how i really feel about being back in school

I think the following story will help those of you who truly know me appreciate how I really feel about being back in school:

Last night in Elder Law my professor asked if any of us knew the meaning of the catchphrase "naturally occuring retirement communities."

I raised my hand and asked "Is that, like, if you build it they will come?"

three cubed

Shelley turned "three cubed" today. We went to watch one of her favorite things, the swifts:

I am not in the picture both literally and metaphorically. One, because I took the picture and two, because the party goes on, and I am already home.

I feel like an asshole, skipping the real party. But, by my recent calculation I have 249 pages to somehow read for tomorrow's classes. How the hell is that possible? I am especially irked that 110 of those pages are for a one credit class that was supposed to be "fun".

So I'll put this one on the record:

High point of the day, without a doubt:

Dancing in the Jeep with Shelley to the Jackson 5 at the train stop waving to the passengers on the way to the Swifts.

Happy Birthday to a very wonderful friend. Wish I was still there.

I will move back to Tacoma and run the funeral home if:

Just talked to my mom who leaves for almost a month in Greece on the second of September. And my grandpa (Papa) leaves for some obscene amount of time in Turkey next week too.



Papa just got back from his annual three week trip up to Alaska and back on the boat. We spent Thanksgiving talking about his fresh return from Lebanon and Egypt.



This does not include the ski trips to Sun Valley and Canada.



And they will spend this Thanksgiving at a Golf Resort in Scottsdale.



Why am I not willing to embalm, cremate and counsel the bereaved for this?

The pictures not taken

Some pictures from yesterday along the coast:


Shelley and I once talked about whether memories are more like the pictures you take or the memories you wished you'd taken. I think most of mine are more like the ones I wish I'd taken, or the moments I knew at the time I didn't need to take a picture of because I'd just remember them regardless. The pictures I take, they tend to be the markers for the memories. The memories can't be posed or captured.

Shelley said each time you take a memory out of the file you change it just a bit. The things we recall the most we recall the least, in a way.

I had to drive into downtown today to pick up some prescriptions. I thought perhaps the only thing that will make me leave Portland will be the point when I just can't take the aching memories anymore. The point when the last of my friends leaves. This city swells with so damn many memories at this point.

Maybe I'll be the one to stay. I've finally learned to stay. Watch things change slowly while they stay the same. I'll get a little better at goodbyes, a little bit better at the aching part. And I'll be here, waiting on my porch, for the ones who return. Changed, but the same.

Who Cares?!!

Who the fuck cares about the Ramsey murder suspect? I am so sick of the news coverage on this one. Top story last two hours of news. Entire hour of Larry King Live. And what's this? Oh my god? Did suspect Karr drink champagne on the Thai-American flight? Who cares?!!!

How do the news channels go from non-stop coverage of the Israeli conflict and the terror threat to this crap? A shaky ceasefire agreement and we all switch to the Ramsey murder shit? Was it just too much for America to take? Who cares about this shit after TEN YEARS?

You know what I want to hear about? Where the hell did all the black and white disposable cameras go? I went to four stores looking for one today and couldn't find one. I miss them. Now THAT's a good investigative piece, no? Also, why no cat-dogs? You people can clone sheep and you can't make cat-dogs? The market for cat-dogs will be HUGE. By the way, what happened to that freakish cult lady who claimed to have cloned the first baby? Did we hit the eight year anniversary of the Ramsey murder or something?

OK, I've got to switch to E and get my Brit and K-Fed fix now. Cheers.

Seasons

I woke this morning in a fit of dread and didn't want to leave my bed because of this day's date. Sunday the 20th of August, only 7 days left of my summer.



I have a terrible tendency to prematurely call the seasons (just ask Shelley). My sense of the seasons runs not so much according to the calendar but according to when I perceive the minutest changes. The first camellia blooms, albeit a week before another snow flurry, and I announce Spring's arrival. The first 70 degree day arrives, albeit sandwiched between 4 weeks of rain and hail, and I call Summer. The first fall clothing catalogue arrives, albeit in July, and I pronounce Fall's arrival. The first street ices over, albeit in October, and Winter has come.



Mostly, perhaps, the seasons change for me in accordance with my still in school schedule. I still have an August to August day planner, after all. And, just as the kids go to buy their pencils and protractors this time of year, I can't fathom summer continuing once I return to the classroom on the 28th.



I worry that this will be the last Summer of Love. I worry that we're beginning a bit of a diaspora. I worry that this may be the last summer we're not quite grown up. Young enough to pin our hopes on Summers of Love. Katrina may move. Shelley hints at moving. And if you all leave, why will I stay? You are my home.



I'm no longer good at leaving. I finally found what I'm looking for, I guess. Still I see a great saudade setting in this Fall. Exactly the way Fall should be. Great boots, falling leaves, brisk air, a bit of sadness in the eyes, a wistfulness. This will get me through to the holidays, when I'll call Winter and you'll shriek "NO, NO, STOP IT!!! WE'VE GOT, LIKE, TWO MORE MONTHS OF FALL..."

Dylan's Eye

So this day went to the dog, not just the dog I guess, the dog; my one, my only, Dylan. Stepped out the door for first things first, his morning walk. Right before we got back to the house I looked down and saw it. Once again, Dylan had done something to his eye:

Called the vet and rushed to NW. This would be the third time Dylan has scratched his eye on something. Last time around, it became ulcerated and they had to make fluid medicinal drops from his eye tissue in lieu of sewing it shut for awhile. Scary and weird. This time, luckily, he didn't actually scratch the cornea, he just got something stuck in his eyelid and irritated the lid. So, no prolonged follow up. Just a day of really heavy breathing, a bit too much doggie clinginess for my taste and some vomit eating tonight (him, not me). My mom thinks we should make him wear those blinders Clydesdale horses wear (she, of course, having owned horses growing up knew the actual word for this, I do not). I vote for an eye patch. He does look pretty tough. If anyone asks, I'll tell them they should see the other guy.

Good Day

Spent the day at the Rose Garden doing this with Shelley and Zoe:

That's me on the right, smelling the roses. We marveled at all the names for the roses: Sexy Rexy, Yesterday, Passionate Kisses and what each smells like. Starry Night, for instance, smelled faintly of vanilla. And, while Rosie O'Donell doesn't really smell at all, Barbra Striesand smells quite heady and pungent. I showed Shelley and Zoe the award winning roses for their birth years. They were born the year of Pristine, 1979 (slightly violet and milky). I was born the year of Love, 1980 (Red with slightly lighter edges, lightly fragrant). Zoe thought it would be funny if I was Pristine Christine.

Then we ate lunch at the 21st Ave Bar and Grill to the sound of some apartment dweller's soundtrack of Ween then Weezer then who knows. Nice patio.

We walked up NW Johnson past the first place I ever lived in Portland. It still looks perfect. We went on a sample mission. First Kiehls: purchased two tubes of Lip Balm #1 between us and scored at least 4 samples. Then Lush: two purchases and I think about 6 samples. Further South on 23rd we were lured into a novelty shop by a lamp with a penis switch lacking any lurid quality; could have been child's furnishing. No samples, and by the end of shop three, we were shopped out.

Good day.

This Week in the Summer of Love IV

Outside I heard the neighbors fighting tonight. They have two kids. He said he was leaving. She cried and said don't leave. There was nothing unique about it. Comforting. But I think they knew I could hear, and that just made it worse. And I hate that they have kids. I want to believe I'll be a better parent, a bigger person, but will I?



Shelley and I have been talking about this being open to v. open with people thing. Keeps running through my head. Along with the befuddling phrase I never promised to be a good person, I never promised to be a good person.



It occurred to me that, aside from my mother, my longest relationship has been with my car; six years and going strong! If I were Pablo Neruda I would write an Ode to my car. Remember when we went to the beach and your car got dug so far into the sand that guy had to tow you out but my car did just fine? Yeah.



I have a long standing fear of soul mates actually existing. See, this is how I met the only guy I've loved. Walking with a friend down a ski slope in the middle of the night in a snowstorm. Two figures approached. I turned to my friend and said I don't know who those guys are, but whoever they are, anyone else crazy enough to walk through this must be our fucking soul mates. And I stayed with one of those figures approaching for the next three and a half years or so. So if he was my soul mate, is that it? Am I done? Maybe it's just safer to believe that.



I've got until the 28th to sum up my summer and I feel like I'm searching for something real, something to pull me through the damage another term of law school will do. The whole saudade serenade. The last leg of Summer of Love IV (I say we made it a IVth, if nothing else because we're all still in Portland and we still want it). Saudade for truth. Naked honesty. Saudade for Summers of Love.

Crack Whores Don't Wear Cosabella

It's eightygazillion degrees outside and I feel like I've been running around like a chicken with its head cut off all day but also like a crack whore mainly owing to the fact that my eyes have been unnaturally dilated since about eleven a.m. this morning leaving but a slice of blue-green and also to the fact that this is the first ever blog written in my underwear (but crack whores don't wear Cosabella, do they)?

I have an irrational abhorrence of eye doctors. Dentists you know not to like: they do things like try to talk to you while they've got their fist shoved up your mouth. Eye doctors work more subtly against you. They ask questions like whether you use any ocular medications and then you have to clarify whether ocular means eye and feel inwardly stupid. And, of course, they dilate your eyes even though the chance that you've developed Glaucoma at age 26 must be smaller than the chance of dying in a terrorist attack. So of course I assume they're slightly sadistic.

Driving anywhere with highly dilated pupils is not fun. And I mean not fun like trying to get down a ski slope after taking a hit on the chair lift (works great for some people, not so much for me).

Trying to complete your daily errands with dilated pupils is also not fun. Really. Try going to the convenience store to pick up a six-pack with dilated pupils without feeling like a crack whore. Seriously.

Then walk home (because you just dropped off your car at the mechanics) with said six-pack and dilated pupils while wearing a black dress in eightygazillion degree heat while trying not to feel like a crack whore.

You'll end up stripping off the dress the minute you get home and writing a blog about it. Really. Or taking a shower

Woke suddenly in the middle of the night

I woke suddenly in the middle of the night to what sounded like a fist rapping against one of my front windows. My hand reached for the phone by the bed. A new development these past few months; I cannot sleep unless I know the phone rests by the head of my bed. I open the phone to read just past two'o'clock in the morning and sit upright. Once again, I hear what sounds like a fist rapping against one of my front windows.



This is the nightmare, the nightmare that has plagued me since childhood. I lay in bed and someone breaks in. I can hear them. And I can't scream. And then I realize it's a dream. And I try to speak to wake the dream. But I can't wake. I'm trapped in the dream.



But this isn't a dream. I listen for the sound again. I listen for footsteps. I hear nothing and finally I go to the window and look out. I see nothing, and I go back to bed.



Opened the door this morning and half expected a note; "Cunt" or "Whore" or "Bitch". But nothing.



Walked the dog and my neighbor June asks about my birdbath. Someone stole her birdbath last night. The one she likes to look out at through her kitchen window. And I tell her about the sounds I heard last night. And that must have been it. They tried to take the top off my birdbath, and the water splashed, they dropped the top back on, and the top rattled as it settled round and round back onto the base.



Relief.

Helmets are stupid

It's not that I hate your kids per se (although while I generally like kids, I'm really not that interested in anyone's kids unless I have met them) it's more that I hate your kids for allowing you to make them wear fucking helmets.

I'm not talking about helmets for bike riding. Fine. Dandy. I'm talking about my neighbors' two kids who have to wear helmets to push their goddamn scooters back and forth across the sidewalk lining three houses. I mean Jesus? What's next? Ya gonna make your kids put on a goddamn helmet to climb the Jungle Gym?

Remember the good ol' days? I'm talking Lawn Darts people! Sure they killed people, but no one you or I knew, right? I'm talking Slip and Slide: run a tarp down the hill on your front yard, spray some water down its surface, and shove the runts down the slippery slope for hours of great fun! Remember what the playground used to be like? Some kid always busted his head open falling from the Jungle Gym. Far as I know, they just stitched the noggin back together and all was well. But I wasn't, like, personally acquainted with that kid. So who knows?

Now my Grandfather wears a ridiculous helmet when he skis. My Grandfather has skied since the 1950's, and suddenly he feels the need to slap a plastic orb on his head? What the fuck? You wanna know what the fuck? You wanna who the fuck? Sonny Bono the fuck! Sonny Bono hits a tree and dies while skiing and now everyone on the slopes wears a helmet. Why does anyone care? When every other Joe Blow hit a tree and died skiing did everyone go out and buy helmets? No. Sonny Bono's not worth it. The most significant thing Sonny Bono ever did was fuck Cher while she was still hot. I'd rather die skiing.

I can only think of one way to combat this and it just won't work. Every time I see a bicyclist or kid without a helmet I will give them a hearty thumbs up and say "Good for you! Bono couldn't sing anyway."

Damnit. I think I'm stuck with this one.

Five Easy Pieces

I went searching today for a song I didn't know the notes to. A strange thing, I just have this feeling and I don't have the song for it. I've been playing lately, and I can emote, but it all feels like Five Easy Pieces, this great 1970 movie about a former piano prodigy turned prodigal son played by Jack Nicholson. One scene I especially appreciate:

He returns home for the death of his father and he wants to screw his brother's wife so he plays her Chopin's Prelude in E minor. He finishes, she's near tears, launches into what pure emotion he poured into the song. And he looks at her and wryly explains he's been able to play it since he was something like eight, it's one of the easiest songs around, and he felt nothing. Naturally that just makes her want to save him even more.

So, I had to find something new. My old piano instructor, Gloria, ordered all my books for me before I quit, most of which I wasn't ready for, and she knew this, I mean, she knew I wasn't ready for them then but I would be someday. Its funny, she's taken on this new found prodigy from NE Portland Willamette Weekly has been covering. She recently compared him to a floodplain in a follow up article. Kind of made me wonder what I was? A rice-paddy? Was there any vegetation at all? Was I just lost in the sea?

Anyway, I think I may have found it in an untouched Scarlatti volume. Gloria's foresight still amazes me. Each time I finally find I'm ready for one of the composers she picked I feel I've just opened a letter from a long departed friend. Pretty amazing that she knew me that well, knew the person I'd become.

To and from the clinic

Went to the clinic this morning to get my LEEP results and Depo shot (I'm pretty unclear on whether I get Depo for the birth control or the complete eradication of my period).



In the waiting room, I read Newsweek's July 31st exclusive with the President during the G8 summit just as the whole Isreali/Lebon mess began: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13988981/site/newsweek/: and actually, it was pretty damn good. I couldn't read any of the "real" Israeli/Lebanon coverage because I find the social utilitarianism Israel seems engaged in just pisses me off too fucking much. I didn't want to be the crying girl in the woman's health clinic.



I got my results, and bottom line, nothing but follow up shit at this point. I can insert whatever I please into my vagina again (OK, I know this is too much info, but really, even when you don't want it, or don't know if you want it, you don't want people to tell you you can't have it, right?).



Driving home I started thinking of Norman Mailer. Namely, what has he been up to lately? Frankly, I simultaneously revere and can't stand the cocksucker. What's my beef? OK, for one thing, has no one else noticed that the format of The Armies of the Night totally rips off War and Peace? Was it intentional? I'm not so sure. I pointed this out to my 60's lit professor and he just looked bewildered. C'mon. Could this be more obvious? Another thing; the Beat psychopath theory just seemed like bullshit to me. I should separate all this from his war coverage. But I won't.



By the way, aside from just a really good night, Shelley showed me the blog of Dan's "uncle" and I laughed harder than I have in God knows how long. Check it out: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=98122629, and then check out his wife Gladys's page and blog. According to Shelley, the kids may get profiles too. Seriously funny.