December? Already?

The end is nigh.  End of the calendar year, of course.  The end of civilization is already under way.  Soon, the end of life on this rotating rock will be the topic du jour.  But, enough of the doomsaying!  What about the winter holidays!?!

The Solstice is getting closer, a time to thank the Goddess for the gift of light.  It's dark and dreary here lately what with the short days and the incessant rain.  I'm not actually complaining about the rain.  We need every drop of it, and we need snow on the mountains.  I learned a new word, a Scottish word, that perfectly describes the weather here: dreich.  Cold, dark, rainy and dreary.  Scotland and the Pacific Northwest have some things in common.  Lol.

Here are the pleasant updates, pleasant for me anyway.

I finished the writing challenge.  National Novel Writing Month asks participants to write 50,000 words during the month of November.  It's the tenth year I have done so!  This year's effort was a fantasy story involving a cadre of Nature deities defeating Eris and her nephews in their attempt to break open the radioactive storage containers at the Hanford nuclear site and poison the mighty Columbia river and everything around it.  In my stories, the good guys always win.  (Really, the good gals, since the majority of my characters are female.  A writer's prerogative, and a lesbian prerogative.)

Here's the really big news:

The Kid is pregnant!  She is having a girl in early May!  I am happy because she is happy.  I mean, yes, it will be fun, and gift giving holidays will be super fun.  There is an element of existential dread here, though.  If she had never reproduced, I would only have her to worry about.  Now I will have to worry about a future generation.  Can one worry from beyond the grave?  I'm not sure, but I'll attempt to let you all know at some indefinite time in the (hopefully) distant future.  I have always, always cared about the planet, but now I have to care about it for infinity.  That's exhausting!  Oh, well, in the immediate time frame we have something fun to look forward to.  So, there's that.

Cheers, women!  I hope your December is full of happiness and health, and a blessed return of the Light.  

November -- Done!

Hello Friends!  Gosh, I've missed you all!

Made it!  Survived and WON at NaNoWriMo.  I have written over 50,000 words this month, almost all of them about my mom.  And about me and my mom.  And our family.  And, and, and.  It's a lot of words, but it just begins to scratch the surface of what I want to say about her.  Still, it's a start.

What else is going on?

For the last year and a half I have been on my own schedule, stumbling through life.  For the couple of decades before that I had been getting up painfully early to be to work before dawn's early crack.  This let me be home in the afternoon when I was raising the Kid.  Well, when my mom got sick and I started taking care of her in the mornings, I no longer had to set my alarm to get up.  That was nice.  Real nice.  It's now been a year since my darling mumsey left me, but did I go back to my previous early morning schedule?  I did not.  In fact, I forgot how to set my alarm clock!  No kidding.  I had to download instructions online this week.  I had to be to work early one day and I was damned if I could remember how to set the thing.  Ridiculous, I know.  You don't get to toss out the alarm clock until you retire!

One thing I will need the alarm for is to get my lazy ass out of bed and back to the gym.  I stopped going on a regular basis this summer.  We had a big upsurge in busy-ness at work and besides that I was riding my bike to work.  So, I felt ok about not going.  Now, however, the rainy season has set in and I just don't feel like commuting in a downpour, spending all day feeling damp, and then riding home in the pitch black, wet night.  Just doesn't sound like a good time to me.  So, it's back to the gym before work.  Hence the alarm clock and it's mechanical intricacies.

Here's a big thing.  You probably remember from my whining about it that I don't love my job and have made up my mind to explore other options.  I've been giving this topic a lot of thought over the past year or so, and have come to a decision.  I am going to go back to school and get a degree in Engineering.

Let's let that sink in for a minute, shall we?

Engineering.

I can just imagine that stunned look on your faces.

It may sound crazy, and it may indeed be crazy, but I'm going to go for it.  I have some ideas about small scale energy generation and I would like to learn the theory and practice of how to make it work.  Actually, I have some ideas about other projects as well, and I'm really looking forward to taking them beyond the idea phase.  I'm excited about it!

But, engineering requires a whole lot of math.  In my previous scholastic career, I studied plant biology.  There was some math involved in that but I didn't have to go beyond algebra, trigonometry and statistics.  So, I'll have to do calculus.  I AM NOT AFRAID!  She shouted to the Universe...

I'm planning on doing a self-study refresher through the Khan Academy and then I'll take the math placement test at the University.  I am totally cool with repeating the basics because I think it will be important to really understand the nuts and bolts of this stuff.

So, that's what's going on with me in a nutshell.

Just to catch you up on the day to day stuff, here's a little overview of the past month or so.

• The end of October was the one year anniversary of my mom's death.  My daughter came down from Seattle and she and I, my dad and my younger brother got together for a little ... what ... 'acknowledgement' might be the best word for it.  The kid and Pop and I had a lovely tea using all the best china.  Later the kid and Pop and I polished silver together and talked about mumsey.  The last day of her visit was when my brother joined us and we all sat down at the table together.  It wasn't enough for me, but at least it was something.

• Thanksgiving came and went.  We had six at the table and it was generally pleasant.  My dad and brother came, Zoe and her man, and me and T.  I had lots of help in food preparation and everything turned out well.  Sent leftover home with everyone so that we didn't feel obligated to eat all that stuff.

• Speaking of eating, I gained back a couple of pounds over the holiday but overall I am still down 20 pounds since starting Weight Watchers.  Still losing!  Back to the gym should help with that...

• The gf and I are getting along moderately well.  I'll settle for that right now.  We've got that other holiday coming up though and her mom is expecting her to be there.  I don't really feel like going - especially since they don't much like me after my outburst of this summer.  I would stay home, gladly, but T's feelings would be hurt and I don't need to do that.  I am still debating whether or not I can do it.  Undecided.

• New furnace.  Ouch.  The house is nice and toasty warm and we have the latest thing in thermostats (the Nest), but man oh man was that sucker expensive.  Oh the joys of home-ownership.

I think that's it.  The large and small and in between.  I hope you are all doing well.  I've been reading your blogs when I can and when you post... haven't heard from some of you for as long as you haven't heard from me.  I guess it just goes like that sometimes.  

Let's all catch our breath before the next onslaught.  December starts TOMORROW!

September?

How the hell did that happen?  September?  Already?  I have a lot of catching up to do...  Items sorted by weight for your convenience.

Large:

The teenager has decided that she would rather live with her other aunt for the second two years of high school.  I have a plethora of opinions about this ~ some positive, some negative.  Really, this one deserved it's own blog post but was shortchanged at the counter.  Suffice it to say, we are child-free again.  YAY!
There's a chance I'll write more of this drama later, just to get it out of my system.

My own kid came down to pdx for Labor Day weekend.  Yes, she brought her man, and a spare (a young friend of theirs who wanted to check out Portland), but it was still great to see her.  It's just so much better having her here on the West Coast where we can actually drive and see each other.  Or take the train.  She is coming down again soon - not this coming weekend, but the following - and we are going to a Quilt Show together!  I'm happy about that!

Medium:

We have a new boss at my work and there is a lot of uncertainty around how things will be moving forward. (As an aside, the new boss is the Chairman of the department.  In fact, he is a man but the more correct term these days is simply, Chair.  But, if I say we have a new Chair at my work it sounds like furniture.)  I so wanted to get out of here before there was any serious shuffling or rearrangement of faculty and staff.  Mostly out of laziness, and that phenomenon called "Short-timer's Syndrome."  I've only got a little over a year and a half to go before my planned departure from this place of employment.  I wanted it to be easy, dammit!  I wanted cruise control.

My daughter's father emailed me recently and asked if I still owned a property we had lived on in far north-eastern California.  Yes, I do still own it.  It's paid for and the taxes are ridiculously low so I have kept it all these years.  He asked if I would mind if he went to check it out.  No, of course not.  Then he emailed me and asked what I would want if he were to camp out there for a while.  I said he could stay as long as he wanted and if he wanted to actually live there he could just pay the property taxes.  What I didn't say, but will should the occasion arise, is that if he wants to live there he can just have the property.  I'll sign it over to him.  It's worth virtually nothing, there's virtually nothing there, it's hard to get to, there's no economy, hell, there's no electricity.  It's way off the grid.  Yes, I'll give it to him.  It feels like the right thing to do.

Small:

We took the vintage travel trailer out last weekend.  It was the Oregon Coast Pride event weekend and we decided to spend the weekend at the beach.  Had a pretty good time, too.  The weather was absolutely to be expected for the Oregon coast: cool, gray, damp.  Nice, really.  Waved at the Dykes on Bikes ~ all 20 of them (ok, it might have been just a dozen), danced at the Inferno party, spent money on good causes and supported the local economy.  And had fun!

We are planning to take the trailer out one more time before it's all rain, all the time.  We are meeting up with some other vintage trailer owners at a campground near Bend in October.  I think it will be fun to see what other people are doing with their trailers, although T wants everything to be perfect, and come on, life and vintage trailers just aren't.

Sorry I don't have pictures of the cute little box on wheels.  I'll work on that...


That's it, women.  It's been a bit of a slog lately, but I'm keeping my head above water.

Back from beyond

I’m back in Portland and recovering from the trip.  The week there was wonderful, but the two solid days of driving on either end of the week was exhausting.  Guess I’m just not as young as I used to be… and neither is my pop!

We had a great week with the Kid.  We got a ton of house repairs done, a bunch of stuff sorted by room, and even a tiny bit of yard work done.  The place looks better than it did when we arrived, not that it was a wreck, just the wear and tear of daily life.

The best thing about the week was that we had the Kid to ourselves.  Her man is already in Seattle so it was just the three of us and the pets.  Very, very nice to spend time with her!

During the long hours in the car my pop and I had plenty of time for conversation.  And, we pretty much talked the whole way across the country.  I found out that my great aunt was a lesbian.  Nice!  And that one of my mum’s best friends in college was a lesbian as well.  My pop figured out that his best friend in high school was gay.  Oh, yes, there was plenty of talk about The Gay.

The Kid is finishing up work this week.  Next week the movers come and pack the household and ship it off to the Northwest.  The Kid will be in the Northwest in just a little over a week.  Once their goods arrive at the new house, we – my pop and I – will drive her dog up to Seattle.  Oh, did I not mention the dog?  Yeah.  We brought the dog back with us in the car so that he wouldn’t have to be shipped by air.  Happily, he is a super mellow pup and is already fitting in perfectly with my household full of pets.  In fact, I think our cats are going to like him better than our dog.

I’m back at work.  Nothing new around here.  Things are much the same at home.  All to the good, I guess.  One of these days there will be big changes, but not for a bit.

That’s it for now.  I’m off to teach a couple of martial art classes this evening.  I’m slowly working my way back into my life. 

Hope the new year is treating you all well…

ps: South Dakota is bigger than you might think.

Some good stuff

Here are some good things that have brightened my days lately.

1) The Kid is moving back to the Pacific Northwest!  Yes, it's true!  Finally!  Zoe's man got a job at that big computer outfit near Seattle and they are headed this way.  I am so effing happy about that.  There are lots of details to work out, of course, but the thought of having her just three hours away is fantastic.

2) T got a job!  A real 40 hour a week job!  True, it's a 6 month temp but they told her at the interview that they want to make it permanent.  Now we just have to set an intention that they find the funding and hire her permanently.  And the best part?  It's doing maintenance at the Zoo!  She started this week and is already thrilled with it.  I told her that if she gets on permanent she'll have to stay for 20 years so that she will have a retirement.  She is so happy!

3) My two best friends are coming for a long weekend, starting tomorrow!  Lisa had been planning on coming for months, she wanted to see my mum one last time but this was the soonest she could get away.  Of course, it's too late for that but she is coming anyway to cheer me up and just hang out.  Then, last week, she told T that she was planning a surprise and bringing my other bestie along for the weekend too!  I'm not supposed to know but T told me because it's hard to hide details like getting out the air mattress and planning for more than one house guest.  I'm sworn to secrecy and I will be the most surprised person ever when KA shows up!  I'm just so happy to have friends who care so much about me.

I'm grateful.  Very, very grateful.  In the midst of my sorrow, here are reasons for gratitude.  Thank you, Universe.  I haven't felt happy for a long while, and here are three outstanding reasons.

xoxoxox

Bit my tongue

So, yes, the Kid left yesterday.  I miss her fiercely.

When T got home from picking up the niece, and they walked in the door, it was all I could do to keep from saying: "Why are you people still here?"

I managed to keep that to myself.  Just barely, but I behaved.  They are trying to be extra nice to me, which I appreciate, but there is no filling of that void with empty words and nice behaviour.

I'll get over it.  I always do.  And, this time I really have something to look forward to: the relocation of the Kid to Portland!  That's what I've got and I'm going with it.

Update from the Rose City!

Wow!  What a crazy couple of weeks it has been! 

When last I wrote to you all, we had just returned from the Twilight pilgrimage where a good time was had by our quirky, blended family.  We had barely gotten the sand shaken out of our shoes and shorts when something so amazing and wonderful happened that I am still stunned. 

My daughter called two or three days after she got back to Iowa.  She said that she realized how much she missed living in Portland.  She missed her family and friends, she missed mountains and forests and the ocean, she missed the funky vibe of the city.  She asked if she could come back and stay for a month or so.

Yes, that’s right.  She wants to come back!  She asked me if she could stay with us for a month or two.  Ha!  I told her that she never has to ask, this is her home and she is welcome in it whenever she chooses to stay.  She insisted that I ask T if it was alright, which I did, and of course it was.

So, at first she was going to come back in a couple of weeks.  Then it was right after the boyfriend’s birthday.  Then it was the following weekend.  In the end, she left within a week of calling me.  She decided to drive out.  I offered to fly out and drive with her, but she wanted to do it on her own.  Well, I understand that.  A long solo car trip is a rite of passage, especially out here in the wide open west.  She wanted to have her car here when she arrived, and wanted to bring some of her things that would cost too much to ship.  She brought both her lap top and desk top computers.  And, more than that, she brought her cat.  Yes, let that sink in for a moment ~ she brought her cat.

Now, she has assured me that she and the boyfriend are not breaking up or separating.  Pity.  But, she has definitely matured in their relationship and is no longer doing everything his way.  We have had some long (and short) chats about that.  She told him that she is moving back to Portland with or without him and he needs to get on board.  I am so relieved to see her regain her sense of self and her stubbornness and her will.  She’s got all that, and it’s time to let it shine.

So, the last couple of weeks I’ve had my kid back.  Heaven!  This also means that we have a full house and lots going on.  It wasn’t too long ago that I was living alone in relative silence.  Sometimes, it’s true, I miss that quiet bookish existence, but mostly I am pretty darned happy.

Right now, the boyfriend is visiting.  It was Zoe’s birthday on Tuesday (27!) and he came out for a few days.  They are staying at a hotel.  Zoe told him that he needed to leave by Saturday since my birthday is Sunday (52!).  All in all, this spring is shaping up to be a pretty happy one.

I’ve got lots more to tell you, but so little time to write it down.  I’ll keep at it though, because I know that you all are on Pins And Needles waiting to hear how this saga plays out!  :-)

A Holiday of Sorts

My daughter came for a visit last weekend.  Being the lowest on the seniority list, she couldn’t get either of the official holidays off, so we celebrated last weekend instead.  It was fantastic to see her.  It definitely wasn’t enough time, since she was only here Friday through Monday, but I’ll take what I can get.

She and I spent most of Friday running around shopping and getting stuff together for our little family holiday.  I don’t know what to call it ~ it wasn’t Thanksgiving, and it wasn’t Christmas or Hanukah (or Kwanzaa, for that matter).  It was too early for the Solstice.  I’ll have to settle on Zoe-mas. 

On Saturday we had dinner at my parent’s house.  My mentally ill brother was there, which is very rare.  He came over because, like the rest of us, he loves and misses the Kid.  She is such a ray of sunshine that even the depressed feel cheery.  We opened up gifts and had pie and it felt very festive. 

Sunday we did a few things that she wanted to do in Portland, like a visit to Powell’s (surely one of the best bookstores of all time).  We walked the dogs, and petted the cats, we played a few games with the teenager, and basically just enjoyed each other’s company.  Went back over to the grandparent’s house to hang out with them again. 

Then on Monday, she was gone. 

Not surprisingly, I’ve been depressed all week.  T thinks that if she can be relentlessly cheerful around me I’ll ‘snap out of it.’  She doesn’t understand but I know that she is motivated by compassion.  I told her (fairly gently) that it would be better to just leave me alone to wallow in it for a couple of days and I’ll recover.  She likes to solve things though, so that’s hard for her. 

We’ve got a busy weekend coming up.  On Saturday I’m subbing for a friend who is out of town, then another friend is having her 40^th birthday party.  We’re getting our tree on Sunday.  I guess we are still getting ready for Christmas, although the part that matters to me is over.  Oh, I’ll suck it up and act appropriately, but I confess to feeling indifferent to the rest of the holiday season.

It doesn’t help my mood that it has been dark and rainy since the Kid left.  We had some lovely crisp, sunny days while she was here, but it’s been raining hard ever since.  Just the weather for a bout of depression.

Sorry to be so gloomy, but my usual Pollyanna nature is hiding under the covers and refuses to come out.

The Daughter's boyfriend

So, last night my daughter called. We chatted about inconsequentials for a few minutes and then she broke the news that they were not going to move back to the Pacific Northwest after all. Instead they were going to move to Dallas. As in Texas. As in Dallas fucking Texas and not Portland or Seattle.

I am so disappointed.

A few months ago she called to say that they had decided to move back to the northwest, probably Seattle. I was ecstatic! So was she! She and the boyfriend are living in Des Moines. Yeah, the one in Iowa. Why, you may ask? Well, the boyfriend got a job there so of course she went with him. They had been living in a Seattle suburb and he couldn’t find a job that he liked that also paid him what he thought was an adequate salary. He does some kind of IT work. Thinks he’s a big shot. So, since he got turned down for the few jobs he deemed worthy of receiving his application, he contacted a recruiter to find him a job. In Des Moines, Iowa, because he has family there. His favorite brother and his least favorite brother live in Des Moines and now his mom does too. So, he wanted to be near his family and wanted Zoe away from hers.

Of course the recruiter was delighted to find him a job in Des Moines. I get the idea that few people are clamoring to move to the center of the country.

So off they go. Yes, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth round here. My parents and I drove up to Bellevue to help them pack the apartment and load the truck. He was of no use whatsoever. Sat around complaining about how hard it is to move yourself. As if he would know since he wasn’t lifting a finger. No, he left it to me and my seventy something year old father to do the heavy lifting. Oh, he has a bad back… or a bad knee… or both, probably, since he is morbidly obese. Anyway! Off they went.

They stayed in Des Moines for about a year. Then he was dissatisfied with his job and found one in Lansing, Michigan. They upped sticks and moved to Lansing. For a total of six months. Then, guess what, he didn’t like his job so they moved back to Des Moines. They’ve been there about a year, again, this time.

Now he has found a job in Dallas. He spent a lot of years in Dallas. That’s where his ex-wife lives (if she is truly an ex, my suspicion is that they aren’t really divorced). He has friends in Dallas. My daughter? No. She doesn’t have friends in Dallas, she doesn’t have family in Dallas, she doesn’t have a job in Dallas. She doesn’t have shit in Dallas. All she’s got is this lame-ass loser boyfriend in Dallas.

It’s just breaking my heart to see her following this guy around the country. What happened to her dreams? Her goals? She is 25 and he is about 10 years older. They have been together for about 4 years. I can’t tell you one single good thing about him. He is ugly inside and out. He is one of the most selfish people I have ever met. Add to that lazy, cheap with everyone but himself, arrogant, patronizing. Oh, ok, here’s a good thing: he is too selfish to want children. Thankfully. So when she wakes up and gets away from him she won’t be tied to him by that connection.

I could write reams about how thoroughly I loathe this person, but I won’t. Suffice it to say that if he dropped dead tomorrow, I would not shed a tear. Instead, I am shedding many tears about my daughter wasting her young adulthood on someone unworthy. I’m shedding tears over her dropping out of college to trail around after him. I hate the fact that she is squandering her precious self on someone who doesn’t appreciate what a treasure she is. It’s breaking my heart. And it kills me that there is nothing I can do about it.

What a week!

My big-ass birthday party was great fun. Had just over 50 friends there. I would have enjoyed twice that many but it was sufficient. I got to chat with most and (I think) greeted everyone. T survived. She doesn’t like big parties but she rose to the occasion. Several of her friends came, which was nice. A friend of mine from New Mexico came up on the Friday and went home on the Monday ~ honestly, house guests are harder on my girlfriend than big parties. She has to do a lot of accommodating to be with me.

I had arranged ahead of time to take the following week off work. I have a big project to take care of and this was my chance to get a solid chunk of it done. It’s an odious task, really. I’ve been putting it off because I felt overwhelmed by it. Cleaning The Basement.

I bought the house in 1994. My daughter and I have a moderate pack rat tendency ~ we are not hoarders, and are in fact capable of throwing out old and broken stuff. Our problem is that we are very sentimental. I probably had every piece of art she ever created. And all of the cutest kid clothes that she wore. She wanted to keep every stuffed animal she ever received. And the toys and games, and, and, and…

Add to this the coincidence that when we moved into our house, my parents were moving out of theirs and one of my brothers had been storing stuff at their house. So, we had boxes of stuff from the parents, the brother, AND the roommate who was moving in with us. Some of the stuff from my parents house had actually belonged to my paternal grandmother and had been schlepped around for a decade or so. What a mess!

The biggest obstacle for me was an old couch that the roommate had left behind. When she moved in it went directly to the basement and there it stayed. It is incredibly heavy! And ugly! And long, and curved, and just plain difficult. Besides the couch, there were two large area rugs and their pads that didn’t survive house training the dog. Yes, they had been sitting down there for years! It’s shameful and embarrassing but what can I say? I’ve been busy! So, getting the couch, the rugs and pads, an old foam camping mattress, the world’s largest stuffed dinosaur (I kid you not, this thing was about 8 ft long), and various odds and ends out of the basement, into the truck, and off to the dump was my goal for Monday. I had two people to help and it nearly wasn’t enough muscle power to get it done. But, we did. I felt so relieved ~ that couch had been a plug and once it was pulled, things started flowing.

Now, when I say ‘flowing’, I mean it literally. On Tuesday, day 2 of Operation Purge, I discovered that we had a little water problem. For an old house, the basement has been remarkably dry in this wet climate. I’ve only had a leak one time (in a different part of the basement) and that was because my neighbor’s downspout was pouring into my side yard. Once he fixed it, we dried out and it’s been dry since. This time however, it was entirely different and so much worse.

We had used one half of the basement for a tv area years ago. TV and storage, of course, for all that crap we couldn’t part with. So, that part of the basement had carpet on the concrete floor. Wow! Carpet holds a lot of water! And supports the growth of fungi! The things one learns in the basement… Everything sitting on the carpet was wet. Boxes of toys, baby clothes, out of date encyclopedias, childhood art projects, stuffed animals, assorted crap, you name it ~ all wet. All going in the truck and to the dump.

Over the course of the week, I took two loads of junk and one load of recycling (free!) to the dump. I have one more load ready to go and still lots of stuff to sort through. It made me a little sad and a lot nostalgic to see all the phases of my daughter’s life in those boxes. I was really fine with throwing out stuff that should have been chucked out years ago, but some of it caught at my heartstrings. I saved photos even if they were wet, and some of her art. Plenty of stuff was not salvageable, though. I tried to be strong and very firm with myself. I had asked Zoe for a list of things she really couldn’t part with and amazingly, about 80% of what she wanted to save was in a box together and dry. That made me happy.

So, I got rid of a bunch and sorted a bunch and still have lots of work to do, but it is a much more manageable task now. The real drag of the whole project was that two days after I got the wet carpeting out and everything spread out to dry, we had some torrential rain and sure enough, the basement still leaks. But now, I didn’t have the carpet to hold the water in place so it spread out further than it ever had! Criminetly! Stuff that I had saved was now wetter than ever! Argh! I made a dam out of an old blanket which had not yet made it to the dump, and held back most of the water. Of course, we are having the wettest spring on record and I’m going down to the basement after work every night and soaking up stinky water with old towels and wringing it into a bucket.

I told a coworker about my leaking basement and he said, “Oh yeah, we call it the indoor pool!” I guess it’s a Pacific Northwest thing… ya gotta laugh ~ there’s already too much water to cry.