Come One, Come All!

"And then I'm going to go and get lunch in one of these gorgeous new restaurants!"

Said I to my sister Ruthie on the phone this morning.  Well, and I didn't make the lunch date with myself, but I have merely shifted the time back to dinner, and I will go and get some food in one of these lovely new restaurants in a few hours.

What I did instead of lunch was a glorious two-hour nap, from which I awoke with no sign of bleariness or the pop-eyed catatonia which is usually my fate when my naps last longer than half an hour.  See, I awoke this morning at four, as per usual lately, and was unable to go back to sleep at all, so I got up and made myself coffee and started in on the house.  And I had finished it -- FINISHED IT! -- before ten.  Ten was when I heard the first sounds in the apartment of anyone else getting up.  Not a sound from upstairs or next door until then, so I had perfect peace -- the occasional car driving past out on the road, the occasional chirp from the walnut tree outside the window.  Six hours of beautiful, solitary progress.  Oh, and I took my time, as anyone who knows me knows.  My inherent laziness and general fatness and sloth keeps me from passing an inviting chair if my back has begun to ache.  And I had several cups of tea as the morning progressed, and read the rest of a book I had started reading last night, and so on.   I listened to Nero Wolfe on tape as I folded clothes away into plastic bags for the Goodwill pick-up, stacked shoes into the shoe bag,  scrubbed at a stain on the carpet, and hung the shower curtain around the clawfoot.

So now I am ready to receive visitors!  Come one, come all!  I am expecting Doug and Kathy tomorrow, Alan and Jody the day after, and POSSIBLY Joe and Katt and Jamey this afternoon sometime.  Probably not those last visitors, though.  Hard to believe that Joe will actually drive into Northwest Portland!

I'm BACK!

Goodness me, I am so happy.

I know, I've said that a lot lately.  But I really, really am.

I just wrote a letter this morning, to a friend from Cannon Beach, and for a moment --  as I was picturing her walking down to that sweet little shingle-covered post office, with her hair being blown around her face with a chilly ocean-scented breeze under the brilliant sun -- I missed living on the coast.  I missed the ocean, and the beach, and the never-changing in and out of the tides.

But!  I am now living in the best and brightest, most hip and happening neighborhood in the city, and paying less for it than I paid for a place in the dullest and deadest backwater suburb of them all.  I am surrounded by buzz and cheer and people's voices, by laughter and visiting and freshly-brewed coffee, by books and newspapers available everywhere, restaurants of every description absolutely clogging up the sidewalks, and more people than anyone could count.  I am home, and safe, and free and myself again.  I can walk to anywhere I want to go -- and will be, I promise you!  This weekend I am not going to allow myself to be lazy in the apartment, or get busy in Beaverton -- I am going to walk around the neighborhood, and see what is still there (Besaws!) and what is new (The Matador!) and I am going to sit outside at least one place sipping coffee and people watching.

Man, I need a laptop!  But someday.  For now, I will just write with a pen on a notebook page.

I try to be my best

This morning as I was getting ready to come to work, I realized that I had still not found my shoes -- none of my "regularly used" shoes, which got left to the last minute, and so had to be somewhere in a box or bag,  probably on top.  I looked around -- and then looked more closely -- and then began to search, burrowing into each bag and digging down into each box.  The mess increased exponentially.  I stuck my feet in my ratty working shoes to go out to the car, which must be where they still were, right?  Nope.  

Then I came back in and worried.  You do have to wear shoes at work, and you do have to wear appropriate shoes on a day when your boss and other people are going to be having a meeting in your office.  I finally reached for my library book bag, which was standing neatly at the head of the bed, untouched since it was surely too small for more than one pair of shoes.  But no, four pairs were carefully packed into that small interior, plus my camera cord, a small box containing safety pins, and a bottle of ibuprofen.  The treasures of Ali Baba! Carefully wedged into the bag I carry to the library. 

Victory!

So. Very. Happy.

Okay -- it's the first of the month, and you know what that means.  It means that I had to be out of my apartment last night, come what may, come what might. And I DID IT!  Calloo, Callay!

But I could not have done it in anything like the degree of efficiency, if it weren't for my downstairs neighbor, Mary.  She stood and patiently wrapped small random glass and china articles that kept showing up in the corner of cupboards or the back of shelves, as I plodded up and down, up and down, with box and basket.  And she was the one who opened the coat closet door, as I was coming back up for a final check of the rooms, to reveal it full of coats, hats, scarves, gloves and a broken fan.  I wasn't very excited about that at the time, but now I imagine (with happy relief) the surprise and distress of looking around for my winter coat when the snow starts falling, and I'm very glad.

So, my new apartment is a happy disaster, as you can well imagine, especially after I sifted through four or five anonymous black plastic garbage bags this morning, looking for my black work pants.  I finally had to be satisfied with wearing blue jeans to work today, but fortunately, no one has come to the office for the past few days.  So we'll hope for the best!

Now this morning, I got up at five-thirty, not from any need, but because I was wide awake -- gonna have to re-program myself over the next few weeks -- and did some very desultory putting away of things.  Which is to say, that I put books on two shelves and some band-aids in the bathroom.  I headed out at seven, to see if I could get in my call on the new credit union (my old one required me to live in Clackamas County) and a stop at Food Front for a bus pass.  

(Hmmm -- spell check does not accept the word "Clackamas" and suggests that I really want "blackamoors."  Don't think so.)

But the credit union was reacting to construction on their building by opening half an hour later than usual, and Food Front doesn't open until 8 anyway, I observed.  So I went ahead and caught the number 15, and rode it all the way here!  Around the corner from my door, to three blocks from work!  Pretty darn good.

So now -- let me just say this out loud -- I live in Northwest  once again.  I never have to drive down Hwy 224 again in my life, unless I want to.  I am tired and my eyes are sunken, I have 34 visible bruises and six blisters, and three cuts.  But I am very, very happy.

Two-level conversation

It's funny -- I'm in the office (air-conditioned, thank GOD) and listening to the two speakers-of-Russian in the large conference room.  They are having, as far as I know, (I don't speak Russian even a tiny bit), a conversation.  But it doesn't sound like a conversation, because both of them are speaking at once.  And not in any sort of loud, trying-to-top-the-other sort of voices -- both in totally conversational voices, as if both were talking on the phone to someone else, or to two other people who were just never responding.  But I have walked by twice, just to check, and they are talking to one another.  Not looking at one another, much, mostly looking at the documents they are discussing.  But both mouths moving ALL THE TIME.

Quietly and in a nice voice

Boy, yesterday was quite a day.  Much too hot, which sort of drew a veil over everything, you know what I mean.  I still ended up enjoying myself, but it was iffy for awhile there.

But I am not going to tell you the whole saga of the day, because that will be boring and uncomfortable.  Instead I will tell you one brief story which happened right after class.

I was hurrying through Albertsons, looking to grab a pint of whipping cream and get the hell out.  I was headed to Dina's for dinner that night, and was making a banana cream pie.  As soon as I came in through the automatic doors, I heard the noise.  Like a distant piece of machinery or a freeway, or something.  But as I went down the aisle, it became clear.  It was a very familiar sound in grocery stores -- a child, about two, crying loudly and with forethought.  This one was a girl, who was making herself cry, and at great volume.  She wasn't hurling herself about in the grocery cart seat, or grabbing at things, or any other destructive behavior, but she was shrieking and crying at length and LOUDLY.

When I came into view of her, I saw that her parents, who were both there, were quite young, maybe 22 or 23, and were talking quietly to one another and entirely ignoring their steam-whistle daughter.  They were also ignoring the dirty looks they were getting from older patrons, who, I'm certain, were thinking that these young folks nowadays were just so used to this behavior that they couldn't even hear their poor little baby girl, who was just crying her eyes out, besides upsetting all the decent, responsible customers who had raised their children right.  None of this yelling carry-on.

As I was rounding the corner away from them, the little girl began to speak, all at the top of her lungs, and through her sobs.

"I wanna say I'm sorry!" she howled, at top volume.  "I wanna say I'm sorry -- I WANNA say I'm SORRY!  I wanna say I'm SORRY...!"

Her mother leaned in towards her scarlet face.

"Yes, sweetie, but there's a rule about saying sorry, isn't there?" she said quietly.  "Do you know what it is?"

I was down the next aisle by now and couldn't see her any longer, but the volume was turned up to eleven, so I didn't miss a note.

"Qui-Et-Ly!"  the small girl bellowed.  "And in a nice voice!"

Me? Or The Mother?

Oh, boy -- I don't know where to begin this story.  Perhaps like this: I still don't know where being a mother and being me intersect or overlap, and when the one has to give way to the other.  I still feel guilty when Me wants to take over from The Mother.  Last night was a good example of this.

(By the way -- this has all been apologized for and tempers have calmed -- so I am not holding it against anyone.  I know that my son has a volatile and very big subterranean lake of rage waiting for anything to drop in so it can erupt.  And while I do not enjoy this, I can understand it.)

I got home and found my apartment very unwelcoming.  Joe was shouting angrily, the standard fan was lying in pieces on the floor, it was hot and there was food and bags and what-not strewn here and there, and Catt, Joe's girlfriend, was on the couch in tears.

The reason for all this was a contretemps with Joe's bank, in which a deposit he had made, and for which he had the receipt, was being denied to have ever taken place.  Several checks had bounced, as a result of this, one of which was his insurance payment check.  And he had a court appearance the next day, in which he was supposed to show proof of insurance.

Those are the bones of the situation, but I had to hear over and over the fury that had resulted, the hopelessness of Joe's position, the manner in which he needed to assassinate the bank manager and any other people who might get in the way, and how he was not going to be incarcerated for their incompetence.  Why hadn't someone let him know this was happening?  Why hadn't anyone at the bank or the insurance agency or any of the other check recipients given him a call?  Now he was going to be jailed for 90 days because the bank had stolen $480 from him, and there was nothing he could do about it in time for his court appearance, which was the next morning at 9 am!  And so on, and on, and on.

Now, my first, and immediate, and strong reaction was to get him OUT of my house -- out, out, out!  I do not like yelling, or threats, or cursing -- if rage is being expressed, it had better be expressed in a reasonable way, and even then, I don't like listening.  That is Me.  But The Mother -- she has to show sympathy and support and affection and assistance.  I mean, right?

So this went on for awhile.  Catt calmed down, Joe spiraled up and down and up and down for awhile, but as I was starting to lose my patience, the next thing happened.  Joe had begun looking at his court paperwork to make sure of his scheduled time of appearance, and saw that it had been scheduled for that day, not the next day.  So he had already missed it, even though he had been behaving himself so well, and planning to attend, and getting ready for it, and all -- because he had been thinking "the sixth" instead of "the fifth" he was now well and truly screwed.  A bench warrant had been issued for his arrest, and he was headed for jail.

Merciful Heavens.  The uproar.  I fled before it, and went to my room, where I sat on the bed with a book, and Catt wept in the living room, and Joe shouted and stormed up and down the hall.

So now, after Joe has calmed down and apologized, and become cheerful, and made some sort of plan, (don't know what it is, and my phone has died, so cannot text him a question) I am still feeling guilty and secretly unfit to be a mother.  If I were a decent mother, I would have flown to the defense of my child, and whipped up a plan to smuggle Joe out of the country to my contacts in Mexico, right?  Instead of which, I just wanted him to stop yelling.