Incomprehensible

That's all.

Incomprehensible.

I've got nothing and too much to say about it all.  I couldn't even post this last week because I couldn't take it  all in.  Still can't.

No need to comment.  I know that we all feel it.

Clackamas Town Center

Hi Lovely Blog Readers,

No, I was not shopping at Clackamas, and so far, no reports of family or friends having been at the mall this afternoon either.  I appreciate your concern, but we are all fine.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and everyone involved.  So tragic.  Incomprehensible.

xoxoxo

6 December 2012

Washington State Pride!

Congratulations to all of the same sex couples who lined up at their County buildings in order to receive their official, state sanctioned marriage licenses!

I looked at the news last night and this morning, at the faces full of emotion, and thought, how can anyone say that this is bad or wrong or evil?  The comments on the local news websites were mostly positive but always the sour note creeping in from some troll or another.

My gal is from Vancouver and if we lived over the river we might have celebrated the date differently.  As it is, we cheered from Portland and looked for familiar faces on the news.

T did not bring up the possibility of our getting married.  Whether that's because she doesn't want to or doesn't want to find out that I don't want to, I can't tell.  Also, we live in Oregon, not Washington.  And, the whole marriage thing is gesture until we have federal recognition.  We already file joint taxes in Oregon since we are registered domestic partners.  Is it enough?  Hell no.  I don't like being denied my rights as a citizen.  Is it going to change?  Of course it is.  Remember that old saying, 'When the people lead, the leaders will follow'?  Eventually, it won't be an issue.

But, do I want to get married?

No.

How about you?

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!

Viv ian

Here are some snaps of our adorable vin tage tra iler, Viv ian.  These were taken during our weekend trip to Lincoln City on the Oregon coast.  We went down for Coast Pride, remember?

She is a 1968 Car dinal De luxe.

The interior pictures all turned out too dark, so I'll have take some more for you to see the inside.

:-)

T's New Project

Well, well, well.  October.  Once again, I'm astounded at the passage of time.  I'm taking your advice though, and doing more floating than treading water...  I mean, why make it harder than it needs to be, right? So, floating.  October is floating by.

I thought I'd just give a quick update on the latest thing round our place.  Remember that we have a vintage travel trailer that we love?  The one I still haven't gotten any pictures of to post...  yeah, that one!  Well, we were going to be taking her out one more time this month -- next weekend, in fact, but have had a change in plans.  For one thing, this long stretch of sunny weather is coming to an end, and even though having a trailer means that one can camp in the rain, we're not going.

This summer, T decided that she had done such a wonderful job of rehabbing our trailer that she would look for another one to rebuild as a project.  Sure, I said, that's a good project for you, but where are you going to put it???  Our driveway is far too small and already has a trailer parked in it.  There's no room for a second one.  She made arrangements to park the new trailer over at her mom's house.  There's plenty of room!

So, she found a trailer and bought it for $100.  Probably, the guy should have paid her to haul it off.  Wow, was it rotten inside!  She felt ok about it though because the appliances were worth more than $100, so yeah.  She's been hard at work gutting it out, saving what is salvageable, and rebuilding it from the frame up. I don't know why this is fun for her, but it is.  And, she's doing a fantastic job!  This trailer will be stronger, lighter, and watertight.  All in all a good thing.  But, right now, it's not sealed up and wet weather is on it's way.  So, while we were looking forward to the weekend campout in Bend, no, we'll have to postpone it so that T can get the new trailer buttoned up.

Want to know the very best thing about this project?  It's at her mom's house and she has been spending a lot of time over there.  Which means that I have had lots more time by myself of late and that is a gift.  I know, I make it sound like I don't want to spend time with my partner, it's not that... entirely.  I just don't get enough time alone.  So, this has been really, really nice for me.

What's going on with you this fall?

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.

Not much, you?

Because I have a few minutes, I thought I'd bore you with some of the trivial thoughts that drift through my largely vacant head.

• Weight watchers: I have lost something like 12 pounds.  It's taken over 5 months, but at least it continues to go in the right direction.  The good thing is this: I'm not hungry ALL THE TIME, as I was at first.  Plus, with their program, one can eat all the fruit one wants and hey, during summer what else does one want but fresh, local fruit.  I like that.

• Related to losing weight, my workout buddy and I can't understand WHY, since we work out HARD three times a week and ride our bikes to work virtually everyday, why aren't we thin???  It's just not right.  Not fair.  It's frustrating.

• I have cut waaaay back on the alcohol intake.  (Yes, I realize that I am still on practically the same subject.)  So, a couple of weeks ago I had a super shitty day and drank more than I should have.  OK, actually it was my mom's birthday and I was really sad and really missing her and I didn't set out to drink too much, it just went that way.  And, truthfully, I wasn't plastered, I wasn't rip roaring drunk... just a little over the line.  But, the abyss opened before me at some point and I just managed to avoid plunging headlong into the void.  Since then, I just have not been interested in having a drink. Well, ok, we had a couple of beers at the softball tournament.  And, I had a pint of cider when we went out to dinner last week.  But, other than that, it's been a tall glass of ice water with a splash of tart cherry juice in the evening.  And it feels right.

• Speaking of the softball tournament, that was last weekend ~ which happened to be the hottest weekend in three years.  It was 105 degrees!  Here!  In the damp and chilly PNW.  I pitied the players.  We were only there to watch and cheer them on.  We didn't do too much cheering on; Miss ADD (yes, that would be T, my irksome partner) got bored and antsy and we left after one damned game.  Our friends were disappointed, as I was, but what can you do?

• And, last but not least, JAM!  I have been making jam like a maniac!  All of the fresh fruit that is available at the Farmer's Market, and all of the berries from our garden are being jarred up.  Last year I froze pounds and pounds of berries and made many jars of sour cherry jam.  This year I have just made jam.  Raspberry, blueberry, tayberry, strawberry, apricot, peach, and loads of sour cherry.  There might be another variety, I can't think of it right now though.  T and I have made eight jars of dill pickles and I just bought four and a half pounds more of pickling cukes for another batch.  This makes me happy.

So that's it for today, my friends.  Not much to say, but I'm sharing it anyway.  

Work Surprise

My office-mate is out on maternity leave.  This has been blessing; she is a real chatterbox and kind of drives me nuts.  The woman who is taking her place is only here a couple of hours a week, so that's nice.

BUT!  Today the replacement Came Out to me!  I had no idea!  Total gaydar failure!

She asked me about my bike ride home and we were talking about neighborhoods and what-not.  She said that when she and her ex split up she moved to the west-side.  Then, this:  "My ex is a she."

I said, "You play for my team?  Fantastic!"  Now she wants me to hook her up and I am going to start looking...    :-)

In-laws... sigh

Alright, a confession.

I behaved badly at the in-law’s house this weekend. 

It’s kind of a long story, and a sad one, so I’ll abridge it.

My girlfriend’s brother is … mentally challenged.  I would say retarded but the family hates that word.  He is not Down’s Syndrome, just slow, illiterate, low functioning, etc.  You know, retarded.  This never stopped him from meeting women, marrying and reproducing, though.  And his kids?  Also retarded, in varying degrees.  The eldest, a girl, lives with me and T during the school year ~ at least until she gets through high school (or I kick them both out).  She is the most functional of the bunch.  The boy, Wayne, lives with his dad.

So, we were over at T’s mom’s house on Saturday.  T’s sister, Pam, was there too, having her mother color her hair.  The kids were at their own mother’s house for once.  We were chatting about random stuff and eventually the hair coloring was concluded and Pam went to pick up the kids.

When they got back the usual conversation started about how difficult Clark, the retarded brother, is to be around.  How he has a million rules for Wayne about everything, and how he is always yelling at him and is, in fact, quite mean to the boy.  He is not allowed to turn on the tv by himself (he is 15), or get a glass of water by himself.  He is not allowed to open the refrigerator without asking.  He is not allowed to play with toys he has been given because he might break them.  He is not allowed to do much of anything.  And, seriously, it’s the halt leading the blind here.  They are both well below an IQ of 70.

This conversation comes up frequently.  Everybody bemoaning how hard Clark is on Wayne, and nobody choosing to deal with the situation. 

Eventually, on Saturday, it got down to talk of physical violence and how Clark had better not hit Wayne because Wayne is now big enough to hit him back.

This is when I lost it.  Talk about triggering.

I asked why it was ok for Wayne to have to live this way.  Why wasn’t anyone putting him first?  Who was looking out for Wayne if he had to grow up with an abusive father?  There was some backpedaling at that point, but the bottom line is that Wayne doesn’t count for very much in the family.  It’s appalling.  It’s wrong. 

And the thing of it is, Wayne is a much nicer kid than his sister who lives with me and T.  She is sly and secretive and withholding and selfish.  Her much more retarded brother has a sweet nature and an open personality.  He is cheerful and outgoing, she is moody and withdrawn.   

T’s mom started to say how she knew what it was like to live with an abuser.  Well, then, why are you allowing your grandson to go through that, I asked.  Oh, it’s not that bad, she said.  I look out for him, she said.

It’s a total fucked up mess, I can tell you that.

Nobody wants Wayne.  Grandma won’t take him.  T and I simply can’t ~ plus we’ve already committed to the sister.  Pam and her family won’t.  They don’t like the kid.  They are a bunch of snobs who like to pretend that they aren’t related to the rest of the family.  I think that he should be allowed to go live with his mother.  Although, that is probably not the best solution.  She is also of low intelligence and doesn’t always have her own place to live.  I believe that she is living with her own mother currently.

So, yes, I lost it.  I ranted for a minute or two and then stood up, gave Wayne a hug, and walked out the door.  Went and sat in my car waiting for T to come out and drive me home.  If I had had the keys in my pocket I would have left.  On the way home I lost it again, or further, and said all kinds of things that hurt my partner’s feelings.  But, really, at that point I was both crying and shouting and far, far beyond discretion.  Ugh. 

I’m not sure why this situation affected me so much on Saturday.  Well, ok, I had an energy alignment on Thursday, my therapist on Friday, and I think my usual walls and defenses were down.  I just couldn’t bear the thought of that kid living like that. 

So, now I have to apologize to my mother in law for being an obnoxious jerk.  I won’t take back what I said, but the way I said it was inappropriate.  It’ll be awkward, for sure, especially since the woman is nearly deaf and telephone conversations must be conducted at very loud volume.  I’ll probably email my sister in law as well.  We’ll see how long they hold a grudge…

A fun weekend with the in-laws.  How was yours? 

(Yes, this was the abridged version.)