A manly man shade of pink

The first thing Punkin said when I told her that I painted my bedroom walls pink was "that's MY favorite color!" Well, of course, I was thinking of her all day long when I laid down that paint. I thought, too, of all the dresses and toys and thingamajigs that she has that are pink, or a shade of pink, or variations of purple and pink, and know that somehow she tapped in hard in the decision making for that color. Five hundred miles was a long ways to send a psychic message to her Papa but the connection has been laid down fairly well over the last few weeks. It must be all those daily phone calls she sends my way that influenced my paint selection.

It wasn't really the color choice I had planned on making. I had a wide variety of paint swatches in hand to choose from. I had been leaning on cantalope, or a shade of peach, maybe even something on the other side of the spectrum, in a lighter shade of blue. But the blue, while nice from the old man in the sea perspective, made the room seem too much like a baby boy's room, and with the coming of winter and the possibility of another long season of cold ahead of me here in this house, I didn't want to lay down something that would add an extra layer of chill to that room.

Yeah, I didn't want cool, although that color would be nice on those steaming hot summer nights when the temperatures hit the low nineties. No, warm was the direction where that color had to go. But in the end it could have been anything considering the paint that was on the walls before I started. I was talking to my boy tonight and he was in agreement that he and his brother were only days away from notifying their congressman about that paint before they had to take off to Boise. It was something that bordered on asthetic cruelty, it was that bad. But not bad in a horrible color sense, but bad in that the paint was old and worn and needed freshening up. It had not been touched upon since we bought the house eleven years ago. Someone along the line decided to paint it a shade of vanilla, but laid that light yellow paint over an old school variation of avocado green. Somehow that yellowish tinge just couldn't keep that shade of green down. It was awful, made even moreso while I laid down fresh paint on top of it.

Nothing like a fresh coat of paint to give a room promise. See, all you hyper masculine men out there must be wondering what the hell a manly man like me would be doing painting his room pink. Well, if you really feel you have a need to know just know that the name of the shade is Pink Grandeur. Doesn't that sound pretty swell already? And it isn't a cotton candy pink, or 50's pink, or even Pink Cadillac or Pink Elephant, but a shade of pink that has a bit of peach in it. Think what you'd get if you mixed your "flesh" and "pink" Crayola Crayons together and that's kinda where it's going, but with a hit of orange in it, too, for warmth. But what really makes that color sing, though, are these two old fifties orange lampshades that I picked up a garage sale in Grants Pass years ago. When those lights are lit that shade of Pink Grandeur turns downright wicked.

Okay, well, not really wicked, but you get the idea. So, think warm. Think of the color of your sweetheart's cheeks after a hard walk. Think the opposite of Pacific Northwest winters, think waking up to a room that already has a blush of sunshine in it. Not painted some cool shade of blue, cool like the deep waters of the Sound, but something with a touch of sunrise in it, something with a hint of the coming of the spring. Not a bad thing to see on your walls on a frosty morning come December. So take that, all you hairy chested types that might snicker at my choice. Besides, it's Punkin's favorite color. Anybody want to give me a hard time about that?

Salud!

Nobody's Fool

John Bonham he isn't, but he sure knows how to make some noise.

These past couple months I've woken up pretty much every morning to the same sound from the same drummer, one that relentlessly beat an anxious tattoo down in the panic zone by my navel. It has been a subtle but consistent drumbeat, not insistent in the way that nature calls, but one that drags me out of bed with a voice that goes beyond prepping my mind for work and other responsibilities: it is one filled with alarm. Each morning brings on that same feeling of dread, of "general quarters", one that propells my body to not only to let in the cat and turn on the coffee water but to get me in the mindset to gird my armor and stand by to repell all boarders.

But I must say that this morning was a bit different, that that mad beating was silent, or at least stilled for the moment. I woke up after a good nights sleep, knowing that the cat was still out and that lights were still burning. I went down, secured the lights and opened both front and back doors to let the cat choose his avenue of approach. Instead of lighting kitchen fires and firing up the internet I took a drive, a truncated version of the Stations of the Cross, hoping once again to beat the odds that have been rocking my world this summer and finally come across the walking Professora. Afterwards I came home to this place, to a pot of hot coffee and a snoozing cat. All well and good. I have miles to go before I sleep.

But back to that sleeping drummer. Somehow I have come to place that is a few steps past the crossroads, to a space on the game board that allowed me to pass go and leave behind the filthy lucre of my job. Somewhere along the line I grew hair where hair was lacking and today I let that freak flag fly. Today I will let those that have helped guide me assist me in telling the powers that be that I am not their lackey, their whipping boy, their punk, any longer. Today is the day that I will proclaim that I am nobody's fool. That proclamation will allow me to not only work hard and walk tall but go forth in the world with a new sort of power, a renewed sense of wisdom, one that says to the frighteners that you can't take away my birthday and damn it, know that you never will.

Yesterday was but another day but still, it was one of those kinds of days that said to me that life is full and remarkable and filled with a sort of passion that only comes when you show the world that you have a zest for living. Yesterday I found myself messing about in a tide pool with friends and I came away from that experience knowing that life is just that, one massive tidal zone, one constantly shifting between water and sand, light and dark, misstep and fortune. It made many things clear to me, mainly that time marches on, that life as we lived it was just that, a time in the past, and that we have many things to do before we settle down into the comfort of that grand sleep that awaits us at the end of life.

I woke up this morning to the sound of a symphony, a jazz quartet, a sock hop garage band playing down in my belly. I woke up and relieved the tired drummer of his anxious instrument, had him put up his drum for awhile. I am tired of hearing the incessant tattoo of that fearful drumbeat. There will be plenty of other opportunties for general quarters in this life but for now it's time rebuild and repair and sooth the tired muscles around my very ragged heart. Right now I wish more than anything just to hear what I want to hear, sweetness, pleasantness, the sound of my children's laughter, not ugly sounds that the enemy camp wishes me to hear through it's psy-ops programming. Today I snub my nose at Goliath and tuck away my sling into my belt, for today is the day that I begin my walk away from the madness and let my life become my own again.

Just know that from this day forward I would rather be ragged and hungry than to live with pockets full of jingle and a belly full of fear.

Salud!

An arts festival of my own

Once again a Labor Day weekend comes and while it hasn't gone anywhere yet I realize that I'm not going anywhere either. Once again work dominates my "holiday" weekend: I have a bedroom that needs painting, which I shouldn't feel bad about since I've been living in this house over eleven years and haven't painted it yet. I know that I have a lot of loose ends that need to be wrapped up in order to hit the BIG project next week, and that's to strip out the bathroom. I see plenty of possible issues coming out of that so I don't want to say that it's "just a painting project". The sink needs replacing, the coving needs to be replaced with a hemlock trim and maybe, just maybe, I might go whole hog and replace that awful linoleum with a nice tile job on the floor.

I may be off but my work ethic has been strong and has pretty much followed the same pattern every day: up by eight, pour a pot of coffee into my system and then check out the things to do list for the day. I tend to goof a bit here and there, run errands and second hand but generally I work straight until six. That's when the whistle blows and the "internal boss" allows for a cooking, a bit of wine and when, the kitchen is all wrapped up and secure, for a movie, maybe two.

Yeah, all work and no play makes Jack, or at least Accumulate Man, a dull boy, so this weekend I decided to make it a point to knock off early and start supper at five. Spin some vinyl, get in a couple or three movies a day. I may not be cruising some nifty art exhibits but I will be painting rooms in the inside of my house. I might not be able to grab of bite off of some Seattle's tastier food stalls, but yesterday I made a mighty fine vegetable and polish sausage frittata for lunch and mighty grand pasta bake for supper. We have to look at these things as, well, part and parcel of the whole "labor" day experience.

The Kitsap Stree Movie Festival began yesterday, too, with a "screening" of the Russian epic 1612. Followed up that bit of joy with yet another "epic", Hellboy II The Golden Army. Nice to finally see the big guy again, as the local video house kept coming up with nada for me as far as a rental was concerned. Sometimes you just have to go out and buy these things. Yeah, as far as buying films, wow, thank goodness I'm still into VHS. What a haul lately. Lots of still sealed films, like Yojimbo and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Ryan's Daughter. Found a nine volume Nostalgia Merchant set of Laurel and Hardy shorts, a clean copy of The Seven Samurai amongst others. In recent days some thirty odd films have come into the house, all ready to be viewed.

But a good arts festival includes music, too. That part I do miss the most about Bumbershoot. I have to admit that it was my chief musical influence there for awhile, as it introduced many new bands and acts into my life that I wouldn't have able to catch otherwise. But since I had my duties to attend to here I pumped a bit of cash into vinyl instead and found some tasty treats to sit and listen to, for instance, some still in their wrapper recordings of Charlie Poole and North Carolina Ramblers. In the same stack I found, oh, let's see, some Doc and Merle Watson, a nice old timey Cajun fiddle piece, some Flatt and Scruggs with Bill Monroe, some clean eighties stuff, a bit of soul, a bit of "at the hop" oldies and ton of Celtic.

Sure, I may not be listening to the cutting edge of current music or be grooving on the best of World Beat or all that, but I won't have to deal with stinky neo-hippy types sitting down next me or have wild street irchins dipping their chopsticks into my brown rice with peanut sauce. The idea not jostling with the crowds on this wet day or seeing all that trash they generate or having to take the long way home via the ferry late at night is good enough reason for me to be home today. I have junk enough to deal with on my own around here.

So, my own personal arts festival is off to a good start. Today is day two. Looking at the program I can see that I'm schedule to brew up some coffee, go watch The Music Box with Laurel and Hardy, listen to a couple sides of Johnny Horton's least known hits and then, after a solid breakfast, I'm due to get out the primer and a couple brushes and hit that bedroom. If I can't go out and see art today, well, maybe I'll make some of my own. I'll pretend my room is a big canvas and go from there. It may not be a Van Gogh, but I think that Van Gogh might find it to be a mighty fine place to paint!

Salud!

Bummer to missing Sheryl Crow, but not bumming over needing a real bumbershoot this weekend: here's this years Bumbershoot program:
http://www.bumbershoot.org/

"Comin' around"

"Early this mornin' I was washin' my face
Thinkin' 'bout goin' to town
Sick and tired of hangin' around this place
Waitin' on the blues to track me down
Bless my soul maybe I'm comin' around

Been lyin' low but maybe I'm comin' around
I've been runnin' nearly all of my life
Far and as fast as I can
It may sound funny but I'm thinkin' this might
Be about right where I came in

Well I don't know maybe I'm comin' around
Got a ways to go but maybe I'm comin' around
Finally layin' my burden down
One fine day
I'll be free
'Til it comes
I'll go on

My heart's a little ragged but it's all that I got
So I'm gonna give it a try
Look out world I'm comin' ready or not
I don't wanna let you pass me by
Here I go maybe I'm comin' around
I'm a little bit slow, maybe I'm comin' around

Finally layin' my burden down
Maybe I'm comin' around
Maybe I'm comin' around
Maybe I'm comin' around
Maybe I'm comin' around"

Steve Earle
The Revolution Starts Now
Artemis, 2004

Smudged finger prints

I have been working hard on this old house of mine, hopefully doing all the right things so that at some point the house will attract the right folks at the right time with the right amount of cash to blow. When these projects started back in July I thought, okay, cool, the house is sweet and quaint and all that, that in itself should attract buyers. But the more projects I have managed to knock out the more I found left to do. Today was one of those days. Once I moved all of The Boy's stuff out of his room and into the staging area next door I saw that the room was a bit tawdry, a tad more than worn. So yesterday I got out the brushes and the paint cans and got to work. Just finished up this afternoon. Sunshiney yellow with white trim. When it dries I'll shift around a few pieces of furniture just to give it that staged, lived in look.

The only thing that gave me pause was the door. I was working my way around the room and finally had everything done but the doorway leading out of the room. The frame was easy to knock out, then I started in on the door itself. That's when I saw them, the hand prints down below the doorknob. Somehow in my frenzy to clean I missed them, that or I ignored them, but there they were, in stark relief to the bright, white paint all around them. I looked at the positions and the size of the prints and knew them to be the "pawprints" of my youngest and my girl, Punkin, too. Nobody else three years ago would have been that far down, that close to the floor.

So, in order to move the project along I just painted over them. I didn't wipe them away like a good prep artist should, but instead covered them up in order to preserve them. Nobody else will ever know that they are there, no one will ever be able to discover their presence. But when I look at that door, at that place below the door knob, I will know that my children were here. This was their house, too. This was a family place.

Walking out of that freshly painted room I can say that a family lived here. Mine.

Salud!

Coffee, the NY Times and happiness

There are various reasons why some of us get up first thing in the morning and hit the news. For some it's to check on their stock portfolios, for others it's to connect with the various political or social or economic climates of our times. For me it's just to know which way the wind blows and to get a taste of good writing from the outset.

My life has been busy lately, in such a way that I haven't had time for a book in weeks. I could make time, I suppose, the way I make time for movies or coffee in the morning, but lately I tend to find non-fiction pieces that I can dive in and out of quickly, magazines with kicky articles I can knock off in a few minutes, cookbooks with colorful pages and well written narration. Reading, or rather, skimming through five papers in the morning is just another one of those kinds of "fast catch" exercises that I award myself, or rather, task myself with, if anything just to grease the skids and keep up with the world. I wrote a friend recently and told her that I couldn't imagine hanging out with someone who didn't go through the news on a daily basis. Not just for the sake of being in the know, but to also be aware of world at large, to see that there is really nothing new in the world, just more of the same thing served up differently.

Then there is the joy of reading pieces of writing that are absolutely delicious, that speak to me in ways that I feel are somewhat supernatural. I read the blog post below and felt like the writer was talking to me personally. Of course I know he wasn't, but this morning he was speaking about universal truths, about tough times, about the chasing down of happiness, about the fleeting goodness of feeling happy, and brother, I could relate to that. I think down the road I will remember this summer in the same way. Right now it's about alienation and shifting things and painting and very hot days. About uncovering little pieces of stray nostalgia, of plumbing the depths of my soul. Later on I may laugh, or marvel at the insight that I gathered. Right now, though, it's all pretty rough and that's okay. Nobody has come around to take away my birthday and so the hard work continues.

But happiness. Wow. I've chased that stuff down all my life it seems, and now, according to the article posted below, all I was doing was living life to the fullest. The piece below is a bit to long to tattoo above my heart, but I will print it out someday and stick it in my wallet. Like Kipling's "If", this piece speaks to me and I hope it registers with you, too:



August 2, 2009, 9:05 pm — Updated: 8:56 am -->
Averted Vision
By Tim Kreider
In 1996 I rode the circus train to Mexico City where I lived for a month, pretending to be someone’s husband. (Don’t even ask.) I remember my time there as we remember most of our travels — vivid and thrilling, everything new and strange. My ex-fake-wife Carolyn and I often reminisce nostalgically about our honeymoon there: ordering un balde hielo from room service to cool our Coronas every afternoon, the black-velvet painting of the devil on the toilet that she made me buy, our shared hilarious terror of kidnapping and murder, the giant pork rind I wrangled through customs. Which is funny, since, if I think back honestly, while I was actually there I did not feel “happy.” In fact, as mi esposa did not hesitate to point out to me at the time, I griped incessantly about the noise and stink of the city — the car horns playing shrill, uptempo versions of the theme from “The Godfather” or “La Cucaracha” every second, the noxious mix of diesel fumes and urine, the air so filthy we’d been there a week before I learned we had a view of the mountains.

The fresh heartbreak was, in a sense, like being in a foreign country; everything seemed alien, brilliant and glinting. It was as if I’d been flayed, so that even the air hurt.
I was similarly miserable throughout the happiest summer I ever spent in New York City. I was recovering from an affair that had ended badly, and during my convalescence I was subletting a cool, airy apartment a block from Tompkins Square Park, with a kitchen window that looked out on a community garden. A theater troupe was rehearsing a production of “The Tempest” out there, and I got used to the warped rattling crash of sheet-metal thunder in the evenings. I happened to catch “The Passion of St. Joan of Arc” on cable for the first time late one night, a film I knew nothing about — it was grotesque and beautiful, astonishing. One of the happiest memories of my life is of sitting on top of the little knoll in the park with my friend Ellen, eating a sweet Hawaiian pizza and waiting to see what movie would play on the outdoor screen that was being inflated in front of us. (It turned out to be “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”) Even though this whole time I was preoccupied with thoughts of the woman I’d lost and torturing myself with jealousy and insane fantasies of vengeance, in retrospect it’s obvious now that the main thing I was doing that summer was falling in love.

I wonder, sometimes, whether it is a perversity peculiar to my own mind or just the common lot of humanity to experience happiness mainly in retrospect. I have of course considered the theory that I am an idiot who fails to appreciate anything when he actually has it and only loves what he’s lost. Or perhaps this is all just what Michael Chabon called “the ruinous work of nostalgia, which obliterates the past.” But I think I recall that summer with such clarity and affection for much the same reason that I remember my month in Mexico City so fondly. The fresh heartbreak was, in a sense, like being in a foreign country; everything seemed alien, brilliant and glinting. It was as if I’d been flayed, so that even the air hurt. When you’re that unhappy, any glimmer of beauty or consolation feels like running into an old friend abroad, or seeing mountaintops through smog. Maybe we mistakenly think we want “happiness,” which we tend to picture in very vague, soft-focus terms, when what we really crave is the harder-edged intensity of experience.

We do each have a handful of those moments, the ones we only take out to treasure rarely, like jewels, when we looked up from our lives and realized: “I’m happy.” One of the last times this happened to me, inexplicably, I was driving on Maryland’s unsublime Route 40 with the window down, looking at a peeling Burger King billboard while Van Halen played on the radio. But this kind of intense and present happiness is heartbreakingly ephemeral; as soon as you notice it you dispel it, like blocking yourself from remembering a word by trying too hard to retrieve it. And our attempts to contrive this feeling through any kind of replicable method — with drinking or drugs or sexual seduction, buying new stuff, listening to the same old songs that reliably give us shivers — never quite recapture the spontaneous, profligate joy of the real thing. In other words be advised that Burger King billboards and Van Halen are not a sure-fire combination, any more than are scotch and cigars.

There is something inherently misguided and self-defeating and hopeless about any deliberate campaign to achieve happiness.
I didn’t always enjoy being a cartoonist. During the 12 years of my career, if I can call it that, I bored my friends and colleagues by complaining bitterly about the insulting pay, the lack of recognition, the short half-life of political cartoons as art. And yet, if I’m allowed any final accounting of my days, I may find, to my surprise, that I reckon those Fridays when I woke up without an idea in my head and only started drawing around noon, calling friends at work for emergency humor consultations, doing frantic Google image searches for “Scott McClellan” or “chacmool,” eating whatever crud was in the fridge, laughing out loud at my own jokes, and somehow ended up getting a finished cartoon in by deadline, feeling like an evil genius, to have been among my best.

But during the time I was actually focused on drawing — whipping out a perfect line, spontaneous but precise, or gauging the exact cant of an eyelid to evoke an expression, or immersed in the microscopic universe of cross-hatching — I wasn’t conscious of feeling “happy,” or of feeling anything at all. I was in the closest approximation to happiness that we can consistently achieve by any kind of deliberate effort: the condition of absorption. My senses were so integrated that, on those occasions when I had to re-draw something entirely, I often found that I would spontaneously recall the same measure of music or line of dialog I’d been listening to when I’d drawn it the first time; the memory had become inextricably encoded in the line. It is this state that rock-climbers and pinball players and libertines are all seeking: an absorption in the immediate so intense and complete that the idiot chatter of your brain shuts up for once and you temporarily lose yourself, to your relief.

I suspect there is something inherently misguided and self-defeating and hopeless about any deliberate campaign to achieve happiness. Perhaps the reason we so often experience happiness only in hindsight, and that chasing it is such a fool’s errand, is that happiness isn’t a goal in itself but is only an aftereffect. It’s the consequence of having lived in the way that we’re supposed to — by which I don’t mean ethically correctly so much as just consciously, fully engaged in the business of living. In this respect it resembles averted vision, a phenomena familiar to backyard astronomers whereby, in order to pick out a very faint star, you have to let your gaze drift casually to the space just next to it; if you look directly at it, it vanishes. And it’s also true, come to think of it, that the only stars we ever see are not the “real” stars, those cataclysms taking place in the present, but always only the light of the untouchable past.

Porch work

Every day is a work day around my house. I can't remember the last time, outside of the time when my kids were here in July and we took a day trip into the city, that I took a day off. Feels like weeks of labor under my belt, but I am not complaining as it shows. Every day is new project done and out of the way and that is a good feeling, no doubt about it.

I keep a "things to do" list going in the cottage, hit it first thing in the morning after I get my coffee water going. Check off things that I hit the day before that I might have missed, add few new items, strike others from the list. It would be daunting to try to remember all the tasks to get done if I didn't have this system going every day. Years ago, when I was in the navy, I would carry around a small spiral bound notebook in my pocket. Kept me abreast of the day's duties, somewhat like "quarters" did for the division in the morning. We all need to keep a list handy just to help keep us abreast of the day's activities. My list told me that today had an "about time" item on it. I had to finish the painting the porch railing. The weather was right and the mood for the job was perfect.

Stood outside and knocked out the job as the rest of Port Orchard went downtown to lend a hand to painting the town, well, if not red, at least other nifty shades. I figured to make PO prettier one house at a time, even if that house was mine. Took care of lot's of other things, too. Oiled cabinets, painted the basement door, unloaded a bookcase. Prepped supper. Stuff got done.

While I was on that porch I was reminded of the summer I took off almost seven years ago. Took more than a summer off, spent six months working on the house, building up a business, goofing, searching for work. Landed a job right here in the county, which was a different place altogether different than where we had expected to land at the end of that six months. I learned a valuable lesson that summer, far more valuable than the ones that helped me build a trellis, a shower stall, slap up dry wall and build a porch. I learned that you should always expect the unexpected. Learn to appreciate what you have in front of you, and more, don't bet on the bird in the bush, take the one in the hand anytime. But also to watch that bird, as they can bite.

So, I took on that porch job today and did all but paint the door trim. Wasn't on the list and so it didn't count. But you can bet it will be on the list tomorrow morning. One more thing to brighten up this little house of mine. One more thing that will help to put the ghosts to rest. One more thing that help me get a bit closer to my children.

Check off that porch railing paint assignment. On to other things.

Salud!

Some things I'll miss

I set my paintbrush down for a moment this morning and took in the breeze. There is a soft one off the inlet today, helping to take the edge off the heat. The heat, too, is a bit more gentle today. I feel the need to hydrate just a tad less than I did yesterday at this time.

I stood on the porch and looked around, took in the boats in the marina, the Olympics off in the distance, the clock tower before me. What I love the most about the view is the outrageousness of the angles, the wackiness of the shading as the day progresses. I love the color changes to the water, the way the sun plays with the tides. I look at that view from my porch and know that it will be the singular thing I will take with me whereever I go. It won't matter much if I live in some small town or a big burg. It won't matter if the house is small or if it's a condo or a new place in a subdivision. I will close my eyes and still be able to look across the water and tell you, if you asked me, how that scene looked according to the season or the time of day.

I sat down in the living room afterwards and it hit noon. At first all I could hear was the tinkling of the chimes on the porch, then I heard two toots from the Horluck ferry down at the waterfront as it prepared to leave, then heard the tones from the clock tower start up. The tunes haven't been as varied as they once were, but those old showstoppers, those old Broadway and Tin Pan Alley favorites have become my own special Port Orchard soundtrack, and have been tattooed onto my aural soul for life.

Once that wee concert was finished I took myself outside to finish up my clematis work. It's rambling over the wall of the house now, just like the English Ivy, and has taken to climbing roofs as well. I've stripped both those plants of there adventurous tendrils, and will miss their annual struggle to take over the house. Mostly I will miss that spectacular bit of blooming in the spring, not only of the clematis but of the Oriental Pear and the Italian Plum and the ornamental Cherry. It was always one of my favorite scenes, stepping out of that back door to head to off work and be assailed by the scents and wild colors of blossums all about me. It was like snowfall sometimes, all those petals falling. Grand. And all for the sake of supplying my Estranged One with a bit of privacy.

This little house has been good to me. It's been a home for my children, a place for my friends to come and gather and sit and tell tales and partake of good food. It's been a place of refuge for family and erstwhile companions, a place to stand and take in the fireworks off of the sound and a home to come back to after long sorjourns and difficult journeys. It's been a home and there will be much to miss about it. But there it goes, it's been a home and my home will always be where I hang my hat.

I have been looking at houses in that faraway place and know that there are many that I could choose from if things go right. I look at the features and the "bones" of the place and know that there is yet another little house out there for me, a place to paint and chaulk and strip out old carpet. A place to sink nails and hang paintings and make altars. There is a place out there that I will be able to come back to after long ramblings and short trips. There is a place where my children will be able to gather and laugh and play in again. It is coming. And know that that place, when I shut my eyes and move onto to other things, I will remembered fondly, too.

There will always be something to miss no matter where I go.

Salud!

Home for sale

It's not everyday that I get to see the results of a long campaign spread out before me on my coffee table. It's been a week of hard de-cluttering, waiting for the moment I could say to my realtor "yes, go ahead, put it on the market". Her satchel of papers told me I was on task and ready to go. And now the house is, too.

So this morning I put my home up for sale. What a magnificent line in the sand that was.

Three years ago there was no way in hell you could have convinced me to do it. Five years ago it was just too far away from being ready for anyone to be interested. Last year, heck, even earlier this month it was still unapproachable in it's messiness. But after three weeks of grueling work I can say that I would be happy, even proud, to have folks come walking through my door and taking a look at my home.

Watching the movie "Up" the other day with my kids clued me in to the great reality, that this beloved little place of mine is just a house. Putting my name on the jet-inked line this morning made that thought even more concrete. But what has been freeing, even more than watching all that clutter go away, is knowing that I am one step closer to truly grasping some greater realization, and that is that my children, and time, and not my possessions, are what matter in this short and happy life.

I have no idea what awaits me in Idaho. I have no idea what I will do for work, where I will live or how much of an inpact I will be able to make in my children's lives. But one thing is for certain, and that is that I will no longer be ten hours away from them. When those emergencies happen, when those plays are held, when those recitals and ballgames and sleepovers take place, they can have me there as a witness. I will finally, after four years, be able to share their joy in real time.

This house has been a witness to my personal growth, but it's time to take those hard learned lessons to the place where they really can take root and grow.

My home is on the market. For those of you who have been here for supper or barbeques and loved the view, please tell a friend. It's priced way below value. Come and see, especially at sunset. It's a mighty grand little place.

Salud!

Patroness Saint of Lost Causes

We all love getting paid. And while I love those twice a month moments of financial solvency, I haven't gone so far as to elevate paydays into some sort of secular holy day. But, I have to tell you, after my somewhat mystical encounter yesterday, I might have to think twice about that and mark those days on a religious calendar.

The joy of paydays are generally offset by general misery of bills. Bills. Yech. They arrive punctually, like the swallows do at the San Juan Capistrano mission. They're predictibile, like sunrise or the seasons or the tides. They slip in steathily, or like a clap of thunder, or like the sickness of a old relative. Steady, fretful, bothersome, mundane. Twice a month I pour a tall mug of coffee, whip out the checkbook, sort through the dross and the circulars, scratch out a few checks and then survey the damage. Usually there's enough left over for gas and groceries and a little bit of play. Thank goodness that I do not lack in imagination or else I would be in a world of hurt for entertainment until that next paycheck arrives.

Yes, taking care of the bills is the ultimate in mundane activities. But yesterday changed things a bit, took bill paying into a realm outside of the normal fare. It was filled with worry of a different sort, instead. I poured that tall mug of coffee that I mentioned above and cleared a place at the coffee table in the living room as usual. I had the heat on low, pens at the ready, the bills stacked and sorted and begging to be paid. But, after a bit of poking around I had to ask myself, "where did I put the checkbook?" Long gone are the days where I would just crank out another book from the check box, get my bills and the bank all out of wack because the order of the checks was suddenly loopy. No, I had to find that checkbook, not just because I tend to get really nervous about identity theft and the town being papered with worthless checks, but also because I had a few of those bankcard checks tucked away in there, too, and that would mean double trouble if the checkbook fell into the wrong hands.

I seem to know pretty much where all my "financial tools" are these days. I have so little cash to blow that paper tends to stay home and my debit card gets the workout out in town, instead. So it was with a bit of consternation that the book should turn up "lost". I began to pace the house, turning over books and stacks of paper and cupboards, looking in places that I know that the checkbook would never land. I went up and down and around the house, checking pockets of coats I haven't worn in months, rifled through drawers I hadn't touched in weeks. I know that I went through my sock drawer, and looked on top of the video cabinet and came close to runny out through the rain to the car to check in-between the seats. But I didn't. I knew that it was inside and it was just a matter of time before I either found the errant checkbook or panicked and called it in to the bank.

So I went upstairs and looked around my bedroom one last time. I have books and films and whatall stacked on my bed as I've mentioned before, and rifled through all that. I took one long look at a photo I have on my dresser of my plaster saint and asked, well, beseeched, for a bit of intervention on my behalf, to have that checkbook show up. I took one step, uncovered another photo tucked away into a stack of VHS tapes, and there, next to the visage of the saint herself, was the checkbook!

Now, I am not one to believe in such things, but I must admit that I was a bit wowed at that moment. I know that having someone pray for you daily is a bit of a luxury, especially in today's crisis packed world where there is so much to pray for. But I have to wonder if I have an account built up somewhere, somewhat like you would have if you gave blood regularly. Do I have a cache of prayers saved up for me someplace that I can tap into on occasions like this? Would they be just as valuable as, say, a bank account? Do I get to work up to a, say, platnium membership? In searching for that checkbook did I somehow tap into a previously unknown mystic portal in my house, one that operates strickly in supernatural terms in times of peril and distress? I wonder how much that checkbook recovery cost me, how much my prayer account is down because of it. Maybe I shouldn't have asked for that help. Maybe I would have found it in the end on my own.

Maybe.

All the same, you, my beloved plaster saint, you have now been elevated to the role of Patroness Saint of Lost Causes in my house. Truly, if ever there was someone who could handle that role with aplomb and grace, you're it.

Thanks for aiding and abetting me with that intervention, and for filling up my spiritual account. I owe you one, buddy.

Salud!