Mm-hmm

The receptionist at work is on vacation this week, so I'll be covering the front desk for part of the day. This afternoon I enjoyed one caller's expressive nonverbal communication. At first she was verbal; she asked to speak with an employee, and I put her on hold while trying to reach that person. Upon finding that they were not in their office, I picked up her call again and we had the following exchange.

Me: I'm sorry, she's not in her office right now.
Her: Mmmmm...[disappointed tone]
Me: Would you like me to give her a message?
Her: Hmm...[thoughtfully]
Me: Or I can put you through to her voice mail if you'd like.
Her: Mm, mm-hmm![brightly]
Me: Okay, just one moment.
Her: MMM-hmm!

It made me wish I could answer the phone that way, without actually having to open my mouth. It would certainly solve the problem I ran into far too many times today, that of popping a mint or a bite of food into my mouth (what?--I was at the front desk almost all day with just a lunch break, I had to take my quick morning snack up there) and then having to chew chew chew so I could answer the phone. If I could just say, "Mmm mm mm-hmm, mm mm mm mm hmm?" when answering...well! wouldn't that be the height of convenience.

Today's Favorites

7:15 am: Eighteen coffee shops within walking distance of my bed. I decide it's going to be a caffeinated day, so I pull myself out the door a few minutes early and walk two blocks to the cafe. The barista knows me well enough to rattle off what I want without prompting as I approach the counter.

7:28 am: Mostly stress-free commuting. I slide my bus ticket into the slot and sit down; this is only the second stop on the 44's route, so I have my pick of seats. I pull my novel out of my bag as the bus pulls away, and read for the 45-minute trip to work. True, that's twice as long as the trip would take by car--but this way I get to immerse myself in Jane Lindskold's Wolf's Head, Wolf's Heart all the way to work; I skip the frustration of asshole drivers; and the caffeine has had time to take effect by the time I stroll to my office, meaning I start my work day more awake, calm, and happy. Gramps would say it sure beats a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

4:45 pm: Shops, gyms, and parks within blocks. Home for the evening, I change clothes and head to the gym. It's a warm day (let's pause to notice the understated nature of that phrase. In fact, it was 62 degrees in Seattle today--the same temperature as Tampa, Florida. That's one week after we were freezing and expecting snow. Tomorrow I'm wearing short sleeves. In January. IN SEATTLE. There are some days in July that I'm not warm enough to wear short sleeves, for crying out loud.), and not raining, so I walk slowly the six blocks, enjoying the warm sunset.

5:30 pm: Conversations with random strangers. Sweating from my workout, I take a detour on the walk home to cool off and stop by the grocery store. My husband had a tooth pulled by the dentist today, so I buy only ice cream, pudding, yogurt, and bananas. One cashier is shouting "BAM!" every time he scans an item, conversing loudly and jovially with his customer. When I exit the store, a man standing outside is selling the Real Change newspaper. I buy one from him and we chat for a minute about the weather and the articles in this new issue before I walk away with my no-teeth-necessary groceries and go home for dinner.

See, there are plenty of days when I hate being right in the middle of everything. It gets claustrophobic, and the smell of exhaust gives me a headache, and when three sets of neighbors are having raucous late-night parties all on the same night I am fully ready to move back to the boonies.

But most days aren't like that. Mostly I love being able to walk a block to the corner store if I have a random craving for peanut butter M&M's one night. I like covertly watching the people around me on the bus every morning. I adore the fact that the owners of Turtle Press live close enough down the street that we were in the same caucus precinct last February. (The fact that we were supporting the same candidate only cemented my admiration of them.) It's convenient and healthy to be able to just walk a few minutes if I want to get a milkshake, or a beer, or visit friends, or work out.

I lived in the middle of Nowhere, Oregon for seventeen long years. At some point I think we'll probably move away from the city--buy a house, get a big dog, and sit in our rockers on the front porch every night listening to the quiet. It sounds nice, especially on nights when the VFW has rented out their hall and two hundred people are shouting and dancing to an extra-loud band at 2 am just outside our bedroom window.

But today the VFW was quiet, and I enjoyed my city. Boonies--not yet.

Short on sunshine? Time for moonshine!

This is when winter gets difficult.

It's not that the cold becomes any more unbearable. Hey, I'd rather walk to the bus stop every morning swaddled in seven layers of coat, scarf, and hat than slog through standing water, tussle with an umbrella, and endure damp toes all day. My feet stay icy all day even when it's dry outside, but at least they're not wet!

No, winter gets hard now because I start to resent it. Sometimes it happens in December, sometimes it's in February, but I seem to always hit a wall of seasonal resentment after I've been teased with the possibility of snow, only to find--once again--that living at 13 feet above sea level does not provide one with the ideal circumstances for good snowfall. I feel inordinately let down when, after a week of freezing and expecting snow, we get a skiff of snow one night that melts before ten o'clock the next morning.

Come to think of it, though, I feel hugely let down even in winters when it does snow a few inches. After I do my merry SNOW! dance, walk around marvelling at the stillness, catch a few flakes on my tongue, throw some snowballs, build a snowman, drink a mug of cocoa, and take pictures...well, then it melts. And that's usually the end of our yearly snow allotment.

Either way, whether I've had snow or just the dream of snow, it feels like the best part of winter is over. Like all that remains between me and spring is a season of grey skies and rain puddles, fifteen-odd weeks of umbrella wrestling, damp toes, and soggy trouser hems. Okay, it's cold outside, it's winter, I get it. Can I please drink a smoothie without shivering yet?
__________________________________________________

What's my solution to all this mind-numbing gloominess? Booze and music, to warm me through and through! My husband's band is playing at the Tractor Tavern tomorrow night, so me and my friends are gonna be havin' us some liquor and doin' us some toe-tappin'. That oughta lick the mid-winter crankiness for at least a couple of hours--at least until the alcohol buzz wears off, I guess.

So if anyone happens to google for Tractor Tavern and Murderer's Accordion (or Murderer's Accordian, as I keep seeing it spelled on their flyers...Steven, I really have to know which it's going to be), come on down at 9. Oh, it's a Thursday and you have to get to bed early? Well, I'm bringing my hot single lady friends--so come for the hotties, stay for the music. Or vice versa. Anything to keep you from whining about your cold feet for a few hours.

Oh, wait, that was me whining about the cold feet. Well, I stand by my advice: liquor and dancing!

I'm not actually advocating alcoholism here, you understand. My dad's an alcoholic, after all. I don't think I've even had any alcoholic beverages in over a month, actually. Let's not mistake the so-called "blogiverse" for the real world, okay? Boozing it up as a response to seasonal depression--funny to write, stupid to do. Just so we're clear. I'm consistently amazed at people's apparently endless capacity to take literally someone's idle online hyperbole.

Mother Nature, I need to have a word with you

And that word is GODDAMMIT, of course!

First you got the yippy weather forecasters all hyped up and excited about the possibility of SNOW! in the greater Seattle area. The local channels started bringing us news updates on the likelihood of SNOW IN OUR AREA! every half-hour. They even named it, of course, because what good is a weather event if you can't have a dorky name for your weather segment--something like THE BIG FREEZE or WINTER BLASTS, complete with animated snowflakes or a shivering cartoon snowman. [Nevermind that our "BIG FREEZE" reflects low temperatures somewhere around twenty-five degrees, which is certainly cold, but hardly a BIG FREEZE. Oh my God, early Wednesday it was 24 degrees, which means we are all certainly going to freeze into solid people-popsicles! Run to Florida while your legs are still unfrozen!!]

Then, after you'd whipped them all into a frenzy of expectation, you dumped several inches of SNOW! on Whatcom county, prompting local news teams to descend on the tiny town of Lynden to record the "ALMOST-TOTAL SHUTDOWN OF CITY HALL" (actual quote). I swear to God, last night one of the weather guys actually reported solemnly, on location, that Lynden was almost completely deserted because of the SNOW!--while cars kept driving calmly along the street just behind him. I wonder how many times he tried to get that shot without any cars in it: "Okay, quick, the light down the street is red, let's do this now! 'This is Kent Brockman reporting live in Lynden, where the snow has already shut down this town--' ah, fuck, where'd that truck come from! Okay, okay, let's try again before that car gets into the shot--I'll talk faster this time--"

Fine, I admit that it's amusing that Seattle's lack of snow forced the local stations, desperate for SOME shots of SNOW! to bolster their failing predictions, to send crews two hours north for some money shots. Nice prank. But the lack of SNOW! for ME to play in is no less disappointing for that hilarity, Mother Nature! I know freezing temperatures are not all that apocalyptic, but they're rare enough here that when it freezes, SNOW! SHOULD FOLLOW. I was really looking forward to my trace-to-two inches, and you held it out toward us promisingly, only to snatch it away in the night.

Winter is far from over. You have a chance to redeem yourself. I encourage you to do so.

Sincerely,

a disappointed resident of Seattle

P.S. Some Seattleites may be thanking you right now for sparing them the necessity of driving in the SNOW!. DO NOT LISTEN TO THEM. What better day for SNOW! could there be than a Saturday? Please ignore them and bring us a good SNOW!fall before March. Thank you.

One "Cool Aunt" Trophy, Coming Right Up!

My sister, her husband, and their nearly-three-year-old daughter, having recently moved to Portland from Alaska, were able to spend Christmas with us for the first time this century. After reaching maturity five years ago they immediately moved to Anchorage to mate and spawn, but now they have made their way back upstream close to their own birthplace, where they will stay only long enough to lay eggs and die. No, wait, my metaphor is collapsing. Help!

Anyway, they live in Portland now, and managed to make the three-hour drive for Christmas. (WE drove for SIX hours! Who's the more devoted offspring NOW, hey? Fie on you, grandchild-begotting sister!) I hadn't seen them in almost a year, and I soon discovered that a nearly-three-year-old niece is even more fun than a nearly-two-year-old niece. She bosses other people around, she talks in complete sentences, she has a budding sense of humor!

Naturally I tried to hog her all weekend, because 1)I haven't seen her in a year, hello! 2)My secret campaign to be her "cool aunt" must now enter its active phase. I bided my time while she lived eight jillion miles north of me because she won't remember much at all of those first three years anyway, right? But NOW, now I can swoop in with the coolness. (Have I mentioned my terrible inabililty to NOT be the best at anything I seriously attempt? It comes with being the oldest child, I'm told. Still, it's pretty chidlish sometimes. Not that I'll be ceasing my quest to be the cool aunt, you understand, but I do acknowledge the pettiness of it.)

I think I renewed the bond we made last Christmas, what with the blowing of bubbles, the opening of presents, and the dancing to Christmas music. Then there was this: Our two families shared my parents' huge camp trailer after all the festivities on Christmas Eve. Just after we got settled and turned the lights out, my niece said plaintively at the other end of the trailer, "I want my Aunt Thel now."

Then of course I had to get up and mop my heart off the floor. What a mess!

Irreverent Humor

December 1997. I was home for Christmas, having just pulled off the slamdance of taking fall quarter finals, going to U2's Popmart concert in Seattle (my roommate's Christmas gift to me, and possibly the coolest gift ever since I'd never have scraped together the fundage to buy tickets for myself), and getting my very first (of twelve) chemotherapy treatment. (It occurs to me that I could have easily made up a little song based on the twelve days of Christmas:
"On the first day of Chemo, my doctor gave to me
A full dose of ABVD!"
I really wish this had occurred to me at the time.)

I was sitting on the couch reading a trashy novel (like I was going to start reading Finnegan's Wake over Christmas break...please!) and my brother walked by, a sulking 12 year old adolescent on his way to the kitchen.

"Hey, bring me some water," I said lazily, still accustomed to being able to boss him around.

He scowled at me. "No."

I was taken off guard by the insubordination from the formerly compliant little fellow, and tried again. "Pleeease? I don't want to get up."

"Get it yourself," he said.

And without even thinking I pulled the dark, inappropriate humor right out of my back pocket where I'd been keeping it hidden (out of respect for the still-shattered emotions of my parents while dealing with their first baby's cancer diagnosis) and threw it onto the table. My parents, seated peacefully next to the Christmas tree, looked up as I wheedled, "C'mon, please? I have cancer!"

My mother gasped. Everyone stared at me. Nobody moved for several heartbeats. Never before nor since have I had the attention of my family focused so completely on me.

"Never mind, I'll get it myself," I muttered.

I still think it was funny.

It was a small solace, then, in the fear and sorrow after hearing that my aunt was diagnosed with breast cancer just before Thanksgiving this year, to hear that when she went to the doctor last week to see how well her mastectomy scar was healing, her first comment was, "Well, I guess that means no more topless dancing for me!"

Maybe I'm not a foundling after all.

Funny Thing

A couple of years ago I abruptly learned not to talk about politics with my father when, during a discussion about rising healthcare costs, he screamed at me (literally...and that was weird in and of itself, since he's usually pretty quiet) that I was wrong to question our healthcare system, that socialist countries have much worse health care than we do--specifically, because of all the regulation. "Canadians are lining up to come here for their healthcare, because they can't afford to jump through all the hoops up there!*" he roared, and left the room before I could reply.

Over Thanksgiving weekend this year I had a headache, and my dad offered me some aspirin. I'd already taken a Tylenol with codeine that I purchased over the counter last time I was in Canada, and said so.

"Huh," he said, shaking his head; "'Course it's probably from Turkey or somewhere; who knows what's really in it."

Yeah. 'Cause if there's one thing we know about Canadian pharmacies, it's their complete lack of oversight and regulation. Right, Dad?

*Which totally explains the busloads of people heading north to obtain healthcare.

Waiting for the Dawn

Take this soul, stranded in some skin and bones--
Take this soul and make it sing. *

November 26, 1997. The day before Thanksgiving. I am alone in my dorm room, sitting on the floor in an empty space surrounded by stacks of books and papers. I rest the old beige telephone on my lap and dial the surgeon's office carefully.

Hello, I'm calling for Dr. La Mancha? Yes, I can hold. Hi, yes, I'm still here. I'm calling for the results of my biopsy last Friday. Yes, he said he'd call me on Monday, but I didn't hear from him then, and he hasn't returned any of my messages...yes, I can hold. Hi, yes, here I am.

Dr. La Mancha is out of the office for the week. Another doctor is on the phone. Well, it is lymphoma; nodular sclerosing Hodgkin's Disease in fact, he says. Looks like stage 2A. You'll probably receive the standard treatment regimen--chemotherapy, probably four cycles or so. ABVD, I imagine, followed by several weeks of radiation therapy. We'll refer you over to Dr. Kaplan at the Tumor Institute, and you can set up an appointment with him next week or the week after. Okay? Okay.

My roommate has entered the room during this brief conversation. She glances at me and her face lights up. "I knew it would be okay!" she whispers, grinning. I realize my face is frozen in the polite smile I put on when the doctor began to speak, and quickly shake my head at her, relaxing my grimace into a frown. She bites her lip and sits down on her bed while I mechanically take notes as the doctor finishes. Nodular sclerosing Hodgkins 2a, I write. Chemo. ABVD. Radiation. Kaplan.

I still have that slip of paper in a scrapbook in my closet. "Chemo" is underlined twice.

The Automatic Bravery of a Cancer Patient, Exhibit A: My roommate being a nursing student, she all but pulls me to the nursing building to sit down and ask questions of her favorite nursing professor. The professor answers cautiously when I ask about the possibility of staying in school while I receive treatment, but admits it might be an option.

I am eighteen and have been in Seattle for barely one year. I stay in control of myself when the nursing professor is speaking, but every time I think about moving back home I start crying again. It seems childish to be more upset about this than I am about having cancer, I realize, but the tears keep coming.

I don't want to tell my parents this news. I imagine my mother sobbing. Oh, hell, will my father cry? Will they insist that I move home? What if I just don't tell them until after Thanksgiving?

But they already know about the biopsy, so they'll be waiting to hear something. And I'm a terrible liar. So I try the next best thing: I ask the nursing professor if she can call my parents to tell them, while my roommate and I are in the midst of our ten-hour drive home. I convince myself that this is a great idea--my parents can have a day to absorb the shock before I have to deal with their emotions, and the professor can answer the questions they will have.

Yes, I tell myself. This is a great idea. And she does it, too, calls them while I am on the freeway, inaccessible in the slow traffic jam that always oozes down I-5 the night before Thanksgiving.

I'm still a little ashamed of being that cowardly, I say.

Ah, you say, shrugging a little; but it was seven years ago, after all. You were just a kid.

I'm glad it's been seven years. It's not a cheerful anniversary, but I mark it every year.

Is it morbid that I can remember this date more easily than the date of my final radiation, my "remission date?"



*Yahweh, by U2, from "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb"

Wee meats

My husband and I had dinner at a Mexican restaurant last weekend. I ordered chicken carnitas, which prompted my husband and I to a discussion about the meaning of the word "carnitas." I thought it just meant "little meats," but he was certain it meant pork, and was bothered by the idea of my chicken-pork blended meat meal.

Since neither of us speaks Spanish all that well anymore, I thought I'd settle the disagreement with a peek in the trusty Spanish-English dictionary when we got home. But no entry for "carnitas" was to be found. Well, I thought, I'll bet one of those crazy online translators can help out. So I went to the dictionary.com Spanish to English translator and typed in "Yo quiero carnitas."

And the ever-helpful dictionary.com translated it into English for me:

"I want carnitas."

Pointy Little Timers

This month marked the third full year I've been at my job.

That might not sound like much to some of you. Some members of my family have had things in their freezer for longer than that. My 77-year-old grandma, for instance, keeps an enormous chest freezer in her garage. Two years ago it broke down just before Thanksgiving, allowing the gathered family to celebrate our bounty by throwing it all away. My mother and my aunt established themselves at the freezer to excavate the trove of food; the rest of us hovered nearby. Grandma had meticulously written the date on each item when she put it in the freezer, making it an enormous popsicle of a time capsule.

Grandma wouldn't let us throw out the newer frozen foods, so she got her neighbors Bob and Jo to clear out space in their own garage freezer to temporarily store her goodies. Then my siblings and I lined up with garbage bags to distribute the food. First my mom or aunt would exclaim over the item--"Chili, 2000!"

"Enchiladas, Christmas 1999!"

"Oh my god--a whole gallon of potato soup from 1997! And it's split down the side!"

Then, with a nod or a sigh from Grandma, one of us would either empty the contents into the garbage bag and toss the empty container into a recycling bag, or put the entire thing into the "save" bag. The "save" bag swelled to surprisingly large proportions but we lugged it down to Bob and Jo's garage anyway, safely restoring those bricks of soup and bread to zero degrees and ensuring that after Grandma replaced her freezer they could return to live for many more years in the comfort of her garage.

Anyway, I've been at my job for three years, which is a long time for me as a recent college graduate. Er, for certain values of the word "recent," that is. It was my first "real" job after school, anyway. I was hired there after several months of unemployment in the fall of 2001, months of financial woe mitigated only by working occasional shifts at the bookstore and cobbling together a few babysitting jobs. So to get that call, after an interview I thought I bombed (Boss: "And what are you interested in down the road?" Me: "Well, after the work I did with Americorps, I'm pretty interested in obtaining my teaching certification and working more directly in the field of education." Boss: "Oh...well, we're hoping to find someone who will be staying here more long-term..." Me: "D'oh! Backtrack backtrack backtrack..."), offering me a full-time permanent position with a SALARY and BENEFITS! --well, that was a thrill. I felt like a real adult for the first time. (I even went out and bought myself a comfy chair with my first paycheck--my first furniture purchase!--just to cement my adulthood.)

It was also sobering, though. A little too open-ended. I told myself I'd work there for at least two years, and then I'd re-evaluate my options. Three years ago when I first opened the drawer of the desk I'd be using, I found an assortment of office supplies, including one of those 1,000-count boxes of staples. Only one strip of staples had been used. I wondered cheerfully how many years it must have sat in that desk, through how many former tenants of my position. This box of staples will be here long after I'm gone, I thought.

Yesterday my stapler ran out of staples. I opened my trusty little box, and pulled out the
last
strip
of
staples.

That's right: I've used a thousand staples in the last three years. The box that seemed set to outlast me--empty, all its staples used up.

I didn't make much of it at the time. I refilled my stapler and tossed the empty box into the recycling bin.

Still, it's a bit of a marker. I went through an entire 1,000-count box of staples, and counting--and I'm still in the same holding pattern. Last year when I reached my two-year mark I did start looking around to see what new direction might be worth pursuing. The direction I found (north) didn't work out after all, so I stayed on, and don't regret it a bit. I like my job and my coworkers immensely. I could see myself staying on there for another three years or more and enjoying it thoroughly.

But now the busy season is over, I have a new box of staples, and it's time to analyze my path. I want it to be a conscious decision, and not find myself staring at another empty box of staples in three years, wondering where they all went.