White Surprise

“What the hell?” I said this morning as I was preparing to leave. “Snow!”

Kris didn’t even respond. I’m always teasing her, telling her that it snowed the night before. I tell her this in February, I tell her this in June, I tell her this in October. It’s like the little boy who cried wolf.

“Seriously. Snow.”

“No way,” she said, but she came and looked outside with me. “Is it snowing now?”

“I don’t think so,” I said, but I was wrong.

Snow fell during most of my drive to work. The roads were thick and slushy. The pines and firs wore a light veil of the stuff. It felt like Christmas. (Or how I always wish Christmas would feel.) A grey fog clung to the hillsides along the highway, blending serenely with the the snowy woods. I’d grabbed my camera on the way out the door, and thought I ought to take a picture, but decided to wait ’til Good’s Bridge in Canby.

Unfortunately, the snow at Good’s Bridge was only a veneer; there was nothing photogenic. Further outside of town toward the shop, there was nearly no snow at all.

Perhaps there’ll still be some white spots when I make my return trip to Salem today. Perhaps I’ll drive through Silverton, so that I’m certain to see some snow.

(Note that while this is one of the latest snowfalls I’ve seen around here, it’s not actually the latest. That occurred on St. Patrick’s Day 2002. We woke in a yurt to find a light dusting outside.)

Sales Call, and The Last of the Sod

It’s a beautiful mid-morning in March. The sun is out, filling the world with warmth. The roads and the fields are wet from the overnight rain. Freeway traffic is nonchalant; nobody is racing, nobody is crowding. A strong breeze blows the branches of the trees by the side of the road.

I exit and wind through the Salem parkway. I look at the old familiar places — the Fred Meyer, the industrial park, the gas station — and the new — the Starbucks, the Applebee’s, the new school. I cross the bridge to West Salem, cruise down the highway to Independence.

And as I drive through this lovely stretch of road, I am swept away by the tides of nostalgia. This was never my home, but it feels like my home: the fields, the farm houses, the orchards. That house looks like the house Kim and Ron grew up in (and that Ron is buying from his parents). That field looks like the one next to our house, the one where we used to ride horses and have dirt clod fights. That orchard is like the one that used to stand by the Knopp’s, the one where all the kids would ride bikes and tell stories about Mr. Knopp, who was said to shoot at kids on bikes with his shotgun (loaded with salt).

The entire countryside looks sleepy. It seems slower paced. Since we’ve moved from Canby to Oak Grove, I don’t see this sort of thing much anymore. I miss it.

I stop at my client’s warehouse. We talk about packaging his bottles of fertilizer: two per box or four? With a dividing partition or without? Doublewall boxes or singlewall? Layer pad or no?

When I’m done, I spy a used book store along Main Street. I duck inside. There’s nobody here. The place is filled to the gills with romance novels, carefully categorized: historical romance, futuristic romance (?!?), modern romance, etc. I’m in the science fiction section when a tall red-faced man bursts through the door. He sees me and says, “Can I help you?”

“No thanks,” I say. “I’m just looking.”

“Okay,” he says. He’s breathing hard, as if he had just been running. “I’ll be across the street if you need me. I’ve got to get change.”

I wander back through the shelves. This is an old building. From the outside, it looks as if it were part of the original Main Street, built maybe a century ago. Inside, it doesn’t look much different, except in spots the old floors have been torn up and new floors of particle board have been nailed in place. I wander through the stacks. All of the books are meticulously categorized: cooking, Asian cooking, French cooking, Mexican cooking. Sports-baseball, sports-basketball, sports-football. Within each category, the books are filed alphabetically by author. The person who organized these is a man after my own heart. I’m dying to find something I can’t live without, but I come up empty. I thank the man (who has returned, and is now muttering to himself while looking through a phone book at the front counter) and leave.

I drive across the wide, tall bridge that crosses the Willamette. I used to take this road — River Road — from Salem to Independence on Sunday mornings when I was at college, just for fun. (Here’s a guilty admission: sometimes I would steal a Sunday paper at random from somebody’s mailbox along the drive.) Just over the bridge, on a whim, I take a right onto Riverside Drive. I’ve never been on this road before, but I love it immediately.

The road only follows the side of the river for a short distance before winding away through farm country. Tall oaks tower to my left, on the edge of a blueberry farm. (And what a blueberry farm! Hundreds — perhaps thousands — of blueberry bushes!) This farm gives way to another farm, this one growing some sort of bramble. Blackberries? Raspberries? Beyond that is an orchard, but not a filbert orchard. Cherries? Each tree has many thin trunks growing from a common root.

The road curves next to the base of some hills and I think to myself, “I must be close to Mac and Pam‘s house.” Suddenly there on the left is Skyline Road. I am close to Mac and Pam’s. I take a detour, head up into the hills. In five minutes, I’m at their door, ringing the bell. Nobody’s home, but Dante is looking at me through the windows on the other side of the house — he’s outside the kitchen wanting in.

I leave a note for Mac: “I came to see you, but you weren’t home, so I pissed in your pasture.” I walk down and piss in his pasture.

I drive off, still under the thrall of the warm March sun, still in a reverie. I thrill to the roller-coaster nature of the aptly named Hylo Road. I consider taking back roads all the way to Portland. I opt against it, though, because I have to be home on time today. We have somebody coming to pick up our sod.

Joy arrives on schedule. She’s wearing a yellow Minnie Mouse parka and a smile. “Thanks so much for doing this,” she says. “I’ve got a guy coming with a truck, but he’s coming from Hillsboro, so I don’t know what time he’ll be here.”

We make pleasant chatter as we load the sod into the wheelbarrow and roll it to the curb. There we stack the sod neatly. “If I have to,” she tells me, “I’ll haul it in my car.”

I frown. She has a brand new shiny Toyota sedan. Not only would hauling sod make a mess of her car, but it would also take eight or ten trips. “It’s okay,” I say. “If we haul the stuff to the curb and your guy doesn’t show up, I don’t mind leaving it here until you can come back with a different truck.”

We haul load after load. Joy works willingly, and keeps up a polite series of questions. I’m too focused on the job to ask questions in return, but I answer her amiably. We talk about craigslist (where she found both the sod and the hypothetical truck driver), about gardening, about the weather. We talk about cats. Oliver, a neighborhood cat, comes to say hello.

It begins to rain.

Now we’re working in the cold and the wet. Water streams down our faces. The wheelbarrow is difficult to handle because the ground is slick and because my gloves are slick. The long job begins to wear me down. We’re quieter now, our chatting less frequent. “I sure hope he comes soon,” says Joy.

We’re wheeling the last load to the curb when the fellow shows up. He’s all apologies: rain and traffic. An invisible cloud of cigarette smoke clings to him. He’s a nice guy, too, and the three of us work mostly in silence to load the sod onto his trailer. When the job is done, I unwind the garden hose from its winter home and spray down the tarps and the wheelbarrow.

I am cold. I am hungry. I am exhausted.

When Kris gets home, I tell her that she must take me out to dinner. She calls Andrew and Courtney, and we meet them at Mike’s for burgers and shakes. When we get home, I run a hot bath and then fall asleep in the tub. As I’m getting ready for bed, Kris says, “Well, that was nice of her.” She’s sitting at the computer, checking e-mail. Joy has sent us some gift certificates as a thank you for the free sod. A kind gesture.

I sleep long and hard.

The Waters of March

It was cold this morning, and a thick layer of frost clung to the car, the road, the trees. Traffic moved slowly, wary of ice.

Climbing the hill next to the mill in Oregon City, I could see billowing frothy clouds of steam from the falls. Entropy. The mist roiled outward, fog-like, making the road slightly more slippery.

Down the hill, past Canemah, I saw the full moon, bright white and glowing, hanging like a low fruit in the cerulean sky. Its light fell silver and shimmering on the smooth surface of the river, forming a road of white from the far bank to this. I was mesmerized. I could not look away. My attention ought to have been focused on the iced road in front of me, but instead I was drawn to the light on the water.

Later in the morning I found a fabulous song: Aguas de Marco by Antonio Carlos Jobim. (Jobim, a Brazilian composer and poet, produced such gems as “The Girl From Ipanema”, “How Insensitive”, and “Desafinado”. He also wrote the English lyrics for many of his songs, including this one.) The song stuck in my head, the melody repeating again and again. I googled the lyrics.

The Waters of March
(aka Aguas de Marco)
by Antonio Carlos Jobim

A stick, a stone, it’s the end of the road,
It’s the rest of the stump, it’s a little alone,
It’s a sliver of glass, it is life, it’s the sun,
It is night, it is death, it’s a trap, it’s a gun.
The oak when it blooms, a fox in the brush,
The knot in the wood, the song of the thrush.
The wood of the wind, a cliff, a fall,
A scratch, a lump, it is nothing at all.
It’s the wind blowing free, it’s the end of a slope,
It’s a beam, it’s a void, it’s a hunch, it’s a hope.

And the riverbank talks of the water of march.

It’s the end of the strain, it’s the joy in your heart,
The foot, the ground, the flesh, the bone,
The beat of the road, a slingshot stone.
A fish, a flash, a silvery glow,
A fight, a bet, the range of the bow.
The bed of the well, the end of the line,
The dismay in the face, it’s a loss, it’s a find.
A spear, a spike, a point, a nail,
A drip, a drop, the end of the tale.
A truckload of bricks in the soft morning light,
The shot of a gun, in the dead of the night.
A mile, a must, a thrust, a bump.
It’s a girl, it’s a rhyme, it’s the cold, it’s the mumps,
The plan of the house, the body in bed,
The car that got stuck, it’s the mud, it’s the mud.
A float, a drift, a flight, a wing,
A hawk, a quail, the promise of spring.

And the riverbanks talks of the waters of march.

It’s the promise of life, it’s the joy in your heart,
A snake, a stick, it is John, it is Joe,
It’s a thorn in your hand, and a cut on your toe.
A point, a grain, a bee, a bite,
A blink, a buzzard, the sudden stroke of night.
A pin, a needle, a sting, a pain,
A snail, a riddle, a weep, a stain.
A pass in the mountains, a horse, a mule,
In the distance the shelves rode three shadows of blue.

And the riverbank talks of the promise of life
In your heart, in your heart.

A stick, a stone, the end of the load,
The rest of the stump, a lonesome road.
A sliver of glass, a life, the sun,
A night, a death, the end of the run.

And the riverbank talks of the waters of march

It’s the end of all strain,
It’s the joy in your heart.

Through much cleverness I discovered and downloaded a wonderful video recording of a 1973 performance of this song by Elis Regina, which I am hosting here:

Elis Regina and Antonio Carlos Jobim — Aguas de Marco

Enjoy it. May it make you as happy as it has made me.

(p.s. There are many versions of this song available for purchase from the iTunes Music Store, both in English and in Portuguese. I bought the entire album called Elis y Tom because I liked this music so much.)

Eternal Sunshine

Lisa recently bemoaned the month of February as “the long dark teatime” of the year. I would like to respectfully disagree: February brings the first glimmers of life, is like waking from a long winter nap. Sure some grey days remain and there’s plenty of rain, but at least we have days like today.

Today is beautiful.

It’s sunny. The sky is clear. It’s nearly ten degrees centigrade, and it’s supposed to reach fifteen by the end of the week. I want nothing more than to mow the lawn. Early February in Oregon always features a few days like this, and by the end of the month they become a regular occurrence.

What other harbingers of spring does February have to offer?

Bulbs begin to blossom. The camellias bloom. Roses are pruned, and the caneberries too.
The rains decreases from an average of 5.35 inches in January to an average of 3.85 inches.
The average daily high temperature increases from 7.5 degrees to 10.5 degrees.
The days grow longer: we gain 42 minutes of light in the morning (by the end of the month, my commute is no longer in darkness) and 40 minutes of light in the evening.
Spring Training!
And much, much more!

It’s not February but January that is the long dark teatime of my year.

Elliptical

It feels strange — but good — to be going to a gym again. I’ve managed to go nine out of the last ten days. It’s becoming a habit.

It’s clear already that I need to do some work with weights. I’ve never been much of a weight-lifter; I don’t enjoy it. Still, I understand that the importance of building strength, of building muscle. I spent one session on the Nautilus equipment last week, and it was humbling. I used to start at seventy pounds on most machines whenever I joined a gym. I can’t do seventy pounds right now. I can’t do fifty. On some machines, I can’t even do thirty. No wonder my knee and leg are weak!

I much prefer aerobic exercise: the treadmill, the stationary bike, the rowing machine. “You should try the elliptical machine,” the personal trainer told me last week. “It’s a better workout, especially with your knee.” I’d never used an elliptical machine before, and my first experience was awkward. I felt like crouching the entire time, but crouching hurt my back. That couldn’t be the right posture, so I tried to stand up straight, but standing up straight forced me to rock from side to side with each stride. Ultimately, I decided this was the correct form, even though it’s counter-intuitive. (I can’t think of any other exercise where you’re supposed to rock your hips.)

I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to do prolonged aerobic exercise, but it’s been fine. I’m able to go for 30, 45, even 60 minutes without pause. And I enjoy it. I’ve mad a mix for my iPod containing one hundred songs with strong beats. I stride in time with bubble-gum pop music (or “Eurotrash dance” as Paul C. would put it) and the time just flies by.

Meanwhile, I’m also playing a little racquetball.

Fifteen years ago, when I was still in college, I played a lot of racquetball. I was a decent player for that particular population; I won the intramural racquetball tournament my senior year.

I’ve only played once since then, though, and that was a miserable failure. (“We don’t need to wear eye protection,” I told the group. “We’re not that good.” Within five minutes I had smacked Kris in the eye with a wayward shot. She got a black eye and I got a story.)

The presence of racquetball courts at the East Side Athletic Club was a big draw for me, one of the reasons I signed up without much hesitation. The club has leagues at three different skill levels: an A-league, a B-league, and a C-league. I went in on my own one day last week to get a feel for hitting the ball around the court. It was terrible. I had no control over my shot. I signed up for a Friday night instructional class.

No surprise: three of the other class members are kids aged nine, twelve, and fourteen. The fourth is the oldest kid’s father. The instructor is a tall, burly man who has been playing racquetball for twenty-three years. “My name is George,” he introduced himself, “like the President.” George is able to smash the ball with careless ease. Never at my peak could I kill the ball with such fluid strokes.

Our first class was spent learning the rules (games only go to 15 now instead of 21, and the tie-breaker only goes to 11!) and learning proper technique. The training on technique helped me most. No wonder I was unable to control my shot in my earlier practice session: I was setting up wrong. Also, my grip on the racquet was too short.

George talked to me after the class. “You’re alright,” he said. “You still remember most of this stuff. Go practice. Reserve a court and just practice hitting the ball until you can get it to come off the wall straight nine out of ten times.”

And so I did. I spent an hour this morning alone in a court hitting the ball of the front wall until it would come back the way I wanted it to. Then I moved ten feet toward the back wall and did the same thing. Then I switched to my backhand. Then I tried to keep control of the ball while killing it. Then I tried to generate a consistent serve. For an hour I hit the ball over and over and over, getting a feel for it. I felt good about my progress.

When I had finished, I stopped to watch a doubles game in progress. The four players all looked like George: tall, muscular men, and bald. (Is baldness a requirement for racquetball players?) Watching them, my progress seemed inconsequential. These large men slid around the court with grace and finesse. Their easy swings absolutely killed the ball. They dove for balls, they climbed the wall, they flicked their wrists and the ball carried the entire length of the court. They hurtled their bodies to the ground with casual abandon. I wish.

“Maybe they’re in the A-league,” I thought as I left the club.

I look forward to continued work on the elliptical machine, and to re-learning the game of racquetball.

Saga Without End

If you thought you’d heard the last of our weather woes, you were wrong! Chapter one was the flooded basement, chapter two was the leaky roof, and now comes chapter three.

It was a warm and sunny afternoon Monday, relatively speaking. That is to say it was not particularly cold, and there was no rain. My mood was giddy. “Perhaps,” I thought, “there really is something to Tiff’s theory that I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder.” On the drive home, I cranked my new classic rock CD mix. There’s nothing like Styx cranked to eleven on a sunny afternoon.

Once home I decided to walk to the store to buy a bathroom scale. I carried my iPod and marched in time to the pulsing beats of techno music. There’s nothing like techno cranked to eleven on a sunny afternoon. After much deliberation, I selected a scale with a digital readout and a body fat indicator. Upon returning home I was somewhat dismayed (okay, really dismayed) to discover that a third of me is fat. Since something like 60% of our bodies is composed of water, that leaves only 7% of me to be anything else. Scary.

To take my mind off this bad math, I decided to play some World of Warcraft-based capture-the-flag. There’s nothing like playing video games on a sunny afternoon. I had just captured the flag and was returning to my base when the doorbell rang. (In real life, not in the game.) What a dilemma! I had the flag and needed to capture it for my team. If I just left, I’d letting the team down. Yet the door needed answering. After a few moments of indecision I just got up and left the computer.

The man at the door introduced himself as Randy, our new neighbor on one of the back corners of our property (replacing the drunken idiots). “Did you know that one of your trees fell over?” he asked. I did not! We walked to the back of the property to survey the damage. A tallish tree of indeterminate species had become uprooted, had fallen across the fence into Randy’s back yard. We spent about half an hour talking amiably, discussing what to do with the tree, but the whole time I was worried about my game of capture-the-flag.

It was a warm and sunny afternoon Tuesday, relatively speaking. That is to say it was not particularly cold, and there was no rain. My mood might have been giddy if I were not faced with the prospect of purchasing power equipment. I’m not a manly sort of man, and, for example, chainsaws are as mysterious to me as computers might be for a logger. I stopped at the hardware store on the way home from work, and I examined their chainsaw selection. I narrowed my options to two models, both gas powered, but it took me twenty minutes to decide on the 16″ Poulan Woodsman 2150 LE saw instead of the 14″ saw. When I got home it was too late to cut anything, but not too late to play capture-the-flag.

It was a cold and damp afternoon Wednesday, typical for this time of year. My mood was apprehensive. When I got home, I pulled on my work boots, my work pants, and a warm sweatshirt, then headed to the shop to puzzle out the chainsaw. I spent twenty minutes reading the manual before I even opened the box. Much of it was baffling: bucking, bar length, chainbrake, kickback, etc. I took my time, though, and soon had the chainsaw operational. It roared with delight at the sight of all our trees. “Let me chomp that redwood,” it said, but I ignored it. “Come on,” it said. “How about that little apple?”

I carried the chainsaw back to the fallen tree. I made my first cut directly at the base of the twelve-inch thick trunk. Midway through the cut, the tree groaned and cracked, then shifted its weight, pinching the chainsaw and almost crushing my leg. It occurred to me that this was no trivial task. This tree was fucking heavy. I’d been treating the job as a light-hearted romp but there were some serious forces at work here. (Namely gravity.)

I stopped to reconsider my plan. “Maybe I should take some weight off at the top of the tree first,” I decided.

I walked around the block and knocked on the neighbor’s door. Randy’s wife, Miriam, took me to their back yard — a thick morass of mud — and showed me the damage. The tree had fallen onto the fence (a barbed-wire contraption erected by the previous owner of our house) and directly onto a stout metal post that had been used to anchor a clothesline. There were branches splayed every which way. The entire tree was entangled with some sort of vine.

After spending a few minutes surveying the wreckage, I devised a plan of attack. I fired up the chainsaw. For the next half hour, I methodically sliced my way through the mass of branches, cutting the wood to manageable size (though not attempting to trim it to any sort of final, usable size).

As the light turned gloamy and a heavy rain began to fall, I returned to our side of the fence and attacked the main trunk once more. Again my cut into the base of the tree was stupid: the moment the chainsaw had passed through, the fat log shifted, sliding heavily toward the fence, several hundred pounds of unstoppable force. The tree butted into thick mud with a thunk. Nothing was damaged (not even me), but only from sheer luck. I spent a few more minutes cutting before the chainsaw suddenly stopped, turning itself off. It restarted fine, but the chain would not turn. I turned it off and restarted it, but still the chain would not turn.

A close examination revealed that a little twig had managed to find its way into the, well, I don’t know what to call it…into the body housing where the chain winds itself up and around. The twig was stuck, but after some coaxing, it came free.

It was here that my troubles began.

Even after removing the twig, the chain would not turn. It would not turn when the power was on, and it would not turn when the power was off. Worse, eventually the chainsaw refused to start at all! Worse still, when I let the chainsaw sit for a spell, oil oozed from the lubrication “port”, an opening I cannot see.

Frustrated, I gave up and called it a night.

And that’s where we are this morning: we have a tree that is half-sawed, a fence that is half-damaged, and a brand new $160 chainsaw that half-works. I’ll try to take the bar and chain off this afternoon, try to see if I can spot what’s causing the lubricating oil to leak. I’m not sure I know what I’m looking for, though.

During this entire process, I keep hearing Walter shout, “You’re out of your element, Donny!” I’m better off playing computerized capture-the-flag.

State of Confusion

My wife is a wonderful woman. She’s intelligent, funny, and competent. She’s probably the most able person I know. However, she is not without flaws.

For one, she has an abysmal sense of direction. She rarely knows where she is, how she got there, or how to get anywhere else. She has no real internal map. If you asked her which way she was facing this very moment, she probably could not tell you.

In contrast, I pride myself on a near absolute sense of direction. I used to say that after I’d been to a place once, I could always get there again. As I’ve grown older, this ability has waned somewhat. Still, except for on our property (where, for some reason, I’m always turned around 180-degrees), I generally know which way I’m facing, and I always know where I am and how I got there.

Naturally, this disparity in directional abilities occasionally causes conflict. For example, on Monday was headed to Sheila’s for a stitch-and-bitch. “Can you give me directions?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said. “but haven’t you been there before.”

“Yes,” said Kris. “I don’t remember how to get there, though.”

So, I wrote out directions:

Head north on McLoughlin, take the Tacoma exit, go left at the light, go left at the stop at the top of the hill, go straight through the stops. When you reach the light at Johnson Creek, go straight, but then almost immediately take a left up the hill. Take a left on Ogden. Sheila’s house is on the left-hand side.

“These directions suck,” Kris told me. I drew her a map instead. “This isn’t any good, either.”

We were frustrated with each other. “I don’t know what else I can do,” I said. “Try Mapquest.”

“Mapquest is wrong. It tells me to get off at Bybee, but I can’t. There’s no exit there.”

I sighed. “Well, then, you’ll just have to do with the directions I gave you.” Neither of us was pleased with this solution, but she did eventually get to knitting and back without incident.

We met Craig and Lisa for a fine dinner at Ciao Vito the other night. After dinner, I was not in the mood to drive home down McLoughlin/99E. Instead, I took 32nd down to Burnside, then cut over to 39th. I pointed out landmarks from my life along the way.

“These are the apartments where Myung lived. He was my sales manager when I was with Combined Insurance. Amy Ratzlaf lived just a block over there. Remember that upstairs apartment where Chris and Cari lived just after college? It’s just beyond that record store. Here’s Stark. What do yo know that’s near Stark and 39th? Portland Nursery, remember? The place we bought our fruit trees and berry plants.”

Eventually Kris became somewhat engaged. “If this is 39th,” she asked, “does that mean that if we followed it long enough, it would run down near Andrew and Courtney’s house?”

“Exactly! See, here’s Hawthorne. There’s lots of stuff along Hawthorne: a Powell’s, the Bagdad Theater, all sorts of stuff. See this Safeway? Nick lives someplace around here. Here’s Holgate. As soon as we cross Holgate, I feel like we’re in the extended range of the area we usually hang out. See? Here’s the Trader Joe’s. Here’s Steele. Who do you know that lives on Steele?”

Kris thought for a moment. “Celeste?”

“That’s right.” If this sounds condescending in the re-telling, that’s because it almost sounded condescending during the event, too. I don’t mean to be condescending, of course, but I find myself trying to simplify things, trying to explain things like I might explain them to a child. Kris is not a child.

“Celeste lives just down there, across from Reed. Here’s Woodstock. We need to cut over to 99E now because 39th dead ends.”

“It does? I thought I took 39th home from Sheila’s the other night. Oh wait — I crossed 39th to Bybee.”

“Right. Bybee’s okay, but it kind of twists through that ritzy neighborhood and the intersections are all funky. I tend to avoid it when possible. Woodstock is easy. Now here’s the Bybee bridge. What would happen if I were to go straight instead of turning onto McLoughlin?”

“I don’t know. Would you hit 17th?”

“Yes! Where would you hit 17th?”

“I don’t know. Near the Verizon ad?” (There’s an annoying big electronic billboard at the Verizon store where 17th meets 99.)

“That’s a good guess, but it’s off a little bit. You’ll see. You should recognize where you are.”

“I don’t recognize it,” Kris said when we reached 17th.

“I forgot that it splits in two,” I said, pulling up to the next intersection.

“Wha—? How did we get here? It’s like we’re in a completely different state!” Ah, the flash of recognition. She knows the area around Bybee & Milwaukie: Caprial’s, Cha Cha Cha, Fat Albert’s Breakfast Cafe, Springwater Grill, Stars Antique Mall, Wallace Books, etc. She also knows a little of the area up by the Cronks and Bennetts near Woodstock. We’ve even driven this connecting route before, but apparently the points have never been connected on Kris’ internal map.

“Why don’t I take this way to Andrew and Courtney’s?” she asked. “Wouldn’t it be easier?”

I laughed. “Maybe. It’s not the quickest route, but it might be the best one for you to take.” We passed Eckankar! The Church of the Light and Sound of God! (Changed, apparently, to the Religion of the Light and Sound of God.) “Here, let me show you how this all connects up to the Tacoma Street overpass.” I turned onto Tacoma. “Remember: the Sellwood Bridge is on this road, too, directly behind me. That’s how you get to Marla’s.”

“Don’t push your luck,” muttered Kris.

Alas, Chantico, I Hardly Knew Thee

“I’d like a chantico and an apple fritter,” I announced to the Starbucks waitron this morning. I make a similar declaration about once a week.

“Chantico!” shouted the waitron to the young woman standing at the steamer three feet away. Then she beamed at me and said, “You’re enjoying those chanticos while you still can, huh?”

“They’re going away?”

“That’s right.” She seemed quite pleased, actually. During the year that chanticos (chanticoes? chantici?) have been available, I’ve noticed that they’re a pain for the Starbucks waitrons. They often sigh or groan or make little looks of exasperation when I order them. About a third of the time, I’m asked if I’d mind waiting because “we have to make a new batch”. Apparently the chantico hasn’t sold as well as Starbucks could have wished. (I wonder if their numbers show some sort of statistical anomaly at the Canby, Oregon City, and Oak Grove stores — “Look, Marvin, chantici are especially popular in one county in Oregon. Why do you suppose that is?”)

“How long do I have before the chantico is gone for good?” I asked.

“Until we run out of the mix,” said the waitron with a satisfied air.

What will I do now? What did I order before the chantico came? I guess I tried to order steamed milk drinks, but half the time the waitrons would mess up and give me iced milk drinks. An iced milk is not so appealing as a chantico on a January morning.

(Note: the spellchecker in my text editor has no qualms with the word ‘waitron’. I am shocked.)

I used to carry my camera with me everywhere I went, but I’ve gotten out of the habit. Recently this has caused me much regret.

Last week the heavy rains caused the streams and rivers to swell and flood. There were several shots I missed: the overflow of Gribble Creek, the boathouse that had slipped its moorings and slammed into the side of the Oregon City Marina, the frothy full Willamette Falls, and countless flooded streams and ditches.

On Tuesday I missed two fantastic shots. The first featured dramatic lighting as a break in black storm clouds let the sun shine in at an odd angle, highlighting an old white barn in golden tones. I’m not sure exactly how I would have framed it, but at least if I had my camera with me I could have tried. The second would have been a wide-angle shot of towering billowy clouds near the Molalla hills, vast puffy structures the likes of which used to spark my imagination as a child.

Today I brought my camera with me to work. “Hot dog!” I thought as I pulled onto Oglesby. “Look at that.” The dark clouds over the Molalla hills showed the barest sliver of orange. When I got to work, I walked back to the field behind the shop to snap some images. (Not that I had a tripod with me, but that’s another story.) A great idea, but my camera battery was dead. Of course. When I fail to practice a hobby for a while, I forget the fundamentals. One of the fundamentals of photography is: check your battery (and always carry a spare).

The sunrise was gorgeous: pink and orange and red gilding the low charcoal clouds. I just don’t have it on film to prove it.

On my drive to work — as I was sipping my chantico — I decided that the title to this entry would be “Alas, chantico, I hardly knew thee”, with the caveat that I would need to google for the proper structure based on the source of this quotation. However, a google search was less-than-helpful. For one, it revealed thousands of matches (1.7 million to be precise). For another, it seems that most people use the structure “alas, [blank], we hardly knew ye”.

Ye? Ye? Can this be right? It feels wrong to me. Ye feels like it ought to be the nominative case, but maybe I’m just pulling that out of thin air. (I grant that my mind says that it is “we” who hardly knew whomever.)

What is the quotation I remember? Is it a mashup of Hamlet’s “alas, poor Yorick” and something else? How is it that the web is filled with close approximations with this, yet I cannot find the original? Lisa? Joel? Dave? Anyone care to point me in the right direction?

No Sleep For You!

I went to a cocktail party last night to celebrate Dave’s thirty-seventh birthday. Over kalamata olives and pickled carrots, I told Dave’s parents and Courtney how my sleep has improved during the past six months. I ought to have known that I was jinxing myself.

One of the cornerstones to my sleep regimen has been adapting to my sleep cycle. Because my personal cycle averages about ninety minutes, there are certain optimal times for me to fall asleep. If I fall asleep at a different time, I wake before five or after six, and that’s not good. Last night, I read comic books in bed until the middle of one of these optimal times, then I turned out the light and fell asleep.

Kris woke me a short time later. She turned on the light and shouted: “Are you asleep already? I hate it when you do that.” Groan.

Kris doesn’t like for me to go to bed before she does, even if she’s staying up until eleven to watch Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (while simultaneously reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix). She also doesn’t like for me to go to bed after she does, even if she’s going to bed at eight because she doesn’t feel well. No — Kris is only happy if I’m going to bed at precisely the same time she is, and if I’m not reading or listening to music or anything else.

“This channel is so annoying,” Kris said. “They keep showing commercials every ten minutes.”

“I was trying to sleep,” I said, but she didn’t care, so I got up to check my World of Warcraft auctions (about which more tomorrow).

When I tried to fall asleep half an hour later, I couldn’t. Another cornerstone of my sleep regimen is a dose of melatonin half an hour before bed. The melatonin helps me to fall asleep, and grants me truly deep and restful slumber. However, if I am awakened in the middle of melatonin-assisted sleep, it’s almost impossible for me to get back to bed. Such was the case last night.

I lay there, tossing and turning. Every little thing bugged me: my wrist hurt, my shirt was bunched up underneath me, the pillows (without pillow cases, which are in the dryer) were prickly, the hissing of the C-PAP machine was driving me crazy. Nemo had curled up by my side; he bit me when I tried to pet him. Finally, sometime just after midnight, I fell asleep. “Sometime just after midnight” is not one of the optimal times for my sleep cycles.

“Your face is kind of red,” Jenn told me on Saturday, after book group.

“I know. It’s always kind of red lately” I said. “It’s from my C-PAP machine. The mask irritates my face.”

“Doesn’t it have a little water reservoir?” she asked. “That ought to help.”

“It does have a little water reservoir, but I never use it,” I said, and everybody laughed. Naturally, I resolved to use the little water reservoir that very night. (And just as naturally, I forgot to use the little water reservoir that very night. I did, however, remember to use it last night.)

The little water reservoir is nice. As the air blows through the C-PAP machine into the tube, it passes over the pool of water, picking up some of the moisture and carrying it to my nose. There’s no doubt that this makes for a more comfortable C-PAP experience. There’s also no doubt that it creates a micro-climate inside my face mask. Last night at about three o’clock, I dreamed that I was drowning. I woke to find that my dream was not far from reality. I pulled my face mask aside and a small stream of cold water poured from it onto my pillow-caseless pillow. Great. I turned the pillow over and tried to fall asleep again.

When, because of my natural sleep cycle, I woke at 4:45, I considered getting up, but discarded the notion as silly. I was tired. Kris’ alarm went off at 5:15. Kris’ alarm went off at 5:24. I got out of bed and poked around on the computer. At 6:00, I hollered, “Are you going to get out of bed?”

“Oh,” said Kris.

I can’t do my morning routine before Kris, because if I do there isn’t enough hot water for her shower. Usually the morning routine begins at about 5:45. If it begins at 6:05, we are w-a-y behind schedule. We rushed through things, and I complained the whole time about Kris’ woeful insensitivity to her husband, how callously she had thwarted him at both ends of the night. She bore my admonitions with poise. I managed to make it out the door just on time.

I am very, very tired this morning.

Footnote: To make matters worse, it is cold. That is to say, my office is cold. How cold? It’s 4.2 degrees celsius. That’s 39.56 degrees fahrenheit! I’ve turned on both space heaters: the old fan-based clunker and my new directional parabolic heater. Maybe between the two I can get the office to near 20 before noon. (The temperature has increased to 10.4 in the 48 minutes it took to write this entry!)

Footnote to the footnote: When I spruced up my office recently, I bought three houseplants to give the place a little warmth. “You’re not very good at taking care of those,” Nick told me recently. “You need to water them.” Actually, they get enough water. They don’t get enough light. And 4.2 degrees celsius? Not ideal for tropical plants. No wonder my ficas is shedding its leaves. I shake it and the leaves cascade like, well, leaves falling from a tree. Okay for an oak in November; not okay for an office ficas.

Sleepless in Oak Grove

On Thursday night, we dined at Gustav’s with Tiffany. Kris loves German food, and it’s difficult for me to say no to a lamb shank. Over dinner, I noticed I had a sore throat. By Saturday morning, the sore throat had worsened, and I had developed a chronic sneeze and a runny nose.

It’s a little early in the year for my second cold, but otherwise there’s nothing odd about this. The only reason it was notable was because we were preparing for our twelfth annual Friend Thanksgiving. We were slicing halibut fillets, chopping onions, steeping chowder. I stopped every five minutes to wash my hands so that I would not infect our guests.

I took some medicine, but it didn’t help. In the middle of the afternoon, I switched to Dayquil, which suppressed the sneezing, cured the sore throat, and lessened the runny nose. In fact, it worked so well that I took another dose just before our guests arrived.

As people came in, I washed my hands again and began to mix drinks. I made a rosemary verde for myself. Just before we served the first course, I took a third dose of Dayquil. For a while, I forgot about my cold: I relaxed, ate good food, drank wine, and enjoyed conversation with friends. Toward the end of the meal, my runny nose returned, so I took another dose of Dayquil. I also fetched a box of kleenex. A mountain of tissue began to accumulate near my plate.

When our last guests departed at around one, Kris and I spent an hour cleaning dishes. Before bed, I took my usual dose of melatonin.

I think you may be able to see where this is headed. Over the course of about eight hours, I’d consumed four doses of Dayquil, had several servings of alcohol, and then took a sleep aid.

My body was a mess.

I climbed into bed, but there was no possibility of sleep. I got up and spent an hour mindlessly surfing the web. I tried to fall asleep again at 3am. My C-PAP machine was a liability; I couldn’t breathe through my nose, so it wasn’t doing anything but blowing air on my face. For four hours, I tossed and turned. My mind raced. My heart raced. I took my pulse several times but stopped because I was getting crazy results like 156bpm and 148bpm. In times past, this would have panicked me. I would have been convinced I was going to die. I’m older and wiser now, though, and knew that I’d simply taken too much Dayquil.

Finally, at about seven, I dozed off. I slept a groggy kind of sleep until eleven, then stumbled downstairs to help Kris finish clean up from dinner party.

I was exhausted. I dozed from time-to-time. At seven o’clock, I took some Nyquil and some melatonin and went to bed. I slept long and hard. When Kris woke me this morning, I was still exhausted.