Baby bumps and kittens
October 17, 2011
There’s one kitten nibbling my calf as I write this–apparently Savannahs are into lovebites, tiny, soft nibbles that aren’t all THAT soft and certainly get your attention–and the other is threatening the bluejays at the back door.
Savannah cats are supposed to be as trainable as dogs, i.e., you can persuade them to obey YOUR taboos, such staying out of the glass display cases. Or refraining from climbing into a 4-foot urn to eat the pussywillows.
I’ve accordingly invested in a small bag of the smelliest dried shrimp in the world, and a book, “Train Your Cat in 10 Minutes.”
It’s day 3 of our training regimen. The 10-minute bit is a lie.
Trust me on this.
Sonlove
September 28, 2011
Did the Ikea thing this weekend. Translation: I trudged through an endless, footsore maze of primary colors, particle board and bewildering, actually serious names. I bought weird but uselessly nifty stuff that will be worn out by 2013, and ate Swedish meatballs.
Swedish meatballs are the reason you go to Ikea, right? (Besides the fact that you can buy a cheap-but-nifty desk to completely re-engineer into a glass sculpture)
Ikea meatballs aren’t as good as the ones I used to make when I was a kid, but at some point in an Ikea shopping marathon I will gratefully GRATEFULLY trudge into the Ikea cafeteria and plop a few on my plate. Then I’ll sit in the window, munching meatballs and trying to figure out which incomprehensible Ikea components will form the piece of furniture I need.
Build me up, Buttercup
August 24, 2011
There’s a game I play on summery Saturdays, called “breakfast.” It’s where I race early to the farmer’s markets, pick up the ingredients for the morning meal, then cook, consume and clean everything up by 10.
It’s a challenge because most of the markets don’t open until 8:30, so the only way it really works is if I forsake my beloved Portland and Beaverton farmers’ markets for the little neighborhood market not far from home.
Elevator dancer
August 17, 2011
The elevator door slid shut and I broke into a jig. I hopped in samba time, waved my arms wildly, sang in time to the music of my feet.
We reached my floor, the door slid open, and I walked out, sober as ever, ghost of a grin…if you know where to look.
Yup. I’m an elevator dancer. Are you?
Body of life
August 15, 2011
“It’s like my body tells the history of me,” she explained, “Of me and my family, who we are and what we do. My whole life is on my skin.”
I took in the tattoos cascading across her arms, thinking that if it took this much of her to chronicle her first 30 years or so, she didn’t plan to live very long. But those tattoos were beautiful, and intriguing.
I met her at in Tillamook last weekend, on a visit to my friend Becky’s family beach house. Getting to Becky and Len’s place is a bit tricky, and I “can get lost going around her own block,” as my old boss used to say, so Becky suggested I meet her at the Tillamook Farmers Market instead.
Three cyclists were sitting on the curb just inside the market, adjusting their bikes, and as one of them reached for wrench her tattoos caught my eye. She they splashed vividly across her arms and chest, and she smiled when I asked if I could photograph them.
“Sure,” she said casually, “I get asked that a lot.”
She and her friends had flown up with their bikes, from Texas, and were cycling down the coast to San Francisco, on vacation. The tattoos, it appeared, had so far them made a lot of friends. “They’ve been on the cover of magazines.”
She’s chronicling her personal history a bit at a time with a Texas tattoo artist. She picks a strong memory, stages it in her mind, then describes it to the artist. Together, they work through sketches and trials until the final scene is etched onto her skin and colored in.
It can be painful in more ways than one, she admits, and it’s a long process. And now she wears her heart on her shoulder and her grandma on her forearm.
The heart–with the slogan “Cut it out and keep it”–isn’t your average valentine, it’s got an aorta and everything. It’s there partially for Texas, about her strong attachment there, and partly about other stuff.
She represents her grandma through a spilled cup of coffee on her inside forearm. “My grandma was Armenian, and she was also a psychic. She could read your future in coffee grounds.”
“Really?”
“Well, that’s what everyone said. She’d have you drink this Turkish coffee, really strong and thick and grainy, and then turn the grounds out onto the saucer. Then she’d read them.”
She pointed out the cup on her inside forearm. “So there’s the cup, and the grounds, and around it are all the things she foretold.”
“Your history and your future, right there in tattoo…” I mused.
And she grinned a wide and sunny grin. “I never thought of it that way, but yeah!”
Sally 4th
July 4, 2011
Strange days indeed.
I’m driving home on a warmish 4th of July night, heading down the hill on I5 from Vancouver. The highway’s like rush hour with everyone going home from celebrations, and headlights and taillights fight it out with hundreds of rocketbursts in every direction.
And through it all a slivermoon* rises like scorched gold, far too big to be true.
Mary, in purple
June 27, 2011
I never asked her name, and after I’d talked with her awhile I didn’t really want to know it. In my mind she’d become Mary, and finding out that her name was really Beth or Linda or Agatha would have just screwed things up.
“That’s a lovely coat,” I’d said admiringly, as we both waited for coffee, “Do you mind if I take your picture?”
The farmers marketfolk swirled around us, doing their best to look glassland-wierd. A half-shaved girl in a clown costume gallumped past, and three girls in crayon-colored Hello Kitty! slickers danced around us in the rain, singing about bicycles.
The bigot
May 12, 2011
“I hate southerners,” the man said over a mouthful of soup, “I’m a northerner, and we take baths. Southerners are always dirty. They stink.”
I froze; the whole unbathed southerner thing was news to me. Might be especially surprising to my North Carolinian mother, who never saw a thing she wouldn’t clean. Twice.
He sat at the next table over, facing me. A lady with wavy brown hair sat across from him, nodding and not saying much. “You haven’t smelled many southerners,” he warned, pointing his soup spoon at her, “I have. Trust me on this.”
I considered asking the guy, in my very best southern accent, if having your head that far up your rectum made it difficult to breathe, but he barreled on, making the next 15 minutes so intriguing that I never said a word.
Cluck cluck
May 10, 2011
“You’re going to raise WHAT????” Tami sputtered, laughing so hard I thought about getting out the defibrillator.
“Chickens,” I said, with a great deal of dignity, “What’s so funny about a few chickens in the backyard?”
“Maybe the fact that I’m not even sure you know where your backyard IS?” she asked.
This is all Brenda’s fault.
Superglue and the shattering of expectations
April 13, 2011
The old folk at the Ace Hardware think I sniff glue. LOTS of glue. They’re amazed my brain hasn’t exploded.
Yet.
Maybe I should explain.