Is Oregon Actually "Ruined?"

Sitting and listening to Nameless Agent -- Crazy Nameless Agent, you know who I mean -- ranting in my boss's office about how we didn't actually "ruin" the state of Oregon by clearcutting all its timber did we?  He keeps repeating this question, having already made very clear what answer he wants, asking if Boss is going to claim that we "ruined" -- complete with bunny-ears -- the state of Oregon.  Is it really "ruined"? 

His nuttiness is of the type that needs to mention any fact or memory or bit of history connected to whatever he is saying, which makes him very annoying and frustrating to talk with, because unless you interrupt his ever-louder stream of rapid-fire free-association, (by shouting) he never gets to the end of whatever question he is asking, or point he is trying to make.  I am trying to ignore the flood of what is now yelling coming out of the office, but it is difficult, because my name keeps coming up.

For something more to eat

Here's the thing about sushi.  It never renders you full.  You never get that feeling of maxed-out-ness that accompanies the eating of almost any other meal.  My usual lunch is a sandwich or a burrito.  And if I ate two of either of those things, I would be groaning with discomfort, and would probably be unable to finish the second one.  So you see what I mean.  But I ate a large tray of sushi for lunch today -- silly waste of money, although delicious -- and I am still fighting off the feeling that there should be at least that much more.  I am not full.   I am neither physically full, as to stomach, nor is my sense of hunger assuaged.  I keep looking around, mentally, for something more to eat. 

Not well-planned

Hey, it is 99 degrees out there.  Right now, at six in the evening, in Portland, Oregon, it is 99 degrees. Ninety-nine degrees!  I guess I should be thanking heaven fasting that it didn't make it up to the predicted 105.  But I'm not, I am feeling, ridiculously, full of outrage and indignation, and like complaining loudly to someone.  But that's just it, see.  There is no one to complain to.  No one can do anything about it.  Whereas humankind can, in certain herky-jerky ways, affect the weather, or in other long-term, far-in-the-distance ways, can maybe-hopefully arrest a trend, but about days like this?  Hot summer days where people in apartments with no air conditioning can actually die?  NO ONE CAN DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT. 

Humph.  This was NOT well-planned.

Fat

The Iowa State Fair is running currently, and the most popular of the fifty-something varieties of deep-fried food on a stick? Is deep fried butter on a stick. Yup, frozen butter that is dipped in batter and deep fried, then covered with honey sauce and eaten with rapture by the fair attendees, who claim that it is "out of this world."

Uhhhh.... Okay.  I am not certain how I ought to react to this news.  My immediate, real reaction is one of repugnance.  "Eww, gross!"  my inner child says, with her face all twisted up.  Melty and greasy and run-all-over-your-clothes-y!  I cannot imagine it tasting even edible, much less like "a hot, soft cinnamon roll." 

I shudder to think of the horribly soft, fat, oleaginous bodies that people who ate deep-fried butter regularly would have.  And I say that with an open eye to the strident, fat-acceptance people who think that we should all embrace fatness as an acceptable human look.  Which, being a lifelong fat person myself, and very deeply ingrained with both resentment at the way the world works in relation to fatness, and with guilt and despair (buried deep, but still faintly fluttering) at my evil sinful laziness in "choosing to be fat," I am both sensitive to, and contemptuous of. 

I don't even want to get into all the different ways in which fatness affects our world, both in its prevalence and in its lack.  Girls killing themselves -- literally -- to avoid it.  People without any fat-making genes, apparently, sneering delicately with faint horror at the rest of us who put on a few ounces from smelling the caramel-popcorn booth. Men, whose bodies do not stockpile fat, since they will never have to bear a child during a famine, (which is presumably what my body is telling itself is about to happen) making casual judgments on the desirability as a partner, as a co-worker, or even as a human being, of an overweight woman.  But let's just accept that I know, and understand, every single way of looking at this problem, from every direction, and with every ramification.  I got that disapproval from my father, my mother, my husband, and my doctors. In different ways from all of them, of course.  Also from saleswomen, from casual friends, and from my sisters.  Everyone in the country, apparently, has an opinion which needs to be expressed, because for heaven's sake, I must be blind to the problem, since otherwise I couldn't possibly allow myself to be so fat!

In any case, I said I didn't want to get into that, but there I was, getting all into it.  Apologies!

Joe's First Job

My son Joe has a job, at last, at last, at long, long, last.  I am so happy.  Almost as worried, instantly, as I am happy, but that isn't fair, to him or to me, so I am going to knock that off right now.  Knockin'.

He is working at Jiffy Lube, which is a very first-job sort of job, but then this is his first job, so that is fine, isn't it?  Yes, it is.

Ex-Wife Syndrome

I have always been afraid of sounding like an Ex-Wife.  You know what I mean.  There are so many of them, and they all say the same thing, roughly: "I loved him, I trusted him, and I married him; he used me, he betrayed me, and he lied to me; men are all scum, and who needs them!"

Since I always feel the Ex-Wife lurking in the back of the room when anyone asks about my Ex-Husband, I have always been unwilling, afraid, self-conscious about describing life with him.  No-one, I think to myself, is going to get it.  Everyone is going to assume I am exaggerating, am twisting the story, am making him sound worse than he was, even if just for the pleasure of a well-rounded story line.  I don't think that any of my friends, with the exception of my sister Ruth, will one-hundred-per-cent-ed-ly believe what I have to say.  They will, privately and kindly, reserve judgment.  Because, well, after all.  I am the Ex-Wife.

So, therefore, and because of which, I do not.  I use vague phrases which everyone will get the gist of, and say things like -- "Well, he used drugs, and he was abusive to me, and he cheated on me, and he spent all my money," and let it go at that.

But I was just reading another blog post, written by a young man -- well, a man about my age, I guess, -- who had worked for Michael at the Art Museum.  While Michael was holding his brief position there.  I remember him too, vaguely -- but I don't know his name, so let's call him Chip.

Chip had been fired, at Michael's behest, and he had also been the "ringleader," albeit reluctantly, for the guards, in their protest against the treatment they were receiving from the management at Michael's hands.  And he is both a humorous man, (though fairly self-absorbed, but hey, it was a blog.  Where else are you allowed?) and a good writer.  And Chip had written a careful, detailed and lengthy description of what working for Michael was like.  And it was remarkable to read.  Both for its power to bring back those memories, which I have not put in the player for years, and for the degree to which he saw Michael.  He spent some time thinking about him -- and why not? -- and he got him.  (He was still making the mistake I made, and that is, attributing these behaviors to an imaginary fundamentally normal man.  And that is the thing.  Michael is fundamentally abnormal, and sees the world from a different vantage point than all the rest of us.  In Michael's view, it is Michael's World that he sees.  We all live in Michael's World.  Not in The World.)

In spite of that, however, he also saw Michael from the point of view of someone who was used to bad behavior in people.  Used to people who drank too much and misbehaved, who used drugs and saw the world through them, who broke the law and might get caught.  (Very different from me and my silly, wide-eyed, love-is-a-many-splendored-thing viewpoint.) And even from this viewpoint, from this place in the cold, hard world, Michael stood out to him as a Bad Guy.  Michael hadn't stolen from him, cheated on him, kept him awake for hours in the night yelling at him, but he still recognized that Michael was a Bad 'Un.  He hadn't had a gun shoved up against his head, while Michael loomed over him, weeping and grinding his teeth with fury and sweating great drops onto him, but he still saw Michael as a Bad Man.  This I also found remarkable, and very comforting.  Very.  And not because I don't believe it myself, or doubt my own point of view, or anything like that, good heavens, no.  But because I know I cannot describe it in any way that people are going to absolutely get.  Because I am the Ex-Wife.

And I believe this is where I came in.

I can WRITE and I can also READ

You know, I gotta say, I am getting more and more annoyed at the symbols instead of words on any kind of sign.  Though even as I write those words I am assailed by a feeling that I may merely be getting older.  Old people don't like things to change.  But just now I opened my blog page to write an entry about something completely different, and found that since my last post (which, admittedly, has been about a month -- bad me!) the directions on the page had changed, so that I looked bewilderedly about and settled, gingerly, on the picture of a pen.  Which in my past experience with this site, is the symbol used to denote "edit".  So how do you now symbolize "edit", oh, Great Blogger?  Is this the way of the world?  Is EVERYONE assumed to be illiterate, even the people who are WRITING things?  Do you feel the need to let the WRITERS know, by pictograph, (in case they can't read the word "write")  that this is where they do their writing?  I object!  I don't mind if every sign on the dang-nab street is symbolized all to hell, but when you are showing the WRITERS where they do their writing, you might just as well use WORDS!

(pant, pant)

And now I have forgotten what I wanted to write about.  You see what you did?