If you can't help, get out of the way

You know how after you have a run-in with a stupid person who accuses you of something, you get all defensive and start trying to deny their claim or justify your actions . . . And then after your heart rate has settled back to low-grade resentment you think of all the pithy, profound, cutting things you should have said?

That woman who lives in my old neighborhood, yeah, the one in her cute little bungalow house, with her cute pesticide-free yard (she has a sign proclaiming it) and her cute little mop-haired floppy-eared mutt, the one who asked me in a supercilious tone, "Why don't you go to a shelter?" That woman? She's still on my mind and under my skin. I've been trying to figure out what I should have said, other than "Eff you, you stupid b-word, eff off and leave me alone." 

What I could have said, should have said, depends on what I wanted to elicit from her. Compassion? I think she probably is a compassionate person, from afar, that is, just far enough so she doesn't have to smell the stink of human suffering or get her hands dirty actually helping dig latrines. She probably donates to environmental causes, maybe not Green Peace but the Nature Conservancy or Save the Butterflies, if there is such an organization. She might contribute to humanitarian causes, maybe Amnesty International. No, more likely UNICEF or Doctors without Borders. When she's feeling particular magnanimous, around the holidays, she might even send a check to the Gospel Rescue Mission, in hopes that will help erase the homeless population that frightens her so much. God knows, homeless people could use more Jesus. Lack of Jesus is what got them into the mess in the first place. 

Yeah, super compassionate, but not enough to vote to change zoning laws to allow affordable and low-income housing in her neighborhood. Not enough to actually change anything to make it possible to get people out of their tents, their cars, their busted-down RVs and get them into proper, safe, affordable, dignified housing.

Just down the hill from where I park at night (near her house), there's a parking lot behind a chain link fence. Inside the fence are about a dozen sheds, barely bigger than outhouses. These sheds are the manifestation of the liberal solution to the homeless crisis. Give them a tiny box, barely big enough for a bed, not even big enough for their bike, and then admit the qualified (best) homeless people (no addicts, nobody who needs a bath or a haircut or some mental health services), give them a key to their own little hut, put all the huts behind a chain link fence, with one opening monitored by a guard, to keep them in, to keep others out, I don't know. Then you can finally feel safe, even if you aren't actually safe.

If I were a homeowner in a big city like Portland, I would be terrified. Not just for my personal safety and the safety of my belongings, my family, my pets, but also for the value of my asset, my house. It must be a gut-punch to discover all the tent cities down the street have cut the value of your property by a third. What if you want to sell and go somewhere safer (whiter, richer)? Who wants to buy into a neighborhood of tents and trash, used needles everywhere, and feces on the sidewalk? 

Certainly you wouldn't want to add an ADU to your property and charge a nominal rent so some nice senior lady could live a quiet, safe, affordable life. You might build it for your mother-in-law, but not for a stranger. In a big city, it's too hard to be an independent landlord. Tenants are nuts. They don't pay rent on time, they don't leave when you evict them, and when the sheriff finally kicks them out, they've trashed your asset and left you with massive bills. Such disrespect.

It's human nature to circle the wagons when the homestead is threatened. Survival instinct is how the human DNA has managed to make it this far. At some point, though, a civilized society comes to realize that when one person is unsafe, then no one is safe. Segregating the community into in-group and out-group ultimately destroys the very security the haves are trying to protect. 

Let them eat cake. 

Everyone dies. 

It takes a lot to awaken the sleeping giant, but people with nothing left to lose can do a lot of damage as they work toward changing the system to be more fair and inclusive. You can either get on board and lend a hand, or you can stand in the way and watch your house burn down. Metaphorically speaking, of course. I would never condone violence. 

But I wished I'd told her to eff off and mind her own business. 

Oh, well. Next time. 

Invisible but still a threat

You know you aren't in Southern Arizona anymore when an older woman living her car feels the need to pull out her stun gun and press it when you walk by her car on the way to your own little house on wheels. I didn't know what it was, having never seen a stun gun or Taser, so I didn't have a reaction until I walked by, got in my car, and Googled what does a Taser sound like? 

The only visible difference between us, besides that her car was a lot nicer than mine, was that she was Black and I am White. So there you go. Usually I am invisible, but not to her. I'm guessing her lived experience was a lot different from mine and possibly not in a happy way, if she felt the need to rattle her weapon when I walked by. 

I visited a childhood friend this week. Remind me not to do that. To some people, I'm an outcast, I'm a pariah. Wrong life choices, yada yada. To others, I'm a curiosity, a specimen to be examined and interrogated. My beloved Arizona friend is the only one who checks in regularly to see how I feel about being unhoused. We figure it out together. To everyone else, I'm shunned, ridiculed, or ignored. 

My new unicorn, I mean, PCP, prescribed a stronger statin to help prevent stroke and heart attack. Unfortunately for me, it enhances diarrhea. I hope the symptoms are on the wane, and I'm glad I stocked up on plastic bags. You haven't really experienced van life until you have diarrhea in your car. There's nothing quite like it. 

My labs show that I'm still slightly anemic, ho hum, old news. He didn't seem to think it warranted any hand-wringing, so I'm not going to worry about it. I spent the past couple years freaking out about health stuff. I'm so over it. I'll try to up my vitamin game but other than that, I will carry on. Everyone dies sometime. 

Meanwhile, rain. More rain. Showers. A little break, followed by more cold rain. A big reason I left Portland (besides that I could no longer afford rent here) was the incessant cool gray wet weather. I have a link to a temperature map on my phone. Today, almost every place in the continental U.S. is warmer than it is here. As soon as my meds are refilled, I'm leaving this slogfest.

I'm not sure where I will go next, because as you know, weather doesn't stay long in one place, whether we want it to or not. I haven't mastered the skill of traveling with the weather, but I plan to work on it over the next few months. Assuming I don't get tased by a paranoid fellow traveler. Or yelled at by a crazed homeowner who thinks the street in front of their house belongs to them.  Or sideswiped by a semi. Or bled dry by car repairs and dental work. Or shamed into nonbeing by my so-called friends. 

Normalizing the nomadic lifestyle

Spring in Portland is an on-again off-again phenomenon. Now you see it, now you don't. Now it's sunny, oops, now it's raining. A couple nights ago I parked in a great spot under a tree. Wind came up overnight. Around midnight I heard a monstrous din on the roof of my car. Bam! The roof rack rang like the Liberty Bell. I lay awake wondering if the tree was going to fall on my car and crush me into my foam mattress. 

In the morning, I discovered a pine cone on the roof, and not a big one. Maybe there were more pinecones, maybe even a small branch that flew off when I drove to the park to make coffee. Wind, is what I'm saying. Sun, rain, wind . . . This is spring in Portland.

I grew up in it, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. The weather was the main reason I moved to Tucson. The weather in Tucson is the main reason I'm back in Portland. You see how this works? No place is perfect. I'd have to be driving all the time to stay in good weather. Spring just sucks, no matter which way you look at it. Sure, it's a welcome respite from winter, but the volatility of spring is hard for me. My head won't settle.

Volatility seems to be the theme of the week. The weather, my head, the stock market . . . Ho, hum, who cares about money, la la la. Nothing I can do about it, and we shouldn't trouble our heads over it anyway. Best to leave it to the experts who obviously know better. 

Speaking of knowing better, some of my family members apparently blame me for the housing shortage. I don't know why they give me so much credit. I'm not a land developer. I've never owned anything but a series of used cars. Not a house, not a condo, not even a shed. As far as housing goes, I tend to think of myself as powerless over supply and demand. 

I know I'm in the doghouse with my family member when I text a picture of a walking path in the Sandy River Delta and they write back, "Playing tourist?" What do I do with that? Almost every text I send receives a reply ending in "Any leads on housing?" I understand my family member is concerned, and I'm trying to have empathy for their fear. But sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. I'm done trying to live my life so they don't have to be afraid.

I know I've said this before. 

Speaking of getting old, I went hiking in a nature park I love and dropped my straw hat. A friend phoned me while I was walking, and as we were talking, the sun came out, and I realized my hat had departed my pocket. I retraced my steps, holding the phone over my head when I went into hollows and behind hills. Eventually I'd walked the entire route twice. I headed back to the parking lot. Some kind soul had found my hat and left it on a rock where I would see it. I probably dropped it the moment I left the restroom. 

I knew the hat would return to me. So many things do. But sometimes the Universe decides someone else needs the item more than I do, no matter how much I cherish it. Every time I walk away from my car, I prepare myself for the possibility that it won't be there when I get back.

The reason I mentioned the dropped hat is because when my mother was alive, I learned to follow one step behind her so I could retrieve the things she dropped. Used tissues, of course, but also sunglasses, hats, gloves, scarves, cigarette lighters, and cigarette pouches. Purses. Those little dealies that can hold a pack of cigarettes. I was grateful that someone put my hat where I could find it. And I still feel chagrin that I dropped it in the first place.

On the bright side, I got double my steps in that day. 

I often wonder what I did to create this strange situation. I don't feel responsible for the lack of affordable housing. I know many seniors are in the same boat. Car, I mean. I wonder if I should seek a communal housing situation, maybe a big house of five other women. We'd share a couple bathrooms, share the cooking and cleaning, maybe give each other rides places, and watch old movies together. 

If that sounds like fun to you, you are not like me. To me, that sounds like utter hell. Even one roommate was too much for me. When I imagine the amount of time and energy it would take to find and maintain that type of housing situation, I am more certain than ever that being a nomad (i.e., living in this car) is the right choice for me.

Maybe someday I will stop feeling ashamed and talk about this as if it were a normal lifestyle. Maybe if more people knew that old ladies were living in their cars because the rent is too damn high, the Section 8 lists are closed, and the only way to get an apartment in senior housing is for someone to die, well, maybe then society would see that there are many ways to survive and even thrive while living an alternative lifestyle. 

Meanwhile, I skulk around the streets, troll for parking places, and wait for my appointment at the DMV. Once that happens, I can get my car registered and plated and get the heck out of Dodge. Well, I drive a Dodge, so I don't mean that literally. It's a figure of speech. You know what I mean.

On my way to hell in a handbasket. See you there.

Welcome to Oregon, now go away

When did the Department of Motor Vehicles turn into such a bureaucratic pithole? I've been to several DMV locations in the greater Portland metro area. They all seem designed to accomplish one goal: make customers wait so long they finally give up and go away. Why did I think Oregon would welcome me back? How naive. It's almost as if they resent me for leaving. Every DMV face (with one exception, the woman who took the photo for my new license) expressed the same sentiment: We told you so, loser. 

That's me transferring my resentment onto the hapless, abused, long-suffering employees behind the glass walls at the DMV. The first day, I walked in, thinking, okay, maybe a couple hours to get my license transferred and my car registered. Ha. Some locations let you make an appointment online. Walk-ins are "standby" customers, meaning you receive service after the appointments are served. My ticket was S171. The leaderboard said next to be served: S30. I'm not good at math, but even I could tell there was a long line of people ahead of me. 

I hung around for a while, then went out to my car and ate breakfast. When I went back inside an hour later, they were serving S60. It was about 2:00 p.m. The office closed at 5:00 p.m. I gave up and made an appointment. The only appointment I could get that wasn't a month out was at a far-away location for two days hence. I grabbed it.

The kind, patient GPS Lady led me to the place. I got there an hour before it opened, two hours before my appointment. Walk-ins were already lined up on the sidewalk in cold, windy rain, waiting for the doors to open. 

About 45 minutes after my appointment time, my number came up. A530. Yay. The guy behind the glass wall gave me a fake smile. It wasn't even noon. I could tell he was already fed up and burned out. I was able to apply to get an Oregon license (only $64, not a real ID because I didn't have two pieces of ID with a residence address), but I wasn't able to register my car because I didn't have the original title. Arizona doesn't print vehicle titles like Oregon does. I had the mistaken impression it could all happen online. Ha. Joke's on me again. So now I'm waiting for my Arizona title to arrive at my brother's house, so I can surrender it to Oregon and wait for a new title and license plates. 

I confess, there were moments I considered giving up. However, once you've started going over a waterfall, you cannot change your mind and paddle back upstream. In Oregon, your car registration and driver's license have to match. I'm either all in on Oregon, or it's back to Arizona, still with no permanent residence address, still not able to rent a mailbox anywhere.

It's cold here right now. It's a typical Portland spring: intermittently windy, rainy, and cloudy, with rare moments of blue sky. Day time temperatures are mid-50s to low 60s. Nights are just below 40 F. Early mornings are the worst. Waking up before the sun to frigid air is brutal. Getting up to pee in the night is no fun either. 

There are many places to park on the street for a minivan like mine. I blend. But I can't stay in one place anywhere. In Tucson, the nomads in town hang out in a huge parking lot by the bike path. Nobody hassles you when you put out your solar panels. When you get sick of traffic, you can drive an hour to get to BLM land and camp for free, work on your car, cook food, and enjoy the desert scenery with great cell signal for internet. There's nothing like that near Portland. I never thought I would miss Tucson. But for a person living in a vehicle, Tucson is Death Valley. Not possible. It's 90 F there this week, and it will only get hotter. Then monsoon, and the fun really begins. Been there, done that, turn around, don't drown. 

Portland has been overcast, rainy, and windy since I arrived last week. That means my vestibular issue is churning. It also means I can't recharge using solar. Without power, I can't run my fridge, so I put it into storage, and now my menu consists of items that don't require refrigeration. That means small portions I can eat in one sitting. Being vegetarian means no canned tuna or chicken, no chunky beef chili, no chicken noodle soup. Being sensitive to food additives and chemicals means no ramen, no cup o' noodles. I have a little ice chest, but getting small amounts of ice daily is a major hassle, not to mention expensive over time. A 7 lb bag of ice is only a few dollars, but I have to dump most of it on the ground. 

Yesterday I traded four hours of gasoline taking a peaceful trip up the Columbia River Gorge to recharge my power stations. It was a nice drive, but it would have required another four hours to get to 100% power. In Tucson, I could drag my power stations into the mall, one at a time, to recharge at the counter where the unhoused plug in their phones. The mall here has only USB ports, no AC outlets. I did a little reconnaissance to find an accessible outlet. I found one by a bench across from Annie's Pretzels. Another adventure to look forward to while I wait for my documents to arrive in the mail.

This is such a strange way to live.

Being in Portland, the city of my birth, brings up a lot of grief. Certain parts of town remind me of things I'd rather not think about. The death of my father, my cat, my mother. The schools, the parks, the roads. The city looks different, after four years away, but some things are the same: the weather, the potholes, the unhoused.

I don't regret leaving Portland. I do regret moving to Arizona, but now that I'm here, I appreciate what Arizona gave me. In Arizona, I was one of an armada of nomads. There were license plates from everywhere there, Minnesota, Michigan, Montana, on sprinter vans, motorhomes, and trailers. Snowbirds are a thing. Maybe as summer approaches, Portland will start to fill up with nomads from Arizona, and I won't feel like such an outsider. Maybe next winter, I'll sprout a pair of wings and follow the sun south, back to the desert.

Meanwhile, I lurk in the neighborhoods I grew up in, sniffing out parking spots that aren't directly in front of someone's house, on streets that aren't too busy or populated by broken down RVs and tent cities, where I can blend in and pretend I belong in that place, just another neighbor, just another visitor staying with a friend for a night, to be gone at daybreak. 

Waves on the beach

I'm boohooing the blues back in my hometown, Portland, Oregon. Cool but not freezing, raining but not all the time, and relentlessly gray skies. Yep. Home. I remember why I left. I wasn't crazy. I wasn't built for this SAD-inducing climate. Some people seem to like it. I saw a man talking on the phone outside his apartment. He was standing on the sidewalk. His feet were bare. 

I'm parked in a parking lot, as usual. It started out empty on a Sunday morning. Then the restaurant next to it opened and the place got swarmed. Now the brunch crowd is moving on. Security swings by every half hour. If I had my solar panels out, they would have busted me. Ha. Joke's on them. And me, I guess. No sunshine means no solar. No solar power means my fridge will be dead by tomorrow, unless I hit the road again. 

I spent four days driving and three nights contorted in the front seats of my car. I thought I could put the passenger seat back, but the floor was occupied by six gallons of drinking water. I sliced my mattress into sections and put them across the bucket seats. The ancient foam promptly sank into the bucket, leaving my butt marooned on the console. I put the driver's seat back as far as I could without shoving my fridge on the floor and fit myself into the slot between the seats and the steering wheel. I had my blankets, and it wasn't really cold until just before sunrise, so I was warm enough. But it was hard to sleep with the constant fear of hitting the horn. I managed to avoid that, but in the parking lot of a Bakersfield Cracker Barrel I accidentally bumped the lower panel and set off the hazards. Just blinking lights, no horn. There weren't many overnighters in the lot, but I wouldn't want to disturb anyone else who might be fooling themselves they could sleep sitting up in their car. 

Maybe if I were younger.

I spent the first night on my road trip on familiar desert BLM land in Quartzsite. That was only a four-hour drive from Tucson. The next day I hoofed it to Bakersfield. I realized at that point I needed to step it up if I wanted to make Portland in time to offload my boxes into their new storage home. So I hauled my stuff across the Oregon border, where I was welcomed at the Oregon Welcome Travel Center. Well, it was Friday after 5:00 p.m, so actually nobody was there to give me the free coffee the sign in the window promised. I wouldn't have taken it anyway, but it's the thought that counts.

At that point, I was running on empty, so the slog north on I-5 through Medford, Eugene, and Salem wasn't much fun. Seen through my rear view mirror, white cars with black trim look like Storm Troopers breathing up my tailpipe. Lucky for me, my car was loaded almost to the ceiling, which means I didn't have much of a view out the back. Sometimes it's better not to look.

I booked a storage unit standing outside of a storage place near my brother's house. At that point, I didn't care about price. I just wanted to unload and put my bed back together. It took me three trips with the rolling cart to pack my boxes into their new closet. I don't have much stuff left, and probably I could have jettisoned half of it. Should have. Didn't. Easier to just pack it and move it when departure time is imminent. Sort it out later. 

The two crates and miscellaneous items strapped to the roof made the journey intact. I was fully expecting to see my blankets and pillows flying out in my wake to make the driver behind me have to swerve and dodge bedding I should have donated. I did not anticipate the layer of dead bugs on the front edges of the crates. I fear my journey decimated entire populations. I'm not proud that I'm a murderer of insects, just like I'm not proud that my car uses gasoline, that I throw away four plastic bags every time I poop, and that I go through paper towels like they grow on trees.

The weather in Tucson is lovely right now (so I hear), and I might head south again after I take care of my paperwork. Swapping my Arizona driver's license for an Oregon license should be easy. Registering my car should not be too hard. Hm. I wonder if I need an emissions test. The main issue is that I need to get new license plates. Getting new plates after I bought the car in 2021 took four months, but that was during COVID, so maybe this time I'll get lucky. 

Meanwhile, here I am in the city of my birth. Portland streets seem narrower than I remembered. Maybe I got used to the three-lane Autobahns through Northwest Tucson. The streets here seem more congested. Probably Californians, buying up condos on the River and bungalows in the Albina district because their mansions burned down. Maybe Oregon seems like a safe bet when it comes to wildfires. It's raining now, but all it takes is one stupid kid with a firecracker to set off an inferno in the summer. 

As you can guess, I'm winging it. Day by day is all I can do. One mile at a time, one moment at a time. Deal with the thing in front of me, first things first, and try not to think too much about what is happening in the world, in the country. I'm sad I missed all the marches on Saturday. I drove under a couple underpasses where people were waving signs. The signs hanging from the overpass in the Medford area didn't appear to align with my values. The overpass I went under in the Salem area was definitely populated by my kind of people. I was doing 65 mph and could not slow down to wave or honk. 

I have a feeling for the foreseeable future, if we have a future, these protests will be like waves on the beach: If I miss one, I can catch the next one. 

The chronic malcontent runs in circles

I ran the paths in Mt Tabor Park yesterday. Well, let's be honest: I trotted. First, I trotted around the big reservoir on 60th Avenue (0.56 miles, so we aren't talking marathon here). Facing west, I saw layers of gray clouds over the West Hills above Portland. The wind in my face was chilly, and I wished I had a hat with ear flaps. Must have been 63°. Brrrr, said the hothouse flower.

I turned the corner of the reservoir, heading north, and suddenly saw bright blue reflected in the water below where a murder of crows was lustily bathing. Lo, the clouds had parted in the east. Between a bank of fluffy white clouds rushing northward before the wind was a thin swathe of amazing turquoise sky. Brilliant, glowing, azure turquoise, beyond blue, definitely not the sky blue color in your crayon box. A brilliant glowing window into the universe.

The clouds rolled on and the blue sky disappeared. But I was happy as I panted and sweated, knowing that just a few thousand feet above my head, the entire sky was that mind-boggling blue.

Today, the clouds fled. Rain is due tomorrow, I think, but today was delicious. I went out in it as the sun was setting to soak up light and warmth, like a hothouse flower, like a horde of other Portlanders who bloom when the sun shines. Sunshine makes everything more tolerable. I even saw my neighbor to the south, whom I rarely see. The only way I know he is still alive is the growing collection of beer, wine, and tequila bottles in the yellow recycling bin. Which he often forgets to put out on collection day. I wonder why.

When I got back to the Love Shack, the living room was glowing with golden light. My cat lay in it, happily wrestling with his blue rug, glorying in the rays. Five minutes of light, and then it was gone. The sun sunk below the eave of the building across the street. The living room turned gray. The cat got up and left the room.

Celebrate! You fail at life.

Finally, there is an official Meetup in Portland for failures. It's called FailPDX, and last night was its kickoff meeting. I heard about it through a random Meetup promo email. The name made me curious. Within a few days, 50 people had signed up. I checked again before it was time to leave: 96 people were planning on attending. Wow.

I left a little early and avoided the freeway, anxious that I wouldn't be able to find the place, afraid I wouldn't find close parking on the dark streets of Old Town Portland. The Meetup was inside a multistory building that stood out in the close-in downtown neighborhood for not being a renovation of a 19th-century monstrosity. The entry lobby was wide, lined in marble and mirror, and behind the security desk was a 30-foot wide, 15-foot tall backdrop of bright green living plants, somehow adhered to the wall from floor to ceiling, glowing under grow lights. It was lovely for its greenness and for the intense artificial sunlight. I was thinking that a security job in front of that backdrop might actually not be that bad. (Remind me of that later, would you?)

On the fifth floor of this building was a series of unfinished offices and open spaces. In the widest open space were easily 60 black padded chairs arranged in rows facing a big screen, which showed the Oregon State versus Ohio State football game in luscious detail. To the right, cafeteria style tables and chairs took up much of the rest of the space. Another huge screen also showed the football game. Smaller flat panel television screens hung from the ceiling, all showing the game. The place reminded me of a gym: The only thing missing were the rows of treadmills and perky people in spandex.

The space was vast. Black windows on the left looked down into the atrium of the lobby. Windows on two other sides looked out on the lights of Portland's downtown freeways and bridges. I imagine the view is spectacular during the day. At night it was just a dark blur of lights. Or maybe it was my eyes.

A couple guys greeted me in a friendly fashion and rushed away to fiddle with the microphones at the lectern. “Food is on the way!” Sure enough, food arrived shortly. I parked myself in an out of the way place and tried to figure out which screen to watch.

A young woman came up to me and greeted me as if she knew me.

“How are you!” she exclaimed.

“Good, good, and you?” I replied, frantically going through my mental Rolodex, which is as slow as a real-life Rolodex.

“Who are you with now?” she asked.

I assumed she meant who was I working for, not if I was in a relationship. “I'm not sure you know me. I'm a freelance researcher.”

She looked flustered so I continued on, “What do you do?”

“I'm in data science,” she said belligerently. “I own my own company.” I wondered if she was belligerent because she was short.

“Oh, how nice,” I said. “What does your company do?”

“We help companies bla bla bla with their bla bla bla and then bla bla bla.”

I'm pretty sure it only seemed like she was saying gibberish. “Isn't that something,” I said.

“We just opened last year,” she said defensively.

“Oh, where are you located?”

“We are working from home right now,” she said though tight lips.

“No worries,” I reassured her.

“There are only three of us,” she admitted reluctantly.

“You gotta start somewhere,” I said encouragingly as she pretended to see someone she knew and rushed away. Whoa. Did I just meet a failure? It's hard to know sometimes. I turned back to the screens in front of me, examining each in turn in a futile hope that one might be showing something other than young athletes in helmets and tight pants running up and down a green field, then attacking each other and falling over in writhing clumps.

A little further along the wall where I was leaning tensely, I realized there was an actual built-in bar where people could get free wine and craft-brew. A crowd of people were milling there, talking and watching the game. Of course, I avoided it all.

An older guy with long gray hair and a gray beard walked past from the direction of the elevators, nodding to me as he went past. A few minutes later, he was back, carrying a glass of what looked like water. No color, no bubbles. He was thin and wore Levis and glasses, like me. I stood up straighter.

“You look smart,” he said as he approached me without quite looking me in the eye.

“Looks can be deceiving,” I said inanely, thinking to myself, Why did I say that? Major fail!

“Looks are only deceiving to the easily deceived,” he said and then nodded at the television screen hanging above us. “Do you pay attention to this stuff?”

“What, the game?” I gaped, still trying to figure out if I had been insulted.

“Stupid past time,” he muttered, although I wasn't sure he meant the football game or the networking.

I stared at him in confusion. He still wasn't looking at me.

“What's your name?” he demanded.

“Carol.”

“Martin.” No handshakes. No nods, but I guess it was an exchange of sorts.

One of the organizers ran past and waved at us.

“Winds of change,” Martin mumbled.

“What change?” I asked.

“Every moment is new,” he said. A moment later he drifted away.

I moved in the opposite direction and found a spot at a table with an unimpeded view of the game. I pulled out my journal and jotted down a few notes, because I knew that later I would be updating my blog, and I would forget these special, surreal moments as they blended into a bizarre timeout from reality.

People are always interesting when you get them talking. Besides the belligerent spitfire shortstuff startup and the hippie throwback, I met a lovely young woman who recruits for the software industry and a fascinating woman who, as a local representative of the National Transportation Safety Board, investigates local aviation accidents. Wow! How cool is that?

Unfortunately, the show started before I got a chance to ask her more questions. An hour and a half later, I slunk out before the thing was over, bludgeoned by bad PowerPoints and worse speakers, and went home to find out the Ducks were toast. Welcome to FailPDX!

Living life takes courage

As I sit at my computer with my feet encased in a rice-filled, microwaved (four minutes) sack of my own design, I peruse the temperature gadgets on my desktop and reflect for the umpteenth time that making my happiness contingent upon weather only leads to disappointment. The temperature in grayish PDX is a normal 42°. If I had stayed in Los Angeles, I would be basking in 80° heat. On the other hand, my friends in Minneapolis are stoically enduring 8°, which is better, I must say, than the minus temps they were experiencing a few days ago. News flash, Carol: Weather is relative and changeable. Duh. And there I go again, pinning my mental well-being on a flimsy hope of catching a glimpse of the sun.

The recycling truck is grinding along the street in front of the Love Shack. I know it's the recycling truck because I hear roaring sounds followed by clinking sounds. I'm distracted by everything, which means I am avoiding something. I keep looking out the window, but I don't know what I'm looking for. Right livelihood, I think. I'm looking for the Right Livelihood boutique, but all I see is the trash truck.

I'm blogging because I'm stymied. Each time I start running for the garden of right livelihood I'm sure is just around the next bend in the path, I find myself walking away from the garden, back to the weed patch. I'd say argh, but that doesn't really sum up my frustration at finding myself once again poking around this wretched weed patch. I was picturing something a little different, maybe something...I don't know...a bit more picturesque and a little less weedy.

If I could just be someone else for long enough, I'm sure I could figure this out. I blame my own brain for this disappointment, but perhaps that's not fair. It is doing the best it can. Unfortunately, my brain seems to be hard at work designing my demise in a perverted attempt to protect me from the ravages of living. Death by brain is slow and tedious, but less risky than death by living life. Living life takes courage.

I suspect the words I'm using to frame my complaint are part of my problem. Contrasting garden with weed patch, while visually satisfying, gives me only two choices, two ends of the spectrum of possibility. Desirable versus undesirable, good versus bad. Of course I want the garden, who wouldn't? But what if there were other places along the continuum, like treehouse, or life raft, or sunny beach? And what if among the weeds are herbs and flowers? I didn't really stop long enough to check. Good or bad, who knows anymore? Not me. Just two overused words that mean nothing.

Warm is good, cold is bad? I feel compelled to mention that yesterday the temperature in Portland was 57°, one degree short of a January record.

Random thoughts from a stinky cheese chronic malcontent

Bless me, Hellish Hand-basket readers. It's been over a week since my last blog post. My excuse is that I've been immersed once again in dissertation editing hell, editing someone else's massive, wretched, poorly written tome rather than my own. I've been diving deep into the quandary of social injustice in the State of Hawaii. The upside is that I know more than I ever knew about Hawaiian history, and have a whole new perspective into the world of social work (which consists of poorly paid people helping other poorly paid people perpetuate a nonprofit machine in which everyone is poorly paid while chasing charity dollars. I'm super glad I didn't pursue a career in counseling!) The downside is that, by the time I finished combing the wretched tome for extra spaces, misplaced periods, and renegade pronouns, I calculated I earned just over $16.00 per hour. Clearly something is wrong with my business model.

Today, with the wretched tome off my plate, I was able to hunt and gather at the local grocery store, put unleaded into my ancient, tired, dusty, fossil-fuel burning Focus, and put on a load of wash. I love multitasking, which to me means doing the laundry while cooking dinner while running a virus scan while talking on the phone. Look at me go!

The weather is weirdly awesome. It's currently 86° at PDX, which means some tropical pockets of Portland will probably hit 90° in the next few minutes before cooling back down to 60° overnight. While it's not unheard of, it is pretty unusual for the weather to be this warm in early October. I went for a trot in the park and soaked in the heat through my scrawny pale legs, wishing I could stop time before the leaves turn orange.

Yesterday I drove over to my mother's condo to help celebrate my little brother's birthday. He's turning... let me think, I guess he's turning 54. Yipes. My baby brother is over the hill. Guess that makes me over the hill and halfway into the graveyard. Well, no use complaining, especially where the really old folks can hear. Don't bother looking for sympathy from old people; that is like going to the garbage dump for bread.Two of the neighbors who came to the party, a couple in their mid-80s, sharp and caustic as ever, were not inclined to hear my brother whine about how his joints ache in the morning. I knew better; I kept my mouth shut.

Birthday parties never have amounted to much in my family. I'm not sure why. I have my theories. This party was relatively painless as birthday parties go—all of us were ready for a nap after barely an hour. I managed to leave all the cake and ice cream with my mother, although my digestive system paid the price today for what I ate yesterday. I think that if I'm going to get sick from eating cake and ice cream, the pain ought to be worth it. Like excellent tiramisu or German chocolate cake. Sadly, 'twas not the case.

It's hard to sum up life these days. From one angle, everything looks like crap. I'm barely earning, doing something I hate almost as much as I hated sewing and driving a school bus and teaching keyboarding, and I'm wondering why I seem to figure out what to do by doing everything I don't want to do first. I know I'm running out of time. The thought makes me want to give up and embrace my inner homeless person.

On the other hand, I'm not sewing, or driving a school bus, or teaching keyboard! Yay! On top of that, the weather is awesome, and while I don't have a steady job, well, I don't have to get up tomorrow and go to a steady job! No getting up early, no dressing up in a uniform, no worrying about my nose hairs and my blossoming sideburns. That's pretty great, don't you think? Actually, I think the longer I'm out of the workforce, the more unemployable I get, sort of like the opposite of a fine wine, more like a stinky cheese.

I would take all the blame for everything, but I think there might be something going on in the local economy. For example, the rental market is tighter than a frog's sphincter, and as a consequence, my friend Bravadita is dragging up on her cute apartment in downtown Portland in favor of shared housing in Gladstone. Her rent decreases in inverse proportion to her public transit commute, which extends an extra hour per day. I find it sad; I fear something similar will happen to me in the next year. My landshark and his wife could boot me out of the Love Shack, fix up the antiquated bathroom and kitchen, and easily lease it to some marketing wizkid for double the rent. I would find myself rooming with my mother, or possibly hunkering down in the Section 8 housing across the street from her condo, where police seem to be on standby.

It's an unsettling, unsettled, yet oddly fertile time. As I approach my 58th birthday, I don't have a whole lot of hope, but freefall is a surprisingly freeing state of mind. My life certainly doesn't look the way I thought it would. I aimed for Santa Barbara and ended up in Pacoima, figuratively speaking. Maybe more like, I aimed for Fiji and ended up in the armpit of Portland. Whatever. I'm trying to live fearlessly, and failing daily, but fearlessness is something to aim for, in the absence of job security and impending old age. The good thing is that since fearlessness is a state of mind, I don't have to leave home to find it.

Portland, the land of plenty

My sister perused the photos from my high school reunion and sent me an email complimenting me on not getting fat. (Isn't that sweet?) Compared to some women in the photos, it's true, I'm a stick. But it's all relative. At the height of my vegan debacle, some six years ago when my body was feasting desperately on muscle and brain cells, having burned up all available fat, I guess you could say I was pretty thin. To be more precise, I could get into the same size Levis I wore in high school 40 years ago (30x34 in case you are curious), and those scruffy Levis hung on my frame like my own droopy skin.

Then, to avoid dying, and because I could (since I live in America, the land of plenty, and back then I had a job), I started eating real food: eggs, chicken, beef, fish, and lots and lots of vegetables. Over the next two years, my muscles returned, along with all of my fat cells (which were never gone, just deflated, darn it), which ballooned to fill all the spaces in my now too-tight clothes. The Levis went into a drawer, replaced by various forms of loose, stretchy pajamas. Black, of course, because it is so slimming.

For the past year or so, as my system has stabilized on the low-carb real-food food plan, some of the extra weight has started dissolving, first from my face, then from my boobs, then my waist, and—if I live long enough—maybe from my hips and thighs. It would be nice to have thin thighs like I did in high school. The good news, in relative terms considering the world is spontaneously combusting right now, is that I can finally fit into my Levis again (although I admit it's a bit of a struggle to get them buttoned up).

So, thanks, Sis, for the moral support. Keeping in mind of course, that it's not really true that outward appearances trump emotions, behavior, and character. That is to say, it matters more how you feel than how you look. In the big scheme of things, we are lucky to be alive and living in the land of plenty (plenty of everything, good, bad, and in between, but mostly pretty good in Portland). Things could be worse. We could be living in Baghdad, Aleppo, or Ferguson. Seriously. Land of plenty, indeed! Gratitude list!

Monstrous feverish crowds of networking women

Nothing inspires me to blog more than noise in the neighborhood. I was trying to update one of my websites, which is always a challenge because I am not that skilled with WordPress, and suddenly the Cafe cranked up the volume. The bass is vibrating through the Love Shack, itching through my nerve endings. Is it live music? Is there a person I can blame? Argh.

Oh, hey. It's nine o'clock. The music just stopped. There is a god after all, and its name is Silence.

Today the weather was perfect for jogging in the park. I trotted around my little beaten track and reveled in the warm air on my skin. When I spread my bat-winged arms in sheer joy, I imagined I was getting just the tiniest bit of lift. I felt lighter. I always do in summer. Everything is easier in summer. Even being broke, unemployed, and terrified is easier in summer. It's the most wonderful time of the year.

A couple nights ago, I went out on a warm summer's evening to mix and mingle with a crowd of women at a... I guess you would call it a club? over in North Portland off of MLK near Legacy Emmanuel Hospital. It seems every old storefront in town is being renovated, even in the (former) ghetto. This club was up a steep flight of carpeted stairs from a bar/restaurant, where a bunch of trendy 30-somethings were sitting at little round sidewalk tables, looking oh so hip. I skittered by in my old blue Levis and long floppy olive green rayon men's overshirt, hoping it would conceal my muffin top and wondering what the hell I was doing so far from the Love Shack, going to a club to hang out with a bunch of women. Jeez.

I don't like women. Not groups of women, anyway, and a club full of drinking older gals laser-focused on networking the crap out of each other is just plain frightening. The air reeked of perfume and estrogen. Some wore hats and cocktail dresses. Who were they dressing up for? There were only two men that I could see: the sound board guy and the club guy who moved around tables and checked the lighting as he nervously looked over his shoulder at the women. As if the herd could bolt at any moment. The noise level made it impossible to hold a conversation. I tried, honestly. I roamed and mingled, sipping a salty soda water with lime, wandering from table to table (there were no chairs), barging in on conversations with no shame, trying out my creaky elevator pitch and listening to others breeze through theirs, thinking this is so stupid.

I don't care anymore. You know why? Because I finally figured out that all these frantic, frothing, networking women are just like me: broke, desperate, and on the edge looking down. Successful women don't network; they are too busy working. Or if they aren't working, they are out with their pals, swilling craft-brewed pale ale and ouzo martinis at the trendiest watering hole in the Pearl District. Someplace I wouldn't dare go, even if I knew where it was. Secret handshake and all that.

The music has resumed. I knew it was too good to be true. There is no god called Silence. Pestilence, maybe, but not Silence. Sigh.

I eventually sat down on a red velvet-cushioned bench along the wall of the club and watched the hordes of females buzzing around each other like colorful bees swarming the hive. Pretending they were taking effective action. Maybe they were, and I'm the one who didn't get it. After a while, a young woman came over and sat next to me. Yay, another introvert. We started talking. It was quieter there on the periphery, and I found out she was an arborist and landscape designer—a refreshing departure from the wellness coaches, personal change catalysts, jewelry sellers, and multilevel marketing distributors that I'd met during my attempts to hobnob. We exchanged cards and best wishes before we escaped down the stairs and out into the warm evening.

In spite of the strange interlude which seems to have commandeered my life, I find things to be grateful for. Besides showing up for networking, somehow I have continued to exercise intermittently, eat organic and local, mostly, and get enough sleep. I've managed to scrape together coins to do laundry. I've somehow kept the bird feeder filled and the litter box clean. I've reached a cease-fire with the ants in the kitchen; they know what happens when they cross the line into my territory, and in return for taking no prisoners around the sink, I'm happy to give the occasional passenger a ride from the kitchen to the bathroom, with the couch the final destination. If they bite my neck, the gloves come off. Those are the rules.

So mostly, I'm trundling through these strange days feeling a bemused mix of hope and despair. If it weren't so ghastly watching my savings evaporate, these would be the best days of my life. I try not to think about it too much. I just keep updating my website, making my plans, and hobnobbing with monstrous crowds of women.

How to know if there is a vortex in your bathroom

My sister came to town for a long weekend. The fun began Friday evening when I picked her up at the airport, and ended this morning at 7:00 a.m. when I dropped her off. She travels light, like the veteran globetrotter that she is. We were lucky to see her: Portland was just the next destination after Boston, en route back to Europe where I suspect she left her heart. She graces us once a year, if she can. She looks better than ever. Every time I see her, I wonder how she manages to remain young while I am speeding into old age.

Speaking of perplexing occurrences, I am not sure, but think there might be an energy vortex in my bathroom. I'm not an expert. Maybe it's a tiny black hole, or an electromagnetic event horizon. Or a really small localized Bermuda Triangle. I checked a map of energy vortices and it appears that the nearest one is Sedona, although many people claim Oregon has an energy vortex of its own. I've never been there, so I can't say. But I have been to my bathroom, many times, and I'm here to tell you, something wacky is going on in there.

It's not a big bathroom. The tub runs across the end of the room, under the window, where I have built a large wooden window seat for the cat. The sink is on the left-hand wall, the mirror is on the right-hand wall, and the toilet is behind the door. The original taupe ceramic-tiled floor was amateurishly covered before my tenure with black and white linoleum squares (same as is in my kitchen), which are now spotted with kitty litter and paint splatters from many coats of dingy ivory enamel. Overhead is your typical mold-spotted, pock-marked, spider-infested ceiling. It's a nondescript room, despite my attempt to describe it. The vortex appears to be on the wall just to the left of the toilet.

Time out while I go rescue a house fly. He looks a little groggy, like he's been batted about the forehead one too many times by a deceptively lazy cat.

Ok, now I'm back. Where was I? Oh, yeah. Energy vortex. My sister managed to survive three nights in the guest room at my mother's condo (which might be sort of like a small black hole, considering how it sucks life energy from visitors foolish enough to linger). She would have been welcome here, vortex or no. Maybe she wanted to avoid going home covered with cat hair and dust mites. Can't blame her. Maybe she just wanted to avoid hurting our mother's feelings. Whatever the case, she decided to brave the condo. The first night she was attacked by fleas. At least, we think they might have been fleas. Or maybe just one really energetic flea. I think a linen change resolved that issue.

My mother's condo gets only evening sun through one living room window. The master bedroom has one east-facing window smothered by huge pine trees. The rest of the place has a few small north-facing windows. So, what I'm saying is, the place is a cave. Maybe that is why my mother resembles a mole: She stays up late reading by one dim lamp or playing Castle Camelot in the dark. She sleeps late, swathed in fleece and slippers, buried in the dark depths of her huge bed. If she didn't snore occasionally, you wouldn't know she was there.

Maybe energy vortices run in my family. I never thought of that before. That could explain my mother's condo. Maybe that also explains the problem in my bathroom.

Here's the deal. I've had a battery operated clock on the wall next to my toilet for several years. I installed it while I was still working, when it was important to keep to a schedule. Now that it's not so important, I pay less attention to time, although I have battery-operated clocks in every room. One day a few months ago, I happened to notice the clock in the bathroom had gained time. Like, a lot of time. Twenty minutes of time. It's just a cheap battery-powered clock; I figured it had lost its clock mojo or something, although it seems to me that clocks usually lose time, rather than gain time. But what do I know about time? I installed a new battery, moved the hands back to the proper time, and hung it back on the wall. Within a few days, it had once again gained 20 minutes.

I took the clock off the wall and set it on the toilet tank, propped it against the wall. Weeks went by: It kept perfect time. I hung it back on the wall. Within a few days, it was 10 minutes ahead. That's when I started to think there might be something odd going on in my bathroom.

I'm guessing the neighbor also has a vortex in her bathroom, right on the other side of the wall. I know by the sound of her toilet flushing that not much space separates our facilities. Maybe she's hung a large magnetic bathroom ornament on the wall, directly opposite my clock. If I see her, I'll ask. In the meantime, I'm going to hang the clock on a different wall and see what happens.

I just Googled "battery-operated clock gaining time" and found out I'm not alone. Other people have encountered the mystery. A few offered some lame explanations. The last commenter said, "Maybe you are at the nexus of the universe or something." I like that idea. Maybe my bathroom is at the nexus of the universe. Or something. I can think of worse places to be.

Keeping Portland weird with the World Naked Bike Ride

You've probably seen the pictures by now, the streets of Portland clogged by naked people riding bicycles. It's called the World Naked Bike Ride. I don't know any more about it than you do, even though they've been doing this since 2004, and I live here. I guess people take off their clothes and ride bicycles all around the world to inspire people to ride bikes (naked or clothed, I presume either one is ok). My guess is that even though Portland may not be the only city offering annual naked bike rides, Portlanders are probably the most enthusiastic, especially if the weather is fine.

Yesterday was a perfect day by Portland late spring standards: clear blue sky, 79°, really great weather to get sunburned on your ass if you aren't wearing shorts. I was wearing jeans, because I can now (lost a few pounds, yay me), and as I was driving through the neighborhood I came upon a small traffic jam. Was it an accident, a pedestrian...? Oh, wait. Gleaming bikes, glistening skin... yep, those people are starkers. I caught some fleeting glimpses of flopping genitalia and one tanned behind as the owner bent over to fix something on a fallen bike. Just slightly surreal, and then the drivers got over it and we all moved on. Just another wacky day in the city of weird.

I've had dreams before of traipsing through town in the altogether, thinking nothing of it, and then gradually coming to the disconcerting realization that no one was naked but me. Invariably in my dreams, true to my inner empress, I refused to indicate that anything was wrong, staring belligerently at anyone who raised an eyebrow. That feeling of isolation and alienation is my normal state when clothed, and I imagine it would be about a thousand times worse were I to be unclothed in public. Well, fortunately, you won't see me parading my lily-white cellulite-riddled skin out in the open anytime soon. I don't want to blind anyone. I don't even like to show my arms, flapping as they do in the breeze. I'll condescend to wear (long) shorts to go jogging sometimes, but only if the temperature exceeds 80°. Those are the rules. You have rules, too, don't deny it.

I used to live with a nihilist. We liked to travel around looking for natural hot springs. We found a few, many of which were clothing-optional. These secret pools were written about in books: Hot Springs of the West, etc. They were always at the ends of long dusty trails or situated high on the flank of a steep, snake-filled scree. People packed in beer and got high and sweaty, sitting up to their necks in steaming sulfur water. Yeah, those were some kind of days. My personal favorite was Hot Creek, a foggy confluence of a cold stream and hot geothermal water bubbling up from below. Every now and then, a fumarole would shift and boil some hapless bathers alive. Hence the large sign on the trail leading down to the river: Bathe at your own risk; 271 (or some ungodly number) people have died here. Nothing like fear of parboiling to really relax you on your vacation.

Being naked in public gives you a new perspective. Ask any two-year-old. The wind and sun on your skin, nothing between you and your human life. I can almost understand the appeal of nudist groups. Wouldn't it be nice to live in a world without judgment or shame? Until it gets cold and you have to put a shirt on. Back to the real world.