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.

The old gray maternal parental unit floats on the stream of life

Today I've been cleaning in preparation for the arrival of my sister. She's coming in tomorrow evening from Boston for a long weekend in Portland. I hope she notices that I cleaned the white squares on the black-and-white checkerboard linoleum floor. I also baked some chicken in the ancient oven in case she feels like nibbling some desiccated poultry while she's here. I hope the smoke dissipates overnight. Tomorrow I'll stir up some dust with my like-new vacuum cleaner. She'll like that, I bet.

Eddie, my cat, lies on my lap while I'm trying to type. He looks up at me and says what he often says, "Do you work here?" It's almost as plain as that Internet cat that says, "Hey." Yep, Eddie talks. I'm not sure what he's wanting... a drink, maybe? A back rub? To be a guest blogger?

Here, dude. You take over.

He apparently wanted a back rub. I complied, and now he's enjoying a snack in his personal lounge (a built-in sideboard in the kitchen, complete with bird-watching window, three entrees, a huge jug of water, and two containers of well-mown hand-grown oat grass. I should have such a life.)

Tonight an odd thing happened. My cell phone buzzed. That in itself is odd, because I rarely get phone calls on my cell phone. Odder still: It was my mother. Wha–?

"Hi Mom," I said guardedly.

She said, "Where are you?"

I said, "Where am I supposed to be?"

"Aren't you picking up your sister at the airport?"

"No, Mom, that's tomorrow night."

"Really? What day is it? Thursday?"

"No, Mom, today is Wednesday."

"Are you sure? I don't get a newspaper anymore, so..."

She sounded chagrined and just a tiny bit worried as she realized her error. I am feeling perplexed and slightly unnerved. I get that she loses track of the days. That's easy to do when you are retired. Or self-employed.

I wonder, is this a sign of a pattern, a portent, a harbinger of things to come? Or is this just a one-off, put it down to her carefree retired lifestyle and the excitement of seeing her youngest daughter? I hope she doesn't flagellate herself with this episode. Well, at the rate things are going, she might not even remember it tomorrow. I don't know if that is looking on the bright side or the dark side.

There's a certain relaxation that can come with old age, I think, for some old folks, anyway. I worked for a brief time as an activities director at a care center, and I met many interesting people. Most couldn't walk. Many couldn't talk. Some were anxious and worried. And some cruised through their remaining days, drifting blissfully along on the stream of life, from ice cream cone to nap to chocolate cake to ragtime music to family visit to fresh flowers to more ice cream, through the clockless days, winding down gently to death. I wouldn't mind going out like that, floating on the breeze.

We are all at the epicenter

In the past few weeks I've heard or seen a reference to what you should do if you have six hours to chop down a tree (spend four hours sharpening and two hours chopping, according to Abe Lincoln). Apart from a brain hiccup where I mixed up Abe Lincoln with George Washington (“I cannot tell a lie”—although I now understand that quote is attributed incorrectly? What the hell, people!), does anyone besides me feel just the slightest bit queasy at the idea of chopping down a tree?

I mean, we're losing trees at an alarming rate all over the planet (80,000 acres of rain forest daily is a lot of trees to be losing), and we all know that losing trees is a bad thing, so why would you even talk metaphorically about chopping down a tree? I predict that in five years using the idea of sharpening an axe to chop a tree to metaphorically refer to honing your performance through preparation will be so politically incorrect that people will shun you with hisses if you dare mention even the thought of tree demise. Tree destruction=not cool. Maybe axes will be outlawed. Maybe you'll have to have a background check to purchase an axe. Maybe there will be a National Axe Association, to help us retain the right to bear axes. Axes don't kill trees, people kill trees.

Speaking of which, just a few miles from here, here being the east suburbs of Portland, Oregon, a kid shot another kid in yet another high school shooting. Nobody wants to think about it (ho hum, another one down, tsk, tsk). It's interesting, however, to watch the amount of news coverage. It occurs to me that the media attention flows outward in concentric circles from the epicenter of the carnage. The closer you are to the incident, the more media coverage spews out over the airwaves. Since I'm within the ten mile radius, I was treated to extensive news coverage. (I watch the 11 o'clock news on the local ABC or NBC affiliates; I won't watch CBS news since they let Meteorologist Bruce Sussman go).

The reporters and interviewees said essentially what they always say when preventable tragedies happen, yada yada, hearts go out, prayers stay in, etcetera, nothing new there. Here on local TV, there were long, soulfully lingering shots of grieving high school students holding flickering candles (it's windy in Troutdale, out there at the doorway to the Columbia River Gorge), whereas on national TV you might see just a couple seconds' worth of flickering candles. I got to see how people ingeniously created little lanterns by shoving a candle through the bottom of a Dixie cup. Clever! And there seemed to be more in-depth explanation in the days that followed, compared to what I've seen for shootings in other places. This go-round included some curious introspection by the reporters (Should we divulge the identity of the shooter or not? Are we glorifying the act, or are we simply reporting the news? Ah, hell, everyone else is showing his picture, so rather than be left behind, we'd better show it, too.) I've had my fill, as no doubt you all have. Enough already. In 20 years, we won't remember. Unlike O.J.'s trial, which is getting a lot of airplay this week, too. If there was any rain forest left, I'd run away to it.

Last night I went to the local AMA-PDX MAX awards at OMSI. Those are a lot of acronyms for what turned out to be a relatively fun event, even for me, the chronically malcontented introvert. I wore my jeans, which aren't quite as skinny as I'd like, but actually can be buttoned, and over that I wore a long shirt so I didn't have to worry about the muffin top. They made me a name tag for my $45. Plus tickets for two free drinks! I asked for an iced tea; the server had to rummage through the kitchen to come up with a bottle of ice tea, guess they weren't prepared for any teetotalers. Along the walls, multiple tables laden with appetizers (salmon, asparagus, cheese in bizarre formations, and pizza!) I had two little pieces of pizza (cheese and wheat... heaven!) and found a spot at a long tall table.

Almost immediately a young blonde kid wearing, I kid you not, a purple velvet blazer brought a plate of salmon and asparagus to the table opposite me. British accent, a little dorky, my kind of guy. Come to find out he volunteered his marketing and design skills to create all the promotional items that were associated with the event. I told him my strategy of insinuating myself into an organization through volunteer work; he's already doing it! We exchanged cards. I feel heartened to know I'm on the right track. All I need is a purple velvet jacket.

OMSI stands for Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, in case you were wondering. AMA is the American Marketing Association, and I have no idea what MAX stands for. It was an awards ceremony, emceed by a fascinating creature named Poison Waters, who wore a slight beard, a tiara, and a gold lame evening gown. Most of the attendees were much younger than I, but there were a few grizzled oldsters (men, not women) rocking buzzcuts, plaid shirts, and long shorts.

I topped the evening off with strawberry shortcake, the effects of which I'm still feeling today, but all I can say is... you only live once, so yum. Won't be doing that again anytime soon, but mmm mmm.

Tonight I helped my mother update her Facebook profile with a picture and a cover photo. (Look out Internet!). She repaid me with home grown lettuce. Next week my sister the world traveler comes to town. Soon it will be summer. Nothing is different, but the air smells like hope.

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.

What's with this twiddling thing?

Hey, all you chronic malcontents, here's a question for you:  Is there some new meaning of the word twiddles? Like, is it a new euphemism for doing the nasty? (Or having fun, depending on your point of view, I guess.) The reason I ask is that I can't understand why one of my posts is getting so many page views. One post is getting five times as many hits as any other post. Maybe it's the word frets? I don't get it.

Well, just thought I'd ask. Although, because this is an anonymous blog, five times as many hits adds up to a whole lot of not much. Don't worry, I won't be selling out to advertisers any time soon. Just keep on drifting by, and I'll keep on ranting about my strangely malcontented life.

It's late. I've been working on revising my website today, learning WordPress as I go. I am proud of myself, I wrote a few lines of code to fetch an image. Wow, look at me go, I'm like coding now! Oh, wait, isn't that jargon for oh, oh, my heart just stopped? Well, I'm so tired right now, I could be dead and not know it.

I've been receiving the Oregonian newspaper for free for a few months. I think it's a promotional effort to motivate people to become subscribers. The newspaper has reinvented itself into a magazine-style format, complete with minuscule fonts and color photos of car wrecks and unpopular politicians. It looks to me like the paper is gasping its last breath and will probably expire shortly. I'd feel worse about it, but today in the advertising inserts were two slick perfume ads. You know what I mean, those flyers where you lift up a corner and peel back a strip to release the scent? Well, if your nose is anything like mine (large, constantly clogged, bristling with nose hair), you would smell that scent (and I use the word scent very loosely) the moment you carried the paper into the house.

Which is exactly what happened. Once I realized my error I quickly isolated the offending ads and shoved them out the back door. The cat watched me with some confusion. I don't usually dispose of paper by throwing it out the door. But we are both interested in maintaining the integrity of our indoor air quality. All this is the long way of saying I'm going to call those numskulls at the Oregonian and tell them I don't want their stinky paper, even if it is delivered free to my front door (only once into the garden, not bad) four mornings every week.

Oh, and in other news, I got paid for all the academic editing jobs I did in May, and I used the money to join the AMA. That's the American Marketing Association, in case you thought being a Ph.D. suddenly allows me to practice medicine. Har har. I am now a fisherman. My strategy is to go where the fish are. Next week I will attend a local marketing event and hobnob with the hoi polloi. Yay. More networking.

I'll keep you posted. Meanwhile, stop twiddling! It's probably bad for your health, whatever it is.

Another new hat: Who am I now?

It's humbling to realize that even after 57 years walking around on the planet I have gained so little knowledge about my own preferences and working styles. A week ago, if you had asked me what kind of work I prefer, I would have said, “Well, thanks for asking! I like to work alone. I'm a control freak. I like to work in my pajamas.” And all that is true. Based on those preferences, I would have expected editing to be a perfect job for me. But after editing 200 pages of poorly written, convoluted scholarly tomes by wannabe academics, I learned that that is not the whole story, not by a long shot. I am an introvert, I am a control freak, I do like to work in stinky pajamas... and I'm a creator, not an editor. Beam me up, Scotty! I've had enough editing to choke a Klingon.

Editing someone else's mess of a dissertation is like trying to sweep kitty litter off a linoleum floor with a toothbrush. You have to find every... last... speck to get the job done right. And just when you think you've found every dinky stinky grain, you see a little dollop of poop caught in a corner. Poop like generating the list of references using a third-party non-APA-compliant software program. Poop like non-APA-compliant tables and figures. Poop like stringing five verbs in a row, all ending in -ing, in a sentence that takes up half a page. That kind of poop. A bigger broom won't do it.

Apparently, I'm a pretty good editor. I'm thorough, and I know my APA. (I ought to, after eight fricking years in graduate school.) My problem, though, is that I'm too slow. It takes me a long time to do a thorough editing job, especially when I have to create styles, reformat tables, and generate Tables of Contents, Tables of Tables, and Tables of Figures... wha—? (Tables of tables? I mean, Lists of Tables! Whatever!)

When you are getting paid a set amount per job, the more hours you spend, the less you make per hour. On the last job, the 150+ page dissertation (I know, what am I whining about? My massive wretched tome was 390 pages!), I calculated I earned about $16 per hour, when it was finally put to bed. That might sound good to you, but that's gross earnings. So, subtract federal, state, local, and self-employment taxes, and I netted a measly $10 per hour. And PayPal takes its cut, too.

So, time to find another hat. I keep finding out what I don't want to do. Year after year, job after job, I fall into the wrong jobs. That seems like a really painful, tedious way to discover one's calling, don't you think? How many possible occupations are there? A few hundred? Probably more like a few thousand. I don't have time to try them all in a colossally misguided process of job elimination.

Only one job lasted a significant amount of time. That was the teaching job at the career college, almost ten years. The job started out great, perfect fit, better than I'd ever had, certainly better than, oh say, driving a school bus, sewing bridesmaids dresses, or playing bingo with old folks in a nursing home. Or gardening, or waitressing, or secretarying, or chaufeurring, or admin coordinating... teaching was way better than all those occupations. And for a few years, despite the shenanigans of management, it continued to be a good fit. Until the marketing classes went to another campus, and I got assigned to teach keyboarding, term after term. By that time, the death rattle was echoing through the halls, and nobody was surprised when corporate pulled the plug last year. End of story. Old news.

On the bright side, it only took a week to realize that I'm not cut out to be an editor. No more spending years doing something I hate, resenting it, and plotting revenge. The downside, though, is that apparently in 57 years I haven't progressed an inch toward anything resembling self-awareness. It's easy to say, you can take the girl out of the art [world], but you can't take the artist out of the girl. (If I can still call myself a girl. I can, can't I? Clearly I am still about twelve.) That old platitude doesn't quite work in this case, but you get my drift, right? I make my own messes, I don't clean up other people's. I'm a creator, I'm a maker, I'm a writer, I'm an artist. You betcha. That and $5.50 will get you a frappuccino at Starbucks.

Tomorrow I'm off to yet another startup workshop (free!) to find my true calling. It's across the river in The Couve (Vancouver, WA), a green and magical land where you can pump your own gas, so maybe I'll find what I'm looking for there.

Be careful what you ask for

I told the Universe I would walk through whatever door opened, financially speaking. That leaves a lot of wiggle room for the Universe, I realize now. But you know how it is when you are desperate for income: you start throwing out blanket-sized prayers and making promises to whatever deity happens to be on television at the moment. And before you know it, the Universe (or random chance) responds. With something you were perhaps not expecting, or wanting all that much, like a pie in the face or an e.coli infection.

No worries, neither one has happened to me yet, although I got a robocall earlier today from the City of Portland warning me to boil my tap water. Wha—? Seriously, boil my tap water, here? In the City of Cleanest Water in the World? Oh boy. And wouldn't you know it, the culprit is one of those hundred-year-old reservoirs just 200 yards from my front door. A broken pipe, a little breach, or some nut peeing in the water, whatever the cause, all that lovely Bull Run water is now contaminated with e.coli bacteria, and the City of Portland is on a boil-water alert for the first time ever. A big thank you to my good friend V., who called me to tell me about the alert, else I would have never known, and probably swilled e.coli infested coffee all day long. In fact, ugh, I have! Oh well. If you don't hear from me in a few days, send out the hazmat team.

I spent the last two days editing academic papers for writers whose first language happens to be something other than English. One 7000-word project was through an agency, the other (12,000 words) directly from the author. I've been sitting at my computer for two solid days, editing, commenting, highlighting, spellchecking, formatting... and I must say, this is the stupidest way to earn money I've ever thought of. I'd almost rather be a gardener (I did that for a few months years ago, when I was still young and limber). As my wrists solidify into concrete and my eyes grow gritty with weariness, I am reflecting that I got what I asked for. And now I'd like to give it back, but I don't have any other income right now, so I'm stuck.

It could be worse, I suppose. It has been worse. Driving a school bus was worse. Sewing clothes for overweight, underappreciative female Los Angelenos was definitely worse. In comparison, this has some perks. I get to swelter in my own stinky sweat. I can listen to my music (Grace Jones, John Foxx, and new Coldplay). I can bury my nose in my cat's furry tummy. I can fart all I want and pick my nose. Really, it's not so bad. But I haven't found the balance yet: I haven't been out of the house for two days. I fear the blood has pooled to my ankles. I can barely move, so it's hard to tell. I should probably be drinking more water, but well, whatever.

On the bright side, however, I have sold a whopping two ebooks! Thank you, dear friends. I don't know who you are because the $15.98 has not yet been posted by Smashwords to PayPal, but someday I hope I have a chance to thank you, if not in person, then with a big sloppy email kiss. Mwah! It is very difficult to promote a book anonymously, I have discovered, so I'm not even trying. Meanwhile, I'm contemplating my next book, which will not be anonymous. This time I'm going to ask the Universe for great big wads of cash and see what happens.

Fitna on the condo board

Today I ate chia seeds and after a wave of dizziness, I felt much better than I did when I posted the last morose post, so yay for chia seeds. I don't really want to blog about chia seeds, though. Tonight I went for a jog in the park, intent on enjoying the last of the balmy weather before the rains return. It was a half-and-half sky, half blue, half white, with streaky high clouds moving in from the coast, a sign of weather to come. As I exited my back door, my neighbor Kirsten waved me down to tell me that her landlord is selling the duplex she lives in. She and her husband might have to move. As she spoke, her chin began to quiver.

“I've planted over 500 bulbs in that garden,” she moaned, waving at her wild and chaotic yard. I didn't say it, but I learned long ago, all the yard work we do for landlords increases no one's wealth but the landlords.

“There will be other gardens,” I said cryptically.

“What will we do? Where will we find another place like this?”

“It is natural to want to hang on to what we have,” I said. “It's hard to let go.”

I left her gazing dolefully at her flowers and sipping beer out of a can. I enjoyed my trot more than usual, maybe because of the chia seeds, who knows. I smiled at everyone, which is a rare state for a chronically malcontented person like me. A bit of sunshine caught me on the way back. Kirsten was still out front, talking to another neighbor. I ignored them and headed along the path to my back door. I heard her voice calling and turned to see her waving at me.

I pulled my earplugs out of my ears.

“Are you talking to me?”

“I just wanted to thank you for your words of wisdom,” she said, still holding a can of beer. I walked out to the garbage can area to meet her. A breeze of beer breath wafted over me. I can't remember the last time I had a beer. (No, I wasn't blacked out. I just don't like beer.)

“I'm always happy to dispense words of wisdom, whether anyone likes it or not,” I smiled.

“You always seem so calm,” she said dreamily, and then she started to cry. I gave her a hug on impulse, not something I usually do, but she seemed comforted, judging by the way she held on to me a bit too long. Maybe she was using me to stay upright, I don't know.

Luckily at that moment, another neighbor, a woman with fake platinum hair whose bearded husband is a guitar player, came out to dump something in the trash, and Kirsten shared the sorry tale of woe with her.

“I've been talking to Carol, because she's so calm,” Kirsten said. The woman (whose name might be Susan) looked at me with no recognition at all. She has really nice skin, I thought to myself. The woman put her empty bowl on top of the trash can and came over to hug Kirsten. I took that opportunity to make my escape.

It was a day for sharing stories, apparently. My almost 85-year-old mother called me shortly after I had changed back into my usual garb (pajamas). Her voice boomed out of the phone.

“The Board Chair said some terrible things to me at the condo meeting last night!”

“What did she say?” I asked.

“She said she heard me say some denigrating things about one of the homeowners. Who happens to be her friend,” my mother sputtered, lisping slightly because of her dentures. “I don't remember saying anything about the homeowner!” Which, I thought, doesn't mean you didn't do it; it just means you can't remember doing it. But I didn't say that.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“I said, 'I'm moving!'”

“Whoa.”

“Then after the meeting, two other Board members came up to me and told me she had done the same thing to them! Accused them of saying something negative about her friends.”

The righteous anger was beginning to pile up in big frothy bubbles.

“What are you going to do, Mom?”

“We need to vote her off the Board!”

“Better check your condo bylaws before you start rounding up a posse,” I warned.

“I've got 'em here someplace. But they are so hard to understand. Can't we just hold a special meeting or something?”

“Probably. But you need to follow the guidelines in the bylaws. This is for the good of the condo association, right, Mom? It's not because you don't like the woman. It's not about revenge, right?”

“I've got two Board members who are on my side,” she said excitedly. “I gotta go.”

If you remember a couple posts ago, I reported that my mother has become a reader of this blog. If she remembers how to find it again, she may read this post and declare that I have failed to accurately report the events I'm describing. It's true I have taken some artistic license in the pursuit of laughs. I've definitely shortened the conversation, and of course, being the malcontent that I am, I've tried to make me look smarter at her expense. Because that's what daughters do as payback for all the years of hell, am I right? But seriously, Mom, if you read this, sorry for taking advantage, but you set it up so nicely, I really couldn't resist. Watching you instigate a mutiny of the condo board is priceless. Rock on, Mom! Fitna on the condo board!

Exhaling at the speed of life

I'm a living example of efficiently working at being ineffective. I stay busy. I'm proud to say I'm not quivering in a closet, waiting to be hauled away to the poorhouse. For one thing, I only have one closet in the Love Shack, and it has no place to sit except in the laundry basket. I'm not that far gone. And secondly, what used to be the county poorhouse is now a swanky hip hotel, with a movie theatre, a brewery, a concert venue, a 9-hole golf course, several restaurants, and a multitude of bars. I went to a marketing conference there a few months back. I definitely can't afford it. I don't think there are poor farms anymore, are there? Well, there's always the Burnside Bridge. Under it, I mean: I'm not planning on jumping, in case you were worried.

I'm not lazy. I do a lot of stuff. I make long lists of to-do tasks and knock them off, one by one. That's good, right? No skulking in my one and only closet. Something is not quite right, though. I feel like a cartoon character, with spinning circles for legs, tearing up the air four inches above the pavement, going nowhere, fast. My logical left brain says I just need to work smarter, find the right strategy, I need to figure it out. My right brain is twirling in confusion, alternately euphoric at being saturated with freedom and morose at the prospect of losing it.

I feel like I've stopped breathing. For the past few months, with no income, my sense of accomplishment at finally finishing the Ph.D. is slowly seeping away. I'm deflating, a belch here, a hiss there. Nothing is coming in to replace what is trickling away. I say to myself, I'm living on air, and it feels true. Stored up air. Air from last year, when I still had a job. Musty stale air, sluggishly metallic as it seeps out of my checking account lungs.

Over the weekend I applied to three jobs: instructional designer, student adviser, and online professor at an unreasonably snobby for-profit university. In a few weeks I'll receive three politely terse emails (if I'm lucky) stating that my qualifications were not a match for the position.

I also recently published the Hellish Handbasket ebook, Welcome to Dissertation Hell. So far there have been 27 sample downloads. That's cool. But no sales. That's not so cool. That indicates to me that people are reviewing it and not finding a compelling reason to buy. Why does that sound familiar? Everything I've done: close, but no cigar. A-minus: Magna not summa. Vinyl, not leather. Just a few pounds away from thin. Just a little too angry, a tad too bitter.

I know if I just hold out and keep taking action, sooner or later, I'll begin to inhale again, and my blues will brighten. In the meantime, I hoard my stale dirty air.

Uh-oh. Can I get the cat back into the bag?

I would like to shout out a big welcome to the newest Hellish Handbasket reader: my mother. Yep. You heard right. My scrawny almost-85-year-old Wild-West mother is back online and tearing up the broadest band she's ever had. Speedy doesn't begin to describe her presence on the Internet. With one breath she's complaining that she can't remember how to use her computer. With the next breath, she's leaving snide comments on Facebook and forwarding chain emails to her entire contact list. Way to go, Mom.

A few nights ago, my mother and I were talking on the phone. I don't remember who called who, but as she is wont to do, she asked me what I've been working on. My first thought was to change the subject. My second thought was to lie. But sadly, I don't lie well, especially to my mother, so I took a deep breath and told her about the Hellish Handbasket ebook, which I had just published.

“Oh, what is it about?” she asked.

“It's called 'Welcome to Dissertation Hell,' and it is a collection of selected posts from my blog,” I replied.

“Oh. You know, I don't think I've ever seen your blog,” she said.

“You've been offline for a while,” I said, trying to steer her away to a different topic.

“Where is your blog?”

Suddenly, in a nanosecond, my future life as a demented person who wears her underwear on the outside of her clothes in public, on Trimet, passed before my eyes. Dirty red underbelly alert! Alert! Not... happening. My brain worked feverishly as I considered and discarded 50 lame reasons why I shouldn't give her the URL to my blog. In the end, I came up with zip. Zilch. There was no good reason to exclude my curious mother from reading my anonymous blog. The thought of telling her she couldn't read it felt worse than the thought of her reading it. Still, I made a half-hearted attempt to dissuade her.

“You know I blog anonymously, right? That means you can't tell your condo friends, 'My daughter has a blog.'”

“OK.”

“And you know I write about personal things, right? So you can't be offended.”

“OK.”

So, I sent her the URL to this blog in an email, hoping she would accidentally delete it or corrupt it or something. Well, I can hope, can't I? No such luck.

The next day she called.

“Hello, Mudder,” I answered, as I always do when I hear her voice blasting through the phone.

“You sound like you are the most frustrated person who ever existed!” she shouted. Oh Lord Kumbaya. She read my blog.

“Ma, relax, it's therapy for me,” I tried to explain.

“You are frustrated!” she accused.

“OK, I'm frustrated!” I agreed. “But it's also an exciting time in my life! It's not bad! It's good!”

There was a moment of silence while we both pondered our next move. In used car sales transactions, the person who speaks first loses. So I took a breath and waited.

“Your younger brother tripped over the cat and fell down the stairs,” she said. Whew. Won that round. The equivalent of a 1968 Dodge Dart, I guess. That is to say, not a huge win.

So now I'm outed to my mother, which may possibly be worse than being outed to the entire world, because only mothers can press all the buttons that put us into that special orbit we experience as frustration. I'm not worried she'll reveal my identity... it's out there in the ebook. And who cares if a few silver-haired old ladies know who The Chronic Malcontent is? Not me.

My fear is that knowing my mother is possibly going to read this blog will cause me to censor my words. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, certainly not hers. I don't think I've said anything too derogatory toward her, have I? Besides calling her scrawny. Which I'm sure she would agree with; anyone can see the woman is a stick.

Well, no use fretting over the wreckage of the future. The cat is on my lap, but he would fight to the death to avoid going into any bag, so it looks like I'm going to have to let this one go. I surrender, Mom. Welcome to my blog.

The Chronic Malcontent succumbs to shameless commerce

Well, I did it. I've been thinking about doing it for a while (thanks to the encouragement of my sister and my friends), and I finally did it. For the past month I have been compiling posts from the Hellish Handbasket blog, in preparation for turning it into an ebook. Yep. A compendium, call it a handbook, maybe, of dissertation-related posts for aspiring doctoral learners. Yesterday, I did it. It's done. I've officially gone over to the dark side of shameless self-centered commerce.

All I've ever wanted to do, since I was nine years old, was write and illustrate my own books. Sometime during elementary school, evil powers convinced me it was an impossible dream, so I pivoted toward painting. Equally foolish pursuit, I was told. Thus, in college (the first of many attempts at higher education), I gave up painting for graphic design (or "commercial art" as it was known in the x-acto knife and rubber cement, layout and paste-up days. Wow, I'm old.)

Unfortunately, I sucked at graphic design. But I loved fashion! I used my hazy vision of taking over the fashion world as a fashion illustrator and designer as an excuse to take a geographical to Los Angeles, where I fell awkwardly into costume design, started my own business, and got into debt. The rest is the boring history of me crawling out of the various holes I dug for myself over the ensuing 20 years. But you can't take the dream out of the girl, apparently, even when she's middle-aged, sagging, and growing a mustache. All I ever really wanted to do was create my own books.

It just wasn't the right time, it seems. Until now. All it took was for the world of technology to catch up to my vision and make it possible. Yay.

Of course, the world of technology also has made it possible for millions of other would-be authors to realize their visions of publishing, too. I find I am a speck, invisible in the vast and swarming tide of people who can also proudly claim they are ebook authors. Anyone can write and publish an ebook. (Even my mother could do it, and she just might, who knows! My scrawny 84-year-old mother just relaunched her online presence! Look out, Internet!)

As part of the gigantic and vibrant marketplace of ebooks, odds of being found are not in my favor. Especially considering my ebook is (more or less) an anonymous entry. Some marketing ploys to boost awareness of the new ebook may be undesirable, if I want to stay anonymous. Am I really hidden? No...anyone who wants to find me, can. I'm not well hidden, I'm not really anonymous. Who cares? Once again I find myself questioning my identity. Who am I? Who am I now? On so many levels, I'm still so confused.

But I finally got something done! Something is now present in the world that wasn't present before, and I was responsible for making that happen. That is the victory for me. If the universe wants to take note of it, so be it. If not, whatever. I'm on to my next ebook. My car may have a layer of moss on it, for being parked in the same spot for so long. But not me!

If you are interested in ordering or sampling the ebook, you can find it at Smashwords. And if you want more info, check out the Welcome to Dissertation Hell: the ebook page on this blog.

Woozy from too much woo

I am pretty sure I will look back on yesterday as a turning point. I think I already am, actually, if I'm blogging about this. What am I talking about, you ask? Woo. As in woo-woo: the collective label some people use to refer to popular pseudo-sciences like homeopathy, acupuncture, and applied kinesiology. Yep. I visited my naturopath yesterday, the esteemed Dr. Tony, and had a mind-altering experience. Perhaps not in the way the good doctor would have wished, but well, I guess now you all can say, “It's about time!”

The visit began with the usual procedure—some muscle testing, some poking, some lifting—and then Dr. Tony stood still, peering into my eyes. As I lay on the exam table, looking up at his towering figure (he's a tall man, anyway, even when you aren't flat on your back), I realized something was about to happen.

“How long have we been working together now?” he asked.

“Almost five years,” I replied, sensing I was being prepared for a pitch of some sort. Or else he was going to tell me I have cancer.

“You are finally healthy enough for me to take you to the next level,” he said. “I couldn't do this while your system was still recovering, but now I think you are ready.”

“Ready for what?” I asked apprehensively.

“Ready for heavy metal detoxification.”

Wha—? He could see my question on my face. He took his 3-ring binder and laid it on my stomach. With my arm in the air, he went through a list of heavy metals, muttering under his breath.

“Arsenic!” he exclaimed triumphantly.

“A naturally occurring mineral,” I replied skeptically.

“We want to get it out of your system. Until we do, you will not be at optimal health.”

Well, who doesn't want to be at optimal health, I ask you? Do you think I would say, Oh, no, thanks, Dr. Tony, I'll just settle for the regular amount of health. Optimal is a little extreme for me. I do everything in moderation. No, I didn't say that. I just looked at him. At that point, I was still willing to believe.

He performed a series of procedures, bizarre actions that have now become commonplace to me, involving holding a little vial to my chest, some rhythmic head compressions, and the spinal application of the little silver gun. Tra-la-la.

“This treatment will begin the detoxification process,” said the doctor. “In a few days or a week, you will feel pretty bad. Achy and sick. You need to be sure you drink a lot of water. The worst thing is to get constipated!”

I frowned, still on my back. Why didn't he warn me of the side effects before he administered this so-called detox treatment? Why didn't he give me the option to refuse? He's not unlike doctors everywhere, apparently: prescribe first, talk later.

He grabbed my left arm. “Hold it up,” he said, as he pushed my arm down. Over and over, he pushed it down, and I did my best to resist the pressure. I thought I was doing good: stronger means better, usually. He was counting the number of times he pushed my arm back down to my side. My shoulder was starting to hurt, but I kept going, determined to demonstrate how strong and healthy I am.

“Thirty-one! That's how much heavy metal is in your system!”

“On a scale of what?” I demanded.

“One is bad! Thirty-one is terrible!”

You know when you are watching a movie, or reading a book, and you allow yourself to suspend reality so you can believe in zombies, or vampires, or true love, you know, those magical elements that make a story great but have no basis in the real world? And then suddenly, a character says something out of character, or you are presented with a jarring moment of obvious product placement (Ben & Jerry's!), or an actor fails to deliver convincingly a crucial line, or you can see the wires lifting Peter Pan into the air... that moment when reality rushes back in to slap you in the face, so you suddenly fall out of the dream, you suddenly wake up and realize there is a fat man behind the curtain? You know what I'm talking about. It's the moment directors dread. It's the moment authors desperately try to avoid. All great storytellers work hard to maintain the suspension of disbelief until the story can be told, the punchline can be delivered, or the money has changed hands.

The moment of truth for me was when he said, “And you need to get a pair of colonics,” as if he were recommending I buy a pair of sandals at PayLess. At that point I balked. I told him I wasn't going to get a pair of colonics.

“Well, you can do what you want...” he said, with that tone of voice we all know so well. Like, you can make this poor choice, but you'll be sorry when you swell up like a fetid balloon full of arsenic-laced crap. I'm giving you some good advice here, but if you don't want to listen to it... well, you are on your own. Apparently, only losers think they can live without Dr. Tony. Because the good doctor is always right. He only wants the best for us, after all. Right?

The thud you may have heard yesterday was me, falling out of the magical state of disbelief with the world of alternative medicine. As I monitor my body for the promised aches and sickness (my left shoulder really hurts for some reason), I am reviewing my new position as a skeptic. My brain is fried with cognitive dissonance.

Either it was all a scam intended to part me from my money, or Dr. Tony has deluded himself into believing the quackery is real. Or else, alternative medicine really works, at least sometimes, which is what we'd like to hope and believe. Science-based evidence of its efficacy, though, is sadly lacking, which means we are operating on faith. Magic. Placebo effect.

All I have to go on is my own subjective experience: I got well after I started seeing Dr. Tony. And that could be because I started eating protein and high quality food, taking vitamins, and drinking more water. Subjective experience cannot replace science-based objective empirical testing, no matter how loudly proponents proclaim that colonics are the cure. All the woo-woo stuff was just magical window dressing, designed to make Dr. Tony and me feel like we were sharing a mystical and precious journey toward recovered health, a journey worth the hundreds of dollars I handed over to him every few months for the past five years.

I am chagrined, embarrassed to admit I may have let myself be duped by the venerable snake oil profession. (A Ph.D. doesn't make me less gullible, apparently.) However, it wasn't all a waste. I learned some things about myself. That's always useful. I guess the nugget in this experience is the awareness that I don't have to cling to old beliefs when they outlive their usefulness. Some people would escalate their commitment when faced with this level of internal dissonance. They would refuse to examine or consider any data that could contradict their world view. (Check out this website for some hair-raising comments.) Ultimately, I can't call myself a researcher if I won't consider what the objective data are telling me. Or, in this case, the lack of objective data.

Believing in alternative medicine is kind of like believing in the existence of god. Except a lot more expensive.

I've always been on the fence. It just took me a while to decide which side of the fence to climb down. The tall man behind the curtain has been revealed. I wouldn't claim he's evil—he's a likable guy—but what I am sure of is that I no longer trust him. That's sad, but perhaps it is also evidence of optimal health.

Best advice I've heard today: Go crazy!

As I sit staring at my computer, trying to dredge up something worth blogging about, I listen to Prince's manifesto Let's go Crazy, and think, hey, maybe that's good advice. Maybe it's a sign from god. You know how it is, when you can go in a million different directions, but you just don't know which ones will pay off, so you find yourself waiting for that special sign from the Universe. The song on the radio: You get what you give. The billboard: 127 million dollars! The horoscope: Watch out for family members trying to undermine your creative endeavors. A song from Prince is as good as any other sign out there, I think. I've tried everything else, and all I get is disapproving growls from my cat and a dwindling bank account. (I'm not sure which is worse.) Going crazy sounds like it might be fun.

My friend Zena the Warrior Princess, who is going on sabbatical for a few months, expressed her uncertainty about what activities to engage in during her time off. We talked on the phone today.

“I have a list of about 20 things to do while I'm gone,” she said. “How do I decide what to do first?”

“Write each activity on a little piece of paper,” I said, “fold it twice, and put it into a container. Shake it up and draw one out. Let the Universe decide.”

“That's brilliant!”

While we were talking, I realized that I had already done this. Years ago, I designed a “game” to help me choose among many alternatives. I called the game Divine Chance. I'm not wedded to the divine part, necessarily, but I do believe in chance, as in random stuff that makes us crazy. And, as my brain slowly remembered the game, I recalled that in my kitchen, high on a shelf behind the houseplants, is the colorful game board, a two-foot square piece of cardboard, which I segmented into something like 15 numbered sections. The sections are loosely painted in festive primaries and secondaries—red, blue, green, yellow, orange, outlined in black, all in acrylic, kind of like an opaque stained glass window.

And there is a container, too! An empty coffee can, still smelling like French Roast, pressed into service long ago as a receptacle for about 20 little folded slips of paper. My idea (at the time it seemed like fun) was to place the game board on the floor behind me, shake up the container, and then toss the slips of paper over my shoulder so that most of them land on the game board. Then my plan was to turn around, find the task that landed in section 1, and do it first, and so on down the line, according to the numbers on the game board. Thus would my destiny be created, through random chance.

Of course, it all depends on what you write on the slips of paper, doesn't it? Did I write impossible things, like... become an opera singer? Learn to fly? Travel the world in a yellow submarine? No, I did not. I opened up a few of the musty pieces of paper to reveal the mysterious tasks that at the time were important enough to me to ask for random intervention.

Cut my hair. (Really?) Fix my car. (Uh-oh) Get an MFA. (Whoa. That dusty dream is, like, 15 years old. I had forgotten about it.) In fact, most of the tasks were trivial, prosaic, and years out of date. No longer applicable to my middle-aged solitary self-employed existence. What would I put in the can now, I wonder? Take a nap. Write a book. Go crazy?

But the idea of the Divine Chance game is still funny. And it's no goofier than using Tarot, I-Ching, or tea leaves to try to chart a path through the unknown future. Now I believe that if I can't make a decision, it means I don't know who I am, at least temporarily. I also know that as long as I stay in action, the Universe can influence outcomes. I don't know how it works, I just know that it does. If I sit around waiting for the bus to come to my door, all I will see is the short bus coming to take me away, ha ha. Signs or no signs, the trick is to be a shark and keep moving. Even if everything seems random and it feels like insanity.

The chronic malcontent hedges some bets

If I could have any life I wanted, this would be it, pretty much. I've got a great little apartment (aside from an ant infestation problem), a cat who likes me a lot, family members who tolerate me, time on my hands to chase my creativity and exercise my curiosity... toss in a little sunshine and some income, and life would be darn near perfect. What was that? Yes, you heard me right: income. I'm sad to say, I'm still not earning much at the Love Shack. Who knew that Ph.D.s fresh out of the can were so unemployable?

That reminds me of a lyric I wrote last year when I got laid off from the teaching gig at the career college. Sung to the tune of Unforgettable, it starts out like this:

Unemployable
That's what we are
Unemployable
It seems bizarre
Like the stench of fear that clings to me

My age has done bad things to me

Never before has someone been more…

I'm sure you can guess the rest. Sorry, I'm an artist, not a songwriter.

The cat stretches across my lap, purring. Now he is attacking my hands. He hates it when I type. Every word I type represents attention that is not directed where it should be—at him. Time out while he exits with a disgusted look tossed back over his tail. My most honest critic.

This week I'm using the shotgun technique I've ridiculed my former students for using when they grudgingly wrote their essays. You know what I mean, where, when you don't know what to do, you try to do a little of everything, hoping by some miracle something will stick? Like, maybe the teacher won't notice that your paper has no point?

Since last Wednesday, I have attended a two-hour seminar on market research for small business owners, I've put an ad on Craigslist for dissertation coaching, I've written a blog post aimed at small business owners and posted it to one of those wretched social networking sites, I've formatted the first ever e-book compiled from my Hellish Handbasket dissertation posts and sent it to friends to review, I've updated two websites (not very professionally, but whatever), and I've drafted a survey for a non-profit organization as part of my volunteer effort (see Universe, I do think of something besides myself, sometimes!). Let's see, did I leave anything out? Besides fighting off ants, vacuuming the carpets... I guess that about covers it.

And, oh yeah, applying for any business adjunct faculty position in the city of Portland. Those are the hedges, just in case my bets don't pan out. My central bet is that I can hold out for the entrepreneurial miracle I'm positive is just over the horizon. But just in case, because I don't want to be a stupid person, I'm applying for jobs. I'm starting with teaching gigs. Then I'll move onto...I don't know, administration, I guess, since it was Administrative Professionals Day today. Why not: At least admins get love once a year. Then after that... hmmm. Not sure. Retail? School bus driver?

It won't come to that, I'm pretty sure. But no one can predict the future. Isn't it awesome, though, that I don't have $50,000 in student loan debt hanging over my head? I can afford to live under a bridge. If I had a mountain of debt to pay off, I'd have to kill myself. Hey, maybe there is a god.

The chronic malcontent cavorts on Easter Sunday

When the sun shines, people in Portland come out of their burrows and cavort. On Easter Sunday, they cavort in fancy clothes. I just got back from a trot (my version of cavorting) in Mt. Tabor Park and saw numerous women (and a couple of men) attempting to navigate steep dirt trails in platform shoes and long skirts.

I don't know what it is about sunshine, but whatever it is, it was magnified today by Easter Sunday. Dueling drum circles of pot-smoking druids at the summit; teenagers in saggy pants standing around on restroom roofs like goats, clutching skateboards; women wrapped in flowered shawls and proudly sporting competing Easter bonnets; gleaming newly washed cars cruising for parking spots along the edges of the park's winding roads; family picnics, complete with hibachis and mouth watering odors; and a few runners, ears plugged with music, weaving in and out of the crowds. Sunday + sunshine + Easter = pandemonium at the park.

The reservoir that the young hoodlum urinated next to last week still slowly drains. It takes a while to drain 38 million gallons of water. It's so silly: A few ounces of pee in or near 38 million gallons of water won't cause any problems for anyone. Hell, we don't complain about bird crap. Portland has excellent drinking water. Too bad these 100-year-old reservoirs will soon be retired in favor of covered storage. I am sad to contemplate what will they will be used for next. Skate parks, probably. Shooting ranges. Miniature golf.

This maniacal Easter madness perplexes me. I don't consider myself a Christian, maybe that's why. I believe my family was marginally Presbyterian. However, we weren't devout; we weren't even interested: My mother liked to sing in the choir. She dragged us, her four adamantly unwilling children, to the big gray church and stashed us in Sunday school to get rid of us while she sang in the sanctuary (four screaming kids, I can imagine, relief at last!). In Sunday school, from well-meaning young white women in cotton dresses and flesh-toned pantyhose, I heard blood-curdling tales that convinced me Christianity is a cruel religion. You mean they pounded nails into that poor guy's hands and feet and hung him up to die? What kind of a society does that? These stories certainly left an impression on this six-year-old. I found no solace in the church of my mother.

I'm not ranting about religion, Christian or otherwise. That's a useless endeavor, even if I could figure out what I was upset about (too many people in my park!). If there is a god, I choose to believe he/she/it gave us all free will. I prefer to exercise mine by avoiding all the pointless ritual and arbitrary rigor that organized religion demands of its followers. Just give me universal healthcare, education, and adequate nutrition, cradle to grave, and I'm happy. And some sunshine doesn't hurt, either.

The chronic malcontent goes undercover

Yesterday I left the Love Shack at 4:00 p.m., intending to catch a bus to downtown Portland. Of course, as usual, I failed to check the bus schedule, so I missed a bus and had to wait. The weather was gray, but mild, mid-60s. I sat on a wide green bus bench, watching cars go by, admiring my odd little village-like neighborhood, a crossroads throwback to an earlier time. (The neighborhood, I mean, not me.) My umbrella was stowed in my knapsack, for the rain that was on the way. And I carried my old but reliable digital camera, because, in this era of social media, what's the use of going on an adventure if you don't document the experience so you can share it with others? I mean, just experiencing something doesn't count anymore. Experience hasn't truly happened until you've shared it. You probably already knew that. All you social media experts, with your greedy little Facebooks.

I rode the bus downtown, holding my camera to the window, clicking the shutter every few seconds, documenting. Not surprisingly, a great many of them turned out to be blurry. Because that is what happens when you take pictures from a moving bus. Oh well. I experienced a bus ride, and I've got the pictures to prove it.

Just past the Willamette River, the bus slowed for its first stop at Third Avenue. I got off and started walking north along Third toward Burnside, cutting over to Second, and then to First, and then to Naito Parkway. I felt pretty good, striding confidently along in my tight-but-not-quite-so-tight Levis 501 blue jeans, my beat up black suede Merrell clogs, and my well-worn olive green denim shirt (sans collar, cut off last summer when I decided to adopt a Nehru collar look). My destination? The Mercy Corps Northwest building on Naito Parkway (formerly Waterfront Drive), just south of the Burnside Bridge. I was scheduled to attend a small business workshop, one of a series presented by MercyCorpsNW for a nominal fee of $25.

I was early (compulsively early, remember?), so I walked around the blocks just to the south and west, looking at the architecture and the people. The world-famous Saturday Market takes place every weekend in this location. The Skidmore Fountain graces an open brick plaza, which was dotted here and there with shopping carts and sleeping bags. I started to feel hungry. Among the old-fashioned glass-paned doors was a modern swinging door leading to a charmingly dark coffee house called Floyd's, open until 7:00 pm. I rarely eat out, especially not on the spur of the moment, but I knew if I didn't eat something, I'd be starving by the end of the workshop. I ordered a small coffee and something cheap called a breakfast burrito, which came wrapped in red and white gingham paper. When I peeled the paper back from the contents, the paper stuck to the warm and gummy flour tortilla. That didn't stop me from enjoying my snack, even though sometimes I was pretty sure I was eating paper along with the food.

To celebrate my intrepidness, I connected my so-called smart phone to the cafe's wi-fi and proceeded to check my email for the first time ever on my phone. Yes, I know that look on your face. I don't need your pity. Honestly, if you read this blog, you know that I don't currently have a data plan, and besides, I prefer to be left alone. I just wanted to see if I could figure out how to do it. I figured it out. There was nothing interesting in my email that I hadn't seen before I left home, so I shut it off. Objective accomplished. The phone went back to being what it usually is: a very expensive and inconvenient time-keeping device.

I arrived ten minutes early to the workshop. The training room was carved of concrete, with a high-techy ceiling of pipes and struts way overhead and a big projector screen high up on the west wall. Big windows faced east toward the River and north toward the Burnside Bridge, letting in the last of the grimy daylight. The center of the room was occupied by several large white formica tables, all shoved together in an island, around which were placed about 30 chairs. A young woman wearing the shortest and tightest stretchy black mini-skirt I've seen since the 1970s asked me my name and checked me off a list. Was this our trainer? People were already there, staking out all the best seats. I chose one closer to the front than I would have liked and sat down. An uncomfortable silence ensued, during which I imagined myself saying something like, “Isn't it strange to be sitting here without saying anything? Does anyone want to talk? Let's say something.” Everyone (except me) was busy checking their phones, probably reading emails.

“Welcome, everyone,” said the mini-skirted girl at 6:00 p.m., “to the introduction to demographic and industry research tools seminar. I'm Alice. Please introduce yourselves and tell us what your business is.”

Luckily for me, she started to her left, so I had time to ponder how I would introduce myself. Should I say I'm a marketing researcher? Would she feel like I was competing? Would she feel threatened? Would I find out I know nothing and make a total fool of myself?

The second woman in the lineup said, “I used to be a professional market researcher.” She sounded confident and a little patronizing. “Now I'm a wedding planner.” As we went around the table, I drew a picture in my journal, one of my typical goofy characters, wearing a t-shirt saying Who am I Today? Off to the side I wrote, Who cares? 

Many of the attendees had established businesses. A few were in the startup phase. When my turn came, I took a breath and made my decision. I said, “I'm Carol, and I'm in the process of reinventing myself after a job layoff. Today I think I'm a dissertation coach, but that could change tomorrow.”

From that moment, I was undercover, posing as a dissertation coach to scope out MercyCorpsNW's market research tools class. My goal was to see if I could pick up some tips on how to do a class of my own, but better. Alice stood at the lectern and launched her PowerPoint, saying, “I really want this to be an interactive workshop.” She then proceeded to talk nonstop, taking questions only when the slide on the screen proffered Questions? She spent a long time talking about types of research. I could feel my eyes glazing over. I was so thankful I'd had that coffee. Then we learned about Oregon Prospector, SizeUp, and ReferenceUSA, all in the context of a case study she had designed herself to illustrate the use of these reference tools. I continued to draw in my journal, trying to stay alert to the small things that would make my market research class better than hers.

I wanted to look around to see if anyone else was nodding off. I leaned down occasionally to wake up my phone to check the time. At 8:00 p.m., the ostensible ending time, Alice was still going strong. Finally at 8:30 her voice dragged to a halt. “It's getting late, people,” she said, looking somewhat dazed. I packed up my stuff and hightailed it out into the rain, intent on catching a bus home. The bus stop was blocks away. I walked fast, waving my umbrella as a defensive weapon rather than a rain deterrent, just in case any of skateboarding, weed-smoking homeless kids tried to accost me. Of course, everyone ignored me. I'm invisible.

The bus took forever to arrive, standing room only. As I moved back with the crowd, a teenager with long braided blonde hair seated near the back door looked at me and said something I had never had anyone say to me on a bus before: “Would you like to sit?” She stood up, wrapped her arm around a pole, and read her Kindle. I sat, feeling old and confused. To my left was a perky young woman holding a paper-wrapped bouquet of pink-edged white roses. As the bus cleared out, the woman with the roses held out the bouquet to the teenager. “I work at a flower shop,” she said. “Would you like to have these roses?”

Now the seat to my right was open, so the teenager sat down and carried on a conversation with the flower shop lady, back and forth, as I sat bemusedly between them. They talked about flowers and the flower shop. Suddenly the flower shop woman looked at me and asked, “What is your favorite flower?”

Taken aback, I told the truth. “Yellow roses.” She beamed at me. People were getting off the bus at Cesar Chavez Boulevard (formerly known as 39th). She joined the line at the back door, waving back at the teenager. And at me, I suppose. The teenager got off soon thereafter. By now the bus was less than half full. I had another 20 blocks to go before I could slink into the Love Shack and try to make sense of my adventure. What did I learn? People who ride the bus at night are fascinating and wonderful. And I don't like market research as much as I like marketing research, if you know what I mean.

Isn't a lovely day? Too bad I can't let myself enjoy it.

It's spring for another day in Portland, and then we are back to the norm (rain). Rain is our year-round season. The only thing that varies is the temperature and how much wind there might be. We have jokes in Oregon about the rain: Oregonians don't tan; they rust. It's close to the truth. Besides some rust, I have a fine layer of moss on my formerly black Ford Focus. I'm sure if I sat outside for a week, I too would be coated with a patina of green fuzz.

With my windows open, I can hear the season unfolding. Loudly. The intermittent buses might as well be driving through my living room; their roaring drowns out my music, my television, the birds twittering, the cat yowling. On top of that, something new: The modern buses are equipped with an external loudspeaker. From it, a mechanical female voice echoes all day and late into the night: The bus is turning. The bus is turning. I assume this announcement is to warn pedestrians, cyclists, and stray dogs that the driver is blindly turning left, so if you are in the crosswalk, you'd better scoot. Bus drivers are known for running down peds in crosswalks here, so this loud proclamation is probably a good thing. But I think it is influencing my dreams. Run! The bus is turning! 

My sister has been pestering me for a year to turn the Hellish Handbasket blog into an ebook. Now that the dissertation adventure is over, it seems like it might be time. Plus, I don't have any work coming in, my marketing efforts have ground to a standstill, and no potential employers are leaping to snap me up, so what else is there to do? When all else fails, write a book. When I was twelve, that was what I did to feel better. I wrote stories in pencil on notebook paper and bound the pages with yarn. Fun! But I didn't have to earn a living when I was twelve. Just so you know, this ebook will not be bound with yarn or anything else. E means electronic, but hopefully not invisible. Stay tuned.

Also, while I watch for the universe to nudge me in some direction, it's a good time to vacuum my rugs, dust my shelves, and clear the clutter. There's really never a wrong time to clean, is there? I could vacuum daily and never eliminate the dust, detritus, and cat hair. If you have allergy problems, visiting the Love Shack should not be on your bucket list.

Before I close this post, I should update you on the ant situation. I had a chat with my little brother (a grown man of 50-something), who owns a house with occasional ant challenges. When I told him I often find ants on the back of my neck, he was appalled. You know that funny moment where you suddenly realize that the so-called normal life you take for granted is actually completely unacceptable to a so-called normal person? I had one of those moments. All it takes is an outside perspective to shift one from “Sure, I taped my students' mouths shut with duct tape. Can't think why I didn't do it sooner.” to “What, you mean that was wrong? Ohhhhhhh, yeahhh, I guess I see that now.”

So, maybe I've been too lenient on these effing ants, is what I'm saying. I'd already attempted to take the offensive. However, the ant poison I made myself from Borax and honey did not do the trick. Maybe it was the container, maybe it was the concoction, I don't know. Last week, I caved and bought real ant traps at the grocery store. I deployed these fancy store-bought ant traps in various kitchen places and waited to see what would happen. I monitored them closely, hour by hour. At first, I saw nothing, not even a few curious scouts. Then one night last week, I entered the kitchen to refill my water bottle before retiring for the night, and I saw a swarm of ants mobbing one of the ant traps.

Was I gleeful? Actually... not so much. I should have been jumping up and down in a victory dance. But I wasn't. Instead, I felt guilt and sadness. What a reprehensible thing to do, tricking ants into thinking they'd found a viable food source for the queens and babies back in the nest. Instead, they will die a horrible death. And it's all my fault. I don't want to kill anything, not even ants. I feel terrible. But I am leaving the ant traps where they are. I can live with my guilt. But I'm done living with ants.

No one is immune to the plague of being human

My favorite days are days when I don't have to go anywhere, and no one calls me. (I'm not saying those are good days, just that they're my favorite days.) Today was not one of those days. Today I drove to The Couv (which is short for Vancouver, Washington—look it up if you don't believe me) to attend an event hosted by the Portland/Vancouver SBA and SCORE. That's Small Business Administration and Service Corps of Retired Executives, for those of you who aren't in the know about the business of business. The event was held at a pub. It was a dingy brick building, formerly a factory, maybe, and dark, dirty, and wallpapered with bad art, so I guess it qualifies as a pub.

I drove over the I-5 Bridge that crosses the mighty Columbia. (This is the bridge that needs replacing yesterday, but no one can agree on what to build in its place.) The I-5 Bridge is old, narrow, and funky, and will probably fall down in the impending earthquake. (When I cross bridges that I know could collapse I mentally review my action plan for exiting my car while underwater. Basically, my plan is the same as my retirement plan: Die.) Anyway, I crossed the bridge, which is a requisite phase in any journey of self-discovery, and despite road construction, one-way streets, and lack of signage, found my way to the so-called pub.

I was early, of course, because I'm chronically early to everything. It's a family flaw. I attempted to verify that indeed there was an event there at 1:30. The waitperson looked at me skeptically and said, “A..B...?” I said hopefully, “SBA?” She said, “Right, right.... I heard something about that...” I put on my marketing hat, metaphorically speaking, and wondered if there might be a better way to greet a customer. Like, “Sure! That event starts at 1:30, and we have a table set up for you right over here! Let me show you the way!”

I ordered an iced tea and sat by myself where I could watch the door. Over the next 20 minutes, other people came in, ordered drinks, and sat by themselves. Were they here for the event? I imagined walking over to them and introducing myself. Hi, I'm Carol, are you here for the SBA thing? I remained seated, watching. Pretty soon two young women—one dark-haired, one blonde—arrived carrying clipboards and stacks of handouts and SBA magazines. They talked with the waitperson and in a few minutes, lo! a table (a glass-covered door set on a folding table) was prepared for the group in the middle of the large, cavernous room next door. The room was lined with dark wooden booths, occupied by diners, who ate quickly and left when one of the SCORE mentors began talking. (More on him later.) Tall factory-style windows let in grimy sunshine; everyone was a silhouette to me, as I sat facing the windows. Outside, a huge yellow roadgrater tore up the street, grinding back and forth for the next hour. The wood-slatted floor gently shook.

The dark-haired woman introduced herself and talked about the mission of the SBA. We went around the table introducing ourselves. A variety of businesses were incubating: a maternity boutique proprietor, a computer wizard, an office furniture mogul, a real estate broker, and a purveyor of prepared foods for single moms. Plus me, marketing research geek. There were exactly as many SCORE and SBA representatives as there were potential clients. Six of each, to be precise. After introductions, the SBA leader told us to mingle and talk with the SCORE reps.

I scooted over one chair and talked with the loud SCORE guy, whose name was Bill. I didn't want to; I could predict what I was going to get from him: a lot of palaver. But it would have been rude to get up and leave him for the tall, slender, blue-shirted mentor further down the table. Besides, he had identified himself as a marketing expert. There's always more to learn. Said the recently minted Ph.D.

Bill was a husky, older man with pale gray bushy hair and unkempt mustache. I told him I was starting a marketing research business. (I did not tell him I have a Ph.D. in marketing.) He immediately began lecturing.

“Here's what you gotta do,” Bill said. “You gotta specialize.” I took a breath to respond, but he ran me down. While I waited for him to pause, I noticed his bifocals were dirty. He was five weeks past heart bypass surgery, so I forgave him his dirty eyeglasses. However, while he talked, he continuously scratched his forearm, leaving a litter of dead skin on the table top.

As he talked and scratched, I couldn't help it, I started laughing. Luckily, every other thing he said was something he thought was hilarious, so my laughter just spurred him to keep talking. And scratching. Then to my horror, to punctuate a punch line, he took the hand he'd been scratching with and used it to tap me on the shoulder. Ew, ew, ew, his flaky dead skin! On my shirt! If I were murdered later, he would have a hard time explaining the presence of his skin cells on my shoulder. Assuming he's in the FBI's database, of course. Ew! What a time to be reminded that anytime I am in a crowd, I am immersed in a putrid cloud of other people's dead skin, spittle, and phlegm!

I'm not a germaphobe, really. There's a bigger problem illustrated by this interaction. Unfortunately for me, Big Bill is the kind of man I seem to attract. Like the megalomaniac multi-level marketing guy I blogged about last year. Big, blustery, loud, talkative, egocentric blowhards intoxicated with the sounds of their own verbiage. I believe they mistake me for a weak, easily controlled, unresistant patsy, simply because I am quiet. When I don't respond with praise and awe, they don't ask questions to find out what I am thinking. They just keep spouting their verbiage, no doubt thinking to themselves, She's a dimwit, but maybe I can get her to sign up for this multi-level marketing scheme! The possibility that I am a discerning introvert with a professional interest in the idiosyncratic behavior of other people apparently does not cross their tiny one-track minds. And they rarely give me a chance to get a word in edgewise; their conversation is locked up tighter than a frog's sphincter.

Bill gave me his card. If the past is any indication of the future, then I'll find myself being mentored by Bill, almost by magic, as if I had no hand in the outcome. Luckily, if you follow the stock market at all, you know that past performance is never a guarantee of future results. I won't call Bill. I will find another mentor, if I need someone, a person who knows how to listen. And possibly who doesn't have psoriasis, although that's not really a deal-breaker. (Gosh, when I think of all the slivers of cuticle skin I have left in my wake, I shudder with disgust and shame. Dermatillomaniac, that's me.) No one is immune to the plague of being human. Not me, not you, not even SCORE mentors. Sad news: It's 100% fatal. Good news: We have today. It may not have been my favorite day, but I was fully present for it. That's a victory, for me.

Overlapping realities in the grocery store customer service line

Today I ate my last four eggs for breakfast, which triggers an automatic foray to the store. (Yes, I eat four eggs for breakfast every day, and no, I don't worry about cholesterol.) Before beginning my foraging foray, I stood in line for 20 minutes to return a plumbing repair item that I didn't need. (Yes, I fixed the leak under my bathroom sink all by myself.) It was a long queue, maybe a dozen people, and the line got longer as I stood there. A woman came to stand behind me, accompanied by a wizened older woman with gray hair and black glasses. I recognized her as the store employee who usually greets and good-byes at the entrance. Have a nice day. The employee stood with the customer. I listened to their conversation, and formed an image in my mind of the woman behind me, based on her voice and use of language.

She was Latina, that quickly became clear. The store employee asked her if she had some ID, and the woman replied, no, only a passaport. It was a friendly exchange, repeated several times, with no animosity on either side. No ID? No driver's license? No, only a passaport. Finally, the existence of the passport appeared to be established to their satisfaction. A comfortable pause followed. Other people arrived. I didn't look directly at anyone. Oddly, the store employee didn't leave, as I would have predicted. She stood off to the side and continued to talk to the woman.

“When are you due?”

“Next month, May 11,” the woman replied. Ah. Pregnant.

“Do you know what you are having?” asked the store employee. Uh, a baby? Steak and eggs? What? Is that any of her business?

“Issa girl,” came the reply. “I'm going to name her Genesis.”

“Genesis?”

“Yeah, you know, like from the Bible?”

The line moved at a glacial pace toward the counter. I admired the pattern of rafters overhead, holding up the ceiling.

“Where are you from?” the store employee asked chummily.

“Mexico.” I could have guessed that one. “Since 1990.” Her English was heavily accented, but her grammar was good.

“Have you been in Portland long?” asked the store employee. Why is she was still hanging around? Was this pregnant Latina woman on a store terrorist watch list or something?

“No, I came from San Diego. My family is here,” the woman said. “I came here to escape a violent domestic situation.”

“A what?”

“A violent domestic situation.”

“You can't change them,” the employee remarked knowingly. Hmmm. A lot of backstory, unsaid. I stifled my curiosity and remained facing forward. The line inched closer. The dialogue continued to spool out behind me. I pulled out my receipt and got ready for my turn at the counter.

“Where are you from?” The Latina woman asked the employee. Why was she keeping the conversation going? I imagined everyone in line was listening, although no one else participated. A baby wept.

“Originally I'm from Utah,” replied the employee. “Then I went to California, then Seattle, and then I ended up here. I hope you like rain.”

“Yeah. Do you have children?”

I got distracted by a father who was managing three little girls over in the furniture section. Two were in a complicated stroller contraption. One child sat in a shopping cart, kicking her heels. All but the baby were arguing loudly, including Dad, and it looked like the baby was about to join in at any second. My mind began the self-checkout process. I wondered, am I a member of the childless minority? (As a member of a minority, do I get any special rights? Like a special right to peace and quiet, maybe?)

“Next in line!” My turn. The slice of life was over. I never did turn around to see what the pregnant woman from Mexico looked like. Even in a grocery store, people deserve their privacy, even if they choose to violate it themselves.