#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.

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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.

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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).