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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.