I'll Drink To That

My mother drank.

She was—or tried to be—a secret drunk. 

At least, she kept the DRINKING secret.  The drunkenness, not so much.  She must have known that we understood how she got the way she got, every night when she came home from work.  But she just could not be frank or honest that she drank, about how much she drank, or about how and/or why she NEEDED to drink. 

She was ashamed of it.  But she didn’t stop.  She couldn’t stop. 

And Dad, who could have helped her stop, helped her drink instead.  Made sure that there was booze in the house so she wouldn’t have to go out in the car to get it.  He thought he had it under control.  As if making sure she didn’t kill herself or anyone else out on the streets after having power-chugged two or three canned cocktails in the parking lot at the liquor store was the only and most important aspect of having her drinking “under control.’

So, my mother spent much of my formative years in the bag.  And I spent much of that time praying that the few friends or acquaintances I had would never see her in that condition. 

I suppose I have made peace with that aspect of my childhood.  I don’t hate my mother for ruining my teenage years.  I was a pretty fucked up kid, independent of any of that (I think…) She did the best she could with what she had, and so did Dad.  Do I wish that they had made different choices?  Yes…sometimes I do.  But it was what it was, and there were happy times in spite of and in between all that. 

So why am I thinking about this today?

Because, now I’m over sixty myself, and it takes a half-hour for me to iron out all the kinks and get fully mobile every morning.  And, with the seasonality of my “career,” I spend many of the darkest, coldest, gloomiest days of the year alone with my thoughts…and that is NEVER good.  So lately I have got to thinking about Mom’s drinking.  It was self-medication, of course.  She had severe arthritis in her neck, and it fucked with every aspect of her body.  AND—and this is her legacy to me, my sisters, my nieces—she had severe anxiety.  Anxiety that she could never share with anyone, because she didn’t want anyone to throw a net over her head and clap her in the loony bin.  The very same kind of anxiety that I grapple with.  Every. Single. Day.

So….I understand, more clearly than I ever have in my entire life, why my mother drank.

At those times when I just want to bash my own head in with a hammer, just to stop the ever-churning circle of anxious thoughts from speeding around and around and around in my head, I fully understand being willing to do anything you can to SHUT THEM UP.         

And that being drunk most of the time was probably one of the more innocuous ways to deal with the issue.

Unfortunately, I cannot drink like that.  My stomach just won’t let me.  My mother’s insides must have been made out of cast iron.  She got loaded every night, but I don’t think she ever got sick from it.  I never saw her with a hangover.  I can drink a couple of glasses of wine, and that’s it.  Any more than that and it just goes down like battery acid.  And if I do manage to choke down enough to cop a good buzz, I feel like crap most of the next day.  Who needs that on top of the crippling anxiety you’re drinking to get rid of?

This isn’t exactly a heart-warming holiday reminiscence, is it?  The fact is, holidays were the times when my mother’s drinking was the worst.  She just couldn’t handle the “stress” of cleaning up the house and having people over…not without a good snort or two under her belt.  So it is, like it or not, one of the memories that comes to mind (haunt?) when the holidays roll around.

Memories….  They’re not ALL good and happy, are they?  But they are what they are.  They don’t keep me from thinking fondly of the Christmases when we were all together, before the really SERIOUS losses of life had begun to whittle away at our numbers around the table.  Mom’s slightly altered condition just became part of the fabric of our lives.

I’d take those days, now, over sitting here at my lonely keyboard, typing out a journal entry, trying to give my brain a productive distraction…

Why Is This Man Still President?

Happy (Not) Holidays

Couldn't really believe this when I saw it online the other day...on NPR, yet:

IS THERE A HOLIDAY TRADITION YOU REALLY HATE?  TELL US!

For all the recent hype about journalists/the media being "the guardians," perhaps a piece like this more accurately portrays the mission of today's media.  Even an outlet like NPR--which is supposed to be above the fray--has been poisoned by our national malaise...and so, has chosen to add a pinch of poison of their own. 

Why not throw just a dash more hate and negativity out there...our gift to our listeners this holiday season!  

Shame on you, NPR.  Shame on ALL our media.  We're supposed to be better than this.

If you would, with your last breath, strenuously object to being labeled, "enemies of the people..." 

...don't act like it.    

Ch-ch-ch-Changes

By next spring, lord willing and the creek don’t rise, our lives will have taken a definite turn.  In the works at this moment is a deal for a house in Eugene, 1.4 miles away from the family I fled in 2001, to this home-in-exile, in the godforsaken wilds of the Portland exurbs. 

By the time we shake the dust of Scappoose off our shoes and leave it well behind, we will have lived here for almost 18 years.  Long enough to have borne and raised a child to almost adulthood…scary thought.  I wonder…would we have been accepted into the community any more readily if we HAD done that?  Because it certainly didn’t welcome us as citizens and business owners.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  Though I love the geography of the area where we’ve lived for almost 2 decades, the town and the people in it thoroughly rejected us, and I, for one, have hated them right back.

As I look over our tenure here, I realize that there have been few moments of true happiness in this place.  Truthfully, I don’t know if that’s just me…I wonder if I have the capacity to be truly happy anywhere.  But there have been challenges.  There was the disastrous five years of entrepreneurship, and the several years of recovery afterward…the damage done to a marriage that, if I’m honest, was already headed for rocky shores when we crashed it into the café.  In the end, we’ve built nothing here, save a tenuous peace between two partners whose lives continue to creep inexorably apart from one another.

The result has been, for me, an eighteen-year exercise in learning to be alone.  And I have learned some skills in that direction.  I’ve also experienced the pitfalls.  Chiefly, I’ve learned that it’s hard to be alone but not free; to have no one who is really engaged or interested in what you do, but still have obligations to people to whom you are legally or emotionally tied…or both. 

I’ve spent the past seven years trying to stay out of my spouse’s way and find pursuits that interested me.  Living out here in the back of beyond has not been helpful…if I had lived closer to a larger and more diverse community, I might have had more success building a busy and engaging life for myself.  I don’t know.  All I know is that I have been incredibly lonely, 120 miles away from my family and what I consider my “home” in Eugene.  In 2003, I fell into an internet community that went a long way toward easing the loneliness and making me feel valued and engaged, but it  also dissolved…long ago, in fact.  I’ve been on my own for every bit of ten years, tilting at…whatever. 

Instinctively, I’m retreating back to the bosom of my family for comfort and connection.  Since they are the reason I left my home in Eugene, I’m not completely convinced that, two decades later, they will be the source of what I’m looking for…but it feels right.  If nothing else, I’ll be close to a larger community of people more like myself—liberal, educated, thoughtful and with a world view beyond the end of their noses.  So I should be able to find a place of comfort and support, should my family poop out in that capacity (which I am confident it will.)

If all goes as planned we will close on this house…

…on January 10, 2019.  It is meant to be the place where we’ll spend our retirement…the alternative to a cardboard box under an overpass.  It’s really a nice little home, in a nice little neighborhood.  Not exactly what I had hoped for as my ideal retirement cottage. I had envisioned a little house out in the country, with a pond or creek, and birds and animals to enjoy…but the husband was not so much into that. 

So, once again, my dream has been put on a back burner…no, thrown in the firebox and reduced to ashes, since we won’t be moving again.  And I can live with that, I think.  As long as I can have a place of peace and comfort as a base of operations, I should be able to sally forth on (solitary) adventures when I choose.  And the family will at least be closer than 120 miles away.  I think that will be a good thing, too.  Though you never know. 

It’s unknown whether the husband will be inclined to throw in his lot with me at this point, or remain faithful to his number one priority—his job.  It’s worth noting that this whole process was initiated by HIM, precipitated partly by his dissatisfaction with how his employer has chosen to treat him over the past several years.  He’s toying with the concept of “Fuck them…I have a life.”  But hasn’t really brought that concept into his heart and nurtured it.  I’d like to think that it’s finally dawning on him that yanking oneself out of bed at 5:30 AM five days a week and dragging one’s ass to a job that makes one frustrated and miserable might not be a good way to spend the first decade of one’s “golden years.”  But I’m painfully aware that all they would have to do is crook their little finger and give him some tiny hint that he might actually be appreciated, and he would be bound to them for life.   

Yes, this is the same employer that was the catalyst for “our” foray into restaurant ownership all those years ago, at another time when the frustration and futility of the job had begun to wear on him.  The restaurant was to be “our” ticket to the freedom and independence of self-employment…but it was never to be.  Twelve years on, he’s still at the same job, still letting it and his hyper-loyalty to it rule his (our) life.  So I am not inclined to think he’s had some kind of epiphany about his relationship to the job and life in general.  He’s nothing if not a creature of completely ingrained habit; that he might voluntarily give up habits of 24 years at the job is almost beyond realistic consideration.  

But, you know, I’ve made my peace with that.  If he chooses to continue working in Portland, we’ll get him an apartment close to work and he can have at it.  Truthfully, our relationship works better, these days, when we’re apart.  Which was one reason I established my own living quarters at our catering kitchen (which I’m not so sure I want to give up, even if we ARE going to have a home a short drive away from my “work.”)  We might just be happiest, for the next three years until he can qualify for Medicare, if we live mostly apart and see each other on weekends.  If, indeed, his job lasts that long…as the company is, once again, hanging by an economic thread.  But the separation would most likely be a positive rather than a negative.  I honestly have no idea what we would do if we had to live together 24/7/365…but I suspect it wouldn’t be pretty.

So this last holiday season in Scappoose, and the next couple of months, should be…interesting.

Nothing New

The internet is in a twist brought on by the release of Trump’s thoughts on Saudi Arabia and the Khashoggi murder.

No doubt it is a clumsy, childish, and ill-reasoned argument for avoiding losing Saudi Arabia as a “great ally.”  But IMO it says more about Trumps’s woeful ignorance when it comes to international relations than it does about any corrupt relationship Trump himself might have with Saudi royalty. 

Let’s “never forget” that the Bush Administration gave Saudi Arabia a spotless pass on 9/11, even though 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals, including Bin Laden himself.  Bush’s team, with its bottomless font of experience in matters of international relations involving oil, skillfully and patiently wove the narrative so that it directed the trail immediately away from Saudi Arabia.  At the time, even the American press didn’t mount a consistent and coherent call for the Saudis to be held accountable for the attack.  

The Bush team spent their time and news cycles sowing seeds of nationalism, fear, and vengeance among the general population. After a decent interval, during which the ADD American public could be counted upon to forget the finer details of the attack—like, who actually WAS responsible for it—Bush and his team pushed the narrative in a direction that served their own purpose, which was to establish a democratic ally (puppet) in the oil-rich Middle East. First, attack Afghanistan, and then swing the sword to Saddam Hussein and Iraq—which was their target all along.

We all know how THAT turned out.  But the Bush Administration did have inarguable success directing the narrative exactly where they wanted it to go, whipping the majority of Americans into a bloodlust that would grant Bush carte blanche to carry out any measures he claimed would “keep Americans safe.”

And Trump? Trump has merely taken the baton of GOP protectionist capitulation to Saudi Arabia that has existed for decades.  But he is handling it in true Trump fashion: awkwardly, ignorantly, impatiently…looking every bit the dictator-wannabe in the process, and not really giving a shit.

Perhaps Trump is doing America a service, in this case. He’s displaying in a stark, unvarnished way how the US conducts covert policy on the international stage with respect to oil. No subtlety, so sugar-coating, no misdirection.  Just “Here it is, deal with it.”  He’s showing it for the ugly, dishonest business it is…and we don’t like it much, do we?

So maybe, in future, we’ll be a little less likely to swallow the kind of subtle brainwashing and skillful narrative weaving to which we have been so vulnerable up till now?

Nah.

Help...!

Deja Vu All Over Again

Getting a little deja vu going on in my life, and I'm not sure I like it.  Two years ago, we planned a vacation to Canada that began just after the election.  We joked  that if Trump won, maybe we wouldn't come back.  He did, and we did...but often find myself wishing we hadn't.

This week, we've planned a vacation that once again commences two days after the election.  We're only going north to Washington, so there's no joking about not coming back if the election doesn't result in a true about-face for our national character.

But, honestly, if we don't take back our beautiful country next week, I don't know what I'll do.  I've been angry, bereft, incredulous and depressed since November 2016. I can't think what condition I'll be in if I have to endure another two years--or, god forbid, MORE--of the horrific dismantling of everything good, true, moral and laudable about our crumbling nation.  

I boldly call upon the Creator of All Things to bless us with light, healing, and a return to sanity in the coming election.  We are so desperate for these things.

I Hate What We've Become

We just bought a used vehicle after two months of wading through the cesspool that is the "used car" culture. 

I don't think I could possibly shower enough to rid myself of the stench of that experience.  

Now we are trying to purchase a home to retire in, and it looks like the home-buying culture is permeated with exactly the same sewage.  

I am SO not going to enjoy wading through shit again so soon...

💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩

Sad but True

Will Saudi Arabia Buy Another Pass?

Now it seems that Saudi agents murdered a journalist at the Saudi consulate in Turkey.  Jamal Khashoggi was a voice for Saudi Progessives...and we all know how much the Saudi elite revere progressive politics.  Khashoggi had fled Saudi Arabia in 2017, in fear for his life.

The Saudis naturally lied about what happened to Khashoggi, claiming he left the Consulate in Turkey through a rear entrance.  Their bullshit has since been called out, and now Saudi leaders are rushing to disavow any knowledge of what might have befallen Khashoggi at the hands of "rogue agents."

I personally am sick to death of Saudi Arabia getting away with everything under the sun--from murder to terrorism to bribery to blackmail to extreme misogyny--because it happens to sit upon a mother lode of oil.  

All the more reason for alternative sources of energy to be brought online as quickly as possible...  Wouldn't we all like to see that pack of jackals become completely irrelevant when the world no longer clamors to buy what they're selling?  

In the Wake of a Victory for Injustice

Sigh!

Karma at its Best

Taking a Break

I have been taking a break from FB.  I've decided not to post, like or comment on anything but photos, for now.  Facebook is not a place one goes to interact positively any more...it's rife with political squabbles even among "friends."  I cannot go there to be snarked at by my internet friends, whom I value probably way more than I should.  After all, I don't really know these people, do I...even though I have been communicating with many of them for the greater portion of the last 15 years.  And they don't know me. So what's the point?

Facebook is valuable as a way to keep tabs on distant old friends and family members.  But of the 47 Facebook "friends" to which I lay claim, only about a dozen are folks that have been/would be in my life outside of the internet.  And when it comes to internet "friends," social media giveth, and social media taketh away.

So I have slowly been going through my friends list and weeding out the people I have no business having little windows into their personal lives--like former employees.  They don't actually interact with me any more...I feel like some kind of creepy voyeur being interested in their lives seven years past their real-life association with me.  And it's not as if these young people were my "friends" when we were in each others' real lives.  So what the fuck am I doing peeping into their personal business now?  It's a little sick, really.

Looming in the background is the task of terminating my FB association with the last few of my internet "friends" from the old AOL j-land.  These are people with whom I once shared myself on a level which I have not before nor since shared with anyone...not my family, not my husband.  But that was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...  I have to come to accept that everyone has moved on from that place.  And so I must, too.  But it's just so hard to walk away.

As I've been ticking away at this post, it dawned on me that my "blog-a-versary" was 2 days ago.  

Fifteen years.  

Fifteen years I've carried on this love/hate relationship with the internet, its gifts and its poisons.

I really don't know how to comment on that, just now. 

Yes. Just About Anything.

Saw this on Facebook this morning:

The answer is:  Yes.  

And not for the ragged bellbottoms, the braless tank tops, the muscle cars, or Led Zeppelin.

But I would do just about anything to go back...to a time in our nation's history when a president was exposed as a criminal and actually had to pay the price.  

When the press was more likely to report truth than lies.  

When an investigative report exposing the foibles of the POTUS was judged credible, and acted upon accordingly.

The 70's weren't ALL good.  But I'd trade NOW for just about any other time in our national history.

We have seriously lost our way, and it doesn't look good for us ever finding it again.      

This Says Everything

This is a screenshot of a FB meme that just blew me away.  Sometimes, somebody, somewhere...gets it right.

Please?

Even Reagan Understood THIS

I hated Ronald Reagan.

He was the first of a run of Republican presidents to whom I could not even stand to listen when he spoke.  His demeanor and cadence spoke of a man who had limited knowledge and insight of the position to which he had been elected; of a man who got where he was and "led" the country by pandering to the emotions and ignorance of the cross section of Americans who would vote for whoever their pastor or their boss or their neighbor told them to vote for.  (In fact, the pastor of the church I attended at the time told us to go to the polls on Tuesday and "vote for the Ronald Reagan of your choice."  From the pulpit.)  I was a Christian at the time, and I remember additionally hating Reagan because of his habit of embracing Christian-friendly policies like pro-lifism during his campaigns, and dropping them like the political hot rock they were as soon as he won the election.

But as stupid and pandering as Reagan was, he nevertheless had a shrewd understanding of American politics.  In the 1980's, American workers still had political power and worth, and Social Security was a sacred cow.  So Reagan knew better than to piss off that large voting bloc by demonizing Social Security, regardless of pressure from right-wing business interests to do so.

Big business and the GOP have been set upon destroying Social Security--along with any and every other provision of Roosevelt's everyman-friendly New Deal--from the day of its inception.  It has taken them 70 years, but they have finally driven Social Security to the brink of extinction through a decdades-long campaign of lies, chicanery and theft.

Let's be clear, friends:  The GOP's 70-year-long campaign against Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit, or some kind of moral objections to "entitlements," or indeed, ANY laudable or "fiscally responsible" policy.  Republicans have been anti-Social Security since its inception because it's a TAX that businesses must pay.  If you have employees, you pay Social Security TAX for them; you can't deduct or finagle or red-tape or off-shore your way around it. 

And American businesses don't think they should have to pay ANY tax.  EVER.

The GOP is now going about the business of monkeying with the benefit process of Social Security.  The House is proposing changes that will greatly reduce the benefits while exponentially complicating the application process and red-tape involved with accessing the benefit.  With the intended end result, I'm sure, that in ten years, maybe less, Social Security will be of so little value that people will no longer care if it goes away.

And that will be that.

And my husband and I will be spending our "Golden Years" living in a cardboard box under an overpass.   
          

We Will Miss You, Black Cat!

Shortly after moving to this neighborhood 17 years ago, we became aware of two black cats who seemed to be the most ubiquitous residents of the area: one scruffy, long-haired, bad-ass looking tom; and one round-bellied, smooth-haired, comfort-seeking guy who we thought at first was a female, and then realized he was a neutered male.  Every time we looked out a window or took a stroll around the neighborhood, one or the other of these two was in evidence. We dubbed them “Book” and “End.”  Bookends. 

“End” was never a friendly sort, and though he would hang around the yard and mark his territory all over my bushes, fences and doors, he would slink away from any chance encounter with humans.  I never could entice him to hang around long enough to start a relationship.

“Book,” on the other hand, seemed to be an affable sort.  He would stay around the yard…sleep in the shed or the greenhouse, consume food I put out for him.  He was not OUR cat for a good long while…but he was around, so we looked after him when we could.  And we learned his story:  A neighbor across the street had moved away and left him behind, probably just after we moved here in 2001.  He had to learn to fend for himself…and he did.  It was a while before we understood how WELL he had learned.

As he grew older and more in need of the comforts of life, we made him a home in our greenhouse.  We installed a kitty door, which we would shut and lock at night to keep him inside and safe from predators.  We kind of believed he had become “our” greenhouse cat.  But he maintained the disconcerting habit of disappearing for days or a week, then showing up back on the greenhouse deck one night as if nothing had happened, waiting for his meal. 

Eventually, we learned that “our” Book was called “Sunny” by the neighbors around the corner; and who knows how many other names by other neighbors who fed, petted and protected him.  He was the neighborhood cat…the Cat About Town.  Everybody loved him.  He loved everybody.

He loved laps.  I would go out to sit on my “coffee deck” in the morning, let the cat out, and he would climb up into my lap for a “pet session.”  This was the morning ritual.  He would get rather miffed if I went out of town or for some other reason didn’t have time to sit with him.

He loved catmint.  In my now defunct fountain garden, I would plant catmint for him every year.  He actually loved one or two of those plants to death.

He loved fried chicken.  We would go out to our favorite local café once a week or so, and I would squirrel a chicken strip into my purse to bring home just for him.  I’ll never forget the time I left my purse sitting on the front porch step for a moment, and looked up to see Bookie trotting away from the scene with a fist-sized white prize in his mouth…  “What the hell has he got…OH!  The chicken!”  Well…it was for him, and he knew it.  I did track him down and take the napkin off it, though.

As he got older and more frail, we moved him into our garage.  Eventually, when he got quite old, he didn’t go outside at all anymore.  He was stiff and sore from old outside-cat injuries, and we didn’t think he could save himself from cars or nasty neighbors or coyotes or mean dogs.  He slept in the garage and spent his days sunning in front of the patio doors. 

About 18 months ago, he became very ill, developed such terrible diarrhea that he was nearly incontinent, lost a ton of weight…basically looked like he was done with life.  We knew he was already quite old—had to be at least 14 or 15, which is amazingly old for a cat who had spent most of his life outdoors.  So…we took him to the vet with the idea of helping him on his way to the Next Thing.  But, evidently, it wasn’t his time. 

Instead of saying goodbye, we came home with a couple of vials of last-ditch medicines to try to get his intestinal issues under control. 

Lo and behold, they worked.

We fed him the special food and medicated him daily…with an eye toward hopefully giving him a couple more months.  Long enough for him to see one more spring.  He surprised us all by hanging in long enough to see 2 more springs.  We were able to allow him a peaceful and comfortable old age, King of the Garage, Lap-Sitter Extraordinaire.

Two weeks ago, his old heart began to fail him.  He stopped eating.  His lungs and abdomen began to fill with fluid.  At last, it was his time. 

We said goodbye to him Saturday morning.

I don’t know why the tears keep coming.  He was old.  He had a decent, long life.  We helped as much as we could.

I told a friend that I don’t believe in that Rainbow Bridge stuff.  I don’t believe that there are animal spirits who are “assigned” to be eternal pets of human spirits.  What I do believe is that there are spirits that are eternally connected, who meet again and again as they return to the Creator and are released to new adventures.  Bookie is out there among the stars, now…  Or he could already be somewhere where we will be together again.

I told the same friend:  We have cohabited with a parade of over twenty cats and four dogs over our nearly 42 years of marriage.  The thing we trade for their unconditional affection is that they are bound to leave this life long before we do. 

We lose a loved one every couple of years.  You learn to accept it, but it never gets easier.

We will miss you, Bookie. 

Until we meet again.