No, Thursday's Out....

Yesterday, I completed my first 3.5 hour testing session at OHSU for the Alzheimer’s study, and I’m reporting that it was fun and fascinating, and left me feeling good. If you are over 65 and can spare three sessions over the course of a year, you might enjoy it, too. I got confused on the way there, when Terwilliger at 6 th Ave was a maze of Road Work and Detour signs. Then I got confused by the many parking pavilions, but no parking. And then I was running late and dismayed by directions like, “Take the elevator to the third floor, make a left, cross the sky bridge, and then make three lefts and take the third elevator on your left, down to the third floor.” Rick used to work at OHSU. Before I left, he mentioned twice that it’s on a hill. I think that was shorthand for “one third floor won’t line up with another third floor.” I paid scant attention, because Rick maintains that we never got lost in Venice, as “you can’t get lost on an island.” Ha. I ran aground in a long hall, ...

Our high school graduation was at the Seattle Center Playhouse, which felt elegant. I was a speaker (not valedictorian, just one of three extras), and my speech was a fiery adolescent scolding about bullying and intolerance. It was aimed at a few specific people who I am sure did not see it as an arrow, meant to pierce their very souls. I had fun writing it. We had an afternoon rehearsal, and then a break for dinner before the ceremony. We speakers were told to leave our speeches on the lectern, and so, of course, during that dinner break, the cleaning staff came in and threw them all away.   And then it was time for the ceremony! It all worked out, of course. BIG burst of adrenaline, upon seeing that clean lectern! Then I gave my speech, probably word for word, with a special, adrenalized fervor. And I learned a big Life Lesson: Beware cleaners! And do not leave your only copy of anything behind! Last night, I got to do a reading at our Lessons and Carols service to kick...

SOLVE had a city-wide cleanup this morning, and I went down to Peace Park, between the Convention Center, the Steel Bridge, and the Esplanade. I drive by it weekly, but have never thought about getting there on foot. It’s a sweet little corner   I thought the SOLVE event would just be the usual trash cleanup, but it turned out there was an option to paint over graffiti, and I went for that instead. Sign me up! I know the graffiti painters will be right back at it, likely tonight. I know that I was, essentially, just preparing a fresh canvas for them. I don’t like graffiti, I do think most of it is just vandalism, and I wish they’d knock it off.    And yet for all that, I couldn’t get depressed over the absurdity of our efforts. I was content to create a moment of visual calm, however temporary.  Maybe it was because my friend’s mom, a nice lady I’ve known since I was twelve, is in her last days, and I was thinking of her. Somehow, moping over a voluntary-yet-Sisy...

Once again, I’m celebrating the late harvest as my mom did, by letting our last homegrown green tomatoes ripen until Thanksgiving. This year the Sungold cherry tomatoes were abundant, and now their Thanksgiving stragglers are filling up bowls and baskets. We've gone from Hang on, little tomatoes to Bravo, little tomatoes! Thanksgiving garden tomatoes make me think of mom. She grew up in Oakland, where tomatoes were easy, and then moved to Seattle, where green tomatoes were easy, but red tomatoes were not. She took ripening some tomatoes until Thanksgiving as a personal challenge, much the way some people baby a delicate house plant. I don’t do house plants, but I accept the tomato challenge. It only lasts a couple of months. I’ve also been thinking of Mom in the wake of seeing a documentary about dementia last week, “Keys, Bags, Names, Words,” that was showing down at OMSI. It’s not in theaters yet, but it’s touring around the world, fundraising. My dear pal Lori went with me, s...

It's Leaf Day, so my 80 year old neighbor Susan was out raking at dawn. This was just a touch-up, since she had raked many leaves into piles already, had begun compiling a couple of weeks ago, and then had even put out orange traffic cones to guard the piles overnight and dissuade anyone from parking in front of her house until those piles are gone. But more leaves had fallen overnight! They were stil falling! I went out to join her, just companionably, because seeing Susan in the street alone gives me a pang. Also, she got to gesture around in dismay at the unceasing untidiness, and I got to remind her there will be one last Leaf Day in December, when the rest of the crop has fallen. We do this. She said Yeah, but clearly December is in the dim future, and of little comfort. Leaf Day is Susan's glory. She doesn't put up Christmas lights or Halloween pumpkins, but she celebrates Leaf Day with gusto. We stopped when the first trucks went by, and now I'm inside on the cou...

We had one of those FedEx struggles, where they didn’t come last Friday, as they said they would, but didn’t admit defeat until about 5 pm.  I spent the day in the front room, reading a book, (but sitting where I could see anyone coming up the front steps), and that’s a nice day, I know. But I would have liked to run a few errands. Then they said it would be delivered Monday, so of course I came home Saturday to find another “We Missed You!” sticker on the door. Sigh. Rick and I had begun speculating, grumpily, that perhaps FedEx pays as much for attempts as for successful deliveries. That would explain why it sometimes seems drivers must have snuck silently up to our door, affixed a “We Missed You!” sticker, and driven away. But I have now done my homework (Googling), and discovered that when other people ask this same question, they get highly conflicting answers like:   No, no, the drivers are paid hourly; No, no, the drivers get ten times as much for a delivery as for ...

I walked around the farmer's market today buying food and flowers from the stands that had no customers, dropping a few bucks in musician tip jars, feeling all Lady Bountiful for spending my custom keeping folks afloat. Then on my way to my car, a man stopped me and asked for a flower.    My hands were full, I was determinedly Off to My Many Next Things on a busy day - a COVID shot, a funeral, a rehearsal and a concert - and gave him an “Are You KIDDING??” reaction, as if he had asked me to go on a date.  He pivoted quickly to pathos, saying, “My dad died!” I figured he was making that up. Then I was mad at myself for being so ungracious.  He got his flower, but it was a complete Lady Bountiful fail. I marched off, and was unexpectedly visited by the stray comforting thought: Oh, well, Jesus got crabby too.  Let me just say, I do not regularly compare myself to Jesus. Also, I know that “Jesus got crabby” is not the approved lesson to take eve...