And we were both stuck behind a guy who was paying entirely in coupons and pennies and didn't have enough of either item. So. Drunk Felon got worked up into this rant (he really just wanted to buy his five cans of pizza sauce and leave the store, I could tell) about how grocery lines are the worst. I nodded sympathetically. Then, he went from that into a rant against self checkout machines.

"They take away jobs!" he told me, leering and lurching and smelling to the stratosphere of cheap, cheap beer.

"Well, it is almost midnight. The store doesn't have very many people working that shift," I pointed out. "How many jobs could the machines possibly be replacing right now?"

"I guess. Anyway. Whenever you pay for stuff you should always have the money ready and you should never pay with a credit card. It makes everything take too d--n long. Only pay with...cash."

"I'm going to pay with a card," I said. This was almost a lie. I had been planning to pay with cash until Drunk Felon butted in. Card all the way now, though, bet your life on it.

"Oh." He lurched again. "I guess...cash. Card. Or check. Nothing else."

I decided not to ask what else anyone could possibly pay with. Food stamps, I guess. Or coupons. Which brings us back to the topic at hand.

I try to avoid coupons because they confuse me and usually snag me into more purchase than I want to purchase. You think you only have to buy one something to get another something half off or free and then you get to the register and you had to buy two somethings to get a third half off. Who needs three somethings? I only wanted two. Or coupons expire unexpectedly. Or marginally do or don't apply in confusing ways to what you thought you could buy with them. It's too much for me to untangle and life is short enough.

However. Last night, I used a coupon to buy wool socks. I wanted wool socks because two years ago I got frost bite and versions of frostbite have followed me ever since and it's been super cold here. My feet have suffered. My feet need wool socks.

With a coupon, I purchased one pair of socks and another (of equal or lesser value) half off. A-mazing. Totally navigated that coupon-aided purchase like a champ. It gives me courage, but I'm also afraid to press my luck. Despite this success, I think I'll still avoid coupons in the future. Seems safer to me.

idaho, day 1

(Andrew blurrily drinking something from Bucers)

There were a lot of questions on the way up to Moscow last night, the biggest one being: Will we ever get there?

I heard a woman encourage a pregnant woman once. She said, "I know. It's so rough in the last two months. Just remember, it's impossible to be pregnant forever." For the last two hours of the drive to Moscow, I kept telling myself that and then I wondered, "But what if it is possible?" Specifically: "What if it's possible to drive and drive and drive and die before you ever get to Moscow?"

But we made it. We're here. Laura's off gadding, something to do with school or responsibilities. Andrew was napping on the living room floor and I was having a writing crisis and feeling the weight of my exhaustion. The WOME (weight of my exhaustion) currently feels like two twin beds plus a great dane piled on top of an insubstantial plastic chair.

So far it's been a lovely trip, though I do have a few concerns. The top concern goes under the heading of "Traveling with Teenage Boys" and that concern is called "What do you feed them? And how often?" Laura ruled breakfast and I have successfully delivered lunch, but dinner is looming and I don't know what to do. Living alone means I don't really do those things called meals. I eat toast and salad and apples and I eat at weird times of the day or I don't eat at all and I just drink a lot of water because it seems like a smart thing to do or I drink coffee. Meals? What the....? I bake bread, totally an adult that way, but bread doesn't qualify as a real meal, I think, unless you're French and poor and starving and a character in a Victor Hugo novel.

break

photo by Alex Pajunas

Gonna see the sister this week because I have myself a new (ish) car and two days off of work. Brother #2's coming with me. There will be extensive documentation and lots of coffee. I need this break so badly.

I finished up the domestic violence series and Friend C. (not to be mistaken for C., who is also my friend but who doesn't live here anymore) was a kind and intelligent person and made sure I was scrambling all over jetties and beaches right after work on Friday morning so I couldn't obsess over the story and make myself crazy. I was so physically exhausted by the time he dropped me off back at home later that afternoon that all I could do was crawl into bed and watch "Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were Rabbit" and go to sleep. Hmmmm...sleep. I'd had barely any since Wednesday.

Here's that last story. I got a text from one of the women I interviewed after she read the story. It was so encouraging and kind. I was nervous about getting everything right, telling things truthfully...not just accurately, but getting the heart right.

Saturday, I finally crashed. Mumsy and Dan (Brother #3) delivered my new car to me and took away ZF. After they left, I just sat around, baked some cookies, read some books. Then came evening and the night of too much emotionality. Which is all kind of hilarious now. Especially when I remember a conversation I had with another friend earlier this week, before I'd finished the story but after I'd just wrapped up two very intense interviews with victims. I was sitting in my car and talking on the phone and telling him that it was a little disturbing to me that all the interviews hadn't really seemed to touch my emotional core. I just listened and wrote notes. I didn't get that sick feeling in my stomach like I used to (and still do) when I'm in court. Well, it all came down on Saturday. Technically, it started when I re-listened to my taped interviews with victims, but I still had a story to write so I was able to stay focused. Once the external prop (i.e. deadlines and writing to accomplish) was out of the way, though, the focus flew away and just left me feeling so unhappy about the world. I can't believe I so blithely proposed this project two months ago.

Anyway. I'm glad I have some time off. I'm going to use it well.

ode to ZF

The new car is coming today.

My infant brother is driving it.

Deep breathing.

So, the new car is coming today. It's a Subaru Legacy Outback.

BAM.

Obviously this car is completely superior to ZF, the lovely loser '89 Honda Accord I've been driving for about the last 6 years. In the new car I can fit guitars, kayaks, surfboards, BODIES. I can also drive on the beach and attempt logging trails. ZF barely clears the 8th street hill on a good day.

I love my ZF car. I recognize the need to move on when I have the money and inspiration to do so...you know, before ZF really starts breaking down and I have to start investing in a complete piece of junk. She's on the cusp right now. She could go either way in the next 6 months. A new car is necessary and, like I said...got the money for it right now. Although, now that the darn thing's purchased, I don't have the money any more. I'd better not get hit by a truck or blackmailed next week.

But, yes, totally love my car. She's taken me all over the place in various states of emotional highs and lows. To and fro from college, on adventures, on hikes, all over this new town. She has brought people to me. She has been broken into...one..two...at least four times, and stolen once for one truly awful week. Got her back. She has absolutely nothing of value inside of her anymore except for a Eugene public library Bach CD that's still stuck in the CD player and will stay there until they rip the thing out because during one break-in, someone stole the CD player faceplate.

For a while in order to listen to music, I used these itty bitty iPod speakers that I got when I opened my checking account at the bank. I'd set it up on my dash. Then someone stole that. So I stuck to singing to myself which has led to this habit I can't shake of singing softly to myself whenever I'm in a car...not just my car, any car. Every once in a while, I'd purchase those huge batteries (D batteries?) and haul along an old boom box so I could play tapes or CDs. I had to create this special throne for it, though, because the jolting of my car would make the CDs skip.

Things that have never happened to ZF:
- Never had a blowout
- Never just stopped running for no reason

That's a lot to be thankful for, I think.

Her only real troubles were an old radiator (the thing lasted from '89 to '08, though, how much can we complain, really?) and a bad starter (ultimately cost me less than $100 to fix). ZF has amazing gas mileage too. Did I mention that? This is a good car. A really good car. And now I'm casting her away for something shiny that will probably crush my heart with its cold allwheeldrive heart.

fears

“It is a fearful thing to love what death can touch.” - Anonymous

---

When I worked at a bakery in Eugene, we made a list of fears. I found it again today.

Courtney is afraid of the economy because she is graduating this year and is worried about how hard it will be to find a job. She wants to work in a non-profit organization. Doing what…she’s not exactly sure.

Trevor is afraid of poverty. To him poverty manifests itself primarily in a lack of food. Trevor is currently eating a bagel.

Claire used to be afraid of accidentally letting a vampire into the house or accidentally saying “Bloody Mary” three times. She also used to be afraid that her family would end up living on the street.

Megan was afraid of being cooked in a pot; it was a reoccurring nightmare.

Ben is afraid of rabid, flying piranhas. That and people knowing what he's actually afraid of and judging him for his fears.

We are all afraid that we have grown stupider since being in college.

---

Today I'm afraid that I might have a fever. I am afraid of finding a spider nest in my bass amp. I'm afraid that I'm developing a hunchback from so much sitting in front of a computer.

saddle mountain

Went hiking last weekend. Unlike this weekend. Coastal storms, don't you know. Yesterday, I spent time by the river in a friend's truck and we watched the trees blow sideways and the water rush and the rain fall and it looked particularly miserable.

Anyway, back when life was beautiful, worth living, etc:













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Part 2 of 3: Domestic Violence in Clatsop County.

I didn't write this story about BABY SCANDAL. I was on deadline for two other stories that morning so another reporter took it for me, but now I get all these calls from New Zealand journalists. "What say we trade some information?" but sometimes it sounds like they're saying something else and we spend a lot of time yelling at each other: "WHAT? I'M SORRY? WHAT?" International calls being what they are.

somewhere there's a place for us

Margaret Atwood. It's a caddish person who says definitive things about other people's souls, especially people they don't know, but I kind of feel like she's just showing off with "The Blind Assassin." Like, "Oh, hi, so you're trying to write ONE novel? How...droll. Me? Yes. I've written quite a few novels. In fact, this one...technically it's THREE novels in ONE." Then she sits back all smug and offers you some more coffee and you want to hate her but she's so much nicer than Ursula K. LeGuin and she is offering you more coffee and it is her house. So, really, you can't throw the coffee in her face and stab her with a kitchen knife and run screaming down the alder-bordered lane. Much as you might like to.

A sort-of-friend here told me Tom Stoppard is aggravating because every line the man writes is perfect and incorruptible. True statement. I replied with something I now suspect was propaganda shoved down my throat by my otherwise wonderful jazz guitar teacher: "But isn't it exciting that such beauty exists in the world? That there's something to aspire to?" My friend, who is also a writer and far more productive than I am, stared at me blankly and then sighed. "No, Katie, it's depressing." And, while re-reading "The Blind Assassin" yesterday, I know what he means. I love Margaret Atwood for what she's done. I also kind of hate her.

---

People who drink beer and talk to themselves should find somewhere else to hang out. Also, the girl who keeps cracking up outside. MOST ANNOYING LAUGH. Like a mosquito whine except louder and more like a bark. I refuse to believe the guy she's with is that hilarious so what's she laughing about? He looks like he isn't doing much except waggling his eyebrows. Maybe that sets her off. He looks completely cowed by this girl, though, nervous that any second she's going to take her purple-painted nails, cigarette and trendy grandma sweater and disappear out of his life forever to start dating a bartender. Rough roads, honey. It makes me think of the Disney Peter Pan when Wendy's sewing Peter's shadow onto his feet and jabbering away, oblivious and cracking herself up and Peter's baffled. He doesn't even need to be there except as a sort of marker to direct the flow of words toward. Scratching his head, he says, "Girls talk too much." And chuckle-face Wendy says, "Hahaha, yes, girls talk too much...hmmmmm? ...Oh."

Good job, Peter.

Actually, the conversation outside isn't like that at all. What was I thinking?

Laughs, like exclamation points, should be used sparingly otherwise we get confused. Smile too much and people wonder what you're worried about. Dogs might smile because they're happy to see you but chimpanzees smile to show you their teeth. It's a hostile display. BACK OFF. Hence the term "She laughed off the suggestion that she was the one who killed the puppies and sent those nasty, insinuating letters to the city councilman."

---

In newspaperland, I'm feeling a little worn out. But I'm going to laugh that off.

Currently working on a series about domestic violence in Clatsop County.

Here's the first installment

Here's a stabbing.

12 hours of sleep & the spider

The spider was as big as my face and I killed it with my left-foot running shoe. The first pass with the shoe only knocked the spider to the ground and there was that sickening moment when it was scrambling, all eight legs vicious and flailing. It was going to escape. I raised my shoe a second time and crushed its life away. Then I went back to bed. The spider is still there, between my bass amp and my kitchen door, a flat spider smudge, a warning to the others.

Now. The story, in context...

I fell asleep last night at 6:30. One minute I was reading "Clockers" by Richard Price and the drug dealer with the ulcer was furtively trailing another drug dealer who may or may not be a hired killer. The next minute it was 7:53 p.m. and I was trying to figure out if it was morning or night and what exactly was going on. There was somewhere I was supposed to be. Wasn't there? Confused, I decided to make my life easier and stumbled across the room, turned off the light and went back to sleep.

5:43 a.m.: I woke up. Wide awake. Kind of. Was it day or night? Rain pouring down outside. Check the window, light looks the same at 5 a.m. as it does at the middle of the night. I felt very little motivation to be actively awake, but, darn it, I wasn't tired. I was moving toward the kitchen when -- pause gasp heart attack -- BIGGEST SPIDER IN THE WORLD, crouched and evil-looking. Massive, lying in wait for babies, virgins, puppies and truth. No way I'm going back to sleep with that monster lurking. But you know the rest of the story.

7:53 a.m.: Wake up again. Groggily assemble clothing and push hair into something somewhat resembling dignity. Check my phone. Two texts, both from Bishop, both from last night. The first one reads: "Where are you?" The second one, several hours after the first: "Did you fall asleep?"

THAT'S where I was supposed to be last night, at the sports bar with Bishop, watching the Giants game.

Oops.

Watching Giants games with Bishop might be my new favorite thing to do in Astoria, even though it's only happened once before. It's like watching Nebraska games with my sister, or following a forester in the forest. The folks dig this stuff. They are closer to despair and elation in this element, be it football, baseball or forest, than they are anywhere else. Sincere and wondrous and it pulls me in. I'm a sucker for honesty.

---

Some news stories, if any of you still care (and I've been told at least four times this week that my job doesn't matter. It gets to one after a while, but one must make one's money somehow and journalism is my equivalent of football so...yes, we move on)

1. Glory be! A boat! Boat is a weird word. Booo-at is how it SHOULD be pronounced, I think. Let's change this together.

2. Controversy.

Jess

Poets are the greatest believers of love, the greatest fools for it and the ones most likely to proclaim from mountain tops that though their lives be shambles, ash-worn and weary, love will triumph and the love that triumphs will look nothing like we expect. It's harder and comes after suffering and doesn't make things easier and sometimes you still wake up lonely, or you lose it or you never see it. Poets still go on proclaiming. Technically, they should start wearing llama skins and eating locusts because they're about two-degrees away from desert-dwelling shaman craziness.

But we all hope they're right...That "My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone" etc.

So I almost played piano this morning until my fingers fell off, precisely at each knuckle. To give my fingers a rest, I read poetry and so I was thinking about love. I decided not to think about familial love because that exists in a way deeper than I realize and I don't feel like untangling it and making myself homesick.

I hope I'm not the only person out there who sometimes wonders if they can love people in a way even approaching the poetic...selfless, pure and all that. There was a short story by David Foster Wallace I read last month. The character repeats over and over again how he's a fraud, a fraudulent person and all his feelings and beliefs are tainted by this fraud he lives. What you realize in the story, though, is that we're all jointed that way. We're all manipulating and stacking. I think DFW's point was, "Get over it." But he was one of those tricky clever people. I'd have to read the story again.

Anyway. Tangent. I'd like to think I love all the people I claim to love and I know, for the most part, what I say is true. There are some people, though, like my family, who I am rock solid in my assertion. There is no way I could not love them. This is also true of my friend Jess.

Years before I met her, on October 2, she was crumpled in a car and if a lot of things had gone differently, we might never have become friends. She might not have been around, is what I'm saying. This is a difficult thought to think now. A Jess-less world. Terrible thought. She has the best laugh I've ever heard. We almost accidentally kissed on the lips at her birthday party and she remains one of my dearest friends, always ready to perform "ceremonies" to celebrate random events with me because she (like me) thinks there should be more rituals and use of tea candles in daily life.

I love you, Trimmer. I'm glad you're still here.

super powers

Look at this picture, gaze deep into its soul. What do you see? The answer should be whatever's a degree less than all-encompassing divinity and power. But don't say "God" because that would be blasphemous. If you were, for example, to say Batman, though, you'd be all clear and good to go for the next 50 years -- depending on how old you are now. If you're already 50, I'm sorry, you probably only have 30 more years, best case scenario.

So, Batman. Superhero, right? Superheroes in general we can approve of? Yes. Batman is special though and he's special precisely because he isn't...um...special. He wasn't born in a radioactive basement in Kansas, or dipped in the lightening bath of the gods one quiet spring day, nothing he's eaten (and nothing that's nibbled on him) has caused him to break out in wings or gills or magnum force death rays. Instead, he's just got moxy. And, yes, endless wealth. We'll give that a nod. But, in general, he's just average and took a lot of those taekwondo classes, the kind you see when you're walking down an unsightly strip of suburban America and they're usually next door to a furniture store or an empty piano showroom.

He relies on gadgetry, wit and his knowledge of humanity to get through the day. Just like the rest of us. More or less. Right?

So, taking a look at my own activities and lifestyle, what would be my superpower if I were more Batman-ish? I've come up with a list.

My superpowers consist of...

1. Being able to just kill at driving around the roundabout off of the Youngs Bay Bridge. Roundabouts should be one smooth movement, precision is everything. Don't hesitate. Don't doubt. Line it up in your mind like a Tetris game. I have to say, I was born to drive that roundabout. With all superpowers though there's always kryptonite or some limiting factors, like no shark repellent in the old utility belt, for instance. Shark attacks not being things one plans for very often. So...things that dampen my power in this area are: Washington drivers who go to darningly slow and mess up the whole precision aspect of a smooth sail through the roundabout.

2. Going all day without eating. I don't start feeling sick, I don't get cranky, and I could still go on a hike with you if you asked me. If this isn't a legitimate super power, I don't know what is. Kryptonite: I need a glass of water right away in the morning or I'll feel awful. But this is true whether I skip food or not.

3. I can play Tom Wait's "Rains on Me" on the ukulele. This superpower is more akin to how Batman can kick people really hard. Lots of people can kick people really hard. It's not special. On the flip, you'd never want to be the person who CAN'T kick people really hard.

4. I can hear sirens in my sleep and distinguish between Medix sirens and law enforcement sirens. But my brain might just be making this up. Kind of like how Batman often trusts Catwoman and maybe only 50% of the time that ends up being a good idea and in that 50% of it being a good idea, half the time he's pretty sure it isn't.

I slept in late this morning and watched "Batman Begins" while eating breakfast (which was mostly kale and carrots, not the best breakfast), so I'll leave you with this:

"Well, you know how it is, Mr Fox. You're out at night, looking for kicks, someone's passing around the weaponized hallucinogens..."

come on up to the house

There's no light in the tunnel
No irons in the fire
Come on up to the house
And you're singin' lead soprano
In a junkman's choir
You gotta come on up to the house


Is it possible to be both completely exhausted, but not? Yeah, didn't think so. Yet I am.

The things that make me love my job have been happening every other minute this week. Unfortunately these same drops o' sunshine are what give me acute work anxiety, stomach cramps, headaches and, in general, reduce me to the level of a nervous dog with an abscess or something else disgusting and painful and needing medical attention. It's a sick, sick world, little pilgrim.

In a moment of distraction this afternoon, I pretended to stab the courthouse deputy with my cell phone. I don't know what came over me. Lack of sleep, I think.

"What are you doing?" he demanded. The only way I can describe how he said this is "faintly incredulous" which makes me think of Jane Austen books.

He then proceeded to tell me that when he's bored and nothing much is happening inside the courthouse, he goes and kicks cars out of the parking lot. Explanation: The courthouse has the misfortune of sharing its parking lot with a museum. Except, of course, the courthouse doesn't like to share. Especially not during the week when juries need to get in and out and the lawyers are armed and sleep-deprived and subpoena-ing whatever moves.

Technically, you can only park there for the museum on the weekends when the courthouse is closed. Of course people ignore this daily.

"Whenever I see them spilling out of their cars with all their cameras, all happy..." he trailed off, smiling to himself. I assumed at this point I was forgiven.

---

I have a new neighbor who shall henceforth be known as Bishop...and her contemporary companion, Anne Frank. Inside joke. Really.

Bishop has taken over C.'s apartment since C. can't live here anymore because there's a county ordinance or court order expressly forbidding it. To help C. keep her sanity during this difficult time, we've started calling the prison she was transferred to "OPB." Her "job" as a top environmental blogger actually refers to work crew duties at the airport. But that's a secret.

---

So I skipped out of work early a few days back. Wednesday, I guess. And by early, I mean, I worked all day except for a few hours in the afternoon when I escaped down the coast and took photos and hiked and ate candy.



---

I met Oregon's attorney general. He used to hunt the Mafia...using a sort of talisman and magical staff, I assume, with all the fierce old magic of federal law behind him. Few can wield that power and not be consumed with the lust for more. Surely as motions are suppressed, the darkness overcomes. Lasses! Lads! Breeches! Unicorns!

Anyway, that's how I like to imagine the attorney general and the outworking of federal prosecution. Someone else in the newsroom, who will remain nameless, looked at my story and pulled up the photo we were going to use and saw a different man than I did. "Why!" this nameless person exclaimed. "He just looks like a big nerd...but he's killed people and such in the Marines and prosecuted the mob. My goodness."

HERE'S THE STORY, in all its objective glory.

And the DUIIs continue to haunt me. My editor asked me to please take "reeling" out of the lede. As in: DUIIs reel drunkenly back in front of the City Council for due consideration. Etc. I thought I was being clever -- typically a bad sign.

dispatches #1

It's beautiful outside. Joseph the would-be-novelist is sitting at a table with his cigarette and black coffee and looks like a lonesome cowboy who might be interesting and have a lot of ruggedness in his life. He writes longhand with a sharpie pen. He produces these perfectly spaced and indented paragraphs in consistent typewriter script. He looks like he might have killed a man, maybe two. Maybe he was a rebel or a revolutionary and now he writes poems. Maybe he's wanted on ten outstanding felony warrants for twenty crimes he didn't commit. He has a beat-up lighter and an old leather bag to carry his manuscripts in. He's written a trilogy of journey novels. Think Cormac McCarthy. Think soul. He looks like someone who would write something like that -- multiple times if he had to.

He has all the accessories to signal a life lived out in the dust and under the sun in a place with too much sky where men are cruel and women lie through satin lips. Bones bleach there and cheekbones stretch out under skin like wings. Joseph looks like he knows something about cliffs and cars and the ways of hearts, bar fights, empty rooms, dead towns and America. All that stuff.

Looks like.

Joseph is not a cowboy, is not a rebel. He never joined the revolution or ever saw a motorcycle he would know how to ride. Joseph is a would-be-novelist who has written a mind-numbingly dull trilogy about journey and youth with himself as the template -- odd since the tail end of young is several decades back and he never was much of a traveler until the gangs in Los Angeles threatened to kill him and drove him north to my town where I met him in front of a coffee shop and he told me his life story in such a dizzying fog of words that I didn't surface for two hours.

Joseph lives in a low-income housing unit with a fabulous downstairs and series of upper floors crumbling into nothing, propped up with thin walls and the desperate funds of people who can't afford to live anywhere else. Joseph is an aspiring racist who blames Mexico for most of his troubles, everything from a broken typewriter (not to mention his inability to type) to why he had to leave California (God rest her beautiful southern soul). Joseph is an old man and I've noticed he looks older than he did four months ago. He looks like people I've know who got cancer, who died from a sudden chill, who are on their way out. He's also a little bit crazy. Probably he needs a friend.

He doesn't remember me and I haven't reintroduced myself. When people start talking to me for no reason other than they're drunk or crazy or have no brain cells left, I say my name is Kay and I will sit forever and listen to them, paralyzed by my curiosity. Who are you? I have to know. We all have such stories to tell about ourselves, most of them are lies but even we don't know that.

---

"I killed women and children over there and I enjoyed it. Hell, I'd do it again," says the man who I'll estimate at 5'7", in the neighborhood of 300 pounds. His gray hair twists like a pelt down his back. He may or may not be wearing a hat.

He is telling a tiny Hispanic woman that his friend is being held by The Coyotes for $3,000 and they're going to behead him in the desert if no one sends the money. They're going to mail his eyes to his mother. He is telling this small woman (with tea cup thin wrists) that he was in Vietnam, that he slaughtered people, killed them when and where he wanted.

"Oh, no, you didn't," she laughs.

And that's where you came in. He is saying,

"Yep, children.
All the time.
I killed women and children over there
and I enjoyed it.
Hell, I'd do it again."

---

Embrace a good friend, tell her goodbye. In the sun and the remnants of summer, walk across the street only looking the right way once. Do not expect to be so suddenly accosted, literally you blink, and there's a man with a sponge face and splinters in his eyes who holds up a shaking finger, cracks his face into a sideways grin and says,

"Deal or no deal."

Just smile, keep walking.

But like that neighborhood cat who follows you halfway to work and is always leaping ahead and getting underfoot so you fall down the steps cursing, he side steps with ballet swiftness and is dancing on the balls of his feet in front of you still.

"Deal or no deal."

He sees something in your eyes, decides it's hesitation and, being a good salesman, he pounces, shaking his hands to dispel your fears about the deal. "The answer," he assures you, "is already decided."

Someday you will die.

weather underground

Is it stupid of me to be excited about fall? The smells, the atmosphere. The memories, my goodness, floods of them, mostly school related. My childhood, again, I say, my goodness!

Slow down.

I should ask myself these questions:

1. What do I expect to be different about the fall?

Answer: Well. It will be colder.

2. Will rain patterns change?

Answer: No, they'll get worse. Two words: coastal storms. Two more words: gale winds. Three words: death by starvation. Culminating in one word: bleak.

3. So why be excited about fall and the oncoming winter of our discontent?

Answer: ...

...wait, I'm still thinking...

...hmmm...think think think...

Thanksgiving! Christmas! oh-my-gosh-this-chai-is-so-good! Do I even need more reasons? Just let me have my nostalgia, that's all I ask for. I'm taking -- oh wait, I'm sorry, did "Name" by Goo Goo Dolls just come on the radio in this coffee shop? I think it did. Wow, that was distracting. But, yes!, more nostalgia. Bring it on! Pile it! Heap it! Until it oozes.

I like how each season has its own feel and brings its whole "I'm new! Brand new! Buy me" with it. "Seasons?" scoff Oregonians. "What seasons?" But they're probably from out-of-town. Silly hipsters, Oregon has seasons sure as there's a nose on my face, it just takes a practiced...um...nose...to detect them.

The rain right now, as we near the end of September, is slightly brackish with faint undertones of something that reminds me of soccer (before I tore my quad), school (before I descended into the hellish, exhausting bowels of college), coffee houses in Eugene, things like bugs and plants dying, and the white room Tiffany and I lived in that first year. There's a kick in the air -- whiskey in coffee, perhaps. A sort of charged up current, something electric and brisk, but the light is mellower now and the water is even a different color, deeper and full of currents.

These little guys, however, takes all the joy out of the warmful-enclosedness: BED BUGS! Is anybody else as freaked out as I am that they're making a comeback? Did you know about this? The glorious bed bug revolution has dawned and we are just nurturing blood bags strewn along their paths to victory. We're those "healing" packs you see in video games. We'd like to think we're the soul-devouring mushrooms or the person with the really big knife. We're not. We're just breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Nations will fall before them. Businesses already are. Don't you read the news? There is no escape.

Bed bugs: Nasty and coming to a mattress near you. Hide your children, hide your wives. Etc.

thread & fabric

“Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months," said Oscar Wilde

...who was a snob
...who I love
...who is now dead
...who also wrote:

"If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you."

---


Photo by Richard Mahar

Most of my body's life has been spent in thrift store clothes. It probably started as a cost thing, right? With 6 kids growing all ways at once, what would you do? You'd go to Value Village and Goodwill on 50% off sale days and buy cheap clothes, that's what you'd do, and you'd buy shoes that are at least two sizes bigger than a given kid's current foot because you know next week those feet are going to put a ruler off its meds with a violent growth spurt.

Oh the days of too big shoes. For me, a tall girl from a young age and the matching feet to balance all that height on top of, shoe sizes have always been galling. Now, at 23, I have so much more perspective. I know my feet are average if not even a little smallish for my height. At the time though, I hated my feet and wearing too-big shoes didn't help my pride. In the long run, it was probably good for my character.

When you're a kid, thrift store clothes always work. How can they not fit? You're basically a glorified oval. No weird kinks and corners. Just slap a t-shirt on and make sure you've got a diaper or undies and everything's good. I spent most of my time in the mud and up trees anyway, my hair unbrushed, my face unwashed. Savagery at its finest. Who cared about fashion? Wearing clothes was just a way to keep from shaming the family name.

Thrift stores continued to work until I was about 14 or 15 and then I hit the Self Conscious Years. My torso outpaced my shirts. "How much spine does one person need?" I wondered. I felt like I had enough to make another person plus a small animal, maybe a 'possum.

I started re-sewing cheapster thrift store clothes to get a more perfect fit. I'd buy 99 cent over sized shirts and turn them into long, fitted shirts. I'd hem pants, resew inseams, do all sorts of diddly to skirts, slash things in half, turn scarves into leggings, dresses into shirts. All my clothes with the exception of...um...undergarments and socks...were re-creations based from salvaged clothing or fabric.

The problem I was addressing: Things didn't fit as simply and easily as they used to. I hate ill fitting clothes. My teenage years were already uncomfortable enough (F.Scott Fitzgerald said: Everyone's youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness), why put uncomfortable clothes on top? Still, I wore a lot of terrifying things.

But it was cheap and fun and I got mostly what I wanted in the end without all that bother of actually needing to look for the desired item.

Then I went to college and I realized I could turn it into a sort of hyper moral tenet: Look, I'm reusing stuff we just cast off for no reason. I'm being wise and sane in a gorged society.

I wore the same clothes for years, cutting them up and altering them whenever fashions shifted dramatically or my sense of comfort changed. One long dress I got when I was 14 turned into a long skirt, turned into a short dress, turned into a medium length skirt and then became a thin-strapped tank top. Now it's a halter-strap tank top and is still in my closet.

Yeah, so all of that's done now.

Sewing still happens, but I'm tired of cheap stuff held together with my crooked seams, cobbled together so it looks right on the outside. If you flip my clothes inside out, you'll see a crazy patchwork of corrections over corrections. Also, I'm facing the problem of fit again. Things really don't fit now. I don't know what happened when I turned 20, but I have something resembling curves for the first time in my life. Child-bearing hips? Maybe. They're foreign to me. I have to adjust.

So the point of all this: I bought new clothes and I spent REAL money on them and I don't know what to think. I had a friend who knows what she's doing take me shopping last time I visited Portland and I ventured out by myself today. Sad as it is, I have more of an image to keep up now, being a working professional. Not much of an image, granted, but I want to look competent and my old clothes are falling apart. The back of my pant hems are ragged from years of walking in the elements. Shirts that kept me through junior high to college graduation are threadbare and unfortunate. It's time to move on.

My hope is that buying this new clothing will not only keep me in clothes for the next seven years, but it will make the whole "What do I wear?" question easier. It was getting to the point of asking every morning, "What can I wear that doesn't have holes? Oh shoot, well check this off the list. Where did that hole come from? When and why? Dear lord!" or "What, of these holey ragged clothes, can I combine in such a way that the overlapping fabrics will conceal the general decrepit state?"

It was complicated and I don't like spending that much time just figuring out what to wear. Silly. I need to be able to get ready in five minutes and not be hung up by what's on my hangers.

So now I have what I need: a new pair of jeans, a pair of slacks for when I'm in court, some nice shirts, a serviceable/comfortable/adorably-appointed gray and black skirt.

Exciting, yes?

Also, I have the tights pictured above (left), but those are just sheer frivolity. Yay frivolity.

---

In other news, I think this story gave me an ulcer. Court stories always do.

I'm looking forward to Monday. Why? Oh well, I was just out, you know, drinking whiskey sours with a co-worker and we were walking back home when she spotted some police lights flashing outside a bar. Interesting. We continued walking forward, round the corner, come to be all of the officers on duty from all the agencies in town are outside this bar. About six cars with screaming lights. Whaaaaaat?

A brawl! Hoorah! People in custody are kicking at the doors inside the back of a squad car. Witnesses and sideline brawl participants are hugging the sidewalks wailing in drunken abandonment, all of them completely confused. Cops are standing around, arms folded across their chests or hands resting on top of their radios. Dark night, neon light. The bar is emptied and closed.

I snapped into reporter mode, caught the eye of a deputy who knows me and started demanding things.

---

When I'm typing up the police dispatches in the morning, I listen to this song:

The sheriff pulled me in and he sat me down
He said, you make no mistake
I know just what it takes
To pull a man's soul back from heaven's gates


Here it is: "Black River Killer" by Blitzen Trapper

the sordid tale of the pants

Hole -- in pants -- the pants I wear every day without fail to work and to court and to all places my legs must go modestly clad -- hole in back of pants. Oh my.

After utilizing scotch tape, I wore them anyway.

But now I need
New Pants
or Patched Pants
or a body that does not require clothing. That, of course, is the eternal ideal. Thanks, Adam. Stupid original sin and now no one gets to be naked EVER. Nor do we get to live in what was probably the most supremely amazing garden in the entire world.

---

Things that are happening right now that I wish would stop happening:

1. The child who, as certain as a metronome and just as vile and pointless, is pinging a metal ball against a metal table and staring all bored at his brother...

2. Inciting his brother into an epileptic seizure of activity. Must run! Must squeal! Must stomp around and cast paper to the ground! Must do this all in a coffee shop! DIVE DIVE DIVE!

3. Coffee. Why am I still drinking coffee? I can feel my DNA tightening into an even more helixy double helix.

4. Child #2 telling me what he's doing from second to second and giggling all crazy whenever I glare at him.

5. Perhaps I should stop hating the future of the world. It's playing peekaboo with me using a copy of The New Yorker. Kind of endearing actually. Cheeky cultured brat, I will not let you beguile me with your native charm and the fact that you're about 5 years old and need to wear glasses(a-dorable).

6. Child #1 kicking the couch I'm sitting on. Dear God, stop! Why are you like this? What sort of horrible trauma are you repressing right now that makes you act this way?! Stop kicking the bleepity bleep couch.

7. Time -- just in general. Stopit.

8. I want THIS to stop happening too. I don't know how this makes you feel. It makes me feel anger and sadness and nausea and as if perhaps we live in a cruel small world that suffers and sobs and is not heard very often by people who should be listening.

---

After a late night (2 a.m. ish?) and a morning wherein I could not sleep past 6:30 (technically, after a week of getting up at 4 or 4:30, 6:30 is sleeping in to my confused body), I decided to go hiking. Somehow got down a steep slide zone without killing myself. My legs were shaking. Not a good sign. I cut the expedition short and instead spent a good half hour sitting on a piece of driftwood someone set up like a bench atop a rocky outcrop. I watched the sea lions leap in and out of the waves, staggering their above-water appearances so that it looked like a sea monster was undulating and uncoiling out in the ocean.

mule variations

RECENT STORY

Related to the following photo:



---

I bought a CD last week. I can't stop listening to it even though I've heard the songs all before years ago. I think I'm in love with the handmade component of it all: a CD. In a CD player. The kind that still has a tape deck. Will wonders never cease? When I go on long driving trips, the CD player boom box comes with me and it runs off of...BATTERIES, huge batteries. Batteries bigger than babies. Bigger than five babies.

The CD, if you are curious, is Tom Wait's "Mule Variations." How do people (Laura) not like Tom Waits? How do they (Laura) not throw themselves prostrate before his holy altar, beating their breast and sobbing, "I'm not worthy!" How does that not (Laura) happen?

Regard:

---

In the last three days, I've subscribed to one magazine and bought four others: two trashy women's fashion magazines, one archaeology trade thing, and one science magazine.

I read in a book written by a journalist that people serious about their craft should read lots of...stuff. They should commit to read one weird thing each week. At least.

So...

The trashy women's magazines have taught me that OMG yes you can totally be a sex symbol (well praise God) in those jeans, but...you know...the good kind of sex symbol. Not the bimbo-y kind. In this modern feminist world you have to draw the line somewhere. Preferably, very very low.

All of the stories start with quotes, but the thing is they're all really dumb quotes. The writers aren't bad. Why are they starting with these quotes? Is it a requirement? Is it something the editors do?

"Sullivan! What's with these miles of context-establishing, beautifully written, poetic leads and opening paragraphs?! You know we can't print this! Here, watch. I'm going to just slash it all the way down 10 inches to...to...here."

"But, with all respect, sir, that's so confusing. You have no idea who's talking or why they're saying what they're saying. Actually that's the most boring part of the story."

"Well, you wrote it. Good lord, don't I have enough to do already? You're a writer for landssake. Just stick in an attribution there instead and put in a single sentence establishing the scene. Glory!"

Furthermore, in the beauty insider tips there's no point to why you have to do all this stuff to your eyelashes and the loose skin under your arm. Yet it's accepted that, Ummmm...of course you want to fix that. Of course you worry about that. Everyone does.

It looks like a never-ending course of disappointment and betrayal to me and this denial of pores seems unhealthy. The message: let them breathe, but make sure you hide them at all times. Women do not have pores...men must never discover that we do or else all is lost.

Also, these magazines are for straight-haired people and have no tips in their "8 Tips for Perfect Hair ALWAYS" for curly-hair folk. Well fine.

---

You got to get behind the mule
every morning and plow

156: oh hi there

It's been a while. How long? So long ago that the last time I talked to all of you via God (aka, the Internet) I was only expecting Nebraska (as a woman expects her first child) and now (from where I sit in a coffee shop listening to some pseudo Euro techno poop probably created in fact by an indie band named [ironically] Consumerism Fist), but (I say): now, from where I sit, Nebraska is a distant memory. Almost.

I was sitting in court next to the security deputy today and somehow we started talking about how the Fatherland smells. Probably we were talking about the weather. Out here, it's not just a formality or a preliminary conversational politeness. Instead it's more like: DEAR GOD! The WEEEEEAAAAATHER!! Why do we live here?!?!

Please note: The weather has been awful. Everyone I've talked to recently has been contemplating suicide. One of my regular sources darkly hinted at a particular gruesome form: suicide by can opener. I said it would take more effort than it was worth. Today, however, is lovely. I went on a two hour bike ride with my new neighbor and it was perfect because we're both wimps about huge hills.

Anyway.

The deputy isn't from Oregon either, and he said they could pave Chicago over (where he lived for a long time) and he wouldn't miss it. Where you're born is different, is special. Nobody better lay a hand on it. Even if you hate the heat of the state wherein you were born, it smells like every good thing that has ever happened to you. When I stood out in the damp evenings in Nebraska and inhaled that thick air full of smells and heavy with everything growing from the dirt: a green, hot air. And the lightening bugs slowly turned on and off. And cicadas whirred loud and electric. It felt like home in the way that home rarely feels. I loved it.

But I will never move back.

Because (here's the other part) I don't know how to describe the way my heart (yes, heart) rose the second I saw the Oregon geography unfold in mountains and valleys under the plane as we flew back into Portland. I couldn't stop smiling.

But. Yeah. Anyway. No more smiling. Down to the bitter cruel realities of life as of person who works at a full-time job, gift-wrapped in deadlines.

We lost two reporters. One to retirement. The other to some lame job. And by lame job I mean an amazingly fantastic opportunity and she will shine star-like and perhaps become famous. Stupid C. Here's her blog. And follow her on Twitter. Do it. I have no idea what Twitter means (philosophically) or why it seems to influence people (emotionally).

When I interned at an alternative weekly, the arts editor would give me despairing looks and "tsk" when I voiced my anti-Twitter, anti-social networking angst. She'd spin back in her chair and cue up her screen which was mashed edge to edge with Facebook whatsits, chat doodas, various instant share type thingys and lord knows what else. Things were pinging and alerting and dinging non stop.

Looks stressful to me.

But let me not detract. If you're into Twitter (even remotely) and care about what's going on around you (even remotely), follow C. Read her blog. Appreciate her blog description which I think is new since the last time I looked it was something like, "C. is a journalist." She told me she'd been instructed to sexy up the description.

It is very important that descriptions be sexy.

---

So briefly, I want people to appreciate how mad it's been. Bear with me...I need attention. Or validation.

July 27-August 3, I'm in Nebraska/Iowa with THE WHOLE FAMILY. Awesome, rad and other mad greats. Behold:



Fly back into Portland Aug.3. Hang out with Tiffany downtown for a few hours. Drive back to Astoria. Get in around midnight. Wake up the next morning and go to work.

Work the rest of the week. Obviously.

August 6, drive to PDX after work.

August 7, leave PDX early in morning. Drive back to Astoria. From Astoria, drive to North Cascades National Park on a semi-self-imposed newspaper assignment. By the time I get to North Cascades, arriving at 5:45 p.m., I have been on the road since 7:30 a.m.

Attend climate change conference night of August 7 after quick intros to all the people I will be traveling with the next day. In bed by 10.

August 8, wake up at the crack o' dawn. Spend all day in the lovely almost wilderness. Climb on top of a boat cabin to take pictures. Get wet. Climb other things. Hike a lot. Interview. Photograph. Get back to my car, parked at the trail head, at 6 p.m. Still have to drive back to Astoria.

Drive back to Astoria. Get in town around 1 or 2 a.m. Get a few hours of sleep. Monday comes. I work for the rest of the week. Obviously.

At some point C. and our city reporter leave the newsroom forever and my workload goes up accordingly. 70 hours last week, I think. I stopped counting after I hit 50.

That brings us to last weekend (which, odd, feels like it happened yesterday). I went to Eugene on a whim Friday evening and stayed through Sunday morning.

Now I'm back and, wow, it's the weekend again. This week has also been jam packed, but I took Thursday and today pretty easy...or, at least, found a way to cram more stuff into a shorter period of time. If I'm being honest: I don't remember what happened yesterday. Today, though, I know I spent the morning going at full tilt. I've been beating the layout people into work for the last two weeks. We're talking 4:30, 5 a.m. It feels great. I'm so happy about my job right now. Trust me on this. It's the most fantastic, lovely feeling.

Oh man, a siren just wailed by. It made me suddenly antsy and anxious. I will resist the urge to rush back to the office and listen in on Dispatch.