Category Archives: First Hill

Nov13

There Goes the Neighborhood

Posted on 13 November 2023 by The Reluctant Girl Scout

Clockface with Bartell Drugs written on it.

Headline news in our part of First Hill is that the local Bartell Drugs at the corner of Madison and Boren is closing in a few days. Between this and our old apartment building having turned to dust, I’m feeling like a crotchety old crone, longing for yesteryear.

Last week when I was entering the Amazon Go that lives beneath Oh La La, I asked the school boy coming in behind me to wait until the gate had closed before he waved himself in with his Amazon phone code in order that his pizza and soda wouldn’t get charged to my account. I said it nicely, not like a Karen at all, but then I heard his friends laughing and saying, “Yeah, Noah. Don’t go in before the gate has closed.” I could tell from the tone and general hilarity in their voices that they were not making fun of this Noah kid but instead making fun of me.

Reader, this was like a stab to my heart. I’ve always liked seeing these Catholic school boys—young men—in their uniforms, with their short hair, politeness when in the company of adults, and look of the future on their faces. On lunch breaks and after school and after basketball practice, we see them at the local eateries, in the above-mentioned drug store, and in Amazon Go, the store that makes you feel like a shoplifter even though you aren’t because there’s no cashier and some kind of magic that alerts Jeff Bezos to what you put into your bag, charges it to your credit card, and then you walk out.

So, I could have ignored them, but instead, it was terribly important to me that I prove to them that I was cool and not a cranky witch. I turned around and said, “So do you not have to wait for the gate to close?” I asked with my eyes big, imploring them to explain the technology to me, even though my goal was not to have it explained but to make sure they knew I was not a person who despises youth.

Noah, bless him, explained very earnestly that it’s not about the gate closing, but once you hear the beep of the next person waving their phone/QR code on the scanner that you know you’re in the clear and all Red Bulls and Skittles will be charged to the next person’s account and not your own.

“Thanks for explaining that to me,” I said before making a beeline to the bakery case, beating them to the iced maple bars before they could clean them out. I’m not sure I softened relations between Gen Z and Gen X—we are, I believe, comrades after all but that’s another blog post—but I like to think at the very least the Karen scoreboard next to my name is still set on zero.

Box image from 1972 toy village of girl pushing car on Play Family street.

My sense of a neighborhood was created by two things: my Fisher-Price Village when I was six and Richard Scarry’s Busytown books, that featured very busy animals working hard at jobs, often in lederhosen. When I first started visiting Z in Seattle 17 years ago, I thought Seattle was where he lived, but after moving here myself and feeling less and less pull downtown unless I wanted something specific (a ferry ride, a trip to Target, the Seattle Art Museum, or a movie), we really lived on First Hill. As per those two sections of my Fisher-Price Village that unfolded and made a city block, the only things we don’t have up here are our own U.S. Post Office or a jail.

Other than the local hospitals, the great class equalizer up here has always been Bartell Drugs, which stands on the corner of Madison and Boren. You could be standing in line behind a person who had just been asking for money on the street three minutes ago and in front of members of the University Club next to Oh La La, all while nurses and doctors from the neighboring hospitals look for lunch options in the aisles.

Outside of Bartell Drugs. One door covered with plywood. — In happier days, there was no need for plywood on the front door.

Bartell was originally a local chain that reportedly treated its employees well, offered local brands, and manage to have everything in the store that Z and I needed: our prescriptions, sure, but also toilet paper, Scotch tape, Beecher’s cheese, shower curtains, plungers, socks, bananas, necessary seasonal items, and Oberto beef jerky. Over the last 17 years, I don’t even want to guess how much money we’ve spent there when we “just run in” for one thing. If our grocery disappeared, we could get by with Bartell for awhile before needing to find a different place to buy fresh fruit and chicken breasts.

For the record, my mother has been lamenting the loss of her beloved Hook’s Drugstores—an Indiana staple—since 1985. She was inconsolable when the news came that they were closing, and I didn’t understand at the time because I’d just graduated from high school and thought national chains were always better than local ones. More stuff. Cheaper stuff. More locations. (I did not take an economics class in school and thus knew nothing about end stage capitalism or the corporate machine.) Now I understand her sadness.

Over the years, we’ve gotten to know some of the clerks and pharmacists at Bartell. By “know” them, I don’t mean we’ve had them over for drinks, or are hip to anything about their lives outside of where they work, or even, often their names. When we walked by the building, we might see “Mort” outside on his breaks, stroking his greying beard, eating a snack he’d just purchased, and listening to music on his iPod. We’d wave and say hi, and he would smile with recognition. (“Mort” was a favorite of mine because one day I was in line at the photo counter where he checked customers out sometimes when he denied Governor Inslee a plastic bag in which to put a bouquet of dripping flowers because the city’s plastic bag ban had just gone into effect. His Honor looked disappointed —despite his approval of the ban—as he stood there in his suit, daisies dripping on the floor.) Another clerk—a young guy that had “manager potential” written all over him— had a fancy sports car that he parked out back, and we’d keep track of whether he was at work or away from work on our daily walks.

We often didn’t know their names and so called them (amongst ourselves) Gravelly Voice, Round Faces (two women who appeared to be related), Beardy Guy, and The Crab. If they wore a name tag, we learned their names, but we aren’t either of us extroverted enough to ask or introduce ourselves. Some days, when I first moved here, the clerks were the only people I saw regularly other than Z. The best day was when the man checking me out noticed my last name and and said that was his partner’s last name and so we talked about lesser Irish names and Irish American-ness.

The Pandemic was not kind to our Bartell but not necessarily because of the virus. At least not directly. The family who started the stores in 1890 sold the chain to Rite-Aid in 2020. There were other mitigating factors like the protests that took place in the city after George Floyd was killed, increasing tensions between the police and the local citizenry. The police force shrank and in addition to fewer cops being available, it felt as if law enforcement desire to help out on non-violent crimes evaporated. Suddenly, in a store where we’d never once witnessed shoplifting we were now seeing people walk in with backpacks, fill their shopping lists, and walk out. We saw people come in and clear an entire shelf and walk out. And in one instance, Z saw a man get a box of Hefty trash bags off the shelf, open it, pull out one bag, throw the box in the bag, and proceed to shove whatever was within reach into it. And walk out.

Interior of Bartell Drugs. Greeting cards and seasonal decor. — It almost looks normal from this angle.

The store hasn’t been the same for awhile. It got the smell of Rite-Aid on it once it sold. The products weren’t the same. Even the labels on our prescriptions were different, with a phone number that was impossible to read when you wanted a re-fill, almost as if they hoped you wouldn’t bother them. The brands changed so there was more and more Rite-Aid generic and suddenly we were witness to more altercations between clerks and angry customer-shoplifters. Eventually a series of security guards were hired with uneven success as many were primarily interested in their phones and not the folks walking in and walking out with the stores wares. Last week, Z happened to get locked in the store when a tiny, fiery female security guard wouldn’t let the man who had ice cream shoved under his coat leave. He shouted that he needed ice cream, and the security guard shouted back, “No one needs ice cream!” He gave up on the ice cream but not before getting melted ice cream on her uniform from a pint he’d—apparently—stolen from some other place. Maybe no one needs ice cream, but he clearly had a strong desire for it.

So it’s not always pleasant at Bartell, but it’s been ours. And handy. I was over there this week three times in an attempt to get a prescription filled, and it wasn’t a huge inconvenience because it’s right across the street. It turns out “close” and “nostalgia” are the things that keep us loyal customers.

Rite-Aid filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, and we breathed a sigh of relief when we discovered our store wasn’t on the chopping block. It made sense that it would stay in business. It’s the only big chain pharmacy in our radius where we’re surrounded by hospitals. Then five days ago we found out ours was closing in a little over a week. We were dumbfounded.

Interior of Bartell Drugs. Empty shelves and Pharmacist sign in background.

Today I went over to get toilet paper and it was a chock full of people, the line at the registers snaked deep into the shampoo aisle. The toilet paper was gone, but I did manage to score two big bottles of laundry detergent, two roles of Scotch tape, and two boxes of Dots. There were other things I should have been getting, but I couldn’t think straight. I was reminded of all the afternoons I’d wander over to Bartell to buy new nail polish when I’d had to quit my teaching job in Indiana, was in a funk, and new nail polish seemed like a salve. (It wasn’t.) I was remembering how Z and I pieced together early Christmas decor with day-after sales of leftover holiday doo-dads. How I’d stood in the greeting card aisle picking out greetings and postcards for people back home that I missed in those earliest days here.

Bartell is like the EPCOT of cashiers, with all ages and races checking people out, and it has been such a good reminder of what I love about living in a big city. All of humanity working together with the common goal of giving us our goods, receiving our money and getting us out the automatic door. I was hoping “Anne” would be there so I could say goodbye. She’s one of our favorites. Some days she greets us like she knows us and others she’s all business. She strikes us as someone who we would really like to know but we’re kind of terrified to engage too much lest it be one of the days when she just wants us to pack up our purchases and leave. We’ve felt weirdly bonded to her since election night seven years ago when Z sidled up to her register with a bottle of $5 champagne.
“We’re going to toast Hillary tonight!” he said, with a smile on his face. That morning he’d asked me if he should wear “suffragette white” to celebrate the day. We had no question about on whom the confetti and balloons would be falling later that night. The world was changing for women and we both felt excited about it.
“Anne” rang up the champagne and said, “I don’t know,” and shook her head. In the moment Z assumed she was just being cautious, but by the end of the evening, we were keenly aware that we hadn’t been paying attention to the right people during the election cycle. Ever since then, we’ve looked at her with reverence. She imagined what we could not, probably because she understood things about America that I’d never had to as a citizen and Z had never wanted to as a Zimbabwean making his home here. I wish we’d tried harder to extrovert around “Anne” and find out what she was thinking about things besides the weather and how busy or quiet the store was for the day. And now it looks like we won’t even get a chance to say goodbye.

Today while I stood in line to buy my six 50% off items, an older lady walked up to me and said, “I’ve lived in Seattle all of my life. Bartell is supposed to be here.” She shook her head and looked stupefied. A guy in front of me turned around and said, “Bartell is closing?” He looked as if I’d kicked him in the gut (though I’m still trying to piece together what excuse he had made for all the empty shelves).

Some people might think this is no big deal. In fact, there is another, bigger Bartell that isn’t closing only six blocks from our house. But it is above a busy grocery, in a busy shopping complex, and it doesn’t feel like a neighborhood store. I don’t want to walk there three times in the same day. Also, how long before Rite Aid decides to pull the plug on it too?

Interior of store shelves, half empty, inside Bartell Drugs.

We’ve decided we’ll go there to do some shopping, but as for our pharmaceutical needs, we’re trying a tiny, independent pharmacy four blocks away where there is a friendly staff, tables and chairs to sit in while you wait, snacks, greeting cards, and things you didn’t know you needed like tiny reading glasses that fold up on themselves and scarves with pockets on the ends. On Friday, we both went there to get vaccines. It wasn’t Bartell, but Z said it reminded him of the “chemists” in Zimbabwe, and so now I guess it’s our new local.

Maybe nobody needs a Bartell across the street, but we sure are going to miss it.

Empty refrigerated case with sale signs on it.

Sep14

No Elderly Ladies Were Harmed in the Writing of this Post

Posted on 14 September 2023 by The Reluctant Girl Scout

Standard

I dreamed the other night that one of my manuscripts had been turned into a blockbuster movie, and I went to the premiere but was so late I could only get seating in the back row where the big, movable seats were malfunctioning. As soon as the opening title rolled, my chair shifted violently to the side and I couldn’t see the screen. I could only hear the movie and comments and coughs of the audience as I stared at the dark wall and ceiling, shadows from the movie flickering in the periphery.

On the plus side, it seemed to be a success based on dream-comments, and the news that Mattel was putting out dolls based on the characters (probably all versions of me). That last bit was only because Z and I recently saw Barbie, though by now it is surely a truth universally acknowledged that until there are Barbies, Funko Pop figurines, T-shirts, and Happy Meal prizes based on your characters, you haven’t really succeeded.

Pretend there are kites in the distance. They were there most of the time we were in residence.

Z and I went on a short trip to Long Beach, Washington, with Hudge. It’s the first we’ve been to the seaside since the Pandemic. We stayed in a condo right on the beach and spent our non-beach time listening to the waves, watching a family of deer who showed up daily under our balcony looking up expectantly at us like Romeo in the Capulets’ courtyard. Walking the wrack line to the south, we dodged jellyfish and piles of seaweed and some brown foam that made me wonder if mermaids had gastrointestinal disorders. And in the distance, we could see Cape Disappointment—a high cliff with a lighthouse perched atop it to alert boats that this hunk of ocean where the Columbia wends its way into the sea can be hazardous.

Hudge and I do a mean puzzle together when not taking in the view.

Isn’t that name the best? Cape Disappointment. It was given this name in 1788 by British trader and naval commander, John Meares, who was looking for the mouth of the Columbia River based on an earlier description from a Spanish explorer. He thought he’d failed when he landed on the cape and didn’t recognize the estuary. Well, I should rephrase that. He didn’t think he had failed; he assumed that the Spaniard had shared faulty information. Why blame yourself when there’s someone else at whom you can direct your frustration?

Long Beach, WA–Cape Disappointment in the distance, not disappointing.

You can kind of see from the map below how Meares might not have recognized a river when he saw it. There’s no neon sign with El Columbia está aquí pointing to it.

Usually when I’m at the beach—or on any vacation—I spend a fair amount of time berating myself for not doing it better. For not walking further or reading under an umbrella picturesquely or drawing something in my sketchbook. At whatever place we stay, I imagine missing something in the tiny little downtown and think maybe I should be poking in the shops there or eating local cuisine, but if we do venture out, it seems like a waste. Who wants to shop when you’ve “bought” a view for the weekend?

Like Prince’s mother, on a beach vacation, I’m never satisfied, though instead of blaming a Spaniard or Z, I assume the problem is with myself.

*Wherefore art thou and thy apple slices, Juliet?*

This trip, however, I allowed for no self-flagellating. I read a lot. (Circe by Madeline Miller—so good.) I listened to the waves and I read some more and didn’t apologize or worry that I was missing something on a walk or at the kite competition that was happening up the beach or that I wasn’t sucking the marrow from the condo we rented because I didn’t flip through the notebook of suggested activities or all the slick coffee table books about sea glass and the Washington coast. My laptop remained in its case. I posted no pictures on social media. I worried about nothing, not even when my mother reminded me that all of the poisonous water from the Fukushima reactor had been released into the Pacific. I picked up one stray Croc someone had left behind and got it out of the water’s path so no creature would choke on it, but I otherwise chose not to worry for four days about all the ways I’ve screwed the planet personally (all those bags of minute rice and plastic candy bar wrappers; all that gasoline and sucking up of groundwater). Instead, I enjoyed the food Z and Hudge cooked and didn’t once worry that I’m a failure as a woman—as a human—because I’ve no interest in the kitchen. I just was.

Reader, it was one of the most relaxing vacations I’ve had no matter how short, not because of what I did or didn’t do, but because I just got out of my own head for 86 hours. I’d like to spend the rest of the year trying this experiment in my regular life. Making decisions. Saying what I want. Doing what I want without consulting my to-do list and feeling guilty about the things I’m not doing or did do but shouldn’t have. (Tubs of Ben & Jerry’s non-dairy Phish Food, anyone?)

What brings me here today, however, is that when Hudge mentioned my blog and Z said I hadn’t posted in over a year, I was shocked. I’ve started entries and written even more in my head, and it hasn’t seemed that long to me. So here I am, cap in hand, not out of guilt but because I have. . . missed doing it.

I have been writing regularly, it just hasn’t been a blog and most of it hasn’t yet been polished for human consumption. Still teaching writing, reading other people’s writing, critiquing writing, and, when there is time left over, reading for pleasure. Also, I got a new iPhone that came with few months of Apple+ for free, so there has been some bingeing of shows like Ted Lasso, Silo, Trying, and Encounter. And for mindless viewing, we’ve been watching (re-watching in my case) lots of Grey’s Anatomy so we can see the Seattle Z moved to in 2006 vs. the Seattle that exists now. Very different skyline. Very different vibe. Mostly, we’re pleased with the Seattle shout outs and how they use familiar-looking Native American art in the hospital. The only thing TV and movies never get right is the rain. Always it’s torrential. Always it’s with lightening and thunder. It’s meteorological Shonda Drama.

Seattle skyline circa 2007–around the time when Shonda Rhimes introduced Seattle to TV viewing America.

I have a Post-it on my computer that says “Past disappearing with smoke.” Anybody know what that was for? Pretty sure I had something to say about it, but now, I don’t know what it was. Maybe it had something to do with the Canadian fires this summer, but it might also have had something to do with my failed attempt to use sealing wax on a letter to my college roommate and it ending in a failure of flame and smoke and nearly burned up correspondence..

My two favorite stickers I’ve seen on the light poles and mailboxes of First Hill recently:

I think I prefer the Mary Oliver one. I feel this way on days when the words aren’t coming. But I’ve enjoyed reflecting on the Old and New Testament versions of the former.

Do with those nuggets of wisdom what you will.

Yesterday, Z and I were walking down Madison which has been in a constant state of various degrees of construction for the last four years as they modernize utilities and get ready for the 2024 launch of Rapid Ride bus stops here on First Hill. On any given day, we leave Oh La La and find our road blocked or a snakelike arrangement of barricades on sidewalks we were able to walk down the evening before. On this walk, we looked across the street and saw an elderly woman who’d gotten herself on the wrong side of the barricades and so was headed into the rubble of the ripped up road. Her only option was to go all the way back up the block and get on the right side of the barriers or walk into traffic.

Though I have sold myself to you as a Girl Scout, albeit a reluctant one, what I really am is an observer. I watched this lady creak along towards the rubble with some curiosity. She stopped and looked around, and my reaction was not to offer assistance but instead to stare at her, as if she were a squirrel trying to decide where to bury her nuts. What would she do when she got to the most extreme part of the torn up street? Would she turn around? Would she curse? Would she tip over?

Z, however, IS a Boy Scout. He marched right over to her, moved one of the traffic cones and ushered her from the busy street to the sidewalk and made sure she knew which way to head to get to her destination. Earlier in the summer we’d passed an older (than us) woman who looked weak and was trying to navigate the steps to her condo with a shopping bag. So Z gave her his arm and carried her bag up the steps and asked if she was okay. He’s always doing things like that and has the kind of presence that offers a certain authority: you should do what he is suggesting—take his arm, let him carry your bags, follow his lead.

Meanwhile, I’m standing on the corner with my head cocked as if I’m watching something unfold on TikTok instead of offering a helping hand. I’d berate myself, but it’s against my new policy so I’m putting it in the category of “interesting things I’ve recently discovered about myself.” If you have an accident in front of me, there’s a good chance it will take me minutes before I realize I should offer you a Band-Aid or call 911. (For the record, I am really good at intuiting when someone is lost and needs directions or offering up a Tide Stick if you stain your shirt.) But by golly, I will write about it later.

I’ve always been an observer, but it did get worse when I moved in with Z at our first apartment at The Paul Revere. Another great name, though what Paul Revere has to do with Seattle or one-bedroom rentals that were built in 1923 is anyone’s guess. It felt like it was our duty to be alert to imminent attacks by the British, but in our decade there, I didn’t have to light any lanterns or ride a horse to let neighbors know to grab their muskets.

We had a bank of windows across the front section of the building and often when I was supposed to be writing, I’d be staring down on the activity below on the street. The traffic squabbles and squealing reunions and the confused people tring to understand the complicated parking rules in front of our building, failing, and being towed were daily. It’s much harder to be an on-the-street reporter at Oh La La because we’re eight stories above the goings on.

The Paul Revere was full of quirk. A 1923 building with blooming camellias on either side of the steps that set off the “fresco” of Paul Revere on the brickwork. Inside, we had glass doorknobs and an old etched mirror, and a single teensy closet meant for clothes, linens, shoes, and anything else the modern flapper might need. It forced me to consider how much baggage modern Americans carry with them now. Because of its close proximity to the hospitals here on “Pill Hill,” I always imagined that those earliest residents were probably nurses or interns who wanted to live near work. Some from the country who must have enjoyed the excitement of an up and coming city.

It was hard to picture our lives post Paul Revere because we’d been so happy there, but the glamor Oh La La’s views and amenities made us quickly forget our first home. Or remember unkindly how much we hated doing laundry in the basement, doing dishes by hand in the teensy kitchen, and hauling garbage to a dumpster in the alley that we had to lock up as if we were depositing treasures outside. Also the exhaust from the bus that idled out front. The unhoused guy who slept in our hallway once. The person who sold drugs on the third floor and who kept the intercom right outside our bedroom window buzzing all hours of the night. The handyman who raised mice that escaped and contributed to the building’s rodent problem.

A lot can happen in a decade in a city.

The building has been empty since everyone was paid to hustle out in the middle of the Pandemic because it was structurally unsound and wouldn’t have survived the Big One —no joke. We pass it now with some nostalgia. Initially, there were lights on and it seemed work was being done to repair it. We had hopes they wouldn’t tear it down, but then it got increasingly downtrodden with a broken window here, graffiti there. Eventually the management company took down its sign as if it wanted to dissociate itself with such a squalid looking place. Squatters moved in. Over the summer, there were two fires that started there, whether intentionally or accidentally is unclear. The second fire was large, burned a hole through the roof, and we can now see that not only is the roof gone but also the back wall. There’s a security fence around it and the sidewalk is closed. It’s unlikely we’d have moved back if they’d fixed it up, but still, it’s the end of an era, or, several eras for the building itself.

We would NOT have been thrilled with a Honey Bucket right under our living room window.

The big lesson city life seems to want to teach me is that nothing is permanent. There’s no point getting attached to the way a certain building looks or the foliage of a particular tree because next week there might be a removal sign and six months after that a security fence and a bulldozer. Things change quickly. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that there was a pink elephant car wash sign over an actual car wash instead of as an artifact of yesteryear and where Oh La La sits there was a decades-old McDonald’s that might have sold those Happy Meals with my dream movie prizes inside. But they are gone and now there are other things that will seem like quintessential Seattle to whoever arrives today.

All this to say, it’s good that I had that beachside epiphany this month so I can finally make peace with our revolving door city and neighborhood. I’ve decided to make John Mellencamp’s “Your Life is Now” the theme song of the rest of the year. Let’s see where I end up. (And if I ever remember to ask the old ladies if they need help across the street or if I decide definitively that it’s my job just to observe them like a social scientist.) Tune in next time to find out.

Jun14

Whose that Nibbling on My House

Posted on 14 June 2022 by The Reluctant Girl Scout

Standard

Our too-many-dollars-a-month Oh La La apartment has a lovely view and nice big windows with plenty of light, but what it doesn’t have is screens.

Other people who are not on the tasting menu of Mosquito Café can probably live without screens here, but I am both starter and main course on their menu, which means last year we used the AC a lot when we didn’t really need to. This year, however, we had a plan: Velcro tape and mosquito netting!

Is it attractive and befitting Oh La La’s standards? Absolutely not. Is it effective? Based on the number of mosquitos stuck to it on the outside, absolutely. Do I feel guilty about the deaths of the mosquitos who can’t always figure out how to get out from between the window and the net? No, I do not. They’ve had a campaign to either kill me or at least make my life miserable for years now. In the words of Samuel L. Jackson’s character in A Time to Kill, “Yes I think [they] deserve to die and I hope [they] burn in hell.”

Also, as a non-scientist, I spend a weird amount of time thinking about the purpose of different creatures in the Circle of Life, and I’ve made as much peace as I can with things that creep me out like snakes and other reptiles, but is there ANY purpose to a mosquito besides spreading ill-will and disease?

The “screen” that I installed just this morning next to my desk makes me feel cut off from my neighbors across the street. The view is not as clear, which they might think is a boon, but what it means for me is less watching cats stretch in windowsills or seeing the pre-schooler on the eighth floor who moved in with his family recently. He peers out the window and I have imagined having a friendly wave that develops into one of those feel-good videos you see on social media of the kindly older neighbor who makes life more fun for the youngster by putting on puppet shows from afar.

Before the mosquito net went up, one evening I saw his parents chasing him and his little sibling around like a little family locomotive on a circular track to nowhere. It was a moment I wish I could film and then send them—those non-occasions you forget to record—but even if I could, all arrows would point to me being a creepy threat to their privacy.

Now, with the mosquito netting up, we’ll never make a connection. He is a tiny ghost and to him I probably look like a bear writing its memoirs.

Things rarely look the way I imagine they will anyhow, so why would this be different?

Call Before You Dig sign with a drawing of a gopher wearing a hardhat and holding a shovel.

Over Memorial Day weekend, I convinced Z that we should make our first trip to Elliot Bay Books now that he is boosted and I’m Evusheld-ed. Because it was the holiday weekend, I imagined everyone out hiking in the mountains or off at a cookout or picnic, Z and I having the bookstore to ourselves, so comfortable with the lack of people that we even would dare to take off our masks.

Hardy har har.

Everyone in Seattle was in the store. Every. Single. One. And they were all exactly where I wanted to be. It was an entire store of Freebreathing Readers. It’s the most people I’ve been around in a long, long time and while I wasn’t actively hating them at mosquito levels, I really did wish they’d leave. Especially the ones glued to their phones who weren’t even browsing. At one point I was upstairs near the bargain tables and believed there was no oxygen getting through the tight weave of my N95, so I considered tossing the books in my arms and racing outside to pull the mask from my face. (My second thought was, how am I ever going to fly again so long as we’re all poison to each other?) It just wasn’t what I’d been picturing for us on our first outing into the world.

Here. Let me re-direct myself to the brighter side.

Was out in public for first time in months and months and months!
Was in a BOOK STORE that is one of my all-time favorites!
Was able to touch books I have only read about in the New York Times!
Had over a $100 worth of gift cards from 2019!
Had a full punch card which meant $20 off my spending!
Found three books and a magazine I wanted!
Did not die of a near panic attack—Lexapro must be working!
Did not spend all of my gift cards on the 3 books and one magazine and so can go back to buy more at a hopefully less busy time!

That’s better.

The books are just staring at me, calling to me even, but I’ve been busy reading other things and have had to put them on pause. Don’t they look inviting though?

Stack of three books on a red chair with LOVE pillow behind them. Books: Body Work, Girlhood, and A Single Thread.

I loved the poetic sentences and thoughts in Melissa Febos’s Abandon Me, and so can’t wait to read these two books of hers. The Tracy Chevalier was the only book of hers on the shelf and I fell in love with the cover even though I’d gone there to get one of her other titles. I find her usual mix of history, imagination, and feminism to be exactly what suits me when I’m looking for a story to lose myself in.

Z went in with less gift-card-buying power than I had and, as usual, left with more books because he’s a thrifty shopper and I usually get suckered in by the new releases or, at least, new in paperback. He’s a much faster reader too, so it probably comes out in the wash.

Here, he would probably like for me to tell you that he is only allowed one IKEA 12×12 square in our bookcase system for his books, which sounds grossly unfair on its face given the sheer number of 12×12 squares we have for “my” books. (May it please the court, if his books are good ones that he passes on to me because he thinks I’ll like them, they make their way into the General Collection and the number of books on Zimbabwe and novels and memoirs by African writers in general have pride of pace on the top center shelf right at eye level. Also, though I abhor stereotypes about only children because I’ve found them not to be particularly accurate, it’s worth noting he knew what he was getting when he married me.)

A book on a red chair. — I want to live in this cover.

Speaking of Z, he also would like for you to know that in my last post I made it sound as if he were the dog gatekeeper in this marriage—putting an electric fence between me and the canine object of my desire. That is not true. The deal I made with myself was that I wouldn’t let myself get a dog until I finished the memoir. It’s easier to make it seem someone else is keeping me from the things I want instead of my own brand of slow-writing and semi-regular procrastination. Do not blame Z! He is blameless!

a rock on a bright blue journal. — The only pet I’m entitled to currently is a rock.

Last week Leibovitz and I talked on the phone while she waited to hear if Baby Leibovitz–with a recently minted college diploma—had landed in Australia for an internship. It seems like only a few months ago she was toddling around the Leibovitz house dragging her pink blanket with her, making everyone laugh, which was her special baby medicine to make everyone around her feel better/happier than they already were.

I understand now—all these years later—why so many older people had opinions about what I should be doing with my life when I graduated. They cared about me, yes, but also, there is something about a young person going out into the world on an adventure you wouldn’t have tried yourself at 22 that makes you want to live vicariously through them, waste none of the time you did, make none of the mistakes, miss none of the opportunities. You kind of want do-overs and the only way to have them is vicariously, and thus the over-investing in someone else’s life choices.

watercolor painting of a kangaroo wearing mortarboard wearing a backpack. — Baby L’s Graduation/Bon Voyage card.

And now I realize linking the stories about Gauze Boy and Baby Leibovitz and my fascination with them and the lives they are leading makes me sound like I’m about to build a Gingerbread House and lure them in for a snack. Maybe forget everything I just said about both of them. And please believe me when I say I have no cages here and am not firing up any ovens to bake a Youth Pie.

You know I don’t like to use the kitchen.

What I have been fantasizing about lately instead of anti-aging pastries is traveling. I’ve always been the absolute happiest in life when my next trip was already an idea in my head, even if it was a weekend away at a cottage somewhere. I liked thinking about what I’d pack, which books I’d take, and I’d toy with the idea of taking no electronics and then laugh at myself because, of course I’d be taking my laptop, iPad, and phone, as well as my headphones, and booklight. It’s like meditation to me. Watching packing videos on YouTube lulls me into one of the best sleeps.

And that’s not even planning what I’d do when I got there, even though usually what I do is berate myself for not reading or writing or painting more. Or going out and pretending to be an extrovert and chatting to the locals. (Why enjoy yourself when there’s an opportunity for self-flagellation away from home.)

Anyhow, none of that is happening because everyone in America is vacationing this summer and so hotels and house rentals are either not available or a bajillion dollars here in Puget Sound. Car rentals are hard to find and, again, when you do, instead of our preferred $14.99 a day at Enterprise, they’re more like $200 a day. And you all know what gas is like right now. This is one of the few times I’ve actually been glad that we’ve lived the last 12 years Carless in Seattle and aren’t having shock at the gas pump like everyone else. But it is currently limiting our options.

So I’ve been trying to figure out ways that we can make a staycation seem exciting even though we’ve been staycationing since March of 2020. I was considering hanging mirrors to reflect light in a different way or putting on a different bedspread or rearranging the furniture so we feel like we’re somewhere else.

Enter World Traveler Hudge, who has offered us an opportunity to stay on her houseboat for a bit when she’s out of town doing research. It’s two-miles away and I can see part of the water her houseboat is on from my window here at Oh La La (one that is NOT covered in netting), but it will be a whole different world. Hopefully next time I report to you, I’ll have stories of waterfowl and boat traffic and walking through a neighborhood that isn’t “downtown adjacent.” I’m already looking forward to a time in the future when I can say, “When we lived on the houseboat” without lying, even though what we’re really doing is staying on a floating home.

View from round window. — A view from Casa de Hudge

That said, I have some potential bug-bite concerns and am already mentally packing mosquito nets. Once when we were staying on a houseboat on Lake Kariba in Zimbabwe, Z and our family and I were sitting on the upper deck as the sun set, listening to waves lap against the boat. And then suddenly, as if an alarm had gone off, a cauldron of bats flew into the sky. My sister-in-law let a cheer and said, “Get ‘em, guys” and the bats feasted on any mosquitos who might have been thinking of snacking on us.

There were so many things on that trip that amazed me and that stick with me, but that one—the discovery that a creature I’d associated only with haunted houses and vampires could be so helpful—is one of my fondest memories.

You know, I’ve made no deals with Z or the universe about finishing any writing projects before getting a pet bat. Maybe if we had a small, cute one, I could forego mosquito nets henceforth, open up the views, cast aside the insect repellent, and various fairy tale concoctions–lavender, vitamin B, white clothing, Avon’s Skin So Soft–that I put my trust in to make me less delicious. We’ll see.

Wherever you are, I hope you are well, bite-free, and traveling with a full tank and unobstructed views.

Bright pink flowers behind old wrought iron fence.

Dec31

A Cup of Kindness

Posted on 31 December 2021 by The Reluctant Girl Scout

Standard

*Icicles at the Stimson-Green Mansion, Seattle.*

At the day’s writing session, V. greets us from 2022 and she reports to the rest of us, still stuck in 2021 for the next few hours, that so far so good on the new year. No one in Australia has broken it yet, she says. My sensitive intuitive writing friends and I laugh at the joke, and talk about our plans and non-plans for the year. We discuss the value of goals, the pressure of goals, and some of us have lists of things we hope to accomplish and others have come up with more of a mission statement to guide the days that follow midnight. All of us are grateful that we’ve had this past year together while we create something out of nothing.

Normally at the new year, I’m equal parts hopeful (that it will be a good year, that I’ll be a productive person, that the wind will remain at my back yadda yadda yadda) and nostalgic for the year that was. Not so much because any given year was so remarkable that I don’t want to let go of it, but because it is now known in its entirety, has been survived, and seems like a tamed creature whose behaviors–in retrospect–were predictable even if they weren’t. (If you’d told me last January that even after vaccines there’d be new variants of our unwanted guest, we all probably would have been in tears. Omicron? Really? Weren’t the first several iterations enough?) It’s the difference between a book you are looking forward to reading and that book finished and how it did or didn’t live up to your expectations, how it surprised you but is no longer a surprise, and you wonder how much of it you’ll remember a week from now or five years from now.

This year I’m not looking back on 2021 with any particular fondness or hatred. It’s the first year that trying to label a year as good or bad seems a ludicrous proposition. There’s value in sifting through the artifacts (and debris) of a year and assessing how you wish it had gone, what worked well, where you’d make changes if you got do-overs, but after a lifetime of believing there was something special about January 1st or my birthday or a Monday of any week–as if it held magical properties– I’m done with that.

This past year changed for me in the middle of a week in mid August when I found out the vaccine hadn’t quite worked for me, and then–after moping around for half a day and feeling suddenly very vulnerable–I finally thought, okay then, what are you going to do with yourself since you won’t be living your life outside of these walls anytime soon? And I drew up some plans for things I’d like to get done by the end of the year: eat better, exercise more, read more, write more, submit more (writing, not to Z…I’ve never been good with submitting to anyone and there was no ‘obey’ in my marriage vows, thank you), and I did almost all of the items on my list for the first time ever in my life. Normally, 364 days after I make New Year’s resolutions, they suddenly just look like wishful thinking written by someone who doesn’t understand anything about how my brain works.

There was nothing magical about the day in August. There was no ceremony to my deciding–I didn’t light a candle or burn sage (we signed a lease where open flames are forbidden). I didn’t wait for a new moon or meditate. There’s a good chance I didn’t even have a shower that day. But I came up with some goals…or maybe “guidelines” is a better word…and the next day I kept working towards those things. And the next day, and the next day, and now here we are…on the brink of 2022 and the only thing I didn’t accomplish was getting a new website up and running. (Mainly because I’m terrified and keep putting it off, so I’ll have to face my fears and get a website up by the end of March. I’m adaptable!

We had some snow this week, which was perfect for my need for winter weather. It got really cold (for Seattle) and has required hats and scarves and gloves and given me that taste of winter I need every year to feel like myself. Z and I went out on our daily walks and it felt like a real score when we saw actual icicles on the Stimson-Green mansion up the street. Icicles aren’t usual here, or at least haven’t been for the last several years. For that matter, neither are snowmen, and we were delighted yesterday to find a few of these little mini ones that would fit into a purse like a Yorkshire Terrier. We’ve also enjoyed seeing a variety of neighborhood dogs in some truly jaunty winter coats and sweaters. Yesterday there was a black Lab in what I can only describe as a fisherman’s turtle neck Aran sweater, and he looked delighted to be wearing it instead of mortified. I imagine him at his apartment this evening drinking hot toddies with his humans by a fireplace with some soft jazz playing in the background while he waits for the new year.

As for me, I will spend the remaining hours of 2021 doing a jigsaw puzzle, hanging out with Z, and filling in the first 12-weeks of my new fabulous planner that will give the impression that I’m actually organized and know exactly what I want 2022 to be. It’s going to be whatever it wants to be and none of us can change that, but I’m hoping I can keep nudging myself towards doing the things that please me and make me feel like I’m living my life instead of life just happening to me. The problem with the last two years has been how we’ve all had to come to terms with how little control we have, perhaps.

Thank you for reading my blog this year. I hope 2022 brings all of us more of the things we want, less of the things we don’t. Fingers crossed for good sense, good health, and good fortune.

See you next year!

Sep8

Lady of Shalott Considers Success Rate of Group Projects, Stays in Tower.

Posted on 8 September 2021 by The Reluctant Girl Scout

Standard

Old stone tower in cemetery, Celtic crosses, River Shannon in distance. — **Clonmacnoise, County Offaly, Ireland**

After the nurse calls to tell me that the vaccine four months ago didn’t take, I do yoga.

Despite having the vaccine in April, I have no Covid-19 antibodies to protect myself, had none when I thought I did and went on a cross country trip with Z to see my family, had none on our daily walks sans masks out doors in Seattle when we got back, or when we had friends over…finally, or when we had houseguests again…for the first time in our new space. Suddenly, I feel like a lone, limping kudu on the veldt surrounded by a pride of hungry lions.

At the moment, my doctor and the fine scientists on the case are trying to figure out what’s next for people like me who have wonky immune systems. I fall into a weird category that isn’t yet covered by directives from the FDA or the CDC. Because I had the J&J vaccine, it’s not time for a booster yet. I can’t officially cross-vaccinate though that has some promise of working. I could lie to some pharmacist somewhere and try one of the other jabs, but I’m a terrible, terrible liar and don’t think I should have to in order to protect myself. But there is nothing I can do at this moment, so I pull down the blinds and tie-up my hair and chew on the side of my mouth.

For what it’s worth, I can’t really do yoga either. I am 54. I am round. I’m standing on the rubber mat I ordered seventeen months ago when the pandemic started, which I have used exactly three times since then. Twenty years ago, I took 3/4s of a yoga class in a claustrophobic studio in Richmond, and then September 11^th happened and though yoga would have probably been the right response to deal with the grief and the fear, I chose instead to sit at home, watch CNN Headline News on a loop, and stress eat. I wanted to be alone with my feelings, not stretching in a room with 20 strangers. A few years later I bought a DVD of Megan Garcia’s that taught yoga to the non-lithe, and I did it periodically on my own but only ever really excelled at Corpse pose, which was at the end of the routine when New Age music came on and you were meant to lie there, dead to the world, not thinking anything.

But today, after the call, after I shake the dust from my purple mat, I, do the poses I memorized from the DVD all those years ago. I’m not good, but instead of critiquing myself, I think about how I’m safe in our apartment, how I can take care of my body in this way even if there’s nothing else to be done other than stay home for now. Again.

I start with sun salutations, which I do, but as I stretch upward, I think about how half of those states we drove through in July—me finally, joyously seeing the world again—were places where a lot of people don’t believe in wearing masks, barely believe in the virus, and absolutely won’t be getting the vaccine even if their names are entered in a lottery. If I’d known in June that I had no antibodies for the virus, we would have stayed in Seattle, I wouldn’t have gotten to see Mom, my family, a few friends, or the country between. Because I didn’t get sick and have no report that I made anyone else sick inadvertently, I’m glad I was ignorant. Ignorance really is bliss. It was a good month that reminded me of what normal might look like at some future time. Maybe this is what it is like for the people ignoring guidelines and arguing against mask mandates. Just press on with your regular life until you are either on a ventilator or your fabulous immune system sees you through. Maybe if I hadn’t answered the phone I could still be living like this, free-breathing and not wanting to stab people who cough on me or Z or anyone else I love.

When we got back from our trip, I was just starting to embrace the idea of the city again. The Delta Variant hadn’t yet kicked up, I thought I was fully vaccinated, and suddenly it seemed possible to walk in strange neighborhoods, to take a Lyft without worrying that I might end up on a ventilator, to hop in a car with Providence and Hudge and go to Camano Island for the day and picnic by the Sound. I was no longer envying people in suburbs with yards or in the country with acres or even people in the city with their own cars who could drive safely in their auto-bubble and feel like they are still part of the world. It was a relief to feel cautiously optimistic about rejoining society.

But it’s a month later, Delta is everywhere, my defenses are apparently down, and I’m back on the 9^th floor peering down on First Hill as I Cat & Cow my way toward isolated health.

As a caveat, I feel like I should tattoo on my forehead, Lucky. I know how lucky I am that I don’t have to leave the house to work, that I have healthcare, that I happened to be in a study checking into the viability of the vaccine with people who have immune systems like mine which allowed me to find out that I needed to take extra precautions in the first place. I’m lucky I live in the city I do and in the country I do where vaccines are available. Twenty years ago—not long after that yoga class—I bought an air freshener for my car that said “LUCKY” in Celtic letters over a four-leaf clover. I never win the lottery, but I’ve felt lucky for a long time. I even feel lucky that I’m an introvert and so being “stuck” at home isn’t the worst punishment in the world.

Four-leaf clover design on cardboard with LUCKY printed over top, hanging from car rearview mirror. — **Faded, but still true.**

But after the phone call from the nurse, it is not until I am slumped into Child pose—legs pulled up under gut, hands stretched forward, palms and face pressed against the mat, my breath making me hotter than I already am—that I have a flash from elementary school. It’s something I haven’t thought about for decades. The lights snap off, and the usually pleasant Mrs. Murray barks, “Bury them!” and all of us know we have to make a fortress with our arms that covers our faces because she’s sickened by the sight of us.

When we are forced to bury our heads, there’s been a real transgression. It is different than the days when everyone is a little too chatty and she has us put our heads down for a few minutes so we can calm down. When we are commanded to bury our heads, it feels a lot like she hates us. Like she would be perfectly happy if we disappeared inside our own arms and were never seen again.

In 1973, I comforted myself with the knowledge that I was not the reason we were forced into this solitary confinement made of our own flesh though my natural instinct was initially to assume that it was my fault. I was not a goody-two-shoes particularly, nor was I pleased with myself that I behaved the way we were supposed to. It is in my nature to want things to be calm and easy, and the hijinks some of my classmates got up to never held much allure. If there were going to be negative consequences, why do a thing?

Let’s face it. I was kind of a boring kid. I wasn’t what you’d call dynamic or even all that energetic. I was interesting the way a turtle is interesting: you spend a lot of time waiting for it to make a move and then it pulls into itself and you forget that it’s a creature and not a stone.

Copper box with with copper turtle, beads and glass balls surrounding it. — **A turtle trapped in a box–souvenir from my MFA in Maine.**

I hated it when we had to bury our heads because it meant I couldn’t read or doodle or stare out the window at the single ancient tree that was outside the window. As it was, school bored me and to have these things that made it tolerable removed from me caused an almost physical pain. Even now, when I’m watching a show and some prisoner gets sent to solitary, I can remember my own exhalations ricocheting off the desk, finding no real space to escape in the tomb of my arms, and bouncing back onto my face convincing me that if I didn’t die of boredom I would likely suffocate. I could probably handle solitary as long as I went in with some books and a journal and a little radio. But all that nothing? Save me.

I was quiet on the outside, but oh, was I dramatic in my own head.

We had a very soft-spoken social worker who would periodically come to our class to do presentations. I was privileged enough to have lived my life without needing or knowing what a social worker was and because her appearance in our classroom was so rare and seemingly arbitrary, I couldn’t quite figure out what the point of her was. Everyone in the elementary school world had a specific purpose—librarian=books, nurse=temperature being taken, secretary=the gateway home when the temperature taken was too high, and so on. But I couldn’t figure out why Mrs. Cobine would very occasionally show up or what I was supposed to do with the information she shared since there would be no follow-up, no quiz, no adjacent reading or art project.

She had salt and pepper curls, beautiful blue eyes, and a soft voice. I recognized her as a benign, caring force in the universe, and she certainly wasn’t going to shut off the light and instruct us to disappear ourselves. But still, why had we been ushered into the library—surrounded by books I wanted to read—to have these soft conversations about feelings.

I was particularly dubious about the box she brought with her that held a dolphin puppet, a tape recorder, and some drawings to illustrate the story being told on the recording. Because she seemed so kind, I wanted to like those lessons, but they were not Scooby-Doo caliber. They were, instead, one of those activities that adults force upon you so you can learn a lesson. I didn’t blame her for these educational interludes—I could tell from the box she carted around that this was something that had been foisted onto her the same as it was being foisted onto us. I wanted what she was selling us to be true, but I was a child who doubted things.

On two of my remaining braincells, I’ve kept the song from one of these lessons. Instead of repeating in my head “inhale…exhale” as I contort myself on the yoga mat, I start to hum the song. This one was about teamwork and involved a sort of goodwill pirate that Duso the Dolphin visited who was trying to get his ship loaded or unloaded or in dry dock or something, and the song was this:

“Come down here and help,”

said Blooper to his crew.

“You can do things in a group

you can’t do just with you!”

Back then, I remember looking at my classmates who were incapable of going a week without doing something bad that forced the whole class to sit in the dark with our heads folded into our arms on our desks. It seemed unlikely that the group of us could achieve anything together other than a decent kickball team at recess. Even as a first grader I could see that we all had our own agendas, our own weaknesses, our own proclivities that meant it was unlikely we would ever get whatever prize promised to be at the end of just “working together.” It sounded easier than it was.

Unless you are moving or throwing a pitch-in or you are Amish and there’s a barn raising on your calendar, I’ve never really believed that many hands make light work business. Many hands mostly make work subpar and everyone leaves thinking it would have been better if they’d been in charge except the person who is sleeping under a tree and hasn’t done anything at all. (He’s usually pretty happy with how things turn out, I guess, even if the result is a C-.)

Whoever heard of a pirate called Blooper anyway?

Generation X is, perhaps, especially inclined to cynicism, and I am genetically predisposed to it. I also have these occasional Pollyanna moments. I like Fox Mulder, I want to believe, and the two duke it out. When the pandemic first started, I was imagining us all banding together like people did during World War II for the greater good. Victory gardens and cheerful rationing and women giving up stockings for parachutes and learning how to rivet stuff.

And there for a while when the pandemic started, it seemed like everyone was making masks and banging pots and clapping for healthcare workers and being careful of each other while we waited for a vaccine, so I was hopeful. But, of course, it wasn’t everyone, it just seemed that way because I was stuck in an apartment on a liberal street in a liberal city where people value science and kind of value other people.

Sign on city street of red boxing glove punching Corona virus. — **These signs were encouraging when this thing started.**

During the yoga session, I work through other poses whose names I can now only guess at and instead of wondering if my form is even close to what it is supposed to be (it is not), I think about how this is the first time since I was diagnosed eleven years ago with that wonky immune system that I’ve genuinely felt the weight of my condition and how I am at the mercy of others.

I still hate group projects. I’ve got no faith in every one holding up their end of the deal.

Instead, I hold a Plank pose for five long breaths for the first time ever and remind myself that this will be temporary—both the pose that my arms are shaking through and this incarceration. I prefer doing yoga this way to that stuffy room in 2001. Good thing I am an introvert. Eventually, one hopes, there will be a vaccine cocktail that works or the virus will get bored and go wherever old viruses go to die, and I can come down from my tower with a better outcome than the Lady of Shalott. (I thought my youthful fascination with this Arthurian character was all about unrequited love, but I see now it was practice for 2020 and onward.)

Then finally, the long-awaited Corpse pose. I close my eyes and relax. The yoga is done. I can tick it off my list. I am in my own home, surrounded by books, paper and pens, a laptop, a view, and Z, and no one is shutting off the lights and shouting, “Bury them.”

At least not right now.

Teapot, full teacup, pastry on a flowered plate. — **My last visit to the cafe at Elliot Bay Books in January 2020.**

Jun8

In the Days Before Sunscreen

Posted on 8 June 2021 by The Reluctant Girl Scout

Standard

One of my favorite memories of childhood is when I would get to go swimming with my Great Aunt Clara in the little oval-shaped in-ground pool behind her in-laws ranch house in a respectable-but-not-rich subdivision in Richmond. Her husband’s family was from Kentucky, her father-in-law had worked in a coal mine and had lung problems because of it, and their children and grandchildren and great grandchildren were often there, eating ham and beans or fried chicken, talking about history and politics and current events, and swimming. I learned to swim in that pool, and members of this family—a family that felt like my own but wasn’t quite—stood around the water-soaked cement deck and cheered me on as I swam the length of the pool, a real rite of passage if you wanted the privilege of going into the deep end.

Aunt Clara always wore a navy one-piece suit, nose-clips, and a swim cap festooned with flowers. She liked swimming, but more often than not, you’d see her on one of the plaid floating air mattresses, dangling a hand in the water. She’d order me to push her around, into or out of the sun, and after a particularly restful float, she’d sigh and say, “I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight.” Then she’d pinch the clips onto her nose and roll off the raft and into the water to cool herself.

Aunt Clara wasn’t being snobby—it wasn’t her pool—she was playing a caricature: Eva Gabor in “Green Acres” or one of the Beverly Hillbillies’ snooty neighbors. When she said it, you could imagine a cigarette in a long gold holder and a gloved hand dripping with diamond bracelets.

We’d laugh but we also knew that this was our own stroke of good fortune that we were able—just for that moment—to pretend we were the sorts of people who had their own pool. People who could walk through a sliding door into a backyard of some manse—probably surrounded by palm trees and drenched in California sun instead of maples and a cloudy Indiana sky—into their own massive pool. This borrowed pool and the kindness of others is also why I was able to learn to swim.

Usually after a day at the pool Mom and I would go back to Aunt Clara and Uncle Clay’s, where the air conditioner would be roaring. I would inevitably have a sunburn—it was in the days before we fussed with sunscreen—and she’d put my favorite striped percale sheet on her blue sofa and I would stretch out on it, the coolness of the material a balm, and I’d fall into a deep and delicious sleep. Come to think of it, it is the quality of these post-swim naps at her house that I still chase after and never quite find all these years later.

I’m not sure why I’m telling you this except I got a sunburn on the roof deck last weekend, and it’s made me think about the nature of that nap, the softness of that sheet, the coolness of the air, and that sense you really only get in childhood when some adult person has a salve or a treat that is exactly what you need.

Fire in circular fire pit on roof of tall building, other skyscrapers in the background. — Come warm yourselves by the fires of Oh La La!

This last weekend, Z and I finally lifted our post-vaccine-self-imposed isolation and had friends over on three different days. Our first guests at Oh La La! We headed to the 18^th floor roof deck where we scored our favorite table, spread out a table cloth, and then piled a picnic feast Z had put together onto the table. The views were stunning—sky so clear we could even see Mt. Baker in the distance—and I kept wondering how it was that this time last year we were in our 1920s apartment with the ancient, stained linoleum, peering out of windows that hadn’t been recently washed, and now suddenly we’re on top of the world. It was very much an Aunt Clara sort of day even without a pool, though we had the good taste not to ask each other, I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight? We’re still not sure how we got so lucky to be in this space, but we’re enjoying it while it’s ours. And though there are things I loved about the old apartment, we ran into our cheerful and talented former maintenance man who said he’d had a recent report of rats in the old building, so maybe it’s just as well we had to move. Before the rats arrived.

I don’t know if this is scientific or not, but I suspect you burn more easily when you are 18 stories closer to the sun. Z thinks my science is off—does anyone know? Surely the red cheeks of those K-2 and Everest hikers aren’t just because of the cold. Regardless, I might need to invest in a parasol. As it stands, I now have a leather chest and arm that I may never be able to moisturize back to middle-age.

sailboats on lake in front of hillside desnsely covered with trees and buildings. — Crane-free viewing!

A midsummer interlude of happenings:

The crane by the lakefront that threatened to build a building that would block our view has been dismantled and the new building is low to the ground and I can still see the sailboats and float planes landing on Lake Union. All the winter worry was wasted energy.
We’ve finally ventured into an Amazon Go and discovered the joy of shoplifting. Funds are automatically deducted from my account when we put them in our bag, so there’s no need to check out. Our record so far for a snack fix was 58 seconds in the store. Sadly, it will take much longer to work those purchased Cheetos off my hips.
Angus the Robovac has finally been given free rein in the apartment without my constant clucking and correcting. He’s a good boy. (I need a dog.)
Speaking of which, there is a new baby French bulldog puppy in the building who wears a pink sweater and snorts like a pig. She’s DELIGHTFUL.
A film crew was using the historic Stimson-Green mansion as a location a couple of weeks ago and the street was blocked off and big trailers were pulled in and there was all sorts of hubbub. I later found out that it was for season two of “Three Busy Debras” which is on Adult Swim and a former student of mine is one of the producers, so that was exciting.
We’ve been trying to learn to communicate with our cooling system. It seems to come on at random times whether we need the cool air or not, and we may have to bring in an interpreter from the UN. But even in its most badly behaving times, I keep rejoicing with the knowledge that when it does get hot for those five days or when the forest fires in California wreck our air quality later in the summer, we’ll be able to breathe. Woo hoo.
My TikTok addiction is still raging. Z says he never knows what’s going to come out of my mouth. The other day, I said, “This Irish witch I follow said, ….” I’m learning all sorts of things about van life, dancing, fashion for the mid-life set, Celtic witchery, Quakerism, mandala painting, body acceptance, and all the reasons I likely have ADHD.
Z and I are finished with classes for a while and are contemplating a road trip. I’ll keep you posted if we happen upon the World’s Biggest Ball of String.

This whole post-vaccine situation still seems foreign, doesn’t it? Suddenly people here at Oh La La are holding the door open or smiling or letting you pet their dogs. We aren’t crossing the street to avoid every human we pass on our evening walks, and even though it makes me feel like I left the apartment without my pants on, I’m walking in the evenings without a mask. What a weird time. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I think it was that one day we would wake up and the virus would be gone and there’d be bells peeling and rejoicing and ticker tape in the streets like at the end of World War II or something, but of course it won’t be that way. Of course it’s going to be slow and odd and our brains are going to have to adjust.

Or not.

Yellow sign reading "Stay close to anything that makes you glad you are alive."

Obviously, everybody’s pandemic experience has been different, based on where you live, if you know someone who was ill, if you lost someone you cared about, or if you were adjusting to life in Montecito away from Buckingham Palace. But I am curious about the choices that people will make about their lives and how they will live them going into the future. Who will decide to change nothing? Who will change their lives completely? Quit doing a job they hate? Leave particular relationships behind? Quit trying to buy happiness? Turn over some new leaf? After the last pandemic of this magnitude, we had the Roaring Twenties—women went wild, ditching their corsets and doing the Charleston, demanding the vote. Jazz took off. American literature and fashion design, interior design, and architecture—all of that changed significantly. Despite Prohibition there was an excess of drinking, an excess of everything.

There are going to be some interesting stories that people will tell about how their lives changed because of the pandemic. I look forward to hearing them, to reading them, and maybe to living my own. I can’t quite narrow down how things have changed in my own head, though I know they have. I’m writing more. I’m reading more. I’m busier during the day in a good way. I want to keep that going. But also I hope that we will all be recognizing more of those individual moments—a dip in a borrowed pool, a nap on the perfect sheet, a conversation with friends and loved ones that involves a lot of laughter—where we count ourselves rich.

lower legs in pants, blue shoes resting on hammock, sky above and beyond.

May3

In It to Win It: An April Blog in May

Posted on 3 May 2021 by The Reluctant Girl Scout

Standard

Paper cutout of boy with mountain in far distance.

Despite the pandemic and despite the fact that Z and I just became bona fide re: being released back into society post vaccine, we so far have been living exactly as we were pre-vaccine. And now that we’ve hit the three-week mark we’ve stopped worrying that every headache is a telltale sign of some Johnson & Johnson vaccine shenanigans. So far, so good.

So what I’ve done to prepare for a future wherein I might actually be around other people is wear my “real” shoes on a walk (and by “real” I mean “Danskos” so don’t go picturing Jimmy Choo anything) and my reward was that in the middle of the night I had a muscle cramp in my ankle. Which is a new thing I didn’t know could happen and was clueless about how to get it to stop.

Because my hair was starting to look more and more like the witches at the beginning of MacBeth, Z and I cut it. It’s now an imperfect bob, but I don’t care. In eleven years I’ve never bothered to find a hair stylist here because I prefer getting my hair done in Richmond when I go home. I would fly to the moon to get my hair done with my person, the aptly named Joy, if it meant I didn’t have to make small talk with a stranger. I’ve been going to her since I was 22 and have no intention of stopping now. Until I feel safe climbing on a plane and getting to Richmond, you’ll have to excuse the straggly ends and the grey strands that apparently Joy’s been covering for awhile without telling me.

At the moment, I’m in the process of purging all non-natural fibers from my wardrobe. I realized one of the reasons I’ve been so comfortable for the last 400 days is because I have not worn anything with structure, have not worn anything that does not grow naturally on the planet, and have not had a zipper anywhere near my person. Eventually, I will transition back into what my friend calls “hard pants” so long as they are cotton, silk, or linen (really just cotton—I’m not that fancy), but today is not that day.

Also, because I hang on to clothes forever, I’m looking carefully at the pieces I’ve been wearing for 20 years or so and considering that probably these are the pieces I’m happiest in and should just keep enjoying them or find replacements. Steve Jobs had his black turtle necks—why can’t I have a signature style?

I’m looking at you black hoodie from L.L Bean circa 1994. You’ve been with me through both good and bad times, have been on three continents with me, and you’ve held up well. Thank you.

My next move is to figure out what three or four make-up essentials I’m unwilling to give up and then just refuse to be lured into any more “this will make you look magical” ad campaigns. No Snake Oil for Me in the Post Pandemic, thank you. From this point on, I’m probably going to look my age. I had a good run for a lot of years—a benefit of having extra adipose tissue, hating the sun, and not having children and thus avoiding worry lines. But eventually age catches up with us all unless we go to extreme measures, and I’m just not extreme. I am going to have jowls and dark circles and bags under my eyes. Used to, I would never go anywhere without make-up and my belief that it hid all of my flaws. At the very least, I’ve always been an eyeshadow, eyeliner, and mascara girl. But can we just admit that mascara is a pain—it’s messy and if it’s not messy you have to rub chemicals on your eyes at the end of the day to get it off. Also, it has never made me look like I have more than 23 eyelashes despite the promises so why bother. I don’t have the upper eyelid situation I used to have, so why keep powdering them with color only to have the color disappear into the recesses of my face folds? (I will cling to my eyeliner, but it is on short notice.) I have always looked ridiculous in lipstick and so I’m just going to own that now and slather my lips with Chicken Poop (really, it sounds gross, but it’s good lip balm) and be done with it.

Basically, I think I’ll just spend the rest of my life pretending that I’m walking around under Harry Potter’s Cloak of Invisibility and it’s going to free up a load of drawer and closet space.

I didn’t mean to be talking about this. Sorry. I’ve distracted myself because of two badly timed advertisements on social media. Instead, I meant to tell you about the houseguest we had for the last two weeks: Our first houseguest at Oh La La.

Paper cut out of boy snuggled in bed. — Stanley was an excellent sleeper.

My cousin’s second grader sent his buddy Flat Stanley to stay with us to be shown around Seattle. About eight years ago we did the same for two other family members, but back then we weren’t sequestered on First Hill, and so we got the expected photos of Flat Stanley at all the tourist spots: on a ferry, at the base of the Space Needle, walking around Pioneer Square, shopping at Pike Market, sauntering along the beach on West Seattle, etc.

This time we were limited. Flat Stanley spent a lot of time on our roof deck looking longingly off into the distance at all of the things we would have shown him if only we weren’t on the short leash or had a car or hazmat suits. (Covid-wise, Seattle is in the Red Zone again and the governor is likely going to move us back to Phase 2.) One day we did venture across the Rubicon that is the Pike-Pine Corridor because I was sure we’d find a decent view of the Space Needle from there without actually going downtown. Like last month when we ventured two blocks beyond our self-imposed boundary, you’d have thought this walk to a neighborhood next to our own was tantamount to trekking to Tangier. I kind of felt like we should have been carrying our passports even though two and a half years ago I taught an afternoon class for procrastinators at the library two blocks over.

Paper cut out of boy on high rise roof deck with city and sunset behind him. — He was a good sport about having to experience the Olympic Peninsula from the roof deck.

It turns out a lot of the thru-streets that used to have a vantage of the Space Needle no longer do because buildings have gone up. When we finally spied our goal, it would have been a perfect shot with the late afternoon sun highlighting the Olympic Mountains in the distance. Except a crane had been erected and kind of blotted the view in a pre-cursor to the final blotting that will take place when whatever monstrosity they are building now is completed.

Paper cut out of a boy with Space Needle, crane, and mountain range in far distance. — On second look, maybe what the crane will be blocking is the mountains.

I know. I know. I now live in one of those monstrosities and my building is no doubt blocking the view that someone else used to have of Lake Union or Elliot Bay. How can I complain? I’m not sure, but I can. At this rate, Frasier Crane’s condo has probably lost its view.

On our walk back home, we passed Neko Cat Café and decided that in all likelihood, that particular type of establishment was surely peculiar enough to Seattle that a bunch of second graders in Middle America would be fascinated, so we snapped some pics there where a cat napped in a hammock. This felt like a real win, like it would make up for all the other fuzzy, crap photos I’d taken of things in the distance.

Paper cut out of boy in front of scooter next to a sign reading "Neko A Cat Cafe" with cat lounging in window. — Riding the cat might be easier than the scooter.

I typed up the letter that will accompany Flat Stanley on return to Indiana via USPS. My brow was furrowed as I clicked away, as if I had a big presentation I had to put together for the Board of Directors at McMahon & Tate. Z seemed a little frustrated that I wasn’t letting him weigh in and that I was hyper-focused on what was only ever meant to be a Post-It amount of info about how far Seattle is from Flat Stanley’s home and what people wear here and one or two photos.

Z shook his head.

I was in it to win. Please note: there is no competition. I will not be awarded a crown and sash as Flat Stanley’s very best travel facilitator. My name will not be included in any Community Notes section of the local newspaper, and there are no cash prizes. In all likelihood, I won’t see this child until next Christmas at which time Flat Stanley will be some old assignment that is now long over, so it is unlikely that even he will come up to us, shake our hands, and tell us how much he appreciates that we tried to show his buddy the best time we could.

There’s something ugly bubbling inside of me that makes me want to do things the best—I’m not sure if I want a gold star for effort or if I am competitive and want to win, even if it is for something unwinnable. I suspect the former because when I do “win” at something I feel bad about the people I beat, but my maniacal expression while I work towards a finished goal probably looks like it’s all about the competition. You’d have to ask Z.

As for him, he was finally allowed to help me insert a variety of photos and write a sign-off to the class. We folded the letter with photos and Flat Stanley—now folded in on himself—into an envelope, put three Gwen Ifill stamps on that baby, and mailed it. I went back to my doodling and TV watching and promptly forgot the high stakes hosting tournament I’d enrolled myself in minutes before.

Paper cut out of boy on stool with statue of two life size bear cubs playing. — Hopefully the bears of First Hill are set on “gentle”.

I’ve missed having house guests. Stanley didn’t require much of us—I didn’t even have to change sheets on the guest bed—but it was nice to have someone around. He was a very easy guest. I’m looking forward to having a three-dimensional visitor in our new space and see how it goes. I’m still fantasizing about cook-outs on the roof and game days in one of the conference rooms with the Big Table. Possibly if we do that, I will be trying to win. Or maybe I’ll just be trying to play the best game.

One development: some obsessive brain cell of mine had me Googling “cat cafes in Winchester, Indiana” and it turns out there is one there. Those second graders will NOT be impressed with our fancy, bit city notions of how we have things other parts of the country do not.

I wish there were do-overs. They’ve probably never been to a Pinball Museum.

Paper cut out of boy on hammock. — Even paper house guests like a hammock and skyline.

Mar31

The Short Leash

Posted on 31 March 2021 by The Reluctant Girl Scout

Standard

Today is the first day my age group with co-morbidities has opened up for the Covid-19 vaccine in Washington State. Woo hoo. Finally, carrying around the bonus weight of a 12-year-old is paying off! I knew it would eventually—thank goodness I didn’t choose to spend the past year improving my diet and working out! Z and I have our names in the hopper, but we aren’t optimistic that it will happen anytime soon. I’m guessing by August 2022 maybe we’ll finally be able to get an appointment.

I’m okay with that wait because right now I’m not sure I’m ready to merge back into society. I know lots of people are thrilled at the prospect of wearing real clothes and going out to restaurants, but the thought of having to put on a bra and give up my fleece clogs (which have seen better days) and climb back into a pair of pants that zip seems equivalent to you telling me I have to learn to speak Portuguese because business will no longer be conducted in English. It’s daunting. I’ve gone feral without realizing it and am hoping someone puts together some TikToks or maybe a TEDTalk on how to return to polite society.

Some of us have been living inside this pandemic more than others. While Instagram alerts me to people who have zoomed off somewhere for Spring Break and feel they are doing their parts because they wear a mask over one ear, others of us are just sitting still, waiting for the All Clear.

When we do go out for our daily walk, we leave the house after 6 when First Hill is quieting down and we’re less likely to run into a lot of people. We stay within an 8 block radius, double-mask, and don’t linger over the chip aisle at Bartell when we pop in to pick-up prescriptions once a month (and treats to keep us in the co-morbidity category). This evening on our walk, we approached a man walking a dachshund who looked like a jovial creature, but the man wrapped the leash around his hand two extra times just as Z and I darted into the street to give them a wide Dr. Fauci sanctioned berth. As we passed, the little devil started barking with a fury and the man looked at us sheepishly and shrugged. I guess we’re all feeling kind of territorial and testy these days.

Last week, Z and I felt like we were living on the edge when we took a long walk and went further west than 9th Avenue. How far did we walk, you ask , that it made us feel so reckless? Why, we walked to 7th Avenue! Two blocks closer to Puget Sound than we normally go, though it was still a good eight blocks or so from the actual waterfront. That’s two blocks closer to downtown than I’ve been since last March. We walked through Freeway Park, peered into the Washington State Convention Center (a.k.a. the place with the escalators that in the Before Times would bring my tired ass halfway up the hill towards home if we went downtown), and then we circled around to see the monstrosity of buildings that have sprung up and are now towering above poor Town Hall. Then we skedaddled back to our own territory as if we’d let ourselves step into some radioactive Forbidden Zone and had to get home and have a Silkwood-style shower to rinse off the contaminants.

White short building at foot of two two skyscrapers. — Town Hall used to look so majestic before; now it looks like a sneaker on the foot of a giant.

It was nice to see the trees in the park which are in bloom. It was eerie to see the Convention Center all locked up to keep passers-thru like us outside. It was disappointing to see that their flowerbeds were dormant when they normally have plants no matter what season. But mostly, it made me antsy and aware of all the things we haven’t done for over a year.

Normally, nestled in our nest at Oh La La we are taken by the things we now see out our windows—an eagle family soaring over the neighborhood and over Lake Union, a hummingbird that peers into our apartment periodically to check on us, the weather systems blowing across the vast expanse of sky that’s now available to us. Mostly, I’ve appreciated this past year and how these small things hold the weight of something monumental. We see the eagle family and one of us shouts to the other one as if Ed McMahon, fresh from the grave, just showed up at the door with one of those big cardboard checks from Publishers Clearing House. But there was something about seeing the locked doors at the convention center that suddenly made me aware of everything we haven’t been doing. How long it’s been since I’ve shopped in City Target, gotten flowers at Pike Market, seen a movie in the theater with the “good” seats, been in a car, driven out of the city. I hadn’t been missing any of those things, but now I am.

Sign taped to window reading "Temporarily Closed to Public" Washington State Convention Center.

Let’s be honest, the thing I’m most looking forward to though is the possibility that I might have something interesting to write about again on this blog once I’m riding a bus, drinking tea in a cafe, having an adventure to one of the islands, flying back to Indiana. I can only make up so many stories about those eagles and what they’re up to.

Since we didn’t fall off the edge of the earth when we widened our walking route by two blocks I have no real stories to share this month. The eagles are aloft. The crows are cawing. The neighborhood dogs are barking. The vaccine appointments are full. Try again tomorrow.

Oh, I do have this story to leave you with and it involves this squonky tree.

For the last several months, this poor thing was standing in a pool of running water that we’d see on our evening—after-hours-fewer-people-to-navigate—be-masked walks on our 8 block leash. We couldn’t tell where the water was coming from—it seemed to be burbling up from underground and pooling on the sidewalk and in the street. Several times a week we’d leap over the standing water and stare at the tree, wondering why no one was throwing it a life preserver. Why wasn’t the city stopping the leak? Why weren’t the owners of the commercial building that sat next to the tree alerting the people who fix such things? We’d tut tut and continue our walk. Over and over again. And then one day, I looked at that tree and felt fed up that no one was coming to rescue it. I’m no arborist or plumber, but it was clear this wasn’t going to end well. I’d had enough.

So I went home and sent off an email to the Seattle Department of Transportation and pointed out to them that it was a waste of water, a waste of a tree, and that someone could slip on the waterlogged sidewalk and sue the city.

I’m turning into that lady.

Maybe they thought I was planning to slip on the waterlogged sidewalk and had a lawyer lined up because they wrote me back in two days and said that they checked into it and were getting to the bottom of it. I’m happy to report that sidewalk and the base of the tree are now dry and the tree is budding.

With all the first responders working tirelessly the past year, I can only assume that I won’t be getting a key to the city or a good citizen award for my work on behalf of one neighborhood tree, but it does feel like this pandemic has made me feel more proprietary about that 8 block radius Z and I have been covering for the last year. Here’s to a longer leash in the future.

Geometric glass building with basalt sculptures and a blossoming tree in front of it. — Washington State Convention Center–our gateway to downtown.

Feb25

Ground Control to Major Tom

Posted on 25 February 2021 by The Reluctant Girl Scout

Standard

PART THE FIRST

I’ve discovered that swiping through TikTok videos in the morning is the perfect way to stay cozy in bed. I give myself ten minutes and then look at the clock and a half hour or hour has passed, which is disturbing, but I keep telling myself this is just winter behavior. It is cold. The flannel sheets and Z snoozing next to me and radiating heat are too inviting for me to willingly bound out of bed the minute my eyes open.

One drawback (of the many) to beginning the day this way is the frequency with which some videos use earworms to highlight whatever antics are going on in the video. For three days now I have had a few bars of Beyonce’s “Halo” stuck in my head on a loop. It. Will. Not. Go. Away. Yesterday, I thought maybe if I listened to the entire song instead of just those bars it would finally exhaust itself but all it did was make Z start humming it too. There are worse songs, but I’d like to move on in my life now.

My recent desire to stay in bed an extra hour was exacerbated by the Big Snow we had that lasted a couple of days. We’re in much better shape than the rest of the country in this regard—now it feels like spring is afoot—but for those two days of snow, the city felt magical and Z and I were thrilled with our new perch here at Oh Là Là, looking down on snow-covered streets and not having to go out on un-shoveled sidewalks. We did venture up to the roof deck and threw a snowball and attempted a snowman with snow that would not pack, but for the most part, we just stared out the window like a couple of kids who had never seen snow before.

Man on snow-covered rooftop deck next to snow-covered table--skyscrapers in background and visible snowflakes falling. — Z on the roof deck about to be pelted with a snowball (of sorts).

Oh, and I did a jigsaw puzzle because snow days are perfect for that and I still miss RBG.

Finished jigsaw puzzle of Ruth Bader Ginsburg image in front of American flag with text written at bottom that says "Women belong in all places where decisions are being made." — Nobody ever looked so good in a lace collar.

INTERLUDE

During the snow days, I got unnaturally concerned with the well-being of a neighbor who lives across the street. Please note (and believe): I am not a peeping Tom. I am not hoping to see any fights, naked bodies, or assess whether my neighbors wipe their noses on their sleeves. Still, when you are living in the sky and working at a window, occasionally your gaze will fall on the neighbor who has a lovely big St. Bernard thrilled with the snow or the neighbor whose cat peers down from the 12th floor as if everything on First Hill belongs to him.

Occasionally, my eye lands on the woman whose blinds are never closed, who sleeps on the sofa with the lights on instead of under her Marimekko duvet in the bedroom. After the first quick glance months ago, I’ve wondered about her. What’s the deal with the sofa? Did she have a bad break up and can’t face her bed alone? Why the lights on at night? Is she afraid of something? Has someone threatened her?

So the other day when I did my quick morning glance before settling into work, I saw her lying on the floor, and my pulse quickened. What had happened to her? I glanced again and the position she was in was really awkward, so I worried that she’d hurt herself. Or, horrors, someone had hurt her.

I instantly started thinking of Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window, wheelchair bound and stuck in his apartment, passing the time by looking at his neighbors with a telephoto lens. When he sees what he believes to be a murder take place, no one will listen to him.

Sky and clouds with two eagles in the far distances. (Arrows drawn on photo to highlight eagles.) — They were both much closer than this but not when I had my camera.

Recently, a pair of eagles have been flying over our building, so my mini-binoculars were on the desk. I have never used them to look in anyone’s apartment and when I do use them, I make over-exagerrated motions so anyone peering at me can see that I am only looking up at the sky and not trying to peer into their living spaces. It occurred to me that if this woman was compromised, I might be the only person knew it, so I allowed myself to fake look for the eagles in the sky above Lake Union and then do a slow but continuous spin in my chair and briefly train the binoculars on her apartment.

As it happens, I did not have to call 911. The body on the floor was not hers. In fact, it was not a body. In fact, it wasn’t even on the floor. It was an oversized knitted blanket stuffed into and spilling out of a basket.

I haven’t had my eyes checked for a year and a half. It might be time.

St. Bernard dog standing in a snowdrift on a city sidewalk. — Sans keg of brandy for snow rescues.

PART THE SECOND

Because Z himself is also magical and amazing like snow in Seattle, the number of times I’ve had a crush on a “celebrity” since we got together is almost nil, but I’m finding myself disturbingly attracted to the bobble-headed @therealindiandad. Initially, I didn’t know why. I mean, his cartoon head is handsome, I guess, but other than the fox in Robin Hood I don’t make it a habit of crushing on cartoon characters. But then one day Z was bossing me up (in a very loving, comical way) and we were laughing, and I realized it’s because watching @therealindiandad joke-chastise @sheenamelwani while Z is still sleep is the next best thing to having Z awake. They remind me a lot of each other, though I’m relieved Z doesn’t have a bobble head. Z was disturbed by this news until I pointed out to him that his bobble headed doppelgänger is not the father of the woman he chides but the husband and the two of them are laughing so much and having such a good time that they feel like good company these days, particularly when so many posts are full of rage or sadness.

When I finally do shut off TikTok, drag myself out of bed, and head to the study, I’m immediately greeted with annoyance because this is the last space in our apartment at Oh Là Là that has refused to organize itself since our November move. I seem to just keep moving the same items in a circle around the room. A stack of things on the ottoman gets moved to the Napping Cloud and sits there for two weeks, and then I move the items on the bed to the floor so I can nap. Then it’s time to run Angus the robotic vacuum so I pick the stuff up off the floor and put it on the ottoman. I think the problem is I haven’t found a home for these final bits of our life: photos, art, and frames we aren’t using right now, stacks of paper I don’t know where to file, knickknacks in the windowsill, tote bags full of projects I have yet to finish, etc.

And in the center of this still messy space is The Desk: the black hole that sucks in and spews out chaos threefold.

This isn’t a new subject for me—I’ve always had trouble with organizing the place I write and teach. I could clean it up for a photo op, but no sooner is the pic posted than the mess starts building again. It’s one of the things that annoys me most about myself: not just that I can’t be neater but also that I can’t fully embrace my messy tendencies without chastising myself. And because the desk is an exact replica of the inner workings of my mind, I’m also annoyed that after all of these years I also can’t just embrace the rich alphabet soup that is my thought process and instead am convinced there must be something wrong with me.

My desk is really a 6 foot cherry dining table with one tiny drawer and a faux drawer with a keyboard ledge in it. When I ordered it two decades ago, I’d just read a book about how people with my brain type were no good with things that were put away and we just need to see everything in front of us in stacks. The book’s premise was that creative types have different brains and were fighting a losing battle in trying to make traditional 1950s-office-systems-with-filing-cabinets-and-in-and-out-trays work for them.

The theory was a good one—and remains true…if my house keys are under a piece of mail, say, the keys cease to exist for me and I start to make plans about how I’ll have to live the rest of my life without locking the door. But when I embraced this new way of organizing, I imagined myself being tidier than I actually am. I was picturing a soft focus desk with a stack of three books, a cup of tea (even though I don’t drink it that often), and an artful lamp so I could write until the sun came up. I imagined a vast expanse of empty desk, glossy wood grain encouraging me to put only beautiful words on the page.

Large desk that is tidy--laptop, neat stacks of books, photo, journal, clock, and glass of water. (Not messy) — The dream.

Alas. It never looks like that.

There is never an empty space where I could suddenly do a project or a puzzle. Instead, there are layers. If I dig down, I’m reminded that a month ago I was really interested in learning how meditation can be different for women than men, I was organizing things to put in a scrapbook, and I was planning to frame a couple of pictures. If I dig further still, I’d discover a gift card for Elliot Bay Books and a receipt for something I bought Z for Christmas. A jar of pickled onions, I think.

A few weeks ago, I was talking to the Poet Friend on the phone and told her how frustrated I was, and she—a tidy Virgo—suggested that I get an empty box, put everything on my desk in the box, dust and oil the surface of the desk, and then put back only the things I use. For two days, it was the desk I imagined it would be when I bought it. But now, I have this box of “essential things” on the floor:

And the desk is now looking like it’s former, messy self.

I’ve taken very little out of the box of essentials, so what I did was find more/different “essentials” to fill the surface. Nature and Beth abhor a vacuum.

Current essential items on desk:

glass desk lamp filled with my mother’s childhood marbles
Row of “must have near me” writing books held in place by Scottie dog book ends from Poet Friend
clock with big numbers so I always know how late I am to a Zoom appointment
laptop
Uncle Joe’s Mint Balls tin can now containing pens, scissors, letter opener from elementary Swedish penpal Cecilia, and two beaded Roses from Zimbabwe
1972 Christmas present clipboard from my maternal grandmother given to me because of my love of drawing but now used for class notes and other things I want to remember but eventually forget about and discard

On a six foot desk, this seems like a reasonable amount of items and all you really need for a desk to function, but I’m not done yet.

Other “essentials”:

An anatomically correct metal bulldog with spiked collar and butt door that raises for insertion of a tea light candle if Oh La La allowed candles and I wanted to illuminate a metal bulldog
An ashtray from a bar bearing my surname purchased on eBay 20 years ago even though I don’t smoke
a two-handled tea cup/soup bowl which I use on different days for:
- my earphones
- my prayer beads
- clean watercolor water
a vaguely royal looking red box in which I intend to keep bits of paper with notes jotted on them of things I don’t want to forget but that currently holds only a Serenity Prayer key chain of indeterminate origin and a postcard of Wales from a boy I never met but with whom I tried to hae a romantic online relationship in 1994
a handmade Scandinavian-looking pottery gnome holding a warm pie next to a toadstool because she looks capable and happy
a shallow light blue dish with my grandfather’s rosary in it. I’ve had the beads for almost twenty years and still haven’t learned all the components of the rosary because the 50% of me that was raised Catholic never got to those lessons
a chicken timer named Erma to keep me writing
a series of gemstones the names of which I can never recall and must then dig in The Box to read the leaflet that came with them reminding me what each crystal is good for. My favorites so far: amethyst and tiger eye
a deck of Farber-Zerner tarot cards because I like the art and like to use them for a focusing practice before I write even though I don’t really know that much about tarot and don’t want my future told. (I’m in it for the metaphors.)
three books on tarot because why have one when you can have three?
my new set of prayer beads (sodalite to encourage intuition, focus, and creativity)
my old set of prayer beads (cobalt blue glass, made when I found out my father was sick, the color of which calms me)
a rock that fits perfectly in my palm that Z found for me on San Juan Island
a Bluetooth speaker
a statue of a pig with a quote from Winston Churchill about the superiority of pigs, which reminds me daily not of Churchill or of pigs, but of my college mentor, Gibb, who loved pigs, particularly his boyhood pig, Jipper, who would meet him after school when the bus dropped him off
some coasters
a tiny painting I painted last year of a young girl squeezing through the Eye of the Needle in a church ruin in Dingle
an envelope that likely contains a home colorectal screening test that I have been ignoring for a year but because I’m partly a responsible person and thus haven’t thrown it out but I keep thinking Tomorrow Beth will take care of it and do the responsible thing
a Venus of Willendorf statue
a holy card of Joan of Arc
class notes, printed readings, and dogeared pages of book passages I want to share with my students
a paisley beanbag from my childhood with a tag hand stitched on it that says “Wayne County Historical Museum Richmond, Indiana” that I like to play with while I’m lecturing and have had since I was about five

So where exactly would I put the stuff in the box (notebooks, ShellE the stuffed turtle, my hairbrush, various pics, notebooks, small clipboard, empty box of chocolates with my last name on the lid, to-do list notebook, notebook from my Swedish penpal circa 1978, an Apple box for my AirPods because Apple boxes are just too good to get rid of, a wooden file box that has half a screenplay written on notecards inside that I started with a friend twenty-five years ago and which I keep meaning to put elsewhere and use the box for some other important non-computerized filing, and a variety of pottery dogs.

I need an intervention.

Large desk with laptop on stand, stacks of books and notebooks, binoculars, clock, prayer beads, pottery creatures, etc. (Messy) — My desk and mind are kind of like the Hotel California.

Lately I’ve been writing every morning with my newly discovered family of fellow INFP/J creatives and we often spend time talking about how our brains work, how differently we are wired from most of the population, and what the insides of our heads look like. We’ve talked about how when we are writing or drawing or doing some other kind of creating, we are out there just loosely tethered to earth and when Ground Control calls us back down to have a conversation about cornflakes or the funny meme they just saw, it’s really, really hard for us to make that adjustment. It’s hard to acclimatize back to earth’s atmosphere.

In my life, I’ve had what I would classify as two and a half visions. One was holy. One was comforting. And then this one from my childhood when I was staying with my grandmother that until now I’ve never been able to interpret.

It was just the two of us together on a Saturday morning, and I was lying upside down on the davenport, my head nearly touching the floor as I took in the new perspective of the acoustic tile and how the dropped ceiling into the hallway would make a stair step if her pink mobile home were upside down. (I’d been exposed to The Poseidon Adventure at a young age and was fascinated by how normal things would be transformed if flipped upside down. Please note, Gene Hackman was an early celebrity crush. A man who was convicted that he could get you to a place of greater safety—what was not to like? Even better than @therealindiandad.) As I hung upside down, Grandma was across from me in the kitchen, where she always was. I never saw the woman sit down until I was a teenager.

Then suddenly, without planning it, I was on the ceiling. I don’t know if this would be classified as an out-of-body experience or a vision, though probably most people would say it was just the fancy of a child, but I felt myself floating in this upside down landscape—the only thing keeping me earth bound was the ceiling—and my grandmother was frantically reaching up towards me, kind of hopping up and down trying to grab ahold of me, and pull me back towards earth as if I were a balloon that had escaped. It was so real. Then I came back to myself and my real grandmother was asking me which cartoon I wanted her to put on the TV because I wasn’t hovering above her after all but was lounging on the sofa expecting her to serve me by turning the channel to Scooby-Doo. We grandchildren were so spoiled.

Tree-lined city street covered in snow. One person walking in street. Snow-covered cars. — On terra firma.

The vision was weird and for years I’ve wondered what it was, what had or hadn’t happened, and then it just sort of folded into my life like the time I was stung under the arm by a bee or the time I fell out of a tree and had the wind knocked out of me and thought I’d killed myself. It was just an event in my life: that time I was floating on the ceiling and Grandma pulled me back to earth.

But now? I think the universe was trying to give me a metaphor for how I’d spend the rest of my life, trying so hard to listen to step-by-step instructions or remember a list of five items to pick up at the grocery or to stay engaged in a conversation or stay focused on my non-creative work, but always, I find myself somewhere other than where I’m supposed to be living between my own ears. Then I come back to myself and the other person hasn’t noticed I was gone. Or, if they are Z, they have noticed and they think I’m a bad listener or lackadaisical worker or a bad bet if they want me to pick something up for them at the store. But they love me despite my human frailties.

It’s been a real boon to know 60-90 minutes a day I’m going to be getting together with these people I’ve never met in real life (and were it not for the pandemic would never have met on Zoom) and they get it. One of us will say, “Have you ever…?” and everyone else will nod in agreement and the conversation will flow. And then we write. And when the host tells us it’s been an hour, most of us are startled because we’ve been out there on our own individual tethers. But also, together.

Goodness knows what the totality of 2021 is going to hold for us. I don’t even want to guess about the future (I told you those Tarot cards are not about knowing the future), but my goal for this year is to embrace my quirks, to work around whatever ear worm has burrowed into my head, and if my neighbors appear to have been murdered, to check in on them even if I feel foolish (or criminal) afterward when I realize their knitted throws were never in any danger.

In the remaining ten months of 2021, let us all be kind to ourselves and laugh whenever we find cause.

FIN

Feb1

The Bears of First Hill

Posted on 1 February 2021 by The Reluctant Girl Scout

Standard

Statue of two bear cubs playing on wingback chair and ottoman in park setting.

Happy New Year!

Or is that a jinx? Am I meant to be saying something like whatever the new year equivalent of “break a leg” is? Also, can you even say Happy New Year when it’s the first of February? Shouldn’t the greetings be over by now?

So far, I haven’t been that impressed by 2021, have you? It’s felt like a worse version of 2020 with an added layer of insurrection. Normally, I don’t put much stock in years being “good” or “bad”—it’s all just the peaks and valleys of being alive—but so far, I am of the mind that the successful coup has been that 2020 is still in office and we just don’t realize it yet. Every morning Z and I look at our phone messages and then ask the other with dread what the news is from our home and from friends. Used to, I’d be whining because the Seahawks were dispatched from the playoffs so quickly or a neighborhood party was loud, but now any day that doesn’t require a sympathy card or new additions to a prayer list feels like a win.

It doesn’t help that in addition to the new beautiful views out of the study at Oh La La that I’m always crowing about, there is also a straight line to an elderly care facility. About half the time I look that direction—directly down the street from my own now bi-focal needing eyes —there are the lights of ambulances flashing out front. On my best days, I say a quick prayer wishing them well, wishing them a lack of fear, wishing them people in their lives who love and care for them. On worse days, however, I angle my chair so I can’t see it at all. It’s a little too close to comfort, the home for the aged. Fiftysomething seems younger now than it did when my grandparents were in their fifties or when my great grandmother was wearing those old-timey clothes, but the days are zipping by. Even if we survive the pandemic, we are, as Alanis Morissette said, temporary arrangements.

Urban tree-lined street with distant red ambulance light, power lines. — Not thrilled with how those power lines seem to connect me with distant sadness.

When I was in high school with my penchant for English and art, I had friends—all male, please note—who liked to remind me that careers with words and art weren’t that lucrative. These boys were good with science and numbers. My father, also good with numbers, felt my chosen major in college—English without the education degree (because I took one ed class and was bored)—might turn me into a pauper and so I should consider a business major despite the fact that I had been a disaster at selling Girl Scout cookies and only loved his cast-off briefcase because it held my art supplies. Though my professors insisted we could do a lot with an English degree, they never handed out lists or offered us much advice beyond “go to grad school” which was, after all, what their own experience had been. Still, I loved words on a page whether mine or someone else’s, and nothing else felt like a good fit.

There were plenty of times—especially during the “spinster librarian” phase—when the mystery of my life was why I hadn’t tried harder to get myself on one of those more lucrative career paths. Or, at the very least, a career path that was less nebulous. On the early morning drive to work, I’d stare at construction workers and think about how much more straightforward and useful their work was: the world needed places to live and roads that weren’t riddled with potholes and so their jobs were to solve those problems.

What exactly was I solving at the library? How to convince someone that if they didn’t pay their fines before checking out another book the entire library system would crumble? Even I didn’t believe that one.

Toddler with brownie hat crying on floor. — You might like to eat cookies, kiddo, but you’re never going to be good at selling them no matter what hat you wear.

One day you wake up, and it’s your birthday, and a few days later multiple friends near your age start talking about their retirement plans in six years or so, and if you are me, you think, but wait a minute, I still haven’t completely figured out what I want to be when I grow up—who wants to retire? And then you realize that while you were trying to figure out what to do with yourself, you were actually living your life.

Who knew?

If I had to have business cards printed right now, I still don’t even know what they should say. “Writer. Teacher. Ponderer” is closest to the truth, but I don’t have a contract from St. Martin’s or tenure, so “ponderer” seems to be the most accurate measure of how I’ve lived my life but the pay is not so good.

Usually on January 6th what I’m pondering is the miracle of my own birth with a very small side order of the arrival of the magi at the manger to visit the infant Jesus. (I do this primarily because it seems wrong to have a birthday on Epiphany and not acknowledge that before it became my birthday it had other, greater significance. That said, the quality of my pondering is often along the lines of wondering what Mary thought when these fancy men rolled up with their expensive jars and boxes of treats for a baby. Because I’m pretty sure what I’d have been thinking is Do you mind if I return this? We’re still living in a manger here and we need some onesies and a Diaper Genie.)

This year, however, I didn’t get to ponder Epiphany or the last five decades of my life because just as I was finishing a morning writing session, my cousin texted that the Capitol had been breached. So Z and I spent the rest of the day thinking about the fragility of democracy, the importance of critical thinking, and how in 1980 my youth group members and I were practically strip searched before we were allowed in the Capitol but somehow the masses were able to break in and run rampant.

I realize it’s not all about me, but I’ve spent my life knowing my birthday so close to Christmas was a pain for people, that it was a high holy day, a birthday I have to share with E.L. Doctorow, Rowan Atkinson, John DeLorean, and Vic Tayback. But now, oh joy, it is a date that will live in infamy. I can hardly wait for next year’s Facebook memes reminding me to “never forget.”

What is wrong with people? You love democracy so you break it’s windows and smear excrement in its hallways while carrying a flag with a man’s name on it as if he’s a king? This is not what I learned about Democracy and the Constitution from my School House Rock cartoons. (Hint: you don’t get to revolt because your person didn’t win. I learned it in grade school and was reminded of it again during both the 2000 and the 2016 elections when I had to lick my wounds without the solace of fur pants and Viking helmet.)

What have we become?

After several hours of watching the news and feeling gloomy about the future, Z and I finally went up on the roof. We were going to go on a walk, but Seattle being Seattle, there were some demonstrations we weren’t interested in getting caught up in when tensions were so high, so instead we let the wind on the rooftop whip us around a bit. We watched the sunset, looked at Mt. Baker which made a rare appearance in the distance, and had a false sense momentarily that all was right in the world. It was beautiful. Later, I was feted by Z and a Zoom version of my folks and opened presents and ate cake. I did, however, forget to put on my tiara.

Distant snow-covered mountain on horizon. City in foreground. — Welcome to my party, Mt. Baker.

From my new vantage at Oh La La I can see the chimney tops of the Stimson-Green Mansion. First Hill used to be flush with mansions but we’re now down to about four, and the Stimson-Green is something special. It’s Tudor Revival, looks like something from a storybook, and is even more delightful inside with each room decorated in a different style. I’ve written about it before. Though all I can see are the chimney and the roofline, I know what sits under it and had the good fortune to tour it, so when I see those chimneys, I’m able to imagine this area in the early 20th century when horses and wagons were making deliveries to the fancy houses, and the residents therein all knew each other and had, for whatever reason, decided they’d rather make their fortunes in the Pacific Northwest instead of Back East. They were not, I assume, English majors.

Tudor style mansion covered in snow. — Stimson-Green Mansion after a snow fall last year.

Next to the mansion is the small, just renovated First Hill Park, and there has been an addition to the old foot print of a bronze, three-piece sculpture of two bear cubs playing on a wingback chair and ottoman. The sculpture was created by Georgia Gerber who also created the famous Rachel the Pig at Pike Market that I’ve rarely gotten close to because it’s always covered with tourists. This new one is a whimsical sculpture that invites you to sit in the chair with the bear cubs frolicking nearby, and it might seem random, but it isn’t.

Women with mask sitting in bronze chair of statue with bronze bear cubs in small park.

The young daughter of the mansion was giving a pair of newborn black bear cubs by her father’s foreman when they were orphaned because their mother was killed in a logging accident. She named the cubs Johnny and Irish, and for the first ten months of their lives, she raised them, played with them, and, one assumes, loved them. (She preferred animals to people.) The upper verandah of the house was their playpen and she regularly walked them around the neighborhood without a leash.

Z has a fit when he sees a dog off leash on our daily walks. Can you imagine if we’d been bumping into little Dorothy with Johnny and Irish? Oh my goodness.

When I think of the bears, I try to focus on the early days of their lives when they were living in the mansion, tumbling over the dragon andirons by the big fireplace, roaming the neighborhood. Before they got so rambunctious with greeting people—not aggressive, apparently, just a little too enthusiastic in their attentions because they were no longer little bears. So they were taken to Woodland Park Zoo where they lived all their remaining days. I wonder about the drive to the zoo. Were they treated like beloved family pets who got to ride shotgun, taking in the city as they neared their new home? Did Dorothy go with them and was it a tearful goodbye? (How could it not have been?) Was their enclosure at the zoo spacious and humane or was it like the tiny wire cage the bear at the park where I grew up had to live? I spent my childhood wanting to see the animals at the park zoo and then feeling instantly sick and sad because they were in small cages and not living the lives they deserved to live. Dorothy would apparently visit them and she pointed them out to her own daughter. She might have been a practical person, but I’m guessing she longed to take them back to the house on Minor Avenue and let them romp on the furniture.

Less exciting neighborhood ponderables:

View out high window of street scene with leafless trees and one green, be-leafed tree in the middle of the street. — Show-off.

This tree. It’s on a mini traffic circle and seems not to realize it’s January. All the other trees around it are naked, but this one is still dressed for a ball. I can’t decide if it’s some kind of sick that means it forgot to drop it’s leaves or if it’s just showing off.

Why our fabulous trash chute is suddenly not working and we now have to carry our garbage down the elevator.

Why I have quit seeing Toast the corgi in the lobby. Has he moved?

Also, WHY ARE THERE NO SCOTTIES IN THIS BUILDING?

Finally, why is there a guy playing a baritone on the corner across the street all weekend long, every weekend. And why does he seem to prefer Simon and Garfunkle tunes? At first it was a fun reminder that we live in a city, but after a few weekends like this, I’m grateful I got AirPods for my birthday.

Everything is so depressing these days.

Except.

When I’m looking at the old people home in front of me, behind me is Swedish Hospital where two of our favorite little girls—Pippi and the Imp—were born. Before Christmas a client dropped off a gift when I handed over a manuscript I’d been editing and she pointed to the hospital with a fond smile and said, “That’s where my boys were born.”

The last few weeks, I’ve twice seen a bald eagle soaring past our building, where normally we only see crows and seagulls. Who knew an advantage of living on the 9th floor of Oh La La would be bald eagle sightings?

And finally, yes, the Capitol was breached but it wasn’t successful. Our elected officials went back to work and the building and grounds crew righted what was wronged. And when I think about the whole event, I’m struck by how it was words that instigated the riot and words—written all those years ago, imperfect but with the intention of becoming more perfect—that allowed us to get back to the business of living. Maybe words really do matter after all.

young girl in woman's lap with Dr. Seuss book being red to her. — Words were easier when they were just Dr. Seuss