Scooter of Doom

Thursday morning September 18, just before 9:00 - Bethany Blvd at HW 26 - Climate: moist and cool - Pavement: concrete composite

Thanks to a tall, blonde, Ed Bagely Jr.-looking asshole in a white Ford pickup I have to attempt an emergency stop on the scooter. Needless to say, the wheelbarrow-like tires are not up to the job and they skid horribly out of control. The tiny bike falters and flails and pitches me forward and I can't help but apply more brake and lock up the front tire completely, resulting in a high-side accident.

As I cart wheeled off the bike my right thigh clipped the left mirror, ripping it from its mount and leaving a nasty bruise that I would discover later. I'm not sure where I hit next because I was mostly concerned about my face rapidly approaching the pavement. Fortunately the cheap 3-snap shield and THH scooter helmet did their jobs and my face is still in-tact, but somewhere in there my right hand and left knee met the ground. As I lay there for a moment, taking stock and making sure I can still move my hands and feet, the driver of the Ford got out and asked if I was OK. I said I thought I was and another guy asked if I could move.

When I reached out for a hand up the other guy (he had been driving the car behind me) helped me out while the Ford driver stood dumbly by. He again asked if I was OK - mind you, less than a minute ago I was upright and on my way to work - and I may have nodded. He then got back into his truck and drove away. The other driver helped me to the sidewalk and then pushed the scooter to the side of the road. He directed traffic around us while I caught my breath and slowly started removing gear.

First came the helmet - fresh air never tasted so good - and I was happy to see that there was only a minor scratch on the shield and no contact points on the helmet itself. Once I could breathe again I started flexing my legs and decided they were sore and wobbly, but unbroken. Then I started pulling off my gloves - the right one resisted, but finally relinquished its swollen prize. I looked at my hand and couldn't quite comprehend what I was seeing. It appeared my thumb was on backwards. I looked at the good Samaritan who was kindly still hanging about making sure no one ran over me, and said, "I think that is going to require medical attention." He gulped, agreed with my assessment, and called 911.

This nice guy, who's name I didn't get, waited for the ambulance to arrive before he continued on with his day. Whoever he is he has my eternal gratitude. I would have felt so lost if he'd abandoned me on the sidewalk in favor of getting to work on time.

Turns out the thumb was really REALLY dislocated and they had to knock me out in order to fix it. I'm encased in a cast from the tip of my thumb to my elbow for the next couple weeks, and with any luck I won't have to have surgery; but I am seeing a hand specialist later this week.

"I did not eat that cookie"

When I moved to Portland I was an athlete. Not in that feel-good "everyone is an athlete" sense, but the much more traditional definition. I had a very physically demanding job and in my off hours I hiked and biked and rode horses and took care of my property and animals. In the winters I snowboarded and shoveled snow and ran up hills dragging large inner tubes behind me. In the summers I swam and water-skied and taught sculling through the parks and rec department. I never once thought about what shape I was in. I did, however, think about how intellectually bored I was with both my job and my life so I gave up some of those activities to teach myself HTML and Flash and eventually landed a job at a great company.

Over the years I would periodically realize that I was more and more out of shape. I would make half-hearted attempts to remedy the situation, but I would eventually wind up making excuses. I didn't have time to work out all the time. I was totally still cute and there's no way that a size 10 is fat. I was getting older. The plethora of previous injuries haunted me. I was totally still cute and there's no way that a size 12 is fat. But all those really mean is that it wasn't a priority to me. Plus, I wasn't too horribly out of shape; that is at least until I quit smoking.

The Sunday morning of Thanksgiving weekend 2007 I smoked my last cigarette. I had smoked roughly a pack a day since somewhere around my 17th birthday and I was tired of being controlled by it, of practically everything in my life revolving around my smoking schedule. So with the help of Chantix I woke up that Sunday morning, lit a cigarette, and was immediately disgusted with myself. I snubbed it out and never looked back.

I didn't count on all the stresses that would pile up on me in the following nine months. I lost my last living grandparent to old age; I lost my favorite aunt to pancreatic cancer; I distanced myself from my long-time best friend because our relationship had become rather toxic; I changed jobs - twice - (and bosses three times) due to my company reorganizing; I lost the freedom to work in the way that works best for me; my new "mentor" talked to me like I was an idiot and made me cry on a daily basis; it seemed that most of my newest team only spoke to me when I made a mistake; one of my friends lost a leg in a mining accident and another tested positive for HIV (not technically things that happened to me, but those sorts of things affect everyone); and to top it all off, I invested everything except my 401K in my brother's business plan.

HOLY CRAP!! That's a big list! And it doesn't even mention the "little" things like the toilet leak that caused a $400 water bill; the toilet that still isn't fixed because it just hasn't been a priority; the dog that keeps getting out; my rampant, unchecked vehicle addiction; never having time to clean my house or catch up on laundry; friends that are mad at me because I'm not as present in their lives as I should be because sometimes the weight of everything comes crashing down all at once in a soul-crushing shit-storm of emotion. Through all of that I didn't smoke, not even once. I wanted to. Often. Like every twelve minutes. But I didn't even take a drag of someone else's. Instead, I ate. A lot.

At the thirty-pound-gain mark I joined Weight Watchers and started taking classes at the community pool. I joined the gym down the street and would reward myself for working out with time in the sauna. I got a bicycle and vowed to ride everywhere that was less than five miles away. I went to yoga at least two days a week. One by one these things fell by the wayside, but I continued to eat when stressed or bored. For someone who is bored every ten minutes this is not a good thing.

A couple weeks ago I saw an addiction therapist who politely informed me that my problem wasn't that I had an addiction, but that no one is supposed to deal with that much stress all at one time. Especially not ADD adults. We're really good "in the moment", but totally fail at the long-term stress management. She suggested exercise and six months worth of a good anti-anxiety medication so I made an appointment with my regular doctor for the script but went straight to my list of excuses for the exercise.

The next week my company took my entire team (150 people) to Salishan on the Oregon coast for two days of intense "team building". Wednesday night I spent the three hours of off time before dinner drinking with the Executive Assistant while we did some much-needed job venting. Then I had a couple drinks at the pre-dinner mixer. A glass of wine with dinner was followed by an obscene amount of drinking at the generously open bar. (I really felt my team bonded over the second round of Petron shots.) As frequently happens with this sort of binge drinking I woke up with a few regrets.

On Thursday morning my alarm went off and I reached to hit the snooze and felt something out of place. Cautiously I opened one eye and tried to make sense of what I had touched. That's when I saw what I had done. The evidence was there, spread casually across the pristine sheets of the bed. Chocolate and flour and butter and sugar all baked together to create the half-eaten cookie on the pillow next to me.

That's when it really hit me that I had to get some shit under control. My king-size mini-suite overlooking the golf course had become my oval office; the white sheets with their chocolaty crumbs my fateful blue dress. Somewhere in the back of my imagination I heard flashbulbs and clamoring reporters while I looked them in the eye, steadfast and earnest from the podium stating in no uncertain terms, "I did not eat that cookie."

Sometimes you don't fall all at once. Sometimes you slowly step down the mountain, sliding a bit here, stumbling a little there, until you look up one day and realize that although you once sat atop the highest peak you have now inched and crept and stumbled your way to well below the tree-line and you're left there with your half eaten cookie and a vicious hangover.

As an appreciation gift we were all given iPod Nanos with the Nike+ sport pack thingy that tracks your run. I considered it a sign, an intersection of my personal low and a really great tool. The morning of August 24 was my first recorded "run". It left me winded and sore and soaking in sweat and it took me 22 and a half minutes to fight my way through the entire 2.73 kilometers. If I were in a movie I would have been zombie food.

My two scooters

When spring rolled around, and gas hit $3.50 a gallon, I decided to buy a gas-saving scooter. (100 mpg is hard to pass up when your four wheeled vehicle only gets 22.) So I did the sensible thing and researched. Size, brand, price, overall stylishness, ease of use and maintenance needs all went into my decision to buy the Twist 'n Go Milano in a minty green that reminds me of Mojitos. I named him Paco. He's sweet and reliable and when I ask him to haul me to Beaverton and back he responds with a jaunty "OK boss!"
But then I started thinking...
If Paco had gears he'd be zippier. If he were a Vespa he'd be more stylish. If he had a metal body he might trigger a light to change once in a while. Well, probably not that last one but a girl can dream. So I started combing Craigslist for a Bajaj. It's beautiful. Jade green, chrome edging, and gears - glorious gears. I named him Hadji. You know, after Johnny Quest's best friend who occasionally does magic. My plan is to sell Paco because I don't need two scooters AND a motorcycle. And a Jeep. And the motorcycle that's already up for sale. And a bicycle. (Soon I'll be standing up in a smoky church basement saying, "Hi. My name is Leela and I'm addicted to vehicles." No, Leela isn't my real name but if I gave my real name it wouldn't exactly be anonymous, would it?)
Friday I took Hadji down to the Bajaj dealer to make an appointment for his first check-up. Tim at Columbia Scooter pulled up his service records and filled me in on his background. Nothing surprising, but it was time for service. I made the appointment then Tim wanted to take a look at the damage the previous owner did to it while trying to figure out the clutch so we went out to the parking lot and I pointed out the scratches and paint dings. He then checked Hadji's oil and jiggled the shifter. Oh no. The shifter was pronounced "sloppy". Not to worry, it's probably OK until the service appointment but I should be aware that not OK means not shifting. While riding around in the sun today the shifter slid further into the territory of "not OK".
And that's when it hit me. My two scooters are easily a metaphor for my relationships with men. Were I craftier I could spin it into a schmaltzy novel that would probably sell millions of copies only to finally be made into a boring but beautiful movie directed by either Clint Eastwood or Robert Redford.
Damn, I've gotten sidetracked again. Where was I? Oh, yeah. The scooters as a metaphor.
Paco is reliable, mostly cute, non-offensive, and will take all the abuse I can dish out without complaining. He's great, but I don't really want him. Hadji, on the other hand, is sexy, temperamental, and virtually guarantees that I will spend long afternoons fine-tuning and fixing because deep down he's fundamentally broken... I must have him.
Even in scooters I pick the wrong men.

Something else that sucks about being single

Tuesday night and its raining like cats and dogs, or whatever it is that cats and dogs rain like. I've heard rumors (all unconfirmed) about where that saying came from, but nothing concrete or provable. Whatever, the rain is the least of the single girl's worries.

What is of paramount concern is that I hate my job. Maybe I'm naive and I don't realize that every other person in America gets up and goes to a job that makes them either 1) want to vomit, 2) burst into tears, 3) break down into a screaming and incomprehensible rage for no visible reason, or 4) laugh like a loon for long hours at a time. Take your pick as to which one actually manifests itself. Sometimes it's a combination platter... what a treat.

What it comes down to is that if everyone gets up in the morning and goes off to a job feeling like one of these four things might happen then I am truly and profoundly sorry for the state of the entire nation, and I don't understand why there's not more spousal abuse and killing sprees. If they don't then that means I'm in the minority (read: outside the norm) and therefore I should be happier. Well, I'm not. And the more often I feel like succumbing to number two (crying) the more I feel like I'm actually sliding into number four (lunacy). Not a comfortable feeling at all. I'm not hot enough to carry off being bat-shit-crazy.

Well, at least I feel I am relatively sane - as long as I recognize the edge of lunacy approaching; so that's something.

So here I am, hating my job, and I have to ask: Logically speaking, what is keeping me there? Well, I have a house payment to make. Regardless of everything else going on in my life, the mortgage must be paid. Which means I must pay it. Which is when it occurred to me that now, right now, this moment in time, right this minute, I wish to the depths of my core that I wasn't single. That I had someone else to share this burden with. That I had someone to lean on who would say, "You shouldn't be so unhappy, my love. Quit your job. We'll make it work while you figure out what you want to do." Or even to say, "I know you hate it, but we have a plan... and it's a good one... so stick it out for a while longer." Something. Anything. Because the only thing the dog says is, "as long as there's food in my bowl and you have plenty of time to pet me then we're good."

The other problem is that I no longer have any real savings. I invested my "take a year and do whatever you want" money in my brother's business. (Again... what was I thinking?!?!?!...... Oh, I know, that I believe in his business plan and that it will eventually pay off to a lifetime of dividends. That's right. Sorry. I had a moment of hysteria there.) So realistically what I have in the bank is three month's worth of mortgage. You may be surprised how quickly you'd burn through that if you stopped having an income right this moment, but trust me - I've done the math - it's blazingly fast.

So what is a single girl to do? Well this girl, for one, has cried all she wants to, vomited... well, never, but just thinking about it is enough..., and screamed more often than any one's neighbors should be willing to put up with. (Thankfully the guy kitty-corner from me ran over his wife - really - with his car! - so they're a bit jaded to random screaming fits and/or drunken yelling at the walls.) What else is left? Logic. Blessed logic. The refuge of the indecisive.

So I asked myself some questions.

1) Why do I feel trapped in this job that I hate so much?

Because I have to pay the mortgage.

2) Would I be willing to take the house out of the equation?

I love this house, and I love my neighborhood, but it is just stuff in the end. So, yes, I'd be willing to consider it.

3) If I take the house out of the equation, then why am I keeping the job that I hate?

And since it's only just me making this decision (not man who either will support me through finding another job or who I am supporting through his own career crises; nor any kids that I have to put through college or even buy new shoes for this summer) and I eventually want to give up most of my worldly possessions and live in a camper for a few years anyway, then I came to the only logical conclusion: Give up the house and quit the job now.

Fuck it. If not now, when? (Yeah, I had a plan. Three to seven years. That's when. But things get in the way of plans now and again.)

And if then, why not now? (YES, I know! The reason I had a plan was so that I had a solid place to come home to. But, REALLY!! WTF!)

F U C K ! ! !

It's too much for one person to deal with. Or at least too much for me to deal with.

Don't be surprised if you see me in tattered clothes with tales to tell of strange Tuesdays in Kansas City and average Saturday nights on the Aleutian chain because I think that could be my life for a while. Maybe because I didn't have anyone to lean on when I needed them. Maybe I would have chosen the same path, but I'd at least have a partner to walk it with. Maybe Bin Laden will convince some earnest young Muslim to crash a plane into the Simnasho rest stop just when I decide it's safe enough for a white girl to stop and pee while on the res. Maybe...

But instead it's just me. And I can't do it any more.

Equal Opportunity

I used to date this guy who once foolishly tried to argue equal opportunity laws with me. He was one of the many people who are under the completely mistaken impression that the government is trying to make you hire or promote under-qualified people simply because they aren't white men. There are two things wrong with this argument; 1- discrimination is discrimination, even if you're a white man; and 2- if you hire the most qualified candidate your employee base will, by default, resemble your community. However, the sad fact of the matter is that there are an alarming number of people who still allow color of skin and/or the presence of a Y chromosome dictate their hiring decisions, which is why we still need these laws in place.

One night we're chillin' at his place, chit chatting about this and that, and it comes out that he's totally prejudiced against blacks. He tells me that he doesn't see how they've contributed to the cultural make-up of this country. (And he claimed to be a musician!!) My eye started twitching, I think I might have blacked out for a minute, I was in complete and utter shock. Stuttering through my anger, but persevering nonetheless, I stammered out a few hundred ways how non-whites in general and blacks in particular had contributed to American culture. Finally he conceded enough ground to not only calm me down for the moment, but to make me believe he was open to at least enough change to keep me in the relationship for a little longer.

But on the other hand he held a very firm belief that everyone deserves a second (or third, or even fourth) chance. He owned a small business and was active on the "Felony Friendly" list. This was something else that made my eye twitch. Not that I'm anti-rehabilitation (the differences between rehabilitation and prison may be explored later, but it's too much to go into here). I do think your personal history of decision making needs to factor into any hiring manager's decision. If you were fired from your last four jobs as a waiter because you refuse to charge your friends for their meals, why should I believe you would start now? Either way, that's not quiet the heart of the matter. After calming down I had to ask him to explain to me how it is that he was comfortable discriminating against people based on an accident of birth, but was still open to hiring people with a proven history of disobeying the laws we all live by.

That was the beginning of the end.

I cannot tell a story

Some people, like my brother and my uncle Howard can tell great stories. They can turn a drive to the grocery and back into an edge-of-your-seat narrative that you'll laugh at or cry with or bite your nails through. I don't get it. I can't do that. Really. I can't. I can write one down. I can even make it humorous, or poignant, or snarky or informative. But I cannot verbally tell a story.

I notice it all the time when I'm speaking to people. I ramble on, repeating myself in slightly different ways and adding in completely unnecessary details. Frequently I get the "hurry up" motion from friends and tired listeners. Occasionally I actually get the words "Get on with it already!" from friends.

Also, I have no sense of timing whatsoever. I start and stop in weird places, sometimes even veering off into some completely different story altogether. No cadence. Just call me "No Cadence Candace" from now on. I'm just kidding. Don't call me that. Seriously. I'll punch you in the butt if you do.

The thing is, when I write something down I can re-arrange it so that it flows better. I can spend an ungodly amount of time choosing just the right word to express myself. This tiny missive took an hour and a half to write. But in person I can barely relate a quick paragraph about lunch.

Am I that socially awkward? Well, yes. I am. I'm really uncomfortable most of the time I'm out in the world, even with people I love who I know love me back. At my age you'd think I'd probably either be over that sort of shit or get used to it. The best I've come up with though is to just grit my teeth, slap a smile on my face, and get through it. But on the other hand, I truly enjoy the interaction with other people.

I took this class at work once that was based on Carl Jung's theories of personality and it was no surprise to me when the results came back that the dominant portions of my personality were equal parts of "blue" (give me facts and get out) and "green" (show me you care). Maybe its that blue and green make for one murky story.

And then there's the ending. Ending a story is sometimes difficult, and if you've heard me go on about "No Country for Old Men" then you know how I feel about the importance of a good ending. But ending one verbally is almost impossible for me. I tend to just stop speaking. There's no real conclusion or punchline, just a point where words become pointless.

I envy those who can tell good stories.

When I was eleven I wanted to be a drug dealer

One bright and sunny summer day I was at my grandmother's house, writing or drawing or something of the sort at her mahogany dining table, the same table that currently sits in my dining room, chatting with my grandmother about this and that, when she asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. A perfectly reasonable question for an eleven year old child. A thousand things ran through my mind; cop, ballerina, stunt woman, rock star, fire fighter, secret agent. All sounded like wonderful choices, offering a life of adventure and excitement, when it occurred to me that what I really wanted was money, guns, and planes. Looking back I realize that this was probably fueled by, romanticized and glamorized by, watching the Friday night adventures of Crocket and Tubbs. But at that moment, when my mind was racing between daredevil or smoke jumper, contortionist or trapeze artist, I had a vision of myself in the future, or maybe a memory that hadn't happened yet. As clearly as anything I had ever seen, but just for a brief instant, I saw myself hanging out of the door of a small airplane, sub-compact machine gun tucked against my left hip, warm and chattering out bullets toward an unseen enemy on a dirt runway as the plane strained and sped toward the azure sky over the brilliantly green trees. All of this I saw and I knew exactly what it all meant, so I took a deep breath and answered my grandmother earnestly. "I'm going to be a drug dealer."

She paused in her lunch preparations, an eternity she stood at the stove, frozen in time while she digested this disturbing news from her oldest grandchild. Chicken burned in the pan while she processed this bit of information and I was fascinated by her lack of response. Had it occurred to me that this would be the reaction my announcement received I would have done it on purpose, but at eleven I was just learning about shock value and the beauty of a perfectly manipulated reaction. She finally came back to herself and turned the chicken a fraction of a second before it was ruined and said, "Really? A drug dealer? How do you see that working out for you?"

"I figure as long as I can not get arrested it will work out pretty well."

This she found amusing so she started asking me more questions. What kind of drugs would I sell, how would I get them, who would I sell them to, and how is it that I planned to avoid incarceration? The basic questions that any career plan needs to answer. I think she planned to trip me up, point out a flaw in my scheme, but (other than the obvious) she couldn't find one. For every question she asked I had a complete and comprehensive answer. I would eventually focus on marijuana, which I would grow on a farm in South America, but to build cash reserves and a solid reputation I would start out with cocaine. I would sell only to late-teens and adults because they knew what choices they were making, (Also, I couldn't believe anyone my age would mess around with drugs - I mean, duh! everyone knows they're evil.) and I would build a network of bribe-able officials and good lawyers in order to avoid doing any jail time.

The questioning went on through our lunch of buttered chicken and rice but I had an answer for everything, and I had them fast. Even if she asked something I hadn't really thought of it only took me moment to come up with something reasonable. When we were done eating and she was finished interrogating me she picked up the dishes and said, "that was some story Kelly, you should consider writing. It's a much less dangerous job."

I've considered this advice several times throughout my life and never really been able to pull it together enough to actually set pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and write something. Until recently. Grandma would be proud, I'm finally writing it down.

Necrotizing Fasciitis

Flesh-eating bacteria. Do you know how difficult it is to get this horrific disease? Well, neither do I. I do know that it has never come up in conversation with anyone I know. Not once have I told the story of the German Shepherd-shaped scar on my back (caused by shingles) and had someone chime in with, "yeah, that's kinda messed up, but did I tell you about when I had..." Not then, and not in any of the other thousand conversational situations (including the bizarre questions I occasionally ask) where "I've had a flesh-eating bacteria" might come up. I've never even heard "I have this friend..."

This shit is not easy to get.

And when it is contracted the appropriate medical authorities are notified and it's cause is meticulously tracked to make sure the public is safe. Unfortunately that does nothing to quell hysteria. And by hysteria I mean the random emails I periodically receive that promise just such a horror for doing something mundane. Usually wearing (not just trying on) unwashed new clothing.

Somehow the afflicted area is always a breast. According to several sites I found through the wonders of Google, NF requires a break in the skin. Do the people who make this shit up think breast wounds are common? (Yes, I'm aware that the reason it's always the breast has much more to do with Freud than it does with logic) And the email is always accompanied by a terrifying photo or two.

Once I found this obviously doctored photo in my inbox along with roughly the same story as reported on Snopes. ("Breast Rash")

But only once for that one, and technically it didn't claim to be NF. Instead this one is supposedly caused by a larvae of unknown origin or species. Either way it's disgusting and somehow specific to the breast.

Several times though I've found this series of photos in my inbox. (EXTREMELY DISTURBING!!! ... don't say I didn't warn you. By the way, Snopes has no conclusive evidence of the origins of the photos, but they appear to be the advanced stages of breast cancer.) They always claim to be a necrotizing fasciitis and they all claim to have contracted it from new and unwashed clothing. Sometimes the warning is that this was passed on by a previous customer who tried on the clothing. As if fashion is a top priority when you have a terrible and, by these accounts, insanely contagious disease. Other times it is attributed to a factory worker who should have called in sick and instead infects your clothing... in Asia or South America, by the way; a long way for a disease to travel with no living host. Whatever the reason given it's all bullshit. An updated "old wives tale" that is designed to scare the crap out of you.

There are two very good reasons I wash my clothes before wearing them, and neither has anything to do with disease. The first of formaldehyde. If your clothing was imported from a third world country, and odds are it was, then it had to pass through customs. If it doesn't pass quickly then it needs to be kept free from insects and rodents, so it usually gets a light spraying of formaldehyde. (That's also what makes new carpet reek.) I prefer to wash that out of my clothes before wearing them as the smell gives me a headache. The second reason is colorfastness. I hate when colors bleed all over each other and a quarter cup of vinegar in the first wash usually stops that.

What really kills me about these email is that they almost always come from the same person. An otherwise intelligent person. And they're never prefaced with anything but an echo of the scary message instead of the "can you believe people buy this???" that I would preface them with. I think she may actually believe them, like this is some sort of epidemic that no one is talking about. It doesn't occur to her that we live in a world that thinks Purell is a good idea and that if even one person got anything so disgusting from something done by thousands of people every day it would be all over the news. CNN would send Wolf Blitzer, a medical analyst, and fifteen camera people. Ann Coulter would be yammering on about how this is somehow the fault of the liberal medical system and only the GOP can save you. In about a week it would be illegal to try on or return clothing. It simply doesn't make sense. I do not understand this kind of fear.

So I roll my eyes, remind myself that even smart people fall for dumb crap, and hit delete.

Namaste Motherfucker

A long time ago I smoked a fair amount of pot, did quite a bit of yoga, ate a lot of sprouts and refused to acknowledge the validity of western medicine. I danced naked under the full moon and painted myself with herbs and minerals to increase body temperature and oxygen flow. I walked barefoot through the forest, trusting my "oneness" with nature to keep my feet safe, and sat for hours listening feeling being the wind in the trees. I've lost months to meditation, stood on picket lines, and spent endless hours discussing the evils of the establishment. And the universe supported me in this by surrounding me with people who shared my lifestyle. Then one day that wasn't who I was anymore, the truth of my being slid a little bit. And that was OK too.

I, who had taken pride in never being the first owner of anything and wanted little, somehow just accepted a sudden need for new stuff and a savings account and even a couple credit cards. So I packed up my prayer flags fortune telling cards and moved to the city. I took a regular 9-5 job (my first and still my only) at a major corporation and threw myself into my new life. I stopped walking barefoot and learned how to strut in spike heels. I traded the pure light of the moon for the smokey neon of dive bars. I forgot about fresh fruit and organic meat and embraced the drive through and the deep fryer. And the universe supported this too. I met wonderful people who guided me through this change. Girls who taught me about eyebrow waxing and navigating the mall and how to have career goals (I never really got the hang of that one). Girls who taught me about four dollar coffee and how it's somehow better than what you can make at home. All these things I learned and lived and was happy with because they were the truth of who I was at the moment.

A few months ago, all of that started to slide again though. Like the first rock skipping down the hillside, oblivious to the avalanche it will start, came a friend who is the master of the material life wearing a shirt that said "Namaste Motherfucker". I began to see a longing for what I had put away in other people, and to meet people who were on the path home. I started to miss my prayer flags and second-hand gypsy skirts. I could feel it all coming back to me and I began to remember the language of nature and how good it felt to honor my body with delicious food. I've slowly been working my way back to my natural self (in spirit, anyway) when the final push came. I met a woman who never really left, and just by being who she is she's simultaneously made me homesick and shown me how to get home.

In honor of the new moon today, the moon of new beginnings, the first moon I've consciously acknowledged in years, we did 108 sun salutations. I'm still riding the high of the constant movement of the body's prayer and revelling in the quiet symphony of muscles coming awake. I feel much more in tune than I have in years, on the road home and even though I'm trying to enjoy the journey there's a part of me that's like a barn-sour nag and can't wait to get there.

Namaste, motherfucker.

I wish I were crazy

Not Charles Manson or Jeffery Dahmer crazy, but cute crazy like Jeremy Sisto in "The Movie Hero". Charming crazy. Adorable crazy. Just sane enough to have friends and drive around and live on your own, but just crazy enough to not have to have a job or be expected to wear pants in public. At least not all of the time. Just crazy enough that my family gives me a monthly stipend to live on and I don't care. Ideally I don't even think about it. Is that crazy, or just selfish? Or is it only selfish if you become aware, and acceptably crazy if you remain blissfully ignorant of the sacrifices of others?

Interesting questions, to be sure, but not interesting enough to hold my attention just now.

The more interesting question has to do with the movie "The Movie Hero" itself. It poses the question: How much better would we be as people if we each thought we were the hero in our own movie? That an audience sees and responds to our every move? The secondary question then becomes: What's the difference between your audience and god? As children in Sunday school we're taught that god watches over everything we do, rather like an audience. (Those few kids who, like me, were raised by agnostic Catholics - or just plain agnostics, or atheists - learned similar lessons of being watched over. Those lessons just weren't couched as "godly" to us. It was much more likely for my mom to take credit as the constant watcher, making me question at times if she actually was psychic. Either way it amounts to the same thing as mother is god in the eyes of a child.)

The difference, I believe, is that even though somewhere between 60 and 90 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christian - depending on which poll you check - Americans are more likely to respond favorably to an audience. The notion of god watching over you is backed by stories of swift retribution and the hinted promise of reward at the end of this life. Apparently great motivation to drag your sorry ass to a pew of your choice once in a while, but not so good at the day-to-day stuff. Plus it is very difficult to wrap the human mind around the concept of "god is everywhere at all times". We tend to think of god as more human, and therefore only aware of one thing at a time.

But an audience... An audience is personal. An audience is there for you and you alone. An audience applauds when you make the right decision and boos when you make the wrong one. Immediate feedback. Instant gratification. The cornerstone of American society - at least in its current form. Your audience allows you to be the hero of your own life. How much better would your life be if you truly believed you were the star?

Not to get off onto a preachy tangent here, but so many of us allow ourselves to be antagonists and sidekicks and even cameos in our own stories. Stop it. Stop it right now. If you aren't interested in yourself enough to be the star in your own life then how do you expect to get anything accomplished? Does anyone really care about the adorable Aasif Mandvi in "Music and Lyrics"? No. We don't care if he is gay or straight, childless or the father of ten, goes to night school to finish a medical degree or has a tail hidden in his tailored slacks. None of that matters. We only really care about Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore overcoming their respective pasts and making a run at a relationship together. Don't be the character that no one really cares about because you'll discover that that's exactly what you've become. Be your own hero. But be worthy of being the hero. Make your audience proud.

Little Notebooks

In the movies, little palm-sized notebooks are carried around by journalists, detectives and the victims of head trauma. They pull them out of pockets and purses and take random notes or refer back to them for information they're just sure they wrote down. Sometimes all it takes to throw the hero off balance is to take a page from the notebook. These little notebooks are amazing things. Always with plenty of paper left for notes and yet they're simultaneously filled with all sorts of useful information already.
The thing is, I've seen these little notebooks in the store while shopping for real notebooks. You know the ones, their cardboard covers in primary colors, white paper with blue lines, spiral-bound along the top. Or maybe, if the user is a veteran detective or journalist then the notebook is the slightly more respectable flip-top refillable style or the Moleskine "Journalist" edition. No matter the cover though the little notebooks are never new. They always appear to have been loved worn abused for years. But when seen on the shelf they only come with somewhere around fifty pages.
Bearing all this information in mind, I've always wondered about their usefulness. I have to imagine a journalist takes a lot of notes and although I have heard stories concerning good reporters and systems of coded short-hand lest some aspiring Wolf Blitzer wannabe snags their notes and scoops them on the story of the minute. Even still, if they take notes (and by "they" I mean journalists as characters not as people. I don't know any journalists as people.) as copiously as depicted then the effective usefulness of a notebook is two, maybe three, stories.
As for police work, I think the distribution would be a little different. Were I a movie detective, or better yet a television detective as they handle a lot more cases, I think I would want notes for each case in its own notebook. That way I could toss the notebook(s) into the case file when everything was all wrapped up. Realistically though, this would mean that a detective in a respectably-sized city would probably at any given time have somewhere between two and six notebooks to keep track of, with at least a couple freshies ready to go for new case assignments.
But the biggest mystery is the note-taking of the walking wounded. In the movies your average head case stops to take notes at least four times a day. That's an average trauma, not a far-fetched and unrealistic injury like the guy in "Memento". Four times a day, fifty sheets per book. And they never use the back side of the paper. Plus everything is printed in large letters with plenty of space between notations, either because they have reverted back to fourth grade handwriting or for our benefit as observers. Four times a day, fifty sheets per book, and we'll figure an average of two notations per page. So lets think of a character as an actual person with a whole life to live, not just the few days weeks months of a movie, which means maybe they go through one a month. And they're constantly flipping through them, checking for a bit of wisdom that they wrote down god knows when. (We won't even address the fact that the information they need is always accessible and in order, despite having gathered it at different times.)
So my question is this: What happens when the little notebook is full? Do they toss it onto a shelf in the closet and grab a new one and start over? Do they write dates on them so that maybe they can piece their year decade life together some rainy Tuesday evening? Do they take the time to copy truly useful information into the new book before storing the old one? Or do they just chuck it out and start anew?
Without some sort of organization and retrieval system information loses its value. If you can't recall it, you don't have it. Regular people would know to get on the number six bus to downtown to go to work, but the trauma victim would have to write that down and if it's not in the notebook where they expect to find it then they effectively don't know it. So when a new notebook becomes necessary, are the first few pages dedicated to necessary knowledge like the number six bus and their mother's new husband's name? What if they forgot to write that down in the new book? What sort of havoc would that wreak onto their lives?
I am constantly confused by little notebooks.

Have you ever checked your email so frequently that you felt unpopular?

Lately I don't have a lot to do during the day. I can't just take off and do something fun because if something does come up at work and I'm not available to take care of it, well, there could be some rather uncomfortable questions about how I spend my time. So I'm semi-tied to my computer between at least nine in the morning to three in the afternoon. When not actually working I generally spend this time doing household chores, reading, watching movies, or playing with the dog. Six hours can be a lot of time to kill when you can't really go any where day after day.

Even still, like most people who have face-to-face social interactions, I have better things to do with my time than wait for email. And yet I sometimes fall prey to the emotional pitfalls of an email conversation.

You check your email in the morning, maybe dash off a message or two to friends. One of your friends happens to be online and responds immediately. You shoot a message back and that's how it starts. You've just gone from exchanging messages to having an interactive conversation. But the reality is that you're trading mail. You're not chatting on the phone. You're not even short-handing a conversation through IM. It's mail. Mail gets put on hold for pretty much everything else in your life. Which is exactly what happens, except you're the one who got put on hold.

One minute you're tapping out a witty retort involving a reference to "Knight's Tale 2: Chaucer's Revenge" as you wonder briefly if IMDB has updated Heath Ledger's profile page yet, and the next you're making sure you didn't lose your Internet connection. You can logically deduce what happened on the other end - life intervened. A job had to be done, a kid needed tending to, bran muffins kicked in, whatever. But that doesn't stop you from hitting refresh again.

Still nothing. You walk away for a bit and tend to your own life, but in the back of your mind you're listening for the tell-tale "ding" of your mail program.

You don't hear it. After a while you go back to your computer; maybe you missed it while you were in the bathroom. Still nothing. To top it off (or maybe it's actually the root cause of this little emotional fiesta) you have nothing really going on on this particular day. Your phone isn't ringing and you have nothing but busy work to do. You know you're being silly but you can't help it. You have sunk into the cycle of "e-pression". Regardless of how you feel about your social "status" on any given day you are suddenly shuttled back to middle school and you're convinced that you just wore the wrong pair of shoes to a new school. No amount of logic can overcome your growing feeling of unpopularity.

So you check your email one more time...

Being single only really sucks when you need something fixed

I'm single. And no, that's not something that needs "fixing". I like being single. I've always liked being single. Sure I occasionally cave to the constant and daily pressures of coupledom and agree (a couple of times even actively sought out) to become half of two. This always makes me a little sad, to be half of two rather than the whole of one, but in the beginning that is completely overshadowed by that "new boyfriend smell". The promise of frequent sexual escapades, the fun of discovering diet preferences and degrees of alcohol tolerances (both personally ingested and as observed in your partner).

After a while though the shiny starts to wear off and then the slow slide starts. One of you begins to think your sexual escapades are too frequent, or discovers that what was fun in the beginning is getting tiresome to keep up with. Then it really starts to irk her that he calls twice a day and seems really put out if she doesn't have anything new to say; and he's stewing up a little resentment because she didn't like his mother's chicken. He won't wipe his shoes and she decides to go vegan and the whole thing goes to hell in a hand basket.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not at all advocating singleness as a lifestyle for everyone, and I'm not saying that all relationships are doomed to eventual failure, and I'm not talking about love because love is something completely different. (However I have met more than a few couples who don't need to be together. Maybe they've run their course or maybe they never should have made the commitment in the first place. Whatever the case they're fun to watch when you're not sitting at the same table.)

I thoroughly enjoy being single most of the time. I loved shopping for a house with only my needs in mind. I honestly love hanging out with myself. I love doing stuff with my friends and not having to worry about how good a time my boyfriend is having. I love planning things for myself. Most of all though, I love sleeping alone. Not even the promise of frequent sexual escapades can make me share my bed for very long. I love sprawling across the bed and taking all of the covers and pillows. There is absolutely nothing about sleeping alone that I don't love.

But every once in a while... once in a blue moon I find myself pondering the what ifs and thinking, however briefly, that it might be nice to have someone around. When I returned from Costa Rica I had such a thought. I had been travelling for roughly twenty hours. I showered in a blissfully warm shower and crawled between my exquisitely cool 500 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets and arranged my six goose down pillows and settled in for a peaceful sleep. Just as I was drifting off I thought "wouldn't it be nice to have someone to come home to, I could use a foot rub."

Did you catch that? I had just returned from a tropical vacation with my friend and at no time did I ever think I would like to share that vacation with a boy. Nope. Not me. I wanted some one at home, eager to rub my feet.

Today my neck hurts. It would be really nice to have someone to rub it. When I'm sick or injured and in need of a caretaker, that's when I really think it would be good to be half of two.

Maybe that's kinda fucked up.

What's next...famine?

It was high noon on January 22nd.

Oh, wait. Maybe there should be a little back-story here. I haven't been to the office in nearly five weeks. The first three were spent on vacation. It's amazing how quickly you can eat up three weeks of vacation time. A little better than a week in Costa Rica, a week or so in Bend, and voila! you're barely acclimated back to your own bed before you're staring at an email from your boss. Also, I'm lucky enough to have the freedom to work from home most of the time., and since I'm in the process of transitioning to a new position (currently one without a supervisor!) my calendar is, to say the least, barren. So the last two weeks, well, week and a half really, have been spent at home.

Which brings me back to noon on January 22nd, at which time I was gathering towels to wash. I paused in the kitchen to pick up the few that were dirty in there. While I was putting the dishes on the drainboard away I heard the unmistakable sound of a lot of water gushing over round rocks. Crap. It was twenty two degrees (Less than any degrees if you use the Centigrade scale!) this morning and there's only one thing that sound could mean. Slipping on some waterproof garden shoes and fighting my way past the dogs who should have been enjoying the sunshine I expelled a huge breath and prepared for what a lot of expensive water/ice damage looked like.

Stepping around the corner I immediately saw that it wasn't as bad as I had feared. The pipes that run to the outside of the house are all mostly indoors so I don't get too worried about pipe bursts. It's not like it ever drops below zero here. Ice storms sometimes cause me a little concern, but they generally only happen once a year and are never a complete surprise. What I see is the complete failure of the insulation on the insulated (and "guaranteed" not to freeze) timer/splitter thingy. It had frozen and was spewing water all over the side yard (and by yard I mean the river-rock covered area on the side of the house). No big deal. Remove the broken piece, turn off the water, bada bing bada boom and it's back to the kitchen where I left off.

Towels gathered once more I set off for the laundry room downstairs. When I got near the bottom of the stairs I realize that my adventure is far from over. Flowing from the laundry room and pooling at the bottom of the steps before making a meandering journey into Tiff's room is what appears to be the Willamette river. Back up the stairs for waterproof shoes again.

First things first. I step into Tiff's room to see what damage has been done to stuff I don't own. This goes against every grain of my being as I have some fairly deep-seated privacy issues. Not just about my own space, but about protecting the privacy of other peoples' space as well. But Tiffany just bought a new laptop and I need to know if I can save it, not to mention my obligation to clean up the water. Of course the water has followed the wall across the room and started edging under the bed. I am just lucky enough that it hasn't crested the little island where her laptop is perched on its edge.

On an aside: People always ask me why my laptops are stored on their edges rather than what would seem to be the more correct (and certainly more conventional) position of flat, as if in use, with the lid closed. The reason is that I never turn them off and my work one doesn't have a sleep mode because it has to work with a docking station, which means that it needs to run its fans periodically. Laying it flat on a carpet means it's trying to suck clean, fresh, cool air through dirty, warm carpet fibers. Standing it on its edge makes sense, and has become a habit for me. Apparently I've passed it on to others which is, ultimately, what saved Tiff's laptop.

So I picked up her computer, checked it for damage (whew! none) and put it safely on the bed. I checked under the bed to see how far it had seeped, removed her backpack from a small puddle, put up a towel barrier and returned to the laundry room to deal with the larger problem.

What does one use to clean up gallons (about fifteen or so, as measured by the bucket I used) of water spread out over an uneven floor? Towels get very heavy and the cold water makes them difficult to wring out more than a few times. A few months ago I fell for the ZORBEES! (annoying little bearded fucker) commercial. They actually do work, just like the loudmouthed little shit Billy Mays yelled that they would. But still, fifteen gallons is a lot of water and fingers get stiff and cold, and sure they hold a lot of water, but that's still only a couple pints or so, which adds up to a lot of bending and wringing so the only real solution is the sponge mop. Sure it only absorbs half (or less) of the big ZORBEES! rag thing, but your fingers stay warm and dry and your back doesn't acquire any unnecessary aches or pains.

How long does it take to pick up fifteen gallons of water with a sponge mop? Just under ninety minutes and then my day was back o track. Laundry, check. Herbal conditioning pack for my abused hair, check. A well earned cup of tea and a couple chapters of a good book, check.

Tiff came home and we blah blahed for a bit and then she started cooking dinner while chatting with her grandma. I went back to the living room to read and idly poke at the plastic covered mud on my head when suddenly I hear "WHOOMP!" and a surprised scream. I looked up just in time to see a flash of orange emanating from the kitchen. Never a good thing.

She had been heating oil to fry something and splashed some water into the pan and it flared up into a fireball that left soot in surprising places.

No one was hurt and, again, all the stuff survived, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the fridge doesn't go out or we'll be looking at famine next.

I am in love with Chuck Klosterman

Ben gave me Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs *a low culture manifesto (now with a new middle) for Christmas.

I must say I love that tag line too, "now with a new middle". I'm working on one of those myself. Unfortunately I appear to be sculpting it with chocolate and cheeseburgers rather than the much better tools of salads and free weights. But I digress.

Anyway, Ben gave me the book for Christmas. I had never heard of Klosterman, but since I don't read SPIN or browse the rock and roll section of Powell's I don't think it particularly strange. So here I am with this book that I desperately want to read right away, (I love getting books as gifts. They say so much about the relationship between the gift-er and the gift-ee.) but I had a long trip coming up and I felt I should save it for the twenty some odd hours of travel time I had in store.

I resisted the urge to indulge in instant gratification and saved my new book for the last leg of my journey. I had by then exhausted all of the other books that were tucked here and there in my carry-on, plus the one that I purchased in the Mexico City airport. So with seven hours to go I got onto the last plane and pulled out the Klosterman book.

I was laughing out loud and, most likely, annoying my seat-mates (a cute indie couple about my age, so typically Portland that they made me achingly homesick) by the end of "This is Emo". Upon finishing the next essay, "Billy Sim" the woman next to me gave up on trying to sleep and started a crossword while I had to check the "About the Author" blurb on the back jacket. I had to know something about this genius writer.

I was surprised to find that Chuck Klosterman looks like a middle-aged lesbian gym teacher. And not in a good way, not that there is a good way to look like a lesbian gym teacher when you're a straight man, but I feel that description also insults lesbian gym teachers. The problem is, that's precisely the description that comes to mind when I see his photo. I can easily picture, just out of frame, a metal whistle, a clipboard, and unshaven legs ending in flat feet shoved into a pair of crew socks and cross trainers, all ready to wrangle the standard Real World selection of high school girls and force them to play field hockey or dodge ball.

It just this moment occurs to me that should he Google (is it still capitalized when used as a verb?) himself - and who doesn't? - and stumbles across this blog then the previous paragraph may cause him to laugh uproariously, but it won't exactly endear me to him, thus ruining my shot at a torrid cross-country affair. But isn't that the way of things when you get right down to it? It is eventually your own words, the truth that is you-of-the-moment, that brings down your own happiness.

Whatever. Google or no Google; Chuck Klosterman looks like a middle-aged lesbian gym teacher, and I love him. Despite his looks, that are so far out of my norm that were I to show up with someone who looked just like him (but wasn't him) my friends would politely pick their eyeballs up off the floor and put them back into their heads then quietly and one by one pull me aside to ask, again politely and gently, if he was hung like a horse or unreasonably intelligent or could possibly fly. And despite the fact that he spends an inordinate amount of time talking about sports. Of course I consider more than a passing interest to be "inordinate", so I'm biased there. And despite the numerous mentions to a desire to be married in the early parts of the book. (I said I loved him, not that I was willing to permanently not be single for him.) Despite all of that, I still love him.

He made me laugh out loud on a sold-out flight. He made me think a time or two, even if it was just to wonder at what point one would consider the word "seminal" to be overused. And at times it was a bit like reading passages from my own twisted mind, and who doesn't like that?

My favorite section was the untitled inset beginning with, "The twenty-three questions I ask everybody I meet in order to decide if I can really love them."

What makes this my favorite part is not the questions, although they are (with the exception of question 23, which has been posed in several movies and, theoretically more accurately but somehow less conclusively, on television) some of the most obscure and thought-provoking questions I've ever read. (To answer number 19, I would probably say something like, "You snore like a room full of lumberjacks and I've got a mean streak. It's why you love me.") Each question could easily spark a hypothetical discussion that, given the correct participants, could go on for years, proving to be a never-ending supply of road-trip conversation. I suspect they were born out of long periods of time spent traveling with (or without) people who may or may not be interesting. One's mind goes to some very strange places when left to its own devices.

What makes this my favorite part is simply its existence. It just seems so in line with the infamous five pages of "requirements for dating me" that I once put together. What it really comes down to is standards. Not just for those you date, buy for those you let into your life on any level. It's good to have standards; as well as standard conversation starters.

My nose just spewed water everywhere

Nope, that wasn't a figurative thing; it was quite literal. I use a neti pot, and in case you don't know what that is it's a teapot sort of thing that you fill with a warm saline solution then stick up your nose and run the solution through your nasal passages. Once you've rinsed you have to expel the rest of the solution, along with any mucus, by blowing vigorously over the sink and then, as flow slows down, into a tissue. Usually it doesn't take that long. A few blows, a wipe, a few more blows and voila! clear nasal passages. (Amazingly clear. If you don't use one I highly recommend that you at least give it a shot.) So I finish up blowing and wiping and breathing and wiping and one last blow just to be sure. I then made myself a cup of tea and went back into the living room. As I sat down in my chair, leaning to the left to set down my tea, my nose drained at least an ounce of fluid out. So here I am, tea still in one hand, half poised over the chair, and trying not to drop myself or my tea as I desperately try to cup my other hand under my nose before saline and snot not only puddle on the arm of my chair, but dribble destructively into the vents of my laptop.

Well, I guess I didn't say I had important things to say.

I know I haven't been writing much lately

According to my new acupuncturist (although I suspect any acupuncturist, naturopath, herbalist, practitioner of any sort of spiritual healing, anyone with any sort of intuition, my own intuition, or me had someone else asked would say the same thing) the itch in my throat and the block I have with writing and meaningful conversations lately is caused solely by the need to say something specific that for some reason I haven't been saying. Well, I finally said it. The what was said and who it was said to aren't important here, what's important is that it's been said and I am finally free to move on with my life.

So get ready, readers, because I've got a lot to say.

Oh, and sorry for the absence.