What hath Irving Berlin wrought

I would like to make a promise: I will never again wish for a white Christmas in Portland.

I'd like to promise it, but I can't. I'm sure that some distant year in the future, the memory of all this slush and ice and gravel and general nastiness will have blurred into a hazy, romantic recollection of this magical December of snow, and I will gaze out the window in a vain hope for even a few white flakes to coat the brown streets and lawns.

I will have forgotten how I had to continue to drive to work these last weeks, even Monday morning when we awoke to four inches of fresh powder on top of the weekend's ice, because the show must go on at work. We were open for business, even though buses and emergency vehicles all over the city were getting stuck. It's something to do with the union; all public employees in the union who work for the city have to be treated equally, so management can't say that the office workers don't need to report but the police have to come in. (Consequently, I found myself in our office with only the mayor and two other employees. Not only that, but neither receptionist made it in, so I got to answer the phones all day. Which was fine--I've been a receptionist often enough in my life to feel perfectly at home at any front desk. And it's not like I could concentrate on "real" work, anyway. And the mayor brought us hot chocolate, bless his heart.)

I'm the first to admit, I am not the most confident of snow drivers. I don't have a lot of experience in the snow, and despite owning an all-wheel-drive Subaru wagon, I prefer my pavement dry. But I'm getting plenty of practice in the snow this month. I am now expert at putting on and removing my chains, and I managed to drive successfully through some of the choppiest intersections and side streets without spinning the car 360 degrees or anything. Although I was still kind of terrified.

I felt better when my dad said this week that the roads were treacherous, because he is a highly skilled snow driver. He used to be on a ski patrol and drive his car through all kinds of weather (this was back before he was saddled--uh, privileged--with wife or children), so if he says it's bad out there, it's officially bad.

The problem is, we are not set up here for extended winter storms. In defense of the Portland area, why would the cities in the metro area invest thousands of dollars in snowplows and sanding equipment that would spend most of their time sitting in a warehouse, rusting from disuse? You think the taxpayers would like that idea? And someone would have to be kept trained and ready to drive said equipment at a moment's notice.

Also, as a group, we are not good snow drivers. We do not see snow often, and we tend to panic when we do, abandoning our cars on the freeway and sliding sideways down hills (and, if we are very lucky, having those moments immortalized by the frenzied local news cameras lying in wait to capture the footage and play it over and over and over again on TV, while a list of school and business closures scrolls across the bottom). Probably we should all be forced to take winter driving school. But how often would we get to practice?

And furthermore, we get damn sick and tired of transplants from the East Coast and the Midwest and Canada telling us all about how we are bad snow drivers, and how we should get more snowplows, and blah blah blah back where we came from we wouldn't have this problem and everyone drives to work in a blizzard with no snow tires or chains. Okay, transplants, but do we make fun of you because you act like you've never seen rain before, and there you are going 20 in the fast lane and managing to hit every puddle?

But I do have to complain a little (which I am entitled to do, because I live here) about the lack of plowing on major roads. The most terrifying day of driving for me was Tuesday afternoon, when it warmed up a little and ruts were worn on all the streets with huge banks of snow in between, and I had to circle a rather large area because I couldn't get from one lane to the other to turn. I screamed quietly all the way home.

So I've been thinking "dreaming of a white Christmas, my ass!" as I coach myself aloud while steering slowly through several inches of frozen slush. In the bah-humbug spirit of the season, I went online tonight to prove that Irving Berlin, composer of the aforementioned song (minus the ass--sorry, Irving), lived a cozy life in southern California, where Hollywood really did dream of a white Christmas as a welcome alternative to all those palm trees and golden beaches. Only, unfortunately for my preconceived ideas, wikipedia reports (and therefore it must be true!) that Irving's life was a lot more challenging than I'd expected. He was an immigrant to the US, and he spent much of his time in New York, where they really know what snow is and how to deal with it and they can't understand what's the matter with us wimps out here. Which squashed my plans to rail against Hollywood.

I still love the idyllic snowy Currier-and-Ives Christmas pictures, with the horse-drawn sleighs and lights in the windows. But I love it better on the wall than outside the window.

As for me, I am dreaming of a gray Christmas next year and every year after. Bring on the rain! God bless us, everyone.

Merry Christmas!

Dog update

I just read over my blogs for the last few weeks and realized that I never gave an update on Sam. I know, two posts in one day after weeks of silence, but here's a brief overview for anyone who's been wondering.

First, Sam still has heartworm, and he's still living with me. I called the vet the day after my last post in November, and he told me that he had done some research and there was a new treatment regimen for heartworm that has had 80-90% success. This treatment process takes ten months:

1. In the first month, the dog takes one preventive heartworm pill, and is dosed with antibiotics every day. This is supposed to weaken the existing heartworm. The dog should be kept inside and not walked during this time.

2. In the second month, the dog has a preventive heartworm pill, with no walking again.

3. In the third month, the dog gets an injection of immiticide, which kills the adult heartworm. The dog then has to be kept very quiet for four weeks, to prevent a clot of worms from moving into the lungs--for which there is no cure.

4. In the fourth month, the dog has another injection of immiticide and is kept quiet.

5-10. In the fifth through tenth months, the dog is on restricted activity indoors.

The vet told me all this, and at first I was elated because his odds had improved, but then I began to think about how a year is a long time in a seven-year-old dog's life. And the vet said I had to keep him inside except for bathroom breaks outside. Sam began to get restless, and wouldn't pee when I took him out for a few minutes at a time, as instructed. I wondered about his quality of life if he couldn't go for walks, and was confined to the house. I couldn't very well explain it to him.

I knew I needed to make a decision for his sake. What was fair to him? What was fair to me? I spent two agonizing days crying and talking about it. My parents felt terrible, but couldn't do anything magical to fix it. Two of my coworkers, who had been through animal-related situations in the last year, told me that whatever decision I made would be the right one. I read about heartworm online. I considered calling the humane society and giving them a piece of my mind, but that wouldn't have done any good. And finally I called my counselor and had him meet me for an emergency lunchtime session. He listened kindly as I sobbed through our hour together about how I wished there was a third option, and he very gently helped me see that I had already made up my mind. I called my parents, who offered to take him in for me if I couldn't do it myself.

So I called the vet, and told him I was thinking that perhaps it would be kinder not to treat my dog, but to have him euthanized. Only I couldn't even say the word. The vet got very agitated when he finally understood me, and immediately said that there was only a very small risk associated with half-hour walks at this stage of treatment. He told me that Sam could continue to go for walks and go out in the car with me, as long as he wasn't running beside a bike or chasing a ball in a field, anything that would get his heart pumping too hard.

There it was: my miraculous third option! My tears stopped right at that moment. He said that Sam will still have to be kept pretty quiet for two months of immiticide, when there is greater danger, but I could see the end of eight weeks of confinement.

It was like the clouds broke open and the sun came out. I put my shoes on right then, got the leash, and asked Sam if he wanted to go for a walk. (He did.) We walked up the hill to the vet's office, where I picked up his antibiotics and Heartgard. And finally, as we walked home, Sam stopped outside the catering place on the corner, in full view of the food prep tables through the plate glass window, lifted his leg against a column, and let loose an enormous stream of urine that cascaded down the pillar in a yellow fountain, and pooled at our feet. Happily, he lowered his leg, looked at me with immense relief, and trotted off toward home.

We're now halfway through the second month of treatment. He'll have his first immiticide injection in January, and then he has to be kept inside most of the time for the next two months, but who wants to go out in the cold rain in January and February, anyway? I feel much more confident that he's going to be okay. He even seems to be feeling better already.

In spite of the vet bills and the roller-coaster of potential heartache, in spite of the idea that we might not have very long together, I do not regret getting him. I feel completely safe when we're out together, and he has the sweetest nature. He never barks, even when he's home all day by himself, except to alert me to something potentially dangerous walking by. If he would just stop getting so excited when one of my cats walks by, things would be perfect. I feel safer at night, too, with an 85-pound German Shepherd patrolling on my behalf.

He's asleep right now on the couch in my office, dreaming with his legs stretched out. Lucky dog.

PS--Not to get on a soapbox about this, but if your dog (or cat that goes outside) is not on preventive heartworm medication right now, please call your vet immediately. It costs about $75 a year and is painless for your dog to take. On the other hand, if your dog develops heartworm, it will cost you hundreds of dollars and be potentially deadly to your pet. Please tell your friends and family to put their animals on heartworm medication, even if the vet says it's not common in your area. It's not common in Portland, either, and my dog still has it. You don't want to go through what Sam and I are experiencing right now.

Snowbound, sort of

Good news for local news teams and Les Schwab profit sharers: it snowed in Portland. It started yesterday morning and continued through most of the day, accompanied by a fierce cold wind that the meteorologists have described as "arctic". With the wind chill, the temperature outside "feels like" 9 degrees F. Yes, really. Today it melted just enough to become a giant sheet of ice over the entire region.

Since Portland is not a city accustomed to such weather, everything shut down. It took ten minutes for the closures update crawl to get from "All Saints Academy" to "Westside Christian School" on TV last night. Unfortunately, I have learned that being a government employee means not automatically getting the day off when it snows. It's something to do with the union treating everyone equally (including emergency personnel), and with taxpayers not liking those lazy city employees getting to stay in their warm houses, and so my office was open for business.

But that doesn't mean I went to work. Despite having all-wheel-drive on my Subaru wagon, I didn't have snow tires or chains currently on the car, and I don't get enough practice driving in the snow to feel confident out there. My dad came by later and drove me over to get some work from my desk, so I could at least do something at home, because the cold weather is supposed to persist through the week.

I took the dog for a walk this morning, up to the grocery store to mail my sister's birthday card. We did fine on the sidewalks and grass, but crossing the major street between me and the store was a little terrifying. It's just one big long thoroughfare of ice, and Sam pulled insistently at the leash while I was trying to tread slowly across. We made it, but then we had to do it again on the way home (downhill, this time). Next time I will wear my cramp-ons.

There were children skidding down the hill behind my house on sleds, toboggans, garbage can lids, or just their snowsuits. It looked like fun. The girl from upstairs met me as I was taking Sam out, and told me her brothers wouldn't come out to play with her. I don't understand that: the best part of a snow day (especially a sunny one), other than getting to skip school, was going outside to play in the snow. I would have offered to join her for sledding, but I knew I had to go by the office soon. Also, it hurts a lot more when I fall down in the snow now than it used to.

After he took me to work to pick things up, I treated Dad to a hot drink, and then he helped me put chains on my car. It's supposed to stay below freezing all week, with another chance of snow on Wednesday, and I can't miss that much work. I'm almost out of personal leave as it is, because I'm still in my probationary period and I get about 1.2 hours of PTO (personal time off) per week. I'll get the rest of the time I earned in February, but I can't use it yet.

Dad very kindly rode around with me while I tried out the chains, and then helped me tighten them on the wheels. I've never driven with chains on before. Please, cold-weather-dwellers and skiers, don't make fun. I am an excellent rain driver, but it doesn't snow here often enough for me to develop my skills. Other than a general bumpiness, I found driving with the chains on quite easy. We'll see how it goes when I drive to work tomorrow.

I also put up my Christmas tree this weekend. I tried to get Sam to pose in front of it for a Christmas picture, but he loses interest quickly in sitting still if there's not a treat involved. And if you're wondering, Sam is feeling pretty well (or so it seems). He'll be receiving his first injection of immiticide, the stronger heartworm-killing medicine, in January, with another in February, and he has to be kept pretty quiet for two months. But I think he's going to be okay, because I have to keep thinking that, and he seems to be happy here. He's content to sleep on the futon in my office at home all day while I'm at work, and he and the cats continue to adjust to one another, slowly, slowly. He looks forward to our walks together, and so do I.

And now, I'm going to make myself some dinner and gaze at my Christmas tree.

The Tree Hunt

I went to get a Christmas tree with my parents today. This is a time-honored family tradition, dating back as far as I can remember from the mid-1980s. Some families get a tree from one of those well-lit, convenient fenced lots in grocery store parking lots. They spend a few minutes looking at the pre-cut trees, wearing plaid scarves and laughing, and then they go to see Santa and drink hot cocoa.

We were not one of those families.

Two weeks or so before Christmas, we would all load into the Volvo, bickering, bundled in our warmest long underwear and raingear (it was western Oregon, after all), and drive way out in the country on bumpy roads to a particular Christmas tree farm that we visited every year.

A chilly and bored-looking attendant would wave us into a parking space between two massive trucks. We would get out of the car, all of us changing from tennis shoes to boots for the mud, my dad standing around impatiently with his arms crossed because he was always ready first. He would pick up a handsaw from the table inside, and we would be off.

Mostly what I remember is watching the back of my dad's baseball cap-clad head disappearing between the trees, and struggling to keep up in my stiff boots without tripping over any tree stumps or stepping in a hole. I usually did both.

Then followed much discussion: this one was too sparse, this one had a bald patch, this one was too fat to get through the front door, that one was too tall or short or narrow or thick. Sometimes we four would each have a different favorite, and stand stubbornly beside it in separate areas of the field. Sometimes we would form factions, two against two.

My mother would usually settle quickly on a tree she liked. (Recently I read that women make faster decisions than men; it's something about evolutionary necessity and needing to protect their young from predators. It seems to be true, except perhaps in deciding what to order off a restaurant menu.) She would stand by the tree of choice, with her arms folded, trying to flag down my dad who was a quarter of a mile off by now, way down among the bigger trees that had been overlooked in previous years and were consequently growing too large for most living rooms or town plazas.

Eventually my mom would grow tired of standing there, and she would find something to mark the tree for later in case we wanted it, because we knew that if we took our eyes off it and turned around, the tree would magically transform itself into an exact copy of all the trees around it, and we'd never find it again. Sometimes she tied a kleenex around a high limb. Sometimes it was a glove stuck on the very top like a leathery star. We could have brought along a ribbon or piece of bright tape, because we had this problem every year, but we never did.

Then we would rush to catch up with my dad, who would be tramping in deeper and deeper mud, still not satisfied. My sister by now would be growing tired, because her legs were the shortest and she couldn't see over most of the trees. There was a tractor driving around the lot on which she could have ridden, but it would have slowed my dad down and he knew that someone else was going to get our tree if we didn't find it first.

After making a wide circle, or deciding we'd gone too far and turning back, we would inevitably end up at the tree my mother had chosen. It looks good, we would resignedly say to one another and nod, and my dad would kneel and cut it down while instructing me on how to pull the top toward (on top of) me.

Then it would be my job to help carry the tree back to the car. This involved a reversal of our earlier procession, except that now giant bushy green limbs blocked my view of the ground or aforementioned stumps and holes. I tripped a lot.

By the time we reached the car, we were all tired, cold, grumpy, and usually wet from the rain. Thus, more bickering. One year, when there was an enormous ice storm, I shut my sister's hand in the door while trying to keep her out of the car (I think she wanted to use my hairbrush? I honestly can't remember what we were fighting about). I felt terrible. I mean, she was annoying, but of course I didn't want to hurt her. We had to rush her to the emergency room, where we waited forever because so many people had fallen on the ice. Even now, she still brings that up every year, and I apologize again. It's a holiday tradition.

This year, though, it was different. My sister's in Arizona, so she got her own artificial tree a few weeks ago, and she wasn't around to remind me about the hand-slamming incident. Mom and Dad picked me up in the truck this morning at my house, and we drove out to a different tree farm where they selected their tree in less than five minutes, and we found one for me not three minutes later, both near the road. A nice young man came and carried them for us, and they put them on an ingenious vibrating machine that shook all the dead needles off, and helped us carry them out to the truck. We were there less than fifteen minutes. It was effortless and easy and no one got hurt.

But I kind of missed the drama.

Good news, bad news, good news, bad...

So, I have good news: I got a dog.

His name is Sam. I adopted him from the Oregon Humane Society ten days ago, and they estimated he's about seven years old. He is a German Shepherd mix, although I can't figure out what he might be crossed with--he's almost all German Shepherd in temperament and looks. He's very sweet-natured and quiet (so far), which is also good news. Living as I do in a condo with close neighbors, I can't have a dog that barks all the time while I'm at work. And my parents love him: good news.

He's good company, and he makes me feel safe at home and outside (it's easy to tell who likes big dogs and who doesn't), and although I had a little freak-out 24 hours after adopting him that this was a completely insane idea, I'm really glad I have him.

My cats, however, do not consider a new dog in their little kingdom to be good news. They've been spending most of their time under my bed this week, coming out only when Sam is closed up in the office. I did a little research on introducing a dog to resident cats (what did we do before Google? I honestly can't remember), and learned that patience and vigilant supervision are key. I don't let Sam in the same room with the cats unless I'm with him, and he wears his leash while he walks around the house so I can grab him if he gets too close to them. Flora, who is usually meek and silent as a rabbit, growls constantly every time Sam is near her, but I've read that that is a normal reaction and doesn't necessarily mean their relationship is doomed. I hope. Louie growls too, but I'm less surprised by that, seeing as he's the alpha-cat in this house.

Sam loves to go for walks, and he does not seem afraid of people (even men) or other dogs, which leads me to believe he's never been abused, so that's good news. And I have found him to be the most reliable workout partner I've ever had; he has not once called me to say that he doesn't feel like going out because it's rainy and dark. I've even lost some weight already. Since I put on several stress-pounds while I was out of work this year, that's also good news.

I took Sam to the vet yesterday for his new-dog checkup, for which I had a coupon from the Humane Society. The vet said that, despite the terrible state of his teeth, Sam might be younger than seven. He might even be as young as four years old, based on the condition of his coat and his pristine back teeth. That was good news, since I might get to have him longer than I was counting on.

But then, the bad news. (You knew we were leading up to something, right?) After Sam had his rabies shot and his exam, and everything was great, the vet did a heartworm test just as a precaution. He went away to check the results, and my mom and I sat in cartoon-dog-patterned chairs in the exam room and petted Sam and chatted.

And then the vet came back in, and he wasn't smiling anymore. This test is positive for heartworm, he said. This is pretty serious. He showed me the turquoise control color, and the blood-red strong positive Sam had turned up.

Somehow I found myself standing up, listening but not-listening to him, as he explained that we would do a second and more conclusive test that had to go out to a lab, and then if it came back positive, we could treat him for heartworm if that's what I wanted to do. He also suggested gently that I could probably return him to the Humane Society, although there was a good chance he would be euthanized.

No, I said, and it came out louder in the echoey room than in my head. No, I'm keeping him.

So he did the second test, and the results come back Monday from the lab. I will await a phone call, but since the first test is 94% accurate, and since Sam exhibits some of the symptoms I read about online for heartworm-infected dogs (lethargy, tiring after moderate exercise), I think we all know what this test will say.

And then he will be treated for heartworm, an expensive and potentially fatal endeavor that he has a 70% chance of surviving. The vet told me that he's only ever had to put one dog down when it didn't respond to the treatment. But I still don't like those odds. Sam will have to be closely confined for 24 hours after each treatment, to prevent his heart from pumping the worms into his lungs and bloodstream, which probably means an overnight stay at the vet's office. It's not going to be cheap. But I wasn't even thinking about the money.

I was thinking about how I could already love a dog so much that I'd known for only nine days, and how I didn't really want to cry in front of the vet and my mother. Peppery tears pricked the back of my nose.

Later, after a good cry and a nap at home, I thought about why it was so much easier for me to cry for an animal than a human. I thought about when one of our two kittens died in China, after we rescued them from the most depressing outdoor pet market I've ever seen, and about how I sobbed with tiny orange-and-white Kito in my hands, wailing like one of those professional mourner-ladies in the Middle East. I didn't even recognize myself in the weeping; it came from some deeper place inside me.

It's not that I don't cry when someone I love passes away, but it's a more complicated grief. With an animal, it's a very clean pain that cuts right down to the nerve, and there's no guilt for not having been a better granddaughter or friend or neighbor. I think it's because it's so much easier to love and trust a pet than another person. I know what Sam wants, what he likes, what he thinks of me, because he has no reason to hide those things from me. I know what Flora and Louie think, too, because they're not afraid to tell me with a purr or a scratch. But a person is a hidden hand of cards.

I wondered if everyone felt this way, if they had to cover their ears and change the channel when a story came on the news about neglected dogs, if they wondered why it was so much harder to read about one dog breaking another's neck on a bus than about an actual person's death. All I know is, although I feel sadness and may cry for a human being, I don't get that same physical pain in my heart that I do for an animal.

So, now we proceed to treatment. I look at this way: we just have to assume that Sam's going to be okay. There's no point in dwelling on the alternative, because there's nothing I can do about it, and because Sam will pick up on any anxiety I feel. Seven out of ten dogs are successfully treated. And his odds are already better than the average dog, because I'm keeping him and not taking him back to a place where he probably wouldn't get treatment at all. That's in our favor, right?

If you are a praying person, and you don't object to praying for a dog, please think of Sam this week. All we can do is hope for good news.

Finishing what I started

I am a world-class procrastinator.

You have only to look at the length of time between my blog entries to know that.

I am terrible at going to bed on time, and even worse at getting up. I set multiple alarms, one of them all the way across the room, but in the morning I very rationally get up and reset them for ten or fifteen more minutes of sleep, and then ten more, and every morning I run out of time and rush out the door with almost-dry hair and possibly mismatched shoes. I would love to be one of those people who gets up early, calmly irons a shirt and drinks a cup of tea while scanning the international headlines, effortlessly applies makeup, and saunters into work ten minutes early with a smug expression.

But I’m not one of those people.

I never have been. I was never great at doing my homework first thing after getting home from school (my main motivation to finish was my parents asking me, annoyingly, night after night, whether I had finished my homework yet, for the love of God). Honestly, that’s one reason I’ve hesitated about grad school—do I have the discipline to get my work done? Even now, I have nightmares in which I have a college research paper due the next day; and not only am I not finished, I haven’t even checked out the books yet. Which is not too far off the truth, in some cases.

I often end up having scrambled eggs or grilled cheese for dinner, because I can’t seem to focus early enough in the evening to make something that requires more than five minutes of cooking. (Don’t worry, I eat fresh fruits and vegetables too, but there are not a lot of fancy dishes prepared in my kitchen, at least during the week.)

Right now, in fact, there is a load of towels tumbling for the second time in my dryer. They were just washed and dried last night, but left in the dryer overnight, and I would ordinarily ignore them for a few days, but I need the dryer now for the clothes which have been waiting patiently for a week to be laundered. (Come to think of it, there’s also a bag of dirty dry cleaning which has been resting beside the door for a month. Does anyone know a good green dry cleaner in Beaverton?)

The Lives of Others, the highly acclaimed best foreign language film at the Oscars this year, has been languishing beside my TV for three-and-a-half months. (I love Netflix because there are no late fees—and because they have almost every movie ever made, and because I love getting those red envelopes in my mailbox, which never cease to feel like a present sent just for me—but it also indulges my natural laziness. If I won’t get charged more, I have no incentive to watch it now, therefore I will not watch it now.) It’s not even the German subtitles; I’ve kept English-language movies nearly as long.

When I check out a library book for three weeks, I don’t start reading it for the first two-and-a-half, and then I end up with fines because of course I want to finish it after it’s due.

There’s a perpetual pile of newspapers and unopened mail on my kitchen counter, bills, pizza coupons, yard cleaning services and political flyers and credit card offers and weekly magazines, all demanding my attention. I clear it all off in the occasional organizational frenzy, but the very next day it regenerates itself.

My general goal is to clean the house every other weekend. Guess how often that happens. Ha ha ha ha ha.

I’m a little embarrassed to admit it, but I saved all the Living sections (pardon me: now it’s “How We Live”) from the Oregonian while we were in Europe, because I like to read the comics every day. I read the front section, too, but not with as much zeal. It may seem unimportant, but for me it’s like talking to thirty different friends each day, and if I skip several weeks, I will miss things that happen to them. I might still get the big news, but I miss the small everyday happenings that make a friendship, so to speak.

I know it’s a little OCD, but I really wanted to read them all, even though I knew it would take me a while. So for the past six weeks, I’ve been trying to read at least one a day, sometimes several, and meanwhile I had to put each current day at the bottom of the stack, because I had to read them in order. (That’s the other thing: I don’t like to read or watch things out of order. If I watch a TV series, I have to start from the first episode and work my way forward. I hate having the ending of a movie ruined for me. Unless a book is really boring, I never skip ahead. I don’t know why, exactly, except that I like the surprise of discovery, and not knowing more than the author/creator intends me to know. Does that make me crazy?) So the stack has continued to get a little smaller every day, but it still stared reproachfully at me as I moved it from dining table to coffee table to floor to dining table again.

When I was out of work, I made myself a list of about ten projects. I think I might have accomplished two of them. In my own defense, though, that’s kind of a different issue, involving financial caution and mild depression. For instance, I need to have my piano tuned, and I was home all day for several months, but I didn’t want to spend the money on it; so now that I have a job, I have the money, but I have no time off to be home for it. Same thing with having the carpets cleaned.

Not to mention the recipe file I wanted to make, the paint I need to touch up in the living room and master bath, the closets to reorganize, the novel to write, etc.

This weekend, though, I really set myself to work:

• I watched The Lives of Others on Friday night, as well as Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (I’ve only had that one for six weeks) on Saturday, and returned them. Incidentally, I recommend them both.


• On Sunday, I read all the accumulated Living sections and recycled them. (Today I sat down for lunch and read today’s and only today’s comics. It was a great relief.)
  
• I finally cleaned the house, took out the recycling, washed the dishes, put clean sheets on my bed, finished all that at 11:00 Sunday night, and then couldn’t sleep because I’d been rushing around like a crazy person all day. (If I had started at 10 AM, or on Saturday, I would have been finished at a reasonable hour, but first I had to sit in my pajamas and read my stack of newspapers, and clean out my email, and go to the movies….)

So it was an especially productive weekend, full of little triumphs.

One last disclaimer: I don’t want you to think I live in squalor, because I really don’t—there are no vermin in my kitchen, no piles of clothes on my bedroom floor, and no stacks of yellow newspaper surrounding all my furniture. But I am not good at going beyond the bare minimum required to prevent embarrassment at my mess, should I ever have to be rescued by firemen.

Oh, and a picture of the new haircut is forthcoming, as soon as I have a day in which I manage to both style it properly, and have someone to take a picture of it…. (And, I am also very proud to report that I created my own bullets in this post using HTML tags, which I took a level 1 class in last week. Aren't you impressed?)

But now I have to go get the damn towels out of the dryer, or I’ll just have to tumble them again later.

Talk to you soon. Probably.

Can it be? A blog update? I am shocked! Shocked!

I know, I know, it’s been a while. But here’s what I have been up to:

I arrived home from Europe on Monday, August 18, spent two days trying desperately not to sleep in the daytime but then waking up at 5:30 AM, and started my new job on Thursday the 21st. (The new job is great, by the way. I love my coworkers, and they really seem to like me. I am constantly being praised and petted—hardly a day goes by when they don’t tell me how much they love having me there, and what with my constant need for positive affirmation, it’s almost enough that I don’t agonize over every tiny conversation and task. I’ll tell you more about the job itself in another entry.)

So after working two days, it was the weekend already. Friday night I was really tired. Saturday I started sneezing. (Do you see where this is going?) Sunday I was a little congested. By Monday morning, I officially had a cold and was in no condition to leave the house, let alone go to work. But here was my dilemma: I’d only been at my job two days; could I really call in sick?

No, I couldn’t, obviously. I didn’t even have anyone’s work phone numbers besides my own. So I got dressed and valiantly dragged myself to the office with a pocketful of Kleenex and Ricola. I felt like my brain had been replaced by jumbo marshmallows. I honestly have no idea what happened that day, although I had HR training and sat in on a meeting in the morning, and had lunch out with my boss (I remember the soup, though—I ordered chicken soup, which was delicious, and also made me want my mommy to come get me and take me home to sleep). By early afternoon, my supervisor was explaining something to me when she suddenly stopped, looked at me, and said, “You just aren’t tracking, are you? You should go home and rest.” So I did.

I stayed home sick Tuesday, figuring that I had demonstrated Monday that I was dedicated to my job, but that I really was too ill to work. I slept all day, and my mom brought over soup and applesauce and jello.

I decided I really had to go to work Wednesday. After all, what kind of an employee works two days and then needs two days off? So I got up early and showered and got all ready to go, but then was so exhausted by the effort of all that, that I didn’t think I could really drive to work and concentrate all day. I called my boss and asked him what I should do. “Stay home!” he said. “One, I don’t want you to get me sick. Two, I want you to stay home until you’re well.” So I hung up my work clothes, got back into my sweats, and spent another day on the couch.

When I returned to work on Thursday, finally feeling like a human person again, they were all happy to see me and teased me about being a slacker, which I thought was a good sign. (If they really thought I was a poor hiring decision/lazy, they wouldn’t have said anything to me, right?)

I haven’t missed even an hour of work since, and so far I really like my job, although I am especially wary of any political maneuverings/alliances/manipulation, because of what happened to me before, and I work in a government office now where there’s plenty of that going on. I’m also hyper-sensitive to being perceived as anything but a conscientious employee.

Toward that end, I decided it was time to upgrade my work wardrobe. Although most of the city government for which I work is semi-casual these days (no jeans and no open-toed shoes are the only hard and fast rules), the office of the mayor is not. Those of us who work in that department have to present a professional front. So goodbye khakis and cords and polo shirts, hello tailored wool pants and oxfords. Although I still look substantially younger than I am (which everyone keeps telling me I’ll be glad about later…), I have not been treated like anyone’s teenage daughter brought in to do the filing, which is how I always felt that the managers at my last job perceived me. They were always inches away from patting me on the head and asking me what colleges I was planning to apply to.

Oh, and I cut my hair. I had never really planned for it to get as long as it was, but it had gotten out of control; my hair is pretty thick, and it took me about ten minutes to dry at full heat. If you know me at all, you know that I never have two minutes to spare in the morning, let alone ten. Overall it’s not much shorter now, but I added some layers (well, my stylist added them—I have not yet been reduced to cutting my own hair—she was really excited to try something new, especially as I had brought in celebrity pictures as visual aids; what did we do before the internet?). Anyway, I don’t look quite as much like an earnest high school student anymore. I hope.

That’s about enough information for now. I’ll do my best to write more; now that I’m settled into my job a little, I will have more energy for other things.

So how was your summer?

Almost Home

Hello, hello. I am finally back in civilized land. There was really no chance for internet use once we left Stockholm. The woman who runs the farm where we stayed has a computer which we probably could have used, if it was urgent, but all I wanted was to check my email and see if anyone wrote to me on Facebook. Not urgent, unfortunately. And then yesterday, we stayed at a weird hotel near the airport in Stockholm, but their "business center" consisted of two computers which you had to stand up at the reception desk to use, and the internet was down besides. I was not happy about that. It really was a weird hotel. I felt like I had landed on a space station somewhere in the middle of nowhere. It was all glass and steel and odd round hallways. It was not homey at all. And there were round portholes in the bathrooms, which looked out into the main room. I guess this was to allow natural light in the bathroom, but it also made me feel like I was having a shower in a submarine.

We are staying in Frankfurt tonight, preparatory to leaving for Portland in the morning. (Yay!) I am ready to go home. More than ready, in fact. I have had many interesting adventures and have enjoyed my trip for the most part, but I have grown weary of digging through a suitcase for my shampoo, and of worrying that I will run out of clean clothes before we can do some laundry again.

I know, I'm a whiner. Here I am in Europe, seeing the great cathedrals and castles, and partaking of delicious cuisine, and all I want right now is to go home and sit on my couch in clean pajamas with a cat in my lap and watch a movie in English.

Except maybe no cat in my lap, since I hear it's been 105 degrees in Portland this week! Ugh.

I will get back to our Swedish adventures once I'm home, since it's costing me €4.50 for 45 minutes of internet time here, but here is a short anecdote to tide you over: when we landed in Frankfurt today, we immediately got the shuttle to our hotel (sort of--we waited and waited and waited for the shuttle outside the airport, and when it came we got seats, but a group of about 8 with suitcases did not fit into the small van and they were mad). It was already after 2 when we arrived and took our heavy bags up to our hotel rooms for the last time, so we decided to have lunch here at the hotel and then go to town to explore a little. I expected that the restaurant would be deserted, maybe even closed, but when we walked in there were several tables of people chattering away, and the food--oh, the food!

There was a table of desserts right inside the door, strawberry cakes and chocolate mousse and cherry sauce and blueberry cake and apple cake and chocolate pastries. There was a table of fruit and cheeses. There was a table of green salad, with sliced cucumber and mushrooms and olives and mozzarella balls and other things to choose from. There were two kinds of soup, and a whole spread of salmon and white fish. There were pastas and beef tips in wine sauce and brussel sprouts and broccoli au gratin. There was a carving station with mediterranean stuffed turkey. There was even a crepe bar.

I couldn't believe it.

So we sat down, and the waiter told us the price per person, and that it included sparkling wine and juice and water. And that's when it occurred to my dad that it was Sunday. This was Sunday brunch that we had stumbled upon. I didn't even know what day it was, but it certainly explained why groups of dressed-up Germans were eating a plentiful feast at 2 in the afternoon.

It was delicious. We stuffed ourselves (some more than others), having had a very bad dinner last night at our Stockholm airport hotel. (Seriously--it was awful. I had a shrimp sandwich that turned out to be fishy-tasting salad shrimp, partially congealed hard-boiled eggs, enough mayonnaise to coat the outside of the Vatican, and a small piece of cold bread. It was disgusting. I had to go to the supermarket afterward and buy a bag of nuts, the only thing I found that sounded good and didn't require cooking. And that was after they told us the damn internet wasn't working until Monday!)

And for lunch yesterday, we had eaten at McDonalds while traveling back to Stockholm. Yes, I know. But as I told my parents, it's kind of interesting to see what different things are offered, or what is not offered, at McDonalds in another country. Basically, the Swedish one was a lot like the American one. Not as different as China, where they serve taro pies in addition to apple, and pork nuggets. Anyway, it was fine for one meal but I was hungry and disappointed last night after all that.

Hmm, this has been a food-heavy missive, but you can see what's been on my mind.

Tomorrow, all things going in our favor, we fly home to Portland! I am so ready to be home. I am hoping to recover quickly from jet lag, because I start my NEW JOB on Thursday. Yay.

I will write more about Sweden as soon as the jet-lag wears off at home.

Out into the wilds of Sweden

Greetings from a gray and drizzly day in Sweden. It reminds me of home, in a good way.

In the morning, we will leave Stockholm, a safe and fairly friendly city where most people speak English very well (I hate to be an Ugly American, but it's so nice not to have to resort to hand signs, gestures, drawing pictures, and using the few words of whatever language I know to get directions or order food--is that so wrong?--but in my defense, I always try to ask if someone speaks in English in their own language, or at least say excuse me in their language before I launch into English). We are leaving for...well, I am not exactly sure where.

We are going tomorrow morning to pick up our rental car from the Stockholm airport, the first time we will have our own transportation on this trip. This is both good and bad: potentially less walking with our luggage, especially for my mother, and we are not at the mercy of bus times or unscrupulous taxi drivers. But it also means we have to navigate streets, learn parking (and no parking) signs, and find our own way in the world. We also have to pay for our own gas, which I understand is perhaps the equivalent of $15 a gallon. Feel better about paying $4.50 at home now?

Today we saw the Vasa, a ship that sank 380 years ago on this very day in Stockholm Harbor: August 10, 1628. It was a coincidence that this was the anniversary of the sinking, and no one at the museum even mentioned it, but my mother noticed the date of the sinking. It was even a Sunday. I told her that if this were a young adult book, we would have been transported back to Stockholm in 1628. She said not to even think that! (By the way, if you're reading this and steal my idea, I will find out and demand royalties.)

The ship was pretty interesting. It is HUGE and impressive-looking, made of black oak and massive ropes. Sadly, it only sailed for 20 minutes on its maiden voyage before it tipped to one side, righted itself, and then sank right in the middle of the harbor. The king had given everyone the day off to watch his prize vessel sail, so there were hundreds, if not thousands, of witnesses.

A team of divers was able to raise it from the harbor in 1961, but it spent over 300 years buried in silt below the water. Consequently, it was very well-preserved. They even recovered many human remains, some of which were used to reconstruct what several of the passengers and crew may have looked like. It was eerie to see the model heads in the museum; it really brought the events to life, so to speak.

Tonight we had Mongolian barbecue for dinner. Yes, you read that right. We went to a restaurant near our hotel, and recommended by our concierge, which had a genuine Chinese buffet and Mongolian barbecue (where you fill a bowl with raw meats and vegetables and noodles, and a chef cooks it for you on an iron stove). It was delicious. We all inhaled our vegetables, and then we had fruit and ice cream for dessert. It is the first buffet I have been to in Europe, except for the spread at our hotel breakfast every morning. That is good, too. I had cornflakes this morning, with dried apricots and prunes and hazelnuts; and Swedish meatballs, and grapes, and sweet bread with cardamom, and orange juice, and a cookie. Yesterday I had all that, and some cheese.

We are not exactly starving in Sweden.

This is our last night in the land of free hotel internet, so I may not write again for a few days. I don't really know what to expect when we are away from the city. Tomorrow we will tour the home of Carl Larssen, a famous Swedish artist and designer (who once painted a picture of his daughter that looks exactly like I did when I was ten, braids and all). And then we are going to a farm near where my father's side of the family lived, in the hope of doing some ancestral research and perhaps locating some long-lost cousins.

Write to me!

The last nine miles

There comes a point in traveling when you just don't want to do it anymore. You don't want to rifle through a bulging suitcase to find your socks. You don't want to do battle with yet another inscrutable hotel shower. You don't want to keep moving every few days to a new place. You don't want to learn thank you and where is the bathroom and check, please! in yet another language. You don't want to drag your bags through any more airports, or train stations, or strange foreign streets.

For me, that day was today.

They say that marathon runners hit a wall sometime before the end of the race. In Run, Fatboy, Run, which was one of the four movies I watched on the plane from Portland to Frankfurt (only two weeks ago, but it feels like several years), this is portrayed as a physical brick wall a thousand feet high blocking the entire road, which, if Simon Pegg's character can break through it, he might just finish the race.

That's how it felt today. Here we are in another city which I really wanted to see, but I was too tired and too tired to enjoy it. I discovered this morning that the head of my razor had cracked in my bag, and I cut my leg with it in the shower. A few days ago, the hairbrush I have had for nearly twenty years simply snapped in half while I was brushing my hair one morning. I have been using the stump with the bristles ever since, but it's not quite the same. (Yes, I am pretty sure they sell hairbrushes in Europe, so I could get a new one, but I have never found a replacement that I liked as well as this brush.) In Italy, I sat back on a park bench and got gum stuck to the back of my shirt, which I then got on the strap of my bag and everywhere else.

Which is how, with all of us tired and weary from traveling, wanting to make the most of our time but also not anxious to leave our hotel rooms, I came to be weeping on the street outside our hotel in Stockholm in broad daylight this morning.

Don't worry, I'm fine now. That's the thing about a good cry: I feel so much better. And we had a pretty good day, with a boat tour of the harbor and some shopping for Swedish glass, followed by dinner in the hotel. I have always wanted to have dinner in the restaurant of a nice hotel where I was staying, but I never have until today. It was raining too hard to go out, and Stockholm itself is expensive enough that the hotel's meal prices were very reasonable. It felt very decadent to eat salmon and new potatoes, drink white wine, and finish off with a chocolate petit four.

And now I am going up to my room to watch a little TV and read my book before bed. On today's boat tour, we learned that Sweden's national television service never dubs movies or television shows, but broadcasts them in their original language with Swedish subtitles. Hurrah for the Swedes!

I hope all of you are well. Send me an email or a comment when you have time!

An international day

I am in Sweden! This morning I was in Germany, and tonight we had dinner at an Irish pub (I had grilled Irish sausage, french fries, and hard cider--oh, and chocolate cake with berries and whipped cream). It's been a little of everything today.

Our hotel in Stockholm is beautiful. The lobby has dark brown stone floors and interesting red Scandinavian chairs--very spare and clean, but surprisingly comfortable--and my hotel room looks like an Ikea ad, in a good way. Everything is white, from the bedding to the walls, except that I have one turquoise wall with an orange and white square on it, and an orange lamp, and a turquoise cushion on a gray chair. It sounds a little bright, but really it feels very peaceful and calm.

I sat for a while after we arrived and watched a movie. Apparently the Swedes prefer subtitles to dubbing, or at least on the channels we get here, because the American movie was in English for once! I learned how to say "thank you" in Swedish from the subtitles (tach), and also some interesting profanity, although I don't know how to pronounce all of it.

Germany was nice, but we only had two complete days in Heidelberg, and we managed to fit in a tour of the Old Town, a couple of churches, the university library, the students' prison, a castle for dinner and an operetta (The Student Prince, which is American but set in Heidelberg--the songs were all in English but the dialogue was in German, so our friends had to help translate); and then a three-hour boat trip, lunch on the river, a tour of the large manor house in the next town with beautiful gardens, and a very nice dinner.

Needless to say, we are all completely exhausted. I have reached the point in traveling where I am ready to go home. Not that I don't want to see Sweden, of course, but I grow weary of having to make several trips to my suitcase for things I forgot for my shower, and wearing clothes that have been rolled and sealed into plastic bags for transit.

We did a great quantity of laundry in Heidelberg, in a combination washer/dryer that is a great mystery to me but managed to get everything clean. Between the three of us, I think we did about six loads over two days. Our hostess was very gracious about it, though, and even managed to get some stains out and hung things to dry. She was wonderful.

Tomorrow we will go explore Stockholm. There is a very old ship to see in a museum, and an open-air folk museum displaying ways of life from different parts of Sweden, and many other things to choose from. I am also interested in eating at a Chinese restaurant. We have seen them in every country so far, and I am curious about Chinese food in other countries.

Today I watched part of the Olympics opening ceremonies on television. It made me a little homesick for China, since every holiday and festival and any occasion is marked by pageantry of the sort they put on for the Olympics, although this was on a much, much grander scale. Lots of swirling skirts and ceremonial swords and dancing and singing, all topped off by enough fireworks to cancel the clean-air initiative entirely.

I think I forgot to write before that I met some Chinese men in Rome. We stopped at a sidewalk stand where my sister had metal card stands made for someone--they're wire with the person's name and decorations twisted into them. Hard to describe, but I have pictures. Anyhow, next to that was a man painting scrolls with elaborately decorated names on them. I decided to have one made. I wrote my name down for the man, and he turned it into a multicolored festival of colors and flowers and animals. It's really beautiful. But partway through his drawing, I realized that he did not look Italian. So I asked him, in Chinese, if he was a Chinese person. He looked up in shock. Yes! Chinese! he said, and rattled off with an accent I couldn't quite follow. I explained in very basic Chinese that I was an English teacher at a university. We both smiled at each other, knowing that this was a special moment despite the language barrier. When we left, I thanked him in Chinese and then used an informal way of saying goodbye. The man from the wire stand next door looked over in surprise and repeated it. We all laughed, and I waved as we walked away. I felt very international.

There is a very comfortable-looking feather bed calling my name. We have free internet at this hotel, although they're down to one computer while the business center is being remodeled, so I should be able to write again from Stockholm. I don't know what will be available once we head into the hills with our car. Oh, and our taxi today was a Volvo station wagon! Ah, Sweden.

Another travel day approaches

Short post tonight. It has been bloody hot in Venice, although I have enjoyed my time here. Tomorrow we leave for Heidelberg, Germany, where we will stay with a friend of my father's from many years ago in the Air Force. He and his wife (who is German) are taking us in. We are all looking forward to doing some laundry and possibly eating a meal at home instead of a restaurant.

Not that I should complain, I know....

Our hotel in Venice has air conditioning, but they are using the term loosely. I have had the AC on full-blast the whole time I've been here, but my room continues to be sweltering. Unfortunately, I cannot open the windows at night because there are mosquitoes the size of rhinoceroses that will eat me alive. (I know this from the last time my sister and I were here, in a hotel with no air conditioning, and we left the windows open the first night. The next day we looked like we had chicken pox, or bubonic plague.)

We have been eating very well. I have pretty much gotten enough of gelati, pizza, pasta, wine, and the other delicious things Rome has to offer. At least for this trip.

Almost, that is. After this, my mom and I are going to buy one last gelato, and take it over to the steps of a church where there is a Vivaldi concert going on inside. I was kind of thinking I'd like to go to the concert, but I'm guessing it is very, very hot inside the church! We're better off on the steps like everyone else.

Today we stumbled on an exhibit of musical instruments at a small (relatively--it would still hold a couple hundred people if they were friendly) church. The door was open, Vivaldi music pouring onto the street, and there was a sign saying Free. So we walked in, and there was a display of violin-making materials, and many old instruments, including an Amati bass from the late 1600s. I saw several violas (yay), and two viola d'amores, which are like a viola but have a great many more strings. As a string musician, this was the highlight of my day! Imagine, we had already passed this church twice, and never known the interesting treasures within. But that's what Venice is like.

I will end now, since Mom is finished with her computer and ready for gelato. Take care, everyone, and I'll talk to you soon. I'm not sure whether our hosts have email in Germany (probably--but I'm more interested in whether they have a washing machine since I am out of clean clothes!!), and I don't know what the situation will be like in Sweden. So goodbye for now.

Learn Italian the Tourista Way

The thing about train travel is, it seems terribly romantic and exciting unless you are actually doing it. Every time I see a scene in a movie with a character taking a train trip, she is sitting in a quiet compartment that rocks gently, trunk safely stowed above, gazing out the window at green fields, usually wearing a stylish hat and gloves. What you don't see is how she had to run through the train station with her suitcase, looking desperately for a ticket machine which then would not take her credit card, and hauling her heavy bag down the stairs and then up the stairs to the right platform--she hopes--before heaving her bag up the steps onto the train that finally arrives, and then seeks out an open seat that might or might not be reserved for someone else, and hoists her bag onto a luggage rack about 50 feet off the ground; and, praying that the train is going the right direction, she sits there sweating through her last clean shirt, too tired to look out the window at anything except station signs that might or might not be correct.

In fairness, I really do like traveling by train. I think the US was very shortsighted not to develop a national rail system (I know that is a popular opinion these days, now that gas prices are more expensive than running liquid gold through your car, or burning big piles of cash for fuel). And it is fun to look around and see what is going on.

There were rows of grapevines threading through vineyards that began to look like lines of leafy elephants, nose to tail, stretching their green trunks toward the train tracks. There were red and white church towers in every village, and medieval towers fortifying the hills. There were very local-looking people on bicycles, women's skirts mysteriously not flying up in their faces as they rode.

And we made it to Venice. Only just. Our train was late arriving in Bologna, where we changed to the Venetian train. I don't know why it was late, exactly, but there was a great deal of shouting in Italian at the ticket collector as we sat at one station (sweating, because the AC goes off when the train stops) for nearly 30 minutes. I tried to ask the man across the aisle about it, but he didn't speak enough English and I didn't speak enough Italian, and my Rick Steves phrasebook was way up in my suitcase. Oh, well. We caught a later train and got here only an hour later than we would have arrived, and the sun was lower in the sky so there was more shade for us.

It may be a cliche, but I love Venice. I know I have picked an obvious choice, but I think it's my favorite city. Ever. Even though it's so damn hot right now that I can't tell if I actually dried off after my shower this morning.

I love the little twisting Venetian alleys that seem to go nowhere (like the dark hole where we watched lines of tourists disappear, and others come out, for hours last night while we had dinner until 10:30--I still have no idea where they were going or why). I love the canals, with their vaguely decaying smell that wafts across the stone bridges and narrow streets. I love the big boats puttering along, and the small wooden crafts that zoom about, and the fact that you take a water-bus instead of a land bus.

And on that note, my father, who for the last week has been ordering water in English at restaurants, has finally learned an Italian word: vaporetto, water bus. He just used it casually last night, like he has been speaking Italian all along. "How late do the vaporettos run?", he asked me, and I almost dropped my camera in surprise. When it comes to boats, he is always interested.

So in the spirit of that, here are some helpful Italian words and phrases I have learned. For you Italian speakers out there, please forgive any errors I may have made:

Dove: Where (doh-vay). As in, "Where is the train station?" or "Where is a gelateria?" or "Where is the nearest fountain I can throw my crabby family into?".

Gelateria: Ice cream shop. Although that is a terribly inadequate description for the heavenly nectar that is gelato. I believe it's made with a very great deal of cream. There's a reason that people bring elastic-waist pants to Italy. My favorite flavors this trip have been cherry, lemon, and peach. It's just too hot for chocolate hazelnut, pistacchio, and my previous favorites.

Quanto costa: How much is it? As in, "Are you planning to drive me all over Rome in this taxi and then charge me 50 Euros more than normal?". Side note: I have unfortunately not learned my numbers beyond 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, so if it costs more than that, I'm in trouble.

Caldo: Hot. Which seems backwards, because it sounds like "cold". As in, "It's so hot that I have had four gallons of water in four hours and not needed a bathroom all day."

Troppo: Too (much). As in, "You are charging too much for these cheap tourist knockoffs," or "It's TOO HOT!" Even the Italians have been saying that last one, which is how we know we're not just wimps.

Basta: Stop. This is a confusing word for me, because it sounds a lot like "bastard" and I wondered why people were yelling that at each other so casually. But really, it's more like, "Stop here for the light," or "Stop, thief!".

Portare via: To go. As in, "I would like this pizza to go." (Really.) This was a personal triumph for me, as I learned and used this phrase on my own to get my breakfast to go, and then taught it to my sister, who studied in Italy for several months but had never heard it. We were able to get lunch to go at a train station and carry it back to our group on the platform while we waited for the next train. I'm sure we could have also gestured to make the woman understand, but it was nice to be able to use real words for once, instead of my usual pointing and thanking.


All right, class, you can put away your pencils. We'll pick up again soon.

Today we are going to Piazza del San Marco (St. Mark's Square), one of the most famous sites in Venice, and I hope we will tour the Doge's Palace, which was the site of the influential political dealings of Venice's most powerful days. My sister and I saw it in 2005, but my parents haven't been here before.

And just in case you're confused by the mention of my sister, she and her boyfriend are also traveling in Europe, and we met up with them for a couple of days to travel to the small town in Le Marche where she studied for a semester. We had the most delicious dinner with homemade pasta at her favorite restaurant, and she took us on a tour of her favorite pizza stand, gelateria, and her school. Now they are back in Rome and headed for Greece (so sad for them), and my parents and I went on to Venice.

Thanks to all of you who have written. I appreciate the emails and comments! Sorry I can't write to everyone individually right now. My offer of a postcard still stands, though, if you send me your address!

It's hot in Italy

Hello, all. We made it! This is not going to be a long post, because I am tired and also this keyboard has a backspace key that sticks and deletes everything I just wrote. Damn it! There it goes again.

It is very hot here. That is kind of an understatement, actually. It is so hot that although I have had about four gallons of water today, I have not had to find a bathroom at all. Sorry if that is too much detail for you....The air is so heavy that I feel like I am inside a warm cloud.

This morning we saw the Borghese Gallery, which is on the former estate of the Pope's nephew. Unfortunately, I do not remember which Pope, but you can look it up if you want to know. He owned and commissioned many beautiful pieces, including some by the sculptor Bernini. No cameras allowed, of course, so no photos of them unless I sprung for a 40 Euro souvenir book, but Google Bernini if you are curious.

We had a delicious lunch at a restaurant called La Bruschetta (literally "the burned toast"), at the recommendation of our hotel owner who is an American woman of about my age, and who apparently knows good places to eat wherever we might be going. She hasn't missed yet. We had mixed vegetables, which turned out to be marinated zucchini, eggplant, green beans, spinach, red peppers, small roasted potatoes, onions, and (inexplicably because it contained no vegetables) a piece of delicious quiche. Then we had an order of breaded stuffed olives (YUM), and a plate of gnocchi with tomato-basil sauce. It was all delicious. Oh, and we finished with a piece of custardy lemon cake with almonds. The three of us just shared one order of each of these things, which was plenty.

This afternoon we had the longest walk known to man, trying to locate the Pantheon. My father, who is usually very good with maps and directions, must have been suffering from heat stroke or jet lag or something, because he led us on a labyrinthian tour of local piazzas, taxi stands, and careening scooters down back streets. When we finally reached the Pantheon, everyone was too tired, hot, and crabby to enjoy it. (Had someone listened to me when I said to turn left out of the bus stop instead of right, we might have avoided such a hike, but we did stumble upon a very nice square with a Bernini fountain along the way, so it was not all bad.)

But not to worry! We were quickly revived by some delicious gelato: I had almond sorbet and wild cherry sorbet, and wow were they good. My mom especially loves the gelato. She is anxious to have it for breakfast, since we have heard somewhere that locals do that.

This was followed by another forced march through the heat. I am the only member of our party not suffering from blisters on my feet. But at last, we got back on our sightseeing bus and got off at the Colosseum, which was particularly exciting for me because I missed it the last time I was in Italy. For some reason, it was unexplainedly closed the day my sister and I tried to visit it. A very impressive structure (which the audiotour on our bus went to the trouble to stress was never used for martyring Christians or sacrificing people, contrary to popular legend--but they would hardly admit it, now, would they?), and we were there at the perfect time to get photographs of the crumbling stone in the pink-orange late afternoon light.

And now, I believe it is bed time. The jet lag yesterday was torture, but my body has adjusted quickly. So far....And also, there are some obnoxious Americans yelling in this Internet cafe. Why is it that Americans seem to think that speaking LOUDER IN ENGLISH is going to make someone who doesn't speak English miraculously understand them?

Thanks to everyone who sent messages. I will try to write back soon! Ciao!

I got the job, I got the job, I got the job!

I GOT THE JOB!!!!!!!!!

An official offer is contingent on successful drug testing and criminal background checks today, of course, but I haven’t had so much as a poppyseed muffin or a traffic ticket. I think it will be fine.

On Monday, I had my “informal interview lunch” with the three members of the department, and I felt like it went really well. The hardest part was just figuring out what to wear (new black polo, black-and-tan flowered skirt, new brown sandals, in case you’re wondering). There was a lot of discussion of the job and the department, a little casual conversation and joking around, and I felt very comfortable wit them. I left them with a solid handshake and the sense that I had done well. But then, of course, I had to wait for them to call me, which is when my brain started its over-analysis of every casual comment and signal.

I know I promised an update sooner, but I was just too nervous to sit still and type anything. It’s been a long week of pacing around, nailbiting, and waiting for the phone to ring but being too scared to answer when it did.

Which it did, this morning, while I must confess I was still sleeping. (I won’t tell you how late it was, or you’ll hate me.) But I might as well enjoy sleeping in while it lasts. Soon enough I’ll be waking up to an alarm in the dark, and rushing off to work like the rest of the world.

The voice mail message they left (because I wasn’t about to answer the phone in my half-awake state and let them know what a layabout I am!) was fairly neutral, which was both good and bad: either they were calling with good news and wanted to give it to me live, or they were calling with bad news and didn’t want to leave it on my voice mail. Or maybe they had offered it to someone else yesterday, who had turned it down this morning, and now I was their second choice. Or maybe….

Erin, enough already! I planned out how I would graciously respond to either a yes or a no, and then called.

Which is how I learned that I was their top choice, they felt there was “good chemistry”, and they were going to offer me a very fair salary (more than I had been expecting!).

When we hung up, I actually jumped up and down like a lotto winner, fists held aloft, whooping. (In my pink pajamas, no less—there’s your visual of me for the day.)

And then I called several people who I knew were holding their breath on my behalf—my parents, my personal reference, my counselor. We were all excited. This was good news. Yay. Etc.

I’m just so relieved, that I will be coming home to a good job and a regular income and health benefits and all that! Now I can enjoy my trip to Europe that much more, and I know that I can spend a little on souvenirs and gelato without worrying that it will affect my ability to pay the electric bill this fall.

Thanks for listening. I may not write again before I leave for Europe, because I’ve got a lot to do and I’ve been putting it off this week, but I plan to update the blog with travelogues while abroad. The 2005 European dispatches were very popular, so feel free to share with your friends. More readers can’t hurt me.

A second interview!

The phone rang tonight at 6 o’clock. My heart always stops when the phone rings these days, but I figured it couldn’t be anything job-related at that hour. It was, however, one of the interviewers calling to say that I am one of three finalists for the job!

On Friday morning, I will do some testing in Word and Excel (because the other two finalists are not local, we will all be doing our testing by email instead of in person to make it fair—I will get an email with the test materials at an appointed time; and then the person sending them will call to make sure that I received them; and then I will have an hour to finish and return them by email; I feel like I'm getting instructions for dropping off a ransom), and then next week they plan to schedule final interviews.

Tomorrow I’d better take my one and only suit to the dry cleaners. I’m glad now that I got a plain suit instead of pinstriped, because I think I can get away with wearing the same black suit to both interviews (with a different shirt, of course).

I appreciate how quick they have been to make decisions so far. They told me yesterday that they know it’s hard to wait over the weekend to hear about a job, so they were planning to notify everyone by Friday whether they would be called back for a second interview. But I certainly didn’t expect to hear from anyone by today!

I would love to know one way or the other before I leave for Europe a week from Monday. And it would be so great to know that I was coming home to a job. I’m trying not to get my hopes up too far. But cross your fingers or say a prayer for me.

At last, a good interview

I just had a job interview, and I think it went really well! Actually, I know it went really well, because while he was walking me out, the head of the department I’d be working for said, “That went really well”.

You know how sometimes you have an interview (or even just a conversation) and you end up saying all kinds of weird, wrong things and giving more information than you meant to, and the interviewer asks questions you don’t know how to answer, and pretty soon everyone is looking at you like you’re completely psycho?

This was nothing like that.

I nailed it. I was prepared; I gave honest, well-thought-out answers to all their questions; I praised the work their department has been doing; I asked what effect the upcoming leadership change might have. They were clearly impressed. (Can you tell I’m on an adrenaline high right now?) They seem like a good team to work for. They laughed at my jokes. I even saw the main interviewer write down “SMART!” on his notes and underline it, and he called me smart.

Truthfully, as of 7 o’clock this morning, I really did not think it was going to go well. I got very little sleep last night, between nervousness and heat and my cat who wanted to cuddle (why, Louie, why? It’s 2 AM and 75 degrees in my room—why would you want to sleep on my stomach??). So I woke up in a fog this morning and blundered around, pretty sure that I was about to blow it.

But I didn’t!

They’re supposed to let everyone know by the end of the week whether they’d like to have them back for a second interview. I told them that I’m leaving soon for a long-planned vacation in Europe and that I hoped that wouldn’t affect my chances. I think it’s a good sign that they asked exactly when I was leaving, and all of them wrote down the dates of my trip.

I will post an update as soon as I hear from them. Even if I didn’t get it (although I’d say I have a decent chance unless they’re just that effusive with everyone), I was heartened by the positive experience. No one has called me “smart” in a professional setting for a long time. Take that, old job!

Old friends

Old friends, old friends sat on their park bench like bookends. You know that Simon and Garfunkel song? It gets kind of weird and discordant in the middle, but I like the images of old men on a bench, watching the world go by. Can you imagine us years from today, sharing a park bench quietly?

Today I went to a party at the house of my oldest friend (oldest as in time I’ve known her, not her age). You know how there are some people in your life, no matter how long it’s been since you saw them, you can still pick right up where you left off as though no time has passed? Our friendship is like that.

We met in the second grade after my family moved into the house where my parents still live, and my new friend lived only two blocks away. I used to cross the creek behind our house by myself, and cut through the neighbor’s yard—with permission, of course—to go to play at her house. Her family had a frisky black poodle who would beg to play fetch for hours. I babysat her younger brother a few times, and I think she watched my sister once or twice. We worked on Girl Scout badges together. I went to the beach with her family, and she went skiing with mine. On summer evenings in our adolescent years, I would call her most nights after dinner to go for a walk through the neighborhood above us, where we would stroll up the hill past massive homes with lawn sprinklers spraying cool mist.

When we were in fifth grade and tired of the afternoon program at the elementary school, our mothers decided we were responsible enough to come home alone after school, if we were together. So on alternate days, we would ride the bus to her house and then to my house. Her home was clean and peaceful and silent in the afternoons. I remember the pungent, yeasty smell of their kitchen bread drawer, which seemed strange and wondrous to me—bread at my house was kept on top of the refrigerator in plain sight. We would eat whole wheat bread and thickly spread raspberry jam, and do our homework or play with the clothespin dolls we made outfits for from fabric scraps.

In the summer, we made our younger siblings perform in plays that we wrote and directed and designed the costumes for. We would spend hours in my basement, rehearsing and planning and trying to convince the younger ones to go along with everything. Somewhere, I still have a cassette tape with a radio play that we produced; it was about a princess, of course, and our voices sound childlike and precocious over the hiss from the microphone. We decided that my sister and her brother would get married, and then we would be related. Unfortunately, neither sibling was as excited about that plan as we were. They’re still not.

Later, she did not drive and I did not have a car, so we rode the school bus together all through high school. I remember many mornings falling asleep shoulder to shoulder in the pre-dawn gray, hunched over our bulging backpacks in our laps, me with my viola case between my knees. The worst was on rainy days, when we had to squish together on the crowded bus, wet coat pressed against wet coat on the damp green vinyl, the windows fogged with the breath of fifty groggy students, the floor slick and gray from soaked shoes.

Our families are friends, which probably helps us to stay in contact. (I am not in contact with anyone else from school. I wonder from time to time how some of my old classmates are doing, but it doesn’t trouble me enough to find out.) Our parents have dinner every few months. Our mothers talk on the phone, and update us on one another’s activities. Her dad and my dad play their guitars together for fun, and even go to concerts (by which I do not mean screaming mobs and mosh pits and overpriced T-shirts—I mean two guys with guitars and microphones at a church multi-purpose room). So I generally know where she is and what she’s doing.

Still, it was nice to see her in person. I can’t remember the last time I saw her, actually. But when we sit and talk together in her backyard in the heat of a July evening, it feels like no time has passed.

Seeing my friend makes me realize anew that I am lonely. A little lonely, I mean. I have my family nearby, and I see people and talk to others on the phone, but I don’t really have any close friends here in town. There’s no one I can call here when I need to vent about something. My college friends, because we have taken different paths and live in different places, have inevitably drifted away, although we still have the bond of common experience and genuine affection. I’m not surprised by the drifting away, but I miss the connection of real friends. I miss having people I can call for spontaneous meals or movies. Does this make me sound pathetic? I’m afraid so.

I was talking to my counselor about this last week, because he’s been encouraging me to get out more. But the thing is, I do get out, or I try to. I stretch myself beyond my level of comfort nearly every week. Sometimes it’s hard for me to even leave the house when I know I will have to talk to strangers, or go somewhere I’ve never been before. Still, I am involved in activities like the community orchestra I play with, where I make myself go to practice every week and usually enjoy it once I’m there; and I have taken several classes through the community college, but I just don’t seem to make friends—at least not within my peer group, and not in as short a time as a weekly class with ten sessions. It takes me a while to warm up to people. And right now, I don’t even have a job to go to, where there would at least be some work friends to have lunch with or talk to about my day.

I have met some very nice people in the orchestra, but they are older and have families and other commitments, and it’s just not the same. And yes, I’ve tried online dating, but I found it very impersonal and weird. Either I made a snap judgment about whoever I was matched up with (and believe me, some of them were for good reason—like the guy who listed “tattoos” first on his list of things he couldn’t live without; I’m sure he is perfect for someone, but that someone is not me); or the person I was matched up with made a presumably hasty judgment about me, based on my profile picture or one of my statements. After a few months of this, I decided that: a) I couldn’t afford it anymore since I’m unemployed; and b) it wasn’t really helping me to make connections with anyone. Call me old-fashioned, but I’d still like to meet someone the way people used to. Whatever that was.

As I said to my counselor, I don’t know where my peers are! I am not going to hang out in bars, and I am not involved in a church, and those are the only groups I see with people my age, other than the young married parents who are friends with other young married parents. I’m not quite at the point where I want to join a “singles” group, although I’m not ruling it out yet. So where does that leave me? If you live in Portland and have a group of friends who could use a quiet, wry addition who enjoys movies and good cheap dining and has a station wagon that would hold several people, think of me for your next event.

I’m afraid this has taken a rather melancholy turn. I didn’t intend it. I read in Newsweek recently that mental health professionals are recommending blogging to their patients as a form of therapy. Because blogging has a built-in audience, or so we believe when we do it, we get that sympathetic ear we are really looking for, that helps us feel better about our problems. That’s what sets blogging apart from keeping a journal or diary, which is also something therapists recommend, but you know that no one is going to see the journal, and you don’t get the same psychological benefit from it. I guess what I’m getting at is, tonight’s entry has been therapeutic for me, because my (presumably) sympathetic audience is out there reading and nodding your heads. So thank you, dear readers.

Bad dreams

Woke up tired and grumpy this morning. I discovered that it was already too hot to have the windows open for a while (at 8 AM, no less!) to cool the house down. But it’s only 72 inside now, and 75 and climbing outside.

I had been in the middle of a bad dream, in which someone was in my house. I have a recurring series of dreams in which someone—always a man—breaks or sneaks into my home. Sometimes the man forces his way in, sometimes he’s hiding somewhere in the house. In last night’s dream, I realized that I had forgotten to lock the door at all, and he was behind the shower curtain. I saw him hiding there and ran to the neighbor’s house, but no one answered the doorbell. I kept trying to dial 9-1-1 on my phone but couldn’t seem to push the right numbers.

It doesn’t take a professional therapist (that reminds me, I’ve got an appointment today…) to figure out the cause of these dreams: sometimes I’m afraid of living alone. Especially at night.

In the daytime and the evening, I love being alone in my house. I love to look around and smile at this place that belongs only to me. I enjoy the peace and quiet, the solitude, the freedom to wander the halls in whatever I happen to be wearing (or not), and to eat right out of the refrigerator with my fingers. I like having control of the remote, and I like being able to stop a movie in the middle if I want to do something else for a while. I like to read in the living room without someone else’s stereo or TV show blasting me out. I like having 100% approval over all decorating and furniture decisions. I love that if there are dishes in the sink, there’s no one to blame but myself—and I don’t have to wash them until I get tired of seeing them there. I love vacuuming only when I feel like it. I love that there’s only one lap for the cat to choose from, so I don’t have to watch him cozying up to someone else when I’m cold. Most of the time, I really love living alone.

But at night I get nervous. I’ve been living here by myself for more than two years now, but the creaks and settling sounds of the dark house still worry me. Anything that sounds like a window opening, or a footstep in the hall, still freaks me out. I glance around at the slightest scrape or shadow, and I hate it when the cats stare at something behind me that isn’t there. In my bedroom, I turn the TV on with a half-hour timer and fall asleep that way, because otherwise I hear everything with that superhuman, extra-alert hearing that magnifies every tiny squeak into dangerous intrusions. (I know it’s not good to sleep with the TV on, but it’s only on just long enough for me to get to sleep, and then I can usually stay asleep just fine.)

Consequently, I dream from time to time about someone breaking in. I’m very careful not to watch movies or TV shows where women are attacked in their homes, because while my memory has conveniently erased all the geometry and state capitals I ever knew, it can play whole remembered film scenes of women being threatened/attacked— in glorious Technicolor, no less.

I know, I know that it’s so unlikely that anything will ever happen to me, but it’s hard to convince myself of this while lying helpless in the dark. While the rational part of me knows that my statistical odds of a break-in or attack of any kind are very low, my racing pulse tells me otherwise. It makes me want to get a big dog, but then of course I remember the urban legend about the single woman who did just that, and then the psycho who broke in simply killed her dog first. You see what I mean? Why would my brain possibly retain that ridiculous story, except to torture me?

When my building was being fitted with new siding and windows last winter, the workmen went off and left a window open one evening. I got home from dinner at my parents’ house to discover it wide open in my living room, no screen, plastic sheeting flapping ominously. I knew that I had to search the house to make sure everything was okay, but my knees were shaking so badly that I couldn’t do it. That’s always the scene in the movie where the crazy man is hiding in the closet with the hatchet, and you’re yelling at the hero/ine, “Get OUT of the HOUSE!”, but they never do. So I called my dad, who (fairly) graciously came over and did a sweep for me, and then suggested I get to know my neighbors better so they could do it next time.

The construction went on for several weeks, during which time they had a lockbox on my door so that they could come and go as needed. Every night I would come home and make sure all the windows were locked, and then look in all the closets and under the bed with my breath held. I was very relieved when they finished up. (So were the cats, who would greet me at the door after work as if they were trying to tell me, Someone was IN the HOUSE while you were GONE, and I would reassure them that it was just the men installing the new windows, but their nervousness made me edgy too.)

Okay, I’m freaking myself out here, and it’s the middle of a beautiful sunny morning. Like I said, most of the time I love living alone. It’s just once in a while that my imagination is too much for me. But I never forget to lock the doors or windows.


(In other news, I am eagerly anticipating the arrival of my GRE study materials. No, really, I am. I opted for the Super Saver free shipping from Amazon, but now I kind of wish I had paid the $6.99 to get my books sooner so I could get started on relearning all the math I’ve forgotten. I’m even looking forward to studying, if my brain hasn’t completely atrophied from lack of use in the last few years.)

A new plan

I’ve made a decision: I want to go to library school.

A couple of weeks ago, I applied for a job as a library assistant at a nearby public library. (I haven’t gotten a call yet for an interview; when I called to confirm that they had received my application, they said they had gotten a lot of applicants, so I’m not holding my breath. Even though it sounds like a great job for me.)

Regardless of whether I get it, I realized that I was more excited about that job than anything I have applied for yet, or anything I’ve read about in the paper or online. And that got me thinking. I don’t want to be a business executive or manager or something, so why would I want to work in an office for the rest of my life? That’s mostly where I’ve been applying, because I know I can do office work and can probably get hired. But I don’t want to be an assistant forever, either, letting someone else take all the credit and all the money. At the wise old age of 29, I’m starting to think about the idea that we only get one shot at this life. If there’s something I really want to do, I should do it now! What am I waiting for?

I’ve always loved libraries. From elementary school on, I have volunteered after school or during lunch to shelve books. I even spent a semester of my senior year in high school as a library aide (being in the orchestra messed up my schedule, and there were no electives I wanted to take during my free period), where I was entrusted with processing the new periodicals and helping students use the card catalog, and the librarians loved me and encouraged me to pursue a library career. It was my favorite part of the day. Yes, I was one of those kids. I sought refuge in the library because the harsh world of school was too much for me. But I also chose the library because I loved books and reading, and the smell of old books, and the delightful order of rows of spines on shelves.

I even looked into library school a few years ago, after I moved back from China, but I just wasn’t ready for it then. I was tired. I didn’t want to go back to school yet, and I didn’t want to study for and take the GRE, and I didn’t want to move. But it’s always been at the back of my mind.

Suddenly, something clicked for me this week. I think I’m ready now. I’ve had a few months of unemployment to figure out what I like and what I hate, and what I might want to devote the next 30 or 40 years of my life to. I read the classifieds every week with a highlighter, and the jobs I’m actually interested in all seem to require a Master’s degree. Most of them require a Library Science degree or something like it.

I still want to write, but I don’t think I am going to be a full-time writer anytime soon. In the meantime, I would like a job where I actually want to get up and go to work in the morning.

So, having said out loud that I want to go to library school!, I have started planning:

Where? The closest program is at the University of Washington, and that’s where I hope to be accepted. They have a part-time distance learning program, which takes three years instead of two to complete, and involves some time on campus and a lot of coursework online. This would enable me to continue living and working (I hope!) here. I could easily get to Seattle for the on-campus times, and I know a lot of people who would take me in up there. It’s also not a great time to sell my condo here, so I would be glad to be able to stay.

When? Fall 2009 is the next enrollment. Applications are due in February. This gives me a few months to study for the GRE, take the GRE, get my test results back, and take it again if necessary. (My math skills are pathetic. Really. My junior high and high school teachers would weep if they saw me trying a basic algebra equation lately.)

How and Why? I am still working out the financial aspects. I’m not thrilled about more debt, but the distance program is cheaper than the residential program overall. And once I graduate with a Master’s, my earning potential goes up considerably. Also, there’s only so much I could make as an administrative assistant or (shudder) call center employee. In the long run, I think the investment will pay for itself.

I’m getting excited about this, in a way I haven’t been in ages. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a real goal. Even though I will have to take some kind of drone job while I’m in school, at the end of it I will have so many more options. With a Library and Information Science degree, I could work as a researcher, a librarian, an archivist, or many other things that I would enjoy. I might actually get to do something fun with my life.

In other news, I had a found money experience today, which was a little more impressive than a folded twenty in my winter coat pocket. I got a letter from my bank saying that there was a tidy sum of money in my name that needed to be claimed. Don’t worry, this is not a Nigerian bank account scam (the deposed Nigerian prince in the letter assured me of such); it’s a long story involving a savings bond, but I’m pretty sure it’s legitimate. I can’t believe I now have an additional cushion between me and the cold, dark world of unemployment and foreclosure and living in a box and all the other things that keep me awake in the night.

So all in all, it’s been a good week! Happy Independence Day, everyone.

Wide awake

It’s almost 1 AM here. I have just finished folding and putting away two loads of laundry, and I made scones, and then I washed the dishes, and then I started the dishwasher. I’m not even tired yet.

I realized something this week: I am really bad at going to bed. I always thought I was just a night person. That’s true, actually: I am a night person. A night person who is really bad at going to bed at night!

I am fortunate never to have suffered from insomnia. Usually my face hits the pillow and I’m out until my alarm goes off, no matter what time it is. It didn’t matter whether I have had chocolate before bed, or whether the TV is on. But lately, I’ve been having trouble falling asleep. Each night, when I finally finish brushing my teeth and washing my face and all the other nighttime rituals that seem to stretch out for hours, I get into bed and turn off the light. And then I lie there, staring at the insides of my eyelids for what feels like several weeks. Eventually I drift off and sleep well (although I’ve been having some very weird, vivid dreams lately, which I can’t usually remember in the morning—one recent dream involved a woman with red-gold hair spread out around her head, and she was laughing as she lay on the ground with her hair on fire, but I couldn’t make her understand the danger).

Apparently, I was not the good sleeper I thought I was for all those years. I was just chronically sleep-deprived. Now that I am unemployed and have time to get my eight hours of sleep regardless of what time I go to bed, my body is not constantly crying out for rest.

Consequently, my bedtime gets later and later each week. First it was midnight. Then 1. Then 1:30. Now I’m almost up to 2. Regardless of the time, my body and my mind are wide awake and do an effective job of convincing me that they can stay up for another hour! Maybe two! They’re like toddlers, putting off bedtime. If I’m out of work for much longer, I will be going to bed at 4 AM and getting up at noon. The only way to fix this is to start getting up earlier, and then I will be tired at night. Except I don’t want to get up earlier. And it doesn’t help to set an alarm—I just hit the snooze and go back to sleep (and that’s the alarm that I place across the room on the dresser, so I have to get out of the covers and walk over to it).

I’m not sure what the solution to all this is, other than more daylight and more exercise. Oh, and maybe just getting a job. Wouldn’t I love that. I got a no-thank-you letter from the arts nonprofit at the end of last week. It was a nice letter, actually, saying that they’d had 160 applicants for one position, and only chosen a few to interview. I could be mistaken, but I believe the program manager added part of it just for me, because she made reference to something I’d said in my cover letter. So it wasn’t all bad. But it still wasn’t a job!

I applied for four more jobs last week, though. Tomorrow (today, if you want to be technical, but I don’t count late night after midnight as the next day—too confusing), I’m going to make phone calls to see if my application arrived and if there’s anything else I can do and wouldn’t you like to hire me, please?

Also, I almost fell in the shower over the weekend. I had just spent half an hour scrubbing the shower, and I must not have rinsed the floor well enough, because as I stepped out with one foot, the foot still in the shower slipped and I almost tipped over. (This would have resulted in hitting my head on the toilet, among other things.) When I told my mom this later, adding that I probably wouldn’t have been found for a couple of days if I fell, she said, “Yeah, and by then your cats would have eaten you.”

Thanks, Mom. Thanks a lot. She hasn’t even seen the Sex and the City episode where Miranda’s afraid her cat will eat her if she dies alone. But she has seen Bridget Jones’s Diary, in which Ms. Jones ruminates that she may expire and be half-eaten by wild dogs (in the book, it’s an Alsatian). Whatever the case, I gave the cats extra treats tonight and taught them how to dial 911 on my cell phone.