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.