Dustpan Alley

2008-07-24T18:42:00.000-07:00

Blog-A-Pocalypse

The first thing I would like to do this evening is send PKM the hugest unlecherous hug from me for drawing my name for her fabric gift certificate! I could not have been more surprised or pleased! So many delicious treasures have made their way to me from Pam. Pam is like the best tree ripened sweet red summer cherries that come to you with the morning dew still on them and just when you think you can't stand so much sweetness she blurts out something tangy-fresh like "Fuck them all!!!".

I heard today that one of my favorite bloggers is going to take a little break from blogging for the rest of the summer. Then I read another blog I love and heard grumblings about blogging and how perhaps she'll drift away from it too. I have seen other blogs I love shut down and I am beginning to think that perhaps this is part of an occupational condition. Blog Fatigue. Do you feel it? Are you about to let your blog fade away? Some common complaints about the blogging world right now is how commercial it's gotten. Ads everywhere and everyone selling something. There's also the same dynamics present socially that plagued some of us in grade school: the popular girls club and how we'll never belong to it...who wants to relive that?

I admit that I feel a little betrayed every time a favorite blog rolls up and blows away. I invest something of myself into my favorite ones and so when they fade into obscurity it's like a part of me is gone with it. Was it me? Am I the reason blogs are disappearing? Did I look too long or ask too many personal questions? At the same time I understand. I really do.

I posted my 7ooth post today. I have been blogging just over two years. What have I gotten from the experience? Well, I certainly didn't make much money in spite of my ads. I haven't managed to keep myself at home. Nor have I become famous and beloved by all. I am not sought after, courted, included in the inner circles of the elite, and I still post way more often than is considered cool. Still, what I've gotten from blogging is something I can't get from my real life community alone. I love my friends in "real life" but they can't give me all that I need. Having this blog has allowed me to connect with people who share a lot of specific things in common with me. It makes it easy to find the people you share a spirit with.

I have, for twenty eight years (with very few breaks), written every day. In secret journals. In serious notebooks. On my old cranky typewriter. On soup labels and on stationary. And on my computer. I write. Beneath all else in life that I do (and I do a lot!) I am first of all a writer. Maybe I'm a shitty one, maybe I'm obscure, scary, funny, bland, erratic...you can describe me in any way you think fits but it won't change the fact that writing is what I do nearly every single day of my life. Keeping a public blog has forced my writing to improve. So if you think my writing here is shitty, you should see what it was like two years ago!!! Writing publicly has given me guidance and consistency.

Writing here allows me to say what I need to and know that there's a good chance that someone else out there who happens to read my blog needs to feel less alone with themselves too. Writing here has given me the gift of finding kindred spirits and also the chance to support others in their hour(s) of need. Some of us have secret selves that cause us pain and vast loneliness. We can't sit down with our family and friends casually and say (by way of dinner conversation) something like "I thought about how nice it would be to be dead today. Wow, it's been a long time since I had that thought. Would you pass the salt please?"

Support. Laughter. Inspiration. These are things I have gotten from this strange place called the "blogosphere".

I can see how it can get overwhelming. There are a lot of voices out there. When you're plugged into the computer you will hear a lot more of them than when you aren't. Perhaps we'll all get to a point where we need to disconnect and drift away with the growing hunger for silence. Take it. I am sad when a blogger I love drifts off but if I have learned anything it's that this is a place of support and so I support the drift. Besides, I've noticed that blogs often spring back to life like favorite dead characters on soap operas. It only took Luke and Laura, like, ten years to come back from the dead, right?

I have started to put my very very dark content into a private online journal because I really don't think any of you are prepared for that content. Believe it or not I have censored myself quite a bit and it has started to really leak into my work here. There's a time and a place for everything. This mental journey of mine is raw, frightening, pervasive, and in need of airing but not now. Not here. I cannot share it with people who don't understand that journey. I have to protect myself.

That doesn't mean there won't be any dark content here or philosophical crap, it just won't be the really tough stuff. I would like to focus now on more of the light. The food. The garden. And the crafts. The things so many people visited Dustpan Alley for in the first place. If I do well in my upcoming interview and find myself fully employed I will be entering a new chapter.

It's been three years since we've had any kind of financial stability. Three years of constant financial tension. If I am fully employed (particularly with jobs that I can look forward to every day) then I just might be able to put polka dots in the windows again. I just might be free enough to breath again.

Free enough to not give a shit if my blog makes a single penny. Free enough to not care if the popular girls spit on my locker or not. I cursed the coffee drinks I served them when I worked in cafes. I just might be free enough to play for playing's sake.

For the record I would like to say that I am not one of those people who is bothered by people making money from their blogs. Writers of newspaper columns make a living and that living is made by the ads and subscriptions their publication gets. What's the difference? If the writing is good I see no reason why the writer shouldn't get paid to write. Writing well is work. It takes skill, talent, and time.

This is my blog. Like a second home. A sanctuary. A sounding board.

I can't pretend I don't care if you're here. I do care. I prefer your company. I need to hear from other people. Your voices have comforted, supported, laughed with me, (uh, and at me, but I won't hold it against you), and made me laugh too. Your voices have been shining something beautiful and I feel more full when you speak up for yourselves and are heard. You've made me better than I was before.

So I will strive to improve still more. For whoever is left standing at the end of this Blog-A-pocalypse.

2008-07-24T08:17:00.000-07:00

Kids In The Woods

One of the things I love about kids is that they don't pretend to be shocked by things. A group of kids finds a dead bird in the woods and it's a curiosity to them. They would like to touch it and talk about it. They find death fascinating and fly into action when we (the parents) suggest that the proper and kind thing to do would be to bury the poor dead bird. Sophie shrieks "I know where the shovel is and I will save the day!" and flies off to get the shovel.

The digging is rough going and Sam investigates Sophie's progress with a stoic eye. Watching the kids is like reading a surreal Carson McCullers book about some cobwebby town filled exclusively with crippled dwarfs. Except not depressing.

Sophie gets about an inch dug up when Ben and his brother Finn decide to help out. Digging graves is pretty entertaining, as it turns out. They manage to get a dubiously shallow grave dug and put the bird in it and cover it with loose dry soil. Immediately they start playing and forget the bird. They run across the grave dislodging their handy work and must be reminded not to unearth the dead thing. I suggest they put a big rock on the spot so they'll remember where it is. A smallish rock is placed on top.

The kids have put death to rest by donning a gravediggers shoes. The moment for them is ephemeral, just another interesting but soon forgotten activity in their day. They may mention it later while taking their evening bath, or dredge it up to impress people later on, but mostly they just took it in stride.

Quite a lot of adults believe that young kids just don't get death. That they don't really understand the gravity of it. The seriousness and finality of it. Maybe not all kids do, but I believe that most of them get it pretty well the first time they see a bug die; that the bug is not going to become reanimated. I think that as we grow up we learn to not handle death well from other adults. We are not supposed to take it in stride because it is the single worst thing that can happen to being. Right? I happen to disagree but that is neither here nor there. I just love how kids can process information and experiences of living and dying with complete sangfroid.

Obviously there are all kinds of things that can happen to kids to frighten them and scar them emotionally. They aren't indestructible. They need care and love and a certain amount of protection. But as long as they have a healthy home and caring parents it's amazing how resilient they can be.

2008-07-23T07:46:00.000-07:00

Sweet Denial

I have a flood of things to say but nowhere to say them and no one to say them to. I keep writing posts and having to delete them because censorship forbids me to print straight from my head. Truths and revelations keep leaking onto the "pages" like fat ink being wicked into wet paper; feathering out until all the paper is covered in dark eerie cross-hatched lines. Although denial has been largely discredited as a positive method of dealing with anything, I think that sometimes denial is the ONLY way to deal with impossible circumstances. I was brought out of denial briefly over this past few days and it was excessively icky. So I'm going to carefully rebuild a protective shell of denial around myself and also not read anything serious.

This is one of my favorite discoveries at Dave and Doe's house. So creepy and so cool I am full of envy that I never think of things like this! Philip does which is probably why he is such good friends with Dave. Talk about a creative re-use of something that would otherwise be in a landfill or in a hoarder's house!

My dog's sister Lulu is the sweetest girl and so cute! One of the biggest transformations I've personally experienced is going from being frightened of dogs for twenty five years and then learning to appreciate and even like dogs, to becoming a person who understands what it feels like to love a dog. I get it now, I really do! Dogs are very cool animals. I can no longer imagine life without them.

Succulents are another thing I used to disregard and even, to some degree, dislike. Why? I see it now! Succulents have been grabbing my attention lately and I find myself getting tangled up in their enchantment. They have secret lives, I'm quite sure.

I love this little succulent garden and I believe I'm going to have to create my own version of it. I have a sunken container full of hens and chicks and another (as yet) unidentified strange beast of a succulent that both need company.

The best thing that's happened to me in a very long time is that I have an interview for the part time job I covet the most. I get the chance I've been hoping for this coming Monday. Let's just all hope I don't go mess up my chance at this dream job by being a spazzy dork beyond the pale.

Hope you all have a great Wednesday!

2008-07-22T08:55:00.000-07:00

A Tribute To Home Cooking

I don't know what other secrets our friend Sharon has up her sleeve but she is quietly the best sour cherry pie baker in the world. It was sweet enough but not too sweet so that the flavor of the cherries- as intense as fake cherry candy flavor- could be bright and loud. The crust was flaky and tender and had no dairy in it so I don't want to know what she used for fat, but whatever it was made the perfect crust. It was the best pie I have ever eaten. It also happened to be the prettiest.

This pesto gnocchi made by our friend Mark is the only gnocchi I have ever enjoyed. It was a great revelation to me- the dumplings (made from potatoes and flour, usually) were tender and melted in our mouths. The pesto was creamy and rich without being too rich. (One must bear in mind that there is no such thing as "too rich" in my food vocabulary.)

I splurged on cheeses for our pot luck at my friend Chelsea's house. Seriously splurged. I fell for the colors and also for the tiny pert older French woman who was making me try every cheese she had that wasn't goat or sheep and it was amusing to watch her struggle with the fact that I could be such a difficult human being by not liking ALL her cheeses. She did make me taste a nasty olive. Chelsea liked it but I didn't. It was an olive that had little or not salt or vinegar in the curing so it was sweet. I don't eat olives for the sweet. Ick. However, do observe the gorgeousness of this cheese board and note that we ate some of them spread with a small amount of grape musk jam, a pleasant first for both of us.

These blueberry muffins are the best in the entire world. I'm not kidding. Nigella couldn't make them better. Neither could Julia Child. NO ONE MAKES BETTER BLUEBERRY MUFFINS THAN CHELSEA. I will get the recipe for them but we must all be warned that even with the recipe they will not be as good because Chelsea is magic and so is her food. If you eat one of these you will be spoiled for life because afterwards the gluey dense oily things you can buy in bakeries and cafes that call themselves "blueberry muffins" are really just fat blimps that stick in your throat and clog your spirit.

I think it's curious how we have only friends with food obsessions. I don't believe we have a single friend who are indifferent about what goes on their plates. Nearly all of them are excellent cooks or at the very least have one dish they make better than anyone else. We had better food at our friends' tables than we had out. Even when we went to D'Angelos in Mill Valley.

One meal I didn't get a picture of (and wish I had) was the pasta dish made by our friends Sid and Dennis. They made a pasta with sage from their garden that was superb. I am reminded of this because the pasta we had at D'Angelos (a winter squash ravioli with sage and butter sauce) pales in comparison to the pasta Sid and Dennis served which wasn't at all fancy or pretentious and was so good I can still taste it in my mouth now. It achieved, with half the ingredients, a purity and richness of flavor that was (I believe) the intention of the chefs at D'Angelos who ought to be taking lessons from my friends.

If I could open a restaurant (not a dream of mine, by the way) that served only food made from my friends' recipes it would be the best restaurant in the world. It pleases me that so many of the people I love take such great care and have such a passion for making food that goes beyond ordinary expectations. It is a constant inspiration to me in my own kitchen.

2008-07-21T08:43:00.000-07:00

In The Cantina

Otherwise known as Dave and Doe's house where every possible surface has had a rich patina of color and art applied to it. Dave and Doe are both artists and being in their house is like walking into the most vibrant playground of texture and surprises. The most prominent style is a Mexican folk art mixed with comics.

I could sit in their kitchen (referred to as the "cantina") for hours just to bask in the cool religious iconography and skeletons. Hanging out in their house reminded me of the great potential for a home to become a reflection and a joyful funny monument to what makes us most happy. Why play it safe in the one place that is yours? So often we view our home as the place to create "peacefulness" and often we choose colors that are soothing and calm so that our house is a get away from the rest of the world.

But when I'm sitting in Dave and Doe's vibrant kitchen I want to know how come so few of us think of our home as the ultimate playground? Or a place to seek inspiration the kind of inspiration we get from travel and museums? Or why so few of us decorate our homes in a way that offers amusement and thought provoking conversation? Why should we play it safe at home in our decorating? The one place we can do what we want to in.

In my mad scurry to find employment when we returned from our trip I almost forgot my new resolve to start planning the transformation of my personal space into a completely personal space. Not something likely to end up in Sunset magazine but something likely to make me feel alive and energized.

Lord knows we have a tough road ahead of us for both obvious reasons and reasons you don't even want to know about. Life is ever shifting and rearranging itself. My house should be a place not just of peace and rest, because after a certain point that just sounds funereal, but a place of fun and vibrancy, a place to wake up and feel alive in.

Thank you Dave and Doe for the huge nudge in my fat ass- I intend that when we finally drag your bones up here for a visit you will feel equally good in my home as I did in yours.

2008-07-20T16:24:00.000-07:00

Just You And Me Now

You lay there like a salty bride in tulle froth, waiting for your wintry groom to come and take you away. Away from this perch. From this cold beach. From these sharp cold waters. From this smoothing sand. You lay there like a salty bride smelling of almonds and oranges. Milky sweet tangy; catching on thorns. You've gone where I can only watch. And wait. You've gone untouchable. What groom takes a bride he cannot touch with corporeal hands? What groom takes a bride who has no earthly lusts?

2008-07-19T19:56:00.000-07:00

Spirit of Glass

Life is a circle and my spirit is glass as thin as breath.

"I am at one of the tables sitting with my wrists facing up, my hands are passive as I wait for something. Another set of hands, which belong to another girl whose face I don't see, are opening a delicate bottle of scent next to mine on the table. It is a special scent that someone has gone to a lot of trouble to find. The bottle is opaque and somewhere between the color of moonlight in a smoky sky and summery blushed peaches. Maybe it even resembles the skin of an infant. It is the most impossible color I've ever seen and the scent is exactly the same: somewhere between the smell of smoky moonlight and night blossoms with the blush of peaches to keep it from total darkness. It is the smell of me."

Dudes. This was part of my dream last night and I actually never wanted to wake up again. Not out of a disdain for living, which I love, but because the dream was so rich, amazing, and better than life. My dreams, as I have said before, are rarely good. I am a person who is plagued by very bad nightmares or at best a whole lot of stupid anxiety dreams about missing classes. But this one was like something unfinished, something freeing, something important and it makes me wonder if most of my healing has been done during the rare nights when I dream like this: dream better safer things than I have lived.

warning*warning*warning
Serious Subject Ahead

I went to the library today. I am going to try to power through my impossible four year stretch of difficulty reading a book without losing focus, feeling itchy, and needing the constant comfort of watching gross medical shows in order to calm myself enough to face every single next day of my life. I used to read a book almost every two days. Until I quit smoking a few years ago. I have not been the same since. Healthier, yes. And no. My mental illness has also reached a point over the last few years that it is hard to take a chance on new books. New stories. I have to manage my moods to such a degree that a book which creeps me out or depresses me could knock my mood down for days.

And that's WITH medication.

So, for example, no Carson McCullers for me. Ever again.

It's very hard for many people to understand but I need to know ahead of time (as much as possible) how any event or "entertainment" is going to impact my head and my capacity to deal with the aftermath. Surprises impact not just me but also my kid and my husband. I have to do risk management equations on myself all day long just so other people can see me as pretty much "normal". It's a lot of work.

I checked out two Mary Stewart novels (not from her Merlin series but from her mystery/suspense series she wrote mostly in the nineteen fifties) which I have already read (but not for a very long time) and adore because the suspense is page turning but I know how they end and I always want to be one of her heroines. I also checked out some books from the psychology section. And I'm a little worried. However, I need to reconnect to what's being written these days from inside the mentally ill mind. I need to connect with my kind, hear their stories in order to figure out which stories still need telling.

In particular I am anxious to read the book called "Cutting" by Steven Levenkron. People like me are called "cutters". I don't call myself that. Until I saw an episode of Maury Povich (many many years ago) about "cutters" I didn't know we had a name. I didn't know we were a group. I didn't know there were enough of us to be our own special thing. I am many special things so I suppose it never hurts to add something to the list. I was worried that it ended up on Maury's show before I got whiff of it in some more legitimate forum. I mean, to see the really cheap low down version of something you've been and loathed and feared end up on a really bad talk show is extremely depressing. Maury was a complete ass about it too.

I need to know, finally, what others are saying about me and my kind. I need to know if I am being properly represented. I have tried writing about the subject and read it out loud to friends which I think is a mistake. It has helped to highlight my non-normalcy almost better than any other single action I've taken in my life. Doing it was bad enough, saying it out loud makes me feel like a very sick and battered human being. Feeling that sick and battered triggers a ferocity in me that is not healthy.

So. I checked books out that I need to read. Will I be able to turn off the shows that calm me like giant shots of Thorazine do for others? Will I be able to concentrate without smoking?* Will I discover what words are missing from this world that I need to add to it? Will I find my place? Will I need a lot of time to recover?

All these questions, and more, may never be answered.

Oh yeah, and I ran out of Paxil and I don't have any refills and I neglected to beg for some tide-over pills for the week-end so my head is doing that twinge-y thing I LOVE so much and by tomorrow I should be well into worrying that I'm going to stroke out or that my head has a bomb lodged in it and will explode before Monday.

Ah well. At least then I won't have to worry about getting that second job, huh? Always look for the silver lining.

*No worries. I won't start smoking. I'll just stop reading if it comes to that.

2008-07-18T09:12:00.000-07:00

In My Other Life

I live two lives, one is my waking life, the other is my sleeping life. I cannot tell you how many times this mailbox has featured in my good dreams. I don't actually have very many good dreams but I'd say that about fifty percent of the good ones feature this mailbox. I want to say this very mailbox but I can't because time marches forward with entropy and at some point in the past twenty five years that I have not lived at 360 Scenic Drive, the original mailboxes were replaced.

It used to be the classic metal kind with the round top and it has continued to receive my mail since I abruptly left this address in the summer of eighty five in a dramatic and swift race between my parents to file for divorce first. I come to this mailbox in my good dreams and I have a thousand letters from lost friendships and ghosts of the past. This little spot on earth is one of my biggest happy places even though in my waking life it belongs to someone else.

Maybe most people think of their dreams as being not real. The things we dream about don't really happen to us. Except that they do happen to me because I carry the memories of my dream events around in my head and my body in exactly the same way that I carry the "real" memories.

Last night I was on vacation with a large group of people and we were supposed to go to some fancy event right before packing up to leave so I was putting on makeup but couldn't get it right and then I put some product in my hair that turned out to be tinted brown an dripped down my neck. I tried to fix it and was in a department store with my luggage...trying to find the event while wiping the stuff off of my ears and then found the event which turned out to be ball room dancing in a high school gym and the bleachers were so steep and reached almost to the ceiling and I didn't want to dance and there were so many people not dancing...arranging themselves in the bleachers like fancy dolls at a stale tea party.

I resented having come. Then it wasn't dancing anymore. It was a convention and someone was shoving a microphone into my face asking me to give a talk...blank panic...I tried talking to all the faces turned to me but had nothing to say and slinked off to get on my scooter and ride the two day twenty four hour trip home with my two pieces of luggage uncomfortably arranged on it. I got spotted by some young pimply person who was there specifically to pick my brain. More literally than was comfortable. Guns came out when I demurred and said I had no time. I ran as the whole place went up in the chase with gunfire. Suddenly there were twenty floors to get down to where my scooter was. Luggage all gone.

Can't get down the stairs. Am always two seconds too slow to get away. Classic resistance dream in which I can only move by grabbing things and pulling myself forward. Legs don't work properly or air is holding me in place...anxiety is permeating my dream. Can't move can't move...why doesn't the dream release me so I can get away? I know at this moment that the whole dream is going to continue in this fashion and yet I don't wake myself. It's not bad enough yet. I finally get to my scooter but by this time I know that a very magnetic dangerous person is gathering forces all around me and I will be lucky to get away. The person in question is there in the crowds of people and the crowds know he wants to get to me so they try to be his arms.

At some point I rush past Anthony Hopkins dressed in colorful motorcycle gear and I engage in some on-the-fly conversation in which I am amusing myself and then realize who he is and tell him that we will probably be seeing each other on the road, passing each other, and waving and then tell him that actually he probably won't be waving to me or noticing me because he's so famous and doesn't have to notice anyone and this little interlude has distracted me but the danger is now overwhelming and I say a breezy goodbye.

On my scooter trying to cram what belongings I have left but everything is falling all over the ground and I find out that the magnetic person has hidden one of my boxes of belongings under a table and I dive for it even as a ton of people try to stop me. I know now that I am running so late. Everyone else is going to get there before me. To the other end of our destination.

I got the box crammed on my scooter and put the keys in and the keys wouldn't go in and then the magnetic person is enjoying the spectacle and laughing and telling me how he will be seeing me on the road. Watching and following and how I will never be far and I will always be in his reach. He's playing now, so sure that I will be like molasses. Somehow the scooter starts and I get up a huge mountain and think I'm safe.

But as dreams do, something changes slightly and I'm now staying in the house of one of Max's friend's mom. On this mountain. But that's the only thing that's changed really because I'm still trying to make time on the road to get to a destination on my scooter instead of by plane and this time I'm suppose to be meeting Max at the other destination only I won't be there and I have failed to book him a flight so he won't be wherever we're meeting either. I am still packing. Always trying to finish packing and I'm still being pursued. S has three tigers on her property that she's quite sanguine about. But I know that I won't get past them.

I never get past the big cats in my dreams. I grab a few of Max's things feeling a pang that he will be so neglected and deprived and try cramming it all on my scooter again and try to leave but all the paths lead to where the tigers are and I'm in slow motion all the time. One path narrows and becomes an impossible bridge over water and I fling my vehicle forward by accident but it isn't a scooter it's a toy car. I go back to beg S to get it out for me only she isn't S anymore she's Philip. He gets it out and I'm on my scooter again. He's gone. Like smoke.

S is trying to tell me how to get on the upper road that will be safe from the tigers and get me going in the right direction but I don't understand what she's saying. Over and over I don't understand and I try to get out but I can't because the big cats are circling me like they always do. Finally I take some path right around her house that leads to the next house and it seems OK until suddenly the cats are right there and there's nowhere to go. I'm in the next person's house and they are freaked about the tigers that came with me and are now nostril close. The neighbor calls for S who ambles up a dirt road and calls the tigers who don't come. One swipes at me and I know it's only playing because I'm only hurting a little bit but will be dead soon.

Something distracts the tigers and I get past them to a road. But now I'm hopelessly late and I have no belonging left. And then Max crawls into bed with us and I'm pulled back to my waking life. Still feeling that sluggish pull of slow motion dreams that freak me out so much. Still feeling the magnetic one next to me. A step behind me. He may even be in bed with us all. He's still around as I write this because we're tied together inexorably. Always.

The only time I'm not running in that anxious slow-motion-body impossible way trying to lose death is when I arrive in my dreams at the mailbox at 360 Scenic Drive and get my letters. Time stops. I stop. I'm calm. I'm happy. I'm home.

What I'd like to know is what does it mean to have the following elements make frequent appearances in my dreams:

Big wild cats (always lions or tigers)
public bathrooms with no stall doors and broken overflowing toilets
inability to move my body (legs) so have to pull myself forward using other objects
being chased
being killed
finding dead bodies
getting mail at my old address
trouble packing luggage
chivalry extended to me
driving cars

Anyone have any ideas? I think I'll look some dream symbolism up.

2008-07-17T09:42:00.000-07:00

Shelling Peas
is the new karaoke

Cooking for a lot of people is exhilarating when you don't have to do it every day. If I had been a farm wife in the thirties with thirteen (or two?) children I would have constantly had a "headache" and made the family eat cold oatmeal for dinner with bacon lard. My husband would have beat me all the time because I would have been useless. The only time in my life that I have been a great housekeeper was when I was a childless housewife: when it was, in fact, my only job.

Cooking for a large group of people I like/love is like giving them a piece of myself. This is why I love Thanksgiving. No gifts but nourishment and time spent together preparing what keeps us hale and hearty, or in bad years-just plain alive. I like a lack of set traditions so that everyone can make it up as they go along. I like things to be informal.

Not informal in a Martha Stewart fake informal way that is really just what formal looks like when it's wearing jeans. I mean truly informal. The kind of gathering where everyone is comfortable lounging around with their shoes on or off, however they please. Where they can help themselves to whatever is in the fridge. The kind where you feel comfortable rooting around in cupboards for glasses. The kind of gathering that doesn't concern itself with doing dishes until the next morning.

So I made my friends wash potatoes* and lettuce and shell peas. The meal was about 95% locally grown and produced. Plus it tasted great.

Here are some highlights of the gathering:

Lisa B's daughter Maddy's obsession with catching and releasing as many frogs as possible and the sideways discovery that Lisa isn't all that crazy for amphibians being up close and personal. Even baby ones the size of dimes.

Riana's daughter Amaya using dog and frog water for festive beverages. The following speculation concerning how likely it was that Amaya was hoping to eat an actual frog was pretty great too: it was decided that frogs the size of dimes would only be good fried like "popcorn" style appetizers and Riana's French husband Benji did point out that while French people do eat frogs, they only eat the legs.

Max stopping a bloody nose with an apple. It wasn't as effective as he hoped and resulted in a disgusting piece of fruit and blood all over his face. He was amused with the experiment and I went flying through the house to locate tissues. He's been getting more of them lately which I think is because of the heat.

Pat from here in McMinnville (who is very old friends with Riana's mom, also named Pat) making mojitos and filling the kitchen with the scent of mint. It was quite a process and makes it a beverage to sip, I think, not gulp. Pat was lovely in her pretty summery skirt and shiny smile.

Max blurring by with actual real cherries in his hands that he was actually EATING.** Yes, fresh local cherries. Did I dream that? Does that negate the awful blue Gatorade he was drinking earlier from the corner store? My kid ate cherries and I didn't have anything to do with it. It was a beautiful sight.

Enjoying Benji's imitation of hormonal teens. He's a teacher and we were discussing the French school system and I was asking how hard the age group is that he teaches (from 11 years old to, I think, 15?) and he was demonstrating the fun attitudes and postures of the different ages. You'd never guess from pictures of him how funny he is.

Finding out that French kids can be picky eaters too. It was also enjoyable finding out that a lot of French people don't even like cheese at all, or will only eat a couple of kinds of cheese. I always suspected these things but keep hearing people claim that picky eating is only an American phenomenon. Which I didn't believe.

How weird and modern is it that you can meet someone online and feel like you've known them a million years without having ever met them in person and then when you do meet them feel like they're family? As messed up as the world is right now, that's a pretty great experience. Thank you Riana (and family!) for taking the time to come and have dinner with us. Until next time we'll gather around pictures in Flickr and share each others' adventures through our blogs!

*My first potato harvest of the year!

**And then spitting the pits out at the girls. Boys!

2008-07-15T22:35:00.000-07:00

Guilty Pleasures

At what point does a guilty pleasure cross the line into a compulsion or an obsession? How strange or dirty does a guilty pleasure have to be before it stops being a guilty pleasure and becomes pathological, illegal, or just plain antisocial? What makes a pleasure a guilty one surely depends on our level of embarrassment in our enjoyment of the pleasure. But, is a guilty pleasure only good because we are embarrassed and enjoy it in secret? Have you ever lost your inappropriate pleasure once you found out that lots of other people share it?

I think what makes a pleasure a guilty one depends on our expectations of how other people perceive us, on our expectations we cherish for ourselves, and how we each see ourselves fitting together in this mad world. Mostly I think it has to do with how we WANT other people to perceive us and how some of our pleasures are like a huge contradiction to everything we want other people to believe about who we are. Or maybe it's just that some of the things we find most delicious are embarrassing because we want to be someone we aren't.

Let's take a look at a few of mine:

I am a magazine whore- I mostly look at magazines for the images. The pictures-not the articles. The fact that I sometimes find excellent writing in fashion magazines is just a bonus. Magazines are a glossy view into other people's lives. You don't open up your life to me enough so I have to go and pry into the lives of people who are motivated to be seen, heard, and paid to be public. Magazines are like candy. They feed my body color and most important? Hope. Yep, hope. Hope that maybe life holds more than dirty socks for me. Hope that maybe I'm not the most idiotic stupid person alive. Hope that I'm not the fattest, ugliest, meanest, and that some day I will look around me and I will want for nothing. Intelligent people supposedly seek out only quality entertainment and don't indulge in such plebeian amusements. A lot is expected of smart people.

Peanut butter and honey- on a spoon. But never just one spoonful. I can quietly consume half a jar of peanut butter. I fill a spoon half full of peanut butter and then pour the same amount of honey on the spoon and then I carefully attempt to take in equal portions of each in my mouth. I will do this until I feel kind of sick. I don't do this in front of people. Not even in front of Philip, though I'm pretty sure he's very aware that I do this. It's a little like sucking on a pacifier. Which I never did because my mom wouldn't give me one so instead I sucked my thumb until I was seven and apparently caused myself (according to my mom) to require a retainer to tame my wild overbite.

Imagining my oldest nemesis in various deflating scenarios- It's been just about thirty years since I was pushed out of my chair, threatened constantly, teased, dissed, and shunned by the most popular girl in Briscoe Elementary during my time there. Let's just say that I have good reason to see her as a blousy aged blond single mom with six kids and very wrinkled flesh from all that sunbathing she used to do. I don't have to say why this is such a guilty pleasure. The underdog must entertain such fantasies. We all know she's probably a wildly successful and happy person who wouldn't hurt a fly now that she's seen the light of Jesus.

See's Candy- Having such great appreciation for high quality food it is reasonable to expect me to like fancy quality chocolate better than the evil corporate See's. Well, what can I say? There's nothing quite like the experience of opening a box of See's and rooting around for the best flavors and leaving half of them bitten into and left behind. It is way too sweet, it makes me want to drink an ocean of water right about the moment it's too late to save myself...yet every time I come across a box of See's I feel excited.

Yellow Scrub Sponges- I believe they are made of artificial materials, which is bad. I like to use a new one every week or two. I've been trying to stretch it out as long as possible because I know that eventually my conscience will demand that I give them up altogether. I want to make good choices for this planet of ours. I want to help it heal not just for me and mine but also I think about the rest of you too and how all my choices impact ALL OF US. I'm so sorry. I just haven't been able to give them up yet. I love how they work. I love when they're new and don't smell or shred and they soak up that soap and I get this indescribable frisson of pleasure doing my dishes and working out the initial stiffness of the new sponge.

Sleeping alone- When sleeping alone was all I ever did I didn't particularly enjoy it. Once married I found myself missing the autonomy of the mattress. I love my husband more than I think it seemly to say publicly, but I don't like to snuggle when I sleep. Body heat against me when I'm trying to sleep is uncomfortable. I also can't sleep facing another face. I can't sleep when I'm being breathed on. I think the perfect set up is the Nick and Nora set up where they each sleep in their own bed and when feeling amorous they can get together as they please.

Happy Endings- I know that as a worldly woman who has razored her own skin, begged food from friends, been mistaken for a prostitute, abused, overlooked, lived with cockroaches the size of rats, watched people shoot up in alleyways out my window because I didn't have television, accidentally seen a guy named Ahmed get a blow job, befriended prostitute boys on Polk street, and peed on the last bus from San Francisco to Marin I shouldn't care about happy endings. I'm cosmopolitan. I'm sophisticated. I know what the real world is like. Right. I know what reality is and that's why I love a happy ending. It's nice when the happy ending isn't arrived at clumsily, but the truth is: I'll take happy endings however they come to me.

Romance- I've actually mentioned this one before. I've attempted to out it. In real life I dislike public displays of affection. Sex is sex is sex. Sex isn't romance. Sex is fun and satisfying and important and natural but romance is elusive and not particularly real for people like me. I'm devoid of that ability to act it out in real life. There is something (probably a malfunction) in me that will not allow me to be romantic. In real life it makes me uncomfortable and itchy. In real life I'm more like a man in the romance department. Grudging, inarticulate, and bumbling. I can only show my love in my fidelity and the life I plan with my man. But in secret I enjoy romance done well. Nothing tragic. Tragic love doesn't interest me in the least. I enjoy the following examples of romance in film and story: The Thin Man, North and South, Pride and Prejudice, Rebecca, My Brother Michael, and The Tennant of Wildfeld Hall.

I don't want the bodice rippers. It has nothing to do with sex. It's all in the communication between men and women, the flirting, and the manner in which love is discovered. I want the fade to black for the steamy bits. As a mature adult I'm supposed to want the passionate part, the mature content, the real hard edged stuff...right? Wrong. That's everywhere in real life. I want the other stuff, the stuff that isn't really real. I can't even use the real words that would apply here because it makes me so uncomfortable to reveal this. That's why I've written more on this one than any of the other ones.

Receiving Presents- There is such an expectation that intelligent, earth conscious, quality minded people disapprove of gifts. Of giving them, of receiving them. I like them. I look forward to them. I love homemade ones, small ones, expensive ones, and thoughtful ones. I don't care what they cost. I love them all. That's not true, I once received a "Precious Moments" Christmas ornament that freaked the fuck out of me and I had to hide it and when we had a fire in our house it obligingly "burnt" up in the fire.

I have left out ones that might hurt the people I love but otherwise I have been completely candid. I think that what makes most of my guilty pleasures guilty is that they aren't the things I'm supposed to find pleasurable. I should have a shoe fetish or secretly have a crush on Regis Philbin or love to watch porn. Instead my guilty pleasures are PG-rated. Suitable for family viewing. Candy and romance. Which makes me wonder- who the hell am I anyway?

What are your guilty pleasures? Do you dare to tell? Will it offend me? Will it frighten your mother? (If it would put you in jail and cause injury to others then don't tell because I will want to maim you for life. Anything else is probably alright.) Go ahead...tell it here.

2008-07-14T20:28:00.000-07:00

What I Learned From Gertrude Stein

There is no aphorism to describe how I'm feeling these days. There is no need to sum life up in abbreviated bits of wisdom. The way I see it- if you don't have time to follow all the circuitous routes that life and it's truths must take then you don't have time to breath. Sometimes you just have to get there when you get there. Sometimes you just have talk until you find the right words. Or walk until you find the right path.

There have been people in my life who didn't have time to wait. To wait for that epiphany of light to shake itself free from the convoluted way my brain sometimes arrives at the conjunction where language and my mind agree with each other. I have been known to interrupt myself a thousand times with parenthetical observations before finally getting there. There, where the meat is. Perhaps that's what attracts me to poetry; the challenge to get to the very core of elusive axis where human experience and emotion meet up in sharp clear points.

I'm going to interrupt myself here to say that one of the most shaping reading experiences in my life (and there have been many) was reading "Alice B. Toklas" when I was eleven years old which was right after I realized that I didn't believe in god as god was told in the bible. I didn't get everything I read in that book. What I remember the most was Gertrude Stein's unblushing use of incredibly rambling parentheticals that would string on for miles so that you completely forgot you were in one until it ended and you had to pick up her thread of conversation before she ran off with herself in her love of words and story. I loved how like real conversation her writing was. People interrupt themselves all the time in real life.

It freed me to write in a way that reflected how the mind is really moving and how refreshing it can be to follow streams of conversation that ramble and rush and turn and sometimes get very very quiet all at once in the middle of a cacophony of noise. I loved Gertrude Stein more for her use of parentheticals than I did for the interesting lesbian life she lived with Alice B. Toklas and all those painters they befriended.

Another thing that's floating around in my head (apparently desirous of being said out loud) is that I am allergic to the expression "making love". If ever you hear me refer to sex as "making love" then you will know that I am done with this mortal coil and am but a shell of myself, nothing but a vegetable with a brain. Ready to move on to where angels flap around with big feathery wings and naked asses saying things like "God Bless Us Every One"...my own personal version of hell in which all sweet and cuddly things make my skin itch uncontrollably for all eternity and I try to remove it but there's always more and there's always someone whispering in my ear "Isn't making loooooove beautiful?" and I want to claw my way out of myself.

Life is circuitous. Love is circuitous. Snaking in and out of focus. In and out of reach.

I often bite the hands that feed me. Like a feral person with narrow limits of social cognizance. No, you won't ever see it except in flashes when it comes like lightening and strikes your hand bringing the blood and the surprise. I described myself today as prickly. I was not lying. I am so prickly I constantly stab myself with my own thorns. I feel shame when I do it to those I love. I feel shame when I do it to those whom I like tremendously. I feel no shame when I do it to those who step on smaller creatures with their dirty shoes.

Reflexive actions. The stabbing of personal thorns. Reflexive actions. Turning inward to one's baby and flooding it with all the nutritive love the soul can bear to hold at once. Feeding and feeding and feeding the baby hunger. Reflexive actions. Healing wounds with light and quiet.

I am not bitter anymore. I'm done with bitter. I have come across some threshold like a bride enters into her new life. Like a reverend looks out at a new flock full of raised curious faces. "What have we here?" life is saying through my mended heart. "What will come of this thread and this needle you have sewn over the tears?" A new chapter. A new bend in the road. A new stream to cross.

I can hear you right now. In this minute I can hear you thinking, sighing, breathing, crying, living, drinking, knowing, laughing, criticizing, loving, and healing.

If I could breath for you I would give you my breath. If I could give you my needle and thread to mend your own wounds, I would. If I could say the precise words you need to hear right now to help you feel understood, loved, and connected I would shout them out across the distance.

We are all in this world together. I hope we dream together too.

2008-07-13T07:52:00.000-07:00

How To Feel Happy Today

Live where the sun has no bite. We're on day 8 of a heat wave. Much of this week has been in the nineties and hundreds. If I was in Seattle right now it wouldn't be so hot, right? Did I not move north enough?

Eat great food. Friends of ours brought us yellow cherries from their own tree and we have been snacking on them nonstop. Then my mom made us tofu sandwiches and bought us bing cherries. Food is really good right now. Plus we made dinner for friends on Friday that turned out to be excellent.

Adopt the sweetest kittens in the world. With nonstop purring it's difficult to stay in a bad mood. Not impossible, but difficult.

Don't focus on how you've messed up your kid for life and how huge this whole parenting responsibility is. Or how your kid knows just what arrows to shoot through your arteries for maximum damage. Ignore the blood.

Catch a frog. Frog's are way cuter than any creature should be. Watching a tadpole metamorphosize into a frog is like watching evolution speed up for short attention spans. A fish grows legs and crawls out of the mud. It doesn't get less biblical than that for us non religious people.

Don't watch "Grey's Anatomy" because everyone in that show is embroiled in unhappy relationships and if any one of them can do something to irrevocably damage what might have been good in their lives, they do it. The medical crap hooks you and then you have to watch all these pathetic ill-adjusted people crash and burn. It's too late for me but there may still be time for you to avoid this snare.

Put clean sheets on the bed. Takes me to a happy place every time.

2008-07-12T11:09:00.000-07:00

Wheat fields of McMinnville
the food where I live

Wheat fields are beautiful. That's a field of food right there. Golden grains shining under the July sun. It's a shame that this food isn't going to feed the people who live near it. This food is going to be exported. This is what's wrong with the world right now. We grow grain and ship it away. We grow nuts and ship it away. We grow beets for sugar and ship the sugar away.

All this food surrounds us and it isn't going to feed us. It's going to suck up a bunch of power to send it somewhere else, to feed other people. We have starving people here in our own county. But that's another story, isn't it? Because even if all the food we produced were to be sold locally there just aren't enough jobs to provide money for the people who are starving to buy it with. The weirdest thing is that every country could be growing enough food for all it's starving people but the people who are starving aren't necessarily starving because there is no food, they are starving because the food costs too much.

While poverty is something I have been familiar with personally in the past and am re-experiencing much more lightly now, I am extremely fortunate that I have enough resources to buy 18 pounds of sour cherries when they become available. I am fortunate to be able to buy them for $1.20 per pound and that I have the knowledge to preserve them in several different ways.

To know how fortunate I really am, even with debt collectors calling me every day, all I have to do is see how rich in food I am to feel my true luck. And now, I must go shower, get dressed, and get processing because my sour cherries are turning brown!! Ack! I'm off. I hope for all of you that you are rich in food too because that is the true measure of our well being.

2008-07-10T08:10:00.000-07:00

Hot! Hot! Hot!

another installment in a summer tale of avoiding debtor's prison

Don't you just want to eat some watermelon in this awful heat?! Well, don't rub it in if you are eating some, because it's not in season here yet so I can't buy any. In fact, if I stay true to my local eating challenge I just might not have any watermelon at all this year. They don't grow well around here.

I'll have to be satisfied gazing at my watermelon fabric instead. I just listed the above apron in my Etsy shop. I'm not sewing again, I already had this and figured I may as well list it. As I ironed it out I couldn't help but feel refreshed looking at those luscious wedges of red and green fruit. This is one of the things aprons can do for us, give us a little perk when we're wilted.

I call it better living through fabric and I know the vast majority of my blog friends wouldn't argue with me on this one. It's why we buy fabric that makes us giddy even when we don't specifically need it. We know that one day we'll be feeling blue so we'll look listlessly through our fabric stashes and when we come across that piece of fabric again it will light us up from the inside out.

If your fabric stash isn't making you happy then it may be time to liquidate it.

I heard that collective gasp.

RELAX.

I have a couple of Etsy orders to get out today and I want to say a special THANK YOU to Diane of Kentucky for her large order of fabric! While Etsy certainly isn't paying many bills at this point in time the extra money I have made from selling fabric there has been easing our very tough financial situation. In order to fix our situation we are going to have to do some very stringent budgeting.

I don't even know how people do that. I am not exactly a spendthrift but just as I started to mentally work out a possible budget I realized that most of Max's pants are either too small and/or are ripping out at the knees. I know I can patch a couple of holes and that's not a bad idea...but you can't make a pair of pants that are too small get magically big enough. I have to spend some money to clothe my kid. Luckily I just bought lots of new things for myself for my Scotland trip because I was really in need of some basics like socks so I should be set for quite a while. Whatever I find I need in the near future I can sew.

Sewing for a boy is not an easy prospect. Unless you want him looking like some freak from a cave. Boys clothes I don't do. Never have. I don't do all those crazy zip flies and to even locate the appropriate fabric is mission impossible. (My kid, as you might have guessed, doesn't wear jeans. He's picky about the fabrics he'll wear. It's a tactile issue.)

The trick we face now is to whittle away at our impressive credit card debt without earning ourselves bad credit in the process. We've had A+ credit for years now in spite of all our troubles and it would be nice to keep it. On the other hand, I'm not sure we'll be able to accomplish this feat without some damage to it. Everyone says to avoid debt consolidators like the plague but that may end up being our only option unless we can somehow make enough money to cover all our monthly needs AND make payments on our credit cards. We've always managed before, but we haven't always had a kid to clothe and feed. We've always paid our debt down to nothing and we've been proud of that.

But these are tough times and until I land another part time job or some fabulous book deal, we are still on very shaky ground. I'm not letting myself be scared today. Even though the creditors are literally calling us. They didn't used to do that. In fact, when we first had one of our credit cards we would constantly get invitations to not pay our minimum payment without penalty. Now if we're late paying by a few days they call us to ask for payment.

A friend of mine who is an investment broker was trying to convince me that we're not only not in a recession but that our economy is still healthy which is proved (apparently) by the profit reports filed by public companies in our country. I say that a great way to find out how healthy an economy is is to try to find a basic job in it. I say how healthy it is can be seen by how quickly your credit card company hunts you down when your payment hasn't arrived on time. Fear itself isn't an indication. Shit, you can just say "The plague has come back!" and half the country will rush to their doctor's office immediately and get whatever shots they're told they need, and they'll believe they need them even if all indications point to the opposite conclusion. However, the only reason credit card companies hound people for payment is if they've been getting hosed.

The truth is that if you've tried to refinance your home and within one week a number of lending institutions have suddenly gone belly up...that's not a good sign.

So my thoughts are turning towards budgeting and I'm not especially distressed by it. I don't love being in the very precarious position we're in. But having gotten a part time job that I can really enjoy and look forward to is a huge step in the direction of fixing our situation. I am feeling lucky again. Haven't felt lucky in a long time.

I'm going to view this challenge of getting out of debt and danger of losing everything as a kind of strategy game. Hopefully at the end of the game we'll still have our house, our good credit, and will learn to live within a small means. I should think of myself as a modern day Jane Austen character. One of the penny pinching poor but genteel relations of richer folk. Middle class people in reduced circumstances.

I am also considering selling my scooter. I'm not sure I could get enough for it to make it worth while but it is in great condition and Vespas do hold their value well. It's worth considering. Without the Vespa around I would not be able to run errands on it which means I'd have to solely rely on my bicycle which means I would get more fit. It would make me sad to have to sell it but at the same time, it's only a vehicle. Right? It's only a thing. A luxury.

I don't know all the answers but at least I have a sense of adventure about my still gloomy financial situation. I am the porky but (hopefully) lovable heroine in an early nineteenth century setting trying to avoid debtor's prison. Let's see where it all leads.

2008-07-08T17:36:00.000-07:00

Wild Things

One of the things I enjoyed the most about this trip to California was seeing the variety of wildflowers on the roadside in Oregon reaching down into the ditches of northern California. It's one of my mental games to recognize and name plants everywhere but few things please me as much as wildflowers. Many of them are considered to be weeds but they have such a scrappy charm the way they dot otherwise bleak banks of dried grass.

This trip there were pink and white sweet peas all the way down the section of I-5 we traveled. In some spots it was like thick pink foam floating on top of the yellow dry grasses. There were small daisies growing in happy drifts. There was some chicory here and there- remarkable for its blue petals. I saw false dandelions in profusions so impressive I couldn't help but feel happy seeing the floods of yellow dots on the landscape.

I haven't identified the yellow flowers pictured here yet. They look similar in form to chicory but I haven't known a chicory to be yellow. There were other flowers that I wasn't sure of. Possibly some wallflowers, definitely some California poppies (looked pinched and small from the dry heat), and I might have seen some salvias as well. I wanted Philip to stop the car so many times so that I could photograph the riches of wild plants and pick some as well but I restrained myself until we stopped at a Denny's by the freeway a little north of Eugene and I spied some easily accessible flowers. Moments like these make the tough moments in life bearable. Sometimes I feel like the whole world goes silent when I pick flowers.

Of course, I thought it might be entirely possible that it's against the law to pick roadside plants. I could get arrested. I could get fined. Such a simple pleasure is often not legal in our very cramped and restricted society. It would be a pity if it were true.

I came back home and started working at Safeway. I had my first real shift yesterday. You know how sometimes you start a job and you know, right away, that the worst aspects of it are going to become a fixture of your life forever and you can see immediately that you would rather stab yourself with a pen in the temple than try to scan in a thousand ratty coupons every single day? I had that dreadful feeling that I would die inside if I had to go back ever again. Within the first hour I was already worrying about having to start all over again the next day.

Part of it was not getting enough training with someone else on a real register doing real transactions. My whole training consisted of computer time doing simulated transactions. They throw you to the wolves there. Seriously. TO THE WOLVES. Who are the wolves? You and me, my friends.

It just so happens that I am a very fortunate lady and the owner of the local toy store hired me yesterday on a part time basis. I started today. Oh holy hell...what a difference in atmosphere the toy store is compared to the grocery store. It's colorful and light and quiet and although it has all its own rules and procedures, there aren't so many coupons and sad people and impatient people. People are happier in toy stores than they are in grocery stores. Plus the people who already work at the toy store are so helpful and the lady who was training me today was so helpful and easy to work with.

Everyone has been asking me over the last week if I'm excited to start work at Safeway and I kept wanting to ask "Are you drunk off your ass, or what?! Of course I'm not excited. People don't get excited about working in grocery stores." Which is quite rude and every time I was tempted to answer in such a rude way I was stricken because the human resources lady who hired me to work at Safeway was so awesome and I really liked her personally. Plus, she gave me a job and I've come to realize that that's a pretty big deal these days. I felt a lot of gratitude for her generosity but I just couldn't honestly be excited to work as a checker.

So, if anyone cares to ask me if I'm excited to work at the toy store I can honestly (and thankfully) say: HELL YES! And also: THANK YOU LINDA!!! I go back for more training tomorrow and I don't dread it in the least. The relief I feel is palpable. It's thick in the air. I'm sluffing off dread in bucketfuls. I need full time work still (unless I keep getting more and more Etsy orders, and I'm so thankful for the ones I've been getting!). Another librarian job has come up. Two actually, but one of them so specifically isn't interested in my undereducated self it almost feels as though the ad for it is saying "...so don't bother applying ANGELINA." The other one is a part time circulation desk job and there are no psychic notes on the listing that tell me not to bother. In fact, I feel a slight shimmer of invitation.

So check it out: maybe life could iron itself out here. I think I'd be great at the circulation desk and since it's part time I could work at the toy store and the library both. This is a working life I can get on board with. My kid is not happy to have me working but if I need to be out there earning actual money (as opposed to the vast amounts of pretend money I make every day) I can't think of a better situation.

I'm not even going to say things like "I probably won't get the circulation librarian job" because I know I would be great at it, I would enjoy doing it so much, and there's no reason on earth why they wouldn't hire me for this position unless they have already picked someone from inside. I've decided that I'm going to work hard on my positive visualization skills. I've never been able to decide if I think positive visualization actually gets results or if it's just that people like you better when you're busy visualizing happy outcomes and so you have better experiences?

If I don't get the librarian job then that really means that something else is waiting to happen out there. Thank you, sister, for reminding me of that the whole time you visited. You have reminded me of so many things I need to be reminded of.

I am like a scrappy wild flower trying to carve out a life out of a hard dry landscape. Many of us are. I absolutely love cultivated flowers but there really is something intrinsically charming to me about those flowers that rise up out of the dust into a cloud of color and I have to wonder where they got the nutrients to shine as brightly as hothouse orchids.

2008-07-06T09:15:00.000-07:00

Apocalypse in Real Time

I've come to the conclusion that the man in the "End Of The World" sandwich sign who used to shout out crap while thumping on his bible on Powell Street in San Francisco was totally correct.

Obviously, like every other sane person in the world, I believe that the fact that all of California has gone up in flames is proof that god doesn't love us anymore. Weep, my people, weep! Even though California goes up in flames every year, this year it's personal.

The snow on Mt. Shasta has melted. A volcano who has remained snow capped every year, all year, is now denuded of it's blanket. A stripped Shasta is clearly proof of something.*

Somehow it seems almost more alarming to see the incredible shrinking lake Shasta with it's banks exposed like Pamela Anderson's breasts right down to the edge of her nipples. This isn't something we're supposed to see.

In a world that sometimes feels abandoned by all graces and hope, a pub feels more spiritual than a church. Especially with its promise of comforts and Refuge...drink...food (incredible rarebit)...and light. It's all here at "The Black Sheep" in Ashland Oregon where we landed last night with nowhere to stay, tired, hungry, and with our unwelcome constipated dog.

Happily there was one room to spare in this full up town. One room. Edge of town on the precipice of nowhere. It wasn't even a pet friendly room but they made an exception for us tired travelers. And so, we head out again into the scorch to find more food and then head home where we are always welcome, where our dog can relax, and where frogs multiply.

*Are there still ~~stupid~~ people unconvinced of the reality of global warming?

**My kid just asked me if I like "being in cars at night, all protectified". Nice made up word. He also called my boobs "invincible" a few days ago. Kids are pretty funny.

2008-07-02T21:39:00.000-07:00

California

bad coffee does happen here

Melinda from Elements In Time wondered why I would complain about the heat wave in Oregon and then run off to California where it can only ever be worse. Good point. I don't miss the California heat and, frankly, I think Oregon has enough of it's own. We headed off to California to visit friends and family that we haven't seen in a year and a half. Friends' babies are losing teeth and turning into big kids. Pets have grown and/or died. Gardens are filling out. Homes are being remodeled...and it seemed that on the eve of starting a new exciting career as a Safeway checker, I had better get a vacation in because it's going to be very long time before we get to take one again.

So I managed to wing it which, as it turns out, is a very bad way to travel with a kid and a dog when most of the people you're visiting hate dogs and don't particularly care to do kid stuff. The air on the way down was heavy and hazy with smoke. The heat on the road was so uncomfortable that I wouldn't have minded having all my guts replaced with ice cubes.

This food, pictured above, is very fancy, very expensive, but not as tasty as it looks. We had it when we visited Mill Valley (more on that below) and ate at D'Angelo's, a Mill Valley institution. The food used to be a lot better than the decor, now the decor is a lot better than the food. That's what money can do for you.

When you are a delicate flower like I am you really need to have big hats and huge sunglasses. If I look suspiciously tired here it's because we slept in a very busy hotel room that (thankfully) allowed dogs but (sadly) made ours feel the need to alert us of strangers walking by every fifteen minutes through the night. It was a bit of a nerve wracking night due to the level of police activity and interrupting a very suspect scene near our hotel door in which snatches of conversation were heard. The kind of conversations that propel you into random kidnapping plots and violent crossfire.

Snatches of conversation liberally peppered with bits like "...well, he's dead now..." and "...we took the money from under the door..." do not fill one with the warm fuzzies. The truth is, we haven't heard a lot of gunfire since we moved to a small town. Coming back to Santa Rosa is like entering a real metropolis of darkness and fear compared to where we are now. The funny thing is that when we lived here we didn't feel quite as vulnerable as we do now that we've lived in a quieter place in which we rarely hear gunfire.

Mill Valley is a place that Philip grew up in. I hate to malign it too much because the way it was when he was growing up was really wonderful and I don't want to be too negative about a place that was so good for him to grow up in. But it's changed in the last thirty years a lot. It's become a place of money and privilege. The cars are all shiny and new and sleek and very expensive. People do not engage in random acts of friendliness and most of the women have a very worked over appearance.

I have a lot fewer strong ties to California than I thought before we took this trip. I have a lot of unresolved feelings cropping up which is just about as annoying as drinking bad coffee in a land with good coffee leaking out of every crevice. I am uncomfortable traveling and am contemplating the attractive idea of NEVER LEAVING HOME AGAIN.

On the other hand, I just had a really nice day with old friends I love and superb cheeses from an excessively expensive grocery store so maybe there are benefits of travel after all. Plus we're staying in our friend's camper and it's like staying in a fort with good pillows. Now Philip, Max, and I all want one to park in our driveway so we can camp out together in it regularly and pretend to be in the woods. We are figuring out how we can create scenery to fix outside of the windows to simulate different places we might like to visit.

The charms of agoraphobia never shined so bright. Home is a great place to visit.