This urgent bulletin just in

I have been reading Dave Barry's review of 2020. By the beginning of May I needed to run to pee and wipe my streaming eyes. As you may not know, I have TWICE received a response from Dave thanking me for my suggestion for an article based on an weird news article: Thank you alert reader. Please seek professional attention immediately. Or words to that effect as I can't locate those postcards. They must be with my other "awards". 

This is by way of confirming that I AM a devoted fan who loved his columns, and laugh uncontrollably when reading his books. I am going to make this a brief post, so you can more profitably spend any time you might have spent reading me, reading a master's take on the year whose passing we collectively, fervently, and impatiently await. Here is the link: 

Dave Barry's Year in Review   (https://preview.tinyurl.com/ybgvxq4x)

If you are unable to get past the paywall you just cough up the current $29 for a year's unlimited access. It is worth it to get access to Alexandra Petri's regular offerings. I also enjoy Dana Milbank and Eugene Robinson enough to get their columns sent to my email.

For visual interest I have enclosed a hand made birthday card I received from one of MY alert readers, who might also benefit from more mental health intervention than I am currently benefiting from (as she recognized a birthday I had previously disparaged in my blog). But the way things are going these days, I just can't hold a grudge: my memory is no longer functioning as intended.

Annual Christmas letters

 I have been the occasional recipient of these over the decades. As I never reciprocate, they have diminished over time. The one I received today is an argument for anyone crafting the summary of their year, even or because COVID.

I have many quirks (failings) regarding social norms. Here are a few egregious examples:

I don't send Christmas cards. As a child I was part of the Slate Family Card Corporation which yearly began with an original design (entirely Dad, and a few times me), one or more silk screen stencils were cut (Dad), then the assembly line was employed. Following a successful screening (Dad) one of us kids would transfer the this product to an away place to dry. In the case of multiple color applications this last step was repeated.

Meanwhile... Mom was checking her Christmas Card list to cull non-reciprocators (applying her opaque and now unknowable standards). All year she had updated this list to include newly formed family units, address, and name changes. This was a task I never appreciated until I started to keep an address book of my own and experienced the exactitude and relentlessness of this activity.

Once the cards were completed, Mom would start signing, adding personal notes, and hand addressing an envelope, which together with the card were passed to her support staff to sign. The assembly line was then reformed to stuff, stamp, and seal the envelopes (NON-self sealing, of course.).

I think that Mom was able to off load envelope addressing for recipients who did not get a personal note. I am unsure about this, but as I wrote the details of our corporate effort I am appalled at how her support staff's efforts pale in comparison to her essential, and intrepid contributions. 

I am not one to dwell on regrets for things not done, but I have one very large one: We (I) should have saved every example of our creative collaboration so I would now be in possession of this trove. And in this case (and others as my heart continues to soften) wish I had let Mom know I SAW her love in action.

I don't give Christmas gifts. Of course I did this as expected up until I had an epiphany about why Christmas season made me so miserable. Historically, it was almost entirely based on the poisonous idea that unless I can give the Perfect gift to a loved one, they will doubt that I do love them. It was in a twelve-step meeting (of similar self-sabotagers *) that I heard and adopted one person's solution: just do the stuff that you enjoy. For me that meant no more uninspired gifts on gift mandated events/dates.

One shining year I discovered the perfect gift for Dad: I ordered him a custom electric branding iron so he could "sign" his wood based furniture, frames, art, etc. Decades earlier he had designed a logo of his initials which I provided for the custom brand. I shared the gifting of this with my sibs, as they too were unable to find something he wanted and had not acquired himself. So perfect was this gift (which he retroactively employed to any earlier creation he encountered) that it pleased him annually to remember it's perfection, and we were warmed knowing we had so pleased him.  Now THAT is my idea of good gift giving. When I have an idea of another gift for another loved one, I just give it. Calendar and tradition be damned. I think of myself as "sand in the gears" of routine gifting.

However today, I got a short-hand Covid informed version of the genre: What my fabulous family has been up to. And it brightened my day. It cut to the chase life-wise: it is how we choose to spend our time and with whom, being thankful for what is possible, and accepting (at least in the moment) what we can't do and who we aren't with.

In conclusion, I have pictured here a birthday card I received from one of my blog recipients. How brave that was! The cat and caption warmed this slowly thawing persona I inhabit.

May this holiday season warm your hearts, affirm our collective care for each other, and get the fuck over with already (including December birthdays).

*When I googled the term self-sabotagers to check the spelling I discovered a 12-Step program designed for the current me: Self Sabotage & Misery Addicts Anonymous. I wonder if they served cookies pre-Covid.

A "celebration" of the 60's

Today it occurred to me that I have two 60's to "celebrate". The first one is the 1960's era. As a boomer born in Dec. 1951, I spent the ages of 9 through 18 in that roiling decade. Most notably for me was the nationwide anger and inability to have civil conversations across the divide*

*over sex, drugs, rock and roll, world view, the meaning patriotism, and the Viet Nam war. Oh, and of course men's hair length.

 

Tree like walls

As my clever readers will have sussed out: by "celebrate" I mean celebrate the end of. My principal coping mechanism for surviving such an angry society was a tortoise like retreat into my shell. I lost myself in my room (which Dad had helped me transform into a sort of tree house, with soft green flooring and rich medium brown cork walls). There was no furniture in this oasis except a small caned rocking chair of unknown heritage which could not bear weight. I slept on a rug which Dad helped me shop for in a rug store, where I tested several by lying down on them. He truly supported me through my teens, which were not so much DIFFICULT (for him) as Puzzling (to both of us). He designed and built a walnut fold down drawing surface mounted on one wall (OK, there was also a stool) and a matching built-in walnut book and music cabinet. I checked out art prints from the Portland library for visual interest. (see note below regarding my possessions) In this period I was obsessed with art and the 1966 horrific flood in Venice prompted me to "consider" joining the art rescue effort. Except for required school attendance (I loathed H.S.) I spent nearly all my time in my room reading, drawing, and listening to music. Blessedly, during those years we spent weekends at our co-owned beach house in Neskowin. Without that haven, I might have had no outside life. Here is a safe link (Neskowin House) to this amazing house we owned until we kids scattered to college and/or jobs. I loved that sanctuary from daily life which held many artistic flourishes (Dad's works) and a tiny two bunk bedroom that was my hide-hole.

Note on my teen age possessions in my tree house "bed" room. This was the #2 house Mom and Dad designed and had built (#1 for lessons learned). All the rooms had recessed storage, so I had a large closet and a bank of drawers with overhead shelves. All of which I kept neat, organized, and under-filled! I have always been me, sadly.

And now for the second 60's: mine. I have my final 60's birthday in three days. Great! This decade has certainly been difficult. My dad died when I was 61, then I shared the next 4 years with just my difficult parent, until her death at 91 (I was 65). The next four years of my life were under the Orange Kool-aid Presidency (I need not elaborate here). And similar to the 60's era, half of  MY 60's have been marked by another great divide**

**over science (and almost all other reality), as well as whether we are Americans with any shared culture, values or desire to remain a functioning democracy. At least there is not a hot bed of discord regarding men's hair length (who has the time?)

So there you have my two-sixt-ies. in a nut shell. And they were both similarly nutty, and like nuts in one's diet, best consumed in moderation (a choice I rarely make).

New use for an existing design element in the time of Covid

First a little history of my peregrinations around Eugene since moving here in the 70's. My then husband and I rented a house in South Eugene for many many years until the 80's when I was making enough income to buy a house and bullied him into being a co-homeowner. He was a very fearful (mortgage!) and resentful (sure, YOU can afford it) guy. Which fear and resentment were aggravated by his post college attempts to parley a Geology degree into something other that working for a Houston Texas oil company with an undisclosed need for a young guy to send to the Middle East. After 5 horrible months in Houston (Feb. weather was pleasant: sure sign of a coming hell) we decided we would move to my home state as he felt his (Colo.) had little to offer job wise. I vetoed Portland as too densely occupied by family at that time. Eugene was the next biggest and, need I add, no hot bed of Geology employment in which he said he was no longer interested. Here I continued up my work experience ladder in accounting despite my degree in Math. Sadly, and perhaps inevitably, my ex never found satisfying and stable work he was willing to do in Eugene. 

That first home was in West Eugene, where we lived until after the (long inevitable) divorce in 1988. A year later I moved to an apartment in the Coburg area. It was perfect for me except it had no A/C and again my income was making ownership wiser. I decided I would like to live in central Eugene. The first one I found that was easily affordable and cute was off 18th and Garfield (Central Eugene). I purchased it in 1997 for $119K. And then over 8 years proceeded to update, improve, repair and enhance it to the tune of $48K. When insane house price inflation hit in 2005 I figured it was the ideal time to dump that cute turkey before more $$ was inevitably needed. In spite of my sizable additional sunk value I was able to clear a net gain of $28K. Then, I decided to wait out the high price mania in an apartment, once again in the Coburg area, but this time with A/C!!

In February 2007, thinking that home values had hit bottom (they so hadn't) I moved into my sweet little home on Escalante St. (River Road) During my fairly extensive search and house viewings (in Bethel and River Road) I was sure of only a few things: MUST have small yard, MUST have A/C, MUST have shade, and MUST have a flatish driveway. This resulted in my realtor (who was GREAT) being unsure what I might specifically like. So we visited several together and I was able to give him feedback as I discovered my previously-unknown-to-me preferences. Unlike my small (and bizarrely remodeled 1940's bungalow) it must be newish and not in need of any remedial effort. I had liked Garfield, but no longer wanted to buy something that would plunder my pockets. Hence I added: must be built after 2000. I found this house by going to an open house by myself. When I walked it, my immediate thought was: "what are these people doing in my house?" That was the first time I experienced love at first sight (including men). But then, homes do not need to be intelligent, wry, and kind. One could summarize my iteration of Eugene dwellings over 4 decades as:

Rent, Own, Rent, Own, Rent, Own.

This flip-flopping was driven mainly by my abhorrence of a needful yard which became a top disqualifying feature.

Now (if you have indulged me up to this point) a thoroughly tediusly summary of how I arrived at my little piece of heaven. Which I continue to decorate and organize to my minimalist, neatnik heart's content. After only a few months here I purchased something I didn't know I needed. I love to cruise River Road Resale where I have found nearly a dozen bargain priced furnishing and decor. It was here I found this simple wooden mirror ($15) perfect for my front entry. At once it called out for my mail box key on one hook and a penquin in the box. Subsequently, in the age of Covid, it presented it's second hook as the solution to having a mask at hand should anyone darken my door and meet my criteria for opening.  (Few do)

 

A statisfing encounter with click bait

Really! I am very leery of clicking on enticing offers at the bottom of things I chose to read. Often they are very tedious, occasionally disappointing, and rarely even result in locking up my browser. But this one grabbed me, as I wanted to vet my lifetime basic hairstyle. As you may not know, my hair went from straight and manageable to frizzy and wavy when I hit puberty (whence came all manner of suffering). As an added affront, this was the age of the California surfer girl who not only was everything I was not, but also sported long straight tresses which were suddenly off my menu of possibilities.

This occurred before high school: in time to ruin my 8th grade school photo. (Which I half-heartedly looked for just now. Sorry.) So, in my Freshman year of H.S. (there were 8 years of Elem.) I decided I could transform myself and blend into a larger group that had no preconceived notions of my former hideousness. I let my frizzy mop grow to enable wearing frozen juice-can sized curlers with frizz- taming Di-pity-Do* every night. How I slept on those I can no longer account for. But I have razor sharp clarity about the morning results: When I combed out my hair it was straight-ish, that lasted until Portland's humidity gained access, and then I spent the day with a huge "bouffant" of frizzy waves. It was a look that to this day has not been purposefully attained by anyone ever photographed for posterity.

I refused to surrender immediately, so I persisted in nightly torture which accomplished nothing desirable. Sometime in that horrific year (H.S. was aggressively occupied by teenagers, with which I wanted no truck) I learned that BOYS! were being allowed into swimming pools irrespective of their hair length. Females were "on the basis of SEX" required to wear swimming caps. This had to be fought. So I went to my mom's beauty salon and had my hair cut really short. Shorter than now as I have opted for a softer look as I age. This is the sort of 60's revolution I was waging. I thought all those boys with long hair and all those girls with a least a handful of hair were sheeple (before I even heard the word). They were being "individual" by conforming. I was OUT THERE! baby. A few times I was even assumed to be a boy by some adult male in spite of my generous chest! So I had my ears pierced and wore dangly earrings.

I forgot to mention how my attempt to be "a part of" and date came off the rails. Amazingly, I was voted "prettiest" girl in my home room. This was without precedent and consequent. But it scored me an invitation to a high school football game by a boy who played in the band from the bleachers. Of course I accepted in spite of my complete dis-interest, bordering on vengeful toward that sport. 

At the game, he sat at the side of a row of horn players, so I could sit next to him. We were able to talk a bit (I have no memories of this, nor his name) but this I remember: he interrupted me to say he needed to warm up his lips (I swooned). He then proceeded to blow air noisily through his lips. Our connection was brief, devoid of physical contact, shared interests or conversation. I was relieved when he announced it was not what he expected, and dropped me. But I was also puzzled. It may be that he had wanted to proceed around the bases (so to speak) with me, but was unclear that it was HIS job to initiate. Sufficient female sexual liberation for teens was likely decades away. I never had another date until college: when the available pool got much bigger, and a bit more varied. <sigh> It JUST now occurred to me that perhaps he found me a bit too conversational. Again: <sigh>

Oops! I got so caught up in my tortured past that I forgot the click bait. My "style" was not included! I shall continue to let my hair do what it wants (except grow longer). This link will take you to "30 Women's Hairstyles to Ditch this Year": https://tinyurl.com/y65r35ph

*My spell check gave me Di-pity-do. The product was actually Dippity Do. But I appreciate my spell checker pointing out that "pity" was appropriate for my styling fiasco.