Sunday, October 18Monday, October 19Tuesday, October 20Wednesday, October 21Thursday, October 22Friday, October 23Saturday, October 24
I have been reunited with my phone, or, next best thing, a semi identical new to me phone that through the magic of technology managed to bring back my contacts, my texts, my calendar and even my apps. It is pathetic how much I missed it and how happy I have been to have it back. Enormous, and I do mean enormous, sigh of relief.
It is late and I have all the usual Sunday doom feelings: I did not get enough done and I suck, tomorrow is waiting with all its work stuff and etc., etc., etc. So this blog post is going to be short and just the pictures: here’s last week. On Sunday, presumably having Sunday doom feelings, I didn’t really go anywhere, so here are Mr. Binks and Sushi, who had moved in on Saturday. Mr. Binks is not a fan of our new roommate, to put it mildly. One week later and things are very slightly better between them, but I don’t know. I did not ask the universe for another cat and I have extremely mixed feelings about this one in particular. Still! There have been moments of cute! On Monday, here is Harvey in the parking lot of Natural Grocer on our way to our usual walk. I was thinking there had been too many cats and not enough Harvey lately, so here he is. Tomorrow we are going to a new vet, me and Harvey, so wish us luck. He needs, like, xanax. Massive xanax and probably talk therapy. Don’t we all, though, don’t we all. Tuesday, we managed a walk on the nicer side of the warrenton dike trail and the sunset was illuminating this frieze of trees. Those three photos were all taken with an iPhone, and I’m not a big fan, although the one of Harvey is nice. But come Wednesday and I have my Samsung Galaxy back. Ahhh! The oversaturated colors! The wonky aperture as the phone can’t decide what to focus on and so chooses at random! My precious! Here’s a photo taken of my daughter’s kitchen table and out her kitchen window. Look at those blues! And admire Five’s art work while you’re at it. Thursday, here’s a local deer. I got quite close and said, hey, do you know you are supposed to be a wild animal? She blinked at me. Friday is a cheat photo because I actually took it on Thursday, but I was at the exact same place on Friday and could have taken it then. It’s way better than the photos I did take, so I feel it is okay. Transparency and all that and sheesh, I am tired, so tired, of that walk. But the light was lovely. And yesterday, which was Saturday, I had a great, high energy, productive day for a change and I only shouted and stomped and lost my shit like twice! It is probably because I spent most of Friday evening drinking wine and nattering on the phone with my dear friend in Canada and I woke up the better for it. I cleaned the gutters (well, some of them) and fixed the weed whacker and mowed the whole lawn. Truly I am mighty. This photo was taken from the ladder on which I was cleaning out the gutters and that is the view from my backyard, the yard that Harvey keeps escaping. I am surprised by how much I like this photo and also, I don’t spend a lot of time in my backyard on ladders so the view, such as it is, kind of surprised me too. You can almost, but not quite, see the water. If you could see it my house would be worth actual money instead of just, like, the ever falling Zestimate that keeps harshing my I could maybe retire someday and not have to live in my car dreams. But alas. You can probably see the water from my roof and the next time I try to sell it (hopefully before the furnace coughs its last) I will demand that they climb up and take a few horrible wide angle shots from the roof.
And so onward we go into spooky week! Halloween week! I have a costume. Well, I have an idea and maybe some supplies so, we shall see. Happy Samhain to all who celebrate as the veil grows thin. I just personally put a bottle of wine outside while, if not chanting, muttering a bit, to soak up the full moon (or what would be the full moon if it wasn’t pouring rain, but, hey, PNW witches make do) and bring world harmony as instructed by an Instagram witch. I’m supposed to drink it on Halloween. Ah magic in the 21st century; it is certainly a thing, Merlin is spinning in his cave, but drinking on Halloween is a task I feel eminently suited to perform.
Sunday, October 11Monday, October 12Tuesday, October 13Wednesday, October 14Thursday, October 15Friday, October 16Saturday, October 17
Hello! To quote Bob Dylan, Everything Is Broken! Last Monday, I ran over my phone. Not on purpose, although that would be a fine and understandable thing, but because it fell out of my hoodie pocket as I was helping Harvey get into the car after our walk. I backed right over it, drove off and realized thanks to my elderly fancy Japanese luxury car (Harriet. Her name is Harriet the Chariot.) that I did not have my phone. Harriet puts a message up on the screen but it takes a while for her to get up to speed, so I was halfway across the bridge before she told me. I went right back and found my phone. I was afraid it had fallen in the long grass, which made me generally afraid because the coyotes come out at dusk. They have escorted me away from that trail more than once. This is nice of them in a sort of Nice Face Be a Shame If Anything Happened To It way, but also terrifying. However, it’s the 21st century and cars are much scarier than coyotes: the tall grass would have been fantastic. The screen was smashed.
This would be a depressing, slightly amusing mishap except that it is the second time my phone has been run over. In August 2025 in a fluster of preparations for the Regatta Parade, I left my phone on top of the car. 2 blocks away it flew off and I did not notice, even though Harriet duly notified me. I went off to the parade anyway, since we were late and I was sure it was in the house somewhere. Welp. Famous last thoughts, as it were. I clearly cannot be trusted with cars and phones somehow.
Both of these phones were Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultras. Replacing the screen on one of those is apparently damn near impossible and extremely expensive, as I learned last August and again on Tuesday. There’s a guy who works at the mini storage behind the Wal Mart who fixes phones and he told me that they often don’t work and he couldn’t guarantee it.
My brother has an iPhone he is no longer using. He has a Raz Senior Mobility phone now, by the way, and I mostly recommend it should you be in the market for such a thing. So he said, take my iPhone, and I did. I took it down to T-Mobile and they transferred my phone number to it and all good, right? No. Not all good. I never had an iPhone before and I don’t like it. And, because of this cursed century and walled gardens and tech billionaires, once you assign your life to one ecosystem or the other, changing over is no small matter. My calendar. My contacts. All my apps. It’s probable that none of those things will come back, but at least some data might return with an android, whereas with an iPhone I’m starting from scratch. Then, there is the emotional wallop of facing deleting all his stuff off his phone. We both know that he will never be able to use it again, but actually deleting his stuff? His phone? It’s just another fucking nail in the coffin and I hate it. I hate this disease so much. It just robs you of your dignity bit by bit and then it takes your podcasts. And, to be selfish, I hate the camera. Hate hate hate it. Let’s face it, I use my phone as a camera much more than I do as a phone. So I emptied my paltry savings account and ordered yet another refurbished phone. I’ll get it this week and start the process of transferring and in the meantime, if you think you were or should be in my contacts, please email me your digits and I will put them in my new phone. And if we were supposed to hang out, please please PLEASE email me because if it was in my calendar, it’s gone.
On to the Photos of the Day! This is a photo of the day blog. Supposedly. Anyway, on Sunday Five and I made fabulous bleach dyed Halloween shirts. It is surprising how difficult it is these days to find just a bag of plastic spiders. And I hate it when people blank out their children’s faces but this is a public blog and MY GOD WE LIVE IN THE WORST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS THESE DAYS. I just. Words fail me. So you will not see Five’s beautiful face on this blog. On Monday I took her to school in the morning and this is one of the views on the way to school. Truly we live in the most beautiful place in the world. Even if it is sometimes somewhat annoying. Last photo from my old phone, she wept, and thank the gods for dropbox. Tuesday, here is the first photo from my brother’s iPhone, taken from the car at a standstill on the Youngs Bay Bridge on the way home from T-Mobile. No clue why everything is green but I rather like it. Wednesday, the afternoon dog walk at the port. Thursday, I went to see Iron and Wine! It was incredible! Shamanic! Transformative! He did not play the song I was afraid he would play but I cried anyway and it was okay! I bought a t-shirt! And my bank card got hacked but I think that was coincidental. Friday morning I went to work – everything during my hell week went very smoothly and it turns out that by and large I am pretty good at my job, and also, more importantly, I have amazing wonderful colleagues who are extremely good at theirs and kind enough to help me out. Anyway, on Friday morning I discovered that my bank card had been hacked. I freaked out a bit but Wauna found it quickly, so no harm done. Except I thought I wouldn’t have a bank card for weeks, but it turns out that they can just print them now, so even that went okay. Now I get to figure out what subscriptions I actually have and get rid of most of them. And then that afternoon: benediction – river otters by the sawmill trail. You can barely see them and I’m irritated at myself for not lugging the good camera with me every day. But there they were, two of them, and you can zoom in and kind of see their little faces. I only see them about every two or three years and every time, I tell you what, it’s a blessing and a glory.
Then Saturday, yesterday, another day, another No Kings protest. I am done, now, with these protests. I usually feel good, after them, like wow! Things might change! Not this time. I mean, I ran into some friends. We talked about cats. And I met somebody who asked me if my blog title was an Incredible String Band reference and ya know what? It kind of is! Nobody has ever noticed that! As a teenager I really loved weird old hippie music and you just do not get weirder or hippier than the Incredible String Band. Thanks to my brother and my hippie aunt, I had all the records. So that was the week and that was the good part of the protest. A beautiful day, some friends. But. You should leave now if you do not want to hear some ranting.
Here are a couple of angry political paragraphs. Fuck No Kings. This is so pointless. It achieves exactly nothing except making old liberals feel smug. If you people think we can hold signs and vote our way out of this I have a bridge or two for sale. We are fully in fascism now. This is a fascist country. The president is a traitor. The billionaires have our entire congress and senate and supreme court firmly by the balls. Feudalism 2.0 is well on its way. You’re not a lord or lady in the castle and neither am I. We’re all of us so much closer to being houseless than we are to being millionaires and if you think that isn’t true, I’m sorry, but you’re an idiot. In the future that they are building, we are penniless serfs IF WE ARE FUCKING LUCKY. If not it’s the death camps. I’m not exaggerating. The only way out of this is general strike, revolution and yes, almost certainly some violence. They are not going to just hand over any power. Climate change is accelerating and they fully intend to ride that wave to total domination of a broken and ruined planet. They would rather reign in hell and they don’t want too many subjects: just a few broken survivors will be enough.
I look around and I feel nothing but despair. A blue wave isn’t going to do shit. I wish it would. But all it will do is bring back the curtain to hide the deals that the Epstein class lives and dies by. Meanwhile, more school shootings: they don’t want school and they don’t want the post office and they don’t want us healthy. And we are all so broken that we are not rising up, just keeping on pretending that everything is normal and everything is fine. I am just as bad as everyone: I keep going to work and trying to pay my increasingly unaffordable bills and buying my unaffordable possibly toxic groceries and meekly accepting that I am thousands of dollars in medical debt despite my supposedly stellar health insurance. My congressperson – who I quite like – says that voting will be fine and she’s investigating the post office and I think, yeah, sure. Sure you are, but no matter what you find, you won’t DO anything, because your net worth keeps going up and you’ve had this job for years and you do not want to rock the boat. Their boats are floating; ours are sinking; here we are and I’m pretty sure it’s the end of the road for the USA. So here comes the election. And if you don’t think that Elon can rig an election, again, I hope you’re right and I’m wrong. But I also have bridges to sell and if you buy one, I’m taking the money and leaving the country.
Sunday, October 4Monday, October 5Tuesday, October 6Wednesday, October 7Thursday, October 8Friday, October 9Saturday, October 10
You know how it’s summer and you think, well, sure, I’m busy now but it will definitely slow down a bit in the fall? No? Me either. I had a sinking feeling all summer that fall was going to be insane and in fact it is living right up to that expectation. I do not have time for anything and it sucks.
Well! My daughter has gone off for a couple days to a concert in California and Five will be descending on what remains of my weekend at any moment, so let’s get straight to the gallery explanations. Consider this alt text, by the way. I am ambivalent on alt text, downright uneasy. Why? Because the clamor to put alt text on every image online coincided with the rise of AI (aka the thieving lie machine; Butlerian Jihad now, etc.) and gosh, it does make it easy for the thieving lie machine to get an idea of what words to put with what pictures, now doesn’t it? Or to be better able to follow prompts when making slop pictures for cheap assholes. So, in the immortal but lost words of the Twitter profile for a vanished convenience store in Asheville, NC, I’m agin it. Nevertheless, I use it on social media like Bluesky because, okay, screen readers and accessibility are good things. But I’m not going to add it on my blog, sorry.
Sunday, October 4, we actually got to go to the nice part of the airport side of the dike trail. Usually I don’t take Harvey there because there are too many other dogs and he, as oft chronicled here, is dog reactive. Sigh. Owning a dog reactive dog just makes one’s life so much more interesting. Monday, we went to the beach. This is because my brother fell again and yet again the firefighters trooped through the house to lift him up. Each of these emergencies throws my whole emotional and psychological self into disarray, every single time, and only the ocean makes it better. Betterish. Nothing really makes it better. Tuesday morning at work the line of light across the river was just extraordinary and I want to paint it so bad. Wednesday kind of a boring dog walk but this illuminated tree made it beautiful. Thursday, I had to run a work errand down by the river and paused to take this shot by Pacifick Distillery. Look at the lines of light on that little gear shack or whatever it is. Coolers. Generators. Shrine to the Dead Fish Gods. I’m not up on the minutiae of the fishery. But by damn the beginning of the sunset gave it glorious stripes. Friday another day, another dog walk, and Harvey is getting old. I have a paragraph about that coming; I’m worried. And then Saturday was yesterday and it occurred to me I didn’t really have a photo of the completed Halloween decorations for this year. Is it not beautiful? Will nooone ever appear to mow my grass? Stay tuned.
Because my life is not complicated enough, Harvey has suddenly developed really extreme separation anxiety. He’s always been an anxious dog and a bit of an escape artist, but he has taken both these tendencies and refined them into a really hellish whole. He cries all day unless he’s right by my leg – or my daughter’s leg, either of us will do – and the minute he’s left alone he goes full MacGyver and gets himself out of the yard. He has a dog door. There is no blocking technique we can use that stops him, so that doesn’t work. Then he takes himself up the hill to my daughter’s house. I have tried repairing the fence, it did not work. I have put up a trail cam, it didn’t catch him in the act. I can lock him behind the kitchen door, which is unfair to the cat and confuses my brother, but then Harvey goes insane. He has clawed through literally 80 years of paint and is destroying the door. He howls and barks and, I don’t know, generally completely loses his shit. I am losing mine, because I have to go to work. I can’t stay here all day. Neither can I continue getting phone calls from strangers who find my dog wandering around, or cranky texts from my daughter as he shows up at her back door.
Therefore in a fit of madness I ordered a crate. I am not, let us say, good exactly, at spatial awareness if it’s in number form. I can look at a space and then look at an object and tell you down to a quarter inch if it will fit but say something is 48 inches wide and I’m like, huh? Then I can’t find the tape measure anyway. This is how I ended up with a crate big enough to hold a tiger. Or a small elephant. I wrestled it into my room anyway: it was flat then. But once assembled it took up, and I’m really not exaggerating, 90% of the last bit of empty floor space in my room. I was mad, though, and so I decided it was great and I could pile clothes on it and whatever, this had to work. This lasted two days but on the second day as I was trying to get my shoes by walking between the crate and the bed with my feet precariously in 1st position, I fell over and went into hysterics. I couldn’t fall very far and the whole thing was so idiotically funny, not to mention that I never even closed the door on the thing, because I don’t want Harvey to be sad, that I about lost it. So the crate, thanks to a genius idea of my daughter’s, is flattened and in the courtyard and next spring I will finally be able to grow vegetables in the front yard. Caged vegetables. Take that, deer! And the Harvey problem, as I go into what will be probably the busiest, most insane week of my job year, is unsolved. I do not know exactly wtf I am going to do. I would take him to the vet, because this is out of control, but alas: like the rest of us here on the western edge of the continent, Harvey does not have easily accessible medical care. I did my best. He has an appointment on the 26th with a new vet. So we shall see.
Also, climate change, and the smallest possible privileged whine: I have nothing to wear when none of the weather reports are right and nothing makes sense. That sentence brought to you by this weekend’s laborious task of swapping out summer clothes for winter ones, a bi yearly PITA which would make way more sense if days that start out chilly stopped suddenly deciding to be over 70 by 3 pm. All this fluster is work related: this coming week, I have to be poised and together and organized and everything has to run like a well oiled machine. Every day is packed from about 7 am to about 7 pm and, yikes.
Yeah, I know, I too can see the disasters lurking just around the corner. But by Friday at noon it will be over. See you next week when things return to what passes for normal around here.
Sunday, September 20Monday, September 21Tuesday, September 22Wednesday, September 23Thursday, September 24Friday, September 25Saturday, September 26
Day late and a dollar short, as the saying goes. And we are all a dollar or 800 short, these days, in Trump’s disease riddled and dying America. Ah the joys of living in a collapsing empire of grift and greed! Anyway, I was sick last week. It lasted exactly seven days, which was polite of it, and it never got terribly bad, but I have a grim sinking feeling that it was Covid anyway. Once you’ve had it enough – and don’t kid yourself, unless you are one of those dedicated souls who have managed to stay masked for six years and even then have preternatural luck, you’ve had it – it becomes terribly familiar. The headaches. The slight shortness of breath. The incredible exhaustion. Yup, I had all of them, plus an ongoing mildish nausea that would not quite turn into something really terrible and yet not quite quit.
However! I’m better now! There is nothing like the feeling when you are fully better from some virus and you go, fuck, I was really sick! I wasn’t even faking it! Didn’t put the thermometer on the radiator even once! But even though I was sick, I took photos, and here they are.
On Sunday, I picked some of the last of the cherry tomatoes. I wish they tasted as good as they looked, but they are mealy and not delicious. There is just not enough sun here to grow tomatoes but there’s a picture of me with a tomato cage in hand in the dictionary under Definition of Insanity: doing the same thing over and over even if the results are uniformly bad. On Monday I walked the dog in two places. I took two pictures and I could not decide which one I liked better. So here’s the second one:
This is the illegal dog walking trail by the airport. The elk were there in force, as you can see if you squint, and between the elk and the terrifying airplanes – military planes, they fly around roaring and scare the wits out of Harvey – we had to turn around. The elk are in rut this time of year, gathering in huge herds and disinclined to be cordial. So we went to Netul Landing where the photo that got selected was taken. Two short short walks do not really equal one long long walk and then we had to go sit in the car in the walmart parking lot for an hour while our pickup order was delayed. That sucked but I did get a blow up ghost and, eventually, yet another plug in air pump to replace the one that was lost by me a couple years ago and the replacement one that was lost by my son last summer. So it goes!
Tuesday, another shortish dog walk on the way other side of that trail. The water was a perfect mirror. Wednesday, it poured down rain all morning and here are beautiful wet spiderwebs like a jewel necklace in the wet rocks near my office. Thursday I gave up and stayed home and slept on and off all day when I wasn’t watching Alone, my guilty TV show pleasure, so here is Mr. Binks keeping me company. Friday, I finally felt a bit better and Five and I started putting up the Halloween decorations with these pumpkins. And! I have edited this post, it’s a week later. The new and better photo in the gallery, a blue and crisp afternoon full of boats, taken from the sawmill trail, is from the Canon. The original photo, Mr. Binks and his dollar store tower of skulls, is here.
And now here I am in the beginning/middle of next week. I’m super busy at work and feeling stressed but kind of energized. Harvey has suddenly decided that he cannot, ever, stay home without me or my daughter being present and to that end he keeps getting through the fence in some mysterious way that I think may involve teleportation or a tardis. There will, probably, be more about that next week because he is driving us all batshit. But for now I am going to go check on the potatoes, and see you next week!
Sunday, September 13Monday, September 14Tuesday, September 15Wednesday, September 16Thursday, September 17Friday, September 18Saturday, September 19
I’m going to start right off with the photos and the week and please, feel free to skip the rest of this post after this paragraph because it’s long, pretty dark and somewhat depressing. That’s just life, though, the week was okay. On Sunday I had coffee with a friend at Sleeper Coffee downtown and the bubble guys were out doing their thing, which is one of the things I love very much about this town. Monday, I was in an all staff meeting most of the day: inservice! I learned a lot about retirement (it’s hopeless) and sexual harassment (it’s bad and must be reported) and did this drawing. And, I suspect, caught the illness I’m currently enduring. Tuesday, I stopped by to take some good camera photos of the white pelicans on my way home from the dog walk. Wednesday, my daughter and granddaughter and I all went to the beach for sunset and I’m so glad we did. Thursday, I had therapy only to find out afterwards that my therapist is moving on. Bummer. I hope I can follow her but insurance may not allow this, so I went to the tiki bar and had a Purple Orchid, which is my favorite of all their amazing drinks. Friday, I woke up with whatever the hell is wrong with me and left work early. Five came over and put up these Halloween window clings, note the actual spider to the left. And yesterday I managed to wander around Fred Meyer in a daze (masked; I’m not history’s greatest monster) and then take poor Harvey for a short walk in the usual place. Other than that I have mostly been lying on the couch watching Alone and feeling sorry for myself.
I am sick. I thought it was a cold and now I think it might be covid (again, and again, and again in this cursed timeline) or maybe it’s a virus and actually, it doesn’t matter much really what it is. I’m not even going to talk about it much. I was going to make this whole blog post about food, because I’m feeling put upon doing all the cooking* and the endless round of grocery shopping and putting the groceries away and menu planning and so on and so forth but I realized that actually, this is not about food, it’s about caregiving.
I haven’t written much about this because I got enough flack from my family in the first incarnation of my blog for daring to write about them. I have tried, this time around, to be a bit more mindful even though I would like to point out that a) basically maybe three people read this blog and one of them is future me, trying to remember, and b) give it up, we live in the panopticon and you, too, blood relative, are observed. I have been planning for years to write revenge memoirs eventually, when everyone is dead, but at this point let’s face it: most everyone is already dead and the ones who aren’t will probably outlive me.
And one is dying very slowly in my garage. That would be my much older brother. He has dementia and a host of other physical ailments but we are terribly strong in this family and what would kill normal people does not, cruelly, kill us. He has had a long and storied life that has included (along with 35 years at sea in the merchant marine or, for a little while in the 70s, smuggling drugs around the Mediterranean in a freighter owned by a bunch of rich hippies) since he was in his late teens, what everyone always said was bipolar but which I think now was probably schizophrenia. Or bipolar with schizoaffective disorder: whatever. My parents did not before they died warn me that this was what I was walking into. They held that he was charmingly eccentric. Or less charmingly, during the multiple times that he was banned from the family and there was no contact, because he was also an alcoholic, like my dad, and they did not get along. Oh yes, mom and dad, it’s charmingly eccentric to type out endless pages of letters in mostly all caps describing conspiracy theories that circle around and around and around. Even if they are pretty well written. We are smart, this family. Word smart. Crazy, strong, and word smart. It’s a fucking LOT. But to be fair, back then did they know what we know now about mental illness? They did not. We know more. And YET, and YET, even in this year of the devil 2026 can anyone get a damn diagnosis? And treatment and help? No, no, they cannot. We can all pretend that help exists but you know, it doesn’t really, unless you get extraordinarily lucky and we are many things, this family, but lucky ain’t one. I mean there is some help. There are drugs, and he is on one, which is good, even if it just keeps some of the hallucinations at bay, and there was therapy, which, well, is sometimes good and sometimes useless but if you have SPMI (Severe and Persistent Mental Illness) which has turned into dementia, it does nothing and good luck.
Anyhow and anyway, he has had a hell of a rough time of it in his life and even though he’s been, over and over, a complete asshole to me, I decided that I would take care of him. He took care of our aunt, mostly, until he had a full psychotic break and I had to have him committed and put my aunt into memory care in the same damn month, hello unaddressed decade old trauma. But he did a good job before that, and what with Dad and all that (more trauma here, oh the circle goes on and on) I felt he deserved some help for a change and so I moved him here to Astoria. I said I would never let him move in with me, but instead help him out in his own apartment. That lasted a year and then he moved in. It has now been a little over a year since that dark day and honestly? Given a time machine I would not make any of these decisions – and the worst of it is that pretty much everyone warned me. But I did it anyway and here I am, and here he is, and some days are harder than others but no days are easy. Yesterday was a particularly bad day and I texted my other brother that I was cleaning shit off the floor in a house covered with spiders. He texted me back a picture of the cover of The Rector’s Daughter by E. M. Mayor which is apparently supposed to be the bleakest ever Victorian novel.
And then I had to google how to humanely euthanize an aquarium fish which sent me into full on hysteria. It’s good to fall over laughing. No, really. RIP Pinkie, who is now in a plastic bag on the bathroom floor next to the rolling pin because humane euthanization requires clove oil and I was unable to source some in a timely fashion. Jesus my life.
My brother is now on palliative care, which mostly means that he doesn’t have to leave the house. It means that vaccinations are over and medications are supposed to be for comfort and pain relief only, although he’s still taking some that are for his heart because otherwise the doctor who lives in his head will be mean to him. Don’t ask. Anyway, it’s good that he doesn’t have to leave, because his mobility is now severely limited and he has fallen twice. We have a wonderful lady who comes in every weekday morning for a couple of hours and he allows her to do the things that he mercifully will mostly not allow me to do. Eventually he will qualify for hospice and then he will get more help, which will be, uh, helpful. He is now third on the waiting list for memory care: there is one, exactly one, memory care facility in this entire county. I have no idea how we are going to pay for that, since his money is quickly running out and medicare does not cover memory care. Of course it doesn’t. If only someone had been able to predict that the baby boomers might get old and sick one day! But no! It is apparently a complete shock and no planning was done! By the way, I know that medicaid will cover that but I also know that he is unlikely to qualify and, just to end this on a really dark note, when the medicaid cuts come through in 2027, he’s really not going to qualify and neither is anyone else. Nursing homes and assisted living and skilled nursing and memory cares and all the rest of the awful patchwork of half assed attempts at humanely helping** seniors in the USA all run on medicaid. The fallout from this is not going to be pretty.
* even as I write this I have to pause it to go feed the bluejay some peanuts. I feed everyone.
** as opposed to humanely euthanizing. We treat animals better in this country sometimes: death with dignity is theoretically available in Oregon but not if you have dementia, even if you ask for it before you really have it. This is why I’m going stockpile clove oil and rolling pins for my own damn self.
Sunday, September 6Monday, September 7Tuesday, September 8Wednesday, September 9Thursday, September 10Friday, September 11Saturday, September 12
This is the returning week because it’s back to regular five days weeks at work for me (#fml, sigh, they expect me to WORK for FIVE days a WEEK like some kind of PEASANT?) and Five is back to school. And, the sunset is resetting itself, back to earlier in the evening while daybreak is later while we are kind of back to our regularly scheduled weather and, well, fall. Returns. The geese are flying overhead.
On Sunday Five and I did some more scooting around, this time on the sawmill trail with Harvey. On Monday I put her wonderful painting up on the front door so the whole neighborhood could enjoy it and I hope they did. She is an artistic genius. Clearly. On Tuesday I worked late and this was the view as I was leaving work from the gorgeous window. Wednesday, I felt sad and blue so I took myself to the beach in the blue hour before the sunset. Spider season is upon us as well – Return of the Spiders; if you live in the PNW you will understand – and every morning this week I have had to apologize to spiders for disturbing them with my dumb human needs. This is Thursday’s spider, who just wanted to peacefully hang out in their web, which happened to be anchored on my car door. I do apologize and move them gently. In more Felicity talks to wildlife news, on Friday I got involved in this little family drama as the herd of deer were up on the lawn above the retaining wall but this fawn was stuck. The fawn was bleating in distress (I never heard one make a noise before; it was very cute and also you could see if you were a mama deer that it would get on your nerves fast), the herd was interested but had no idea what to do (deer are not noted for their brainpower) and I was trying with extremely limited success to explain that they should all move towards the stairs. I have this tendency to try to explain to them in English using shorter words and arm gestures like, move that way deer! No go there! Go that way! Oh, of course, I think, they will get it now. Spoiler alert: they did not. I had Harvey with me; it was the last day where I’ll have the whole building practically to myself and so Harvey went to work with me. This did not help. The deer do not like Harvey, which is understandable but unfair: he ignores them completely and in fact even turns his head so he can’t see them. This is Harvey’s big trick for dealing with anything he objects to: just look away. It no longer exists and, bonus, you are now invisible. I wish it worked for humans; I would do it all the time. Like daily. And then it was Saturday, which was yesterday, and it gloriously rained most of the day: welcome, welcome oh fog and rain and wind, I have missed you so. I took Harvey for a long walk along the legal part of the airport dike and there was nobody else there except a tiny little black shrew or baby mole or something that was bobbling along like a toy on the trail. I talked to it too, and told it to go into the long grass, which it did.
I have more to say, specifically about house issues because the bathroom has suddenly come down with a bad case of mold. I can’t get the plumber in until Wednesday and oh, sweet jesus, I did NOT need this right now. I am wearing a mask to use the toilet; there are air purifiers running in the other rooms but I need to take a shower tonight. A shower of mold, I guess. This is not good but here we are again, this damn house, this damn town, this gods damned country and the all of it. Why are we not rioting in the streets again?
Sunday, August 30Monday, August 31Tuesday, September 1Wednesday, September 2Thursday, September 3Friday, September 4Saturday, September 5
The last week of my vacation! On Sunday I walked the dog and it was green and lovely. Plus I think that’s the afternoon I chatted with a very nice lady who is new to the area and looking for somewhere to walk her dog. Monday, I was getting ready to leave – it is pathetic but I am old and preparing for 3 days in Portland takes the same amount of planning, energy and packing that 2 weeks camping in the wilderness used to require – and anyway, I took one photo, which is to say, here’s Mr. Binks in the courtyard. Tuesday, we were at the Oregon Zoo and, pro tip, the Tuesday after the first day of school is THE day to go to the zoo. It was the least crowded we have ever seen it and that really, really helped. Also, baby elephant! Tula-Too! Also took the car in to the dealership for a software update and a recall thing and that was an experience: I am new to the luxury car dealership treatment. They were very nice even though I think they could tell that I am not, actually, in the correct tax bracket to drive an Acura, lol. And they loaned us a car while mine was being worked on! It is driving much better and I wish I’d done this months ago. I also dropped my Canon 5D at Advance Camera for a much needed cleaning and tuneup and had a lovely camera nerd conversation. Wednesday, it poured rain and we went shopping. As is required on every Portland trip, apparently, we all got hangry and overwhelmed by Powells, but this reflection was lovely. Thursday, it rained off and on and we drove and went food shopping, which also ended in hangry, sigh. Then we picked up our big box of salmon in the rain in Vancouver and drove on home. Friday, Five and I went down to the Riverwalk so she could scoot and I could run after her, far in the distance. And on Saturday Harvey and I took our regular walk and saw these ominous clouds apparently giving the river the finger.
So now, here I am. My vacation ends tomorrow and as per usual, I got none of the things done that I planned to do. The house is still trashed, the papers are still in a giant scary heap, the flea meds remain unpurchased, the art has not been created, there has not been much in the form of exercise and I’m still feeling cranky. But, books have been read, minecraft has been played – just found my first sulfur cave – wine has been drunk and, the big city errands have all been completed, even including buying way too much strange vegan ramen at Hong Phat. Got some film back as you can see in the previous post and all in all things could, of course, be much worse.
Also, we spent two nights in an absolutely incredible historic hotel which just might be haunted, although we saw nothing scarier than the decor in the Arcadian Garden, aka the downstairs bar/restaurant – see the center photo, because what says Garden better than astroturf and chunks of, uh, rock? Concrete? Moon rocks perchance? Nevertheless it was an awesome place to stay, with a gorgeous saltwater pool, free breakfast with made to order omelettes and two free drinks per person, not to mention wine tastings in the lobby. And the crows came flying by in the evening on their way to roost.
Below, ZOO! All from my trusty old Canon 5D Mark III. The cougar at the bottom became extremely interested in Five, clearly sizing her up as a possible lunch entree. As the internet says, if not friend, then why friend shape? Also, there were two fat, happy rats in the flamingo enclosure. I scoured the internet looking for details, and nothing. The zoo has clearly got a good communications department. As always, I like the seals and otters, but oh, I am so fond of giraffes and tortoises.
And now, here comes fall, back to work and Five starts kindergarten tomorrow. Here’s hoping for a fabulous fall for us all.
A roll back from the Chaika half frame solid little Soviet 70s camera. The film is Lomochrome ’92 which has indeed as promised given everything a kind of elegiac golden summer glow. I don’t know why it is that film just makes me so much happier than digital but there is no denying that it does. Huge thanks yet again to the good people at The Shutterbug. I stopped by in person and it does in fact seem that someone has defrosted the film hipsters from 2010; they have not aged and it’s a bit uncanny. 😀 Anyway the clerk was concerned that I wanted the diptychs from the half frame and I was like, no, no, I know that you make the decisions and I trust you! And the random is part of the process and the joy. So here, summer in a roll of film.
Sunday, August 23Monday, August 24Tuesday, August 25Wednesday, August 26Thursday, August 27Friday, August 28Saturday, August 29
I am on vacation. I mean, I’m home, sitting in front of the computer, but I am officially On Vacation and oh hell yeah, I am currently drinking a third small glass of wine. Whoooo! Living it up! Watch out! If you knew me in my glory days you will be shocked by how little I drink now. I sure am. But anyway, I figured out that I could get 11 straight days off for the price of four vacation days, so that is exactly what I am doing. And three of them are gone already and so far I am shocked, shocked to find out that what would ordinarily be my regular weekend turned into. . . wait for it. . . my regular weekend! I have gotten neither more nor less accomplished but I have been a bit more cheerful about it.
On Tuesday my daughter and Five and I are all going to Portland for a couple of days. Last spring I bought a share in an Alaskan salmon boat and on Thursday we get to pick it up. I have never done anything like this before, by the way, in case that nonchalant sentence has you fooled. I have no idea what this entails or how it’s going to work out or how much salmon my share will include. In a state of mild panic, I bought a freezer on sale from Costco. It’s now at my daughters because I don’t have anywhere to put one here, despite, sigh, needing an extra freezer. I was thinking it could go in her garage and I could run up there and get dinner but alas, no, she makes the good point that the electricity in her “garage” *cough* shed */cough* is unreliable. And by her I mean I own half that house, but I suspect the half I own is the unreliable bit. Anyway, it’s now in her laundry room and Tuesday, off we are going to the big city, the Oregon Zoo, the hopefully cheaper grocery stores, the kids’ consignment shops, the Acura dealer and the camera repair place. Three days of fun and errands!
My brother had a small fall last week and so I am a bit concerned. He was fine but we had to call 911 which meant that 9 guys showed up to troop through my laundry room. The cops, the firefighters, the EMTs, all to lift one man back onto his bed. Then they fled and I do not blame them. Anyway, my son will be here, my daughter’s friend will be staying at her house to take care of the kitten and will stop by to keep an eye on my brother and, best of all, our amazing caregiver has agreed to start working five mornings a week. It takes more than a fucking village, these days. I like the way that Northwest Senior and Disability Services tells you that you can be reimbursed for respite care without mentioning that actually, respite care does not exist! In Clatsop County, it is a myth. But that is for a longer post to come, someday. Maybe. If you are unlucky.
And, the week that was: Sunday morning I went to Fort Stevens and encountered BABY ELK! I did not get too close – I genuinely do know better – and I got lectured anyway by a park volunteer who was absodamnlutely determined to lecture at some length. Sigh, but she’s doing the lord’s work, so. She can lecture me all she wants. Monday, I was in Skamokawa! I was there for a work thing and these are the swallows that were everywhere around us. It was amazingly cool and also, I will put up a photo below, but the shipping channel runs CLOSE to the beach in Skamokawa. It’s kind of crazy to see. Tuesday, the oh so familiar walking trail – I am so very sick of it but with a reactive dog in a beach adjacent town in August, you do what you got to do – with wonderful clouds. Wednesday, we went to that other one of three trails that we walk regularly, here is a ship, and Thursday, Mr. Binks hopped up on the roof of the car to be his glamourous self. Friday, Five and I went downtown to look at the sea lions, pictured here, and also to walk down to Frite and Scoop and have not just ice cream but also french fries because, you know what? I am the grandmother after all. Also I can’t choose between the two myself, so I’m not going to expect Five to do it. She had strawberry ice cream and I had chocolate sorbet and then we had frites with garlic oil and parmesan. It was glorious. Saturday was yesterday and here is Harvey observing the cloud reflections in Young’s Bay. And as you can see, the weather has been just, well, flawless.
When you’re just chilling on the beach while the GIANT SHIPS go by.
Turning means the seasons are turning; off we go to buy back to school clothes. See you next week when I will have some big city photos to share!
