abbie the cat
american girl
bakerina
banzai descent
eunmi
found magazine
garden gal
hedgehog
Joe
leigh lady leigh
likewise
master of the etch-a-sketch
oh my stars and garters
overheard in New York
pongomania
receptionista
ridiculousnous perspective
rusty magdal
schoolsmelt
tremble
today
March 2008
December 2007
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September 2007
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November 2006
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December 2005
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December 2004
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September 2004
visited *loading* times
you were so small but so fierce and I was starting new and scared. we were a funny pair at the pet shop buying food, toys, crate, collar, leash - anything to bolster our tiny alliance.
you were so small but so fierce and you yelped your dissatisfaction all the way back to Portland. we waited in line for the ferry for hours it was summer and busy. hot in the car while I sat with you on the lower deck instead of going upstairs with the people and the clam chowder and maybe a beer or two. I sat with you in the car on the lower deck wondering what sent me to the island to pick out the smallest most fiery hard to love pup.
you yelped all the way over on the ferry two hours - we stopped at Lopez and you yelped all the way back to Portland over five hours because of traffic and we arrived at the St. Francis, my beautiful apartment building with a balcony, we arrived there both of us tired me wilted and you still mad.
for six weeks you were tiny so small that I slept on the couch and every two hours down six flights of stairs to get to the patch of grass outside. sometimes you didn't make it. often you didn't make it.
you ate a hole in the wall, you ate the leg off a table, you ate your leash. you missed your mom, your brothers, your island, your freedom. the waterfall builder didn't train you at all and me post-Los Angeles, post-divorce, new to this crazy life, I didn't know how to start. I took you to a class and they kicked us out. I let you roam, you licked homeless people, nearly died, romped in the park, jumped on strangers, I despaired.
but over five years you've changed, you've mellowed. the people in the building stopped calling you Lu-cifer. over five years I've changed. I got stronger and we slowly became a pair, we grew into it, patched up the walls, bought new furniture, learned to play and to be still together.
change. dogs change, people change.
the ex-best friend and I have changed and now we marvel and circle around this new-ness, this old-ness, this thing we're building. she is so bravely pulling off the layers that we both loved & needed. I am so easily saying what's on my mind instead of just trying to make her laugh or hold her near. we've patched over our own holes in the walls and we've learned how to play and to be still together but I think we both wonder for how long we can pull it off.
have we had enough training? has enough time passed?
the ex-best friend needs a new title and so I will call her the mermaid. The mermaid is coming to celebrate Lucy's fifth birthday on friday. she and Lu have been through much and they will dance to say hello and we will all laugh, drink wine, eat cheese. I am happy she's coming, happy at all the changes that have brought me here, her here, us here. I am happy with my wild child pup, my steady ben, my new friends, my old.
I am even happy not knowing what happens next.
this week is for you.
I didn't know anything about dogs but when I got the call I drove up the next day.
I'm giving them away, he said. You asked me to let you know so I'm letting you know. I'm giving them away but you can have first look if you come tomorrow.
He lived on San Juan Island. He lived on San Juan Island where he built waterfalls and danced like a fool and got high in the middle of the night so he could sleep better and we were a brief and crazy couple back in the day. His dog was a dalmatian named Lady and she snuck off at a party one night with a black lab named Rusty. One of those kind of parties, you know. An island party.
I drove five hours to the ferry landing and waited, looking out at the water, thinking about clam chowder and those waterfalls. They were pretty but they didn't last long.
I didn't know anything about dogs but when I saw you, my girl, you were climbing all over your brothers to get to the food first and you wouldn't let me hold you and I fell in love and said I'll take that one.
I'll take that one, I said.
last night I found Italy in NE Portland.
Lorenzo's on Mississippi. So Good. So Italian deli. Tubes of tomato paste for sale next to packet of saffron and tiny amaretto candies. Cheap but delicious red wines for example the glass of Barbera D'Alba for $5 that I enjoyed thank you very much. Paired with homemade gnocchi. HOMEMADE GNOCCHI. oh yes. tables with little checkered tablecloths and a couch with a giggling baby. flourless chocolate torte. olives sold by the pound.
what a delight. just when I tire of my small town it sends me Lorenzo's. grazi, Portland.
Schultze Gets The Blues bills itself as a charming, endearing, joyful experience all wrapped up in the tubby form of a sweet retired accordian player.
Don't buy it.
(and if you don't want to know anything more about this movie, stop reading now)
Like many other foreign films, or maybe just the ones I see*, the message really is - if you're different, odd, passionately living outside the mainstream and you are cast as the main character in a movie - You Will Die. But first, you will make the audience care about you, want to know you, fall in love with you. Afterwards, someone in the film will shrug and say, possibly in German, "things happen" or "he was a good man" or something equally unsatisfying.
roll credits.
*Y Tu Mama Tambien, The Widow of St. Pierre, House of Flying Daggers, okay, I can't remember any more and obviously I need to see more movies with subtitles and stop being drawn in by, say, Bruce Willis' appearance on The Daily Show (Ben - he looks good bald, maybe I should shave my head. me - he looks good bald and Jon Stewart likes him, maybe I should see the movie) and then getting shocked by the bloodbath and lack of a plot.
it's just an application like I've filled out a hundred million times before.
just an application which includes an essay, a personal statement, four letters of recommendation, transcripts, a resume and all of ME somehow summed up in one little packet. all of my life summed up and an essay on how this would be the best the very best school for me and look I went to Columbia and I can write and I am personable see these four people said good things.
it's just an application like nothing I've ever done because when I was eighteen I was fresh and new and it all looked so good student council and tennis and those test scores were out of this world my god she's smart. but this school, they don't want scores they want diversity and expression and they want me to have spent the years between new york and portland doing something grand or at least good for the planet and the populace not working for an insurance agency while writing my heart out every morning wishing that were my job.
it's just an application but I am trying something I might fail and I don't enjoy that. no, no. I like to move forward only when certain sure of guaranteed success. beautiful shiny success. I'm mailing it off today this unsure uncertain packet. these dreams of something different held just barely together with a couple of staples and way too much hope.
so, yeah. It's not just an application anymore.
a unit didn't sound like very much dirt when there is a whole yard to consider and I bought so many seeds from the nice people in Sandy, Oregon. The nice people in Sandy specialize in Heirloom varieties and have pretty pictures on their web site and I was bored at work and now we have $62 worth of seeds which in case you're wondering, is a Lot Of Seeds. lots.
the day before they were delivering the dirt I called and said how much dirt is a unit, anyhow? the size of a car? a truck? a dumpster. A dumpster and our driveway was built for horses with steps in the middle not for cars it's too narrow for any car and too steep which means all dirt is carried up it in a wheelbarrow. instead of a unit I got 4 yards. which is the size of a car. my buick, actually. almost exactly the size of my buick.
after shoveling dirt into wheelbarrows and pulling it up backwards because frontwards it was too heavy on that driveway which got slippery after awhile due to the dirt that was falling out and ben yelling at me for the dirt falling out because magically his dirt did not fall out he's careful that way, our Ben. He's careful and I hate to do the gender thing but let's face it he's stronger my arms hurt my back hurts even my hands hurt. after shoveling dirt and pulling dirt and dumping dirt where I see a garden and anywhere else there was room, after doing that for three hours and then more the next day we still have a big pile of dirt outside on the street.
and then it rained. it rained and the big pile of dirt trapped a big pile of water and so there was water pooling up and gathering under aforementioned buick. I watched it from inside thinking that it would find a way to dissipate but instead it got bigger and bigger so there I was while Ben was having breakfast with his dad who makes me crazy talking about Jesus like he's at the table with you. There I was in the rain moving dirt so the water could flow downstream and not flood my engine but at this point it was wet dirt I was dealing with not dry dirt that is easy to shovel. wet dirt and my arms ached and water dripped off my hood, my jacket. There I was shoveling again but wet dirt this time and thinking about our old apartment with the balcony and small pots of dirt and flowers not big piles of dirt and weeds and yard and ivy and blackberries and three other kinds of invasive weed vine things that the people who lived in the house before us thought it would be nice to plant I guess.
The IT guy from work came by because on Friday I offered him some dirt and he filled the back of his truck with dirt and there is still a pile down there. I pull back the curtains in the front bay windows to look at it, check on it, under it's tarp. Waiting for me. in case you are ever faced with the dilemma of how much dirt to order just remember that a pile the size of a car is a whole lot of dirt.
someone wrote in the middle of the street a few blocks from my house:
I KNOW WHAT YOU DID ROBERTA
reasons to buy beer at CostCo 1. Lots Of Beer. 24 bottles of beer and then if you buy two boxes because you think, well, I don't come to CostCo that often because it's too big and there are too many choices and the people with screaming kids and those flat pallet carts filled with 200 cans of pickled beets - those people are the people you like to pretend don't represent America - and so you buy two boxes of beer or maybe three then you've got 48 bottles or 3 x 24 which is more than 48 but less than 100 - anyhow, it's So Much Beer. So much beer that you have to store it in the basement and then go often to check on it and admire it and yell up the stairs to Ben "hey, Ben, you want any beer?"
2. Cheap. because in Oregon, although we let the Rajneeshees roam free and even poison a whole town and I've been to more gay weddings than straight ones this past year, we tax the hell out of all kinds of alcohol. we are not afraid of contradictions, but we are afraid of people buying booze on Sundays and if you're going to get drunk in our state, it's going to cost you. unless you buy your beer in bulk. 3. Friends with the Neighbors. now, with all this beer laying about, you can offer some to a neighbor as in 'care for a beer?' and then when you go to get the beer you offered, you actually have some to give. because 6 packs go fast. But bulk beer? Doesn't go fast. which leads me to reasons Not to buy beer at CostCo 1. 48 or even more bottles of the Same Kind Of Beer. It's the same every time you drink it. It's the same beer and so when you go to get a beer you don't peer around inside the fridge wondering what Ben brought home from New Seasons maybe some new kind of microbrew you've never seen or maybe Black Butte Porter which is your favorite all-time best bottled beer ever. No, no, it's the compromise beer that neither one of you really loves but you can live with and you bought it, 2 or more boxes of it, because it was cheap and it Seemed Like A Good Idea At the Time. 2. Not Cheap. Having many many bottles of the same kind of beer means that you start offering beer to the neighbors, to anyone who stops by, to people on the street. Friends stop bringing beer over because you have SO MUCH that what's the point, really - and so you're actually keeping the entire town in beer. Which is not cheap. 3. Friends with Neighbors. maybe you don't really want to be friends with your neighbors. maybe once you become friends with your neighbors you can no longer yell at them for letting their dog poop in the park across the street without picking it up. maybe once you become friends with your neighbors and then they decide to build on the empty lot next door and you find out that the kinds of houses they like to build are shaped like barns, well, you can't really say anything. because you are friends now. because you shared your beer.
The Night Charlie Parker Played Tenor at Montmartre Café in Greenwich Village -- Joseph Pacheco
my annual review was months ago. december. last year.
part of it included a very long form divided into sections. I had to rate myself on reliability, teamwork, productivity etcetera. then the form was sent to my colleagues and my supervisor and my HR Director and they rated me. with Comments.
Today I got the form back from my HR director who is insane. And we are going to meet to discuss the Comments.
She handed me the form and I haven't looked at it yet. I am being very cool about it all. Who cares what they think about me, anyhow, at this job that I hate.
Me. I care. A lot. But I am pretending that I don't need to know.
don't care. don't need to know.
Not Looking. Not.
Ok. I looked. Happy to see I got exceedingly high ratings for punctuality. And my use of Automation is off the charts. 5, 5, 5, 5. All fives. I guess they don't know that I'm Using The Automation to post on my blog and write emails and troll craigslist. and look up Mark Ruffalo on google to see if he might ever be, say, visiting Portland.
But the Comments. the Comments are freaking me out. Two people said I'm Moody. And I am Overprotective of coworkers. And Suspicious of Management.
Gah, I wish I hadn't read the comments. Apparently, my team members see me as a paranoid union organizer. moody? I am an even-keeled air sign. I am an even-keeled Aquarius with gemini rising pretending that I don't have a scorpio moon. fucking scorpio moon. moody.
M. O. O. dee.
