421 posts from 2007

I want you to tell us what you'd like in the new year.

Be creative. Be practical. Be serious. Be silly. Make a bullet list.  Phrase it in a poem. Write one word. Write 100. Tell us, the world, the universe what you hold in your mind and heart for 2008.

Listen to Sammy

I don't do New Year's resolutions.

That doesn't prevent me from taking pause to reflect on the year closing. A rendition of the highlights would sound trite and boring. It's been done to death. So done to death.

Guess what. I'm gonna do it anyhow!

You know how David Letterman (late-night TV talk-show host for you Aussies) has his Top 10 List of the silly and satiric, stupid and serious? I'm following suit (on the list, not hosting a TV show).

Presenting my Top 10 of 2007:

10. It's much, much harder to find a reasonable place to live in Tacoma than you'd think it would be in a town this size. It's either ghetto and gangland or the rich neighborhoods. Which leaves two choices: (a) get into drug-dealing, or simply track down the former tenant druggie ho and board with her; or (b) marry into wealth. Which would turn me into a white ho housewife, without the baggy pants hanging off the tush.

9. Drizzle and rain, and the occasional snow and ice, reveal again that drivers in Western Washington cannot drive! You'd think living in an area where it rains six months outta the year would cultivate a certain ... um, is skill too strong a word? Then how about attentiveness? Could you please tailgate just a little closer in the downpour going 70 mph to close up the whopping six inches separating us? Make sure to keep your headlights off in the zero visibility? And don't forget about yakking on cell phones and texting every second of your journey. No wonder my insurance doubled moving here. Idiots. P.S. - they're way worse approaching Seattle. Drivers in my area are fairly OK, nicer and noticeably more likely to let you in than in most places I've been, and that's a lot.

8. Stupidity earns high incomes. I've seen this over and over and nowhere was it more glaringly evident than at the warehouse. I really need to write/post a letter to that manager to get that monkey off my back. That's for another day, when I'm in a foul mood. I love havin' stuff to look forward to.

7. Seattle sucks. Since this is the year's Top 10, not Top 100 of How Seattle Sucks, tempting though it be, I'll provide a classic commonplace (I've since been told) example: I'm driving for paratransit. Go to Seattle to pick up a client at a hospital. Don't know the city at all. Never drove there. I pull to the curb to check a map. Within moments, a metering cop pulls up behind. Super hardass military macho type with the buzz cut. Points to the curbside sign. No parking after 4 p.m. It's 4:03. I hasten to move the (work) car while offering the contrite explanation that I'm working, don't know Seattle, am picking up a client. "I'm working too," Mr. Hardass Officer huffs, coldly tossing a ticket my way. I contest it in a letter to the judge. He lets me off.

6. They don't make things like they used to. My previous roommate provides the evidence by wearing the same blue terrycloth bathrobe day after day after day after day. All day long. In the apartment. Never leaving. No modern robe made in China could stand up to that kind of wear.

5. There is goodness in life. My employer. Amazing human beings. Their presence and working with, as opposed to for, them changes me and the direction of my life in ways too numerable to list. Plus my coworkers are tha' bomb. A hilarious and terrific bunch of goofs who are competent, skilled, have brains and they use 'em. Whoa!! It's official, I've landed on the other side of the universe far from all previous jobs. Still don't make much money but that's OK for now because the experience of being with these people is priceless. And it's helping heal mountains of crap and abuse.

4. Living on a noisy road suits me no better now than it did in the three rare occasions of the distant past, a superb track record for one with a lengthy list of residences. So unsettling, toxic, disharmonious to my nervous system and in terms of poor environmental factors second to not having space. Granted, it's better than what was facing me, homelessness and sleeping in my car (which was neither practical nor realistic), so I'm grateful this door, any door, opened. I'll always remember how dangerously and terrifyingly close I came to falling into the hole. Like being dirt poor, it's one of those things that stays in the soul.

3. Well, Patti, of course. Meeting her one on one, face to face, just us, in Portland at the Bite of Oregon festival.

2. My peeps. All readers of my blog, whether they go peep peep peep or not.

1. Peter.

(sorry, folks, that's all you'll get outta me.)

Overall it wasn't the grandest year on the books, there's plenty of room for improvement ahead, but it weren't bad, weren't bad at all.

I'd be remiss if I failed to note that, outside of Seattle, the probability of a bad year in the Pacific Northwest is low. One, the beer's nearly always tasty. And there'll always be water falling from the sky. If not now, then in the next 10 minutes.

Happy '08 to one and all!

I'm not bankrolling Verizon. Or any other phone company.

I was a late, late, late entry into the cell phone market, forced into it by a relocation and family insistence that I have a phone for job contacts, so they gave me one. I know how to dial numbers, answer calls and check messages, that's it. Around texting and taking pics, I'm clueless. And content to remain so.

Point being, I'm not a phone person. Except when it comes to my sister (who, by the way, is equally outta the cell phone loop). We can and do talk nonstop for hours. Two hours would be a quickie chat, four would be approaching an average, eight wouldn't be unheard of. 

Funniest illustration was when we both lived in the Bay Area, about an hour, 1-1/2 hour drive apart. This was back in the era of landlines only. We're yakkin' and her partner leaves their home and drives down to mine to deliver something. Walks in and finds us still gabbin'. For all the time spent on the phone, he could've easily delivered her in person! But then we woulda missed all that time talkin'.

Anyhow, necessity sometimes requires that we put down the phone and turn to e-mail and this is one such occasion.

See, my sister is a huge animal rights person. Huge. Of a magnitude beyond what most people associate with animal rights. She's a visitor from an animal planet, I swear, in the guise of a human.

And recently two new animals joined her family. How creatures find her is a phenomenon in and of itself, amazing stories untold. The two new members are rabbits.

In their former "home," they were kept in a single cage in a dark basement, starved for food and water. They were always huddled in the back corner of the cage, totally  neglected and relying on each other for companionship, warmth and survival.  Never let out. Never outdoors. Never saw the sun.

Then my sister came along and their worlds changed infinitely and permanently.

(Pause: the woman with the bunnies prior, she's a midwife! Um, p.s., no fuckin' way would she get near me if I were birthing a baby. P.S.-2, why why why do people like that even have animals?!?!?!?!?!? Fortunately that rage takes a back seat when an animal is involved. A "care now, shoot later" approach.)

So, the bunnies have been in their new home for a little while and are acclimating to the change and rapidly coming out of their fear and shells. It's been a process. Where once they'd huddle terrified in the corner of their cage set outdoors in the sunshine for their first time, my sister gently coaxing and encouraging, never rushing them, now they bound out, dance, run and play and do this little hop with their hind legs that bunnies do when they are in glee. 

It's amazing how care and love and a good environment can transform.

Whatever their former names were, she didn't know and didn't care to know, there's no good in bringing forward the association. As is her nature, she waited for the animals to tell her their names. (On this we are of like minds.)

After a few weeks, they did. And thus I introduce to the good people of the world and blogging community:

Carlyle and Matilda

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Here they are, tuckered out after an evening exploring in their blissful, expanded world. They love their wicker balls (a favorite bunny toy), one of which is visible in the background.

They're still very connected, with one rarely venturing far from the other. Trauma has a way of bonding creatures for life and that's OK, and in this case the reason they survived. The lives of Carlyle and Matilda are forever changed, for good, because of my sister.

The darkness is forever behind you, Carlyle and Matilda. You're forever in the light and sunshine and grass now! Welcome!

Six guys and I pull off a miracle and are blessed with burgers.

That rocks!

This one apartment has been under renovation for a while. Yesterday marked do or die in its completion. Actually it was this morning when resident D was to move in. By my own decision, I put in a couple extra hours of overtime last night to help make it happen. And this morning the guys were laying the last of the kitchen tiles.

But, we made it happen thanks to incredible teamwork, skills, humor and affection. Then we helped the man move in. Then we were all treated to a surprise lunch of sirloin steak burgers from our employer.

These unexpected pleasures, gestures of gratitude, appreciation and recognition make my employers (and job) shine in a way unprecedented and unparalleled. The  camaraderie, team spirit, positive attitudes, humor, affection, goodwill and mutual respect at my job are beyond measure and personal experience. To be treated to burgers by magnificent people may seem like a small matter but it isn't. The bounty of burgers in such fine company made it a meal fit for kings and a queen.

Strange dream last night.

I'm standing in a room or house and a heavy object falls off the ceiling, clonking my head hard. Evidently it's something glass because I'm standing in a circle thick with shards and my head's injured, a portion of it evidently carved out or gone.

I hold still because of the glass and cover the injury with my hand. An unknown someone in the house evidently hears the commotion (or maybe I beckon?) and comes in to assist. End of dream.

Glass, breaking or otherwise, is an odd feature in a dream, for me. Don't know what inspired it except possibly my job, where I'm sometimes on tall ladders alone delicately handling old, unique and funky light fixtures that might come crashing down. 

Or, with part of my head missing, maybe it's just sci-fi.

It's 'cause of my dessert quiz that bigjo had to go shopping in the plus-size department. So the least I can do is help shed the pounds with a diet plate including precisely 21 peas, no more and no less.

See you in Waikiki in your bikini, bigjo!

Diet plate

In a season of candies and cookies and cakes, oh my!, a calorie-free quiz hits the spot. Dig in.

You Are a Brownie

Decadent and intense, you aren't for the weakhearted. Those who can deal with your strong flavor find out how sweet you really are.

What's the best gift you received this year?

On Christmas Day, lots less traffic. Equals peace and relaxation.

peace 'n' quiet