Well, that was a week. I’m still figuring out how I want to to do this, format wise, but maybe this is the way? I don’t know yet. I’m going to have to either dump some images or up my plan too, which, ouch.

So, this week. Some not good stuff happened this week in my family and I would very much like to use this blog as my therapist and spill my guts out about it but, I don’t do that anymore. I wish I had a therapist, though. Damn do I wish that. Alas! It is 2026! They are thin on the ground and my ridiculously busy schedule means that that’s partly my fault. I’m on intermittent leave at work, which means I don’t have to use my own PTO, or, I only need to use part of my PTO when I take time off to care for my brother. This is amazing and I love Oregon and my job for it being available – I don’t know for sure, but I strongly suspect that this would not be possible in North Carolina. However, the catch 22 here is that I don’t feel as if I can also take off time for myself, so I don’t. This is a me problem but, there it is.

Honestly it’s not like I’m being all that productive at work. As the country spirals deeper and deeper into fascism it’s harder and harder for me to get anything done. I know the solution to this is to do more, get more involved in the resistance (such as it is, but I too am an old lady with a sign, so, hey) but see above: I don’t have much time. I have work, which is that neat 21st century version of 9 – 5, 8 – 5 plus other things that I have to attend. Somebody wrote a song about this – not the famous one, a recent take off lamenting the way work has expanded – but good luck finding it. Then I have my brother, who is either very easy or very hard, depending, but who always needs someone to go to doctor appointments and field phone calls and deal with caregivers and social workers and on and on. He needs someone to make breakfast and dinner every day and someone to make him take a shower and change his sheets and all that kind of stuff. Three times a week he has a very expensive care worker who is supposed to do all that kind of stuff, but, tbh, they prefer either walking the dog or “cleaning” my kitchen. I mean, so do I, but nobody’s paying me. After he got out of the hospital last fall it was even more intense: there were almost daily visiting nurses and PTs and OTs and more social workers and they all came to my house. This is. . not ideal. I mean, it’s good and all in the larger sense (and again, go Oregon) but I constantly feel as if I’m being judged for my house and it’s untidiness and general air of genteel decay. I hate it. People I don’t know cleaning my kitchen in a way I would not do it makes me really angry, too. See above, me problem, but.

And then there is my delightful and wonderful granddaughter, Four. She is four, that’s not really her name, but we’ll go with it until she becomes Five next July. I love her and I know that I am lucky to be so involved with her life but (there sure are a lot of buts in this post) I have her for quite a lot of almost every weekend due to her mom’s work schedule. I take her on Friday nights from 6 to whenever her mother gets home, usually around 2 am ish and this weekend I also chauffered her from birthday party to birthday party on Saturday and I have her again starting at 2:30 this afternoon and ending, I don’t know when. Probably tomorrow morning sometime.

And there is the dog, who likes to be walked, and the cat, who likes to disembowel things, specifically me if I walk by him wrong, and the fish, who like to be fed, and the plants who would like to be watered and not have to wait until I’m drinking a glass of water in their presence and suddenly am hit with a wave of terrible vegetal guilt. Not to mention the laundry and all that sort of stuff.

So all of this is a longwinded way of explaining pathetically why I did not make it to the Indivisible meeting yesterday and why I can’t find a therapist who is available when I am.

Meanwhile! The photos! Last Saturday I went to the beach and I went again this morning, so those are the bookends of the week. I found a sea urchin shell this morning! Last Sunday I met my friend for coffee at Coffee Girl and the ships were lined up so perfectly. Monday it poured and poured and was dark and foggy and altogether just Oregon coast in January. That photo is the Fred Meyer in Warrenton where I was awaiting pickup groceries. Which I never do but my daughter swears it ends up being cheaper and she may be right. The fog just sat here for several days and on Tuesday on the way to work I took this shot of the graveyard near the college. I took some more in the afternoon; I should post them somewhere. Fogtography! I loves it! Wednesday was my daughter’s birthday but I had to go to Seaside for an evening meeting so this is all I got, the freaky PNW version of Spanish moss. Thursday all hell broke loose in my family and I will just say, addiction is a fucking disease and it will break your heart in a million million pieces. Breaking, broken, crash. Yes this is an ironic shot for that conversation, but the heart needs what the heart needs and sometimes that’s space to breathe for a minute. On Friday morning I was outside the bus station early, saying goodbye, and the jogger made the composition. Yesterday, which was Saturday, I took a wrong turn off Marine Drive like some kind of dingbat amateur so I ended up crossing the bridge and going to Columbia State Park, which is very small and extremely boring but actually a nice peaceful place for a short dog walk and a photo from the other side of the river for a change. Then this morning it was back to the beach with Harvey the dog and the crabs are molting, the waves are waving and I will loan you my beach mantra, which is the four words Wind Wave Salt Sand switching up the order, over and over and over, until your brain goes blank and that’s all there is.