Laughs

For some reason i can't figure out how to make this a hyperlink on my old ass laptop (Ashley, thank you sweetie...) but this has had me maniacally laughing on the inside for days. Happy 2009, and enjoy:

http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/not-invited-back/Content?oid=1011095

Using our gifts

A friend and i were talking this morning about the importance (or un-importance) of using the gifts the universe gave us, for the greater good. On one hand, our happiness is our own, for us to achieve and hold. No one can provide us happiness, nor should we feel responsible for the happiness of others. On the other hand, we are part of a community, which has nurtured us and helped make us what we are. So what do we owe to that community as payback? Can we feel justified in holing up in our corners of the world, idly scribbling, yawning away the days in our own creative pursuits? Or conversely, can we feel justified in spreading ourselves thin, doing not quite enough for too many people, in the pursuit of effecting the most change possible?

One might say this friend of mine takes the first road -- that of harboring his own delight, and thus looking from the outside like he's doing nothing but allowing the world to spin by him. I, on the other hand, am more of the spread-thin variety -- working during the day, working again in my off-time, and all the while raising this revolutionary. I feel i must work at this day job, in order to provide the tangibles that society requires of a family in America. A warm home. Health care. Organic food. I justify the sacrificing of a mother's idle delights in trade for a child's comfort. And when i am done with the journalist's day job i do to provide the tangibles, i throw the Need to Change the World in. I try to spread the Good Work over the radio, because perpetual motion pushes me further than just Creating a Home.

My friend says he does not envy my position, but he knows that people like me do envy or resent people in his. Perhaps that is true. Perhaps we just want them to join us in doing more of the Good Work, even if they do not join us in the nine to five sort.

I ask myself what the nine to five provides that keeps me doing it, because in my heart of hearts i am the idle traveling bard too. The first thing that comes to mind is health care. I could delight in smelling the roses too, if i could provide sure-fire healthcare to my child.

But effecting societal change like creating universal health care does not come along by sitting in a basement, allowing dreams to trump reality. Likewise, the fire to fight is hard to light when you are burned out from a day full of office work. Yet all of us have to stand up and present ourselves. We have to show up to the rallies, or create them ourselves. If we are not the ones in charge yet, we have to show ourselves to those who are and say we do not accept things the way they are. Because of the wonders of the internet, some of this can indeed be done by sitting at a computer in your own corner of the world (i.e., this blog...), but still i tend to think the sound of stamping your feet in protest will not convey so well through your computer.

The man who allows himself to sit idly in his room all day has not been allowed such luxury by his own labor. Nor should the woman who works at her creative job all day pretend that she got to this esteeemed position by her own hand alone. Hundreds upon thousands of warriors before them did the Good Work and stood up, so that life would be better for the ones who came next. Now those gifts which have been bestowed (for better or worse) must be used for the next level of change.

The gifts bestowed upon me and my friend are greatly different, and can be used for different purposes in the battle. But it is important that our feet stamp in stride on the battlefield, thinking always of the next warrior, who will contemplate their motivation... and recognize they owe it to the ones who came before to move forward...

After Party

The big holiday of the year has come and gone,
Barack Obama is sunning himself in Hawaii ahead of his big inauguration,
and people in the Pacific Northwest are delighting in the trusty sound of splashing water, instead of boots crunching on snow.


It's been an overwhelming month or so, and i'm feeling a bit of the after party blues. What do i lament upon -- if i'm not worried about the future of our nation (as if all our problems are solved by Obama...), or making sure my daughter has a true understaning of holiday traditions, or making sure i get to work through the snow?

We have spent our recent days making overly sweet cookies, rolling up a jolly snowman, making snow angels, wrapping gifts, starting a holiday tradition of going to the theatre, cuddling up with hot chocolate, and working through the snow storm... all the fun things you do when you have a kid and it's the holidays. Even if you are more of a naysayer than a joiner. But now... what?

My daughter has a saying that comes out from time to time, which this overly-protective mother does not want to admit is what she says when she is feeling a bit depressed. She never says it in the summer, but i still don't want to admit that she may be feeling some seasonal depression. A five year old, sad?!? Once in a while she'll come out and say "Mama, i just don't feel like doing anything." Usually when it happens i will suggest a couple fun things she can do. If that doesn't work, i will just scoop her up in my arms and declare it's time for a cuddle session. Then the sad five year old doesn't have to "feel like Doing anything" -- she can just Feel. I take her to my room, we lie down on the bed, and i stroke her hair...

When she's old and this mama is replaced by the ones she chooses to spend life with, i hope she can say to them, "my love, i just don't feel like doing anything..." And i hope they will respond by scooping her up, taking her into their room, and stroking her blonde hair...

Can you tell that's what i wish someone would do to me right now?


"Life, i just don't feel like doing anything..."

Happy Solstice

Sammy and i trudged through the snow last night to the corner bar, to tip a glass for the Winter Solstice. Here's to kissing the moon goodbye, and welcoming the return of the sun!

Really Snowy Days

A drive 50 blocks from my house today restored my faith in humanity. It started this morning, when Sascha spent an hour in the cold, helping me dig out my car when it got high-centered in the driveway. Or maybe it actually started a few days ago, when my faith in humanity was tested. The kiddo and i went for a hike at Tryon Creek and came back to find the passenger window of my car smashed out. My purse was gone, and since then no glass company has been able to help me get it fixed. Monday, they said, on account of the bad weather... but after Sunday and Monday produced the biggest snowstorm this region has seen for 20 years, Monday didn't seem so feasible anymore. So now they say Tuesday, Wednesday... I have cleared out a space in the tiny garage for my car to sit, but that means i've had to conquer the drifts in the driveway to get in and out.

This last round of snow has finally unsettled this overconfident Midwest driver. After all the nonstop news coverage of the cold weather this week, it is finally fully warranted. (I would show you a picture, but UPS is having a hard time delivering my repaired camera, on account of the snow!) The sidestreets are barely passable for my all-wheel drive, because the piles are higher than my car's clearance. After the hour of digging today i finally made my way to Southeast 82nd Avenue -- normally a teeming thoroughfare filled with all manner of shady characters and disreputable storefronts. Today it's a steady line of chained 4-wheel drives, and along the sides, a stream of people, walking on the road instead of the sidewalk. The seedy convenience marts and jackoff palaces are mostly closed, so they get a pass for not shoveling their sidewalks... but the ones that are open are helping people put their lives in danger by not clearing the walks. On a day as terrible as this one, most people would choose to stay inside instead of cruise the avenue. But since we are two days til Christmas, 82nd was crazy busy. People are stocking up and getting the last crappy gifts they can find at Fred Meyer, since heading to the mall is more and more out of the question by the day.

And in the midst of this storm, people are coming together. I stopped at the grocery store myself today, and people were happily chatting to strangers and wishing them well while they waited in long lines. A customer listened patiently as a stock clerk told a story about getting home with her little car. On the streets, perfect strangers assembled to help the family in the 2-wheel mini SUV make it through a messy intersection. Little gangsta boys who normally walk indignantly slow across the avenue wherever they please were instead stopping to help the old grandma with the makeshift cane made from a kitchen table leg get through the snow. A loyal friend pushed his teenage friend's wheelchair through the snow to help his buddy make it home. When i finally made it the 50 blocks that was my journey, a Mexican family stopped trying to get their little car out of the snow and helped push me back out of the apartment driveway.

Times like these remind me how basic our real needs are. When things get bad, if we are able to trudge through the snow to get to the corner market, we can get by. When others around you are struggling, scraping an inch of ice off their pitiful hope for transportation, they will drop everything and help you instead. If the economy continues to tumble and we hit a few more low points because of it, days like this make me think that we're gonna be all right. In the middle of chaos, people's goals narrow -- and we work again on helping each other.

Now we just need someone to help the people walk on the sidewalk, instead of the busiest street in Southeast.

Snow Days

Eight days before Christmas and the world is set on its side --
the slushy, icy side of the Northwest where people lose all ability to think about anything other than how cold and Snowy it is outside.

Two days ago i set out for Beaverton when the first flakes of the season were falling. For the people in the Willamette Valley, this is cause for utter panic. At work we go wall-to-wall with our weather coverage -- as if people who are holed up in their homes aren't bored stiff and wishing for a couple good holiday movies to be on for the afternoon. For a Midwestern woman, it's simply cause to pack some gloves and a hat. On the first morning, i turned onto the first major street near my house, and on its six-block expanse were three groups of people just wishing to get hit. The roads and the sidewalks were all covered with the first fresh white half-inch of snow -- none of the roads had been cleared yet and had hardly been driven on either. The sidewalks were just as snowy as the roads, but no moreso. But three different packs of people chose to slide their way down the street -- where i was precariously driving -- instead walking on the sidewalk. I think that Willamette Valley people are so clueless to what snow can do, that they don't realize that someone approaching them on the street may run into them if they don't move out of the way. I wonder if any of them got hit.

I suppose this is one of the few times when i differentiate myself from people in the town where i live. I just don't get the freakouts. I was in the tire store this afternoon, getting a new set. Not of snow tires -- just plain old tires that needed to be replaced. But waiting in line with me were dozens of people, frantically getting snow tires installed for their treks around P-town for the winter. Most of these people will not be getting anywhere near the mountains, but their cars will roll around with studs and destroy the roads until April first. Another half of the people in line were there for chains. They too will be rolling around town with chains on, until the last flake of snow disappears from the highest elevations, where they dare not to drive anyway.

And i have to laugh when i see the funny-shaped snowmen in people's yards. The slumpy snowmen only come about by using all of the snow in the yard. Frosty's wonderland looks a little funny when he's the only bit of white for a hundred feet on any side.

The kiddo, by the way, is a Willamette Valley girl all the way. She called me when i arrived at work that first snow day, telling me all about what she and her grandma were going to do in the snow that day. "It's SNOWiiiiinnnnggg!!!" she said, utter amazement in her voice. Since then she's gotten into her snow garb every morning to roll around and make snow angels in the back yard. But she hasn't roped me into making a snowman yet. For this Willamette Valley mama -- it's just too cold for that.

Tupelo Honey

Before there was the little blonde rascal,
before there was Libre the rascally dog who sleeps all day on the couch,
there was Tupelo Honey.

Honey from the Tupelo flower is supposed to be the sweetest in the world. And this beautiful Akita with the liquid almond eyes definitely earned her name.

I first met her about ten years ago, when she still had a right leg in the front. It dragged when she moved even then, flopping behind her other one a little, so that when she ran she made a sound kinda like "clop, thunk, clop thunk..." At six months she'd gotten hit by a car when she crossed a street to greet one of her favorite humans. The man who did it just took off without stopping, his little girl's hands pressed to the back glass as he drove away. The doctors thought she might regrow the nerves in the leg, so they let her drag it for a while to see.

Her human and i hit it off right away, so within her first nine months we were all one (practically) inseparable family. When the Millennium came around we were insistent on being on the top of a mountain to celebrate it, but we couldn't take her. We carefully wrapped a bandage over the sore that was constantly open and angry, where she dragged it on the ground. Then we left her with Grandma and took off for Colorado. Four days later we came home to find the same bandage still on her leg, but the back and forth between the snow and the warm Grandma house had tightened it so much that Tupelo's leg had had no circulation for a long time. Another four days later, we were picking up a three-legged dog at the vet.

She seemed to be happier without the leg dragging. She could get around fine and only seemed to tire a bit earlier than the other dogs. We saw just how "fine" she could be when two years later she crawled out of a half-open window, hopped a six-foot fence and got with a Shepard-Lab named (don't laugh) Angelo Garcia-Leary. The scoundrel. This, two days after we'd brought her a fine Akita stud to breed with, and let them frolic on the Oregon coast together for a couple nights. All they'd done was find a salmon run, and rolled in the dead fish. So a short time after the Angelo Encounter, nine puppies were born at the foot of our bed.

Josh chose to keep the biggest one -- Asha the blond bomber with the massive paws. I chose Libre the runt, who came out last and right by my feet in the middle of the night. She was the one who ran the other puppies around the yard. I liked her style. Tupelo was the most patient of mamas, and seemed to understand that we were there to be co-parents to her new little ones. When we became parents, she did the same for us. Her nickname was "Mamas" and she earned it. When strangers came knocking, she let the younger dogs do the charging for the door. Instead, she'd head to the baby's room.

Our daughter was born in the house we were happiest in -- the A-frame in Horton. The puppies were not born there but they grew up there -- chasing off coyotes, sniffing out critters, protecting our stuff when we had to go away. As the years got on Tupelo would often just lie in the driveway, while the other two would come back puffing and dripping from a romp through the creek. I will not live there again, but i do still honor that home as our family abode. The kiddo's dad just got the place back. After living there for much of her life, and then being away for four years, Tupelo and her son Asha got to move back too. When she got back she started to spend a lot more time on the deck, near the house, or just laid out on the living room floor. She was geting old, but she was also home, and it was time to breathe a sigh of relief. One morning Josh woke up and she was not there.

All sorts of theories are flying around about her getting nabbed by the cougar that's been lurking around Horton, or getting carted off by unscrupulous dog lovers who wanted a novel purebreed. But i am sure that she finally got home, and went off into the woods to die. I miss her, but i am glad that she was able to live her life happily, and die in the place she loved most. We should all be so lucky.