I’m cleaned out. On cleaning. On the professional level.
I’ve intuited that for a while and yesterday it was confirmed when I went up to L.’s former apartment (she being the one with all the clutter whose abode I agreed to clean).
Well, the entire place had been repainted and new floors laid so it wasn’t a massive job, only a couple hours.
Still, my enthusiasm was as flat as a Coke left sitting in a can for a week. I’ve got a good handle on why. I still love to clean -- my space. And really think I’m done cleaning spaces of others. I’m not nearly as passionate about it as I once was. Chalk it up to been there done that, wholly and fully. Time to move on.
* * *
There’s a movie on tap tonight. “My Life in Ruins,” from the same writer of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.”
One site summarizes it thusly: Georgia (Nia Vardalos) has lost her kefi (Greek for mojo). Discouraged by her lack of direction in life, she works as a travel guide, leading a ragtag group of tourists as she tries to show them the beauty of her native Greece. While opening their eyes to an exotic foreign land, she too begins to see things in new ways — finding her kefi in the process.
It’s just opened at the historic Blue Mouse theater and I’m going with a hodgepodge of fellow movie fans. On Tuesdays it’s $4 - a steal! Dunno whether I’ll be able to sit it through. I don’t like more than half a dozen people in a theater and I HATE the sound of popcorn being eaten (my sister shares this same affliction of sensitivity). So it’s a gamble going. Any film titled “My Life in Ruins” is one I should see.
* * *
My building’s witnessing an exodus, like many others; people are on the move. My two girlfriends have vacated. An unknown fellow with a studio that I looked at and won’t take. And, I’ve learned, the dude right above me. His is also a studio. I’ve not yet been given the tour and I can’t wait!
On the one hand, it’d be a move up, literally and symbolically, and out of these old maid’s and very haunted quarters. On the other, I'd no longer be in direct line of the birds feeding and I so love that. There’s no harm in checking it out.
He anticipates leaving in July - nearly already here! Where’s the year gone? Seems like only yesterday in January I was lamenting the lack of jobs. Oh, I was. I with millions of others. Never mind. Enjoy your day. Especially you lucky dogs with employment.
I'm a little ticked at Tacoma. Just a little.
Yesterday completed the Taste of Tacoma, an annual three-day event held at Point Defiance Park. It's basically a food fest with vendors from area restaurants paired with businesses and artists promoting or selling their wares.
There are bands on scattered stages, a couple beer gardens, a comedy tent, the wine and roses garden where for a price you can sample five wines and keep the glass or simply listen to the light jazz while strolling and enjoying the beauty of the roses.
There's no entrance fee and you can spend the entire day. The event always draws the crowds, especially on luscious days like yesterday. In case you hadn't heard, we are a severely sun-deprived bunch in the Pacific Northwest so when Mr. Sol makes an appearance, we flock like dehydrated desert survivors crawling toward the water.
Years ago, before my time here, Taste of Tacoma was evidently just that: an event where visitors could sample from the vast array of vendors for a few bucks a pop.
My the times have changed. Now there's hardly a sample to be found. Most plates run 6 or 7 bucks. Some constitute meals (namely those loaded with Asian noodles). Most are ridiculously overpriced for the quantity and quality. Understandably, you don't expect fine fare at the faire, but to my thinking let the prices reflect that.
I intentionally saved my appetite for the event. Mistake. My friend and I strolled surveying the booths for an hour for a dish that was affordable (especially to the unemployed) and healthful. I examined the contents of plates as diners pulled away from booths, occasionally stopping them to inquire what they were eating. I needed a snack, not an entire meal.
The most appetizing was the alligator on a stick. So I asked the price: $7. For that, they should be haulin' tail, not munching on six fried pieces skewered on a stick. A crab cake, which also appealed, was 5 bucks. One crab cake.
That's how it was up and down the corridor. My poor little body was aching for food. I finally gave up and told my friend "let's go find a place to sit down and listen to music." She was wanting a snack though too so bought two small plates and we shared a stick of yakitori chicken and four little eggrolls. Hardly a meal for $6; still, it was better than starving and kind of her (as the employed one) to pick up the tab.
My beef with the Taste of Tacoma is that it is no longer that, certainly not in any affordable sense. In fact, I was a little surprised and disappointed at the prevailing high prices in these times of severe hardship and unemployment. I understand that it's an opportunity for restaurants to introduce their foods to the public and that they've got costs to cover and profits to realize. By the three-day turnout, I'm sure they do very well.
Nonetheless, I can't help feeling changes are in order. I'd like to see the Taste of Tacoma return to its grassy 'n' gritty roots by offering tastes at half the prices of recent years. That opportunistic approach that now marks the Taste of Tacoma leaves a bad taste in my mouth and a lump in my throat.
Signed,
WB, an ardent Tacoman
Is Brad Pitt cut out to be a cop?
Russia thinks so.
Perhaps you’ve read that the city of Omsk, in South Russia, has placed life-sized cardboard cutouts of the actor dressed as a cop at key intersections to curb speeding and reckless driving.
I dunno, could be trading in one problem for another as drivers slow to gawk, then end up in fender benders. They do say accidents are down.
Imagine the maximized results had those Russian authorities used these cutouts:
I've been waiting for this day for a week. Or more.
Today brings the first meeting of a group entitled by its facilitator "Belief in the Unknown." Her goal is to bring together people with a belief in the beyond, the paranormal, experiences that can't be explained by reason and logic for spirited discussions (I couldn't resist). She also mentions hoping for possible excursions into haunted places if there's interest.
Well, there's definitely interest on my part. She's bringing structure and vision along with flexibility and openness to the group. It's sounding like we're on the same page and I'd love to partner up with someone(s) attuned to haunted spaces and willing to go there.
I've really been looking forward to the gathering and feeling its chemistry and meeting the founder. Her name's Aubrey. If name association's any indicator {that means you, Ms. Aubrey}, we'll get along fine.
UPDATE: So the first meeting, held outside a Barnes & Noble bookstore to take advantage of the sunshine, went splendidly. Eight folks total, inc. two guys, ranging from newbies in the paranormal and psychic arts to the old-timer (that'd be me). So glad I went! Had a hunch it'd go well; it did.
The closing of the Black Water cafe has left a hole in my coffee heart.
There are no substitutes; the void is real and palpable. Whereas before I awoke to the happy prospect of venturing to the Black Water with laptop and Berr Symon in tow for a leisurely sit over the town's finest espresso, cruising on Vox and watching the world ebb and flow, now there's a thud in the room.
There are three cafes within equal walking distance of the Black Water and each pales for its own reasons. None fulfill the thirst for coffeehouse culture.
Oh Black Water, ye are missed.
* * *
I'm distressed as I sift through my cupboards and refrigerator each day, generally as the coffee's percolating, for food for the large birds and find nothing. I am Mother Hubbard.
My dilemma's resolved as of yesterday when I found this on the Goodwill shelves:
I've never owned an air popper so I stopped a shopper with a motherly look to inquire about its use and quantity of corn. Popcorn's cheap and giant jugs are available at Costco at a price that won't break the piggy bank.
I'm joyful to have found a way to keep the food coming for the birds. It's win-win; the feedings help them and bring broad smiles and chuckles to me.
I still must continue learning how to feed myself.
* * *
It's said that finding coins on the ground is how the angels alert us to their presence. If that be the case, angels are circulating about me in numbers lately. Either that or I look down way too much as I walk.
Such melancholic countenance has its rewards, beyond the obvious. Such found coins are never put into my wallet. Instead, they're placed on my special little gold Buddha dish, my gratitude dish. In time they'll be rolled and taken to the bank in exchange for bills that are ideally channeled into a special fund.
Ideal, however, often conflicts with reality. However, the thought's there. I've collected as much as $12 in loose change. That's a lot of looking down. Like I said, gloominess does bear fruit and in ways unthought.
Notice that's psychedelic, not psycho, and do I or do I not post the pic.
That's the million-dollar question this morning since it costs a buck for every photo transmission from my cell phone. A buck's a lot when jobless and struggling to survive.
So after thinking on it for a few days, I decided the pic's worth the price to share this very cool item I found at the Goodwill. Talking on it reminds me of my junior year on the high school newspaper. I was a page editor and often sat at this large old wooden desk, the sort you'd now likely find at an antique shop or Goodwill, speaking of thrift stores.
And time to time I'd be found relaxing, feet propped up, shoeless no doubt, staring at half a dozen or so candles burning on the desk. I'd ground them upright with a little pool of hot wax. Hence my nickname pyro amongst the staff.
So anyway, I unearthed this from the pile of candles at the Goodwill and am instantly charmed. Oh yeah, a keeper! Not to everyone's taste, granted; it definitely appeals to mine. I was also fortunate enough to find a plate from the stacks and stacks that matches (in my funky world of fashion)!
Plate was only 59¢ and the candle 99¢! A steal for hours of visual and burning pleasure! So enjoy the special pic. By the way, the candle, it's huge! Hence the can of V-8 juice, for perspective. (Had no cans of beer, only bottles.)
In the wake of the death of Ed McMahon, the Tonto to the television great host Johnny Carson, the irreverent Men's Room yesterday posed this question to the radio audience: What can you not have without the other?
Being that I had my hands on the wheel at the time, I couldn't place them under my chin to contemplate when the question proved more challenging to answer than I'd have thought.
What can I not have without the other?
My laptop at night without wine or a cocktail at my side. Nah, that's not it.
I thought of a second but it's not coming back to me; whatever it was, that wasn't it either.
I continued contemplating. Then it struck like lightning:
I cannot have a road trip without bad coffee.
I'm passionate about road trips. Ain't much more I like than being in my Subaru alone exploring the open highways, byways and roads to destinations determined and undetermined. It's the cowboy on his horse without another (human) soul for miles upon miles, just the man and his horse in nature. Take road trips and travel from me and I'd die, they're intrinsic, my air.
As for that coffee, I'm particular. The coffee must be at my side and drunk in the car and we must be in motion, we must be the wind. (Negotiating stop-and-go traffic in a large city does not count.)
The free motel coffee's adequate in a pinch until I can get to the authentic stuff: the bad java from the mini-mart at a gas station. Ideal is the one alongside the highway or byway or the truck stop in some tiny town in the middle of nowhere.
It's gawd-awful swill to the taste buds and the best damn cup of coffee each and every time!
Some of the "can't have this without that" from the Men's Room audience:
Red Bull with Jager
eggs with ketchup
movies with popcorn & soda
David Lee Roth with van Halen
chocolate with milk
crackers with cheese, canned spray permissible
campfire with marshmallows
sex with cigarettes
hot dogs with mustard
mornings with coffee
Phil Collins with Journey
sunflower seeds with baseball games (actual, not on TV)
Me, road trips and bad coffee; jump in with a reply on yours!
Caught this on the radio this morning:
This very pleasant chap had been manning the parking lot outside England’s Bristol Zoo for six days a week for around 25 years. The lot has 150 spots for cars at $1.40 a pop and eight for buses at $7 each.
On June 1, he didn’t show up at work. So the zoo’s management called the city council folks requesting they send over a replacement attendant.
“The car park’s your responsibility,” said the council.
The zoo said, “The attendant was employed by the city council ... wasn’t he?”
The council asked: “What attendant?”
The fellow, name unknown, has gone missing from his home with a tidy haul of some $4.7 million (AU 5.9 million), give or take a cool mil.
That’s a lotta piña coladas sipped from a hammock at some beach for the rest of his life!
In its heydey, my building was the place to be. It's where the money was, where the movers and shakers of wild and gritty Tacoma resided.
Built of red brick in 1912, the building, named after an upper-crust fellow by the name of Mr. Hill, served as setting for galas and games in the giant cardroom/ballroom in the basement.
Residents and visitors passed between two thick white pillars out front and through the heavy wooden-and-glass door and past the carved mantel to the right and up one, two, three or four staircases -- to the top floor with the penthouse if that well connected. Hands glided along the same banister that mine now follow when I dare to ascend from my hovel in the basement.
It was the era when maids, usually black, were banned from entering apartments through the front doors, they were required to use the kitchen doors alongside. The cold metal shafts that served as refrigerators remain as do the ghosts and spirits of residents past who met good times and tragic.
My apartment's the exception to those days of glory. It's the old maid's quarters. I laughed and exclaimed "appropo!" when the owner told me because at the time I was earning my keep as a professional cleaner.
It's not just that. My station in life has tumbled far, in breadth and depth, from my soul's blueprint, background, education, life experience, aspirations and true self. Where once I dreamt by soul design of traveling the world with pen and camera, capturing humans at their best and their worst and the glory and beauty of animals and nature, now I fight to survive and stay off the streets and cobble together the funds that allow repairs to ill teeth.
My apartment is accessible through a side door or the grand entrance, down the staircase to the basement, first door straight ahead. I've often imagined how many eyes of the finer breed have been laid upon this very door before they turn right toward the dedicated cardroom.
I've come to know a few of the neighbors and as such have seen inside their spaces. Wow. Wee. Niiiiiiice. Places that are spacious with lots of windows and light and good vibes and energies. And all that for only a few hundred dollars above my rent, which tells me that mine's overpriced or theirs too low.
Even at those underpriced rents, I couldn't possibly afford either of the two apartments vacated by my gal pals, though I do covet Kate's place. However, today I discovered that the studio above me, the largest in the house, is coming available; the resident gave me the tour.
It fucking sucks that I just lost my job because I'd take it, it's what I've been needing.
The space is larger and with a more liberal floor plan. Mine's cramped, confining and impossibly restrictive around arranging.
It's above the street. Mine's at street level, which I don't care for at all.
It looks out into a bushy giant paine. Mine looks out into a telephone pole.
And the best feature: windows. Windows that allow a flood of light and sunshine, on those rare days of Mr. Sol's appearance in the Pacific Northwest.
The windows in my place, on the other hand, are few and angled such that half the apartment never sees the light of day, literally. And because I'm freakishly suprahuman light-sensitive, I struggle a lot here. In fact, I've often considered moving just to get some light.
My place is old and tired. It could benefit from a fresh coat of paint. Actually it could benefit from a change in color, especially because of its inherent dreariness due to the dearth of light, but the owner allows only standard antique white. And shame on the person who painted the wood trim!!! The ocean of bland white is mind-numbing and dreary.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not dissing the place, it's a helluva lot better than living under the nazi queen bitch. Still, truth is truth and truth is the place is worn and weary. It has none of the vitality and good vibes of half-dozen spaces I've viewed in this fine and distinguished structure of fascinating history.
Funny how one day can alter a life! A week ago I'd have snapped up that larger apartment. I hunger to move up from my lowly station even if "only" to the first floor where the waves of gaiety and fruitful living and light linger palpalbly. It'd have been a small step -- well, 17 steps up the staircase to be exact -- 17 steps in the right direction.
As for the cardroom down the hall, alas, it's occupied, so I can't invite you over for entertainment. However, I can host some of my own. I'll provide the snacks, wine and spirits -- and by that I do mean the many ghosts inhabiting these walls -- if you'll supply the cards:
Gosh dang.
About four times now I’ve called and left messages for Sarah, the owner of the pet pavilion and with whom I interviewed.
Her response: nada, zero, zip, not even a courtesy call.
Which brings to mind this: When I was looking for work, round 1, I dispatched oodles of resumes and applications. Oodles = in the hundreds.
I recall the handful who responded, not for any remarkable content in their message (generally a universal "thanks for the resume") but BECAUSE they responded.
I remember an era where lack of response was the exception. Now it’s the norm.
What happened that we've become such a rude, thoughtless, inconsiderate and discourteous people?
And why is it that we as a people tolerate it and hold no one to standards? If you tolerate bad service without speaking up, then that's what you'll get.
The lack of response from the pet pavilion owner brings to mind a similar experience not long ago. I got a call from an ad agency requesting an interview in response to a resume. I was rather excited because writing positions are nigh impossible to come by in my town.
I immediately called, got the machine, left a message. This continued for nearly a week - my leaving messages to set up the interview she had requested. She never returned one call. Eventually later an e-mail arrived with a lazy apology and info that they'd hired someone "and thanks for your persistence."
Yes, I was displeased by the lost opportunity, more so rankled by her lack of response, which I found unprofessional and discourteous. Had I been a client, I'd have taken my business elsewhere.
I penned an articulate letter to the president to inform him of the events and express dissatisfaction with the lack of response and professionalism. I wrote because I thought as a president of a small family-owned company he needed to be informed and respond to the workplace matter as he saw fit.
To my view, it's not only businesses that have a responsibility to customers but customers to businesses. If we fail to communicate, how will they know there's a problem or where to improve?
About a month later I received a letter from the president. He thanked me for bringing the matter to his attention, acknowledged that the woman had been rather busy at the time but that was no excuse for her unprofessional behavior. The matter was closed.
I feel a similar call to action with the pet pavilion.
My heart and spirit feel strongly that someone has to speak up and take a stand and that task seems to fall to me because I care. I care passionately about the degradation and evaporation of manner, consideration and courtesies in our society. I just can't sit by idly and silently. Good lord, how hard is it to return a phone call? Zip off an e-mail reading thanks for the resume? How hard is it to show some very basic minimal courtesy? Apparently fucking hard based on the prevailing actions of our times.
If the letter to the pet pavilion woman increases her awareness or catalyzes more attentive and courteous responsiveness to her callers and customers, then my speaking up will have mattered.
I thirst to leave this world in a little better shape than I found it. The battle is unending and exhausting and when my time is up, I'll relish and celebrate my departure. Until then, my passion on these matters here runs infinite. Alas, not so with the post so off I go. Poodles Toodles!
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