ARGH! Rudeness!

Ugh. So in my apartment complex we have washers downstairs in a room; about 7 washers and 7 dryers, perhaps 8.

I'm really annoyed at the moment, because I went down at 7:40 am this morning to put in a load (yes, I was up that early. I often / generally am on a weekend) to put in ONE SMALL LOAD and some JACKASS has taken up ALL THE WASHERS.

YES. *** ALL *** of them.

How do I know they have? Because the timer on the front of each machine is within a minute or of each other; 22, 23, 22, 22, 23 and so on.

The whole reason I went down early was to catch the washers before this clod (okay, so it could be more than one...) commandeered the entire laundry room for his/her own personal use. Afterall -- nobody else wants to do laundry on the weekend, of course.

One day, I looked in a washer of such a happening and each one was filled with about 5 things. For crap's sake. What a waste of 75 cents and water. Sure, I believe in separating colors and whites, but this person had 5 colors in one, then about 5 more colored items in the next one, then a about the same amount of whites in the next -- and so on.

It really BLEEEP-ing annoys me -- nay, pisses me the &$@# off -- that someone would be that clueless and lack that kind of common sense.

Yes. I get that laundry is annoying. Yes, I get that you want to get it all done as quickly as possible. But that's why you do it more often, perhaps, rather than once a week and thus putting AN ENTIRE 3-FLOOR BUILDING OF ABOUT 150 OR MORE UNITS ON HOLD.

Ugh. So I came up and lodged a complaint to the management.

Again.

I've complained about this before -- it seems like they could put a 3 unit limit on someone.

Because here's the thing: whoever does this then takes up ALL THE DRYERS, TOO.

Once I hung around for a bit of time as they timed out (like for about 10 minutes) to -- POLITELY -- say something to the clod --

Er, ahem -- neighbor --

-- but they never showed up in that timeframe. So not only were they hogging the washers and dryers (a dry cycle is 60-80 minutes long), they continued to hog it after it was over.

Sure. I've left a load in longer than just the 35 minutes for a wash or the 60 minutes for a wash for a variety of reasons (I've forgotten, I've gotten sidetracked, I've left to do an errand for the hour and it took longer, etc.) but It's only been one *MAYBE* two loads.

It never ceases to amaze me at how clueless people are that there might possibly maybe perhaps be other people that exist outside of their own little world.

*SIGHGROAN*

GRRRR....growl (muttermuttermuttermuttermutter)

Anyway. Enough on that. It's probably a good thing I've never run into this clod (SORRY SORRY, NEIGHBOR!)...otherwise they might find themselves with a laundry basket-shaped belly after I stuffed it down their neck. :)

But I'd do it with all the grace and politeness I was raised to have when dealing with people. I wouldn't be the least bit rude about it. Not at all. I'd simply be giving them a hands-on definition -- a...visual, if you will -- of "Go stuff yourself."

..............At least it's a pretty day outside! :)

-- H

"!"

I just noticed that my little Mama Bird did take a bunch of the cotton!

And here I thought she'd snubbed me :)

-- H

What I Did For My Summer Vacation

My birthday was last Thursday, and each year I take a block of time off to celebrate it. This year I had half of last Wednesday, Thursday, a vacation day Friday for the Fourth, then both Monday and Tuesday. It's been nice.

I did a lot of stuff for myself, and one thing was to fix up my terrace even more. I'd planted a bunch of plants back in May when it got nicely warm, but then Mom Nature thought she'd have the last laugh, and we had one more hurrah of cold, damp weather that killed off most of what I planted -- all except for the geraniums.

I'd planned to do just geraniums as they forgive you for dry soil, wet soil, colder weather, hot weather and so on...they're quite hearty. My terrace gets sun in the morning, but not too much, so I have to be careful with what I choose. Geraniums seem to also like it out there, as much as they like direct sunlight.

Plus they weather through the winter nicely if I remember to cluster everyone against a corner of my terrace and then wrap them with clear plastic. I usually do that in October -- and then step out once a month or so and give them a good watering.

I have a lovely view, too, of a wonderful garden a downstairs neighbor keeps up, and has done so for nearly fifteen years. It stretches down to the end of the building to the left (about two aparments in length), and then about three times that (or more!) to the right. Linda had cancer last year, and so I helped her by watering her plants a few times during the summer months; it took a total of about 3 hours over two nights each time! She also recruited the help of a local garden club, who came in and put it "to bed" when Fall began rolling into winter.

She's doing much better (all in the clear), and I've been glad to see her poking around out there in the afternoons and evenings.

The jasmine I put out on my terrace smells beautiful, and the sound of my new kapiz windchimes is lovely as well. I actually finally did something I've been meaning to do for the last 3-4 years, and that's to hang all my windchimes from hooks along the edge of the ceiling (the bottom of the upstairs terrace), as they never seemed to chime much from the hooks along the walls, even though they stuck out. They've been much more active as well.

I also got a new hummingbird feeder, as the red glass globe one I had seemed to frustrate the humming birds that would stop by -- my father said he'd noticed that the holes for their tongues weren't as large as the ones in the cheaper / classic-style ones that look like a jar with yellow flowers on it. So that's what I got.

I'd also been starving my local birdies; my suet feeder was empty and I kept forgetting to buy more. Did that as well.

Speaking of birdies...a little hapai mama bird decided to make her nest in my hanging basket of geraniums. I'm pleased she felt safe there (I had fun reaching into my inner 6-year-old a few days ago when I discovered she was doing that by finding things to leave for her to use for her nest. Some she took -- like the pieces of twine -- others she didn't. She snubbed the bits of cotton).

And so -- watering that plant is a bit dicey now. I try to carefully do it from the opposite side from where her nest is, but it inevitably startles her and she flies out, cluck-chirping at me. I just hope Lady Perigrine Falcon who graced my terrace last year stays away until Mama Mia and her little family have flown the coop.

Speaking of that falcon, there's a pair of ospreys that have taken up residence by the duck pond near my house, and it's been really cool to go walking there and watch them gliding around, and to hear them calling to each other.

Their cry seems throatier than a red-tailed hawk, and osprey seem to be chattier than hawks, too. I'm not sure I've ever seen more than one hawk at a time, either.

Anyway. Below are pictures of my terrace for you all. It's been nice out there, and I've been listening to / watching planes flying overhead, heading to what's likely the Hillsboro Airshow next weekend. I've heard some oldtimey-sounding prop planes, jets (F-16 and a few F-18s) and I did get to watch a big Coast Guard helcopter whop-whistling by overhead. That was really cool!

Not much more to report. I'm sad today's my last day before I go back, but I feel nicely rested, too. Plus I only have 3 days this week, so it'll be a short week.




Above: I look down into this; my neighbor downstairs and over one apartment takes care of this. It stretches out to the right and left as well. It's even more gorgeous when all the flowers start blooming.



Above: This is to the right of the first picture.




Above: To the right as you face out. You can see one of my two chairs -- I have room for them, matching footstools, a little table in-between the chairs, all the plants AND a big gas grill!



Above: To the left as you face out. New hummingbird feeder and newly-refilled suet feeder in view!



Above: Close-up of the Zen Spot.



Above: To the left of the Zen Spot. The bamboo and palm tree (it seems to really like the weather here!) I've had for a few years; the jasmine plants (one on each side) I just added today.



Above: Another angle of the Zen Spot. Slightly longer view.



Above: A wider shot, taken from my balcony door, showing my new kapiz windchimes, and the other ones I hung along the edge.

-- H

Write On

She sat in front of the monitor, staring at the white space. After a time, the spaces and breaks around the words she had already written began to form patterns as her eyes blurred and became unfocused. If she tried, she could make them change and morph, like looking for shapes in a popcorn ceiling. She reached out and rubbed a smudge on the screen. It didn't change. Getting up to retrieve a paper towel and some Windex seemed like too much effort...just as it had all the many other times she had noticed it.

In her mind, she pictured other writers in just such a moment. Not quite stuck in writer's block, but not really out of it either, either. Like being in some kind of slushy mud that allowed for movement, albeit stickly and slowly.

In some ways it helped -- and didn't -- to think of this moment as shared with someone such as Faulkner or Clarke or Seuss or Snoopy atop his doghouse, clattering away his latest saga unfolding on a dark and stormy night. Or even a student trying to pen a book report into an A-winning formula.

She closed her eyes and pictured herself in front of an old-fashioned typewriter, the smell of fresh paper, ribbon ink and rubbed eraser wafting up to her. Or perhaps a later version where, instead of the smell of disintegrated rubber it was the bright scent of Wite-Out.

She opened her eyes, and watched the cursor blink, gently encouraging her to push on.

She tapped out a few more words, adding to the fluxing pattern of shapes and spaces...and then backspaced over them. She typed them again, wondering if they had perhaps fit and she had judged them too quickly, and then highlighted and obliterated them. She stared at the cursor blinking patiently, waiting for her to spill her letters, words, sentences and paragraphs she felt were clamoring around in her head – but were unable to find the proper exit. And when they did, they fell out dull and convoluted and wordy.

A few more words tapped out of her fingers -- and again she deleted them, then typed and deleted again, the conversation rewinding and playing again in her head. She smiled, wondering if somewhere there were avatars of her characters sitting at a table trying to hold the conversation she wanted them to have – but unable to because she kept pausing and rewinding them, leaving them to hang in mid-conversation and thought.

Sometimes the words did flow, like a stream swollen with winter melt and s creativity. Other times, it was like trying to eke out a few sips of sludgy water-like stuff from an old East Texas creek bed in waning August heat. She wasn't quite there now, but she could feel the possibility of it looming over her shoulder, like an oppressive editor.

Sometimes she thought she could feel her characters' frustration at having to start and stop and start and stop again. Her actors in her mind-movie, trying to come to life in bits and bytes – and maybe, just maybe, in paper.

Did they get hungry as they waited to speak the words she wanted to give them? Did they tire and wish for a nap? Did they sit looking out the window of the restaurant where she'd left them, admiring the pretty day wishing she would just hurry up and pen the damn scene so they could go out and enjoy it?

Maybe, she thought, that's what deja-vu was – rewrites in her life as rendered by some author spilling out the words of her story. Maybe that's all I am – bits and bytes of existence in someone's laptop somewhere. Maybe...when I go to sleep that's the computer's shutting down. Maybe my characters dream, too.

Okay, she thought, that's just a bit too Rod Serling! Even for you.

She stared again at the blinking cursor, its rhythm and timing as precise as a digital metronome.

A bird sang outside her window, the refrigerator geared on as a humming back-sound to the clock on her wall, a neighbor closed their door and passed hers, whistling. The cursor blinked.

She felt her characters shift uncomfortably in the seats where she'd left them; again, sort of behind and to the right of them, there was the sense of growing irritation with her. The man began to tap his food idly and impatiently; the woman pulled out her compact and checked her lipstick. Beyond them , a car passed on the street, sunlight glinting off the windshield.

She looked away from the blinking cursor to stare out her summer window; she heard a car start and its radio blare on. Leaves fluttered and shushed in the growing breeze, and a siren from the fire station a few blocks away wailed into the afternoon, efficient and stalwart.

She thought perhaps a walk around the duck pond a few miles away would do her some good. Shake out the words that lay in messy piles in her head into something tidier and more accessible. Maybe read someone else's neatly-sorted and bound words out on her terrace, the moment accompanied by a cold beer and bare feet and thoughts of what to have for dinner. Maybe she would grill some chicken and have a salad...slice up a fresh peach for dessert. But she'd had the last one at breakfast, so that would mean she would need to go to the store and she didn't want to because it was hot out and she was low on gas anyway and she didn't feel like doing a bunch of errands and besides she hadn't shaved her legs that morning because she planned to do that tonight but she did have the chicken and fresh organic greens and that would also go well with a beer maybe one her brother had brewed the last batch he'd made was really good and --

She shook her head and reeled in her spill-jumbled, unfettered thoughts with another sigh.

She got up from her desk and walked to her office window. Years of dust had settled between the storm panes, creating a pattern of lacy settlement. The blue sky and air had the polished and new look of early summer, and the clouds almost like moist puffs of bleached cotton candy. Floating clichés. A cool breeze slipped through the screen and sighed over her skin, making the stubble on her legs rise a bit -- like strange sentries becoming alert.

And though she couldn't see it, she knew the cursor still continued to blink.

Her apartment sounded and felt oddly quiet for a late Saturday summer afternoon. By now, in the warmth of the day, there should be splashing and laughtery shrieks from children in the swimming pool, but there were none. She peered through the leaves and hedge and carport to the pool; she could see no one at first -- and then she noticed a lone, bikini-clad female figure stretched in the sun. The woman had on a straw hat and sunglasses, and, propped on her belly, she held a thick book in her hands. A testimony that it was possible to neatly tie together those elusive things called letters into words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters and...thus...a story.

She again thought of her terrace and a cool beer, but instead padded back to her desk and sat down in front of her monitor again – stiffly greeted by the blinking cursor..

Shut up, she thought at it. I'm trying.

She felt her characters sigh. Not hard enough, she felt-heard them say.

Oh...you shut up too. It's not like you're birthed fully formed in me like some mythical God, and all I need to do is slap some clothes on you and send you off to the publisher. I have to create you as I go.

Well, that may be, the woman said, but how about more creating and less thinking about the whole thing? That's what's damming up the process.

She didn't reply.

Look, the man said, pushing back his water glass. He leaned forward over his crossed legs to face her better. What if I just told her what I was really thinking at the moment? That's what you've been hovering over for the past hour. What you keep writing and erasing. Then just...have her respond to that. That's what a conversation is. Even...I don't know. Have her call me a total and complete jerk-off for telling her what I'm thinking. I don't care. It'll probably sound dumb and stupid the first time through, but you can change that later, you know. We don't care what you write -- what we mind is not doing anything.

I know that, she thought. I just – I'm stuck.

No you're not, the woman said. You just think you are. You're stuck on the details. Just get us doing something. My butt's going numb from sitting here.

It's like your mom always said, the man said. Get it down and then go back and change all the verbs and adjectives.

Well, she thought...true. I guess you're right.

Of course I am.

And so she did -- she typed out the very words she'd typed and erased several times before and then typed out the next parceled set of words that came...and the next set. The tapping went from staccato and hesitant to a flurry of clicking.

Like a burst pipe, out flew the words. The cursor barely had a chance to blink. Letters fell onto the screen, shaping words, sentences, thoughts, feelings, actions, reactions. Paragraphs flourished and snapped into place. A page was filled, as was another -- and another. She fell into the coursing and flow, into the rhythm of her fingers on the keyboard. Unnoticed, the summer day wound into twilight and into darkness, the sun on its way into a new day elsewhere, as forgotten as her stuckdom.

She stopped only when the scent of someone's barbecuing dinner gently wafted in through the window and tapped her back to awareness. The room was lit only by the fading dusk and her monitor; at some point, her hall lamp had been clicked on by the timer, but she hadn't noticed.

Her fingers paused above the keys. Her characters were no longer dangling in some action, over some cliff of a conversation. She felt a mutual satisfaction of the trail of events through which she had pushed them over the last few hours. Yes, they said. Go and eat. We're fine where we are. We'll sit here and wait for you to return tomorrow.

Pleased, she pushed back from her desk and barefooted her way into the kitchen to revive her own characterhood with a chilled beer and some leftover cold lasagna, and wondered, mildly in the back of her mind, if her own author was doing the same thing somewhere.

Hear Ye! Hear Ye! I Had a Thought....

…And it’s, “I wonder what the longest hair on my head is?”

Ha. No…although I’ll admit in times of random Space Cadetness I have wondered it off-hand.

Contrary to what some people think, I don’t post a blog when I have a thought…it’s when I have a thought I want to share. I’ll just keep those who accused me of that anonymous, okay, Dad?

I’ve been meaning to write the last few weeks, but it’s been busy-busy-busy. We’re having our Fall Sale at work, and so the usual fax-copy-email-phone work has been ratcheted up to a higher level. But it’s worth it; I got a nice bonus this month, and so my savings account is now happily fed. Plus I’ve been out and about with friends; I got invited to a cocktail party a few weeks ago, which was a lot of fun. I have to admit I felt rather mature and adult (yeah, I can hear the brotherly remarks coming in from that comment…) and it made me realize that sometime in the last year and a half I up and got myself a life.

Or at least one that involved being more social.

I’m kind of a hermit by nature, which is fine with me, but I began realizing that my truer preference is to be a “social hermit” – as in a hermit that goes out and does things with a set of select friends. When I was in the Air Force, I had a friend who called me a “social butterfly” because no matter where we went, we’d run into at least one or two people I knew. Different times, different me. But I began to realize that I missed that aspect of me a couple of years ago.

And so at the urging of my best friend Jane, I created a page on MySpace; say what you will about it, I’ve made some really good friends in the Portland area through it. Plus I’ve been getting a lot closer to coworkers as well; so I guess that new level of maturity – and even finally being in a place where I’m comfortable with myself in a way that allows others to be comfortable around me – has been creeping in for awhile. The cocktail party was just something that opened my eyes to it.

Also a few weeks ago, I went to traffic court to defend a parking ticket I was given 21 minutes before my paid receipt expired. I’d never been in the Multnomah County court building before – a big stately thing in downtown Portland – and when I walked in, I felt like I was in television deja-vu – some episode of Law and Order. (Boots sound awesome on marble floors. It was almost worth it to walk in circles while I waited for the court session to begin!)

But the courtroom I had to go to was rather shabby and basementish; the Law and Order glamour stopped at the threshold of the doors in. One door had a piece of hand-torn carpet padding propping it open, and the copy machine sitting dilapedatedly in a corner had its base held together by concrete gray duct tape. I have seen recessed fluorescent lighting like that since The Rockford Files was at its peak of popularity. It looked like someone had cut the ceiling open with giant pinking shears and then slipped the fluorescent bulbs into the upward-pointing triangle.

Dangling from one downward-pointing triangle was a piece of masking tape that looked years old; fuzzy strands and balls of dust fluttered plaintively from it, making it look like a piece of fly paper that had been stored under someone’s bed for a few years, then put on display. It matched the musty-dusty smell that permeated the air in a ghostlike way; you’d catch a whiff of it…and then just as you became aware of it, the scent dissipated, only to come back when you stopped paying attention to it.

The smell reminded me of…something. A doctor’s office? School? The Oregon State Library? It had that strange smell of dust and old-but-now-dry damp…a combination of cool air, dust and paper. It was a familiar scent that evoked muddy memories of…nothing in particular, but also specific places that had the same smell.

And I think I’ve seen nicer curtains in motels.

Even for the scruffy, almost claustrophobic feeling of the room, it did have a quiet calm to it. I think it was the recessed fluorescent lighting and the knotty pine paneling on the walls that saved it from being too closed-in. Though I must say I was confused by the scallop-shaped burn marks on the acoustic tiling above me. They were too round and perfectly- and evenly-formed to be water stains, but I couldn’t figure out what would have caused such a mark.

Overall, it seemed to simply be happy to boast the best of 1970s legal décor – but now boring and shabbily professional. Drearily official, even. And you can’t forget the popcorn finish to the ceiling, the pinnacle of 1970s décor!

There was a nice view of downtown, however, that you looked up into from the little basement-like room. As I sat there, waiting for the session to begin, I watched the creamy fall light playing off the buildings. It was a beautiful, clean, clear day that had the light and feel of Spring – the only giveaway were the crimson and ocher and fading green leaves of the trees out side of the window.

I was amused, though, by the fact that Centerpointe isn’t the only place that deals with people who can’t read (see previous post It's Been a Long Time Since I Rock and Rolled) – there were three very large signs telling people how to check in; I had to chuckle as I wondered how many times the clerk had to field the question in a single day for how to do so. I even wondered what my customer from that earlier post would say, since it wasn’t printed on “official letterhead.”

Then the court session began. I sat, amazed at how many people were no shows, and were then, by default given a “guilty” conviction – which meant they were then out $40, $60, $100 – or more! Even the $40 would be worth defending for me – that’s a damn decent trip to the grocery store. It made my little $16 ticket seem paltry.

Since the docket was in alphabetical order, I sat there listening to the excuses of the people before me for why they shouldn’t be found guilty, even though in one breath they’d say, “I saw the sign that said ‘No Parking’, but here’s why I did it!” and would then come up with something that was more of a whining excuse than a reasonable reason…so to speak. It began to sound like the legal version of the adults in the Peanuts movies: “Wohn wonh wanh wanh wanh wonhn…”

What I gathered from the excuses that there should be equal rights for passenger cars – they, too, should be allowed to park in a truck-only zone! Other people were there and didn’t get tickets so I shouldn’t either! I was handicapped! I had to keep bringing down armfuls of presents from my son’s birthday party! I don’t have eyes on the back of my head, so how could I see the sign that was behind my car! And so on…

At one point I could barely contain my laughter as a young lawyer in an ill-fitting suit got up and grilled the poor parking attendant, trying to get her to admit that the computer in her little handheld device was faulty, despite the fact its time and settings were set automatically by a satellite, and so his client should not have gotten the ticket, given to him for parking – without a receipt – in a zone ten minutes before that area stopped requiring payments. A minute or two I can get – but ten?! Even my old wind-up alarm clock I had as a child kept better time than he claimed a GPS-programmed device did.

As I whispered to the girl next to me – Shakespeare had it right: Kill all the lawyers.

He was so embarrassing, that even the judge had to work to keep a straight face, and those of us watching were squirming with embarrassment. I love finding clichés in action.

Finally it was my time. I got up and explained that I first had to run across the street to the other machine because the one I was trying to use wasn’t printing anything out. I saw the posture of traffic official next to me soften a bit. “Oh,” he said.

I held up my receipt. “I did have this on my dashboard,” I said and laughed, “But it was wholly my fault. I wasn’t aware of the requirement for having it curbside; I’ve never parked downtown on the street that I can remember – I usually take the train – or I park in a lot and I’m used to just putting it on the dash. So after I purchased my ticket, I opened the passenger side, chucked it in, and hurried off to my appointment.”

I turned to the parking official and said with a smile, “And with the way your job is, you can’t be expected to search each place of my car where a ticket might be displayed. So I can understand why I got the ticket. Now I know what to do!” He looked at me, amazed, then smiled -- clearly surprised by being treated with that level of respect...and my admission of guilt.

So did the judge – she then completely dismissed the charge, which is like getting an annulment: as far as the legal system is concerned, the ticket never happened. It’s an eradication that even a “not-guilty” ruling gives you. Life is so much easier when you just take responsibility for your actions, I’ve found.

I thanked the judge, and then I turned to the parking official and thanked him for coming. He seemed quite surprised by that as well. “You’re…welcome!” he said, and even seemed a bit pleased to simply be acknowledged as I’d acknowledged him. He’s likely got one of the most thankless jobs out there.

Afterwards, I met up with Andrew at the Rock Bottom Brewery and we had a few beers and shared some nachos and got caught up. It was a pleasant way to wind up a boring afternoon. Granted, I lost more paycheck-wise than I did in return for the $16 ticket, but it was the principle of the matter.

And that’s sort of the biggest thing that’s happened in the last few weeks. Now I’m about to head out and schlep Andrew out to Gresham so that he can get a new TV; the trunk of his car is kind of tiny, and doesn’t make TV-schlepping very easy. Mine’s a bit larger.

So I must now wrap this up to go get dressed and wash my face. More to come…when I have another thought.

One I want to air out, at least.