Rather than clean

Honestly, I'm supposed to be cleaning. My sister's coming this week and I need all of our 600 square feet spanky clean. In this place, even the tiniest little mess seems huge. I walk in with the mail and it's ~*PANIC*~: "This has to go somewhere right now!!!!" It'll only take an hour, two if I want to organize the papers I'll clear off the flat places. But here I am instead.

Ooops about those pictures on my last post. They don't quite fit on there. You may already be aware that my tech skill set has a few holes in it. But things could be worse. My last boss was King Technophobe III. He was really attached to MSDOS Windows95, in 2005. He'd passed up an entire decade of upgrades! He'd say, "I want those interrogatories done by Thursday."
And I'd respond, "Are you sure? Y/N"
And he'd say, "N. Finish them by this afternoon."
And I'd say, "Control Fu."
And he'd say, "Control Alt Delete."
And I'd say, "Are you sure? Y/N"
And he's say, "N. I need those done."
I even had my office painted blue, in hopes that he'd listen to me more.
Anyway, Mr. Windows95, Esq. was outed as capable when we found out he had figured out both 1) e-bay and 2) how to become addicted to it. The staff then took measures to forcefully remove the virus called Windows95 from the office. We did this delicately. That being North Idaho, the boss kept a gun in the office.

I'm going to try again with some pictures. Forgive me if I mess up. You deserve better.

The orchard blossomed mightily this week. All of a sudden: BAM!! BAM! BAM! POP!! The whole thing slammed into spring. And the weight of winter lifted. And everything felt good again. I can actually stand up straight, naturally, without an hour of yoga. The trick? Taking off the bulky winter coat.
I got a full moon stroll in the warm wind through the white orchard this week. And I even got a sweet scented little nap one afternoon, under the hum of happy bees. And here's an odd sight that caused a double take on Good Friday:
That one's for my mom.

The Easter Bunny hid WAY TOO much candy around the place this morning. Damn Rabbit. How about some carrots?

I stayed home all week. Because last week I drove: Wen to Spoke, Spoke to Wen, Wen to Salem, Salem to Spoke, and Spoke to Wen again! Sheesh! If I sat in the car one more second, my ass was going to stand up, slap me across the face, tell me to get someone else to sit on, and walk out on me.

Here are photos of the traveling week. Rushing water in a hurry to travel long distances seemed to be the theme.
M. Falls in Oregon




Spokane Falls:

The Death of Shimmer

As I have noted in this virtual tome so recently, and as you yourself may have also noticed, death happens to every living thing. And it has come to our house. Thankfully, we were gone. Except for Shimmer, Blue's beta fish, a male, as she so carefully informs one and all. Because they are the fancy looking ones.

I knew Shimmer wouldn't last long. He had ick and he was elderly. His lavish iridescent fins had thinned and looked like wads of hair from a drain. When last I saw him, he was bouncing along the bottom of the tank on his side, one "lung" bloated and white.
I dropped by the apartment on Wednesday to do some paperwork and the land lady caught me before I went up. "He doesn't look good," she confided.
"I know," I said.
"I think he's dying," She warned.
"He's old and he has ick," I said.
"He doesn't have long," She worried.
"It's not your fault," I said.
"I know not to over feed fish," She fretted.
"Yes, You can't over feed fish," I allowed.
I breathed deep and trudged up the stairs. What would I find? How decomposed would he be?
He laid at the bottom of the tank. I noticed my mother had turned off all the heat before she left and the tank was chilly. I chipped out some ice and poured a little hot water in. About 1000 un-touched pellets of fish food flew up. And Shimmer skipped feebly across the bottom.

Yes, you can't over feed a fish. Unless your a little tipsy.

I recently cleaned his tank, but it was now a cloud of soggy fish food. As I washed and rinsed, I wondered what the hell I was doing. This fish was obviously near death. He couldn't eat. He wasn't going to last another day or two. And I was cleaning his tank.
I laughed when I realized I was trying to ease his passing. If he was going to go, I didn't want anyone, not me, and certainly not the fish-Valkyriesthat would carry him from this world, imagining that I had killed him through neglect, that I had let him slip from this life in a dirty cesspool of soggy crumbs. Maybe a vet would prescribe morphine drops for his water? Should I dump in some whiskey? Or make a quick finish with the garbage disposal? In the end I decided that if suffering to the very last breath was good enough for humans, it was probably good enough for a beta. When last I saw him he was struggling along the purple rocks at the bottom of his tank, gasping for ... um... air?

When we returned there was a note on the table, a fancy and formal script. "The fish died." The tank was empty. The lid was off.
She said that he was dead the day after I left him. She flushed him down the toilet. I thanked her for not leaving him in the tank for me to fish out his half decomposed body. She said she'd considered freezing him, but felt that would be over kill.

Later, her husband commented that the fish had ick.
"Yes, I know, but what was I going to do, bring a $3 fish to the vet?"
There. I'd said it.
I'd tried to ease his passing, tried to preempt guilt, and now here it was, staring me down. I'd killed a $3 fish because it was a $3 fish.
"You know there's stuff you could get at the pet store that would've taken care of the ick."
"REALLY!??" How should I have known that?! But then, it wasn't even worth it to me to Google "ick" and get an answer in 3 seconds. Why not? Because it was a $3 fish.
PETA is going to KILL me!

I love PETA, most of the time. But they are really not going to like this: I hated how that fish had to eat every damn day. Every damn DAY! We had to feed him. I had to hire a pet sitter once for $30, just so the $3 fish wouldn't die of starvation, and then he dies anyway! And what's more, the beta is a fighting fish. That F-er would've killed me, eaten me alive, piranha'd me in 3 seconds, given the slightest advantage. If Blue would forget to feed her fish, I'd go over and he'd puff up like a bully and swim back and forth looking tough. Had our sizes been reversed, he'd have gobbled me: a vegetarian (mostly)! He was $3, with a surly, possibly even dangerous, personality.

He will be missed.

I broke the news to Blue.
"What did she do with the body?"
"She flushed it down the toilet."
"Darn, I kind of wanted to see what a dead fish looks like."

A chunk of something operatic

The kids are eating yogurt.
C "I just got a chunk of something."
B "It's probably sugar or cream."
C "Really?"
B "No. Mom bought it for us, so it's probably just a chunk of healthiness."
C "I like the kind Oma and Opa get for us. That has chunks of sugar."

I was commenting to someone about Coyote, that his current interests would predict a future of opera and baseball.
"Hard to see how those would combine."
"Not really," I said. And I suddenly had a vision, as if I were there, on the astro-turf, singing in his baseball opera. And then, I dove head first in to it: I actually improvised a segment of that opera to my Real Estate Agent and the Inspector's Wife! What I was thinking, I cannot imagine. I think, now in retrospect, that I was not thinking at all. In my falsetto opera voice, I belted out a tune about how I was hitting the ball, it popped straight up, and then the tragedy laid me low, low, low down. It was a foul ball.

Certainly, there is no market for this.

In some regard, I wish you could have been there. In other ways, I'm very glad you weren't. And now I will brag for a second: it was REALLY FUNNY!!! And I am not the only adult that thought so. But it's always hard puzzle out what people are laughing at: me or the opera? But at least they didn't stand there, in silent shock. Huck and the kids loved it and keep demanding that I do it over and over again. And because I continue to play the fool, I am telling you about it.

And then there was this funny little cherry on top: someone asked me if I taught our kids music lessons! I have never been accused of having an iota of musical ability. But she disagreed. That's my fake opera voice, I noted, THAT can carry a tune, but not my real voice. My real singing voice will be taped and played back to us all in hell. That is what my real singing voice was made for.

What I want?

The impossible: to name your desire. This is the hardest part of house shopping.
What do I want? The agent asks me.
What do I want? I repeat, incredulous.
Do I get that? It's always seemed like such a pointless exercise. Why imagine it? Why want it? Why create the suffering of wanting what does not exist and what I can never have? Why begin such a path of pain and disappointment?
This is where my mind resides. This neuro pathway is practically worn through. I think I need a new one.

So what do I want in a house? I tried to write it all out. But some things I simply couldn't even write down: too fantastic, too absurd to even imagine it all coming together.

What do I want in a house? It sounds as shallow as finger nail polish. But it cuts to the core of values and identity. Country? City? Easy payments with more money left for fun stuff? Hard payments with nothing left over? Cookie cutter construction or an individual stamp? Do you want to make that stamp or accept someone else's?

Most of the stuff we've looked at is slopped up old crap with asbestos siding sliding off into a yard full of garbage. One squat little shanty looked like a disembodied mental illness had simply taken over the entire acreage. In another house, the renters hadn't washed the dishes in months and didn't even try to hide the four foot bong in the living room. Well, I'd probably be taking as many drugs as possible too, if I had to mow the green shag in my living room every week and eat in a kitchen over run with red and yellow plaid tiles.

There was a pretty nice place, but the living room was as big as our current bathroom. Everything else in that house was enoromous, but we're not a family that likes huge private spaces and no public space. This means that every conversation or interaction would take place on some one's turf. A family needs a no man's land, where there is no mine and yours, but a space that allows an ours and an us.

Of course, if I did, perchance, find Paradise, a paradise beyond my meager imaginings, a paradise with all the things I couldn't bring my un-presumptious, un-entitled self to write down on my list of wants... If I did find such a thing and if I did make an offer on such a thing, I probably wouldn't tell you until everything was in place. Real Estate deals are known to careen off their rickety tracks in ugly, painful crashes. I'd opt for silence until everything fell into place, even the keys.

Success, raging success, can make some of use feel horrifically guilty. It's hard for me to tell my friends about anything truly wonderful that I do or experience. The sting of jealousy and the guilt of not being able to give everyone everything they want and need (no one has ever accused guilt of being reasonable!) is worse for me than risking pity by broadcasting my troubles.

Perhaps the hardest part about blogging for me will not be the year of tribulations, but a year of jubilations. Can I share my joy with you? Can you understand that any joy I may have or may only dream of having is a joy I want for you, too? Is a joy that I wish I could bring in to your life? And if you can understand that, then my joy will increase as I share it. And your joy will too. If you sympathized with my plight, felt my pain, wondered what me and my family would do, then you also deserve to feel my joy and to share in that too, to let that shine on you and brighten at least a moment of your life.

The shit is going to be there. It is going to hit the fan. And we are going to be covered in it. It's inevitable. The fear, the ugliness, the wreck, the death, the tragedy. And this means that the joy must be revelled in all the more. With intention and determination, we commit ourselves to happiness when the sun breaks through the clouds. After all this, we owe it to the light to give it our full attention as well.


I am in Salem tonight, picking up the kids from their spring break in my parent's fabulous new house. So modern! So beautiful! And my mother's job at the capitol? So fancy! So much energy and passion in that marble and brassy place. But it looks like a Mormon temple with that burly brass man on top, the Angel of Logging.

And the kids? They are genuinely sick of each other after a week of no other kids. And so, I am going to buckle them into a car tomorrow, side by side and drive for 7 hours. We may survive, Lord willing, as they say. But when we get out of that car, I am determined to revel in peace and freedom for at least as long as we were cooped up.