Spring Broke

Spring break is begun, and I'm not sure why, but I'm grumpy. Is it because I'm already missing my regular class routine that ended over a week ago before exam week started? The lectures, the rapt absorption of every fun fact in art history, the Olmec carved heads that make me want to sculpt big things, the smug satisfaction that I felt upon realizing I knew more skeletal bones' names than I thought and that wasn't going to be tough after all---basically, the last week wasn't fun as usual, today I feel seized with the pending home invasion of Homo habilis, (a handyman installing a window) and knowing I have weeks of unmade plans to catch-up on in this tiny shrinking little week of break. Fah! (I want to watch more Deadwood DVDs and eat ice cream, but the hours tick by relentlessly.) I already hear the jingling of H. habilis' toolbox coming up the walk. It's all for the greater good, I know. Make the effort, do the dishes, vacuum, deal with the pile of magazines. Iron. Fold and put away the clean laundry from Thursday. Grrr.

It's like Betty's coming to visit all over again, I think that's what is making me crabby about this. I resent it for no reason other than I'd rather be doing something else that's fun, not necessary. Like going to get a new laptop, or seeing a movie, find a couple orchid plants on sale at Fred Meyer's, starting a new knitting project, falling into some margaritas with friends. Bah humbug.

There's no one to blame but myself. Clearly, at some level I'm too in touch with my inner 13 year old and she and I are sulking upstairs in our room, waiting until we turn 18 and our lives will really start. Those were 5 long long years, as I recall. Let's fast forward, shall we?

Someone else over the weekend remarked that an anthropology degree was a gigantic waste of time and money, what were my real plans, and that may be the real catalyst for the slump today. Either I am a complete and indebted fool, or too many people in the world have no imagination and bigger vision about handling practical reality. You can buy a $40,000 SUV and make crazy payments on that for years and that's normal today, but racking up some bills on a college education and a degree or two for about the same price is foolish. Explain this to me.

Okay, I'm going to "get real" for a few hours anyway and do some hausfrau stuff, see my favorite dog a bit, and then maybe pick up some mint chip. Betty's not coming, stand down and relax, spring break is only a week and it will be school again in no time. A smart anthropologist can create her own dream job, mull that over while vacuuming.

Ay, Carumba!

...I can't put in the Spanish inverted exclamation point, but it's implied, okay?

Semana Numero Dos is now history, and I have a legal holiday long weekend to spend like a student. 'Cause that's what I am! I had some beer, and watched the last episode of my telenovela "Amar sin Limites" last night, with every woman of child-bearing age either about to pop or holding a newborn, the single women having weddings, and the people over 50 holding their grandchildren and smiling. And the evil characters living a life of shame or dead, the bad always get punished, and forgiven before they die. Now I'm down to only one show, 9pm on Univision, the costume epic of colonial Mexico, with amazing estates, horses and carriages, gowns and pirate attire, aging conquistadores and their willful children...Pasion. Pretty much sums it up, really.

School so far is amazing, I'm keeping up on the reading, and I had a chance to meet with one of my professors who is the head of the archaeology dept. for 30 minutes of course advising, she was very helpful. She was trying to encourage me to take the two statistics classes, but honestly, it's not likely, not when there's two alternatives in the Linguistics dept. that have a lot more interest to me. Math? NOW? I shudder to think. Aren't there Excel programs to crunch those numbers by now? We were seeing slides of her and her team in the 80s excavating a site in eastern Washington, and they still had to use survey equipment and plumb lines from 500 ft away. She even had to concede that GPS is the greatest tool ever, technological updates from other fields are being grabbed up in archaeology and anthropology as fast as they come along. More support for my position, I say. Excel all the way.

After class yesterday, I gave myself a thorough tour of the library, got into the PSU student access websites, found the extra material my art history prof posted for us to access, and then found the Chinese and Japanese literature in translation sections and checked out two titles from 18th century dynastic eras. Ever since I read "Memoirs of a Geisha" in 1997, I love to read these type of stories of long-lost cultural eras in Japan and China, I just get lost in the beautiful imagery and genteel mannerisms. Like I don't have enough reading to do right now?

Last Saturday I had a chance to catch up with my pal from the B-store days, Linsey, and she had a new laptop, bitemarks from a Doberman puppy/piranha, and had enjoyed her first non-retail Christmas in forever. We met at a very busy Zell's, kept a table occupied way too long chatting, and left smelling of really good homefries. Smoked wild salmon omelette cannot be recommended highly enough, so so good. She's all in Career Chick mode, which is great, she's got a great gig right now, but I wish she'd get back to writing her blog. Now that she has the new laptop that doesn't overheat and crash, the world is waiting...

Betty finally got herself another dog, my brother and I heaved a huge familial sigh. Since she quit working her part time job after Christmas, she's been cooped up in her condo and going sour fast, she didn't have anything to take her out of her deeply grooved rut. Of course, any step forward is good in this prolonged grieving process for her old dog, and I know he'll be his own little personality and eventually she'll bond with him as much as the other one. Already she sounds better on the phone, she's getting some exercise again, spending more time outdoors walking him a few times a day, seeing her neighbors going around the block, all of the fringe benefits of dog ownership. The puppy sounds like a mix of some boxer, shepherd, shorthair, tawny and about 50 lbs full grown. I told her to get some new running shoes and check the non-slip strips on the tiled stairs to the condo, he'll be a handful for a few years, pulling her around on a leash. My brother and I are so relieved.


Wild weekend, right? Maybe a trip to Best Buy to play with the computers, maybe check out the new Apple "Air", see a movie. Save the homework for Monday...such a slacker.

After School Snack

Well, really it's lunch, but it is after school, my first day of school, my first round-trip to class and back. Toasted white tuna sandwich with lettuce and sweet relish and an orange.

Bliss.

And even more synchronous, my textbook for today's class arrived in the mail this morning already, so I can do the reading assigned before the next class on Wednesday. Is this perfect OR WHAT? My Intro to Archaeology prof is a funny woman who manages to keep her reading glasses hovering above the very end of her nose and they never slide off. About 40 students in all, three over 40 years old, and only two cell phones rang during class. Prof showed some slides at the end of the class period, and then it was suddenly over. Sixty five minutes, syllabus in hand, I went and activated my student email account, then headed home. I'm also seeing new shoes in my future, because it is quite a hike from the bus top to campus and all my Birks need re-soles.

I know it's goofy to be this excited about undergraduate classes, but getting to this humble place has been a 25 year journey. Bringing lots of baggage along. Yes, I'll get a job doing something, I reassured Betty, and gave up trying to explain why I'm majoring in Anthropology. She thinks I'm going to do Forensic Science like on television. Whatever. It's my money, I'm not going to worry about who gets it or not. Everyone else I know is thrilled for me, and that warms my heart so much, my enthusiasm is contagious, my face glows with it. "I got a fever, babies!" says my inner Christopher Walken. Say no more.

Chop wood, carry water. That's what you do before you are enlightened, and what you resume doing after you are enlightened. So today, I'm doing laundry and washing dishes, while reading my text between loads of clothes and dishes. I'll try not to be a total spaz and call everyone to twitter about class. But as I went over the Hawthorne Bridge this morning, it dawned on me how many of my deepest life wishes have come true in the last couple years. Big BIG wishes, major Life's Dream types. Going back to school, to get an upper college degree---in motion again. Meeting Robert Plant in person---September 2005. Having my own bookstore---done. Being a writer---varying degrees of consistency, but happening. What's left? Well, going to Provence is huge. And large-canvas painting. Singing in public. Creating a permanent grand-scale garden with a varietal bamboo grove and tea house. Finding a great guy. I think that's about it. And I think they all look doable from here, because the really big ones at the top of the list are checked off already. Holy shit! So so cool.

Tomorrow morning is Intro to Biological Anthropology, and Asian Women's Studies, a senior level class. Hominids, neolithic tool makers, the beginning of art. Asian cultures to prehistory and the roles of women in it. No wonder I can hardly sleep at night, I feel incendiary about this stuff. "So why aren't you taking any business classes?" Betty wanted to know. There's no fire there for me, it's a bucket of someone else's cold ashes, not even mine. Finally, I'll quit explaining, it should be evident to everyone by now.

It's So Funny

Finally, this school thing is starting to feel real to me. I was protecting my fragile heart from disappointment all these months, with the missing transcripts, delay delay, uncertainty about the process, the worry that it's really just too late to be relevant.

It's real. It's really happening, I am now a full time student again, it is OFFICIAL. I did it!

Crossing the line of demarcation almost effortlessly yesterday, while standing in a line for my photo ID, gripping my stack of 'welcome students' materials, smelling the strange mix of fruit gum, coffee, vintage 70s student lounge and youth in the air, I emerged a student. Say hello to the new peculiar institutional structure, go stand in long lines, there's always a few hundred people doing exactly what you want to do when you want to do it, and off-campus living means structuring my time when on campus to get more things done. But I quibble.

My hair looks fabulous. The gray was growing in fast and furious, so the fine student Emily at the Aveda School salon layered in some warm brown and light blonde to take 10 years off me, and gave me a swingy flip cut that brushes my shoulders. That photo ID card will be my constant friend for a few years, and I didn't want to scare myself each time I pulled it out. After scoping my required textbooks at the school bookstore, I came home and ordered online for a fraction of the price, saving enough to pay for half a new laptop. That student discount can really come in handy.

Most of the orientation was kind of a snooze, I'm afraid to say. It was a full force gale outside and the tour leader's voice was whipped away, and we all just followed her like baby ducks from stop to stop as her arm waved in this direction and that. Okay, there's the library, look up the hours later, here's the music building, looks neo-classical easy to remember, here's the athletic complex, check specifics later, student parking structure, dorms, health clinic, student center, engineering , let's go back check your maps. Since I hadn't waited until the very last minute to register, I skipped out on the 'how to register' section at the end of the afternoon and went to the text bookstore before the other 350 newbies headed over there. The campus looks very urban after dark while rush hour traffic crawls by at 4:30, the bus really is the best option.

It just feels so perfect, completely right, on-target, natural and fulfilling. So I'm already thinking ahead to grad school. A four year plan to getting my masters degree is the bigger picture as it appears to me from here, and it looks doable. Anything else just fades into unimportance in comparison, except the usual; animals, friends, crafting, Porch Time, and gardening. Gone gone gone are all the days and years of not feeling genuine in my own life, going through the motions. Instead of automatically reflecting back to my old retail-centric life, I'm enjoying the distance I feel from it all now, it's really fading away, too.

It was easy to close down my booth at House of Vintage, it felt like the right thing to do, and the rumor is the building is going to be sold anyway. I'd made about as much money with it as I was going to without a cash infusion to keep buying to restock it, and that wasn't happening. So, I'll keep crafting to sell online, which is no rent, and I can work on it at my own allowable pace with school and everything else. It's all good. Fabric Depot was having a 40% off sale yesterday and today, and I found some yardage I really love for a futon couch cover, so I'm going to head over there later this afternoon when the Estrogen Brigade thins out at dinner time. Why bring toddlers to a crazy-busy fabric store? It's insane. Shop in shifts and leave them home. Please.

Betty is waiting for me to call and give her the report on school updates. Better have some breakfast first.

Since You Asked

Thanks for the support, the waiting game is tough.

Still no word from Portland State University on my admission status.
My transcripts are all in, and I've already gotten a letter that had a student ID number on it, but it may have been regarding another student with my name and some previous PSU term grades. Of course, it arrived on a Saturday, when the office is closed, so I sent off an email asking them to please look into this ASAP so it doesn't hold up anything for me.

Classes start in 5 weeks!
Aaarrrrggghhhh!

Anyway, that's where I am with school, and will probably be able to meet with someone this coming week to get going with Registration and Orientation, etc. Then get a campus job and get going with my new life. Yesterday I talked to a woman close to my age who had her nursing school books spread out all over her workspace at a shop on Hawthorne, her anatomy final is this coming week, and she was cramming. We talked a long time about Life, and the timeless what-happened-during-my-20s-and-30s, and how it's pointless to regret past choices and what got in the way the first time. She said her hardest problem is wanting to be too chummy with her professors, being her peers, and not being a stand-out too much by answering all the questions out loud in class. I didn't ask her about the Mrs. Robinson Issue, maybe she's happily hooked-up, so she didn't mention it either. I'll have to just behave myself.

Speaking of... Consistent Mr. Torso sightings at the gym have me doing laps like Aqua Girl. He's in training, I overheard him saying the other day to the only other person under 60 with him near the pool besides me. Whatever gets me into the swimsuit and the water, whatever it takes. He's got to be under 30, which means I really need to get a grip and just admire the scenery.
Whatever. Like I told my pal Jolie, lucky for me he has a cheap hobby like swimming, all he needs is the goggles and trunks, unlike some people I know who have to own horses, rent the barn, buy the chaps and hat and gear, pay to show the horses, and you never get to see them (legally) smiling and relaxing in the hot tub almost naked. But she does have the hunky ferriers...

Sorry, my middle-aged lady got loose again, got to do something about that.

And I'm not going to Florida for the holidays, since Betty and I do the weekend 3 hour phone calls, we're pretty much caught up I think, and other than getting her computer set-up working at optimal level, there isn't much reason to fly me out there. Earlier this year I had thought about it, but that was so long ago, and now all I care about is getting into classes and arranging a job around that as best I can so I still have a life, time to study and write papers, and make stuff to sell. I'm going to get a portfolio of my stuff together, take photos, and shop it around the Portland Craft Mafias and see who wants to hook up with me, to supplement the Etsy site and focus on some local interest, too.
The Oregonian did a nice article on the hand craft movement here in town, and how high-profile it is becoming nationally, encompassing re-use, reduce, recycle and how to support local shops and craftsters instead of going zombie-like to the mall to have your brains and wallet sucked dry. One December night a few years ago, I came home zombie-like from my store at the mall, poured a tall tumbler of Merlot, and spent about 90 minutes being Santa and took care of Christmas all at one sitting. Didn't even need to refill my wine glass. What a relief that was, all shipped, all done. Ho ho ho.
This year I took the hand-made pledge. Hopefully they'll forgive me.

No Shame and No Apology

NYTimes Dining Letters Re: Portland Restaurants: Golden Age of Dining and Drinking 9/26/07

Well, you know I have to run off immediately and buy copies at 7-Eleven and Fred Meyers so I can mail off the Dining section to Betty in Florida. I have to. Small and petty though it may be, I need to show her this, even though I can hear her comment from here--"What? It's not like you got paid for that."

And it is so abbreviated, and they left out the "See you at Pok-Pok!" which I thought was friendly and a genuine sentiment. Oh well.

More later, you know it.

Houston? Hello, Houston? Are you there Houston?

There's the weird phone message from the inside of someone's car, and the beginning is scrambled and incomprehensible. Who would call me from inside their car with a speaker phone---OnStar, oh, it's Betty, naturally. She has the 500 free minutes to burn inside her Cadillac.

She's on her way to dinner with my brother after playing computer Geeks all afternoon, and she's calling to let me know they are canceling all the arrangements we agreed on during the four hours a day hand-holding calls I had with her and the new laptop last week, and I get to hear where they're going to eat, and how far it is from main roads I don't even know the names of in her town, and I realize it's the minutes burning that's the thrill for her at that moment. And I really hope she's not the one driving the yacht while chatting. You can imagine.

I had to go out to the porch and sit for a spell. It was all just too much for me.

She defers to men every frickin' time, it never fails. I've built computers, used them for years, know her better than anyone on earth, and will sit (no longer) and talk her down for hours to get her aimed in the direction I know she needs to wind up in, and will wind up happiest in. Then she does a 180 because she talked to some guy for 15 minutes, and obviously he's the expert.

And will she call the guy when she's frustrated at how her progress and situation is lagging behind and she's impatient for the faster system, the zippier program, the instant results???

No. She'll call me.

Help.

So, after sending her a snooty email yesterday after coming back inside from the porch, I sent her a nice white picket fence and garden path email today, like the snooty email never happened, and went on and on and on about me. I have to chuckle at that, she has a-ways to catch up on her typing, and her emails so far have been 1 or 2 sentences. Heh heh heh. She now knows more about the health and growing habits of my tomatoes than anyone should ever have to endure. Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha! And the domestic dramas of my neighbors, including dialogue and how many police cars showed up, and which cops were cute, and what kind of pen they used and how short the night shirt was, and and and... Mwah-ha-har-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!!

My brother-----you are Officially tagged IT.

Gotta fly!!

Betty Crashes on Planet Dell

My 68 year old mother just got a computer.

After years of nagging her to get one, I may have been wrong-headed.

Most of Wednesday and Thursday of this week has been spent on the phone with her in Florida talking her out of the tree she ran herself into when the Dell boxes arrived. We literally had to begin with, "Okay mom, open the boxes," and I kept speaking very calmly and slowly.

Somehow, I had assumed that with her many part time jobs over the last ten years, she'd come into contact with Windows and basic computer operating experience, maybe even created a few documents in Word, and she certainly did alot of computer cashiering. Didn't most of us learn the basics at work or for school? Those of us over 35, I mean?

Honestly, I had so much compassion for her, she was ready to chuck it all off the condo balcony, and refused to pour herself a glass of wine to regroup. "No, I need a clear head for this nonsense, I'm so out of my element as it is," so I didn't make fun of her. But I was astounded.

BTW, the Dell people could put more in the way of an Owners Welcome Package in the top of the box for the other newly brave computer buyers to orient themselves. No wonder the various Geek Squads are doing so well. And don't pack all the power cords in with the printer box, pack the laptop adapter and cords in with the laptop, sheesh. We had 10 minutes of freak out because she swore there were no cords for this thing. Her shiny new laptop came with Windows Vista Home Premium, and her icon flags are different than my old XP Professional, and the frustration was dangerously mounting.
"I'm just going to shut it off and deal with this another day," she said after we finally got it fired up.
"NO, LEAVE IT ON!" I came at her through the phone. "Then you'll just walk by it everyday and dread starting this again,and weeks will go by ---we're doing this today!"
Big sigh from her. "You're right, that's just what would happen, and you'll never want to answer your phone again, thinking it's me with this stupid thing again, so okay, now what?"

Thursday we were haggling about dial up, DSL, broadband & WiFi, calling my brother to drive over and help her, how rude the Dell support guy was and how she couldn't understand a thing he said and how much he made fun of her, couldn't I fly there to just take care of all this and the eBay store thing, too? Plus, she needs a digital camera, and what's a megapixel?

"You know, I've never sent an email in my life," she finally confessed.

"You said you had done all the notifying of customers at the store about orders being received, repairs completed, you mean you weren't emailing people?"

"Why would I go through all that when I can just pick up the phone?"

My head is in my hands at this point. What have I done? Unleashed her into the world with a loaded gun?

My five year old Sony Vaio is still overheating along, whirring and inconsistently recognizing the CD/DVD-ROM drive, low RAM, crappy graphics capability, and I'm stuck with it for now. And here's mom, driving a Porsche laptop in comparison, and doesn't even know how to start the engine. I could cry. I realized I couldn't help her from here, the parts of my advice she actually listened to she wasn't doing anyway, so I told her to make an appointment with the Geek Squad and tell them she needs the DSL kit in a box along with their technical support to install it, and at least an hour scheduled to show her around Vista.

"I wish you were here to just do this!" she snapped.

"I wish I had the brand new laptop and you had my old one to punch keys randomly on," I replied wistfully.

"Why would I bother to go through all this with a five year old computer, someone's cast-off?"

I didn't say anything. I'm a smart kid.

Back with a gentle vengance

I won't go into why, it had to do with Mom-ageddon, pre- & post-, and then the gardening...

Enough with the excuses...

May is my favorite month of the year, and I intend to spend as much of it outdoors as possible. In spite of the two waves of hail we got this afternoon, as well as thunder & lightning, I ran out to see how the tomato starters did, and all was well. Right now it's raining and a beautiful sunny sunset is starting over the West Hills and the last of the hail is melting in a slush pile on top of the scooter tarp out back. Is Spring great or what?

Before anyone thinks I'm going all too Martha these days, I just finished reading "The Intention Experiment" today, uniting quantum physics with laws of attraction, and bioelectromagnetic fields and an awful lot of studies and research in labs all over the US & Europe. It takes off where the author's previous book "The Field" leaves off, and ties in with more science than Abraham likes to get tied up with, but interests me somewhat. I enjoy some science with my spirit, to keep the whole universe as large and limitless as possible. Like my earning potential...

That's funny in itself. Everyone is now ready for me to get back to work. I've tried not to be annoying, or bloatedly gloating, or hanging around too much in any one place too often, but the question has now shifted from "Wow, just relax and take your time," to, "So-uh, what the hell do you do all day?" I have started making notes on Craigslist, Monster, PDX classifieds, and starting the third resume version. I chat up acquaintances for leads, I'm checking into school or at least a summer class, and asking every person I know who works at home how they arranged this situation for themselves. My cell phone arrives tomorrow from UPS. I'm now ready to call "Common Grounds" my home office, 'specially since they started serving Voodoo Donuts. Hoo-wah!

I pored over Danny Gregory's two books, "Everyday Matters" and "The Creative License" on how the dogged NYC adman became a self-taught professional artist and author. I bugged Linsey about her friends who have cool jobs, does she know of anymore cool gigs going on?
I did not buy a new laptop with my severance money.

There was that almost imperceptible burst of realization about a month ago that I had stepped off the career ladder climb. There's writing and painting and projects to do, people to stay close to, trips to make, my body to be kinder to, friends to keep, and the job title just isn't as important as it was. There may be romance to be had, ee-gads!! It feels good to be here, and the steps forward from this place are exciting, it's going to be good.