A Cranky Ol' Lady Goes a'Blogging

In Portland again

2010-09-02T21:23:00.002-07:00

Here I am in Portland again, enjoying refreshing air with alternating sun & clouds, sometimes a bit of rain. Last weekend, son T was here as well, and we all (five of us) went camping two nights up in Washington, near Mt. St. Helen's in the Gifford Pinchot NF. As son J has accumulated three tents (giant, small, and smaller), T and I didn't have to lug camping gear on our flights. We even got pillows! After leaving pavement, we drove for what seemed like three days on gravel washboard and set up tents in the dark. Sleeping was COLD. We survived, waking to fresh-brewed coffee, blueberry pancakes, and bacon next to a warm fire. J&L sure do know how to camp, and even baby Henry is a veteran camper and giggler. We took short walks (T ran several miles of course), admired the Cispus(?) river roaring past the campground, and T could not see a tree lying across a torrent without walking across it. And we sat around talking, reading, snacking, etc. basically just enjoying being surrounded by Doug-fir, hemlock, and w. redcedar all day instead of city. The second night we all put on more layers and felt cozy.

T's back in Phx, but I opted to extend my stay to be here for J's birthday and so he and L could have a rare night out. Henry is such an easy baby to stay with. Mostly good-natured and entertaining... at least this time. I have to admit that on occasion he has been a pill, but that was before he got used to not-Mom, not-Dad folks. Now, we're good. He works hard all day pulling himself up to standing (and occasionally toppling) and crawling at jet speed all over the place. I bought him a wristband with jingle-bells, which he finds delightful, and we make a lot of goofy noises and faces at each other. When no one else is home, I sing to him. Maybe I'll get my voice back. I've found vocal exercises on the internet that are sworn to reduce or eliminate snoring by strengthening up the back of the throat so it doesn't collapse on itself. They are basically exercises singers use to keep in shape, so it seems logical that I could also get my voice back. I can dream.

The Sparrow

2010-08-22T16:18:00.003-07:00

Yesterday I finished reading The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell, a book so fascinating and at the same time so excruciatingly painful and heartbreaking that I feel run over by a truck. After a while, I guess I'll tackle the sequel, but right now I can't. In short, a group composed of Jesuit priests and various scientist types (in the future) manage (this accomplishment may be the least believable part of the story) to travel to another planet whose inhabitants' eloquent singing broadcasts have been picked up by SETI. They make contact, and the consequences range from ecstasy to unimaginable horror and all points in between. Only one priest makes it back, and his debriefing is interleaved with the group's experience of the years-long visit. Theology is a (the?) major theme, along with ecology, evolution, familial love and friendship. Normally I roll up my eyeballs at stuff about religion, but here the issues are sophisticated, interesting, and challenging enough to knock that prejudice aside, at least for me. There aren't any easy answers here, but there are lots of good questions. (Anyhow, I've always liked the Jesuits.) The author, formerly one of the science types, was raised Catholic but converted to Judaism, and she's writing a lot of her own theological and intellectual struggles and growth into this story. And I'm not going to say what's so horrible because I don't want to be a spoiler. Read it yourself!

Also yesterday, I watched my son T's second Muay Thai fight (he won!), which was also horrifying in a way, but turned out to be much less so than I expected, was actually interesting and made me proud. I only regret that it took place in one of those obnoxious giant casinos way on the other side of town. I hate those places -- all the jangling frenzy rattles me.

Update on the photoshop issue -- It is not totally dysfunctional after all. I can open *.jpg files, but cannot open raw files (*.NEF) without crashing. I do NOT want to give up taking photos in that format. I still haven't done anything except post on the Adobe support forum. Nobody is helping yet. Oh! Haven't checked yet today. Off I go.

And then I'll escape into another quite ordinary and horrific crime novel by Henning Mankell, which will be so soothing after The Sparrow.

The ongoing gripe-fest about broken Photoshop

2010-08-20T13:05:00.003-07:00

What an aggravating day! First, I called Adobe Customer Support for help with my photoshop problem (crashing every time I try to open an image file). I was willing to pay the $39, but no way, no support for me. Why? My Adobe Creative Suite 2 is toooooooo old!!! I was instructed to use the online forum to seek help. (Been there, nothing there, guess I could write something and wait, and wait...) Then I thought, well, maybe I should spring for a more recent version, so I called the ASU computer store and was told I could get CS5 for only $169 if I bring a current class schedule, or if I don't have one but have an ASU ID card ("Sun" card), I can use it one time only, under the policy of being nice to friends/supporters of ASU. Wheeee!

So, at midday, sun glaring, I hit the highway, paid $3 to park (feeling sorrowful not to be in the club any more, no parking permit, no class, out in the cold), trudged in the blazing sun to the computer store, and was told I can't have it without a current schedule. The guy I talked to on the phone was naturally gone for the day. Did I get his name? No, damn it, I am not in the habit of asking everybody's name when I have no clue there will be "issues." However, for an extra $30, I could buy it without a class schedule ($199). Granted, $30 isn't that much, and $199 is still a bargain, but I stood there wavering, resisting, thinking about that course I really want to enroll in but I'm trying to be sensible. Let's see, spend $2000 to save $30? Sure, that's rational. But I still might give in; it's not too late. (The employee even said I can enroll, print out a schedule, then withdraw! Heck, I might want to do that anyhow after attending the first class.) So, I stood there like a donkey starving between two haystacks unable to decide what to do. Finally, I accepted her offer to hold it for me for a week (they disappear like hotcakes).

Then I remembered I'm enrolled in a 1-credit yoga class at the community college! Okay, I call the bookstore there. It's not in the store, but it's available for online order, $199.95. Hmmm, that sounds better than another broiling trek to ASU. I'll eat lunch and think about it.

Oh, this is so boring! Why are you reading this?

Damn it!

2010-08-19T18:35:00.002-07:00

So now I can't use Photoshop! I finally settled in to do a re-install. First I did what turned out to be a pseudo-install, which was quick and didn't change anything. So then I read the instructions in the read-me file, deleted files, emptied trash, and tried again. This time it took a long time and seemed to be going very well until the very end of disk 4, when something did a flibbertygibbet, flashing error messages and swallowing them like minnows. I figured, well, that was just in one of those "Creative Suite" programs I never use anyhow but greedily install as if I might someday become a completely different person. Nope. Photoshop crashed as soon as I tried to open an image file. Bummer. When I work up the frustration tolerance quotient again, I'll re-try but only install Photoshop. Hah. It'll never work. I really don't want to face a trip to Tempe to buy a more recent version, which I'd love to have, but facing the broiling sun, the long walk from parking to the student discounted store, the risk of having my outdated student ID rejected and therefore having walked in the sun for nothing, or the expense if successful -- all that is daunting. But maybe if I go tomorrow, before fall semester actually starts, maybe I can still use the ID. Heavy, all this decision-making.

Meanwhile I'm loafing (reading) a lot and occasionally cleaning some corner of the house in preparation for house-shoppers. If I only do a little bit at a time, I can just barely stand it. Yesterday I was in a funk, so I went to a tiny meeting of the Glendale Poets at the library. That was fun, perked me up a lot. The leader is a sweet missionary-type lady about my age who patters on and on, kinda gets on my nerves. The cut in library hours has required her to change the monthly meeting time, the prolonged details of which I heard three times as people kept coming in late. Then we read some poems (the fun part). There were only five of us, and happily nobody brought anything to write with, so we didn't do any writing exercises. (I hate writing exercises. I wanna be left alone when I write.) It was the first time I'd attended, and I said I'd come back, but I may have been lying.

To enroll or not to enroll?

2010-08-15T14:49:00.002-07:00

Here's something else bugging me. I've been taking poetry courses at ASU for the past several semesters. I am hungry for this. I learn so much. The professors have been wonderful, each one unique and brilliant in his/her own way. But it's so damn expensive! And tuition keeps going up, up, up. This fall semester, tuition + fees for a 3-credit course is almost $2000! So, I sit here dying to take a 500-level poetry course that will be demanding and juicy, will feed my mind and spirit, and not taking the step to enroll because I think I should not be spending that much these days, with personal circumstances in a state of turnover and too much credit card debt and my inheritance dwindling as the market wallows in an apparently long-term funk. I know that's the right decision, the practical and cautious decision, but I ache to enroll, I salivate to be challenged in a classroom dedicated to poetry. Damn. I might (usually do) have a sudden last-minute change of heart and just throw money at myself! Thinking...

Realtors aren't all alike

2010-08-15T14:12:00.002-07:00

This new realtor is so different. He called today wanting to bring someone over, and of course we are sloths and haven't done any cleaning up yet. He didn't care! He said if that mattered to them, they weren't really a serious buyer anyhow. Wow! The previous realtor (prissy old phoney woman with fake hair & show-off clothes to make her look young) had us working like demons and paying hundreds to cleaners, and she also said we had to leave the house for hours while people often didn't even show or took their time, which is a genuine hardship in this heat & no place to take a dog except Petsmart or Petco, which gets very, very old very, very quickly. Our signatures on the paper have barely cooled, and later this afternoon he wants to bring someone else as well. Same realtor, buying and selling -- that's what I did, and I regretted it, because I should have made a lower offer and didn't negotiate at all because I was a complete dummy. But hey, I'm keeping my mouth shut. Uhh, it occurs to me that maybe he's not putting the house on MLS and exposing it to other realtors. Amazing, we didn't think to ask, just left him to his own devices, feeling kinda glum and non-activist.

What a slug day. Just listening to NPR and playing solitaire mostly. Exercised yesterday, which livened me up. I usually don't go to Bally's on consecutive days but maybe I should. I even slept late this morning, catching up on shortages all week, as I stay up too late to be getting up at six to walk the dog. Dog and me loafing today. Anyone who knows me has to be astonished to hear that I have been getting up every morning between six and seven. Me too. It actually feels good to be out before the sun is high enough to get mean. This week is gonna be awful, temps close to 110 and overnight lows in the 90's. Why do people live here? I feel pissed off all the time. I keep scheduling things I have to do, not leaving me gaps to get out of town. Dumb. I know, I can go to REI today and shop for a pad for camping. Yeah!

There's more

2010-08-14T20:21:00.002-07:00

Aha! Back again, twice in one day. Why? I'm bored. My photoshop software is fucked up, so I can't work on my photos. It has been showing signs of damage ever since my first iMac's motherboard went south and I bought a new one (new iMac, not motherboard). Something happened. Updates would no longer install. I've lived with it, cuz it's already got too much stuff in it anyhow, for me, so who needs updates? Me, apparently. Now, just this afternoon, when I tried to add photos from Alt-89, the plateau, every time I try to open an image file, the program crashes. I'm reluctant to haul out the original CD's and re-install, probably will have to wrestle with Adobe's paranoid security restrictions and will get mad and spoil my day. So here I am, whining in public.

Not far, maybe a mile, outside Bryce Canyon National Park sits a restaurant that displays a braggy sign about their homemade soups and pies. I'm a sucker for homemade soups and pies, and I was hungry, so I stopped... and so did everybody else. There I was, dusty grayhead all alone. Restaurants hate to waste table space on singles. They gave me suspicious glances as I sat waiting for a table to come available, then they (guiltily, avoiding my eyes) escorted me to the counter (without even asking if I minded sitting there). I did mind, but I stifled it. I got to watch frantic staff rushing back and forth in front of me, behind the counter, avoiding my eyes and muttering about people at certain tables. Finally I got a menu. Eventually a waitress appeared -- mine! I asked what kinds of homemade soups they had. Just one: tomato and macaroni. (Tomato and macaroni? Why?) I asked, does it have anything else in it? Ummmm, maybe some ground beef. I ordered a cheeseburger with bacon, kind of pouting, and buried myself in a New Yorker magazine. When the burger (and fries) arrived, I asked for barbeque sauce, and was surprised to get it. Then I tasted the burger. It was excellent! Really, really good! And so were the fries. And so was the blueberry pie I ordered for dessert. So, after all that irritation, I ended up liking the doggone place. You never know.

I wrote about eating chicken at the Rock Springs Cafe north of Phoenix, but I forgot all about my accident! Before leaving on my trip I had tripped over the little stone wall between my front yard and the sidewalk, and I carried the resulting shin bruises around for weeks. They were just about gone when I fell again at the Rock Springs Cafe. To enter the place, one has to navigate wooden beams laid to form three small steps down from the parking lot level. They sported a coat of brand spanking new lurid, practically glowing, bright yellow paint. I saw it, admired the yellowness, and fell right off it, splat. Hurt, but not really. But now my shins are bruised all over again, one of the bruises bulging up angrily. They acted panicked, like other folks have fallen (hence the new paint job?) and they are sensitive about it. Well, hell, one arrives there dazed by freeway driving and the motherfucking heat, and it's no wonder one fails to correctly interpret the lovely yellow and falls flat! Someday somebody's gonna break a bone and sue somebody. I have an idea: paint black stripes on the yellow, at an angle, changing the angle for each step, so it's not pretty any more and just maybe suggests a warning. (Maybe I should email them about my idea.) The three steps, all the same color as they are, kind of blend together like a single surface; they don't look like steps but just a bunch of yellow stuff merged.

Home not home

2010-08-14T14:20:00.006-07:00

This is a view of Deadman Pass in the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon, off I-84. Traveling east, exiting at the Deadman Pass rest area, one has to squeeze through a teeny underpass (crossing under the freeway) and drive three miles east of the rest area to find this viewpoint, which I think was worth the trouble. Bye-bye Oregon, for now.

Oh, how do I let it go so long (writing here)? Maybe it's because a lot of what's on my mind is grubby details I don't much want to write about here. I dreaded coming home, facing the necessity of tiresome details of putting an end to a dead marriage. Been home a week now, everything pretty calm and dreary. Met with a realtor, put the house on the market for a little less than what I paid for it in 1997 and not nearly enough over what we owe to give us a decent send-off. Oh well, so it goes.

So, I paused a few days in Portland and then headed on home by way of Bryce Canyon National Park, which was overflowing with visitors gabbling in many languages. Camping was not even remotely possible, everything full, so I just drove around stopping at viewpoints and taking some very short walks, soaking up the spooky beauty of mostly-orange eroding rock formations and enjoying the audacity of begging crows.

At a "natural bridge" so close to the viewing area it seems to smack one in the face, a young lady went on about how Bryce Canyon isn't a canyon (it's an eroding plateau) and the natural bridge isn't a bridge (since it doesn't go anywhere, nothing on the other end). So true, like something Congress might authorize spending to build. And like "reality" shows aren't.

After, I barely made it to Kanab, Utah, before I had to stop and sleep. All that gorgeous scenery I saw on the way north was hidden in darkness (and light rain), no fun driving this part sleepy. I'll be back one day, and I'll visit more of the dense cluster of parks and monuments and other varieties of spectacular preserved nature in southern Utah. A pity I won't ever live near them, as I've had my fill of ultraconservative states.

In Arizona, I took Alt-89 instead of regular, treating myself to the lonesome beauty of a high plateau. I watched a black-throated sparrow singing his heart out on a grass stem. I noticed lots of places to pull off the road and sleep, nobody to shine a flashlight in and object. I'll be back.

All this time, all the time I was gone, temperature and weather varied but was always COOL. The descent into Phoenix was depressing. One bright spot was the Rock Springs Cafe. Of course they have good pies, but I had already had pie two days in a row. I focused on non-sweet food. I saw fried chicken on the menu, and with little hope, I asked if dark meat was available. I was agreeably shocked to be informed that I would get the pieces of half a chicken. It was the best fried chicken I've had in years and years and years. It was a small chicken, tasted fresh and the pieces were crispy and cooked to perfection (juicy! even the white meat!). Yum.

I drug my ass home. Grumpy, when he saw me, looked like he was expecting me to assault him (probably because of that email he sent when I was at the writers' conference). Obviously, I did no such thing, chose to ignore the email as a misguided outburst not to be taken seriously. That may not be accurate, but as a working hypothesis it works better than fighting about it. Everything is calm here, not happy but at least tolerable until Oct. 31, when Grumpy is done with school and ready to find some sort of job and go it alone.

You'd think I'd be working hard to get my stuff in order to facilitate the move. Hmmmm. Not yet, at least not much. Little things. First job was to panic over 8 lbs weight gain, only to see it disappear after four days of excessive defecation (big piles of road poop!). Tossed out many old files, found insurance policies, requested beneficiary change forms, saw the tax man who recommended a mediator for divorce while I was signing off on the '09 tax forms, thought about amendments to my trust, etc. Mostly I'm reading mystery novels and a few books of poetry, exercising, getting up early for dogwalks and feeling sleepy all day, huffing at Bally Fitness, etc., and best of all, hours and hours working on my photos from the trip!

Life goes on.

Camped on Hoh River

2010-07-30T22:36:00.003-07:00

On the way back Portland from Neah Bay & Ozette, I traveled down the coast on 101 and found myself in endless forest w/ no motels and getting late. Finally saw a "lodging" sign directing me into a driveway, a B&B, which of course was full, but the superfriendly woman called a friend who takes in folks when everything is full. I found my way and was welcomed into a private home where I slept in one of those bedrooms overstuffed to the brim with photos, pillows, bric-a-brac, and who-knows-what-all. But the bed was comfy and I shared a bathroom with her visiting son.

On the road again, after sausage gravy (outasight) over biscuits (like concrete) and coffee in the Forks Coffee Shop, I checked out some campsites and was hooked by one in Hoh Oxbow campground. Here's my li'l tent and the view from the foot-high picnic table.

I stopped midmorning and had the whole day to enjoy views of the Hoh River, Stellar jays, chestnut-backed chickadees, and reading The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest on the midget picnic table supported by my rolled-up sleeping bag. I was a super-permeable sponge, absorbing nature like a tonic. Then it got dark and cold! Shit, I didn't have enough warm clothing. Leaving Phoenix in July, it just didn't seem possible that there'd be any use for a hooded sweatshirt. Somehow I managed, was almost comfortable, slept well. Then headed back to Portland, where today I took Grandbaby to the park again and let him chew on Maple leaves.

Cape Flattery

2010-07-30T20:11:00.004-07:00

My visit to the northwest extreme corner of Washington was spectacular. Cape Flattery is breathtaking. I only regret that I limited myself to the main trail, which was short (3/4 mile one way) and made easy by tree slices, boardwalks, and viewing platforms. On the way back I noticed a side trail, unmarked, which I later learned was 3.3 miles long and led to the Strait side rather than the Pacific side of the cape, and that if one was brave enough to use the ropes, one could actually get down to the beach level. Ha! Not me! But I wish now that I had at least walked to the edge for the view, a photo of which was displayed in the Makah Museum. Instead, I drove down to Ozette Lake and took a trail out to the beach there (Sand Point). It was also 3 miles each way, with ups and downs, and so I realize I could have done the other, which would have been more rewarding. Oh well, I'll have to go back to Neah Bay and see Cape Flattery again some day.

I just can't seem to ever get tired of this view!

Okay, okay, I'll stop. It was late afternoon and very misty, so that's why the photos look subdued. At one viewpoint, there was a herring gull nest perched precariously very high up on a rock ledge. Three fuzzy gray chicks wandered around a few inches this way and that, somehow not falling off. The area is a nature preserve, which explains the very limited access. I wonder how long before somebody starts dumping, or drilling and spilling. It seems there's no end in sight for stupid, blindered spoilage of our planet. So I won't complain about restrictions.

The Makah Nation's museum was beautifully designed. I had read their web site, about their history of whaling (eight men in a canoe!), recently resuscitated in coordination with current regulations and restrictions. I saw a replica of the whaling canoe and samples of their traditional equipment in the museum, including sealskin balloons to tire the whale (a ritual now abbreviated by the more humane shooting after the lancing is accomplished). They also hunted fur seals and sea lions from slightly smaller canoes. An excellent video documentary was playing continuously, relating the tribe's history and present efforts to bring traditional knowledge back to life. Their history was limited to memories and oral tradition until a mudslide revealed a 500-yr-old village at Ozette with a multitude of artifacts reinforcing oral history (and by the way persuading the U.S. government to allow them to use fishing nets when it was proven, by remnants of fish nets made from nettles, that nets were traditional, not introduced by white settlers). I was so impressed by the museum that I was moved to buy t-shirts and a beautiful coffee mug (like I don't have way too many of both already).

Leaving Fort Worden & writers' conference

2010-07-25T20:17:00.003-07:00

This is one of the views I was privileged to live with twenty steps from my dorm (an old barracks next to a drill field, used in filming An Officer and a Gentleman) at the Port Townsend Writers' Conference the past week. On some days, both Mount Ranier and Mount Baker were visible. Poor me.

The conference was stimulating, exhausting, and sometimes amazing. I think I will remember Denise Chavez acting out the borderlands characters in her fiction for the rest of my life. She is a national treasure. Chris Abani and Martin Espada also left indelible marks. But most of all I will remember Erin Belieu, faculty for the workshop I and 14 others participated in. She was an excellent choice for me, though I had no clue of this when I signed up. She "gets" my poetry, and I "get" hers. If she weren't in Tallahassee, Florida, I'd try to go study with her. Friday night, I had read my old standby poems at an open mike and got exuberant responses from the audience. Then Saturday I met with Erin one-on-one, when she helped identify needed changes to make the poems' on-paper quality live up to their audience appeal. She also made some suggestions and gave me some contacts for finding a low-res MFA program that would be likely to suit me. I feel validated, encouraged, and motivated. She told me (staring hard as though trying to physically force me to "get" it) that I'm ready to submit and to aim high, which obviously made my day (i.e. sent me into a manic state which I harnessed by staying in my room to read a novel last night instead of going to the reception).

Now I'm in Port Angeles, at a comfy motel, after driving all of fifty miles today and checking in at noon. I had the best, juiciest, freshest-tasting grilled oysters at The Bushwhacker (google maps thinks it's "Bushwacker") restaurant, with a glass of Castle Rock pinot noir, and lemon lavender ice cream for dessert. Tomorrow I head for the Makah reservation, Flattery Beach, Neah Bay, etc., on the farthest northwest tongue-tip of Washington state. Maybe I'll finally pitch that tent I've been hauling around.

Writers' conference a blast!

2010-07-20T13:18:00.002-07:00

Whew! It's only day 2 and already I need time off for a nap. Workshop with Erin Belieu meets every morning for two and a half hours. I haven't read her poetry yet (just bought a book), but she's very sharp and good at this. I've already gained new perspectives and learned to notice things I hadn't yet. Her dry humor is delicious. An assignment kept me up late doing a poem for today, but we stopped just before reading mine, so I feel groggy without the compensation. Oh well. Yesterday I tried out an afternoon workshop, which was a waste of time. The instructor only commented on the best of everyone's effort without attention to improvements needed. Then a "craft lecture" by Chris Abani, who is like a lightning strike (bought two of his books after). Guts, intensity, no bullshit. Then an evening reading: poems by Dana Levin, written after deaths of both parents, a sister, and sundry relatives -- clear-eyed death's head stuff with Aztec blood and gore mixed in. Holy shit. Then Peter Orner read humorish snatches from his life, good but overshadowed by Dana. Finally, starting at 10 pm when I should have been finishing my poem, an open mike session, to which at the last minute I failed to take any poems and was shamed (in good humor, but still). I know, but I felt queasy at the last moment here in a strange land.

Back up to Sunday evening -- a reading by Martin Espada, who oddly swiveled his hips around while reading heartfelt culturally insightful and humorous poems (I can see why his books are already gone from the teeny bookstore and his workshop was filled long before I signed up).

Today, having learned the afternoon workshops are not my best investment of time, I'm taking a much-needed break to read, check bank accounts, write here, and just relax. The food is so good I skipped lunch today, still full from breakfast. I heard that up until a couple of years ago it was humdrum institutional-type food. Now, we are bowled over by multitudes of fresh, local veggie choices and all the trimmings (yeah, meat too, but it's so dull in comparison). They even make good coffee. (Duh.)

And I haven't even mentioned the ocean! The woods! The chilly breezes and sporadic sunshine! Birds! I'm having a ball. Now that I've finally located a building where wireless internet seems to work, I'll be back, maybe with photos.

To the park with Henry

2010-07-15T17:47:00.003-07:00

Grandma's first stroller outing with Henry was a blast -- back to Alberta Park, this time with grandbaby on wheels. First we trucked around to give me the required daily exercise, then we settled in the grass to wait for a free swing. Henry rips grass out of the ground with a passion! Grandma intercepts grass on its way to the mouth, and he doesn't seem to mind. Finally, our turn. Surely I'll always remember how much fun I had the first time I took Henry to the swings. He is such a fun, happy baby, makes wonderful noises and faces, makes me feel fine.

Aaaaah, Portland!

2010-07-14T18:21:00.003-07:00

A walk turned into a layabout when I reached Alberta Park, a few blocks from the house. Grass brilliant chlorophyll-green, soft, and cool. Air cool in the shade and softer than clouds. Stretched out under a large, splayed sycamore tree, I watched leaves tremble while maybe an hour passed. Why somebody like me has spent so many years in Phoenix is a mystery. Even grassy parks are spiky, never mind the natural landscape. I feel myself coming to life here, smiling more, relaxing and breathing (despite the remnants of a cold) more freely.

On the move

2010-07-12T08:51:00.003-07:00

I'm loafing the morning away in a motel in Beaver, Utah. It's okay. I was exhausted last night. I got out of the house and hit the road before noon yesterday, which is rare for me. Then, once I hit Flagstaff, which was blessed with 70 degrees and sporadic fits of sprinkly rain, I felt so good I took an hour-and-a-half lunch break at my favorite little restaurant, kinda homey and veggie, with good coffee. My veggie melt sandwich was soggy (were the veggies grilled on the bread, where they sweated into it?), but I didn't care. I stared out the window at the three sister peaks and gloried over not being in Phoenix.

Then I took off north on hwy 89. I hadn't ever gone this way any farther than Sunset Crater. The scenery was exciting, and there wasn't much traffic. Rocks started looking Grand Canyonish. Emergency vehicles streamed by at intervals, and eventually I saw the reason. A vehicle lay upside down in a gully off the road. I get the shivers when this happens, feeling like it could be me and I'm not ready to die. Then I worry about all the loose ends (failure to update beneficiaries on insurance policies, for example) and swear to fix it all when I get home. Ha.

Hwy 89 took me past the turnoffs to the north rim and Bryce Canyon National Park, which I'd thought to dawdle at, maybe camp for the first time in years. But I had decided to do my dawdling on the way home when no time crunch will bother me. Even without leaving the highway, the scenery was glorious in southern Utah. I finally cut over to I-15 on hwy 20 and found a motel. Today I'll get through Salt Lake City and onto I-84 toward Portland.

On the way home it will be much easier to wrassle stuff in and out of the car. Right now a giantic oil painting of redwoods (once my grandparents' and then Mom's, now on its way to my oldest son) is wedged in on top of everything. It took me half a day to wrap it up in many layers of protection. I hope I did well.

My thoughts reach toward Grumpy and Lady, left at home in the heat. Grumpy has finally fully digested the fact that when we finally sell the house we will not be living together any longer. It took him a long time to believe me. First, stunned and disbelieving; then waiting for me to change my mind (he wants me to get back on Paxil); and finally showing signs of grieving, which means it has finally sunk in. I hope he gets to the point of acceptance, understanding that I don't hate him but in fact have a lot of tender feeling for him despite the differences that have become intolerable. I hope this interlude with me out of the house gives him a chance to come to a state of acceptance that doesn't include vitriol. I try to imagine what is going through his mind. He doesn't want to talk. I told him that I think he should take Lady when we finally do split up. He wanted and found her, and I'm more inclined to be unencumbered at this point, though I'll take her if he doesn't want to or can't. I feel sad. But I do not have any second thoughts. This is long overdue.

Back to bed bugs

2010-07-08T20:14:00.002-07:00

I forgot to add the last but not necessarily final chapter of the bed bug saga. About a week ago, both of us feeling stronger finally, Grumpy decided to try sleeping in the bedroom again. After all this time, residual poisons lying around everywhere, we were discouraged to find a couple of live bugs under the edge of the mattress that had been resting on the floor. Squashed them, naturally, and observed a few others, nicely dead. So, we took some evasive actions: Bought a bed frame to elevate the bed off the floor; sheathed mattress and box springs in bed bug proof (and mite proof) very expensive zippered covers; trashed all old pillows & replaced them with bed bug proof (and mite proof) pillows; put diatomaceous earth in plastic bowls under all the roller legs of the bed frame; scattered diatomaceous earth along the baseboards. (That stuff slices up their exoskeletons.) We also kept the bed clear of the wall. Hopefully, there was no way for a bed bug to get into the bed, except possibly by climbing up onto the ceiling and dropping.

So far, so good. No bites. There may very well be some live bed bugs trapped in the encapsulated mattress, but they can't get out. Die! (It only takes a year to 18 months for them to die of starvation.)

Need I add that I did not participate in this experiment (except to shop and help set it up)? Grumpy is brave and rational; I am not. I am edging toward solitude and have taken up permanent residence in one of the spare bedrooms at the other end of the house. I like it there. I'm as alone as I can be at this point. I have silence while reading, and Grumpy has all the TV or radio noises he desires all night long, suffering no complaints or snide remarks from me. And, thanks to an east window, I continue to get up early almost every morning and take Lady to the park for a runaround.

Tonight I drug my old but like-new Eureka Timberline tent #2 (#1, genuinely old, has zipper problems) from the garage into the back yard, where I miraculously remembered how to set it up. If the opportunity presents itself, I can camp out on my road trip. I'm dusting myself off and remembering how to be me.

Grouchy dog park

2010-07-07T22:37:00.002-07:00

First there was the time we got locked into dog park. Now, it's the chairs. The city had provided a lot of inexpensive plastic chairs for dog park visitors. One evening I arrived to find everyone talking about the scarcity of intact chairs inside the fence and the huge pile of demolished chairs outside. They looked like they'd been torn up by a herd of grizzly bears. Is this an experiment in human behavior when resources are limited? Is there a camera posted somewhere recording us? Did those teenage boys who tried to lock us in come back with a vengeance?

Now there aren't nearly enough chairs, and a struggle has developed between the folks on the small dog side and the large dog side for what chairs there are. On the large dog side, we large dog people were grousing about how many chairs had been moved to the small dog side, and there were now more chairs than people over there. So, our self-appointed social director, who likes to put chairs in a big circle and invite people and dogs to congregate and socialize, took it upon himself to raid the small dog side's chair collection. We were all pretty happy until the very loud and obnoxious church lady from the small dog side came storming over. Words were exchanged ("You don't own the fucking park, lady" and "You must be a devil to take a chair away from a disabled person"). It seems that one of the chairs moved was actually the personal property of somebody, though there was no way to tell that. Some of us made snide remarks about the church lady, who had been annoying us for weeks yakking at the top of her lungs on her cell phone about church stuff and yelling at her dog. That was last night. Tonight, hardly any chairs were left on the big dog side (again), and many of the regulars were missing. (Grumpy and I, thinking ahead, had brought our own chairs.) In the social director's absence, people weren't all that sociable. I started making snide comments to Grumpy about the cluelessness of certain dog owners who haven't a clue how to communicate with their animals. Plus, it was about a hundred degrees at 10 pm. Kind of soured us. It's a good idea to rotate among several dog parks so one doesn't just get sick of certain people. Or just stay home.

Film: The Road

2010-07-01T02:14:00.002-07:00

Stayed up late tonight to watch The Road. Good to remind myself there can be worse things than bed bugs. I've put it off this long, dreading it, because I've read the book and remember how that felt. The plodding grey horror of it was awful, yet I feel compelled to re-dip myself in it because I have a serious dread of some predictive truth in it, some devastating catastrophe destroying most of us, without any explanation, making no rational sense at all. So many things have already gone awry as our species furiously reproduces and ravishes its life support system. The will to correct course is too weak, and most of us in relatively wealthy nations haven't a clue how to survive without our gadgets. I'd like to think of myself as a possible survivor, but if my reaction to bed bugs is any indication, I'll probably be hysterical and as useless as anyone else. I'd have to latch on to a Viggo Mortensen type and play helper. Probably our own catastrophe will (already is) come about gradually rather than suddenly, with a steady escalation of application of ineffective remedies and increasing panic. Shit, I hope I die first.

Gotta shake off this morose and pessimistic state of mind. Better dive into another Kurt Wallander murder mystery. Ah, maybe not. The theme of social rot runs through all Mankell's novels, an uneasy recognition of a shift in the nature of social violence.

Today I felt well enough to toddle around buying bug-proof pillows and mattress covers and a bed frame. Tomorrow, assembly. Night checks have revealed no live bed bugs! Can it be true? Have we killed them? Tomorrow night Grumpy (and I?) may face up to the only true test: warm blood-filled bodies exuding carbon dioxide in the dark (and probably leaping up every hour to flash on the lights to check for creepie crawlies).

Another triumph today -- for the first time since Grumpy's surgery and other maladies, I got a strand of my life back, printed and read the poems for the workshop in Port Townsend. A tingle of poetic impulse revived. I could almost see myself writing again, felt the itch to roll words around.

Resurrection

2010-06-30T11:10:00.002-07:00

The past few days I have been flattened by a terrible, terrible cold -- one of those that makes one question all sorts of things, like scientific research priorities. Seriously, figuring out how to whip the common cold virus(es?) would surely elevate the quality of human existence more than beating cancer. And that's not to denigrate the horror of cancer. Not at all. But these horrible colds hit more (all) of us over and over again and, without actually killing us, knock us down and out, make us question the value of life, turn us into grouchy fountains of virus reproduction, push us over the edge of sanity and self control into helpless, hysterical, inert, useless, whiny and self-absorbed meat packages -- or maybe that's just me. (Don't even get me started on flu.)

Grumpy drove last night, took Lady to dog park and even brought home nectarines and bananas. The first drive went well. Whew! What a relief. Maybe I'll get my life back. The hours I've spent this week (coughing, sneezing, dripping) sitting in VA hospital waiting rooms reading murder mysteries and playing spider solitaire on my iPhone have been a life-consuming drag. Upside, a doctor agreed that Grumpy should reduce his dosage of blood pressure medication by half. Hopefully this will mean the end of dizzy spells & end of worry about not being able to leave on my trip. So far, so good. No more scary spells.

Now that I'm upright again, though staggering a bit, it's time to try re-occupying the bedroom to learn whether our war against the vampire bugs has triumphed. But first, we will purchase bug-proof jackets for mattress and box springs and bug-proof pillows to replace all our pillows, even my cherished down pillows. They've been baked, and a couple of the pillows have little shadow impressions of (presumably) bed bugs baked to a crisp in their dying last escape attempts. Shudder. I cannot really lay down my head again on those pillows. Fresh start. Any bed bugs still alive (or newly hatched) inside the mattress will at least not be able to get out. I wish they were capable of intense psychic suffering during the 18 months it takes for one to die of starvation! None have been observed venturing out during the night to crawl over the mattress, so maybe we actually got them all. Nevertheless, bug jackets will cover all mattresses from now on.

Bummed

2010-06-27T22:31:00.002-07:00

Abert's towhee and curve-billed thrasher in the back yard this evening. The towhee is the one I thought might be a female cowbird the other day. Today I saw the rufous patch under their tails (two of them).

Another trip to escape bug-killing spray, this time Grumpy's DIY, and the destination was Flagstaff. I looked forward to at least a peek at Kachina trail, but fire had closed down the National Forest altogether. Bummer. At least we got to feel cool air. We stayed at the Motel 6 (West Woodland Village). The room was oddly redecorated -- no carpet, weird raised sink, hard mattresses. On the drive home, I started scratching at itchy bumps on the back of my neck. I had checked for bed bug sign, but maybe that's what it is? Meanwhile, a scratchy throat developed into a full-blown cold. Today I'm slightly better than yesterday, but feeling very beaten down in general. Took Grumpy for a mall walk this afternoon; he did two laps while I punked out after lap 1. I hate mall walking. Then he had a bad dizzy spell after we got home & his blood pressure was low (over-medicated?). I'm supposed to take off for a week-long writers' conference in Port Townsend, Washington, in less than two weeks. If I have to cancel that after paying a thousand bucks, I'm going to be livid and deeply resentful. Maybe I can hire somebody to check on Grumpy while I'm gone. I'm a pity party tonight.

Bragging rights

2010-06-25T10:03:00.003-07:00

This morning I got up at 6 am to take Lady for a run in the park -- a first. Given the killer temperatures the past couple of days, it was a triumph to get outdoors before we hit 90 degrees (it was 89) and before the sun's direct rays could heighten the torture. My current bedroom with east-facing window and no curtains is impacting my sleep/wake behavior on one end. The other end (what time I hit the bed in the evening) is harder to change. Maybe a mid-day nap? Absorbed in a Henning Mankell murder mystery after a hard afternoon doing housework and deserving of that reward, I can't seem to put the book down before 1 am. Still, I've been getting up at 7-ish for a while now, an amazing turn of events for me. Perhaps my whole life will change as I shift to 6am. Will it last?

Disturbing a dusty heap, I cringe, expecting the worst. During my prolonged resistance phase, I might notice the heap, have a momentary impulse to do something about it, cringe, and stifle the impulse. Transitioning to action has been traumatic these past weeks. Perhaps it will stick. Going on strike, feeling petulant and justified in my secret war, has been futile and self denigrating. Of course, it's not just my fucked up marriage psychology working on me. It goes back to my mother, my childhood, my rebellion and haughty rejection of the whole kit-and-caboodle. I'm contemplating (with disgust) the therapeutic benefits of bed bug infestation.

Another treatment & a vacation

2010-06-24T21:00:00.004-07:00

The high today was about 112-113, and now at 9 pm it's still 106 outside. No dog park tonight! Isn't this a bit early for such high temperatures?

Update on the ongoing bed bug saga: Tuesday, another spray session in master bedroom and bath, plus. I did a passable job cleaning the rooms, and we emptied out all the dresser drawers completely this time. Grumpy managed to do his own. Thank you. More bags and boxes of junk baking in the back yard, including our Dish network receivers, which probably wasn't good for them. However, in case bugs are hiding inside... gotta do it.

Exhausted and both of us grumpy as hell, we leaped into the car and took off toward Prescott (where it was just slightly cooler than Phoenix) and found a "budget" motel that seemed okay. You can damn well be sure I checked the mattress for bed bug sign! I took Lady out to visit the "field" behind the motel where I'd been advised to take her by the obsequious desk clerk (Indian or Pakistani?) who also passed on a second hand restaurant recommendation (more on that later). The "field" looked wonderful on first inspection. The landscape rolled away down into a hidden depression (canyon?) that looked interesting, but a barbed-wire fence marked off the smallish area intended for motel doggies to wander around in -- or so I thought. No one around, Lady is always good about running circles around me when I take her off the leash, so that's what I did. But here, she was super-excited, doing a good imitation of reluctant city dog suddenly seeing wide open spaces again after a year's restraint. She took off so fast my head spun. No circles. She lit out in a straight line for the horizon, oblivious to prickly pear and not slowing down one iota for the barbed-wire fence. She had forgotten me, like city dust. When I took out after her, calling in all the voices I knew -- playful, demanding, panicky -- a zillion crunchy desert weeds loosed their multi-zillion sharp-as-glass-shards seeds directly into the openings in my Keen half-sandals, half-boots. I was too panicked to stop, sure I was losing Lady. I stopped at the fence (reluctant to crawl even though the lowest wire was about two feet off the ground) and called and called. Oh so reluctantly and with many second thoughts, she finally stopped, her gaze still on the far horizon instead of on me. She made a couple of restarts, then oh so reluctantly turned toward me, changing her mind repeatedly and back again. Thankful for so much off-leash conditioning, thankful she even remembered me, I snapped that leash on (bubbling over with praise and gratitude) and never took it off again until safe at home. Considerable prickly-pear spine extraction was required (Lady, not me).

If you ever go to Prescott Valley (the make-believe town 7 miles or so before you get to Prescott), you have to eat at Oliva's Mexican Restaurant. It's bright yellow, can't miss it. Our appetizer was a mountain of nachos with great piles of guacamole. Stunned, we would have cancelled the main course if it hadn't come straight away -- carnitas, with the best seasoned rice I've ever tasted and absolutely delicious altogether. No regrets. We had two meals out of it. Another drive up there just to eat is highly probable.

We luxuriated in a kingsize bed, stayed as late as possible the next morning, and drove home the scenic route (by way of Wickenburg (sp?) instead of the freeway), glum at the prospect of facing the home front anew. That night (about 1 am) I flashed on the light in the bedroom and found two live bed bugs on the mattress. Damn varmints!! But it takes a few days for bugs who were hiding in crevices to come crawling out to search for food, which they do every 4-7 days more or less. So maybe all is not lost. Grumpy has already shopped at Home Depot and brought home six bug bombs for a DIY in a day or so, plus diatomaceous earth to scatter along baseboards (maybe mattress also?) and cut them up.

Today, I made deep progress in cleaning the living room. My gut is knotted up with the effort, but I am finally starting to get into this cleaning stuff, hating it less. Here's hoping.

Surviving extermination

2010-06-21T23:18:00.002-07:00

I'm so tired I forgot what I was going to write about. Oh. Exterminators coming back tomorrow, so we've been doing even more cleaning out of cabinets and drawers and closets. I threw away about half my clothes. Tonight I cleaned the bathroom adjacent to the bedroom which hasn't really been cleaned since we tried to sell the house two years ago. Fucking disgusting.

I have a neurotic thing about housework. I can block out dirt and disarray, and I do. But when it finally has to be done, I am almost sick. I can only do a little at a time. The accumulation of grime disgusts me, and I am also disgusted at myself for letting it get that way. But, since I do not live alone, I end up cleaning up after the other, resent it, fury builds, and I go on strike. Grumpy is even more oblivious to dirt and mess than I am. I hate the whole "wife" thing. I never wanted to be a "wife," as it blends too easily into "housewife." This is one of many reasons I want to live alone.

This evening I sat on my back yard patio noticing birds and a large, exotic-looking butterfly that whipped past my face under the grapefruit tree and then shot over to the tangelo tree and disappeared. I rescued my little patio table from under Grumpy's junk and went inside to find binoculars and bird and butterfly books. A Gila woodpecker (or, more likely, a pair) has established itself near my yard and flies back and forth yelling. A hummingbird was checking out the tangelo foliage. A dull brown dove (inca? mourning?) sat around not showing me its tail, so I couldn't figure it out. Grackles with raggedy tails and mouthfuls of food in a hurry, a female cowbird (bronze? brown-headed?), unshutupable mockingbirds, house finches... It was nice to sit there as the air cooled and not feel about to be eaten by jungly foliage. I think the butterfly was a giant swallowtail (suburbs, citrus = fits), though I didn't see its pattern well enough to be sure. It had unusually pointy forewings and was mostly black. Now that I've stared at the photo, I'll hope for another look.

Eventually, I was able to go back inside and tackle housework.

Still there

2010-06-19T23:02:00.003-07:00

Tonight, 11 pm, entered the vampire bug chamber and flashed on the lights. One adult size bed bug was cruising around on the mattress. I shuddered in horror, searched for and found poison spray, zapped it, and retreated. Here we go again.

I'm getting more and more comfy in my little private bedroom. I need to move in a bedside table and reading lamp and put up curtains.

Yesterday and today the yard cleanup crew was here. The head-high forest of gnarly weeds is gone from the lawnless east side of the house. The citrus trees have had their skirts raised and the thriving baby palm trees and Russian sumacs and gargantuan weeds torn from their shade. The bermuda grass has been razed and the rotten fruit scooped up. The yard looks scalped. The driveway is filled with bags of yard debris and unwanted furniture. I exhale relief and gratitude and continue picking away at the inside job, little by little -- therapy for me. I had let myself sink to Grumpy's level, refusing to do any nonessential cleaning with a "fuck it" attitude. That way lies self hatred and house hatred. I clean now, and Grumpy shakes his head, calls me crazy. I sneer.

Vampire bug redux

2010-06-14T13:25:00.003-07:00

Grumpy got brave last night and slept on the new bed and new expensive sheets in the bug-den bedroom. Early AM he awoke feeling something fall off his neck. He saw and killed about a dozen bed bugs, small to large sizes. Glad I didn't refill the chests-of-drawers with clothing yet. Bug people coming back this afternoon to perform a higher intensity treatment of the bedroom. If I had gone to sleep in that bed and wakened to that scenario, I'd probably have hunkered in a corner shivering and weeping and Grumpy would have had to call the psycho ward for pickup. As it is, I am quivering a bit. And just when I was starting to feel normal again.