gimme just one more night

"Give me just one more night, give me just one more night, one more night, cos I can’t wait forever..."

Well somehow it's the end of the year...2005. Can you believe it?
Yeah, me neither!
Here's a review of 2005 from my personal perspective:

Jan: Helloooo unemployment! Unlike George Bush who was sworn in for 4 more years of the war party, I got my pink slip at the end of Christmas season. Yep, January means jobless! With all that free time on my hands, I started taking Japanese again after not having done so for quite some time.
Feb: Started working at Valley View around V-Day, and began a long season of gainful employment, and quality time outdoors.
Mar: Added a new member to the family. Butterbean was born on March 13th. We also aquired the meth neighbors this month as well which led to about 30 days of sleep deprivation. what a fun month it was.
Apr: The busy season was starting up at the nursery. bare root season was almost over. things started blooming all over town. Amazingly it also frosted several times.
May: May was a month of nice weather, farmer's market trips and darn pretty scenery.
Jun: June was a glorious month of productive harvesting, and enjoying the weather. I began working over at Ashland more, and got to spend my time back on the familiar east slopes again.
Jul: We went back to Memphis, got married and spent a week out in the Smokey Mountains.
Aug: We moved to Portland and I finally resolved the longstanding DMV crisis. Shortly after all hell broke loose and Katrina destoryed the gulf coast.
Sep: While the judicial system was wracked by tragicomic upheavals, Brian started his gig, I started taking classes at PCC and working at the bookstore.
Oct: I started working with troubled teens at Marshall High School.
Nov: I started working for UPS which went a long way towards solving my financial needs.
Dec: after the mad rush of finals and Christmas season I'm glad it's all over. I even got accepted into graduate school so have at least some idea of what will come my way in the new year (more papers and tests!)...hopefully I'll be well on my way to a teaching license.

It was a crazy mixed up year. So many things happened, and so many things changed. My life is very different at the end of this year, than it was at the beginning.
But that's how it goes, I guess.

Happy New Year!
あけましておめでとうございます!

bball and back to normal

can't say i miss the hype...
it's nice to get back to normal.
had the most uneventful day ever...
and i was totally fine with it.
adventure, excitement, a jedi craves not these things.




so tonight was the grizzlies game. well technically i guess you could say it was the blazers vs the grizzlies...
but i have lived in memphis a great deal longer than portland. and just like when i was in memphis we were in the nosebleed section. but that's cool. like there's a dimes worth of difference between the $10 and the $40 seats anyway.
it's a little weird watching the grizzlies play in portland, knowing that nobody's cheering for the same team as you...the other totally weird thing was the sheer number of white people in the building. that was a first for me.
the elvis jokes were flying fast and furious.
you know, it's been a long time since i've been to a basketball game. i used to go to tons of college games when my brother played. and the ones i went to were like glorified high school games but they were fun as hell. i think my favorite was still the lemoyne owen games, their halftime show was the best ever...i bet your school doesn't have djs. word.
The only thing better than smuggling in a bagful of cookies is walking out and catching the bus right on cue. not having to walk home in the rain or sit in postgame traffic...priceless.

feelin' homesick for everywhere

all it takes is a word and you remember it all...

i miss them mountains, lord i miss them. everywhere you look, there'd be mountains, north, south, east, west.
they greeted me every morning out my window, and at night after work, i'd climb up the hill after dinner and watch the sun set over 'em.

i miss the two trees at lithia park that i used to sleep between curled up in pine needles just out of sight, filling up on tree energy,
i miss the sound of the creek running under the bridge,
i miss stealing apples and pears and plums offa other folk's trees,
pickin' grapes offa grapevines, and picking flowers by the train tracks.

then i get to missing other places too. the outer banks, the rusty trainbridges on the elizabeth river, being out on the bay at night in a boat watching the lights from far far off, and walking on the beach alone after the storms roll through

in memphis, it's the people i miss most. we lived hard but we played harder. lost dancing in the darkness following the bridges to nowhere, finding our own treasures in the aftermath.

i know i can't go back...those worlds no longer exist in the same way they once did. i'd be makin' too much out of it thinkin' i could ever have that back.
but i can't help missing them either.

and so it goes...

"Tree!" and unexpected frogs

climate change?
four horsemen of the apocalypse?
my friend denny writes, "...I saw a frog in our little garden pond. I see green plants everywhere that have yet to die off because, like the two previous winters, we've had only brief cold spells."
I thought that was weird (who ever heard of frogs in December), but wouldn't you know it...I discovered one on the way to work this morning.
everything around is named cedar hills, but there ain't too many cedars in them hills no more...
So i'm walking down the hill from the transit center, minding my own affairs, and as i walked past the slope dotted with ferns and baby douglas firs poking up out of the slate-y rock, and what do i hear in the ditch just past the group of alders, but a frog croaking! how shocking indeed. it's been warmish this week, but i didn't think it was THAT warm. but then again the syringa is kicking out buds like it wants to bloom. what is UP? it is NOT spring!
while conversing with an unexpected frog cheered me up, it also made me sad...poor little guy's clearly confused.

wonder if we're even gonna have a winter in 10 years...
i'm with denny, i don't know if i like the way things are going in this world. i see abuses of the environment every day that offend the hell out of me. and that's only the stuff i can actually see. but as much as i'm tempted to go unabomber on the next muthafucker that throws trash along my sidewalk, i figure i ain't goin' nowhere so I gotta make the best of it...

静かにしてさえいればここに居てもよろしい。

Thoughts of the day: (dedicated to Sonya Johnson)

"Belief has the word ‘lie’ in it... and that pretty much sums up what the world has us believing about ourselves."
-- Doug Firebaugh

将来、何になるつもりですか。
What are you going to be?

"You´re a shinig star, no matter who you are
Shining bright to see what you can truly be
That you can truly be"

Be, 居る Do 為る , Have 有. If we seek abundance 豊富, we must be abundant in spirit 気. We can begin to cultivate 気豊富 by opening our 心 hearts in 随喜 gratitude.

随喜 日誌 を始める Start a gratitude journal today.
毎晩, write down at least 5 things for which you
are grateful.


易しい 例題 tool will help you 開豁 open your eyes to the 豊富
abundance of your 今世界 world.

1. love above all else
2. home (know where to lay my head down)
3. sufficiency (job, food, money, not a lot but enough)
4. knowledge
5. health (can keep on movin')

This is the dilemma I've been grappling with all my life, not so much the
materialistic side of it, but thinking I have to wait to get what I want.  The book
I just got done reading kinda ties into this too, basically saying you gotta have a dream to live in this world...
"Often people attempt to live their lives backwards: they try to have more things, or
more money, in order to do more of what they want so they will be happier. The way it actually works is
the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you love to do, in order to have what you want."
-- Margaret Young

As they say, "What the hell you waiting for, girl?"  Sonya woulda known better than to wait for nothing. 
She never waited around for nothin'.  She got a notion to want to do something, she jus' go on an' do it. 
Whether it was "possible" or not. 
Honestly I don't know anyone braver, an' probably never will.  She is my hero...wherever she is.

"Keep your head to the sky."

a couple of days off is always a good thing

Dec 23rd: well i'm glad all THAT's over...no more Christmas related packing and shipping for me. (or so i thought...)

Dec 24th: sure was nice to sit around the house for a few days, eat cookies and relax. Didn't go anywhere. Didn't do anything. It was fabulous. Well I take that back, we did go see Narnia on Christmas eve. Austin said it was cheesy but you know that's part of the charm. Of course a movie about kids hiding in a wardrobe and popping out in a magical kingdom is somewhat cheesy. As is the book it's based on. And all the others after it are based on equally cheesy premises. But hey, nothing wrong with it. I have no complaints, and granted the last time I read the book was 6th grade, but I don't think they butchered anything too badly.

Dec 25th: like I was saying, boy am i liking all this lounging around. weather's lousy anyhow although i did get motivated to walk around the neighborhood a little bit.
can you believe i still can harvest some herbs out of my garden at this time of year? granted they're mainly things like rosemary, but i can also count on sage, chives, celery, and thyme. there's a hawthorne tree across the street that's sparse, but the haws taste almost like apples. they're the best tasting hawthorns around.

Dec. 26: i'm a retard. i thought i had to work today. ha! i went and hiked all that way and opened up the store and realized we were supposed to be closed. shit. i'm so silly.

Dec. 27: okay now it's back to work for real this time. and boy oh boy does it suck. i totally feel sorry for anyone who works in retail right now...i didn't realize there were so many procrastinators. i think we had more people up in our hair after christmas than before. and i broke yet another thermos. what a craptastic day indeed.

speculatin'

will our caped avengers get to go iceskating tomorrow?

who knows...

but you can be damn sure they'll be stuffing themselves with sugary holiday snacks.

stay tuned kids.

captain boxcutter and the rollatape possee representin' on the westside, hell yeah.

somebody put the crank back in krunk

Went over to Tiny’s and worked on getting Christmas cards done. Nothing like a booth, some horizontal space, and good coffee, to get me motivated. While we were there, someone busted out some krunk straight outta Mississippi. The Christmas music was just to get on my nerves, now they jus’ tryin’ to make me homesick…ain’t that somethin’?

This is from a forward I got from a friend but I figured in light of all the hype going on outside, it's appropriate as hell today...

Heavenly Father, Help us remember that the jerk who cut us off in traffic last night is a single mother who worked nine hours that day (for minimum wage) and is (trying to get to the daycare to pick up her child before the $60 an hour fine sets in and) rushing home to cook dinner, help with homework, do the laundry and spend a few precious moments with her children.

Help us to remember that the pierced, tattooed, disinterested young man who can't make change correctly is a worried 19-year-old college student, (with no health insurance) balancing his apprehension over final exams with his fear of not getting his student loans for next semester.

Remind us, Lord, that the scary looking panhandler, begging for money in the same
spot every day (who really ought to get a job!) is a slave to addictions that we can only imagine in our worst nightmares.

Help us to remember that the old couple walking annoyingly slow through the store aisles
and blocking our shopping progress are savoring this moment, knowing that, based on the biopsy report she got back last week, this will be the last year that they go shopping together. (And for their family, the last Christmas they will spend together).

Heavenly Father, remind us each day that, of all the gifts you give us, the greatest gift is love.
It is not enough to share that love with those we hold dear. Open our hearts not to just those who are close to us, but to all humanity.
Let us be slow to judge and quick to forgive, show patience, empathy and love.

Today out on the streets, it was all honking horns and impatient holiday shoppers circling the parking lots like vultures and hanging out in intersections all over town. I didn’t have to work today but I had to go out to a couple of stores, and boy oh boy were people worked up. Kinda made me dizzy to be around all that frantic energy. I was really glad to get back home at the end of it all.

oh yeah and its solstice too

yep kids, it's winter now. if you don't know what winter solstice, is i'm sure you'll find a hundred other websites that can illuminate you, and well it makes for some interesting reading actually...

but anyway--i thought this picture was pretty cool, although technically we're almost to the new moon which means i'm gonna be laying low and hibernating. the days are going to get longer again though (good, who really wants the sun to set at 4pm? not me, although i hear it's worse the further north you get) and soon i hope the new agricultural season will be upon us. i have delusions of grandeur...

for now though, keeping the plants inside from succumbing to a variety of pestilences is challenging enough. even my salvia apiana has some infestation of aphids. didn't think anything would be desperate enough to afflict salvias...

i am really looking forward to having a few days off in a row, for which reason i guess christmas is good for something. probably won't do much of anything except make like smoky and park my butt next to a radiator and lie around, but considering i've been running around for weeks like a one legged man at a shit kicking contest, not doing anything at all sounds real nice. and it is appropriate i suppose in this season of hibernation and repose. my maples aren't doing a damn thing...why should i?

last week i felt like i was in chicago, this week i feel like i'm in memphis. it's been raining like a champ and it's about 40 degrees, so not a chance in hell of snow. zone 6 can be a letdown sometimes, but the plants seem to love it. honestly though it really doesn't matter much what the weather's like. unless you work outdoors or are homeless you don't have to think about it much, which is why i think it's strange that people talk of nothing else...if i had people to talk to, i'd talk of anything but the weather, there are so many interesting things out there to think about.

random note #127 fake reubens

a new kick we have going on around here is fake reubens.
real reubens are not happening around here, and brian's not wild about tempeh so tempeh reubens are out (although we ate them at declerye and i love 'em), but sometimes you gotta keep it real, german style.
here's a vegan recipe we indulge in on a pretty regular basis that gets the job done and doesn't require a whole lot of effort:

fake reubens: (makes about )
(what you need to be in the bid'ness)

* 1 loaf of rye bread (or whatever makes you happy)
* 1 package of fake meat (or real if yer into that), I use pastrami and that works real good in terms of color and texture.
* sauerkraut, (we make ours and it looks a lot like the picture i yanked from sandorkraut, who is my personal fermentation superhero), you may wish to buy it. try to stay away from the canned stuff if you aren't making your own...it's not that great. but really if you eat sauerkraut even semi-regularly it's totally worth learning how to make it yourself. the results rival anything you can buy by miles.
* 1 pack of fake cheez, (or real if you aren't lactose intolerant), I've had real good luck with the jalapeno jack which is non-traditional as hell but seems to work. grate or slice...either works. it's supposed to be swiss cheese, but who really cares...
* da sauce: mayo, ketchup, and a little mustard. relish if you got it. mix it up.
*optional: friend onions, pickled beets instead of sauerkraut, dill

1. fry onions if using, and sautee with meat.
2. toast bread
3. assemble by coating bread with sauce (I use a spatula for maximum efficiency), and stack with fried stuff, sauerkraut, and cheese
4. cook on griddle until toasty.
5. if you want you can shake a little dill on there
6. or if yer feeling really lazy, toast some bread, slap it together and microwave it.

so yeah, not exactly traditional, but quite tasty, and it's easy enough to do that i'll do it without complaining even when i'm dead tired and grouch after being at work all day. Like the picture says, it goes well with a beer. i also like to serve mine with some kinda fairly simple soup like tomato or potato.

not that i like complaining

oh my god...i musta been the only person in portland who had to work today...
okay, so maybe that's not true.
but it felt true, yo.

seriously i was one of those unfortunate types who still had to report to work inspite of the snow/ice storm we had yesterday. and let's just say it's a good thing i did. today was nuts. complete insanity from open to close. hordes and hordes and hordes. but i'm fine now.

i saw something over at (thesedaysbegin.blogspot.com) that i thought was worth replicating with my own variables, so here goes:

in the last year...

i have left all the homes i've never had
and buried them in my heart

i have packed up my life and shoved it into boxes
and hit the road over and over again

i went all the way up north
only to find i missed the south

i had to move to the city
in order to realize how much i loved the country

i have met the most amazing people
and had to leave them all behind

i fell in love with a guy straight from my dreams
and married him (in spite of being more or less against marriage)

i lost several jobs
and managed to find new ones

i've had my happiest moments
and felt like dying

i gave up some vices
and had to take them back

i have argued and cried
and kissed and made up

i have lost faith in my country
and learned to trust in its people

i have grown up a lot
by being around children

i have learned more about myself
for having been so many other people

just a thought

it just occurred to me...i have no idea if i'm going to be working tomrrow or not...there's tons of snow on the ground. if it's still like this i may be staying home...

i also haven't heard anything back from psu about graduate school. they said mid-december, and call me crazy but i think we're there. i sure hope everything works out...i don't know what i would do if my whole plan fell apart now.
let's not think about that, eh.

yay hooray snow today!

wow, it snowed! that's so amazing because i was becoming totally convinced that it never snows in portland. all of a sudden a huge storm rolled up out of the south and made the street outside my window look like a snowglobe.

so we went out and frolicked in what will probably be our only snow of the christmas season. i'd post pictures but the files sizes are huge right now...

other than watching the snow i've had a pretty lazy day. i didn't do much except relax, and about the only ambitious thing i did all day was make a wreath out of umbellaria, holly and rosemary. it's pretty but i don't know where to hang it...
the cat's curled up by the radiator and she can't be bothered to move from its side except to eat. brian's lost in magic land and i'm feeling lazy myself. it's a good sunday for that...

aww yeah

brian rocks!

i just came home to a bowl of hot chili and a big hug.

what an awesome husband.

howl howl howl

the winds scream and howl like drunken dancers through the streets of portland,
the walla walla brothers 5 resurrected on full moon nights of late december,
causing a ruckus in the alleys,
pulling hair and hats and scarves asunder, shaking windowpains and rattling nerves,
howling and moaning and howling again.

"who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the vibrating plane" (allen ginsburg)

all i'm saying is that lord god in heaven it's windy.
chicago windy.
tail wind of fury windy.
it was quite unpleasant to stand out in the gale and wait and wait and wait and wait for the bus to come.

but the hype at work was less hype, i love cracking jokes with the ladies, and chocolate and pizza is a panacea for most of what ails me.

next week it's going to rain every day.
tonight the wind blows, traffic lights sway, the roof groans and ceiling tiles lift and shake.
the windows rattle, and the heat runs incessantly doing nothing.
nothing on earth could induce me to leave the house on a night like this.
the natives are right, the chinook lost...the wallas won. and man is it ever windy.

botan

ah botan...it's been quite awhile since i've had it, but steven came home with some and passed them around. i love the way they melt on your tongue, wrapper and all. such a relic of my childhood...

today was pretty hellacious in the way that only working during the christmas shopping season can really ever be. after a whole day of solving other people's problems i feel kind of numb. but every day has its moments.

one of today's was the kid who was hopping around like a frog. reminds me of the quote, "energy is wasted on the youth". but oh she was cute. i wish i felt like hopping around at 4 in the afternoon on a friday, but alas those days have long since come an' gone.
the other moment of coolness was this woman who came in with a couple of kids. i guess what i admired about her is that she had a really cool parenting style. instead of yelling at them, like most people, she was really interactive, and instead of saying "don't do that!", her technique was getting them to understand why they shouldn't do certain things, and looking at the bigger picture. I especially liked it when she told her son, "you know instead of always wanting everything you see, think about how some people aren't able to have the things they want" which turned into a nice little minilesson on poverty and christmas. She said it in a way that was not condenscending or patronizing and yet entirely age appropriate. i guess she reminded me of jessica sumner, i always liked the way she interacts with her kids...very thoughtful. anyhow the point is, this kind of stuff gives me hope for the future, and counteracts all those times i see people screaming at their kids and even cursing at them...i hate that crap. it makes me sooo mad.

as for me, here's a piece of advice i should really pay attention to, if only i were better at that sort of thing...
"STOP and PAY ATTENTION. For example, how do you react to the alarm clock, traffic, work colleagues and situations, your partner or children? How do you react to anger or fear in someone else? How do you react to your own anger or fear? Become a witness to your own life. Pay attention to how you do things." It's so hard though...I don't know how people do it. Sometimes I wish I was better at retaining information and focusing on the kinds of things that other people seem to have no problem with...after all nobody else seems to have a problem with this except for me. But my question is, how do you know what to pay attention to? Do y'all literally pay attention to everything? Equally? Isn't that exhausting? It sure sounds like it would be, but I don't know...I guess that's the way it's done, but I would imagine it's a lot more stressful dealing with all that incoming data and stimuli. I'm tired of getting yelled at for not remembering shit, and I can't say that I literally choose what to pay attention to. It's more like my brain discards random data on a regular basis that it thinks it doesn't need, and screens out a lot of things that other people probably retain and consider important...
i don't know. it's a challenge area, for sure.

it's days like these i want to follow the good advice of lennie and george and go live off the fat o' the land...life would be much simpler if i could just hole up on a farm somewhere and ride out the days of my winters hunkered up next to a cozy woodstove, knitting away like a madman until springtime...

please leave attitude in here

a good message for a day like today.
i'm nostalgic as hell anyway, and i remember well the wise words emblazoned upon the box of mystery from declerye (much like its predecessor, the punk and smoking room), and this mindful phrase of good advice for communal living.

today was really crazy at work. not exactly an earth shattering revelation but it takes a lot of effort to remain in the state of zen-like calm when you get interrrupted 500 times.

i'm excited about having an excuse to re-read "of mice and men". the kids at marshall are reading this apparently. i also decided to revisit the oddyssey while I was at it. i'm embarrassed to admit it, but i guess we didn't read the whole thing in 9th grade because i don't remember several of these chapters. we must've read an abridged version. considering that most of my classes were in mobile units that year, anything's possible. but as a future english teacher, i'm supposed to know these things.

nothing like doing ESL work to remind me how curiously arbitrary English is sometimes. I blew the money I earned from a consultation on a consolation bowl of pho around the corner. somehow the idea of coming home to a cold silent house with nothing to eat was just too much for me. pho is really a wonderful secret weapon against the winter cold and fortunately in portland you are never very far from pho. i think it is one of the things i missed most when i was living in ashland. but now that i'm here i miss senior sams so i guess you can't win. if anyone wants to open a senior sams in portland, i'm waiting very very impatiently.

i full expect tomorrow and the day after that to be completely insane at work, but as long as people remain civil, it's all good. i can handle volume, but when the huffy complaining starts, i'm gonna think of the complaint box.

and now it's time for bed. it's early but shit, it's been a long ass day. and tomorrow's gonna be a whole lot more of the same...

steel reserve kinda busride

a little while ago it was seriously hype outside, i don't know what was going on, but the usually tranquil street down below became the scene of thumping bass and slamming card doors shaking the house and rattling the windows. i won't speculate too much but i'm sure i don't want to know.
the moon is full. anything is possible.

got a quote from kill bill by seanny in the checkout line...
THE BRIDE: Then give me one of these. HANZO: These are not for sale. THE BRIDE: I didn't say, sell me. I said, give me. HANZO: And why should I be obliged to assist you in the extermination of your vermin? THE BRIDE: Because my vermin, is a former student of yours. And considering the student, I'd say you had a rather large obligation. reckon associations can come from just about anywhere, ne?

other random things that happened today:

i saw an old lady walk across a busy road and lose her shoe in the street. she didn't have any socks on...so she walked back in the middle of the road with cars coming at her and picked it up and stood on the side of the road trying to balance and get it back on. the wind was blowing out of the gorge and it was below freezing.

lately i've noticed that i don't get that excited about christmas. i never really thought much about why, until i realized that my grandmother died on christmas eve. hmmm...

a guy got on the bus this morning, around 9 am, waltzed down the aisle sipping on a canned beer like he ain't got no shame in his game...the a little while later, i smell the aroma of cheap beer and sure enough the guy next to me whips out a concealed fotay of steel reserve from up out his jacket. yum.


dude, nursing homes are depressing, i had no idea. the stories people in my class tell about the places they work are just disturbing. these girls on the bus were talking about the ones they work at and it's pretty appalling... makes me want to adopt a bunch of elders who never get visits from their family anymore.

My walkman is totally MIA. I have no idea where it is, and i don't even care for the most part...i would like to have my one rechargeable battery back, but really the thing was totally fragged...it barely worked after living a hard life with the likes of me. but what really makes me sad is i had my Los Amaya tape in there when it disappeared...i'll never be able to replace that one. found it in a trashpile and it's old as hell...so no more El Lavaplatos or Bacalao Salao for me no more. sigh. i have good memories of rockin' that through orange mound back in the day. besides who wants a walkman and cassette tapes in the days of ipods? but me, i'm old skool...i guess i'll have to get another one and hope it doesn't meet the same tragic end.

i'm reading this book about trees. it's pretty fascinating. i had no idea that the celtics were so obsessed with trees, but i'm glad to know there's a precedence for this sort of thing. Similar subject matter can be found at http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shire/3951/dryadart.html
if you are wondering what the hell i'm talking about. one of my life goals is to write the definitive works about trees so i try to read up on it...

well that's enough for one day. i'm out...

complain like a mortal

can i just say for a minute that today really sucked?
i'm tired of being a superhero, today i just want to wallow in self-pity for a second...

we were horribly understaffed at work so lisa and i did tons of work with no letup and hardly a spec of a break anywhere in sight. then i go a royally screw things up, come home exhausted, want to go christmas shopping but have no money, then get all the way home to discover I'm locked out the house for the next 3 hours and have to go around the corner and hang out at tiny's because i don't have anywhere to go. then they close, and i have to sit out in the cold, but fortunately it's only 15 minutes before brian comes along and rescues my frosty butt.

today sucked.

but i guess it could still be worse. after all some people spend lots of quality time out in the cold, and don't even have houses to get locked out of. and even though i screwed up big time, at least it's not the worst thing i've ever done, not by a long shot. but right now i just want to go crawl in bed and pray to god that tomorrow is not gonna be an instant replay. i ain't invincible. i'm just like everyone else. and just like everyone else, i want to complain once in awhile when things get ugly.

denny bear

denny snowbeard!

you lucky bastard,
i wish we had snow too.
i miss you buddy!
brian misses you too.
i will send you big mental cup of hot chocolate.
luv, amy goat and brian scamp

sluggish saturdays

we're firmly in that time of year that i can't function without coffee. the SAD kicks in and i don't get out of neutral without blessings from the caffeine gods.

i sure didn't want to get out of bed this morning, but it wasn't that bad of a day. friday was kind of hellish in terms of intake volume to employee ratios, but today was busy but not in as frantic of a way. i got into a rhythm of some sort and actually experienced the onslaught of boxes and paperwork in a zenlike place where i felt completely balanced and unfrantic all day. it's a good feeling considering we're getting into a hairy time of year.

my one complaint is i'm sooo tired of bad christmas music, i'm in that hell where i have bad christmas music stuck in my head. we have to listen to this station that plays the same 10 christmas songs over and over (because there's a finite number of distinct christmas songs, they play different versions of the same 10 or so songs, and after 2 hours or so, you get the eerie feeling you've heard it all before). i'm sure this is what hell is gonna be like...kinda wish i was next door listening to bad cheesy classic rock with the construction guys. that's way more my speed. "duh duh DUH baaad company..." oh yeah. feel the flow.

call me a grouch if you want but i just am not in much of a christmas mood this year. mainly because i don't have free time to do anything other than eat and sleep. so it might as well be february. not to mention with this kind of schedule, absolutely nothing whatsoever gets done. kinda sad, but i really don't feel like doing much of anything with the one day i do have free. i'll be sad when all the twinkly lights get turned out and we're just left with the bleakness of winter. sigh. january's such a letdown.

my one hope is that someone sends me some socks. and maybe something hopelessly chocolate-y. i positively miss the smell of bear creek's bakeries at this time of year. and the free samples. it was worth getting up at 5am for. about the only thing i don't miss is the hike from the back lot (although finding agate was fun), and being around THAT much telecom equipment gives you weird headaches after a few hours.

i got an email from joshy. gosh that makes me happy. i get so excited when i hear from someone. i miss people...

the last flaming hoop

here goes...the last hoop i have to jump through (if you don't count an extended waltz with financial aid) is an interview at 2pm. they're threatening to have us do "impromptu" teamwork exercises.
whatev'...
if i can handle a roomful of sullen uncooperative teens, i figure i can handle anything.
so here's to hoping i get in grad school this next spring.

about those teens. whew, today was a bag full of tricks.
jordan and leon pretty much spent most of their time messing around with each other, and buggin' about pizza every 5 minutes. it would have been a complete loss except that the eerie thing is they did some actual work. even leon who i thought wasn't going to show any signs of doing anything wrote a paragraph rather unexpectedly. it actually made a good intro to what he wrote last week.
i don't know what to think about the two of them...i can just imagine the potential if they weren't totally distracting each other all the time.
i saw them talking to what looked like a coach out in the hall. i hope that will help with motivation because leon actually has decent writing skills...and needs to pass English if he wants to keep playing sports.
this other kid huyen showed up, voluntarily i guess. i didn't have any trouble getting him to do his work, he was all ready to go, so i tried to teach him the tricks i know for spotting verbs in a sentence very quickly so he could finish. hopefully he learned some of them, because i find them very useful myself.
probably the most surprising thing that happened today aside from this mysterious work that happened to be mixed in with a healthy dose of screwing around, was that all three boys like green tea. huyen i could see liking tea, but they were all raiding my tea like it was coca cola. normally i'd be pissed about some teenage boys drinking all my tea but frankly i was more mystified and bemused, and let them have at it to see if they were really enjoying it. they drank all of what was left after i drank half of the thermos on the ride out there. crazy...

the interview situation was much easier than a room full of teenage boys for sure. we had to discuss a lesson plan which was tricky because we were a group of two english majors and a science major. fortunately i have some science experience so i can forsee some interdisciplinary possibilities, which is essentially what we had to come up with. i'm glad i have all the classroom experience that i have because these things are so much easier with a bit of real life practice. i don't think there's anything hard about coming up with a lesson plan anymore...

then we had to write a two page statement on how we would implement diversity training in our classroom. another easy one. dude, i'm taking multicultural ed right now so this is what we've been talking about for months. not to mention i have lots of experience to go with all the theorizing in this area as well.

i think the one thing i wish i had more experience with is discipline. i never had much of a problem with discipline in adult ed (people are only there if they want to be, so they tend to behave--the only issues i ever had were people were late to class, or talkative which were easily dealt with). working at the botanical gardens, i never had much to deal with even with 600 kids. oddly enough they usually behaved themselves...the adults on the other hand...
i work in a high school now, and have situation like jordan and leon messing around, but don't have any idea what my role is in a situation like that because i'm not the teacher, and don't have any idea what the rules are. beyond telling them not to do something, i don't know what more i can really do, other than not let them get under my skin (i suspect in a way they're really testing me more than each other) so i try to show them that they aren't bothering me. but in real life, i would never let this stuff float, and i would have some way of seeing to it that they behave a bit better. but i guess this is my weakest area, since i've never had to deal with it.

tonight's class was interesting. we were talking about aging issues, how people deal with death, and how incredibly shitty nursing homes can be. honestly i feel pretty good about aging, but it's probably because i've got some really good role models. i know some kickass old folks, the type who would never be mistaken for "old" because they look and act years younger than their age suggests. here's a few people that make me think getting older isn't such a bad deal:

1. helen. if she's still alive (and knowing her she might be) is probably about 100 years old. last time i saw her she was 95 and frankly looked like she was about 65 or so. she still worked, and although getting around was probably troublesome, she still enjoyed being around college students so much that she made the effort to "go to work"every day.

2. gertrude. she's in her 70's now but you wouldn't know it. she tells strangers she isn't a day over 16 and she must smile even in her sleep. she's got a hug and a nice word for everyone and frankly it brightens my day just thinking about her. even having knee surgery didn't keep her out of commission very long. my motto in life these days is, what would gertrude do in this situation?

3. my grandmother. she's dead now, alas, but when she was alive she never sat still. i remember her hitting baseballs into outer space in her 70's.

4. howard mcdonald. i'm sure howard must've had a fairly hard life, but i never heard him complain about it--or anything else for that matter. he was a deeply religious person, and full of good advice about weathering the ups and downs of life. i miss his wisdom.

those are just a few of the people i know that make me think having grey hair and some wrinkles isn't the end of the world. they turned out alright, i'm sure i will too. as they say, it's all in your attitude.

a little less hype

today was a little less hype than the past few days. i can't say i've exactly recovered my christmas spirit, but the level of craziness was more manageable...i even had enough energy to force myself to deal with a longstanding issue...

i need shoes. bad. shoes that don't let the rain in. feet that aren't wet and cold. these are all pretty crucial and what i've got just wasn't cutting it.

i went to the mall so i could hit payless. that's about all the more my wallet can handle at the moment and anyhow i've always had pretty good luck with those guys. i never have any luck with trying to buy women's shoes in my size, and i don't wear heels, so i usually end up having to buy men's shoes anyway. i found some boots that look like they'll get the job done. they're waterproof, will keep me out of the great lakes that form at the end of the street, and look comfortable enough for a day of hard labor with no sitdowns...in otherwords they'd even be good enough for the nursery.

the old pair is so bad i don't even think homeless people would be interested...not even the guy at the bus stop on belmont...so i guess they belong somewhere random--like on a telephone wire somewhere.

more reflections

"The people we are in relationship with are always a mirror, reflecting our own beliefs, and simultaneously we are mirrors reflecting their beliefs. So relationship is one of the most powerful tools for growth...if we look honestly at our relationships we can see so much about how we have created them." -- Shakti Gawain

This quote reminds me of something brian used to say to me a lot
in the early days of our courtship. It's true too, although I am only just beginning to understand it now.
This is the semester of personal growth, in a sense I've been doing some long overdue homework on identity issues. This isn't the first time I've started thinking about it, but this year is the first time I've had a chance to systematically explore who I am. And frankly it's kind of fascinating sometimes.

So for those of you who are in relationships, maybe something to think about some time is, what of yourself can you see more clearly being in a relationship with someone? For me, personally there are so many things I was only vaguely aware of before...i think you can only really be truly aware of yourself in the context of other people...

reflections in the windowpanes

haven't been up to much of anything other than going to work and school lately.
i tend to zone out a lot after a whole day of solving other people's problems, but on the trainride home,i like watching the world reflected back to me at odd angles in windows on the train. it seems more real to me than the real world does right now.

Is the fake snow on tv as close as i'm getting to snow this year? i bet its snowing in ashland right now...but not here. after calling for snow several times in the last week it snowed for 60 seconds last wednesday when i was on the train platform at 82nd street but that don't make it a blizzard. but i don't care what they say, portland is at least as windy as chicago ever was...that crazy wind must come out of the gorge or something. nobody warned me about the wind for talking about the rain.

storm troopers ain't lightin' my oven but i'd love to make some christmas cookies like my mom used to make. in the meantime i'm passing the time with pims which are as close to those polish cookies we used to get at the medmart as can ever be found in these parts. if i could find the russian store again, i bet they'd know what i was talking about...

just what every short attention span kid needs, i think when i see them peddling video games on tv. no offense, but my biggest nemesis these days is flash games. hard to get anything done when all the kids i'm tutoring are distracted by videogames. about the only way i can keep them off of there is to cut the power to the computers.

"oh mr steven segal what will you do?" i don't know what this shit is that brian's watching on tv, but it's some old ass steven segal movie, it's incredibly bad anyhow but to get even weirder its got him in some crazy leather jacket spouting off environmental messages about drilling in the arctic and hydrogen powered cars...and this was back in the 80's. didn't know the ol' boy had it in him.

"i haven't daydreamed in color for so long..." i haven't seen the sun in such a long long time so i get to wondering where you are. are you sick? are you well? are you chasing trains in freightyards? are you frozen sitting out in the woods laughing at the moon? leaving mysterious signs under overpasses? teaching children the mysteries of life? saving the world? chopping wood and lighting fires? dancing in the kitchen with a frying pan in yo' hand? call me when you get a chance, or write, i'd love to know...

the challenge of relationships

"The Challenge Of Relationships"

Relationships naturally bring out into full view our desires,
attachments and unconscious programs – our likes, dislikes, belief systems,
judgments, compulsions, conformities, etc. Relationships challenge us
because they take us deep into thoughts, feelings and experiences we have
suppressed for a lifetime. That’s why they provide the very best arena
for personal growth!

“Human relationships are the perfect tool for sanding away our rough
edges and getting at the core of divinity within us.”-- Eknath Easwaran

I survived the intimacy panel...we had to talk about how and why we got
married, and what we thought about it.  i'm not so good at talking in front of people anyhow,
but i think i did alright.
i still think it's totally amazing that i'm married sometimes.  and that i enjoy it.  never thought
of myself as the marrying type.  but it makes sense in a weird way, and i'm pretty
okay with the way things have turned out thus far.  life's funny.  you never know.