hobbitses, precious

In case you were worried, yes, everyone in Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit" will be speaking their lines in the epic-whispers-betokening-doom which are now standard in all fantasy or fantasy-style movies. I can't be sure, but I'm going to bet there will be a choir intoning in Latin at some point during a fight scene, followed quickly by a pregnant held note and slow-motion shots of a character charging the vast and yowling enemy hordes, wielding a sword, yelling and discovering his inner Viking.

I like the looks of Bilbo. Very fussy yet intrepid and he has a nice nose, too. However, Thorin (in the book: head dwarf, snobby leader-type, brimming over with history and capitalized place names) will be portrayed by a dark young sexy god who sings lilting Celtic-style verse in a fair baritone while turning the full force of his gypsy eyes on the camera. Fili and Kili -- also good-looking. Unsure how to feel about this. Galadriel, for reasons unknown, will make an appearance and tenderly brush hair away from (Sir) Ian McKellan's face. Gross, but bravery points for her. Good elf men must have been hard to come by in that particular Age.

I wish Peter Jackson was more entertaining, but he's not. He just runs around with pins deflating well-rounded characters and turning good stories into the equivalent of a 70's car chase with lots of lingering backward glances and shots of New Zealand. I can't forget what he did to Sam Gamgee, turning him into the token "fat kid" character and the plucky comedy relief... like Porky Pig in the "Drip Along Daffy" cartoon. Which you should watch:



But anyway. The preview, with its wide screen mountain vista shots, also reminded me of how much I want to go back to the North Cascades. I told M. I want to die and be buried there. He said that's probably because I haven't traveled much. The words of someone who has never been to the North Cascades, I say. I'm already planning next year's trip.

The mountains, Gandalf!

nothing really exciting happens in God's country

I'm committed to making tomorrow a good day by using bicycle power. My schedule: 5-9 a.m., baking. Doubles at the restaurant: 11 a.m. - 8 or 9 p.m. Triple shifts, yay! So, I'm going to break out the rain gear and bicycle to the coffee shop in the morning. Instant good day.

---

Been re-writing my resume and re-realizing my inability to keep dates fixed in my head. What year did I graduate from college? When did I even start college? Surely I was at that job for 5 years... only 2? Huh. There are some interesting jobs out there: a 14 week stint in Alaska for the AP wire, anyone? My next job goal is to work in the mountains, or near the mountains.

---

Bruno woke me up around 5 this morning, yowling his head off. But apparently he was lonely and just wanted to cuddle and fall asleep in bed with me so I ended up sleeping until 7:45 after all.

---

My first work shift starts in an hour and, since I'm working a double, I'll be there all day. I started adjusting my attitude yesterday so that I could be okay with this today. I like my jobs. They're not hard. I'm just bored, I think, and I resent that I have to tie any emotion to the jobs. There's no reason for drama or, really, even stress: we're serving food. It's one same darn thing after another. Everyone calm down. Most of this is inside me, however... hence attitude adjustment. Whatever. I did yoga this morning (hamstrings are sooooo tight. Flexibility is not like riding a bike, it seems).

---

The worst question to ask me when it's after 8 p.m. and I've already broken down the kitchen line for closing and you're the last table in the restaurant and you've finished eating and your bill is on the table is: "How late do you stay open?" Because I know the sentence hovering in the background is: "We were thinking of sitting here, sipping wine for the next 5 hours and we hope none of you were thinking of actually getting off work and going home to sleep." By the way. I guess I forget sometimes that I only exist for the customer's convenience. Whoops. (Was that bitter? It sounded a little bitter. People are just so odd.)

247: the obsessively looking back syndrome

One of my favorite cartoon strips is a Peanuts cartoon where Charlie Brown is watching a square-dancing competition on TV and his little sister asks him why he's watching it and he says the people look happy. He likes watching people be happy, he says. I love that strip but I never want to embody it. It's Charlie Brown speaking so you know he's only saying it because he isn't happy and he also feels he never will be happy. His reasoning is that if he can't be happy, at least he can watch other people be happy. That's terribly defeatist.

So. Some things I want to keep in my mind for next year:

1. The motives and thoughts I ascribe to people are simply that: motives and thoughts I'm putting in their mouths and which they have not spoken or even thought. So I should stop getting angry and frustrated at made up people and instead investigate my own motives. Why do I think a person is responding a certain way? What am I doing that I feel guilty about? (because I kind of think that's the root, right there. I'm doing something I know I shouldn't or in a way I shouldn't but I don't want to stop. I want what I'm doing to be justified and right)

2. I'm happiest when I'm making, whether that's sewing, drawing, writing, or playing music and writing songs. This year, I didn't do enough making... although, I guess, I was writing every day at the newspaper.

3. I will not stay in the service industry for more than a year. That means by Sept.2012, I'd better have a new job lined up. M. says I won't be satisfied ultimately with anything less, and he's right. My patience for waiting tables and making coffee is limited. Unless I have to (for money), I won't be able to keep it up. Not if there's a writing/creative job out there I can weasel my way into. It helps that old sources are constantly harassing me at the restaurant and coffee shop, asking me when I'm going to go back to reporting.

4. Stop sabotaging myself. I'm going on a snowboarding/hiking trip to Montana in January or February and I'm a little bit terrified even though I know it's going to be a blast. A part of me would rather stay safe and comfortable and bored and in a flimsy false version of happiness (which comes, really, from fear to do what is hard). The other part is screaming to explore this vast country and see people and let things happen and move to another state and work hard at challenging jobs and have my confines (mental and physical) blown apart. It makes me think again of a W.H. Auden poem:

"We would rather be ruined than changed
we would rather die in our dread
than climb the cross of the moment
and let our illusions die."

Also, I've come up a with a purpose for this blog: short assignments. I love where I live and I don't write about it, not enough, not truly. So, short assignments: tasks of describing, of recording. Starting next week.

Neeeway. Today is going to consist of resting up (last night was terrible. I was at work for only two hours and I couldn't even stretch out full length on the bed until after an extremely hot shower, a back massage that was more a spine-cracking ordeal than a massage because my muscles were so tense, and at least a quart of tea and I don't know how much ibuprofen... after which, I slept like a large, ugly baby). Also, taking stuff to Goodwill and playing with Bruno (who is fantastic and still a fartsy brat)

eve

I have already taken 3 naps today. Merry Christmas Eve, everyone.

Christmas notes

Christmas, for whatever reason, is the seat of most of my childhood trauma. I still can't sleep without my feet covered because of an animated film called "The Nutcracker Prince" in which an evil rat queen scurries under cover of darkness, creeping into beds and biting people's toes to call curses down upon their lives.

That was a fun December night in our family. The movie ended and L. and I were so terrified we ended up sleeping on the couch with my exhausted father. Over the years we built up a whole mythical persona for the evil rat queen. We could make deals with her. We could make sacrifices to appease her. But there was always her son to worry about. He was less predictable: the rat prince who, in the film, is later stabbed by the Nutcracker's rapier and drags himself through a dollhouse palace, bleeding from his side and screaming vengeance in a raspy death rattle. Yes, this was a children's movie.

The other thing I'm still working through is the whole concept of Santa Claus. I was a very superstitious child. I knew (intellectually) that certain beings and creatures didn't exist. But at my base, in all belief, I couldn't be so sure. Thus, my scrubbing through our lawn to find four leaf clovers, my obsession with mythologies, my casual gifts of food to the Elder Gods (just in case), and my inability to banish Santa Claus from Christmas traditions.

Wilson children never believed in Santa Claus. We were taught from very young that he was a consumerist pagan myth loosely based on St. Nicholas, a real man who had lived in Turkey or some other place that sounded equally made-up. I remember my mom clucking disapproval at a Santa-heavy Christmas display in a craft store. Christmas wasn't about Santa and it wasn't about presents. It was about Jesus and shepherds and virgins (whatever those were. The answer that satisfied for a couple years was "a woman who wasn't married yet." This would later become very complicated.)

But the vigorous and repeated denial of Santa Claus didn't convince me he was fiction. Instead it told me he was not only 1) real, living, and breathing but also 2) the embodiment of evil. L. and I feared him. He came into our house? Whether we wanted him there or not? Didn't he understand that this was a Christian family and we were only about saviors, wise men and hark the heralds? Santa Claus became a natural force to us, as unfathomable as a hurricane, not to be contained or controlled. A fearsome being.

The years passed. We learned how to spell. We realized "Santa" was an anagram for "Satan." That was the year we decided to turn all the heaters up to HIGH on Christmas Eve. We knew that, traditionally, Santa came through chimneys. We had no chimneys, but we weren't taking any chances.

Still, deep in my heart, I wanted Santa Claus to be real and good. I couldn't bring myself to like the obese Coca-Cola Santa who looked like a whiskey alcoholic on a bender. But I loved old folk art-style pictures portraying him as a tall, lean striding man with a long beard and reindeer-skin boots, a hunting horn at his hip: the Santa Claus based on Odin. This was a Santa Claus I could get behind.

Mostly, I don't get Santa Claus and I don't understand telling your children he is real. I have no background with this and it sounds weird and, besides, children believe things or don't believe them and there's little you can do as a parent to control that. I think I would have given up on Santa early on if I'd been told he was real. As it is, I'm still a little obsessed. The question marks around the nature of Santa (good or evil?) haunt me yet.

---

I plan to get caught up on all my advent readings today and tomorrow. I've been slacking. As usual. Jesus just takes such a long time to show up, though. Have you thought about it? A really long time. It's interesting.

Still have some Christmas gifts to buy. I busted out most of my shopping yesterday and there are only a few things to make. It will happen. It will be fine. Christmas isn't until Sunday.

a monday

I have only a few goals today since I'm not feeling motivated. I've discovered that if I'm not feeling motivated, I should set my expectations bar less on HIGH and more on MEDIUM LOW otherwise I'll just perpetuate a cycle of sadness. I have a problem with sadness and I want to avoid a flare-up. So. Goals for today:

- photograph Bruno. We are now in Week 2 Experimental Phase and things are looking only 50-50 for Bruno. He's awesome. He's rad. He's adorable. But I'm not convinced I should own an animal yet.

- adjust my attitude toward work. I hate working. Well, that's not true. I like to work, but I like to be working on my work which means writing and drawing and playing music. But no one wants to pay me for these things so instead I do other things (like work at a coffee shop and at a restaurant) and call these things "my work" even though I know I'm lying to myself.

- be outside for a while

- buy sponges so I can wash my dirty dishes

- shower

- read through T.'s novel again and give useful feedback

- drink coffee & possibly eat yogurt

- find out if M. has my phone because otherwise I don't know where it is.

- find my last paycheck (but I think I accidentally threw it away. Winning, always winning)

- visit Tom at the Antique Store and do some Christmas shopping there. Last time I went in I found a scorpion encased in an amber pendant and a plastic Bambi figurine.

motherhood

People who treat their pets like children used to frighten me. Not because I don't like them or animals but because I worry about their capacity to love people, specifically people who are me. This is a weird worry because I don't really know these people and will probably never be at their house for Christmas. I guess it's a survival instinct. If we were all living in caves, I wouldn't trust these people to help me hunt caribou. They might come out and rattle a spear with me, but they'd be hunting for someone other than the tribe, specifically, they'd not be hunting for the parts of the tribe that are my hungry belly.

Or... this is what I used to think. Until Bruno.

Bruno is not my child and I will never think of him like that, but I kind of get the pet-as-child scenario. You give the pet all this love and care and they treat you like a possession and demand more food. Children do that. Then they leave you or disappoint you or get hit by cars. I'm serious. This is heart-wrenching, gut-slugging stuff and it's rotten especially when the child and/or pet doesn't even let you get a full night's sleep.

Enter Bruno. I will probably keep him. The church has breathed an expensive "OK." But, my goodness, if he doesn't let me sleep all through the night soon, he's getting the boot into a cold, dark, lonely world. If I let him in the bedroom, he prowls around, sucks on the blankets and tries to sleep on my throat(hard to breathe). If I lock him out, he's fine for about 10 minutes and then he starts yowling. And doesn't stop. I was raised with the principle that you let petulant, screaming babies scream when they're going down for a nap and you don't give into the tyrannical whims of dogs and cats because they've got to learn they're not the center of the universe. It's just difficult dealing with a creature that doesn't care and doesn't feel shame.

Dogs, for the most part, will to please. You direct the weather in their lives and they are simply wind vanes. If you are displeased, they cower. They tiptoe around. They hang their heads. Cats, I'm learning, are different. They don't care. They're God and you're just a can-opener. When Bruno curls on my lap and extends one front paw out to rest on my chest, I don't take it as a gesture of love. Rather, he's like a rich man running his fingers down the hood of his Porsche. He looks at me with those lidded blue eyes and says, "You're mine." As long as I keep running smoothly, he'll keep me. To him, my existence says more about his existence.

I'm not sure how to feel about it. I don't think I like it.

So the experiment continues.

Bruno!

Been book-reading up a storm. Winter brings it out in me, I guess. Also the kitten helps. Oh... yerrrs, I have a cat, pending approval by the church board (the church secretary, scrawling my name down on her to-do list, whispered behind her hand "It will be FINE don't worry." She's a cat-lady. She wants everyone to have cats, rental rules be damned). His name, pending approval, is Bruno. My coffee shop boss said he must always be referred to using a mock Slavic accent: "Bruno ees strong kitten. Bruno will not be takingkt the back talk from anyone." So, yes, it's very easy to lay for hours on my couch, reading a book, with the kitten sprawled across my stomach, purring and being adorable. I was worried that he was leading a boring life but I read this morning that cats sleep roughly 16 hours a day to prepare themselves for bursts of demonic prey-hunting energy.

Anyway, the books, a short list:

1. Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson. She describes it as a novel about loss so, yes, totally uplifting stuff. But so beautifully written and then randomly hilarious. Also short. Can't put up with pages and pages about loss. Too depressing.

2. (already finished so does it really count? YES) The Shipping News by Annie Proulx (whose name is pronounced Proo, apparently, and not Pro-lux like I've always said it my mind, though not out loud since I was sure it couldn't be correct). Definitely one of the best books I've read in a while. The style was hard to get into at first, but once you have the rythmn down it's lovely. I liked best how she slowly brings in these really hard, biting social issues without hitting you over the head with them. Just weave in this thread, weave in that and then suddenly you're at the end of the book and someone's pain/experience just makes the bottom fall out of the world. It makes me want to go to Newfoundland. It also makes me love Astoria even more: that sort of rough-tumble, economically depressed, heavily fished, etc. I know that.

3. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. So many wonderful scenes and occasionally wonderful characters but Smith switches around so much. She'll draw this amazing portrait or situation then suddenly collapse into sentimental Dickens-style crap like: "OH THE GLOW OF THE CHRISTMAS TREE TURNING THE CHILDREN'S CHEEKS RUDDY WITH ANTICIPATION." Gahhhhh. No one cares. You can tell she wrote the book for a reason... well lots of reasons, whether she realized it or not. But one reason was so that people understood that the poor were people. She succeeds when she shows this in scenes at a doctor's office or in random conversations characters have with each other. She fails when she realizes what she's trying to do and goes gung ho into it. Then it's like she's throwing rocks at your face and hitting your toes with a hammer screaming "GET IT? GET IT?" And you're like, "YES. Dear lord! GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH"

4. Currently, I'm working on East of Eden. I had a history teacher who called Steinbeck a "naaaaaaaaaasty old man." The man can write like God though. How does (did) he do it? I want to lay his sentences out on the dissecting table and pull out my knives. I want this book to never end. Thankfully it's about 500+ pages.

Oh books books books. I love books. I love having books around me. I love going to the library and getting stacks of books. I love fobbing books off on other people. Ohhhhh books.

Well, I've spent the morning writing this and reading up on cat behavior and I need to get myself to the pet supply store. Bruno needs more stimulation, I guess. Something to suck up the screaming Satan vortex of his energy so he stops gnawing on my wrists and hiding under the bed to attack my ankles in the mornings. He respects M for some reason. Probably because M is also male. Vexing.

But, oh Bruno is so cute... especially when he curls up on my head at night and purrs like a train engine. A-dorable.

Thanks-giving

A server running past me down the kitchen line laughing crazily to herself sums up my Thanksgiving. I worked and it was very, very busy. Not overwhelmingly so, more seasoned colleagues claimed later, but they didn't seem as confident in the moment. A diner ended up not wanting a pint of stout he'd ordered and it sat on the server counter winking, beguiling, tormenting until one of us threw it away. I started pouring out an order of decaf coffees and then realized 1) I'd already filled the order and 2) the people had left the restaurant ages ago.

Finally got off work and blearily made my way to the boys' house. It was like "A Christmas Carol" or something else by Dickens. For example: A cheery light beckoned in the windows and out poured the smell of food: potatoes! stuffing! peppers! spices! turkey! A wee exploited beggar child crouching in the gutter sniffed the air and was content, etc. Meanwhile, I toiled up the walkway, battling the wind, my mind filled with the restaurant, a thousand dramas I'd orbited like a satellite, my head continually bent over a dirty table (and the next and the next), all the time wondering if there would be enough silverware. A dog's welcoming bark woke me to the present. I walked through the door, my scarf tucked under my chin, the dogs leaping at my ankles (except for Sasha whose head reaches my waist. She was standing on my feet and pretending, politely, not to realize it). One of the men vacated a chair, another washed a plate, the chair-giver filled the plate with food, a third man handed me a knife. "It's clean," he said. A fourth offered me champagne. Then I kind of snuffled into my mashed potatoes and missed everything and everyone in the world.

End my Dickens novel.

No, it really was a good Thanksgiving. And I am thankful for:

... the homeless people who yell at me (in various cities I've lived in) encouraging things such as: "SATAN KEEPS YOU BEAUTIFUL!" "STAY CLASSY!" and, my favorite, "I THINK YOU DROPPED SOMETHING!!!! (pause) OH! It was YOUR SMILE. Which is a shame. BECAUSE YOU WEAR IT SO WELL!!!" Although Satan keeping me beautiful gets points for originality.

... pet name websites ("Does your dog run around in circles, bark for no reason at all and poop on your bed? BONKERS would be a perfect name for him!")

... the novel I'm reading right now

... coffee and the way coffee lends itself so particularly to book reading, waking up and non-threatening interactions with other people (your coffee drinking companion will probably never finish up her cup of coffee, throw an arm over your shoulder and leer into your face screeching, "How about we stumble on over to the next coffee house and get WASTED!" It just doesn't happen)

flannery connor'o

I came to the coffee shop with "The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor" under my arm intending to read them. I didn't. Instead I read this: "Northern Gothic," by a woman whose writing I love and you should too.

STORY EXCERPT (to encourage you):

"Will sin persist without a captive audience?

'Course it will,' mutters Flannery O’Connor, 'there’s always sin, girl...'"

I still wonder who woke up and said, "Darling, I've had a vision. We must name our only child Flannery!" Mother or father? If Father: bad taste, sir. If Mother: you probably knew better but you also probably knew what you were about. Because they actually named her Mary Flannery O'Connor but that middle name was persuasive and had its way in the end, too much of a temptation for a mind bent towards writing. Nothing more is known of Mary, but we all know about Flannery.

I brought the book with me because I'm working on short stories and I'm bad at them. Or I lack the courage to create conflict and carry through to logical conclusions regarding illogical human behavior. Flannery, as the above story comments, has a lot of gall. Okay then, instruct, Flannery. I'm looking to you for a tip, or two (if you're feeling generous).

The story I'm working on currently is from a very real experience and I'm trying it out from the viewpoint of someone who is not me. It's a little awkward since I've suddenly realized I will not allow certain people to read it (certain people who were there, for instance). It's completely different from what happened, but I'm stealing things left and right. Things perhaps some people will not appreciate stolen. T says writers are thieves and bandits. Joan Didion said a writer is always selling someone out.

#234: assembly line

This morning, in Safeway, an ambulance driver turned to another EMT. He had found a sparkly pom-pom on a shelf full of holiday-type stuff.

"We should have these in the van for calls," he said, waving it in the other man's face. "See (pom-pom-pom-pom): 'You're feeling better!'"

I imagine the astonished face of the next car accident victim they encounter will look a bit like the astonished face of the EMT.

---

I'm in Portland for a wedding and taking my weekend (my weekend only lasts a couple hours this week apparently) at a coffee shop until Tiffany is out of yoga and can play with me. I'm feeling several things:

- my bum knee and how much it HUUUUUURTS

- and (more), I feel like I'm in the gift shop of a factory that produces ready-made boys who wear skinny legs in skinny jeans, black rimmed glasses and have slightly-mussed hair, interesting facial hair, shaggy golden dogs and, atop their heads, are wearing variations on a newsboy cap.

The factory also makes girls but these come with more options: skirts and boots or skinny jeans and boots and a vast selection of other accessories including handbags, bookbags, rings, necklaces, and bracelets. You can purchase these extras anywhere or make them yourself! We have patterns for sale. However, the method of crafting the Sour Expression is a trade secret, sorry. We're not allowed to talk about it except in low tones over coffee with a Mac computer on the table between us (guarantees the proper emotional detachment to intimate moment ratio).

I'm always amazed by how good yet similar everyone looks in Portland. I feel like a backwoodsman and it took me an hour this morning to figure out what I should wear to the wedding. Everything I was picking seemed too casual, too earth-colored. To combat the earth colors, I brought with me the Disco Ball Dress... with which I will wear a ... brown sweater.

---

I slept for almost 12 hours last night. I was not supposed to, but I got off work and went to take a 15 minute nap. Woke up at seven and somehow called Marta to tell her there was no way I could get out of bed and go to her house for dinner (I'm trying to remember if I was really even awake when this happened. I don't think I was. I wonder what I said... if it was actually such a smooth translation from what I was saying in my mind). Then back to sleepsy. Slept through several "where are you?" texts and answered them when I woke a second time around 10 or 11. Didn't wake again until 5:30 this morning. Whew. Feels good and also excessive.

This is what an open/bake at the coffee shop go immediately to close at the restaurant schedule will do to me.

And bake-bake-baking is fantastic. I work in a little ghetto kitchen in the bowels of an old building. It's a separate room built in the center of the basement, surrounded by exposed beams and darkness piled in the corners where giant burlap bags of coffee beans, the freezer and other items abide. Down there, the only living things are me and the Norwegian River Rats. These rats are (apparently) as big as sin with a mean streak a mile wide. They will stop it nothing to get into the kitchen. Their only goal: general befoulment.

"It is imperative," said my boss on my first baking day, "that you always shut this door." She slammed the kitchen screen door behind her and I thought I saw beady eyes flashing as furry bodies lurking outside turned suddenly and naked tails whipped away into the basement dark.

But wait! There's more!

"Whenever I'm dehydrated, I drink coffee," said a girl with shaking hands and bruisy looking eyes.

I'm calling HANGOVER, right now. There's a trio sitting and doing one activity each with as much focus as they can and each of the activities they have chosen don't require them to do much except hold onto a coffee cup and flip through books with lots of pictures.

I think I have a 65-year-old alter ego because often when I look at girls my age, I start pursing my lips and handing out modesty ratings, wondering quietly and inwardly if they were raised by wolves (nasty-minded, pervy wolves who told them every morning, "There's no such thing as too much glitter or naked leg.")

I think: "Honey, God gave you cleavage for a reason but it's not THAT reason." I consider carrying around a bag full of cotton sheets to drape over them (in a motherly fashion intended to instruct and nurture not demean).

negative ye burr, pre-music version

I'm having a neurotic moment -- like what T was describing when he called to tell me he's sending me the first part of his novel to read. He's a little nervous. He said he imagines it as if we are sitting in a coffee shop together and I push the manuscript across the table to him, lean back, maybe suck on the end of my pen then take a deep breath (rather like a sigh) and say, "Look. This is horrible. You're horrible. Please stop writing. We can't be friends." He admits that this is not likely to happen and totally irrational.

So along those lines. I'm going to a concert tonight. A city concert that will be dense with trendy young people and I'm trying to remember what that's like and (oh lord) what I should wear. I don't want to be too cold, too hot, too practical, too impractical. Basically I want to wear a smock, leggings and a comfortable sort of face covering. And slippers. I'm realizing I've lived too long outside civilization, in a rural county. The city is dark and evil and I believe that if I show any skin (ANKLES!) I will be hunted down and assaulted by lustful men-types. Rapists and murders lurk in every shadow. Peace, peace, but there is no peace. Etc.

So we'll see how it goes.

I thought we were an autonomous collective

Originally I was going to go to the snowboard/ski expo in preparation for the Montana trip that the two M's and I are going on in January, but I keep sabotaging myself by reading amazing things and having weird dreams and overhearing conversations that make me want to write and write and write. So now I'm conflicted. I think I'll still head out that way, maybe catch lunch with a former co-worker. But I'm taking my computer too just in case I get there and need to spend some time drinking coffee and typing (all I've done this morning besides watch 15 minutes of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail").

Such good times recently. Marta and I drove to Portland this week for dinner with my fam-fam then went to Binks for some of Marta's adopted family and then home, talking all the long way, in bed by 2:30. Then yesterday was a fantastic work shift at the restaurant with my pony-tailed co-worker and enough eaters to keep us busy. Plus everyone was in such good moods. One older couple joked with me so awkwardly that it wasn't until halfway through their lunch that I realized they really liked me and just thought they were being hilarious. I had spent the first part of their visit wondering if they were going to complain to management and spit their food back on their plates.

From work went to wrassle with a wolf dog and clean a very dirty house (I let the wolf dog run around until it came to cleaning the floors then she was banished to the outdoors). So satisfying to see that dirt come up and to make all things sparkle and gleam.

THEN (and then and then) went out for a beer with the Sarahs. The Sarahs apparently are always planning nights on the town. "This time, Sarah," they say to each other, "we're going to go CRAZY." They told me this while yawning and talking about one Sarah's kiddo who she already misses, having not been apart from him for a night out in months. It was 8:30 and they didn't think they were going to last. "Stick with it, Sarah!" they yelled at each other.

Then it was a quick hi to Marta and my pony-tailed co-worker and then to bed. Slept like a rock but a rock with weird dreams... I feel like shale would have weird dreams. Perhaps I am shale.

wampum

Last night I had a dream that my hair was long and straight-ish (like it was when I was ... 12? 13? Somewhere) and that I was in a nice hotel room with a huge grand piano made out of some sort of blond wood and I was a piano expert and almost wept because it was such a nice piano but when I tried to play it L. showed up as her 8-year-old self and kept belittling me until I (responding like my 9-year-old self) got angry and peevish and refused to do anything except wander the room alone. Also everything I tried to play sounded terrible so... I woke up realizing I needed to memorize more pieces and/or write a tango.

Need the sleeps. Been opening/baking at the coffee shop and then going straight to closing/opening shifts at the restaurant with (at the most) an hour between jobs. Then I get off work and read "Madame Bovary" until I fall asleep and wonder what she had to take to be so stupid, or if Charles (recounted in a chapter later expunged from the text for morality reasons) grew pot and his "doctor" work was conveniently mistranslated from the original which read "cannabis dispenser."

But anyway. Work = $$$$!

which more often feels like

$$$$?

because I remember that I don't care a whole lot about money (suddenly I remember that I also must PAY RENT and for ELECTRICITY). Still, not doing too bad in the dollar department. My mind is at ease which is not normally the case when I contemplate money. Booo money. I wonder what people would do if I tried to pay for everything with mussel shells.

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but this is not money."

"I'm sorry, sir, but this is wampum. I'm reporting you to the Bureau of Indian Affairs."

Don't mess around with the BIA. I hear they have friends at the BLM and the BLM (as we all know) has weaponized what's left of the wild mustang herds.

run away

A county sign showing escape routes from a house in case of tsunami or other flood-type event read: "PLAN YOUR ESCAPE." But instead of educating me, it just made me think of all the things you could plan to escape from. I have made a list. Forgive me.

PLAN YOUR ESCAPE! from:

- cardboard boxes (possibly the type that contain refrigerators)

- conversations that are
a. tedious
b. too personal
c. insulting
d. interesting

- Celtic music

- knotted up aprons
a. straight from the drying machine
b. shoved into a drawer
c. in a plastic bag (as was mine this morning)

- too small shirt sleeves
a.(this list is drawn from personal experiences)
b.(painful personal experiences)
c.(as you can tell)

- wedding photos

- all photos

- strangers with judgmental eyes

- tourist traffic

- enslavement

- Cormac McCarthy novels
a. THE CROSSING!!!!!!! ANYONE? HOLY LORDY.

- sugar high

- commitments

- ambiguous decisions

- current situations

- coffee shops with "bad atmosphere"

- phrases like "good energy"

the porpoise/purpose dilemmas

There is only one conclusion that I can come to: I have become a bad writer. I mean, I write poorly. Impoverished is my writing. I think it's because my subjects are lean (not in the well-muscled sense... I mean, they are scrawny). I've been reading through the blog archives and have decided that however vague it was at times, my best writing on here happened during my internship when this blog had purpose and scope. After the internship, it just became a diary. When I was employed at the paper, it became a sad and secret vault. I struggled to mask events in obscurity and I didn't tell you the whole story because we've all read about those employees who gripe about Things and then get fired. And now? It's a chronicle of my confusion and the trials of seating tourists in restaurants. Wheeee.

I ran across an old entry where I outlined some projects and goals. I'm going to do that again. This is the best time since this winter will be known as the Very Cold Winter of Poverty in which I plan to live paycheck to paycheck and not touch my savings. I know I will make a killing this summer if I just stick it out. In the meantime, the writing needs some work and the life needs some push.

So I will...

1. Edit select old completed short stories and start sending them out

2. Write new material and start sending it out (M says he will slap me if I stop writing. He claims others will support him in this including the police. I am doubtful but I don't want to call bluff)

3. Put together applications for several Writer-in-Residence programs for next year
(Been planning this/thinking about this for almost a year now and already made all sorts of outrageous plans in a very public way and will lose face if I don't follow through. Also, I just found out that the National Park Service has a lot of residences and I could live in the wilderness for a month FOR FREE and write.)

4. Be in a Writer-in-Residence program next year (in the wilderness)

5. Solve the problems associated with the incomplete circle rug for Mumsy which I promised her last Christmas

6. Find a purpose (porpoise! ... surely I'm not the only person who automatically substitutes the word "porpoise" for "purpose"? Anyone?)... Anyway, find a PURPOSE (...porpoise...) for this blog. Like so:

Oh lordy, stop the madness. I'm sorry. I've been loopy all morning and (while we're being truthful) all last evening too. I can't turn it off. I don't know where it's coming from... I need to work more maybe or have a religious crisis. Well too bad. I'm feeling quite all right God-wise, thanks, and I'm happy and I like being happy.

lies I let sit regarding the Columbia River

I didn't have my camera this morning so...

When I walked down the street from my apartment toward the river and the coffee shop this morning, the street spilled toward the river and it looked like this, buildings on the right and on the left, street in the middle:

|||||__________||||||

Sun shining, la-de-da.

Then BOOM a massive cargo carrier trundled up the river and the street (and the view) looked like this:

|||||{{{nnnDDDDhhhIm}}|||||

(does not convey how amazing and unsettling this is: to look down your street and see such a big thing slipping past traffic at eye-level. It's like the day the Burnside Bridge was up and we thought it was the end of times)

Someday I'll get tired of this but not today.

Just tried to find a picture of this sort of event on the internet. No luck. People only take pictures of stupid things. Like the Megler Bridge or the Cannery Pier Hotel or crumbling walls or sea lions (gaaaaaaaaaad, sea lions).

---

My favorite thing is when people come into the restaurant and I try to seat them somewhere and they look at me like I'm pond scum and harangue me into seating them somewhere else at the front of the restaurant. Finally, having gotten their way and beaten an impoverished 20-something into submission, they lean back in their chairs smile at each other, gaze out at the Columbia River like it's a particularly nice puppy and sigh, "Ahhhhh, I love looking at the ocean."

At which point I don't care how small and vile their souls may or may not be because if you think a river is the North Pacific Ocean, you have other, infinitely greater problems.

And I smile and pour them water.

---

10:14 a.m. NEWSFLASH!!!!

Man reading a newspaper and drinking coffee with some other past-the-mid-life-age friends and a popular song playing on the radio. Line singing about "my heart beats in my chest" and right before that line (but just when you knew it had to be the next line, because it's a popular song and that's what popular songs do), this man (who must be closer to 70 than 50) gets a silly grin and beats his chest, dancing a little jig in his chair. MY HERO.

---

AND MORE! At 10:23 a.m.

Trying to get a handle on what's happening in the rest of the world, by which I mean what's happening in places that are not Clatsop County. Like the Occupy protests and earthquakes and it makes me think of a conversation a friend was told about and later told me. It happened between two high school-ish students who were talking about the Occupy protests. "Yeah they're happening everywhere," one guy says. "What are they?" the other asks. "I don't know... some kind of social networking." Pause. "Didn't one happen in ... whatsit called? ... Sibya." And the other guy pauses. "Yeah..." he says. "Sibya."

sickness of the cars, pathogen of despair

"With Major Lawrence, mercy is a passion. With me, it is merely good manners. You may judge which motive is the more reliable."

- Lawrence of Arabia

I'm worried about Word Documents and how I can create new ones forever. Where do they go? Does it get tired making new documents? Is this wasteful? Electronic waste. I mean digital. I mean magic.

So besides that, a series of very depressing thoughts this morning while driving to get coffee from Marta and while listening to the Man From Snowy River soundtrack which is playing on an endless loop in my car for a reason that would take too long to explain but could be summed up by mentioning that my friend Gotter made me. I think.

List of sad:

- Squeaks. Our dead guinea pig and how when we moved to the new house he lived in the garage and we kind of forgot to play with him and his last days were probably very lonely although he remained well fed to the end.

This came up because I had a dream about a lot of guinea pigs and I was going to build them a fenced area outside so they could frolic in the green grass.

- How I lost my promise ring that my dad gave me and I lost it very early on and I still feel very loathsome and awful whenever I remember this and do usually end up crying a little bit.

- How I lose all jewelery.

- How I miss my brudders and my sista.

- How people wear unflattering colors all the time. Pathogen of bad taste and/or color-blindness (myxamatosis). But that's petty (but not really). I just saw a girl with ORANGE hair (think lite brite, think cat hair all over your black sweater) and yellowish skin (like mine) wearing a very light olive-green colored coat and I think she has a mustard yellow scarf as well. Bad decisions. But my hair is literally a nest today so... judge not lest ye be judged.

Don't have to work until three (the depressing list is done now, by the way). My shirt will probably not be dry in time but I had to wash it because it was starting to smell like dead lynx. In the meantime, I plan to write and play musics and make soup?

I'm trying to plan a soup, bread & wine night at my apartment -- following the success of sandwich, salad & wine night which happened Saturday, a very mellow, pleasant time with just a handful of people and we mostly sat around and talked and looked at the National Geographic Portraits coffee table book Mumsy bought for me years ago. There was a heap of food on the table and such good red wines. More events are desired (by me). New co-worker apparently makes a killer Italian wedding soup and I just make things and there are people I know who eat... so... yes. It's nice to have the apartment peopled (and I did clean up the hobo encampment before they came over).

Lovely day today. Maybe I need to go hiking. Hiked for hours yesterday and played disc (DISCO) golf in the Washington woods with Friends. Got very car sick as well. Also read this: "We have heard a voice of trembling, Of fear and not of peace." Which might have referred to words that the Lord spake concerning Israel and Judah but which I shall apply (new age Jefferson gospel fashion) to being car sick. Sounds about right.

the screaming children will not win

I am so very ready for the sickness to be over (down with the sickness?). It's at the embarrassing leaking stage now where snot explodes down the nose while both eyes (or, more often, one solitary eye) tear up and a single cough could send my whole face sideways. All of this happening at the most inconvenient time every time, like when I'm pouring water for a customer or about to hover over someone else's food. I was at Fred Meyer buying stuff that also included leg warmers and enough tea to float boats (many many boats) and the cashier said, "Sounds like you're sick."

"It's evolving," I said.

"Ahhh," he said, "it will last two more weeks."

"Don't tell me that."

"I'm just preparing you."

Thus spake the prophet Isaiah unto the children of Israel in the days of the
tribulation.

---

Also, I weary of my computer but am not even sure where to begin with replacing it. Did some cursory research yesterday and ended up on the National Park Service page for someplace called Buffalo Lake. I think. Or was it River? A nationally significant space of water.

---

Only a four-hour shift today. But caution, my love. Last time I got excited about a short and easy Friday I ended up staying on a second shift and working very late and what with my early early morning at the coffee shop tomorrow... no good, no good.

---

The apartment is ridiculous (and dogless, but let's not reopen that wound). I've been in it almost a month and it still looks more like a hobo encampment than a place I've lived in for... almost a month. The living room is presentable and put together. Half the kitchen is still in boxes, though, and the study is more of a study in despair than anything else and I need to clean the fish tank so the inherited fish won't die.

And speaking of dogless. I'm launching Plan Don't Let Baby-the-Pound-Dog Die Part 2 where I go to the church council and petition them in person and question how they could possibly worry about a barking dog in my apartment when they have forty million screaming children running loose below me who begin screaming at 6:45 a.m. and don't stop until 6 p.m.

catching up

"Have you no fear, English?"
"My fear is my concern."

-Lawrence of Arabia

When I worked at the paper, I learned some of the ways people lie: about themselves, other people, events, circumstances, ideas, reasons, religion, states-of-mind, pictures... anything. (I am listening to a man lie right now, in fact. He's several tables down from me. He lies shamelessly, loudly, constantly and with his ego in his voice. I once told him after a meeting I was covering that he was a liar and he screwed his face into this faintly disbelieving smirk and continued lying... but lies are tricky. It's not always a blatant lie, rather a slight rearranging of true things so that the final quilt comes together false)

Now, in the service industry, I'm getting full doses of pettiness. Really (really) does your table matter THAT MUCH? I think it's fear of death.

So most of the customers at both jobs are older and most of the people working at both jobs are younger. The older fears the younger, fears our ability to (I don't know) kick them in the shins when they're not looking and run away very, very fast before (perhaps) the police can catch us and beat us with night sticks. They believe we were raised by wolves and we're eying their tendons, ready to run them down like sickly elks.

"Why are you seating me at this table? Is this where the floorboards are rotting? Do I hear a chainsaw? Are you going to con me out of all my money?" They clutch their glasses of water and watch my every move. I am out to cheat them, part them from their money, their dignity and wrench open their hands to sever the pinch they've kept on life which they have held onto not for any joy life brings them or they bring to life, but out of habit, because their fingers bend that way.

But then there are the nice elderly people.

The couple so old and bent and confused we wondered if they should be out at all. They sat on the same side of a four-seat table and she kept her hand on her husband's knee while she ate dessert. She kept apologizing to the server for her messy hair. "We were driving and it was windy and now my hair's a mess and I'm wearing a hat inside. I'm sorry you have to see me this way." They left holding hands and smiling vaguely when we thanked them for coming in.

And there was the man, who struggling to get out of his chair, both hands laid flat on the top of the table, working his knees and hips, caught my eye as I passed with a water pitcher, commanded me, smiling, "Don't get old."

holden caufield

The fruit fly invasion is no longer all over the kitchen. Now it's just in the garbage which means that when I empty the garbage, the glorious Fruit Fly Dawn will likely return to the kitchen.

Before last night they'd been roosting by the hundreds at the top of my cupboard where I'd put out white wine and apple cider vinegar traps for them. Then last night, I walk in and there's nothing, not a stir. None of them tried to fly up my nose or swarm around my wrists. However, neither were there bodies to evidence a final and magnificent end. Where did they go? Clearly they all died, I decided. But where are the bodies? Where? Do they turn into dust? Do the living sweep the dead under the oven? Is there a secret fruit fly burial grounds somewhere in the bowels of the sink? (I bet that's what the Drosophila suzukii strain does. Apparently it's an invasive species. Can't trust it with your daughters or your Cadillacs. Can't trust it to die decently and leave a corpse for evidence).

But enough of this. I know where they are now. They're in the garbage, nuzzling up to a peach pit or whatever else is rotting down there. I just emptied the can, but whatever, go to town, fruit flies. I don't want to know how many eggs you can lay at a time. I squished a copulating pair with a paper towel and felt just fine about it.

---

Title for today: "Everything makes me dizzy except lying on the couch and reading novels."

I'm sick! Score one for Fall: fevery, icky, lazy, work-canceling stupidness. Making no money today that's for certain. New survival plan currently being formulated and will mostly involve eating garlic and not reading "The Catcher in the Rye" ever again. I can't be sure but I think it made me sick.

Apart from causing my sickness, I think I hated it because it succeeded at what it set out to do. It made a true voice and maintained that voice. Good on you, Salinger. Unfortunately, it's a voice I hate. My instinct with "Catcher" was to never read it because the only people who recommended it over and over were 1) boys who 2) said they read it in high school or as freshmen in college and it 3) changed their lives but 4) they, despite this change, remained boys and were fairly useless though perhaps they've recovered. I need to call my friend T. and talk to him about "Catcher". I think I could respect his opinion and appreciate Holden Caufield's place in his life. Everyone else, all you 20-something boys, nope. Sorry. Probably I'm immature. I'll take that.

The whole time I'm reading it I want to push Holden Caufield into a large, muddy pool. Or constantly nay-say him, which is (more or less) what I did in my mind but I think I was largely directing comments at various boys I've known who have reminded me a lot of H.C. and probably only remind me of H.C. because they read "Catcher" and decided H.C. was amazing and DEEP and TRUE and tried to emulate him around the time I crossed paths with them in Eugene when we were all more-or-less, freshmen in college. Oddly though, most of my male friends are probably guys who read "Catcher" and adored it. But they grew out of (or maybe into) the adoration in a different way than the guys who are still like H.C. and have fallen like dead fruit flies and disappeared. (Tying it all together. Point!)

But it's some sort of classic. So now I've read it. I feel a sense of relief akin to the time I finally read and finished a Thomas Hardy novel. Oh Thomas Hardy, ye olde darlin' manny.

aurence

Being a woman is kind of like trying to bathe a cat -- some kissing angry cat with a floofy tail that gets caught in things. Just saying.

In about two hours, I'm going to church because that's my new thing to do: go to church on Thursday nights. I started going with a friend and have been still trying to go even when she can't come with me. Last time, probably two weeks ago, I went by myself and sat next to an elderly volunteer firefighter whose name I think was Duncan. Then the pastor used the phrase "shekinah glory" and I breathed the sigh of "my people." Hooray for slightly nutso bible nerds who talk a lot about dead languages and historical context and the Bible as literature + inspired Word.

(An alcoholic official just walked into the bar where I like to sit and write and, again, I say thanks to Father that I no longer work at the paper and have to listen to these people and write down what they say like it's important or even makes sense. But I'm trying to be less angry. I catch myself all the time -- like there's a dial in my head turned to high temperatures and the word "JUDGMENT." My friend, the one I go to Thursday church with, says she tries to start the day asking God to help her love people as Jesus has loved her. So... yes. "Help" being the key word.)

Other things:

1. Making some soups tomorrow. I want to make F. dinner but he's actually a good cook so I feel insecure.

2. This pork taco will probably kill me.

3. I will not (WILL NOT) forget to stop by the Women's Resource Center tomorrow and try to launch the campaign called "Katie Makes Herself Useful in the Community"

Currently reading...

1) "The Shipping News" by Annie Proulx

2) This little piece. Tightly written.

3) "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom" by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia!!!)

restauranteering

After a week of planning and planning to bring my camera to a friend's birthday camping trip, I (naturally) forgot it entirely until right when F. and I crossed into Washington and I woke up from my car-ride cat nap. But that's okay because I'm living like a person right now -- sleeping, eating meals, hanging out, hanging alone, hiking, working -- which is outstanding. Gold star. We'll not talk about how yesterday was basically a long nap interrupted with activities that required me to wake up for a couple hours here and there.

The new jobs are going well. I have to keep reminding myself that I'm only a week into this and that no one expects me to get it right away. I expect this though because I'm unrealistic and demanding. I closed quite a few nights last week and any remaining concept of myself in time was destroyed. (Reminder: I'm closing tonight too. Mental preparation)

It's definitely fall this side of the world. The cold and the wet are here and driving with an intensity that makes me think fall gets really bitter and has low self esteem, that fall is in fact a five-year-old child who hasn't found a constructive way to get the grumps out.

Hmmmmm what else?

Work dreams! So as crazy as it was to work at the newspaper, I rarely had work dreams. Maybe one every couple months. But with the restaurant job, to date, I have had at least one work dream every night. These dreams usually involve me needing to seat a lot of people. I feel on top of things until I look at the dining room and realize every single table is taken, that all the unseated people want window seats, and that dead whales are about to consume the restaurant. Then I usually need to wake up and go to the bathroom except I'm afraid to because all of those window grabby seat needers are standing outside my bedroom door waiting for me to show a sign of life so they can pounce on me and demand things. They also always ask me what the dinner special is and I can never remember (but that happens in real life too).

It's funny because I don't feel stressed out at work but the dreams, man oh man, screaming, weeping wreck by the end of them

bella luna

"Old man, if you give one more bite of my food to those dogs, I'll kick you till you're dead."

(Yes, I've been watching "Moonstruck". In installments. For the last week. Yes, it stars Cher. Yes, I believe it won Academy Awards. Yes, it's horrible. Horribly good.)


a. No dog for Katie (sad face). I'm trying not to be too disappointed or too mad at the Church War Council... and I'm trying not to tie my thwarted dog love into frustration at how the day care wakes me up every morning at 6:45. I don't know what those ladies are doing down there before the kids start arriving but it sounds like the end of the world.

b. I ordered a shirt from a store yesterday. A man's shirt. It felt like the 1940s (thankfully I was wearing my fancy tweed coat and it was blustery outside and I'm a working waitress girl now and ... you get the idea). I went down into the bowels of the store, to the mens department where a clerk met me, hands folded in front of him, head inclined slightly to indicate attention. We looked in vain for a black button up shirt (size very small). We hit upon a shirt that would become me well and he placed an order, took down my phone number and said the store would inform me when the shirt arrived. I don't know why this was all so exciting, but it was.

c. Sat with N. at the restaurant bar after my double shift yesterday and found out I get one free shift drink. W. rolled his eyes at my excitement. There's a white wine there that I love and it might be the best way to end a shift ever. We also get a free meal when we work a double.... anything on the menu. La-ti-da.

d. A little girl (maybe 2 years old) lost a shoe on her way to the coffee shop counter. "Uh-oh!" she said and I looked down and she's also wearing glasses. Knock me over with a feather. Teensy kids with glasses kill me.

e. After two hours of bear/cougar encounter horror stories, I've decided to celebrate 24 years of not being eaten by a cougar. Cake for everyone.

jerbs

So apparently it's Monday. The phone, calendar and M. all tell me this. I have no idea. My schedule (or lack of scheds) means I just don't know. Time has also ceased to have meaning. Sometimes I'm hungry and I eat food, but at no set hour. I've never had a job that began at 11 a.m. It's shattering (in a good way). It's so decadent. I have whole mornings to myself. I've been eating breakfast, stretching, walking, reading, playing guitar, writing, going out to breakfast -- a whole bunch of untold of, unheard of.

My first day at the restaurant was a blur. I trained in a whirlwind with three different people and confused all the table numbers. However, I can fold napkins -- small victories. Then a friend met me as I got off shift and we ate dinner together then took a dog with us to the beach and played in the fog, hunting for treasures in the driftwood. She found two bird skulls and a collection of warped plastic. I found a stick and a one-legged plastic horse. Both of us found multiple toothbrushes and slippers. A great disturbance in the Force. It was like a world made entirely of bathrooms had exploded and washed up on the beach. (as if a million voices crowd out in pain and then... silence -- reference anyone?)

Anyway. The point is, I was tired (brain-tired from newness) but I had so much energy otherwise and I felt fresh and bright and ready to give. Yayayayayayay. Each day I'm kind of amazed that I don't have to go back to the paper. It's... odd. This work is so easy even though I'm still incompetent and new to it all.

So, for the people out there who still read this (MRS. PAYNE), I'm doing quite well and catching up on sleep.

Goals for today:

1) Get through my double shift without pouring water onto a customer when I'm refilling glasses (very deep-seated fear)

2) Learn how to play and sing "The Devil's Right Hand" by Johnny Cash, which shouldn't be too hard since I think the man could only sing five different notes and usually stuck with two. Simple melodies resulting.

3) CASH CHECKS and so have the monies for to pay rents (I'm really really really bad about cashing checks. A mental block perhaps)

4) Find another black shirt for work since the uniform shirt is making me crazy (and, more importantly, sweaty. Bleh)

jail bird (dog)

I've made a mistake and fallen in love with a dog ("dig" as a friend calls them). She's smart and kind of looks like a rabbit and today when I had her out in the sad gravel backyard behind the pound, she jumped straight up in the air like a helicopter ("how-popper" as my brothers used to say) and landed on top of the picnic table. Be still my heart.

She's been at the pound since February so she wasn't very interested in me the first time I saw her. But I stopped in again today and she was a lot more fun.

By the end of a half hour, I had her coming to me and sitting and patiently playing a game with me that involved her jumping up onto the picnic table, dropping the ball onto the ground then leaping down to the table's seat, then to the gravel where she'd come up to me, sit and I'd throw her the ball. She'd catch it and jump back up on the table.

She looks kind of like this except a little taller and a little bigger because she's got something else mixed in with the French Bull Dog:

Basically, she's a bearish, bowlegged darlin' and I want her, to have and to hold, in the good times and the bad. So I've handed the decision over the Church War Council that manages my apartment. If they say "yes, pets allowed", then chances are I'll seriously consider adopting Baby (as she's currently called... that name won't last long if I get a hold of her). It's a weird decision and not one I was really expecting to make until I was 50, but dog ownernship has become increasingly attractive over the last year and I think Baby would be a good fit.

She's smart, trainable, healthy and four years old, young enough to be worthwhile for hikes and walks but old enough that I won't be owning her forever. I'm not interested in puppies and 20 years of dogdom, thanks. I'm also not interested in problem dogs. I don't need to prove that I can love things. Nor do I really feel like saving anything. You will not see me buying the one-eyed, deaf dog with stomach cancer, abandonment issues, scabbies and chronic intestinal disorders who's next on the docket for the bone machine unless some one adopts it. Nope. Sorry. Go ahead and turn it into glue.

Except for you, Baby. Nobody better turn you into glue.

ch-ch-ch-changes

"Did you hear that? That's the story I just wrote. Yes, yes, I know we had a bargain. I just said I'd write it, I didn't say I wouldn't tear it up! It's all in little pieces now, Walter, and I hope to do the same for you some day!

...[to the other reporters] And that, my friends, is my farewell to the newspaper game."

- Hildy Johsnon, His Girl Friday


Some responses to my impending departure from the newspaper:

1. "Gotta do what you gotta do" (always accompanied by a shrug and eyes swinging to the right... usually said to me by older men looking at a lean retirement in a poor economy)

2. "Short timer!" - county official

3. "Yeah, well that's good. You should probably live like a normal person for a while." - female friend

4. "Well. Good luck. If I see you around town, I'll throw something at you." - drug cop

I put in my notice two weeks ago for many reasons and then (of course) all those reasons seemed silly at different times and then very important and now (looking back) it's a strange roller coaster heart break mess. I came out belly up in the best way, though, floating on my back. I (thanks, God) quit without a job to turn my hand to and within a couple days had two new jobs. Probably the most painless job search I've ever experienced. The second job jumped me, in fact.

Me: [stumbling in with my sad "did I make the right decision?" face and in need of morning coffee]
Coffee Shop: "So were you serious when you said you might be looking for other work?"
Me: "Yep."
Coffee Shop: "Wannaworkhere?"

And in the midst of career upheaval, I...

a. moved to a new apartment ("You could do cartwheels in here!" said Marta when she helped me move furniture. And then she proceeded to do two, from the dining area to the living room. I've tried a couple down the hallway, but the close walls scare me and I over think what I'm trying to do, as my bruised elbows and knees prove.

Yes, the apartment is huge and I've been wanting to buy a dog just so I can call to something and hear it scamper through rooms for at least five minutes before I actually see it.

I finally have room for all my books and the instruments are airing out and getting played. I've fallen asleep on my couch a couple times -- I have a couch! I can have people over for dinners and tea. Yay yay.)

b. cried for two weeks straight (I document it because the body is a fascinating thing and why we cry is really weird to me especially since crying shows very clearly that you are hurting or confused... basically, you're in need, yet, few people want to be seen crying. I know I don't. So why do it? Because we can be as stoic and snobby as we want but the body will not be denied its expression of pain! Take that, mind. You can't win)

c. saw the end of the Fitzhugh case only to have Them slap an incorrect headline on top of it. Oh well. This is how Katie learns to let go and be less prideful. This is also how Katie learns about rage and not expressing it. Here's the story.

Background: this case first began last August, about the same time I took over the cops beat. It was my introduction to a lot of things and a lot of people: domestic violence, detectives, the Women's Resource Center, murder trials, etc. I didn't expect it to end until February 2012 and I was going to stay at the paper at least till then. But (suddenly) there was a settlement conference and (suddenly) the whole case was wrapping up. I didn't plan to quit the paper at the same time, but so it turned out.

A detective who I'd pestered constantly about this case came up to me after the sentencing, shook my hand and said, "Well. Full-circle. Good luck out there."

---

I'll miss the job but I'm excited about what comes next mostly because I have no idea. I have work lined up that will keep me in food and shelter. Beyond that, got some plans, but nothing too dramatic. I will play a lot of music (sitar, your time has finally come), write stories (possibly books? the mind reels), make food, and calm the h down. Perhaps I will work on being a more useful friend... less frantically busy and stressed-out and forgetful. One of the churches in town asked me to be more involved with developing music during worship -- I'll try anything once (except for heroin... I do have some principles).

Now that I'm seeing the end of the newspaper job and have more or less accepted it, I'm excited about what I can do. Alternative small town online news website, anyone? I'm not out of this game by a long shot. It's too addicting and (besides) too many sources still like me and will tell me things. There's also going to be some traveling in the future. I want to see the United States. I also really want to go to Montana. Marta said she'll teach me how to snowboard. I told her death comes to us all anyway so why not?

“We would rather be ruined than changed;
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.”

- W.H. Auden

babies, the definitive edition

This is a post about children, but first it is a post about a book because (clearly) children and paper products are synonymous.

I am reading (or rather, read) "Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year" by Anne Lamott. I feel like she's a roommate that you love and think is wonderful, but she has these tics that make you want to hit her half the time or go into your room and shut the door (all the while insisting that nothing's wrong between you, you're just really busy and you really need to get some project done and really [really] everything's ok. But [really] you just needed to scream into your pillow for a couple minutes because your roommate is driving you crazy). Anyway. This book makes me believe I can have children... not that this was every a particular concern, physically at least. I'm the oldest of 6 children all of whom more or less popped on out without any sort of angst. I have, as it were, the child-bearing hips of my clan.

What I mean is, I think I might be able to raise children (it helps that Lamott is very funny and swears a lot and admits to evil thoughts. Such things make me feel safe, in good company, not the only utterly lost and crazy person out there).

But I have complicated emotions about children. I love this one family of kids utterly, but I babysat most of them from when they were toddlers and infants. There's a connection there and they are (in my book) the raddest group of kiddos ever. Most other children I tolerate. I don't enjoy feeling forced into liking or approving of anything simply because it's young and helpless and wouldn't survive under a city bridge for a day. If I like the parents, probably I'll approve of the offspring, but I probably won't beg to hold it and play with it and take it off their hands for hours at a time. Unless I am paid. (There are some exceptions. You know who you are.)

I can already hear your judging thoughts, don't worry. I'm okay with kids, but it's like people. I don't like ALL people indiscriminately. I like individuals. Thus, I refuse to like all children. Sorry, it's not going to happen. Children can be ugly little tyrants and I'll give them some grace, but I'm not going to give them total abject worship.

This used to worry me. How can I be the oldest of several kids, raised in a community of large families, and not be a baby person? Am I some sort of sociopath who hates life (and America)? I can't guarantee that I'd like my own children, but I think there's a good chance I would.

But enough of this... before I turn everyone against me and get labeled a baby hater. Let's be clear: I will not dangle your child out of an upper window, nor will I say cruel things to your impressionable child like, "Life is short and hard and then you die." They'll figure it out soon enough. Nor will I condemn them because they can't do anything useful except look cute and make me feel (on occasion) maternal -- but let's remember, many things make me feel maternal: loggers, my brothers, "Godzilla," dead moths in the hallway, awkward girls, people who work ridiculously long hours, and the old Honda Accord no longer in my possession.

Here's a positive: despite all my indifference to children, I am a baby-whisperer. It's like how people who hate cats are always the ones to have cats come fawning all over them. So am I able to get cranky babies to fall asleep. It's like magic and I can't take any credit for it yet it has happened on multiple occasions. Just so you know.

I get my advice from the advertising world

At what point do you throw the whiskey out the window and bellow (to no one in particular), "I'll abide no more of this tomfoolery. I'm moving to Montana!" Question mark.

Just do it. Just saying?

How do you come to that decision? What pinnacle of despair must one reach? Hypothetically, of course. Pinnacles being scarce among the sandstone and basaltic cliffs of this coast.

If I were to chart it out... but F. is opposed to time lines and plans. I could learn from this. He knows how plans make God's trigger finger jumpy.

I, however, like to lay out plans and can get easily carried away on a daydream, a detailed unraveling into the next 20 years where (on this very day, decades hence) I am scheduled to be sitting in a rocking chair on a front porch that simultaneously overlooks mountains and oceans while also being located in the remote middle of the United States. If all goes according to plan. I believe I also will be wearing burlap sacks and carrying a crossbow. Again, if all goes according to plan.

I'm baffled by the steps that lead up to a decision. I feel like I've stumbled into most things I've done and realized only later a decision was made. Most plans fall apart (God's got his revolver in the "at ready" position that scares police officers). Or they change direction in a way fit to give you whiplash. The plans I make are actually terrible, but they stack up nice (confession: I was once addicted to playing Tetris) and they do make sense. Truly.

I hate making decisions because I always choose the wrong line at a grocery store: behind the crazy coupon lady, next to the man in the kimono who pays for everything with pennies and rusted nails, in front of the meth addict on a bad day, with the only cash register operated by a foot pedal and a monkey. Clearly, I should not be entrusted with making decisions. I will step into a mess. But it's this sort of attitude, this fear of risk and change, that makes it possible to turn gray with age before you're thirty-five. I'm sure it also leads to kleptomania, hygiene issues and the inability to remember how to spell hygiene without computer spell check tools.

Stuff happens. Or, to be even more passive, incidents have been said to occur in altered ways.

---

Can I get more vague? Ironic since only this morning I called out a police person for uttering something along the lines of, "We are working to establish a format in such a way that, down the road, we can better understand how to approach the situation and further our investigation." I started cackling once he said the word "format."

I'm trying to figure out how to lead an interesting life, having recently realized I will die (while I realize it, I still don't believe it). My mortality is like math: something I acknowledge must exist, but also something I can't ever really comprehend. There's so much out there I could do. I'm tired of doing things and staying places because it's comfortable (and therefore easy). Complacency will not be tolerated. Beatings will continue until morale improves. Etc.

Just a thought.

all my friends are talking about leaving, about leaving

To Mrs. P

My sister is moving to a tropical island paradise where she will languish in a life of untold drudgery and tears until she returns home years later, a warped and twisted ghost of the lovely woman she used to be. Or that's one version.

Also, my sister is moving. She is packing right now. I am not helping, but sometimes I say things like, "You don't need a pillow, just roll up a sweatshirt." And I'm reminded again how we're different people. I, in my mind (repeat: in my mind), aspire to a monk-like simplicity full of physical discomfort, one pair of dirty jeans and "putting up with stuff." L. is not the opposite of this. I.e. unbridled consumerism tempered by nothing but the availability of money -- she's not like that at all. But she does give me that Look (kind of like the Tone we're always complaining my dad takes with us during serious discussions. He denies this. Likely, L. denies the Look). That Look says to me that I'm trying to get attention by being Noble and I should stop because it's Annoying. Probably she's right.

Now we're eating PEZ candies from a Thor PEZ dispenser. I have caught one flung at my head. Now Sara has arrived in her (I will call it) sexy sexy blue dress. She has allowed me to call it this.

I'm on vacation this week, which means I squashed two week's worth of work into last week to justify not working today through Friday. Except that's a lie, because I worked today. So far though it's the best Monday I can remember. I'm trying to plan a wilderness camping trip and (in my mind, again) I plan to leave for it tomorrow. I also plan to drag at least one brother kicking and screaming along with me... mostly for protection against wildlife that might otherwise be tempted to chomp on my soft neck and flay the flesh from my bones. I need to present a more threatening front.

Here's how I figure it. Two grown people: threat level is a screaming red with a hint of orange. Safety level: pristine. One grown woman alone: dull gray, like the color of my pickled intestines on a bear's mantelpiece next his other kill trophies. Safety level: shot to hell. Or, if you prefer, heck.

maybe a car will come along

Haven't had much time or want to write blog posts. So, pictorially, here's what happened in May.

Sister Laura Graduates. For which we travel to Idaho. I asleep sleep in the back on a mattress. Illegal.


The mattress, ft. Caleb

The sad state of many of the photos I took, dark and/or blurry

Documentation

Sister Laura

assortment

Is it any wonder why we all leave home?
People say, "I knew you when you were six years old"
And you say, "But I've changed, I've changed, I've changed, I've changed."

---

On the side of a train passing me in Eugene while I waited next to the tracks three or four years ago I saw graffiti-ed: "Everyone I know who I love is dead or loves someone else." And I tried to identify. Probably I was silly enough and lonely enough to think I could connect myself to such a sad, silent sentence. What I want to write next is: "That I know better now." Well, maybe.

T. told me on the phone last Saturday about a friend he has who will deny all sadness, telling himself (when he is sad) that someone out there has it worse. Therefore, this friend concludes, his sadness is invalid, something to be thrown out. T. hates when people do things like this. "Own your own pain," he said, before adding (for the shock value), "It's okay to feel like it's the worst thing since the Holocaust."

One thing covering the courts beat has taught me is that you shouldn't own other people's sadness, although there is a time to be sympathetic and, for me, a time to absorb it into my own body so I can write about it and ask the right questions. But, bottom line, if you start stealing sadness you'll run the risk of being really obnoxious and/or going crazy. Also, it's not yours.

It almost feels like aging is about figuring out what is yours and what is not yours. I stack what is mine into piles I can decipher and I am more tribalistic than some people I know, relying heavily on the group for interpretation, raised as I was in a village sort of church.

---

It's too cold in this old apartment and the bread won't rise. So I've put the dough in loaf pans and tucked the pans into my electric blanket. See what comes with the morning. Hope for giant breads.

---

PS. After I posted this entry, Blogger shot up an ad on my page that read: "Is Despair Your Daily Bread?" Which proves just how creepy the internet is.

209: stalinist oranges

I'd been at the fire an hour and had talked my way across the police and fire "do not cross" tape and everyone was worried about the power lines that swooped from the apartment complex, threatened by flames and smoke, to the pole across the street. One sergeant had already descended like the wrath of God upon two pushy people who had hopped the yellow tape and set up camp in a front yard to get a better view and were, incidentally, directly under the power lines.

Meanwhile smoke billowed and flames leaped. Or so I was told. The fire engine was in my way so I have most of this on faith. Neighbors and residents were clustered together on the sidewalk, cell phones strapped to their cheeks, holding babies, yelling at their wayward children. A firefighter revved up a chainsaw.

Then the mail lady, wearing her Pacific Theater-style silly white hat and blue shorts, a mailbag strapped across her chest, walked down the sidewalk. Her stride did not slacken as she approached the do not cross lines. It was as if she didn't even notice how her legs lifted to carry her over the tape. It was as though the tape did not exist. Bah! What is tape when you work for the federal government? When local police can't even enter your building to kill a murderer who still has the bloody knife clenched between his teeth unless they have been deputized by the U.S. Marshall? Again I say "Bah!"

She delivered mail to the first house. She delivered mail to the second house. She continued around the orange cones, over more police tape, past baffled policemen, firefighters and volunteer emergency responders and -- lo -- delivered mail to the third house. Then, she turned to the fiery apartment complex and would have (as heaven is my witness) delivered mail there too if everyone around her hadn't suddenly come to their senses and ordered her away.

Nothing -- not rain or sleet or snow or apparently electrical fires -- can stop the U.S. post.

---

Hope any of you who are still out there reading this are well. It's been nice to be gone, but now it's nice to be back. I deleted my Facebook account recently and that feels grand although it would feel even more grand if I could actually delete it. Because when I say delete, I really mean "deactivate" since Facebook doesn't let you get rid of anything. If I want it back (as if I'd never left) all I have to do is type in my e-mail address and password. So long as the e-mail is still up and working, Facebook comes back. Facebook may be the devil. By which I mean Satan.

Maybe Facebook has horocruxes. I just need to find them all and destroy them. It's one plan anyway.

#208: stories

What a weird day, piloted on one hour and 30 minutes of sleep (12 a.m. to 1:30 a.m. and then off to Portland then turnaround come back again to be at work in Astoria by 7:30 a.m. The moonset was lovely and the sunrise beautiful). I don't think I'm tired but it's like when they're drilling in your mouth at the dentist's office and though you can't feel the pain, you know it's going on. So. I don't feel tired, but I know I must be. Deep down. Like maybe in my ankles? Kidney? Something. I don't remember being this moody since...well, while we're being honest, I guess it hasn't been that long. Since the bail hearing probably when the victim's autopsy report came out and I felt like throwing up and kicking things.

Here's a teaser of what I wrote for today's paper. This is a test to see if you want to keep on reading... Let me know if you don't. I learn from this. I'm curious.

<><><>

When 10-month-old Kaiya Maclay sees a photo of her mother, her eyes widen, her mouth opens to form a perfect oval. She pushes her tongue out against her gums.

“That’s her excited face,” says grandmother Judy Bleecker.

If it’s a photo Kaiya has seen many times before, she will make that face and dance, waving her arms and kicking her legs.

She’s old enough now to understand that the people in the photographs aren’t alive. She sees her mother’s picture and knows it’s only a picture. The real person is somewhere else.

But if Kaiya is shown a photograph of her mother that she’s never seen before, she’ll look at it intently then take it in her hands and turn it around to peer at the back.

She is looking for Jess Maclay, but she can’t find her.

Maclay, 30, a caseworker with Clatsop Community Action, died in a car accident Sunday morning, Feb. 20.

The car she was driving hit a patch of ice on U.S. Highway 26. She lost control, spun across both lanes and smashed into a fire truck parked on the side of the road.

It was the third car accident to happen at that exact spot that morning.

Emergency responders cut Jess, her husband TJ Maclay and their daughter Kaiya out of the car.

Jess was taken by helicopter to Portland where she was pronounced dead soon after arrival.

Here's the FULL STORY.

#207 instrument

This is where all my free time and certainly a good stack of my money has gone recently. M. started calling it my boyfriend.



I felt a lot of guilty for casually laying it out on the carpet like this so I could take pictures. Yes, I am in love.... like Disney Cinderella singing "So this is love, mmmhhm mmhmm, so this is what makes life divine." And I do only play it while dressed up in a lot of gauze with a boomerang on my head:



But it's not that it's just pretty (although it is) and fits my arm-to-torso ratio quite nicely and sounds fantastic (it does)... It's that it also looks like this: (Hmmm. Don't know how well you can see. Bad photographer)



This guitar has been played and dinged up and carried around and loved. I like that best.

Yesterday, in a car, we were talking about houses because Marta and Matty were looking at houses to buy last week. The last house they looked at was a dirty little hole on a fantastic tract of land. The minute Marta set foot in the house, she wanted to leave, she said.

"I don't believe in spirits or anything like that, but there was something nasty and bad about this house," she said. By which she meant, Matty clarified, it was a place where someone had been hurt, molested, beaten. It had that feel.

I think about places we have left -- for all time, for a little while -- and how a house smells strange and musty when you come back from camping, how the yard has grown up and the blackberries have started to take over in a hostile way, how one time the faucet let loose a stream of brown water.

I think how hospital rooms will always be hospital rooms: places of blood and medicine, the stinking skins and bodies and wounds mixed with the smell of disinfectant, rubbing alcohol. Death and birth, different sorts of pain.

I think how we know when places and things have been loved and cared for, and conversely, when we are in a place of terrible actions. It must be something we can smell but could never name. Like how I know a crisis is coming between me and another person, but I only realize at the last minute that I know and have known for a long time. We pick up on so much and only a quarter of it we ever realize consciously.