All Things Profane and Sacred

2009-02-27T15:56:00.001-08:00

Yep, still alive and doing well. All that cider is doing pretty good too-we drank 7 gallons, have 5 gallons of hard cidar waiting to be bottled and 5 gallons of apple cidar vinegar. Very nice.

Currently working on pruning the apple trees-they're big, beautiful and massively overgrown, which is probably why I don't have any grass in my front lawn. I've been pruning on good weather weekends for the last month, and have a pile of brush as big as a walmart superstore, but I still need to get the bigger branches and stuff that is over 8 feet high. On the upside, I've got rippling shoulder muscles from all the reaching with the pruning shears.

Hopefully once I bring some light in, and with a little help from our compost, we can get some veggies going. This year we're hoping to at least have zucchinis, peas, tomatoes and some herbs. J is builing a food dehydrator with some people from down on the farm, so we'll do our first batch of dried food along with the jam we can from our blackberries and gleaned strawberries.

We're just finishing the last of our frozen blueberries, the jam, alas, is all gone. And I still have damn frozen zucchini-I got lazy and fat with the breadmaking. So next year-more jam, less frozen zucchini (more dried zucchini!). Man oh Man am I glad to see winter leaving again.

I've been burried in the blues at work. My managing attorney has been gone, so it has just been me, the little lonely rural attorney chipping away at my hopeless cases and hopeless causes. I've been trying to feel something for all the newly poor who are just now discovering how much life sucks, but I'm finding it real hard to be sympathetic for those who just discovered that the easy life raking in government benefits is just a figment of Rush Limbaugh's imagination. On the other hand, I have actual job security, at least for the near future, so I'm currently one of the privileged few. Hard to remember that when I had .66 cents in my checking account all last week, but there it is.

Slowly making the damn hell wedding preparations. Got my half of the invitations out. If you haven't recieved one, you're on J's list and you can go ask him where your invite is. Don't call me about it. Acutally, things are going pretty smoothly and are pretty well in order. We've just got a few finishing touches and we'll be set. Thinking happy weather thoughts. And calm blue ocean.

2008-11-06T13:19:00.000-08:00

Life has been rolling pretty fast these last few months. Sending the intern back to school. Busily working away. Getting the apples processed (17 gallons of cidar). Election night nail biter. Wedding preparations. Car troubles. Buckets of rain, buckets of tears. Too much to write about, especially since my time is short.

2008-07-25T14:12:00.001-07:00

The office is dead quiet today. The court docket shows that only 1 (of 4) judges is actually sitting on the bench today-everyone else seems to have skaddaddled. In the last week, we've had about 1/4 of the calls we usually get, and I've got no new stuff-just all the stuff I've been sucessfully procrastinating on. Gotta keep my eyelids propped up until 5-what to do, hearing prep, despite having no return calls from witnesses? Or call the hospital and do the phone circle? Or blog and read blogs, email home, look out the window and burn some comp time while waiting for the Friday afternoon emergency to walk through the door? I'd enjoy this downtime a bit more if it weren't for the bored intern sitting in the office next to me-gotta be a role model for the next generation and all that.

Went out to Alsea Falls last weekend and camped overnight. We didn't have a destination in mind when we set out, so we were traveling light. The spot we found was drive in camping and had its share of the usual weirdos who need to bring a generator and their xbox when camping. We pulled in and snapped up the last spot at about 5 pm, which isn't so shabby. $10 for the spot and $5 got us an armful of firewood. The next morning we got up and it was an easy hike to the falls. Since everyone else was still hazily poking about their campsite, we had the falls to ourselves. It felt good to finally do some exploring of the coastal range, outside our own little home. Hopefully we'll do some more before the cold comes.

We're already getting ready for winter-bugging the landlord about finally fixing the damn roof, getting in firewood, fixing up cars, canning preserves, etc. Still, it's beautiful today, blue sky, clear water, and, um, piney pines. I can't friggen wait for the weekend to start.

2008-06-30T09:11:00.001-07:00

Well, somehow a few months have slipped by me again. Life just keeps rolling along, dogs, J, money problems, work, home. We bought a kiddy pool this weekend, so I'm looking forward to filling it up and sitting in it in the not too distant future. Meanwhile it's Monday morning, it's overcast and I have a busy goddamn week. 4 days, oh lord.

2008-02-28T09:13:00.000-08:00

Man, oh man, I'm not sure where February has gone. January neither for that matter. Our woodpile is looking pretty depleted, but it hasn't been too chilly mostly. The sun is starting to feel warm again and is actually out once and a while.

J is officially a green collar worker, having spent the last couple of months working in a fab shop on a large organic/sustainable farming operation over in the valley. They're also paying for some of his schooling, so he's pretty happy.

The cars are up and down, mostly down. The big old green beast had a steady stream of problems, which cumulated in the turbo charger pooping out. Of course this happened just outside of Eugene, about an hour's drive from our house. We took the backroads home, since we couldn't get it up over 35 mph. It was on a dark windy mountain road that a car started trailing us. We didn't have room to pull over for a few miles. When we finally were able to pull off the road to let them by, the bastard hit his lights and we realized it was the fuzz at our bumper.

I realized as soon as the lights flashed just how suspicious we looked. While we were dinking with the car in Eugene, I got a raging headache, so I had the seat cranked down. We were passing a bottle of OJ back and forth. We didn't think to turn off NPR, so Dead Air was playing when he walked up to our window. He let us go and we limped the car the rest of the way home.

So I spent a few weeks piloting a borrowed 5 speed truck, which drives just a little differently than the VW. I suppose now I really know how to drive stick. Now J has resurrected the beast that we bought last summer, which mostly starts. On days when it doesn't start, I drive him in to Corvallis and pick him up after work. Long days, oh lord.

2008-01-07T12:59:00.000-08:00

Well, the only good thing about having the political season upon us is knowing that GWB's days in office are numbered. Of course, we'll all be living with his legacy (debt, bad/dumb unending warS, larger government, less civil rights, a sunken economy, etc. etc. etc) for years to come. In Oregon I don't get a vote in either party's primary, which doesn't make sense to me-wouldn't you think that major parties would want to know which candidate non-affiliated voters want to vote for? Isn't the purpose of a primary or caucus to figure out which candidate has the most support and is most likely to win? And doesn't winnability have more to do with how much support from the nation as whole, rather than just the support of party hacks. I mean, I understand the risks of open primaries, but closed primaries are just dumb. Anyway, I guess it'll just suck to be me if we had a Clinton/Huckabee choice in the upcoming election, but then again, it would also really suck for everyone else.

2007-12-28T18:56:00.000-08:00

Well, my resolution to blog more has really taken a tumble. I think it would be a different story if I had access to the internets at home, but alas, the prices for middle of nowhere mountain top internet far exceed what we are ready, willing and able to pay.

One big change-a few nights ago, J told me that he really did not want to be called J on my blog anymore. He does not like it when people meet him and say, "Oh, you're J!" or when people who know his name call him J. He has told me that he prefers the pseudonym Jackass. So, Jackass it is. Feel free to call him that whenever you see him, I guess.

This has been another hard month, in a series of hard months. Jackass lost his job for refusing to work off the clock. Our cars have been hit and miss (I'm blogging because it is 7 pm and I'm still at work because my car won't start and Jackass isn't answering the phone). Our reserves are low and we need more firewood. My clients are driving me crazy. It makes me feel bad to so badly want to strangle people who have serious disabilities, but there you have it.

It was a skinny Xmas, but we had warm flannel sheets from my mom and his, as well as cozy blankets. We slept until noon, smoked up (those Walmart gift cards are at least good for trade purposes) and continued sleeping intermittantly while watching movies. I hope New Years will be the same, but Jackass badly needs to get out and shake his ass and pound some drinks. I don't much think that'll happen in Blodgett, but maybe the Grange Hall in Summit will have something festive.

2007-12-03T08:23:00.000-08:00

Well, I made it to Wisconsin. A friend who was heading up to Portland kindly gave me a ride up to my Friday meeting. On Saturday, I took a cab out to the airport. The cabbie, a rockabilly kid with a fedora, told me that I was flying out just ahead of the storm-SuperSweet! I landed in Minneapolis to make my connection to Milwaukee. We got on our plane. The captain assured us that we'd be taking off, though running late for de-icing. We de-iced. We got in line on the runway. Then he told us, "Folks, I got some bad news."

So, I answered the burning question, "Who the fuck takes their vacation in Wisconsin in December during the first major snowstorm of the year?" But luckily, I have family just over the boarder from Minneapolis, so I was able to take a shuttle over by them, have a shower, fresh clothes, food, weed, sleep in a bed and generally freshen up overnight before flying on to Milwaukee the next morning.

The point of my whole unplanned winter vacation was to visit my great-grandma. Nana hasn't been doing too well, and I wanted to make sure I got at least one last visit. Plus she's just been taken out of her home of many years to get assessed and see what she needs are and she hasn't been happy about it. I was given a huge blessing-she was in fine form and we had a great time visiting and talking. I hope this isn't the last peak before the big decline, but a permanent improvement. Only time will tell.

2007-11-27T09:33:00.000-08:00

Between weather and cars, I am going insane. It seems like if one of our cars is working, the other isn't. Or if both the cars are working, the wash machine or hot water heater is exploding or freezing or some such.

We've also got some nasty weather out here. A lot of practice sessions with the car and the stick and the rolling backwards downhill got canceled over the holiday weekend due to freezing fucking rain. Last night I couldn't see my headlights heading home and the car behind me kept turning his lights off and on. When I could finally pull over to make sure my lights were actually working, 30 stressful minutes later, I could see front and back lights, but back on the black mountain road with rain screaming down I couldn't see 5 feet in front of the car. On the last hill I was sure my lights had gone because I couldn't see a damn thing and kept praying that no one would rear end me or try to turn into me. When I limped into the driveway, I could see my lights, so they were actually on, but doing me no friggen good.

This morning was my first day driving the bug in to work. I made it and parked it without stalling out or whatever, so that is good. We'll see how the trip home goes. I'm terribly nervous, because I have a meeting in PDX on Friday. I can't drive the old green gal because she has a short in her system and the battery goes dead. So, a shiftin' I will go into the morning rush hour traffic downtown and then out of the evening rush hour traffic. Hope I survive.

Then on Saturday I have to fly out really friggen early in the morning to frozen old Wisconsin. I'm not sure how all this traveling will work out. I'm still trying to figure out if I can keep from stopping on an uphill slope between here and there. Fingers crossed.

2007-11-02T15:58:00.000-07:00

I'm back to the house after a week long work thing in Portland. Work put me up at a hotel downtown, so I was within walking distance to just about everything. It was really nice, after these many months of driving 40 minutes in to work or the grocery store, or anywhere else you want/need to be, to be able to walk 5 minutes and buy stumptown coffee and then walk another 5 minutes and be at work. I also got to ride the Max a couple of times, which is awesome. You can actually go wizzing by all the cars that are frozen on the highway while you laugh manically. I really love Portland. If I do decide to move back to a city, Portland is where I want to be.

Still, it was good to get back to the animals and home and J. While things are hard and shitty and difficult right now, and not just for the usual financial reasons, I'm still hanging on the mountain.

2007-10-21T10:24:00.000-07:00

Yea-I'm blogging from my laptop. My poor laptop was out of commission for about a year without a cord. With no internet, there wasn't much point in getting the cord. But today I'm blogging from Portland and the sweet internet is flowing like butter.

It's been a hard month of ups and downs-lots of downs. October is usually my favorite month and the mountains are full of smokey crisp blazing glory-cool snappy mornings and warm brandy afternoons. But this month I've been sickly and worried. Our bank account has bottomed out. What to do?

But J is working again this last week, and although the wages are shit, it sounds like he will be getting a raise soon, and we don't really need lots of money, just some time where we both have a job, goddammit.

We had J's grand-nephew out at the mountain last weekend. We picked him up in Eugene and took him rambling on the coast. He was a blur of swinging arms and legs and sand and waves. All in all, a beautiful day at the beach.

Yesterday was J's birthday. Thanks to some help from my mom, I was able to take him to Portland Center Stage for Cabaret. It was a great show, lots of fun and nearly nekkid folks running around for our pleasure.

Shit. Just as I was finishing this post, my screen went black. Computer would not come on as long as the power cord was plugged in. It would come on if cord was unplugged, but it went black almost as soon as it came on. Before shutting down, I was able to confirm that the battery is low. What the fuck?

2007-10-12T10:29:00.000-07:00

So, J is trying to teach me how to drive stick. He tells me not to worry too much about the clutch-he expects to have to put a new one in after I've mangled this one. Still, I'm having problems with the car either pooping out or charging forward all out of control and crazy like. I also forget which gear I'm in, and have to look down at the gearshift and try to figure out where to go from there, which means I'm not looking at the road. Oh, and yesterday, as I tried to shift from second to third, I accidently shifted into first, which the car did not like at all. The whole thing just makes me really nervous-I don't want the transmission to drop out of the car onto the road, but it sounded really close yesterday. If anyone sees an Orange VW Super Beetle driving up and down Old Blodgett Road making a hidous noise and smelling like burning clutch, give me a wide berth, would you?

2007-10-08T16:13:00.001-07:00

It's been a shitty couple of weeks. I had this horrible cold that I just couldn't shake that is still draining the life out of me. We've had problems with our water heater, problems with bill collectors and problems with insurance companies. I want to nap out for about a week or so and then completely reorganize my life into something saner and more manageable. I know we'll pull through, but I'm feeling down and blue.

2007-09-21T09:59:00.000-07:00

I'm a lonely girl up on the mountain again. J is picking up some stage crew work on a variety of shows (the bastard is doing the Smashing Pumpkins show tonight at the Clark County Ampitheater), which means I've been fending for myself this week. It's actually nice to have some alone time-we've both been getting a bit of cabin fever stuck on the mountain together. Still, I can't wait to have him back tommorrow, if only to get some hot sweet lovin'.

2007-09-14T12:41:00.000-07:00

We're battening down the hatches for winter, even though the September weather has been pretty fine. Luckily, we are less in the red this year than we were last year, so we have the time and money to get in a couple of cords of wood this weekend. We'll probably get another cord or two before it gets really cold out here. Get our lamps cleaned out and ready to go with fresh oil and wicks. Plastic over a few of our six (six!) crookedly hung doors and chink the rest of the cracks. Store away 20-40 gallons of fresh water and enough no bake food to get through the inevitable power outs. Can some blackberry jam and a shit load of apple jelly, apple sauce and apple butter. Paint the awful walls a nice warm color so it isn't as gray and grim as last year.

I think this winter we will be in better shape than last winter, although I'm hearing predictions that this winter will much longer and colder. Last winter, we got into the house in the last week of September, way too friggen broke to prepare for it. This winter, we can at least winterize and prepare for being without electric.

2007-09-04T16:05:00.000-07:00

I was doing some legal research today to drop the SJ bomb and ran accross an interesting concurrance by Justice Black in a case that fought back against the hysterical Commie witch hunts. It sounds like he just wrote it yesterday.

MR. JUSTICE BLACK, concurring.

Without notice or hearing and under color of the President's Executive Order No. 9835, the Attorney General found petitioners guilty of harboring treasonable opinions and designs, officially branded them as Communists, and promulgated his findings and conclusions for particular use as evidence against government employees suspected of disloyalty. In the present climate of public opinion it appears certain that the Attorney General's much publicized findings, regardless of their truth or falsity, are the practical equivalents of confiscation and death sentences for any blacklisted organization not possessing extraordinary financial, political or religious prestige and influence. The Government not only defends the power of the Attorney General to pronounce such deadly edicts but also argues that individuals or groups so condemned have no standing to seek redress in the courts, even though a fair judicial hearing might conclusively demonstrate their loyalty. My basic reasons for rejecting these and other contentions of the Government are in summary the following: [341 U.S. 123, 143]

(1) I agree with MR. JUSTICE BURTON that petitioners have standing to sue for the reason among others that they have a right to conduct their admittedly legitimate political, charitable and business operations free from unjustified governmental defamation. Otherwise, executive officers could act lawlessly with impunity. And, assuming that the President may constitutionally authorize the promulgation of the Attorney General's list, I further agree with MR. JUSTICE BURTON that this Court should not attribute to the President a purpose to vest in a cabinet officer the power to destroy political, social, religious or business organizations by "arbitrary fiat," and thus the methods employed by the Attorney General exceed his authority under Executive Order No. 9835.

(2) Assuming, though I deny, that the Constitution permits the executive officially to determine, list and publicize individuals and groups as traitors and public enemies, I agree with MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER that the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment would bar such condemnation without notice and a fair hearing. My views previously expressed under similar circumstances are relevant here. E. g., dissenting opinion in Ludecke v. Watkins, 335 U.S. 160, 173 ; and see In re Oliver, 333 U.S. 257 .

(3) More fundamentally, however, in my judgment the executive has no constitutional authority, with or without a hearing, officially to prepare and publish the lists challenged by petitioners. In the first place, the system adopted effectively punishes many organizations and their members merely because of their political beliefs and utterances, and to this extent smacks of a most evil type of censorship. This cannot be reconciled with the First Amendment as I interpret it. See my dissent in American Communications Assn. v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382, 445 . Moreover, officially prepared and proclaimed governmental [341 U.S. 123, 144] blacklists possess almost every quality of bills of attainder, the use of which was from the beginning forbidden to both national and state governments. U.S. Const., Art. I, 9, 10. It is true that the classic bill of attainder was a condemnation by the legislature following investigation by that body, see United States v. Lovett, 328 U.S. 303 , while in the present case the Attorney General performed the official tasks. But I cannot believe that the authors of the Constitution, who outlawed the bill of attainder, inadvertently endowed the executive with power to engage in the same tyrannical practices that had made the bill such an odious institution. 1
There is argument that executive power to issue these pseudo-bills of attainder can be implied from the undoubted power of the Government to hire and discharge employees and to protect itself against treasonable individuals or organizations. 2 Our basic law, however, wisely [341 U.S. 123, 145] withheld authority for resort to executive investigations, condemnations and blacklists as a substitute for imposition of legal types of penalties by courts following trial and conviction in accordance with procedural safeguards of the Bill of Rights. 3
In this day when prejudice, hate and fear are constantly invoked to justify irresponsible smears and persecution of persons even faintly suspected of entertaining unpopular views, it may be futile to suggest that the cause of internal security would be fostered, not hurt, by faithful adherence to our constitutional guarantees of individual liberty. Nevertheless, since prejudice manifests itself in much the same way in every age and country and since what has happened before can happen again, it surely should not be amiss to call attention to what has occurred when dominant governmental groups have been left free to give uncontrolled rein to their prejudices against unorthodox minorities. As specific illustration, I am adding as an appendix Macaulay's account of a parliamentary proscription which took place when popular prejudice was high; this is only one out of many similar [341 U.S. 123, 146] instances that readily can be found. 4 Memories of such events were fresh in the minds of the founders when they forbade the use of the bill of attainder.

2007-08-31T09:49:00.000-07:00

Last week I was thinking that this week would be busy and hellish, but several of my more time consuming cases settled or got otherwise resolved without a lot of effort on my end (joy for me, joy for my clients). So, it's been quiet around here for a change, which gives me a nice chance to clean out my paperwork strewn office, catch up on my reading and get my files organized.

I'm ready to be done at 10 am, but I can't leave the poverty stricken people of the world over the weekend, so here I am.

2007-08-22T10:01:00.000-07:00

Our struggle with the cars continues. We have J's 30 year old Mercedes, which needs shocks quite badly and probably won't start come winter, our new (to us) $500 Mercedes, which sucks gas and just needs some rust management work before we sell it, our Toyota, which needs, among other things, an exhaust manifold before winter.

We're hoping to finish up work on the new to us Mercedes by the end of next month. We have someone who will trade us some cash and another Toyota for the gas guzzling Mercedes. That way we would have two reliable winter cars and the ability to pull the old green gal off the road until we can give her some TLC.

And we finally got rid of J's stupid Nissa Stanza. It is a long tale, the finishment of that old money sucking whore. It was broke down in our driveway for the last 6 months. We finally got it running when a desparate friend needed to buy a piece of shit car. We were set to drive it up to Salem and to collect our $ when the damn thing blew a gasket. We babied it back to a parking lot, and moved it every few days while we tried to figure out whether to fix it and sell it (Js desire) or to junk it (mine). NPR refused it as a 'donation' and the junk yard refused to come out and pick it up, so we wearily decided to take it in, fix it and then sell it. Of course, upon deciding this, another part exploded in the sun, so we had to cajole, then threaten the junk yard. And faced with the possibility of losing our copious business, they relented and hauled the hose beast to its final resting place.

2007-08-16T09:39:00.001-07:00

I fixed my toilet with dental floss. The end of the arm that the chain that the little stopper thing is attached to rusted off. So, we couldn't flush without reaching into the back of the toilet and fishing out the chain. So I attached the chain to a piece of dental floss and attached the other end of the dental floss to the wall with a tack. Now you can flush by just pulling the dental floss. Voila.

2007-08-13T10:28:00.000-07:00

One of the nice things about living on the mountain is having real darkness at night. This weekend, we got up at 2 am Sunday to watch the meteor shower. We must have picked exactly the right time, because at about 4 am the clouds rolled in and our stars were gone.

2007-08-10T11:33:00.000-07:00

The weather has been beautiful; court and paperwork are not at the top of my priority list. Is there anything more sinful than a public service attorney home at 2 pm for a nap in the shade of an apple tree? Our green apples are turning pink in the sun and are almost sweet enough to harvest. Our adopted deer-the guy who was with mom last winter, but is now a swinging batchelor with fuzzy spikes-is pretty happy with the food supply. He no longer fears the dogs, so long as they are inside the only thing on his mind is procuring more delicious fruit. We have a full supply of pesto and lemonade and are ready for the weekend to start.

I don't know as that I can force myself to work all day today, even though I went home early yesterday. Luckily, this is pow wow weekend, so I can count hanging out and stuffing myself with fry bread as work time. Maybe I should go do that.

2007-07-30T14:50:00.000-07:00

How the frig did it get to be August (almost)? It seems like nothing much marks the time for us these days besides the weekly arrival of the unemployment check and the monthly payment of the student loan debt.

I just got back from another work imposed exile-a trip to San Jose. I swear, you'd think they'd want me in the office more, but I'm not complaining. It's nice to finally be able to travel (and get paid for it!). I took the opportunity to take the train down and back, which was nice but also VERY long (about 17 hours worth one way). As long as it was, it was much less hassle and stress free than dealing with the airport and all that garbage. And I completed travel without getting lost, missing my ride or any major mishaps-a first. Now maybe they'll stop making fun of the way my travel plans go awry (or, as they say, the way I screw up the simpliest of plans).

But it's hard to be too down. All my utilities have been paid in full, and I'm current on my student loans thanks to a little grant I managed to land and I have high hopes that J and Job are soon to be one.

2007-06-27T15:54:00.000-07:00

So, last Thursday, at 1 am, we did a 45 minute trip to the emergency room. The doctor stiched J's lip back on his face where it belonged. It was a real mess and the doctor said going in to work at the metal shop was not a good idea. We called in Thursday and Friday. On Monday, when J went to work he was told he was fired-they had replaced him Friday and had not bothered to call to save him the 45 minute trip in.

I hate this.

2007-06-15T15:45:00.001-07:00

Ok, so this morning was gray and depressing, so I came into work first thing and posted a depressed bit. Things are not so bad.

2007-06-15T08:16:00.000-07:00

We have again achieved two income household status. Hopefully, we'll be able to hang on to that for a while. Our reserves are tapped and the creditors are at the door. Luckily we're able to carpool, so that saves money and means we only really need one working vehicle.

Money has been a little bit maddening for us this last year, two years, or however long it's fricken been. I can't deal with the bills anymore because it makes me feel so hopeless. We keep struggling but I feel like we're stuck in place, and while things change, none of it seems to matter to our overall financial picture-we're still fucked.

2007-06-11T09:04:00.001-07:00

One thing that is really different about Oregon is the amazing ubiquitousness of recreational smoking equipment. It is especially the bongs that get me-in Wisconsin, bongs are (or at least were) illegal. Here, you can buy them at the local corner market. For real. This especially struck me a few weeks ago, as we were traveling through rural Benton County. We stopped in small town, USA for a couple of sodas at the local mini-mart and were greeted by a huge display of bongs upon entering. One of these bongs was 4 feet high. At the mini mart. Crazy.

2007-05-23T15:03:00.000-07:00

It's a beautiful day out here on the left coast. I took a trip up to the res (courtesy of work, of course) and came back the scenic route along the bayfront, Spearhead playing at max volume. I've been doing a lot of recreational driving, which I know is bad, is very bad, and polluty and probably is partly the reason I am so damn broke. But it sure is nice to float down the back roads, exploring the rolling hills and farms and mountains out here. I think about Ken Keesey a lot while I'm rambling around the backroads, especially down around Lane County.

I wasn't real sure about moving back to the Boonies when we made the move, but I really like the pace of life out here, and the way the sun shines on the mountain and the mist and rainbows and all that Bobby Burns stuff. It's different than living in Rhinelander, much more rural and comfortable. I miss my internet, but am glad not to have the tv.

2007-05-17T16:24:00.000-07:00

My last month or so of blogging is a graveyard of half completed posts describing time that is dead to me now. I'm starting to jot thoughts down in my home diary, and if the no internet at home thing continues, I'll probably eventually end the blog-no point having this damned thing hanging around my neck if I'm not going to update it at least once and a while.

A lot of my thoughts these days are focused on client stuff, and a lot of what occupies my mind or is frustrating or funny or sad is stuff that I gotta take with me to the grave. Its a hard knock life, I guess.

I had a weird moment today in tribal court when the judge asked me to stay after and talk to a couple of law students from an out of state university about life as a young lawyer and practice in tribal court. So I did. Including the bit about how the bar exam fried my mind for a bit (I didn't mention the new and wonderful world of what my doctor tells me are migrains. That shit started right after the damn bar, so you can't tell me there isn't a connection. Nor did I mention the substances that got me through the bar exam and most days. Not that I'm the only one. If you've read the OAP's latest newsletter, and I'm sure you didn't because I'm the only one who did, you'll see that several attorneys responded that pot was what made their life liveable. And those were just the really honest ones.) and how fucken hard it is to sit around jobless, and how much the long empty days full of failure fuck with your ego, your expectations and your sense of self. And how much of your day as a lawyer you spend second guessing yourself, your motives and your abilities. Neat how things come in threes, isn't it? Anyway, I did clue them in to some of the good stuff too, but I guess I wish someone would have told me some of what I told them today-not that I'm sure I would have taken it to heart at the point they were at, but whatever. Does this make me venerable?

2007-04-04T09:15:00.000-07:00

I just want to take a moment to say how freakin' sweet netflix is. We've been on an educational jaunt lately, watching classroom films from the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. Classics like "Duck and Cover," a hilarious anti-pot short done by Sonny Bono, and a nice little piece on syphillis put out by the national institutes of health. And, just to completment our little educational jag, "Reefer Madness: the Musical," which is just like the Reefer Madness we all know and love, except with zombies and color and musical numbers. A great improvement.

Thank you netflix.

2007-03-26T12:55:00.000-07:00

Snatching a moment between work emergencies to mention that I had a swell weekend working in the yard. We have a big cherry tree that is full of blossoms and thousands, maybe millions, of little buzzy busy bees. Standing under the tree, you can hear the hum and drone, and feel the air vibrating all around you. Spring is pretty darn fine in ole Orygun.

2007-03-08T12:53:00.000-08:00

Came home yesterday to huge piles of poop and vomit all over the house. Not exactly the welcome home I was hoping for. It looked like both dogs and the cat decided to purify their bodies by throwing everything overboard. I hope they aren't planning anything-there are more of them than there are of us.

2007-02-28T07:48:00.000-08:00

Ah, another lovely morning at work. Why, oh why is the eviction docket at 8:15? Snow again in the mountains, which is pretty, but cold and wet and slippery. The weather keeps fucking with my head-all morning long it was, "11 inches by 10 pm!" "No! 2 inches above 1000 feet by 3 pm!" "It'll all melt by noon!" "4 inches at 500 feet by 10 am!"

C'mon guys. I just need to know that I'll make it over the hump to work by 8:15, and will be able to make it back home at some point in the afternoon. I shouldn't have to peer outside and calculate what's happening on the mountain by how much snow is on the cars going by, or call home mid-day and ask, "So, what's going on up there?"

2007-02-23T10:08:00.000-08:00

My plan to blog more had a monkey wrench thrown into it with this new gmail requirement for Blogger. I didn't have the time to dink around, so I put it off, but today, with the grey clouds rolling overhead and the office quiet as a church, I'm breaking the long blog-fast. Besides, I just can't look at public housing regs all morning long.

Another month of ups and downs. After a month of going through the application process, J was finally hired at this place. They hired him for $2/hour less than the job was advertised for. For 2 weeks, while he was supposed to be training for his job, they kept him working these low level shit jobs. During the second week, J's car died, so I was driving him in to work in the morning (40 minutes), and then driving to my work (80 minutes in the other direction) and picking him up at night. It sucked quite badly, and was pretty stressful. That weekend, we celebrated his car being once more operational, and we looked forward to an easier schedule.

When he came in on Monday, hoping to be moved to doing what he was supposed to do, they fired him because there was 'not enough work.' When he went into the employment office to look for more work, he saw they had posted his job the day before they fired him. Assholes. At least he has unemployment now, but he's still pretty down about the whole thing.

The day he was fired, I was having my own problems. On my way home, my car started losing power pretty badly. I willed the car to drive just a little further, and just managed to coast into a small, mountainside store that was not much more than a phone booth before it died. J was not home, so I hitched a ride with someone heading back my way. When he got home and we swapped news, all I could say was "at least I won't have to drive you to work tommorrow." He hated working there anyway, so at least now he has a chance to find something better.

So, I've been driving the old green machine-the 30 year old mercedes with the 400,000 miles on it and the awesome sun roof, and the wee electrical problems for which we carry a fire extinguisher behind the drivers seat. Ah, the glamourous life of a legal aid attorney. It's a fun car to drive, so I'm really not bitching so much, but we really do need two actual working reliable cars. How we're going to finance another car is a worry for another day.

And we finally have the heat back on, after a week of shivering cold. It seems our furnace was FUCKED UP BIG TIME (FUBT) and needed cleaning and special parts and a new chiminy and 30 technicians to put 'er right. Luckily it wasn't tooo cold, but February in the mountains is still no time to be without heat.

That all is not to say that things aren't going swell as hell out here. I still like my job. I had some triumphs, settled a bastard of a case in an extremely agreeable way, and managed to be the sole attorney in the office during my boss' vacation. Not so bad, all in all.

2007-01-25T16:13:00.000-08:00

I feel really guilty putting down time I spent reading stuff (not friggen cases or hornbooks, but real, honest to goodness books) as work time. I mean, sure, the material is work related, but I'm certainly enjoying it waay to much to be getting paid for (or, I should say, accruing comp time for) it. I supposed I need to remember that work doesn't have to be unpleasant, grueling or taxing.

2007-01-19T16:20:00.000-08:00

A difficult month, with lots of ups and downs so far. The work sent me to somewhere sunny and warm for a conference, but I missed my flight (long story, but the short version is: I've never gotten the hang of air travel) and had a lot of waiting, running, and then more waiting to do. It was a sort of swank place they put us up in and the conference was nice. All and all, I wonder if it was really worth the time away from work, but whatever. J got a job while I was gone, and then promptly broke his toe. When I got home, the weather was sucky and got suckier. We were completely snowed in for what should have been J's first day of work.

Then we discovered that our little home's brand new water pump and filter combo had just been put on a concrete pad without any sort of insulation. J had gone out to find out why we didn't have any water, and the whole shebang was frozen solid. The housing was cracked due to the expanding ice, and the filter was shattered. That was 4 days without water. Oh yeah, did I mention that I was on the rag at the time?

Anyhow, as we're coming into the last stretch, I'm trying to hold things together. It's clear that we'll be doing a whole lot better as a two income household, but finances are pretty strained right now. I had a bit of a breakdown this morning when NPR was running a story about new lawyers in public interest jobs and how fucked we are. Joe Biden has a bill that would provide debt relief to public interest attorneys who spend more than half their time representing victims of domestice violence. Since I spend about 90% of my time with DV victims, have a staggering amount of debt and am at the bottom of the payscale, this bill would be a godsend. We're talking 40-80k of debt relief.

It'll never happen, or I should say, it is extremely unlikely to happen, but the thought is awfully nice. I love my job and I love handling stuff for my clients. I can't imagine doing private sector stuff and having to deal with billing and cost/benefit analysis and a lot of the other bullshit that goes with being an associate or a solo. I like setting my own hours, and deciding how much work needs to go into a case. Also, I like my clients (mostly), and I like cutting the balls off of someone who thinks they can continue to abuse them through the court process while no one does a damn thing to help out because they are too fucken broke. Okay, I'm getting sort of tired and irrational here, but the damn point was, I am willing to sacrifice the salary to do what I enjoy doing. I never expected to be rich (and havn't been disappointed yet), but the financial pressure I'm dealing with are too much and I'm on the verge of a complete emotional breakdown. Not that that's anything new, i guess. This too will pass.

2006-12-20T16:05:00.000-08:00

We did the grocery shopping last night, a two hour ordeal (one for travel, one for navigating WinCo Foods) after which we always treat ourselves to a take and bake pizza. When we got home, we were without power, so the pizza sat on the porch, sadly uneaten. Our range top works when the power is out, but the oven has a digital dial. The real bitch is the no water situation-I don't feel real professional heating up water on the stove to take a ho-bath (splash the water between the legs, under the boobs and rinse the armpits). In any case, today J flagged down a passing caravan of electric company men who are busy as bees fixing the temporary fixes they threw up after the storm, and reports from the home front indicate that we do again have power.

I'm gonna go home and eat'sa pizza.

2006-12-18T09:10:00.000-08:00

Pretty scary wind storm out here last Thursday. Gusts of 100 mph. Trees down, flooding, a few days without electric, roads impassable. We heard a gigantic crash which turned out to be most of a tree taking off part of our house and smooshing our power line. I was surprised (pleasantly) to have electric back on by Saturday night-it gets cold out on the mountain. Luckily, I got lamp oil and wicks last time it stormed, so we were somewhat prepared, although we didn't think to pick up water (note to self: well won't pump water without electric), and didn't have more than a day's supply of wood (enough to dry out what we could scavenge from the blow downs).

I'd like to thank the oh so helpful radio fuckers who kept telling us that we could find out about closed roads, weather conditions and utility outages by simply going on the internet. Real friggen helpful, assholes.

2006-12-13T13:53:00.000-08:00

So, as you may have assumed from my protracted blog silence, I've been busy as a one legged man in an ass kicking contest. Still no internet out at our little mountain hideaway either. Also no tv (no channels come in), though I did break down and buy an answering machine, since J is job looking. I'm glad to be working, and to be honest, though financially it's been rough, I'm glad J had some time unemployed. It makes me feel better that I can spend some time supporting him, after the horrible year he's supported me. And I think he needed some time off.

I'm starting to feel a bit more like a lawyer these days, although it feels strange to sign my name, Attorney at Law. Mostly I'm able to leave work at work, which is nice, though there are some cases that keep me tossing and turning at night, hoping I didn't screw something up too badly. The schedule is not demanding, and I've been able to pretty well keep my hours reasonable (and not just "lawyer reasonable" but really real world reasonable). The office is very low key and relaxed. I don't even have to wear a suit on non court days, although I keep a jacket at the office for emergency hearings.

2006-10-18T08:54:00.000-07:00

My car is like the House of Usher these days. Bits keep falling off and shaking loose. The only possible ending for this is complete and total collapse (hopefully not while I'm inside).

2006-10-13T08:20:00.000-07:00

These days it's like walking through molasses to get anywhere, it seems. Car problems and money problems are still plaguing our fractured household. I feel cold and isolated during the week, not so much while I'm at work, but coming home to a big empty house that is still mostly silent and full of boxes is depressing.

We basically rented a big ass truck, loaded all of our stuff into it, and unloaded it as fast as we could. Then J left, and it was just me, these boxes and the animals. Between work and taking care of the them, I've been too overwealmed to get much accomplished.

It doesn't help that turning on utilities out here takes an act of god. We have no mail service, and the local post office is only open 10-4 M-F and 7-9am Saturday, so I still don't have a real address. Our street address is fucked up-the houses are not numbered in a way that makes sense, the last owner fucked it up on all the official documents, and the 'street' that our 'street address' is supposed to be based on had a big fucking fence built across it by our neighbors. I don't want to be fucking around, I just want fucking mail, trash and internet.

Not that I can afford them right now. We just finished paying off J's work loan, and were so sweatily busy with that that we've fucked ourselves into the very corner we've been trying to avoid: the same old fucking money trap. My private loan payment alone is about $650 a month, and for the last 2 months, for all intents and purposes, we were a single income household. J is thinking about continuing to work up in Sandy for a while, working twelve hours a day for three days whilst crashed on someone's couch, and staying in Blodgett the rest of the time while looking for work. I think that plan sucks ass, but I don't have a lot of genius ideas at the moment.

I keep telling myself that it is just a while more and that once we are both bringing home full paychecks we will be doing ok, but for now, it feels like more of the same, only I'm working my ass off, instead of moping around.

2006-10-03T08:52:00.000-07:00

So, I've been almost completely unreachable for a while now. I'm back from the beautiful Northwoods of Wisconsin and am living in the beautiful Oregon Coastal Range Mountains. Still no phone or internet where I'm living, so things have been pretty quiet, except for at work where I've been, well, working.

I like my office and I like my job. I still have no idea what the hell I'm doing, but I guess that's really what being a lawyer is all about. Nothing like scheduling an appointment to go over a matter, and then researching that matter like hell because it is a subject you know nothing whatsoever about. Fakin' it until someday I (hopefully) make it.

Blogs will continue to be hit and miss until I have my beloved internet back.

2006-09-20T18:04:00.000-07:00

Well, the week is proceeding on, and I can't wait to be a little more bored with my life. Ran into work this morning, ran up to the rez, took the damn hell bar exam, ran back to the farm, packed, dazedly drove up I5 (thinking gorey thoughts all while cars whizzed by), got in and am ready for Phase II: figuring out what the hell we can bring on the plane, and Phase III: dropping the dogs off at the unsuspecting boarding facility.

We have found a place to move to, so, as soon as we fly in on Monday, it will be off to the rental truck place, and the loading and unloading and the blah blah blah.

2006-09-15T08:06:00.000-07:00

Busy lak the little bee, that's me. The last few weeks have been hectic, between trying to find a place, trying to learn the ropes, and trying to get ready for the wedding. We've got a house on the line that may work out-it is in the process of being sold, so things have really been up in the air. We were supposed to be able to move in this weekend, but between one thing and another, that hasn't worked. So, it looks like I'll be futoning it with the farmhands for a while longer. Hopefully, we can do paperwork early next week, fly out to Wisconsin (We leave next Thursday!), fly back to Portland, pack everything into the moving truck and J can unload while I return to work. What fun.

Next week is going to be a horror of busyness. Our office is being audited, I have to take the tribal bar exam (to practice law in the local tribal court) and then I'm wisking away home for a short vacation. Whew. Hopefully by the end of the month, I'll have my beloved internet back.

2006-09-06T17:33:00.000-07:00

Man, I miss having easy internet access. I mean, I have internet access at work and stuff, but then I'm just, you know, working. Anywho, I'm here late doing non-work related stuff, killing time before I go to look at a rental place. Fingers crossed, I really need to stop living out of a box on the farm. I don't see what landlords have against people with two dogs. Jude was a much bigger danger to home and hearth before he had a buddy to hang out with.

Everyday this week I've ridden my wienie-mobile through the coastal range and down into Newport. A commute that is an hour because of distance, rather than traffic, is not so bad, especially since I'm traveling through beautiful country. It would be much improved if my CD player or radio was working. Now it's just me, the peaceful morning mountaintop and a rousing a cappella chorus of Devo's "Whip it" to while away the drive.

The farm is peaceful-it sure is relaxing to watch the farmhands toil in the veggies while I loll about slugging down cheap wine on the front steps of my temporary abode. I'm camped out on a futon next to the bathroom, but I'm surrounded by lavendar, mexican sunflowers and a variety of other pretty blooms, so that's not so bad. Still, I hate being an imposition, and try to stay out of the way as much as possible.

Updates will be sporadic until I have real sho-nuff internet.

2006-09-01T08:25:00.000-07:00

I had some free stuff up on Craigslist yesterday-always an amusing experience. A woman came and knocked on my door to let me know that all the free stuff was gone, and did I have any more free stuff? I told her no, except for the big pile of clothes I was gonna take to goodwill. Her face lit up, and she said, "Really? Can I have them?" So I loaded the 3 trashbags and huge box 'o clothes into her car and she took off down the road. Then, like a consciencious CLer, I deleted my post and hummed happily to myself in my empty office.

2006-08-31T08:39:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's just me, but my buddy Jude seems to be more clingy than usual lately. We've been inseperable buds for the last 6 years, and he always gets worried every time we move-and we've moved a lot together. Poor guy, for the first time I'm going to move away, and he won't be able to come with me, for awhile at least. I think I will actually miss him and worry about him more than J-at least I can talk to J on the telephone. I can't explain to Jude that I'll be back for him and we will have a great time out in the coastal mountains soon enough.

2006-08-30T06:16:00.000-07:00

So, I was browsing through site meter, as I am wont to do, and I noticed that my last visitor came via the search term "Grannies fucking their grandkids" (I'm gonna assume that it was in the interest of public health, rather than to arouse the purient interests). Since I couldn't remember writing anything about grannie incest, I was curious as to what prompted the visit. The search was through Ask.com, so I moseyed on over there to see what I could see. There were sites for grannie products, hot grannies, sexy grannies, hot sexy grannies, GILFs, raging grannies, raging hot grannies with sexy sauce, and in the middle of all this hot grannie action is my blog, looking rather wholesome, all things considered.

So, I did a quick google search to make sure that a normal search engine is not listing me as a purveyor of grannie filth, and to my relief, I didn't see myself on the first few pages, at least. Now I need to go clear the search history before J gets home-I'd hate for him to get the wrong idea and hire some grannie call girl for our anniversary.

2006-08-29T15:33:00.000-07:00

Do you know what really rocks ass? Having someone tell you all about this thing they call "benefits" and how you're gonna have them. Hello regular dentist visits!

2006-08-29T06:18:00.000-07:00

The mortgage broker is going to run our credit reports today. She's been helpful and encouraging so far, but I feel like that's gonna change now. I hope she is able to stop laughing by the time she calls me back.

I feel exactly the same way about the whole thing as I do when the dentist asks if I floss regualarly. Shame mingled with defiance. No, I don't floss regularly, but I have a damn ass good reason. (I actually do, but its sort of gross to explain, so nevermind)

2006-08-28T07:33:00.000-07:00

J had an out of town friend visiting for the weekend, so we didn't get a whole lot accomplished, other than a 5 hour nap on Sunday. The rental house I had lined up fell through, and there hasn't been much in the paper. I've been lazy about calling the mortgage broker, but no more. There just hasn't been anything in the paper, on craigslist or otherwise available for us. It's sounding like I'll be living on the farm for a while.

I pretty much have this week off-tommorrow I'm going in to do paperwork at the Portland office, get the collective bargaining agreement, ask questions and meet people. This let's me "start" work before the holiday and thus get paid for not working it. Other than that, I'll be packing up, sorting, putting things on craigslist and generally being a terror.

2006-08-24T14:30:00.000-07:00

Do you ever look around, shake your head, and wonder if there is some sort of brain dysfunction that takes ahold of people as soon as they are elected to any position of responsibility more weighty than county coroner? (Russ Feingold excluded! I heart you Russ!) Then again, whilst googling, and goggling and giggling today, I realized it isn't just people elected to office, but the majority of the people in all countries around the world.

Maybe I've been spending too much time online. Man, I gotta start working for reals.

2006-08-24T07:28:00.000-07:00

I've been having mini freak outs again, nothing I can't keep under control, but somedays I start thinking about all the debt, gigantic piles of it crushing me lak zee bug, and have to put my head between my knees and breath shallowly. J said to me the other day, as we juggled some bills, "Wow. We would've been really fucked if you hadn't have gotten this job, wouldn't we?"

Indeed. And now we're looking at having to borrow money to move down to the coast, another couple of thousand. And I've been thinking uneasily about my car-it has a rusted axle, and I'm afraid that driving in the salty ocean breeze is going to finish it off, and one day I'll be driving down 101, hear a clunk and half my car will be driving off without me.

I know, I need to takes these challenges one at a time. I think this stressful period has altered my brain chemistry in a bad bad way-I can't seem to think about anything without a rising wave of panic crashing over me.

It's more than that-I really need to start working, or, I should say, working at something full time, balls to the wall. I need to be busy; this constant living in my head gives me too much friggen time for introspection and I'm not seeing good things.

2006-08-23T07:06:00.000-07:00

We've had a few Autumn preview days here. Cloudy and cool, they are great lazy, sleeping in and doing nothing days. I wish I had time to be lazy, sleep in and do nothing, but these days are just packed, and although I'm steadily crossing things off my to do list, I don't feel very accomplished.

J and I will both get a paycheck at the end of this week, thank god. I've made my famous chicken matzo ball soup, my famous cream of carrot soup and supplemented both with liberal helpings of bean burritos (thank god our former roomate, E, left a shit load of tortillas in the freezer), but the cupboard is looking rather bare these days and the creditors are circling closer. I can't wait to be making better money-the first thing I'll do is go on a B-double E-double R-U-N, Beer run! You just need a five or a ten and a sober friend, beer run! Car and the keys and a sober driver, beer run!

Then I'm getting some slippers. Mine have worn through in several spots, and when I returned cans yesterday ($7.00!) I was wearing them in what was the biggest fashion faux pas since that whole boobie thing the christians were all worried about at the Superbowl. Note to self-must throw out slippers. Much as I love them, they are soaked in empty can swill.

2006-08-22T08:07:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we arranged to play things by ear with the couple who are renting our house after us. The male half of the couple does stagework for various shows around the Portland area. He ran lights for Cirque du Soleil when they were in town and said it was the most challenging show he had ever did. Lots of cues to memorize. Anyhow, the circus folk teased him throughout the show about how he needed to memorize not just his cues, but all the cues for the whole show so he could "call the cues" on the last day of the run. All through the run, he whaled on memorizing the cues, and on the last day he said, "Ok, I'm ready to call the cues." "Hardy ha ha ha," the circus folk replied, "We were just kidding!"

So, anyway, he called the cues that night, performing flawlessly. They were in awe of his prowess, and asked him to run away and join the circus. Apparently, they train folks for about 3 months to learn what he did in 3 weeks. Unfortunatly, he was about to have a baby, so the circus moved on without him.

It sounds like a sad poem about growing up. I would write it up if I was a poetry writing motherfucker, but instead I'll just put on my clothes and go to friggen work.

2006-08-20T08:07:00.000-07:00

Spent yesterday driving up and down the coast around Newport. We tried to make it fun, but it felt more like a forced march. We didn't have time between appointments and running around to actually get out on the beach, we just kept driving by on our way hither and dither and sighing melodramatically. It wasn't totally wasted time, it just felt like it. It probably didn't help that we were in the car from 10 am to 10 pm.

I also secured an emergency back up housing situation at an organic farm about an hour away from Newport. We stopped by on the way back and all the farm hands were out grilling tuna that they had traded their vegetables for in Newport. They gave us beer, J ate a load of tuna and they took a vote to offer me emergency housing. At least now I have something, if nothing works out.

2006-08-18T12:30:00.000-07:00

The thing I like best about my neighborhood is that all of the stop signs within a mile radius have "Hammertime!" stenciled on them.

2006-08-18T07:07:00.000-07:00

There is a place in Portland that sells little kits of powdered urine and some chemical solution that heats to the correct temperature when water is added. About 6 months ago, one of J's friends needed one of these, but he was very broke, and they only sell them in two packs. J bought one to help him out, and it has sat on our bookshelf ever since. Last night the friend was in need of one, and the friend in need had weed indeed to trade for it. Just in time too-I've been jittering everywhere, trying to make arrangments and whatnot and the big panic beast is on the rampage. I feel like I really know what Bob Dylan meant when he said he had a head full of ideas that are driving him insane.

Jude the pothead dog is a whole 'nother story altogether. I had noticed that he had been acting weird, especially when visitors come over. He's been wanting to jump on everyone and everything, and he gets waaaaay too excited when he sees someone coming up the walk. I've had to lock him up, because he becomes a bouncing ball of excitement. Then it hit me-we haven't been smoking because we're poor. Our visitors haven't either, because they are also poor. But Jude associates the two-visitors and sharing a bowl-and he is that guy that asks if you've got something to smoke before he even says hello. I wish I had managed to instill some manners in him when we did obediance class. Instead he got a certificate for 'most enthusiastic' and I got a sympathetic look. Thank god Pogo just says no. I have a limit of one stoner dog of the apocalypse per household.

2006-08-17T06:22:00.000-07:00

So, I'm crazy. Bonkers. Barney. Balmy. And that's just the B words. I've been looking into rental houses down by Newport, and god how I hate hate hate trying to find a place to live. Partly it's the zoo that I'm hauling around, but mostly its the whole picking out a landlord and putting down a deposit that gets me blue.

About 1/2 to 2/3s of landlords suck, in a general fashion. They will try to steal your deposit (after charging waaaay to much-one place wanted rent+$200+$150 each for the animals=too fucking much to put down on a rental house), they won't fix things, they want to stick their big fucking nose into all of your business. Trying to separate the wheat from the chaff is hard when there isn't a whole lotta rental options (that aren't ritzy mansions on the beach).

So, crazy yes? In the head? Insane in the membrane as the kids would say, at least they would back when I was a kid, or I should further say, they would on tv when I was a kid, ok, alright, no one says that but me when I'm feeling manic and rumbly. ARRRG!

So, now, at this late date, we're again mulling over the purchase of a house. We think that it could be that when all's said and done, we'd end up shelling out less than we would for renting, and at least then we'd be investing a bit of money, rather than throwing down some slimeball landlord's toilet. [Note: I worked in property management for several years; I feel justified in my 1/2-2/3s estimate and mean no offense to the 1/2 to 1/3s of landlords who are awesome. I love you!]

After all, I figure you may as well get all the stressful life changing events behind you at the same time. It's like when I quit smoking (again-practice makes perfect) right before the bar exam. It worked perfectly-I was so stressed and sick over the exam, that I barely noticed that I had quit smoking.

The problems with that senario, though, are many. First, we have no fucking money. No savings. No credit, no nothing. Second, we trashed our credit getting though this year. I went into school with good credit. I finished with decent credit. One year later, I have trashed credit. Third, the manuvering seems like it would take a goodly long while. There are other problems, but they are too gloomy to contemplate. I suppose it never hurts to talk to a mortgage broker, and different people have told me how you don't need a lot of cash on hand or great credit or whatnot, but I find it hard to believe that any bank would look at my financial situation and say, oh, sure, here's another hundred grand-enjoy!

I'm going to go put my head in a bucket of water.

2006-08-16T06:57:00.000-07:00

Preparations for the great and terrible move continue, with the low worry of money hanging in the background. Last night was my last night at St. Andrews Legal Clinic and I said my goodbys, and ate chinese food and thought about how much I've learned (I don't know most of the answers, but I at least know some of the questions now).

We've made arrangements to wrap up the house, but have yet to talk to the landlord. Since J needs to stay for a while, we decided the best way to handle things was to find someone who wanted to rent the house, and stay on as a roomate. We figured he could trade free rent for our security deposit and get off the lease when we were all moved out. That way, everyone wins-the landlord doesn't have to rerent the house and deal with the deposit, the newbies wouldn't have to put down a shit load of money at the outset, and we would save money and time. Crazily, it worked out perfectly-J has some friends who are living in an apartment with their new baby and a roomate. Apparently, the same day I was interviewing in Newport, they were talking about the need to find a house, and decided they could spend as much as $900 a month, exactly what we pay now. Yesterday when they came over, they immediately fell in love with our big old place (it's hard not to-it is a beautiful old house), although it could be that the thought of all that space intoxicated them.

I'm still trying to nail down how much money I get for moving expenses, and I'm feeling worried. I need to talk to another guy and figure out what the deal is. I have a line on a house just outside of Yachats (!), but move in costs are around $2000 and I don't know how I could raise that much money. I can borrow about $1000 from my mom, but we're flat ass broke, have no credit, no savings and own nothing that we could possibly sell/hawk/burn for the insurance money.

Something will just have to work out, I guess. I'm flying by the seat of my pants on this one, but it's nice to have less dire problems occupying my thoughts these days.

2006-08-15T06:23:00.000-07:00

I've been having bike problems, which, while not being as bad as car problems, are not so good either. The problem is my damn shifter. It's been doing this thing where I shift to go up a hill, and then halfway up the hill, chunk, it shifts into low gear, stopping all forward momentum. This wouldn't be quite so bad, except my whole ride home is uphill, so all the way home it's shift, clunk, shift, clunk.

Yesterday added a whole new dimension to shift, clunk. I was headed up my first hill, and shifted into high gear. There was an awful spronging sound, and the bike shifted into low. I looked down and noticed the cable running from the shifter to the gear was pulled out and loose looking. Uh oh. So, I had to walk the damn thing most of the way home, getting on to ride the flat areas and smaller hills with strenuous peddling all the way.

2006-08-14T06:01:00.000-07:00

Things have been really different here, different and busy. After awhile the initial euphoria wore off somewhat (a long while: J was so excited he woke me up at 2:30 am on Saturday by spilling a huge glass of lemonade all over the bedroom-and he wasn't sorry to wake me with the commotion; he said he had been lying there for at least an hour trying to go to sleep with a head full of ideas). Then came some panic-in the next month and a half, I need to find a place to live (with the traveling zoo), pack all my shit, move, start the first job in my career, live without J for the longest time we've been apart since we met, go to Rhinelander for the wedding and so on. All except the wedding need to happen in the next two weeks. We've asked for this, and are happy about it, but the whole task is rather daunting.

2006-08-11T15:01:00.000-07:00

Sometimes good things do happen to bad people. I was offered, and accepted the position in Newport.

Alphabet, by Jeff Lewis

Late at night cloudy light will creep over my old house
and the chair where I once sat
someone new is there and he'll stare at that wall.
We're all parts of an alphabet.
We spell new words in new spots we're at.
And the big round blue boat drifts around in the dark . . .
and they say that we'll drift for a while
'til we die in the sun
it's a spiral
it's a combination lock.
I'm just hoping that I'll get it open
and these joys and frustrations
are just turns in the combination.

2006-08-11T06:46:00.000-07:00

Today is going to be full of somberness and things I don't want to do, so I'll give ya a semi-funny story:

Last night we were sitting around feeling sorry for ourselves and making our way through Scorsese's awesome, but long, Bob Dylan documentary, when we got a knock on our door. T'was our neighbor across the street who bought the scary clown house and is in the process (a long process-apparently the scary clown owner was letting his scary clown dog use the living room as a scary clown toilet) of making it a respectable house. Her water was shut off and she had to use the bathroom and after looking around at her choices, assholes on her left, white trash on her right, older people kitty corner on both sides, she chose to go with the hippies across the street. So we yak a bit, since she didn't want to flush and run, and she suddendly said to me, "Do you guys smoke weed?" I said, "Only weeks when we're particularly rich" (sad truth). She laughed, "I knew you guys were cool!"

So there, high school. I finally made it. I am cool. At least our neighbor who was in desparate need of the toilet thinks so.

2006-08-10T07:00:00.000-07:00

So, I heard yesterday that the forces in Newport have not yet decided my fate. My mole, deep within the fortress, told me that the decision is down to two people, me and some other person. This horrible person, I was told, was edging ahead of me, because she speaks a little Spanish. My mole thought this was indeed stupid, and said that it wasn't enough to converse with clients, and most of the Spanish speaking clients were illegal, and thus couldn't be helped with our federal funds anyway. The position I want is funded with a grant to help out a nearby tribe, and most of my time would be spent working with them.

So, what's a gal to do? I called up Newport, re-expressed my extreme and raging interest, and, oh, mentioned that I was going to the tribe's powwow this weekend, and wondered if anyone from the office would be there.

Take that, Spanish-pants.

2006-08-09T07:42:00.000-07:00

I just need to yipee, and send a big congrats out to Lamont, the challenger that beat that scaly old fucker Lieberman. There are many adjectives that could describe Lieberman, but now there are a few more, like: Sore loser, baby, spoiler and the like. He was a Bush cheerleader and closet Republican before the primary, and now he continues to show his true colors after he got his ass handed to him by the voters; first thing this morning he filed to run as an independent.

2006-08-09T07:19:00.000-07:00

I had a horrifying interviewing nightmare last night. I dreamed that I went through a harrowing, but normal interview. I got a call for a second interview, and set up the time and whatnot with "Peter" (who suspiciously has the same name as this guy I interviewed with a while back who didn't give me my dream job, but, well) in Salem. I was in my bedroom with J, packing up stuff, getting ready, and smoking pot. Then there was a knock on the bedroom door. It was the interviewer, and a gaggle of office folk. He said he was just in the neighborhood and wanted to check in with me and make sure I was going to make the second interview. After they left, I turned to J and wailed, "This room reeks of pot!"

So, I drove to Salem (with J in tow for some reason) and got there early enough to see this well dressed WASP walk into the building with the interviewer. I looked down and realized that I was wearing a tee-shirt (Question Authority) and a flouncy gypsy skirt. I started freaking out-J was trying to calm me down. Then a couple of friends (thanks V and B!) showed up, and gave me their clothes. It wasn't a suit, but it was at least better than what I was wearing.

Anyhow, there was more to the dream, but that moment really stands out in my mind. Standing there and watching the well dressed and proper young man causually saunter in to the interview, while realizing that I was hopelessly out of place and out of my depth.

2006-08-08T07:18:00.000-07:00

I know I'm totally playing into their hands, but how fun is it to have Samuel L. Jackson call someone up and harass them into taking you to see Snakes on a Plane while insulting their job, hair and vehicle?

As much as I love the esteemed Mr. Jackson and snakes, I really don't want to see this movie. J, on the other hand, is excited, and keeps repeating, "There'll be snakes. On the plane. It'll be great!" On the third hand (tucked safely out of sight most days, precious), we heard the snakes on a plane song this weekend, and it was pretty fucken funny. In fact, I just now found the lyrics online, and will present them for your viewing pleasure:

Snakes On A Plane (Bring It), by Cobra Starship

Times are strange
We got a free upgrade for
snakes on a plane.
Fuck em, I don't care.
Bought the cheap champagne,
we're going down in flames, hey.

Oh, I'm ready for it
Come on, bring it.
Oh, I'm ready for it
Come on, bring it.
Oh, I'm ready for it
Come on, bring it.
Oh, I'm ready for it
Come on, bring it.

So kiss me goodbye.
Honey, I'm gonna make it out alive.
So kiss me goodbye.
I can see the venom in your eyes.
Goodbye.

It's time to fly,
to make the stars align
with the turpentine
lounging in their suits and ties.
Watch the whore's parade
for the price you paid, hey.

Oh, I'm ready for it
Come on, bring it.
Oh, I'm ready for it
Come on, bring it.
Oh, I'm ready for it
Come on, bring it.
Oh, I'm ready for it
Come on, bring it.

So kiss me goodbye.
Honey I'm gonna make it out alive
So kiss me goodbye.
I can see the venom in your eyes

So kiss me goodbye.
Honey, I'm gonna make it out alive
So kiss me goodbye.
I can see the venom in your eyes
Goodbye.

Ladies and gentlemen
These snakes are slitherin'
with dollar signs in they eyes
with tongues so reptilian
This industry's venemous
with cold-blooded sentiment
No need for nervousness
It's just a little turbulence.

So kiss me goodbye.
Honey I'm gonna make it out alive
So kiss me goodbye.
I can see the venom in your eyes

So kiss me goodbye.
Honey, I'm gonna make it out alive
So kiss me goodbye.
I can see the venom in your eyes
Goodbye.

Oh, I'm ready for it
Come on, bring it.
Oh, I'm ready for it
Come on, bring.
Oh, I'm ready for it
Come on, bring it.
Oh, I'm ready for it
Come on, bring it.

We seem to be losing altitude
at an alarming pace
Midtown downtown
Snakes on a blog
I suggest you grab your ankles
and kiss your ass goodbye.

2006-08-07T06:58:00.000-07:00

I sat, tapping my fingers all the while, through another low key weekend. Trying not to think about where the money will come from. Trying not to think about whether I'll be offered a job today. Trying not to think about the billion or so topics that are sure to bring on a screaming headache, but that my mind can't resist turning over and over again. Makes reading the blog rather monotonous too, eh?

Job hunting requires this zen state that I don't have down yet. You must have full faith that you will get the job-otherwise the interview doesn't go so well and your failure is assured. At the same time, you must believe that you won't get the job, so that you aren't thinking about how much better your life would be if you were working full time up until the time you get the rejection letter and get clonked on the head with the hard, cold rock of reality. You must maintain a state of no mind, a mind not fixed or occupied by thought or emotion, and thus open to everything.

I can't seem to reign in this panicky elephant who's running around in my head and shitting all over me, making a state of no mind out of reach for today.

2006-08-04T07:16:00.000-07:00

Oh my God. Pat Robertson believes in global warming. Either I need to go reevaluate my own position on this, or the end times are truely at hand. Next thing you know, he'll be talking about using all those stem cells we're currently flushing down the toilet at fertility centers across the country.

2006-08-04T06:49:00.000-07:00

With a tip of the hat to jalpuna, today's fun link leads to the politics of hummer humping. It sorta reminds me of this story in Steven Levitt's Freakonomics about the demise of the KKK. As mosta y'all probably remember from history class, the KKK used to be a real force in this country-a terrorist organization that thrived on secrecy. Well, this one dude was fed up with it, so he went undercover and learned all about the KKK-how they were organized, what the secret passwords and rituals were, what they talked about at meetings-all kinds of shit. Then he teamed up with the producers of the popular radio show, Superman, to produce a series of episodes where Superman took on the KKK. As people started to make fun of the KKK with it's grand wizards and dragons and super secret handshakes and whatnot, recruiting sharply decreased. It's an important lesson-laughter is more powerful than all the scolding, wailing and rational discourse in the world. And it feels good.

2006-08-03T06:59:00.000-07:00

I'm tired out today, so go look at these bad tattoos. The blogger writing about them is a fuckwit (and some of the really bad tattoos are some pretty fun art). I especially like the penis tattoo on page 2 (but, geez, ouch!), and Mr. Cool Ice on page 3 is pretty fucken funny. The last chick on page 4 is actually in J's vast pornography collection. Wheee!

2006-08-02T06:09:00.000-07:00

Today's post is going to be about good things-I guess it's about time for that, huh? Yesterday when J got home and asked how my day was, I told him that while I was cleaning the catbox, Sadie Mae peed all over the bathroom floor. He told me that when he stopped at the store on the way home, a guy in a wheelchair talking on his cell phone ran him down. Yep, we're quite a pair.

Anyhow, good things. Yes. Well, the estimate for auto repairs was extremely high (I'm glad I have the kind of car that can go through a collision and not show it-I think the extra paint looks stylin'), so I moseyed on over to the insurance office and paid up my account, told them about how my ticket was dismissed and then told them about the collision. They're pretty much taking care of it-all I have to do is fill out an accident report today.

I also got word that my job on the coast may become reality. I probably won't hear back until next Monday, since the decision maker is on vacation, but we'll see what happens. It's odd to think that I may have to move in the next few weeks, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. I'm looking forward to a problem that is a little less dire than, say, starving to death, bankruptcy or a lifetime as a carny.

2006-08-01T06:54:00.000-07:00

My officer failed to show up at court yesterday, so the ticket was dismissed. I'd like to take this for a good omen, but I think its still too early for that.

2006-07-31T06:07:00.000-07:00

Today is going to suck more than most days, and this is in comparison to the stupid piano weekend I've just waded through. You see, J has this piano, his grandma's piano, a piano that was made in the 1800s and came out here strapped to a conastoga wagon. It has lived at his mom's house for as long as I've known him. When his mom's house burned down, the piano got a little scorched on the outside, but was still standing. This weekend, he was determined to get the damn piano. The perverse bastard insisted on bringing it all the way to Portland, I suspect in hopes that the mojo created would be such to generate a job offer in far off Newport.

He made a dolly for the piano, and his mom rented a truck down in McMinneville. I dropped him off down there, made my way back through damn hell Dundee (may you all rot in hell) in the Sunday going home traffic, head pulsing and aching in same areas that my head pain has lived in since the bar exam-back of the eyes, front teeth and jaw, bridge of my nose. In Newberg, I was involved in a minor auto collision, which is probably going to bring my whole financial house of cards falling down. The piano made it fine.

Today, I get to again go to court over this stupid fucking driving uninsured ticket, work late, wait for a phone call from down in Newport, wait for another call from Newberg, and call one of my more ominous creditors and explain that I don't have any money just now, and they should just get in line and wait, goddammit.

2006-07-28T06:45:00.000-07:00

Newport was beautiful yesterday. The sun was shining, the wind was blowing and the waves were crashing. J thinks it's very funny that I changed into my suit in the Subway bathroom-I was hoping to show up unwrinkled and goddess-like, but when I stepped outside into the ocean breeze, all my best laid plans quickly went astray. It's ok, though-the lead attorney was wearing jeans and a cordoroy suit jacket, so maybe my windswept look will work out fine.

At one point in the interview, the lead attorney asked me if I liked country music. I told her I was listening to Johnny Cash on the way down (true, but I felt like a suck ass). She nodded her head approvingly and said, "Johnny Cash, very good, I'm writing that down." And she did. Then she underlined it.

2006-07-27T06:07:00.000-07:00

Yesterday J got paid. He's been working a lot of overtime, so we had a bit of money in our pockets, which was totally exciting. We splurged by geting some deli chicken and fancy bean coffee (something with a lot of 'ochas' and 'capas' and 'chinos' in the name). Then we extra splurged and paid our water bill in full-yea!

2006-07-26T07:27:00.000-07:00

I don't have anything super great to blog about today. It's been cooler these last few days, blessedly cooler, and I've been tinkering around the house on projects that were abandoned in the heat. Tonight I'm going to actually do some baking, and tommorrow I'm driving to Newport for my interview.

I feel like I've been stuck in a holding pattern. The days are rather similar-worry about unpaid bills, go to work, clean the house, worry some more, walk the dogs, go to bed early, get up in the morning when worry and anxiety creep in on my unconsciousness. I'm ready to have some different problems to tackle. The ones I have now aren't any fun anymore.

2006-07-25T07:16:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning to blessed coolness-the blistering heat wave seems to have mostly passed. Now we gotta take care of all the vacuuming, piles of laundry, and rolling dust bunnies that backed up while we were conserving energy like backwards lizards. This last weekend, at some ungodly hour in the morning, we were sitting on the porch catching a breeze as the sky lightened in the east. J pointed this out and said, "Oh, shit. Here it comes again." I think the animals felt much the same-they were sacked out like us for most of the last 4 days, getting up only to eat, unload waste, and drink more water.

2006-07-23T08:13:00.000-07:00

104 on Friday, 100 on Saturday and now today we're supposed to be down to 95 degrees. I had an interview Friday, and was just about melted to my suit by the time I walked from the car to the building. Saturday, J and I both woke up about 3 am, in a salty tangle amid the damp sheets, and got up to sit on the dark, cool porch before trekking back inside for a few more hours of restless sleep. This weekend has been full of odd hours and low energy laziness. Watching the Best of the Muppet Show. Learning how to make a D&D character. Browsing Pornography. And so on.

2006-07-21T18:33:00.000-07:00

The sun, she burns us, my precious!

2006-07-20T07:06:00.000-07:00

I got a "Notice of Class Settlement" the other day in the mail. As a member of the affected class, I am entitled to a brochure that tells me about getting a free credit report. Are they fucken kidding me? Progressive is in the dock, and I get information about my free credit report? Weak, dude.

2006-07-19T21:25:00.000-07:00

I feel pretty exhausted today, but not sleepy in the slightest. I always feel wound up after volunteering at the night clinic. Today was a pretty easy day, client wise, but I was training a newbie, which always gets me nervous. I could tell our last client was going to be difficult when I looked at her handwriting. I dunno, but it just looked like trouble, ya know? Then I called her name and looked in her eyes and knew it was going to be a long one. In a way, I'm glad, because our other clients that night were pretty easy-straightforward people who were able to articulate their needs and wants-and I didn't want the newbie to think it was all cakewalks and fanfare. Nope, low income clinics have quite a share of mentally ill, drug addicted or mentally challenged clients, and you gotta be able to work with them just as you would any other client. Well, this client ended up flipping me off and screaming "Fuck you!" before she left, so Newbie got a full helping of what he'd be shrugging off if he wanted to continue volunteering at the clinic. I must be adjusting to legal life-it didn't particularly bother me (maybe because I saw it coming), but Newbie looked rather shocked.

I somehow got lucky enough to get the interview for the job where my application got in late. Even though the job would require a move to Newport, I'm rather hoping to get it. A change of scene would be nice. As much as I love my house and love Portland, I also wouldn't mind getting out of the big city and living somewhere in the back country, somewhere woodsy and quiet. It would be a pain in the ass logistics wise-I'd have to move first, and then J and the boys would have to join me after we got up some cold hard cash, and I'm not sure what I would do for housing, broke as I am, but I figure that if I get the job, something will work out. It has to.

2006-07-19T07:47:00.000-07:00

I had a dream last night that I lived on a houseboat, and I came home one day to find it sinking, ala Titanic. I hope that isn't an omen or anything.

2006-07-18T06:52:00.000-07:00

Our dog, Pogo, is a sneaky little poop. Jude is too big for sneakiness-he tries to creep, but his big whacking tail and clumsy oafish feet usually give him away. Pogo is delicate. He doesn't barrel over to the cat box and rummage around until he has a sand mustache. He delicately picks over the box, carefully snapping up cat treats, so it isn't until he comes over and licks you that you notice someone's breath smells like cat ass.

2006-07-17T07:05:00.000-07:00

I've been biking to work in the mornings, waiting for that magic day when I can make it all the way up the hill on Russel Street on my way home. It's a short trip, but I'm terrified of biking in traffic and still have some problems not visualizing getting run over, doored, tripped or squashed. Since a big chunk of my route is right on the bike superhighway, serious bikers tricked out with all their bike bling (there, that stupid word must be totally out by now, since here I am using it. I killed the bling bling, yar!) keep passing me effortlessly. Of course, they also have bikes that cost more than my car, bikes that my 1970s Schwinn, Squeaky, just can't compete with.

2006-07-14T07:05:00.000-07:00

So, I threw my cards yesterday in a quickie reading and basically got back the message "Remain strong, obstacles will be overcome. Check out how much you're learning!" Pttthb. As I was telling J yesterday, I don't mind being poor, but being destitute really super sucks (he, of course, pointed out that we weren't destitute-we have a roof and electricity-just really really poor. We need to step up to sorta poor-able to pay bills and keep our beater cars running).

I have a few job prospects on the horizons, but they are really squeakers, as opposed to all the possibles I've interviewed for over the last few months. I have a Legal Aid job that I missed the deadline for (Thanks L&C job database!), but still have a chance at an interview for since I know the woman I'd be replacing and she put in the good word for me. It's out on the coast, so I'd have to move, and probably live alone until J and the boys could afford to move out, but on the other hand, it's on the coast, the pay isn't bad, and it's a 35 hour work week.

I also have an interview for a job I'm grossly underqualified for-a result of either my mad cover letter skills, or my mad networking skills. I guess you never can tell.

2006-07-12T06:58:00.000-07:00

So, when J finally got back up to where I was with the packs and dogs, it was getting on towards dark. We scurried up the last half mile of the trail, draped in blankets, sweating like bloody hell. There was a beautiful campsite right on the lake, but another camper with two loud dogs had secured it, and it was right on the trail, anyhow. We moved off to the left and found a nice private place, threw down our equipment and started making camp as fast as possible. As the last of the light disappeared, J put up our tent and I gathered firewood like a motherfucker.

It was dark by the time J started working on the fire and I started to rummage for dog food for our ravenous beasts. We were supposed to meet up with J's brother and his wife, but since it was fully dark, I expected they weren't coming. I told J we should just quit for the night, climb into the tent, make some body heat and sleep. I think we were both pretty cold at this point, since we were really sweating on the trail, and hungry and tired. It was then that J's brother and his wife showed up, walking through the dark by the light of their cell phone.

They couldn't get a fire going either, at first. But with the help of some magnesium (?) and a cig pack stuffed with toilet paper, we soon had a cheerful little blaze going. Sucess had never been so sweet.

So, you know, we watched the fire like bazillions of humans have done before us and talked and looked at the shapes the embers made deep within the blaze and thought about dragons and hellfire and the end of the world. And then we slept.

2006-07-10T07:20:00.000-07:00

I found out this weekend that it is not Lake Melmamoose, but Lake Memaloose. I also found out that when a trail is referred to as "easy" "not too hard" and "moderate" you should be prepared to scale cliffs. We additionally learned that we are all-J, me and the boys-soft and out of shape. Our adventures were many, so here is part one of our little drama:

I met J in Sandy when he was done working Friday, and drove with him over to his friend's house in Estacada. We dropped off my little weinie car that doesn't like driving up and down mountains and packed everything into J's car. Since we decided on the trip all last minute, I just had a lot of gear thrown in helter skelter-the three tents I found, J's backpack and some extra clothes, bedrolls, and the cooler. After picking through the lot for what we thought we'd need, we tossed some trash, left his friend a voicemail and the car's spare key, and took off. Hilariously, J's friend got home from work, saw a strange car parked next to his trailer and strange garbage in his can, and gathered it all up in a huff, putting the trash and a nasty note on my car. Then he went inside and listened to his messages.

Anyhow, we got out the mountain, and J's car is losing power and overheating. Then he remembers that his fan is not working. As we're stopped by the side of the road, a hillbilly with a gun in his lap pulls up to see what the problem is. He helped us to canabalize a wrecked, shot-to-hell car for the wire we needed to 'fix' the fan and continue up the mountain. Later, J's brother ran into the same hillbilly standing by the side of the road looking his freshly wrecked car. Apparently this guy took a corner too fast and slid off the road into the woods. Glad his gun didn't discharge into his passenger's face or anything like that.

We got to the trailhead a bit late, but it was still light. We ran into some day hikers coming down the trail and asked them how it was. They told us the trail was only about a mile, and was pretty easy. Well, a mile isn't much, so I decided we could haul along the cooler. We tied the bedding and tents onto us and started hauling and dragging the horribly heavy cooler over increasingly rough terrain. After about a mile of this, we decided to leave the cooler and come back for it after making camp. Another mile down the trail and we decided now was the time to double back, grab the necessities and ditch the cooler until we were ready to go home. I waited with the dogs and the packs while J went back and secured the cooler in a tree.

2006-07-07T08:17:00.000-07:00

Going camping up at Melmamoose Lake this weekend. Gotta get away for a while.

2006-07-06T07:05:00.000-07:00

Well, I got the rejection letter I was waiting for in the mail yesterday. Y'know, I'm getting to the point where I'm scared to death to come home-I'm afraid I'll get there only to find a smoking hole in the ground where the house used to be. It's been a month of disaster-2 more rejection letters to put on the wall, a good fucking by one of my student loan companies, a deep wall of inpenatratable debt and steadily declining credit, no job prospects of any sort, a 'burglary' that called me home from work only to find cops in my basement, constant collection threats, car trouble of both the legal and mechanical stripe, and a million other small things that I can't think about right now because my kindly mind (and just maybe a goodly dose of alcohol) has blocked them from my memory. How long, oh lord?

I know this is totally crazy, but it's my blog and I'll be crazy if I want to (and these days I'm feeling pretty crazed-I'll probably end up wandering around downtown, homeless, in a suit, begging for change). After every job interview, I tell myself not to get my hopes up, that until I hear word, I must assume the worst. But usually during the course of the interview, I start really liking the people and feeling like it is the sort of job that I would like to have and picturing the way I would do things and how I would fit in the office. As much as I try to smother that hope, it's still there lurking.

And when I get the inevitable rejection letter, I feel like they were laughing behind my back the whole time. That they were smiling and nodding encouragingly the whole time, and, after I left, they all pushed back their chairs, looked at each other and had a good laugh over what a bozo I am, and how I must have gotten my degree from a mail order catalogue and how they need a better screening system. I almost feel these days like poverty is in my genes, that the 'better class of people' can see through the cheap suits I wear that are getting more threadbare by the day and see the desparate scramble in my eyes, the debt and foodstamps and unpaid bills.

2006-07-05T07:07:00.000-07:00

I had a long 4th of July post written, but it was too depressing. Let's just move on, shall we?

2006-07-03T06:25:00.000-07:00

It's been quite a weekend so far. My car broke down Friday night, spent Saturday fixing it, spent Sunday dealing w/J's mom and her burned out place, and today I get to go downtown for this stupid fucking driving without insurance $242.00 fucking ticket. FUCK FUCK FUCK.

2006-06-30T08:43:00.001-07:00

Enquiring minds want to know: Why is there a giant cock on top of the "Freedom Tower"? Or do you think it looks more like the old one finger salute? The most appropriate thing about that monstrosity is the Orwellian name, considering the escapades that have gone down since 9/11.

2006-06-28T14:24:00.000-07:00

The U.N. says that "Cannabis use has turned into a pandemic that is causing almost as much harm as cocaine or heroin." What the fuck are they smoking over there? Hey, U.N.! We have a little problem here in the states called meth. It utterly destroys users, their families and the surrounding community. There's another charming little drug called crack that people will sell their body and soul to obtain. Then there's this nice little drug-legal the world over-called alcohol. You ever seen someone addicted to alcohol?

Goddamn, the world is filled with asshats. Listen to this: "About 9 per cent of those who try cannabis find themselves unable to stop using the drug. Cannabis
has been linked to precipitating psychosis in vulnerable individuals, and aggravating its symptoms in diagnosed schizophrenics.Cannabis can also produce negative acute effects, including panic attacks, paranoia, and psychotic symptoms. (Executive Summary, pg. 21)" Um. Maybe they just watched one of those classroom films put out by DARE?

2006-06-26T07:32:00.000-07:00

Too hot and depressed to blog today. Must go lie down.

2006-06-22T07:15:00.000-07:00

Jebus. Could we get this 'end times' bullshit over with so all the wack jobs can go whistling off to heaven, and the rest of us can get back to work already?

2006-06-21T08:43:00.000-07:00

I'm tired and depressed today. Lots of financial problems. No good solution in sight. I keep waiting by the telephone, sending out "hire me" thoughts. I've been thinking more and more about walking away from it all and saying fuck it. I could go be a carney, or a migrant fruit picker, or a beach bum! Ok, so that would all suck (except the beach bum part) but I wouldn't have creditors calling day and night (because I sure as hell wouldn't have a phone) and I wouldn't have this constant knawing pain in my stomach, not to mention the runny shits and the blinding headaches that I would guess are the direct result of being cornered. Treed.

2006-06-20T07:02:00.000-07:00

I love free stuff. J is always chuckling over some great find I made in some neighbor's garbage pile or on craiglist. When people visit my house, I do a lot of "Yeah, that's great! It was free!" Very classy.

My favorite spot to score free stuff is this house down the street that always has a couple of plants or flowers sitting out on a free sign. I think when the homeowner prunes back her giant garden, she sticks what she's getting rid of in a little container and puts it out. Anyhow, my porch is covered in lovely lamb ears, minature roses and other colorful plantlings that I've dragged home from there.

I usually go by when I'm walking the dogs in the morning, so arm space is limited. Also, I feel a bit silly walking down the street with the two dogs (and usually a bag of poop to boot) in one hand and a plant in the other. It looks like I either decided to take my plants for a walk, or like I am ripping off people's gardens while I'm out and about. So, I smile big and say to everyone I meet, "It's free!"

2006-06-16T06:47:00.000-07:00

I have had a marching band playing the electric bugaloo song in my head most of this week. I don't like it (especially since it never gets past the chorus), but previous experiences with trying to change the channel in my head have taught me that sometimes it's best to leave well enough alone. After all, it could be "Convoy" or William Shatner's version of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds." Shit.

2006-06-14T22:18:00.000-07:00

On my way to my volunteer gig, I saw a hopscotch grid chalked on the sidewalk. It was surrounded by rainbows, moons, stars, comets and, in a childish scrawl, the words, "Is life good". (I know the period goes inside the quotes, goddammit, but it doesn't here. Trust me.) I thought about what the writer had in mind while chalking that particular phrase. Was it an exclamation, like, "Is life good!" or was it a question, "Is life good?" Did they mean good to me, or good in general, or good for themselves or their generation? I didn't get to the ultimate question, "What is good?" (42! Nope, doesn't work).

AAAANNNYYYYHHHOOOWWWW. I swung my buns up Alberta Street and walked into the worst night I've had at the clinic. It was just long and difficult and double plus unfun. When I left, my eyes were aching and I reeked of failure. Plus I had upended a soda on some poor attorney's desk during a consultation. I felt real professional, and like a real credit to volunteer work.

As I passed the same sidewalk art on the way back home, while I was trying to wipe the unpleasantness of the night from my mind and shoulders, I was in a different frame of mind. The people I talked to, was their life good? Had I made their life any gooder with my bungling?

My life is on the good side these days. I may be in a tight spot financially, but I have my man and my dogs, a home and a job, friends and family. I just wish I wasn't so ineffectual in helping others bring themselves back to good.