Better than fruit salad

My cat has taken to waking me up at 3am, instead of the usual 6ish. I’m not sure what to do about this. The first night I felt bad because I hadn’t fed him the semi-regular late night snack (which I do sometimes because he eats weirdly small amounts, and sometimes he asks for food at night.) I’d assumed he was actually starving, and my repeated throwing him off my pillow started to feel more heartless than it needed to. So I got up and dished out a little food. That was a big mistake though, because now we think 3am is the perfect time for a snack! The perfect time to wake up! If I don’t move or actually push him back down to my feet or push him off the bed, he will sit on the other side of my pillow which drives me batshit insane for some reason. I have a king size pillow, because when Anthony’s here and we share the (twin-size) bed, a longer pillow makes that easier. When a cat I’m mildly allergic to sits on it, it means hair that I can’t see gets everywhere on my head. If I keep moving him off the pillow he comes back again and again for hours, and I don’t sleep. So what to do? I haven’t worked it out yet. I’m afraid if I shut him out of the room I won’t actually wake up in time for things.

MEDIA

1. Today’s episode of “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” features an unusually hilarious ‘not my job’ game, which you can listen to here. It’s The Collected Wit and Wisdom of Matthew McConaughey, and it’s about as insightful as it sounds.

2. I went to OMSI last weekend with the geohashers, and in the physics lab they were playing a series of films by Arthur Ganson. By and large my favorites were those akin to this, which reminded me of Paul Klee’s Twittering Machine. No one else in the room was as struck by these films as I was. It was out of context of course — his machines involve simple machines like pulleys and levers, but the films are clearly art house and not simple documentary footage. I stood there for half an hour watching these things, and then had to leave and go with the group to work on wooden puzzles. Of course Anthony was as geeked about this as I was, and I think we’re going to by the DVD once we both have money again.

3. Last week I netflixed the BBC’s “The Human Face,” hosted by John Cleese. I was completely delighted by this segment, and would re-watch it every day before going to work. The final two episodes were a little more depressing to me, dealing with fame and what makes a beautiful face beautiful, and anyone who’s ever had to endure a Women Studies 101 class understands why this question instantly tires me out. The fame episode in particular made me feel hollow and unhappy, because as much as I pretend like it isn’t true, there really are people out there that only want fame and celebrity out of life. And it scares me. But in order to adequately explain to you why fame is so Very Beside The Point when it comes to life, I would need to have you here with me in person, so we could go fly kites and stand in cold water and yell at the ocean.

FOOD!

I live next door to one of the Thursday farmer’s markets. Along with the normal stalls of fruit, veg and meats, they have little stands of ready-made food, making Thursday night dinner a cinch. Sometimes they have little events; last week was a coupon with every $5 spent, good for a free corn on the cob (corn on the kabob). This week I also got milk. Fancy unpasteurized milk from one of the local dairies. I’m still a little afraid of milk that I need to shake first in order to distribute the solids, and I worry about how foul it will be when it does in fact go foul, but the taste is clearly superior to any other milk I’ve ever tasted, even from other dairies. So drinking it up fast should not be a problem.

It is also melon time evidently, and there were samplings of all these wonderful tiny melons. I came home with two, and mutilated them with my melon baller this morning.

I ended up with crescents instead of spheres, but they still taste the same. I’ll just have to practice on more melons.

Melons in their original guise usually can’t be friends with me because I cannot eat a fruit the size of my head before it goes bad. And pre-cut melon from the store makes me wonder when it was in fact cut. I adore these fist-sized things, half is just enough for a bowl of mid-morning sweetness. Good for either second breakfast and elevensies, if you will.

NOT QUITE WELSCHMERTZ

There is a phenomenon Anthony and I have been talking about. It’s when you are doing something that should Feel Very Significant, yet doesn’t, somehow. Moving to a new state, starting grad school, getting married, buying a car, quitting your job as a CEO to join the Peace Corps, things like that. Clear jags in a life-path that one would expect would sort of feel epic. But doesn’t. It’s the lack-of-feeling-epic feeling. We want there to be a word for it, and as yet have not found one, and instead refer to it as, “that thing again, you know, the lack-of-epic-epicness” or something similarly inarticulate. So we’re on a bit of a WordQuest, to see if there is in fact a term for this. I suspect if there is one it’s in German.

EVERYTHING ELSE WITHOUT A GRATUITOUS TITLE

I’ve been shying away from talking about work because it’s been a bit awful lately, and that does not make for good posting. It also causes me additional pain to rehash every waking moment of the day if it was both physically and mentally exhausting (I’ve lived it once, must I DWELL on it?). I’m also working hard on rebuilding that on/off switch between Work and The Part Of My Life With Meaning, with limited success. I’m getting there but it’s a slow process, particularity when you were unemployed for several months. And when before that you had a job you loved. It continues to confuse the hell out of me. On Wednesday I went into HR to quit, and left that day with a promotion instead. Back when I was doing a lot of research on Schizophrenia, a common metaphor I came across was the ’switchboard metaphor’, whereby one’s various mind-and-emotion connections are plugged into the wrong places, and therefore send signals to the wrong places. That’s a bit what this workplaces feels to me, what with my actions turning up with all these strange outcomes that make no sense. There is absolutely no degree of predictability whatsoever. It should probably feel fresh, but instead it feels unstable and confusing. Even threatening at times.

However, there was a moment yesterday when six of us were in the kitchen making macaroni and cheese for 80 football players. That was really fun.

Although there are no pictures yet to prove it, I have finished that quilt I started all that time ago. I backed it with a couple study homespuns instead of flannel, so this is an Adventure Quilt. A quilt to use out in the wilds as well as on the couch on the weekends. It is also the most boisterous quilt I have ever done, with a couple eye-achingly bright strips that really kick out on a cloudy day. I adore this quilt. I brought it with me to the Avett Brother’s concert at the zoo last Sunday where I was rained on for three hours. I eventually bailed when I noticed I was sitting in a three inch puddle of water. I also saw her there, but shied away from saying anything because I thought that might be weird. I recognized her right away not by her looks, but by her Adventure Quilt spread out under a tree.

Today there is a crispness in the air that feels decidedly autumnal to me. Me and my Adventure Quilt are ready. Bring it on!

I have been away from the radio for almost a week now.

My beloved music device, Philco, has a rather flimsy wire “antenna” that now cannot get me a good clear signal. I was hoping it was my location, since back at the old house I had trouble with reception in certain rooms, particularly after they changed the frequency. But I’ve walked around the apartment with the little kitchen radio now that it’s unpacked, and the consensus is the problem lies within Philco, not within my reception. (Also, I live pretty much in the heart of the metro area. So, poor reception from OPB would not only be highly unlikely, it would certainly not be tolerated in my neighborhood.) So that’s a bummer. I am slipping off the bandwagon in terms of news — I somehow missed Obama winning the democratic nomination until a few days later, which sends my heart a-flutter because I was genuinely worried about that. But also, I am strangely…not missing the radio.

Where I came from, public radio was not a priority. It had almost no funding, and what money it had went to entertainment type programs on the weekends, filling up the entire weekday and most of the weeknights with music programming. A lot of this was “diverse music,” which was the local two or three radio people playing CDs all day long. Occasionally they would go off on a Bach tangent, but for the most part it was a pretty good mix of things, kind of like if someone with roughly my taste and a far more elaborate music library sat down and did “shuffle all” five days a week for six hours. It used to infurate some of my friends who came from other places, claiming they could get music anywhere. But I was always of the opinion that if you can hear Yo-Yo Ma and Blue Man Group in the same set, the music can’t be all that bad. The nightly routine was nice as well — World Cafe came on at around 8, and then Echoes came on at 10 which was occasionally unbearable, but did always my signal to dim all the lights and wind down for the evening.

It’s nice to have routines. And I was open to the fact that the bulk of this routine would be disrupted when I moved here. No question. I was ready for a change of scheduling. What I was not ready for however, was a complete lack of weekday music programming.

Um, which again. I’m not being a hater. If anything I am kind of relieved to live in an area that has an opinion about stuff and wants to talk about it on the radio. But. This means that I need to find something new to listen to during the bulk of the day, since I cannot (yet) abide the yammering on and on about “what I think about this,” because where I came from that was always of the Rush Limbaugh variety, and it hurts me to hear it on the radio. I have a built in aversion to the auditory opinion column. At least right now. I’m sure once I’m broken in it will be just fine. Until then though, I am on slight music withdrawal.

This is going to sound really dumb — but I think I need to take a vacation. Yes, you heard me. I am unemployed in a city that is my wet dream, and I need a vacation from being on this vacation. Before I actually go on vacation, here in about two weeks. It feels petty and lame. But even on the days when I think I am going to take a break from unpacking and moving furniture and fretting about how I am going to pay the bills next month and just go on an adventure today I wear myself out getting there. Friday I wanted to simply drive over to a fabric store, and I did. But on the way I saw all this stuff! And then I got there and whoa, there was so much fabric! Fabric by real designers in patterns I had never seen! Being sold for prices I should never pay! But it was vast and big and beautiful and whoa there I go, getting all overwhelmed again.

I kind of feel like The Berenstain Bear’s Too Much Birthday.

The other thing is — Thursday I felt the first pang of oh! Anthony’s not here. I have been very much aware of this the whole time of course, but I hadn’t actually had much time to thinking about it. Thursday was a lot of feet dragging, feeling small, and the lonely. It occurs to me that without the helpful device of work or school it is harder to make friends, as there is no common life situation thing immediately apparent. That’s a little overwhelming.

That night I was going to go to some live music but I bailed at the last minute and went to an open mic. And that was good. Got my eyes off myself and onto other people, got my fingers working — drawing some real stuff for the first time here. That was helpful. Yes indeed.

All the ships that have been hanging out in the river for the rose festival (an event that I have mostly ignored — there is always next year) will be leaving tomorrow! I heard an announcement on the radio: 5-6am, again at 9am, and 11-11:15am! I’m supposed to hang around my house and receive furniture, (the LAST bout, I should hope,) but surely it won’t arrive that early. I think I’d like to watch some ships sail away.

The Rose Festival kept catching me in small ways. When Mom and I walked along the riverfront before they left, we admired the many strange boats and carnival sights. Then yesterday I drove around aimlessly and ended up downtown while the floats from the parade were leaving. I was kind of trapped for a while, but took advantage of it. I pulled off, paid for parking, and wandered around aimlessly on foot. I didn’t accomplish much. I need to get a proper map of downtown and get a sense of it — I kept ending up in streets lined with shabby warehouses. I did make it up to the Whole Foods past Powell’s for lunch (must remember this! 2 dollar salad just the way I want it!) and chatted with an older gent who was down from Seattle. He asked me what I was reading, asked if I’d bought my book at Powell’s, because any blue-blooded Portland resident would only buy from Powell’s, no? Evidently. It made me smile. It would be like going to Seattle and asking if locals bought their cranberries and granola they were snacking on at the Pike’s Place market.

Then later I set up the sewing stuff to make some headway. That felt good.

There are a lot of parks and things in the area. I knew that anyway, but I started digging around for something outdoorsy and my mind, she is blown. Aside from the zoo, museums, and the famous gardens (for the moment I will stick with my neighbor’s creations) there are a plethora of state parks, forests, wildlife reserves, and all that goodness. The weather forcasts showers, but so far? Time to take advantage of what looks like it will be a beautiful day.