Cat Time

When Kris and I lived in Canby, we had a summer ritual. During the evenings, when it was warm, we would take a walk through the neighborhood. We’d head down Sixth street, take a right on Fir, stroll over to Eighth or Ninth, and then head home once we’d reached the highway. It was a pleasant, familiar pastime.

It didn’t take long to become accustomed to develop rituals. Kris would stop to look at the gardens that particularly pleased her. I picked up flyers from in front of any home that was for sale. But our top ritual was the counting of the cats.

I’m not sure how we began, but soon after starting our walks, we discovered that there’s a certain part of the evening that might be dubbed “Cat Time”. After dinner, about an hour before dusk, when the heat of the day has begun to fade, the cats came out to take their ease. They sat in the grass, or under cars, or by the curb. In some places they would gather in twos and threes, but most often they would sit alone, watching.

We would count them as we walked. In fact, we would place bets as we started out. The first person would pick a number, and the second would call “higher” or “lower”. The fewest cats we ever saw during Cat Time was seven — the most was twenty-nine.

Kris would stop to pet her favorite cats. At one house on Ninth there lived a cat we called Cookie. Cookie was a whore. When he saw Kris, he would prance down the driveway and roll at her feet. I would sigh and sit on the curb as Cookie and Kris exchanged their affections. There were other cats who were glad to see her, too.

Cookie was not this cat’s real name. His real name was probably something like Tom or Mario or Bubba. We named him Cookie ourselves. We’ve always named the cats we meet if we don’t know what they’re really called. So, along our walk, we had names for the thirty-or-so various cats we encountered on a regular basis.

Spurge was the cat next door, so named because he was always in our yard, like a noxious weed. Thirteen was the beautiful orange cat that lived on Fir. He got his name because the first time we saw him, he was the thirteenth cat on our walk. Otot looked just like Toto. Dee and Dum were the twin Persians that lived near the Bemises. Sad to say, I can’t remember many of the other cats’ names, though at one time I knew all thirty.

I mentioned this story to introduce the concept of Cat Time. For fifteen years, we’ve been under the impression that Cat Time was about an hour before the sun set. Not so.

I’ve been rising at 4 a.m. for the past week. I tumble out of bed and immediately head out the door for a walk around the block. After seven days of this, I can assure you that Cat Time does not occur during daylight. Cat Time is 4 a.m. You would not believe how many cats I see in my sixteen minute stroll through the neighborhood. Where do they all come from?

This morning I passed a gang of cats. There was a cluster of five or six of them sitting in the middle of Arista, sitting near each other, but not too close. (Those of you with cats know what I mean.) They were having a meeting about something, and I could not help but think that their subject was me. “What should we do with the interloper? How can we get him to stay in bed? He’s violating our sacred hour! Let’s speak with Simon about it. Maybe he can do something…”

There’s good news and bad news on the sugar front. I made it through my week without sugar. So far it’s the most difficult thing I’ve done on my list of goals. It frickin’ sucked.

I allowed myself to eat fruit, but that was about it. No cookies, no candy, no cake. No white starchy foods. No condiments.

So I made it through that week of hell. That’s the good news. The bad news is that my wellness coach, Lauren, has asked me to do this for two weeks instead of just one. So, I’m just half-way through. Argh!

I just had a grapefruit for breakfast, which was a pleasing combination of sour and sweet, but it’s just not the same as a couple of delicious Sno-Balls, you know?

I Learn Ping-Pong

Kris told this story around work last week to the amusement of all her little friends. I’ll do my best to reconstruct how she told it, but no guarantees that it’ll be as funny.

One of my goals lately has been to “just say yes” when people ask me to do things. So long as the requests don’t violate my morals (no drugs, no sex with goats), and so long as I have the time, I’m giving new things a try. I’m not just saying “no” out of fear and trepidation.

Charlie Lam, my grade school soccer coach, stopped by work a couple weeks ago. He came by to evangelize his table tennis club. He tried to convince Jeff to join, but he wasn’t interested, so Charlie turned his sights on me. I’ve always like table tennis, and I have nothing going on Tuesday nights (except writing — but then I’m always writing), so I agreed to give it a try. “Just say yes.”

So I went to play table tennis a couple weeks ago. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. How good would the other players be? Charlie had assured me that most everyone was just a beginner. “Do you remember Danny Hunt?” he had asked me.

“Sure,” I said. “Is Danny playing?”

“No,” he said. “But Danny’s mom is playing.”

Playing table tennis with Charlie and his group brought back a flood of old memories. He was my soccer coach for four years (five?) when I was a boy. I was always intimidated by him, though I’m not sure why. His son, Torey, was a good friend of mine. They lived a half mile away, so we spent a lot of time together. I was on Torey’s horse when my brother Tony ran into it with a bike, causing the animal to throw me to the ground and step on me.

Anyhow, playing table tennis with Charilie and his group felt like old times. He took some time to teach me proper form on my forehand. I didn’t do a good job (and even at my second session the other night I was having trouble), but I tried. We did drills together. We played some mini-games in which other players and I competed to be “king of the hill” (or “king of the table”, in this case).

Eventually, we played some full games. The rules have changed in recent years, I guess. I was confused at first. For example, the serve alternates every two points now instead of every five points. There are infinite “lets” on the serve. The ball must be tossed into the air on service, and must be struck behind the table. The biggest change, though, is that a game goes to eleven points, not 21.

Anyhow, I did well. I won several games, which made me happy. Not bad for my first night. I drove home in a great mood.

“So how was ping-pong?” Kris asked when I got home.

“Exhausting,” I said. “But fun. I’ll go back next week.” I told her all about the night. I told her how I was able to beat a lot of the other players.

“That’s great,” she said. “Who else was there?”

“Oh, nobody you’d know,” I said, getting ready for bed. “It was mostly just a bunch of fifth- and sixth-graders.”

That, my friends, is the story that delights my wife. I don’t think it’s quite as funny as she does. Those kids are good. They’ve been practicing for a while. I’m just starting. Still, Kris yuks it up every time she thinks about me gloating over twelve-year-olds.

We’re Not Interested

The phone is the bane of my existence. It rings all day long, especially at work. And since I’m the one charged with answering the phone, I have to stop whatever it is I’m doing to answer the damn thing.

Yes, I know I get paid for this, but it’s still frustrating. I’m thinking. My mind is at work. When the phone rings, it breaks my concentration. Sometimes, when we’re busy, the phone rings ten or fifteen times an hour. When this happens, I begin to curse.

Even at home, the phone bugs me. Send me e-mail! E-mail does not interrupt my work flow. I can answer it when I have the time. The phone requires my immediate attention. (Obviously, I don’t mind calls for certain things, but come on: a lot of things are better suited to e-mail.)

All of this is preface to another story.

J.D. and the Yellow Pages
Once upon a time, I had a bad experience with a company that publishes a Portland-area telephone directory. Before this time, I had basically been polite and patient with telemarketers who called about their various phone books. (And who knew there were so many? It’s crazy!) Since then, I’m an asshole, and I don’t care.

Just yesterday morning I received the third call in as many days from somebody with a thick Indian accent offering to update our free listing in the U.S. Business Yellow Pages. The first two times I politely asked to be removed from the list. Yesterday I was not so polite. I’m not proud of my behavior, but hey — I’m only human.

Anyhow: on Monday, Nick received a call late in the afternoon. It was a fellow named Raymond. He’s taking care of our account this year at the one telephone directory in which we choose to advertise. (There’s a new account rep every year, it seems.) Raymond was all chummy with Nick, telling him how much he looked forward to meeting all of us. Nick hates stuff like this. He told Raymond to call me Tuesday morning, but then he couldn’t get him off the phone. (Nick is not assertive.)

On Tuesday, Raymond called me. He told me that he had a lovely chat with Nick on Monday, and that he was pleased to be talking to me. He asked if he could come out to go over our yearly contract and to tell us about the company’s internet directory. “We’re not interested in the internet directory,” I told him.

“Oh, I think you’ll be interested in this, J.D.” he said. Whatever. I gave him directions to find the place. “Oh, I’ll bet it’s gorgeous out there,” he said. “I’ve never been out there. I look forward to seeing the country. And I look forward to meeting you.” Whatever.

Yesterday Raymond called just before our schedule meeting. “J.D., I’m running behind,” he told me. I said that was fine. I’d be here. Hoping the telephone would let me write in peace. “Great,” he said. “I really look forward to meeting you.”

“Man,” I said after he hung up. “That man is obsequious.”

“What does obsequious mean?” asked Jeff.

“Brown-noser,” I said. “Ass-kisser. He’s full of false flattery.”

Nick agreed. Then he had an idea. “Uh, I’m going to town,” he said. “I’ll, uh, run in the deposit. Bye.” He had no desire to be in on the meeting. Taking a hint, Jeff grabbed the loppers and went outside to prune trees. (Trees that have never been pruned before in nearly two decades.)

Raymond arrived. “Wow,” he said. “This is gorgeous country, J.D.. What an amazing drive. It must be special to work out here.” I gritted my teeth, first because of his painful saccharine-sweetness, and then because the grip of his handshake was hard enough to crack walnuts. We sat down.

“J.D.,” he said, “I want to show you our internet directory.”

“We’re not interested,” I said.

“I hear you,” he said, “but I think you should look at the changes we’ve made, J.D. We’ve had 60% growth in the past year.”

“That’s nice,” I said. “But we’re not interested. Nobody I know even uses an online telephone directory. They all use Google.” Even as I said that, I knew I’d make a mistake. I’d given him a concrete rejection, given him something he could reply to.

sigh

Raymond held up a finger. “Hold on. Let me show you something, J.D.” He leafed through a binder, hunting for a page he wanted to share. He couldn’t find it. He leafed some more. He leafed some more, and then turned the page a quarter of the way toward me, as if letting me look (though I could not see a thing). “Our customers have shown tremendous satisfaction with our online directory. It lets you target locally.” Blah blah blah.

Raymond talked for five minutes about his stupid internet directory. I just let him go. I sat there and nodded, but I was really thinking about my blogs, and about what I would write in the afternoon, if the phones ever stopped ringing. Blah blah blah.

“Now doesn’t that sound great, J.D.?” Raymond said, wrapping up the spiel.

“Look,” I said. “I told you before: we’re just not interested. We have no interest whatsoever.”

He was about to reply to this when there was a knock at the back door. It was the Schwan’s man. Actually, it was the substitute Schwan’s man. He’s a bozo, and I know it, but I was in a passive-aggressive mood. I played happy and cheery J.D. “Hi, how’s it going?” I said. “We don’t need anything this time. I’m sorry.”

The Schwan’s man said okay, and then he told me all about the awesome grilled cheese sandwiches they’ve begun to sell. “They’re great,” he said. “I love them. I ate a whole box by myself the other day.” (And he looked like it.) “If I could, I’d sit around and eat these cheese sandwiches and play video games.” He paused. “But my wife wouldn’t like that.” I laughed heartily, but not because I thought it was funny. I was just being mean to Raymond.

As I returned to the office, the telephone rang. It was a customer with whom I could joke and chat, so I played happy cheery J.D. again. But when I sat down to talk with Raymond, I was dour, serious J.D. He seemed to get the point.

“Well,” he said. “I guess we should sign the contract.”

“Yes, that’s a good idea,” I said.

I signed and initialed a couple pages. When we got to the last page, he said, “Now you’re sure you don’t want to consider the internet directory?” I had to look at his face to tell if he was being serious. He was.

“No,” I said. “We’re not interested.”

We finished the deal, and I led him to the door. “Thank you so much, J.D., it was a pleasure to meet you. It was great to get out here and see this beautiful land. You sure have a great business. Take care!”

I sat at my desk to process some quotes. I had been working for about five minutes, and was getting up to use the fax machine, when Raymond appeared at the door.

“Pardon me, J.D.,” he said, “But I thought I should let you know that you can change your mind at any time about the internet directory. It’s not like the print directory where there’s a deadline. We can insert your listing into the online directory any time.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

He left. I finished my quotes and wheeled over to write up a weblog entry. I had been writing for twenty minutes when all of a sudden Raymond was by my side. “What the hell,” I thought to myself. What planet was this guy from?

“Pardon me, J.D. But I forgot to give you these flyers. This flyer describes your contract. It’s the same one you get every year. And this flyer describes the internet program. It’ll give you a better idea of what it can do for you and your business.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. “Look,” I said. “We’re not interested. That’s it. We’re just not interested.”

“Oh, I understand,” he said, though he clearly did not.

About five minutes later, Nick returned from town. “Is he gone yet?” I whispered to him.

“Who?” he asked.

“The phone book guy. He keeps coming back. He won’t take no for an answer.”

Nick laughed.

I told Kris this story this morning as we were getting ready for work. “Who’s going to take care of crap like that if you leave?” she asked.

I thought for a moment. “Nobody. Custom Box will just have a listing in the online yellow pages.”

Nick just came to interrupt my writing to read the following quote, which is from his favorite film of all time, As Good as it Gets. (Which apparently is not very.) Simon has just knocked on the door of Melvin, a writer who does not like to be interrupted.

Melvin Udall: Never, never, interrupt me, okay? Not if there’s a fire, not even if you hear the sound of a thud from my home and one week later there’s a smell coming from there that can only be a decaying human body and you have to hold a hanky to your face because the stench is so thick that you think you’re going to faint. Even then, don’t come knocking. Or, if it’s election night, and you’re excited and you wanna celebrate because some fudgepacker that you date has been elected the first queer president of the United States and he’s going to have you down to Camp David, and you want someone to share the moment with. Even then, don’t knock. Not on this door. Not for ANY reason. Do you get me, sweetheart?
Simon Bishop: It’s not a subtle point that you’re making.

I’m under the impression that Nick believes I’m like Melvin lately. He may have a point.

Stories My Barber Tells

Barbers are natural-born storytellers. I love getting my hair cut because it’s guaranteed entertainment. Today my barber told me all about The Nam.

The conversation began as a discussion of teaching foreign languages in high school. The other barbers, and one of the customers, think it’s a shame that foreign languages aren’t required anymore. I commented that even when I was in school, they weren’t required, and that their presence has faded even more in the last twenty years.

This prompted my barber to mention that all he knows are some phrases in Vietnamese. (Warning: foul language ahead.)

“But my Vietnamese isn’t very good,” he said. “Once over there I found this gook on the side of the road and I pointed my gun at him” — my barber leveled his clippers at his own reflection in the mirror — “and I told him in Vietnamese to put his hands up. But he didn’t understand me. I said it again, and he still didn’t understand me, so I started shouting at him in English. I was scared. ‘You goddman flathead, if you don’t put your fucking hands up, I’m going to kill you.’ Well, apparently the gook’s English was better than my Vietnamese because he flipped me off and shouted back, ‘You fucking pig. I don’t do nothing. You fucking Marine.’ And I would’ve shot him, too.”

“They hated us over there, and they had every right. We Marines were trained to shoot anything that moved. And we did. We didn’t have a choice. I mean I went over there and told myself I wasn’t killing nothing, but all it takes is for those first few bullets to come flying at you, and you change your mind real quick. You kill your first man and it makes you sick. You throw up.” — here he pretended he was vomiting — “You feel terrible. But then after you kill a few more, you get used to it, you even get to kind of like it. You feel powerful. It’s a terrible thing, but it happens. That’s war. It’s how it works. You kill or be killed.”

“The thing is, though, it really fucks you up. When I became a civilian again — this would have been 1970 — I was really messed up. I went to a shrink at the VA and I told him that I was having dreams. I said, ‘Doc, I dream that a bunch of gooks are chasing me. They chase me to the edge of a cliff, and I don’t want them to kill me, so I jump off and fall to the rocks below. But I don’t break up. I bounce. I bounce off the rocks back up to the cliff where the gooks are and I flip them off. And then I jump again, but I bounce right back up. What’s wrong, Doc? I have this dream all the time.’ The shrink just laughed at me. ‘Son, you know what the matter is? You think you’re Superman.’ And you know what? He was right. I did think I was Superman. I had an attitude. I was always getting in fights. I loved it. I lived to mix it up. A good Friday night ended up with a fight at a bar.”

“This one time, when I first set up shop on my own, I pissed some guy off, and he got out of his chair and he was bouncing around with his fists in the air — you know, like in the cartoons — and he said, ‘I’m going to kick your ass.’ ‘We’re going to be here a while then,’ I said. And that just made him madder. ‘I’m going to hit you in the face,’ he said. ‘You’d better do it,’ I told him. ‘You look pretty goddamn silly bouncing around like that. You look like a kid.’ He never did hit me, which was lucky for him.”

“You get some crazy customers sometimes. In barber college, we used to give free cuts to the drunks. I remember one time this drunk came in and I took him in back to give him a shampoo. I’d never given a shampoo before — this was only my second or third haircut — but how hard could it be? I took him in back and lathered him up and began to give him a shampoo but his hair started falling out in clumps. ‘Jesus Christ,’ I said. ‘What’s wrong with your hair?’ The drunk freaked out. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he said, and he jumped up from the chair — soap still in his hair — and he ran out of the barber college. We had to chase him down and apologize. He came back, but he wouldn’t let me touch his hair.”

I gave the man a $3 tip on a $12 haircut.

The New Frugal J.D.

I made some changes to this site’s RSS feed the other day. Could somebody who reads foldedspace via RSS please leave a comment (or e-mail me) so that I can verify things still work? Just a ping is fine.

Here’s an entry I’m able to post to three different weblogs! You gotta love that…

Rhonda called this morning. “There’s a garage sale near me where a guy is selling old comic books. They’re from the seventies. You might want to come take a look.”

I did want to take a look, though I knew it was dangerous business. One key to managing your money is to avoid temptation. It’s foolish to purposefully put yourself into a position where you’re likely to spend.

And yet I drove to the garage sale to look at the comics books.

I’ve collected comics since I was a boy. I used to collect the actual magazines, buying them at grocery stores and bookshops. I grew out of them in high school, and in 1989 I sold my entire collection for $100 to a comic book store near my university. I needed the money to take a girlfriend on an expensive date. (The collection I sold included many fine runs, including all of Miller Daredevil, most of the “new” X-Men, all of Marvel Star Wars — basically all the cool stuff from the late seventies and early eighties when I had been actively collecting.)

Most garage sale comics are woefully overpriced. People ask $5 for a common-as-dirt mid-nineties Batman, for example. Nobody’s going to pay that. But the garage sale I drove to today was different. The seller had two boxes of mid-seventies Marvel comics, all of which were priced at about $2 an issue.

He had Amazing Spider-Man from about 115-145. He had Fantastic Four from about 130-160. He had Incredible Hulk from about 180-200. He had various issues of Avengers, X-Men, Captain America, and Daredevil. There was a lot of great stuff here, and two years ago I would have offered $100 for as much as the seller would let me take.

I didn’t do that today. Today I leafed through both boxes, thanked the man, and left. Why? Two reasons:

I no longer collect the comic magazines themselves. I collect comic compilations.
I’m a better money manager than I was two years ago.

Would I have liked to have these comics? Absolutely. They would be great fun to read, especially since most won’t be collected in reprint volumes for another five or ten years, if ever. But I can’t keep up with the comics I buy currently. I’m thinking of cutting back to collecting only comic strip compilations. And there are other things I’d like buy with that money. (MacBook Pro, anyone?)

In the end, I only spent a few dollars in gas to drive to the sale and back: a victory for the new frugal J.D.

You Don’t Have to Explain the Math to Me!

This story will be a repeat to those of you who read Get Rich Slowly (though I don’t know what percentage of you do). The more you know of my personal mythology, the funnier this story is, in a total self-depricating sort of way.

The Woodstock Writers Guild met last night. We meet one Wednesday a month at the local pub. The food isn’t very good, but my fellow writers find it difficult to resist $2.50 pints. They quaff cheap beer; I drink diet soda.

I arrive at the pub early to take advantage of Happy Hour. Very frugal. Cheap hot wings are hard to beat. I eat my hot wings and mozzarella sticks and drink my diet soda while reading the latest issues of Smart Money (“10 Things Your Gas Station Won’t Tell You!“) and Business 2.0 (“Blogging for Dollars!“).

My fellow writers filter in. The meeting begins. They quaff their beers. I drink my diet soda. We talk about the craft of writing. The waitress comes by — my friends order more beer; I order another diet soda and a slice of apple pie.

Our discussion is interrupted when Andrew is declared the winner of the pub’s nightly raffle. He wins a t-shirt — a t-shirt with a beer logo. He’s pleased. Cheap beer, cheap hot wings, and a free t-shirt — we’re doing well.

When our critique of the story is finished, we catch up on our personal lives. Rick got married last month. Paul has just begun dating someone new. Josh and his wife are expecting their first child. Andrew and his wife just had their second. I just returned from vacation in San Francisco.

The check arrives, and the monthly ritual of “who owes what” begins. It’s always the same thing: five brilliant guys (seriously — each of us is pretty damn smart) trying to decipher a restaurant tab. It should be child’s play. It’s not. Andrew, in particular, seems to have a hard time. I give him a lot of crap for it — he has a math degree. Once, in a large group, he declared defensively, “You don’t have to explain the math to me!” as someone was trying to tell him about Malthusian population growth.

So there we are, trying to figure out who owes what. Mine is easy. Since I was there first, the top three items are my order. I calculate the total, write it in the corner, and hand over my debit card. I let the other four geniuses dissect the rest of the bill.

The waitress comes and takes it away. We talk some more.

When she returns, the “who gets how much change” ritual begins. There’s a great deal of confusion. The numbers don’t add up. “This is why I paid with a debit card,” I say. I stare absently out the window, savoring the lingering taste of diet soda and apple pie in my mouth.

Apple pie in my mouth.

It occurs to me that perhaps I’ve been a little too smug. While it would be amusing to allow the confusion to continue, my fellow writers are becoming a little cranky. “I think I know where the problem is,” I say. “I forgot to pay for my apple pie.” My five-dollar bill is greeted by a chorus of jeers.

I’ll never be able to live this down.

The Milwaukie-Gladstone Trolley Trail

Kris and I went for a walk through the neighborhood tonight.

As we strolled up Lee and onto Oak Grove, we noted the two houses that had recently sold. We turned onto Rupert and walked past the church. “I wonder what they’re doing there,” Kris said. “It almost looks like the church is developing it for their own use. There’s a driveway that cuts back behind it.”

“And look at that,” I said. “That old house has subdivided its lot; there’s a new building going up.”

Just then a couple in a red station wagon slowed to a stop. “Can you help us?” the driver asked. “We’re looking for the trolley tracks.”

“I think they’re down there at the bottom of the hill,” I said, pointing the way. “Or used to be. There’s just a divided street now.” The man thanked me and drove way.

As we reached the bottom of the hill, we noticed that there were, indeed, trolley tracks still visible, running from Arista back through some yards and out onto the other Arista.

The Interurban Line was one of the first rural trolley lines in the United States. (In fact, I think it was the first.) It was built in 1893, and ran from Portland to Milwaukie to Oregon City. It is likely that our house was built soon after the trolley went in. What is now our back door used to be the front door, and the lot extended back another hundred feet to the trolley. The land was subdivided long ago. When the Superhighway (99e) came in the thirties, trolley usage declined, and it was shut down in 1959. What happened next?

As Kris and I were marveling at the short section of remaining track, the red station wagon happened by again. We waved it down. “Look,” we said, pointing at the track. “There’s some rail still here. We think it used to run at an angle back thataway.”

“It did,” proclaimed a voice. We turned, and there was a man sitting on his front porch, listening to our conversation. “The rail line ran back through there, and then up the other Arista to Milwaukie. And from here, it ran all the way to Gladstone. Over the years, the right of way has been ceded to landowners, but Metro and the Clackamas County Parks District have acquired the entire length. They’ve got the funding and are going to turn it into a trolley trail. You could walk it now if you wanted to.”

The woman in the passenger seat of the car leaned over. “I know a man who has photographs of the old trolley line, all along its entire length. He has photos of every stop.” (Here I was stupid — I should have got the woman’s name and phone number.) The couple in the car waved and drove away, but we stayed and talked with the man on the porch, who introduced himself as Doug Woods, a member of what passes for Oak Grove government. (Oak Grove is actually part of unincorporated Clackamas County. It’s a fiercely independent area that refuses to incorporate even though the larger governments ache for it to become a city.)

Doug was full of area history. He explained how upper Arista used to be split level. “One lane of traffic was several feet higher than the other,” he said. “A few years ago, the county got tired of that and leveled the whole street out, removing the old railway median. Now they’ve got to put it back in.”

In fact, along whole stretches of the old trolley line, people are going to have to make concessions. It’s lain “fallow” for decades, unused, and slowly residents and businesses have staked claims to the unused land. Doug pointed out that the lady who lives next door to him was cranky that the proposed linear park would cut behind her property. It would essentially take away a twenty-foot wide stretch of land that she’d come to use as her own, even though the right-of-way belonged to the county. Further down the line, in Jennings Lodge, the trail has been annexed by a car dealership and by the parking lot of Buster’s Bar-B-Q. These residents and businesses will lose some land they’ve been using for free.

We live due east of the “e” in River Road, just west of the trail.
I’ll let the other neighborhood bloggers share their location if so inclined.

“When it’s all done,” said Doug, “there will be a multi-use trail that runs all the way from Milwaukie to Gladstone. It will be eight-feet wide and completely paved with asphalt. It’ll have soft shoulders. The local high schools can use it for cross-country training. Local equestrians can use it. Bicyclists can use it, but they won’t be able to dominate it like they do the Springwater Corridor. It’ll be a truly multiuse trail.”

I asked him what the timeline for completion was, but he couldn’t say. Plans were already behind schedule. He hoped it would be done in five years, or maybe ten, but there just isn’t any way to know for sure.

We asked him about other stuff in the neighborhood. He told us that the church at the top of the hill used to own the vacant lot, but sold it. It’s being developed, and the fire department had demanded another accessway into the church. That’s why there’s a new road back there. Doug told us about the big white house on the bluff overlooking River Road. The woman who bought it came before the county with a proposal to turn it into a bed-and-breakfast. “Or,” she said, “I could subdivide it. I could legally turn it into a fifteen-lot development.” The country approved the bed-and-breakfast.

We talked for a long time. Twenty minutes? Half an hour? Eventually we took our leave and walked home, better acquainted with our neighborhood than when we’d started.

(I first wrote about the Trolley Trail on 08 February 2005.)

J.D. the Duck

“Lieberman lost,” Kris told me today.

“Lost what?” I asked.

She fixed me with her gaze, shook her head, then ambled upstairs. “Lost what?” I called after her.

“I’m going to watch the news,” she muttered.

I went upstairs to watch the news with her. Apparently Joe Lieberman, Democratic Senator from Connecticut, lost a primary election. Connecticut has primaries in August? What are they smoking over there? “So what?” I said. “Who cares?”

“I’m not talking to you,” she said. I watched the rest of the Lehrer News Hour with her, and my questions were answered. Then I went downstairs to take a bath.

Kris came downstairs as I was soaking (and reading an article in Men’s Journal about the twelve greatest sports cars of all time). She pulled back the shower curtain and stared at me (and my fleshy lumps). “You know what the difference between you and Celeste is?” she asked. Celeste is her good friend and co-worker.

I thought for a moment. “I’m happy?” I said, hoping that was the right answer. I snuck a peak at the Corvette pictured in the article.

“No,” she said. “The difference between you and Celeste is that when I said to her this morning, ‘Lieberman lost,’ her reply was, ‘Omygod — are you kidding? How do you think this will affect the upcoming elections?’ When I said to you, ‘Lieberman lost,’ your reply was, ‘Lost what?’ That’s the difference between you and Celeste.”

I half-listened, half-read a great run-down on a classic Jaguar. “Huh,” I said. “I thought you were going to say the difference was that I was happy.”

“You know what? A duck is happy. A duck! A duck walks around all day oblivious to what’s going on in the world. That’s what you are: a duck. You’re a duck.”

I tossed my magazine onto the floor and slid back into the warm water. “Quack quack,” I said. Kris sighed and left the room.

We’re leaving for San Francisco in the morning. We won’t return for a couple weeks. I hope to be able to post while I’m gone, but no promises. Maybe we should have paid the housesitter to write weblog entries, too…

Further Tales from Rosings Park

What’s a typical May evening like at Rosings Park? Let’s take a peek…

It’s not raining when I get home from work. In fact, it hasn’t rained since mid-morning. I check the grass: it’s basically dry. I check the sky: it’s grey and ominous, but there’s no rain. I decide to risk it.

I set the mower wheels on high and start it up. I mow at light speed, nearly jogging. Even so, it’s a slow go — the grass is tall from all of the wet, warm weather. After just ten minutes, it begins to sprinkle. I continue mowing. A light rain comes and goes as I sprint through the tall grass. I mow the road lawn, the front lawn, the side lawn. I’m just about ready to start on the back lawn when there is a crash of thunder and the sky falls in. Rain comes down in a torrent. I park the mower under the maple by the back porch and go inside. So close! Another five or ten minutes and I would have mowed it all.

Kris comes home.

Our gutters, which were well-cleaned in January, have become clogged in the recent monsoons. I cleared the gunk from the lower gutter last night, but I wasn’t willing to brave the cold and the wet and the heights to clean the upper gutter. We stand at the kitchen window and watch the rainwater splutter-splutter from the top of the house onto Kris’ precious planter box.

In the spirit of “responsiveness”, I grab a stepladder and make for the roof. Simon helps. When I lean the ladder against the guestroom wall so that I can open the door, Simon climbs onto the bottom rung and wriggles his way to the top. There he surveys the room. He isn’t happy when Kris pulls him down. (You may recall that Simon loves ladders, as demonstrated by the following photo.)

Kris holds the ladder while I climb onto the upper roof. A single fat, waxy leaf is clogging the works. (Not much can reach the upper gutters. They’re very high.)

When I climb down, Kris is gazing longingly at her gardens. She loves her gardens. Sometimes I think she loves her gardens more than she loves me! “You should take a picture of the gardens,” she says. “I’ll go move the yard waste container.”

I grab my camera and snap a few shots, but can’t get anything framed that I really like. (“These pictures aren’t any good,” Kris tells me later as we are reviewing them. “You’ve cut off this plant here. And what about those roses? And we don’t need to see the lawn.” sigh)

While Kris and I are otherwise occupied, Simon has come outside onto the lower roof and scampered along a little outcropping to the balcony outside Kris’ office. We decide to let him have some fun, and so go inside to eat our dinner. When we come back up to get him, he is gone. Kris goes outside into the yard to see what she can see. What she sees is Simon, now on the upper roof, lounging away.

“How’d he get there?” I ask.

She looks at the balcony outside her office. “I have no idea,” she says.

I look at the area around me. It is conceivable that Simon might have climbed up a low, angled bit of roof. But to have reached the upper roof, he would have had to twist himself at an odd angle while jumping, similar to the way he had climbed the ladder earlier. I shudder at the thought. Any mistake and he would have plummeted to the camellia hedge below.

I go to Kris’ office and out onto the balcony. Here the situation is almost worse. The only way Simon could have made it to the roof was to make a six foot leap to a small platform above another camellia hedge. A tough jump for such a big cat. (From there, though, it would have been easy for him to scamper up.)

These are the only two routes he could have used. It’s difficult to conceive that he would have tried either of them, but apparently he did, because now he is lounging on the upper roof. I climb up the rickety ladder and call him over. He trots to me, tail tall and proud: “Look what I did!” He trills and even purrs at me as I pet him. But then I turn into Bastard Dad, hauling him down to the top step of the ladder (which is wobbling beneath me).

He stomps off to sulk in the bedroom.

His little brother, Nemo, is proud of himself for sneaking into the basement during the excitement upstairs. At dinner, I went down to fetch a bottle of salsa. I must not have fully latched the door. All three cats have a special sense that tingles whenever they approach an unlatched door. I don’t know what Nemo finds so exciting in the basement, but he loves it. He can spend hours down there. (No doubt he’s tearing open the spare cat food bag — that’s one of his hobbies.)

At the moment, Toto, my misunderstood daughter is sitting on the arm of my easy chair, purring and staring at my face. She wants attention. Every so often she reaches out a paw and gently claws my ear, pulling it toward her. Why? Because she’s a cat.

Kris is upstairs watching the Lost episode from three weeks ago via BitTorrent. She’s sad that we’ve forgotten to download last week’s episode, because it further goofs up her sequencing. Basically, if tonight’s two-hour finale contains episodes D and E, and the one she just finished is A, she will be watching them in this order: B-A-D-E-C. I hope she can keep that straight in her head. (Update after the fact: she could not keep them straight in her head. Apparently episode C contains critical stuff, because she was completely lost. She gave up and will have me download it for her later.)

And me? I will soon be taking a hot bath while reading The Wealthy Barber, which I hope to review soon at my personal finance site.

And that is a typical evening during springtime at Rosings Park.

Saving Baby Jay

Note: Though this entry may at first appear to be filled with cat on bird violence, it has a happy ending. I think.

I was sound asleep in the tub tonight when Kris came barging into the house. “Nemo just caught a juvenile jay!” she shouted, distressed. I woke with a start. Outside there was a raucous squawking riot. I rose from the tub and dripped to the front door, naked.

Nemo was slinking around the back of the house, treasure in mouth. Simon was making his way to the azalea hedge where the capture had occurred. “What do I do?” Kris asked.

“Scare Simon,” I said. I ran to the bathroom for my pants. When I came outside, Kris was pouring her water bottle over the azaleas. “No,” I said. “Hit the hedge with a stick.” She did so, and Simon bounded out. So, too, did another juvenile jay. Simon saw it, but Kris was quicker: she scooped it into her hands.

“What do I do now?” she asked.

“Hold on,” I said. I grabbed Simon and shut him in the house. Mama and Papa Jay were flying from limb-to-limb, squawking at us.

“I’m going to make a nest for the baby,” Kris said. She bunched up some ivy in the crook of some pine branches, then placed the fledgling inside. While she worked, I walked around the house to find Nemo.

He was back by the dogwoods, seated in loaf position, watching his baby jay as it hopped along the ground. Nemo wasn’t even trying to play with it. I thought for sure the thing had been mortally wounded, but when I picked it up, I was shocked to find that it was wholly uninjured. How was that even possible? As I carried it back to the front yard, it squawked — louder than any adult jay I’ve ever heard — and struggled to be free. Its parents squawked in reply.

“Is it alive?” Kris asked after she had locked Nemo in the house. She was as shocked as I was. “What do we do now?” she said.

“Put it in the tree with its brother?” I suggested. But when I crept behind the azaleas — naked except for my pants — the other fledgling was gone. “Ouch,” I said, pricked by holly leaves and pine needles. Kris took a turn looking in the pine and on the ground nearby, but there was no sign of the bird. Can a parent jay carry its children? we wondered.

I let the feisty jay free on the grass where it immediately hopped for cover underneath a lawn chair. “We should feed it,” Kris said. While she looked for worms, I grabbed my camera. I loved the little bird’s personality, his indomitable spirit to have survived Nemo.

“Worms are more difficult to find when you need them,” Kris said, bringing a little one for the baby jay. The bird pecked at it, but did not eat it.

We spent half an hour trying to get the parents and the baby to reunite. Mama and Papa Jay were aware that their baby was with us; they flew from hedge to bush to tree, keeping low to the ground, but they would not come into the open to get their child. And we didn’t want to let the fledgling hop into the bushes (which was what it wanted to do).

The mosquitoes feasted upon our flesh: I was still wearing only a pair of pants.

As dusk fell, we brought the bird inside and put it in a cat carrier. (Oh! The irony!) We gave it a dish of water and a dish of millet. We made a bed of straw. While Kris fussed over our young charge, I googled for information. I found a page about how to care for baby birds — unfortunately, its advice was to let the fledglings hop into the bushes where its parents can care for them, something we had prevented. By this time it was dark out, and we were worried that the parents had given up on their child when we brought it inside.

“I’ll get a box,” I said. I found a shoebox, and we moved the bird and its water and its millet inside. I took the shoebox and placed it behind the azalea hedge, beneath the pine tree.

Will our little jay survive? I don’t know. I hope so. Our feline children will not be allowed outside for several days, that’s for sure. The first place they’ll go when we let them out is the azalea hedge, hunting for birds. I’m hopeful that by the weekend the juvenile jays will be able to fly, and thus elude our hunters.

Cat and Bill disapprove of the fact that we allow the cats outside, partly because they do hunt, killing birds from time-to-time. I respect their position, and understand their concerns, but mostly I believe that the cat-bird dynamic is hardcoded into nature and ought to be allowed to play out. However, I recognize that as a moral human animal, it is my responsibility to do what I can to protect all intelligent life when possible. Nemo killing a goldfinch once or twice a year is one thing; Nemo picking off baby jays who have left the nest is another.

What line has been crossed here? I can’t articulate it, but I do know that so long as it’s within my power to save these baby jays, it’s my responsibility to do so. I feel no remorse at the death of a goldfinch, but the death of a jay seems reprehensible. Whine as they might, the cats are restricted indoors for several more days.

Resources about caring for baby birds:

Be well, little bird!