Entries are now out of order

Well - I have now got all my old blogs from my old blog transferred to this one minus the pictures. And blogspot will not let me add any more pictures here. What am I supposed to do?! If you really want to see them, the old pictures can still be seen in the archives section of the old blog at www.jeremysewell.com/cindy. I had to move because my entries just up and disappered one day. But I am thankful to Jeremy for setting up my first blog.

Now We See Through a Class Dankly

May 01, 2006

We had another unexpected extension of the ski season this Saturday, overlapping the opening of yard sale season. Sunny meltdown conditions exposed rushing rivulets and rocks, the torso of the ski lift operator and the top of my head. I skied in the sun, hatless and happy, over a million snow cones, assumed unflavored. I didn't taste any of them in spite of a few knee-twisting falls and an upward crawl to retrieve a lost ski.
We left the mountains in time to get to an open house, at the university I'm considering, that was to begin at 2 PM. When we got back to the valley it was dark and cold. Up to last week I would have said it was dank and left it at that. But being in second grade changed all that. The teacher was asking the kids for "ank" words. When the kids at my table ran out of ideas I would whisper the names of some of the Ank family I'm familiar with, like Hank and dank.
"Dank," volunteered the young man, one eye out for the teacher's approval, one eye speculating on me dubiously.
"Dank?" questioned the teacher, "I'm not sure that's a word."
"Yes, it means cold and dark," I advocated, while wondering if I was going to get in trouble for cheating.
We talked about dank that night at dinner. We looked it up in the dictionary. Like I was saying, the valley was dark and cold and dank. I drove through the dankness to the open house. It was OVER at two. That's the kind of behaviour that may automatically make me ineligible for admission.


Comments (1) I love the title! This was poetic and funny. Thanks for sharing it with us. I'm going to have to look dank up myself, now, for a refresher.
Posted by: Calamity Jane at May 1, 2006 06:12 AM

Male Pattern Boldness

May 04, 2006

Have you seen the movie, "March of the Penguins," the documentary of the love and the anguish of the penguin way? They choose a mate for life, but how do they decide? Is it wealth? They have none. Looks? They're all the same. Leadership? None stands out above the others. Proximity? They waddle right past one to a seemingly same other on the far side of the penguin pack. What exactly are the females looking for? Size of the feet? Which penguin male can best cradle an egg on its toes? Or maybe it's the voice, since after a harsh winter's separation, that's how couples distinguish each other from the crowd.

A pair of young male Mormons greeted me on the sidewalk the other day. They were new to Duvall –"small town, real life" – having emigrated from Utah, a dry place where moss does not corrupt, four days ago. Both were wearing white shirts and black pants. One was concerned that he had cow manure on his black shoes since they had been shoveling in missionary service earlier that day. One was from Penguich, a fact he liked to tell because it was fun to say its name. One was named Elder Young and the other, Elder Jones, Jr.

I congratulated them on already finding one of our main attractions, the cow. As a welcoming gesture, I pointed out a good walking trail built along an old railroad bed. The trail leads to downtown Duvall, and I invited them to drop by our church's community space there. It's like a Starbucks without the Starbucks, though we will be getting a Starbucks soon. They didn't think they'd been to downtown Duvall yet, but I suspect that they might have seen it from their apartment window. I told them also of attractions in the neighboring town of Woodinville, like Target, a movie theater and Barnes and Noble. Come to think of it, I told them a pair of young Mormon males lives in that town in the apartment below my nephew's. Their names are Elder, too!

How coincidental that they both have the same unusual first name, these two "Elders" from Utah, rooming together, converged in Duvall. And two more in the next town. What are the odds of that happening? An older woman like myself notices these things.

It reminded me of my daughter's first roommate at college. No, they didn't have the same first name, but they were about the same size, they had the same long light brown tendrils of hair, and the same blue eyes. They both had wardrobes gleaned from thrift shops and were members of the same Celtic music group. Students sometimes mistook them for each other on campus. Even though one was from the East Coast and one was from the West Coast, one studied Slavic languages and the other Romance, their voices sounded alike.

"Allo!" they answered the phone. Boyfriends would call and get confused. I would dread calling my own child, because I couldn't be sure who answered the phone. How could I ask to speak with my daughter if I was already speaking to my daughter? A penguin mother could do better.

I asked the two young men if they had seen the movie about the life of those funny black and white birds? They could do a documentary of their own journey and call it March of the Penguichers.

Posted by cindy on May 4th 2006 at 05:45 PM

Comments
Even the second time through weeks later, you made me laugh at "a penguin mother could do better."
Posted by: john at June 25, 2006 04:43 PM

From The Solace of Leaving Early

A Milano Book Club Selection
From The Solace of Leaving Early by Haven Kimmel
Amos stared out his study window at the clear night. The pups had quieted down. He remembered (tonight and often) one of the most important classes he took as an undergraduate English major, British Literature: Beowulf to Pope. He hated it at first, hated Beowulf, Chaucer, Sir Gawain, the Faerie Queene, all of it, really, even though the professor, Dr. Hempel was gifted and passionate and funny. Then they read Marlowe's Faustus, and there was something from the beginning so perfectly...what was it? When they finished the play, the professor asked the class, "What was Faustus's real sin? Where did he really fall?" And there had been the standard answerss: He ws greedy. He desired power, knowledge. He was lustful and blasphemous. Dr. Hempel agreed that Faustus had been all those things, but that Marlowe had very carefully planted a clue in the first scene in the play; he had revealed the trap from the beginning.In the text, Faustus is reading the vulgate of Saint Jerome, and comes to Romans 6:23: "The wages of sin is death," he quotes, and stops right there, despairing, without turning the page. Dr. Hempel looked out at the class. "You're all good Christians, right? What's the rest of the verse? What would Faustus have seen if he'd turned the page?" There had been no answer. "'For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.' Don't you understand? Faustus was eternally damned because he was a bad reader."

Posted by cindy at 11:02 PM, May 11, 2006

Cause for Gasping

Three things amaze me: when a seed sprouts, when a baby is born and when I find a book I'm looking for in the library.
No, four: when the insurance statement reads,"Amount you're responsible for: $.00."

posted May 17, 2006

Tijuana at Night

Tijuana at night.
Posted by cindy at July 7, 2005 at 04:06 AM

Picture to be recovered at some future time. View at www.jeremysewell.com/cindy

The Wrong Answer

I folded laundry to Regis and Kelly today. Their guest was an actor who had portrayed Truman Capote as he wrote and researched his book, “In Cold Blood.” I remembered reading that in 5th or 6th grade and writing a plot driven book report. I concluded that the book was good. My teacher was horrified. She thought that the book was violent and an awful thing for a fifth grader to be reading. I realized then, that I could have an opinion about books. Up to that point I had thought that all things “school” were supposed to be good and therefore accepted that they were good. But school and school accessories were not all knowing, all wise, all powerful, all good. School was not the same entity as God. I got a lot out of fifth grade.

Posted by cindy at November 2, 2005 04:03 AM

The Perfect Present

Last week I mailed my daughter a present to arrive on her birthday, today. It did! I found it a month ago at a thrift store. It was a children's Japanese version of Aesop's Fables with bright Japanese graphics. Since Amity audits a Japanese class while she is getting her master's degree in French translation, I thought she would really enjoy this book. A gift so finely tuned to its recipient for a quarter just made me feel really clever. So I called her on my cell to wish her a "Happy Birthday," today, and she had just received her package. Should she open it? she asked.
"Oh yes, do!" I replied my excitement mounting. And then I realized that it might be the wrong level of Japanese. It might be Kanji or Katakana or Hiragana, thereagana, something entirely unintelligible to Amity.
"Can you read it? "I ask with mounting anxiety. "Is it the right level of Japanese?"
"It's Korean. "

Posted by cindy at February 1, 2006 06:29 PM
Comments
Hahahaha awwwww that was still an amazing find! I guess she'll just have to learn another language :-D
Posted by: Jeremy at February 2, 2006 11:26 PM
Dork
Posted by: Sharon at February 16, 2006 03:15 AM
That reminds me of the time we found some fancy towels with Chinese characters to bring our Chinese teacher for her birthday. We proudly presented the gift and she told us - this is Japanese.
Posted by: Kathy at March 15, 2006 09:13 PM

My New Job

Today was my first day of subbing in the self-contained special ed class. I’d tell you about it but then they’d have to kill me. There goes my book. You may wonder how it is that a career home educator is subbing in the government schools. I do, too. I can’t quite understand it. A friend called me subversive. I think I just enjoy visiting the prisoners.

Posted by cindy at February 1, 2006 06:11 PM

Preview of Coming Attractions

February 01, 2006

1/28/06
So, I've been having some women's health problems and my doctor loaned me a book to review so that I could be aware of my treatment options. The book was encyclopedic. Where do I start? So many ways a girl could go wrong...how about the chapter on menopause? Why isn't it called womenopause?
Peter Pan doesn't mind reading about premenopause, but Peter Pan doesn't want to read about plain old menopause. Peter Pan wants to be surprised by menopause. I won't grow old, I won't grow old. If a tree falls in a forest and there is no one to hear it, did it make a sound? And then if it is made into a book about menopause and the book isn't read, will menopause still happen?
I read the chapter on menopause, anyway, and now I get it. I am just about out of eggs. Time for the hen to be cast out of the chicken coop and into the stew pot. I am an almost empty egg carton with an expired date. I'm still in the refrigerator, but I'm about to be recycled into a chidren's craft, maybe one of those caterpillars with pipecleaner antennae, metamorphosis in reverse. Bye, bye butterfly.
I remember a day from my childhood in my backyard by the pussy willow bushes in early spring. I watch a ladybug and know that its lifespan will be only a handful of days. I'm pretty sure the ladybug will miss the Fourth of July and Christmas. At the end of her brief appointed time, the ladybug will be all grown up, lay its eggs and then that's it. Poor ladybug: eat, drink your aphids and be merry for tomorrow you die. Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home. Your house is on fire and your eggs are all gone. Ladybugs will come and go, while I have many summers to play.
Which reminds me of bookclub: we are discussing Tuck Everlasting. Tuck drank from the magic stream and will never age though all his friends and family do and he is left all alone. He cannot grow old along with anyone. Someone asks, "Who wants to live forever, anyway?" I do, I do, I DO!
How many of Solomon's wives were menopausal when he wrote, "It is a wonderful thing to be alive! If a person lives to be very old let him rejoice in every day of life, but let him also remember that eternity is far longer, and that everything down here is futile in comparison...the day one dies is better than the day he is born! It is better to spend your time at funerals than at festivals. For you are going to die and it is a good thing to think about it while there is still time. Finishing is better than starting."?
Here I am, with my summer coming to a close. The swordfight scene from Princess Bride flashes across my mind and a little voice whispers to me, "I am Inigo Menopause Montoya. Prepare to die."

Posted by cindy at February 1, 2006 06:33 PM

Comments
Hey, Mama, it's me. The image of you as a cardboard caterpillar is pretty funny.
Posted by: Momo at February 1, 2006 08:08 PM
Another re-laugh over "I am Inigo Menopause Montoya"
Posted by: john at June 25, 2006 04:59 PM

CSI: Duvall

After a record number of rainy days straight in a row, a number of bodies have been found thoroughly wet and dead. One woman was discovered by her husband, sitting and slumped over at her dining room table. A yellow sticky note was found in a puddle at her feet: “I have gone to a drier place.” Forensic tests revealed traces of sticky note adhesive on the female’s forehead. Investigators are trying to determine if the victim placed the sticky note on her own forehead or if it was placed there by someone else, someone who was trying to shift suspicion to the weather. Why didn’t the husband phone police before his wife got so wet? Tune in to this all new CSI:Duvall episode, Waterblogged, at the end of this rainy season.

Posted by cindy at February 23, 2006 12:34 AM
Comments
Of all the pictures you could post - like say a beautiful picture of rain - you post a dead thing? The Pacific North West is obviously not good for you - you should move to Texas. (See the photo at www.jeremysewell.comcindy)
Posted by: Sharon at February 24, 2006 01:48 PM
What about April - no satirical musings?
Posted by: Kathy Deicher at April 25, 2006 01:44 PM

The Welcome Paddy Wagon

Our cow town recently held a logo contest. The slogans for the winning logos were For All Walks in Life; Small Town, Real Life and A Charming Little Town. The first weekend we moved here, my nephew and his friend came home with the odd story of being stopped by the police for playing frisbee in a deserted suburban street. They asked for a ride in the cop car and the request was denied. They asked if they hit the cop could they have a ride in the car. Their smartalecky suggestion was ignored. Later that day, we were at one of the two grocery stores in town and my nephew pointed out the policeman to me. I decided to introduce myself.
It was the wrong policeman. They all look alike. We got acquainted anyway. He, too, was from the East coast having lived in Virginia and having worked with juvenile delinquents there. He wanted to know which of the boys was with me. He wanted to know how much trouble had my nephew been in? The officer could spot a juvie from experience. Well, no trouble, none...since he's come to live with me. Then the man in blue warned me: There is nothing for the kids to do in this town, but drink, do drugs and have sex. And once you're in trouble here, everybody in the grocery store will know.
If my life was a book, the reader would recognize this as foreshadowing. If my life was a movie, scary music would start playing in the background and the popcorn eaters would be urging me from the depths of their hearts: get out, get out, get out while you can. But did I speed dial my realtor?
Nooooo. I thought, What unoriginal, what unimaginative teenagers. We're different. We have library cards. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the Snoqualmie, I will fear no evil. Welcome to my town: for all walks in life, real life, small town, charming little town.

Posted by cindy at March 8, 2006 05:45 PM
Comments
You should really move to Texas where the kids drink, chew tobacco, do drugs and have sex. Of course they do it better here because everything is bigger and better in Texas.
Posted by: Sharon at March 11, 2006 05:22 PM
Lovely.
It could be worse: you could have a new local gang called the Drips. They would be entirely pathetic if they hadn't just beaten a kid to death in front of his junior high school.
Posted by: Calamity Jane at April 11, 2006 06:00 AM
Oh, and Aunt Sharon, your subtle hints are cracking me up!
Posted by: Calamity Jane at April 11, 2006 06:00 AM
Again, mucus escapes quickly through my nose at reading, and re-contemplating, "library cards. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the Snoqualmie, I will fear no evil."
Posted by: john at June 25

Serpentine Spring

I saw Western garter snakes in the park yesterday. There were four or five of them about a foot and a half in length sliding along the forest floor and gliding down the middle of fern fronds. They wiggled about in an area a couple of yards square, almost touching the toes of my shoes at the edge of the trail several times. Did I smell like a bug? There was the black one and then black ones with orange stripes, or yellow stripes or turquoise stripes. The Easter Bunny must have been out in the woods dipping snakes.
Periodically, along the river walk in the dog no-leash area there werestone steps built down to the river's edge for the dogs. People would play fetch with the dogs and the dogs would jump in the river for short dips - canine Roman baths.
Cindy-4-11-2005

Comments
Oh, how wonderful! I had forgotten about them sliding down the middle of ferns! What a lush picture.
Posted by: Calamity Jane at April 13, 2006 02:29 AM
I picture your Easter Bunny carefully preparing the deep and wide container of paint: mostly clear oil with only a single strip of paint all the way across. The snake would have to go straight down through the center, and slowly enough so the strip would be able to move toward the center as the snake went deeper.
Posted by: john at June 25, 2006 04:50 PM

Corrective Measures

As long as I've got my mind on orthopedic problems, back in 6th grade...
I told my teacher that two boys were lifting up my skirt on the playground. She said that they would have to stay in during recess the next day. Before that recess rolled around my teacher told me that I would also have to stay in. The boys had told her that I liked it. Oh elementary injustice! Did she not also wear a skirt? Were we not both required like the postman through rain, snow, sleet or hail, to bare our legs under every circumstance with some slight mitigating comfort of anklets, or knee socks, or the discomfort of tights or stockings strung by garters depending on our age or height? Hadn’t she experienced some inhibition on the monkey bars? A girl could hardly hang upside down and she really must not climb too high.
Those two boys and I spent the recess inside at opposite ends of the sixth grade classroom, unsupervised. If they had come near me who knows what fury might have been unleashed. I went home and told my dad. He taught me how to make a fist with the middle knuckle protruding and showed me the spot on the upper arm where it would hurt the most. He also told me that shins were sensitive. My heavy red corrective shoes did some admonishing from that day on. Thus was born my philosophy: kick, don’t tell. If Anita had shared such a belief it might have saved the whole country a lot of grief.
It was not till a year later, in 7th grade that the women-in-pants restriction was lifted. The reformation was led by a kid from my church who was senior class president. Pants were now allowed on girls if the hems weren’t cut off or frayed. I began to put my pants on one leg at a time just like every other body who wants warm legs. School culture began to foment change in church culture. Women began showing up in polyester pantsuits. What was God to think of women who covered their lower limbs in cloth tubes? Criticism by both sexes on behalf of His holiness occurred. We ought to have seen this coming as soon as women stopped riding their horses side saddle. What do you know? Their legs actually do go up to there. In all this turmoil where was the outrage over knit polyester?

Posted by cindy at July 11, 2006 09:46 PM
Comments
Great story!
Posted by: Calamity Jane at July 15, 2006 10:31 AM
Kick Don't Tell! Kick Don't Tell!
You inspired me.
Posted by: Bibah at July 28, 2006 03:38 PM

Sky Watchful Waiting

The cirrus clouds tonight form a mammogram film with suspicious calcifications.

Posted by cindy July 11, 2006

Parallel Ski Universe

I never thought I could be a good skier. My feet turned in when I was a child, my doctor diagnosed me as pigeon-toed, and my grandfather was a shoe salesman who was able to accommodate the diagnosis. He customized heavy corrective shoes in the shop at the back of his store that were designed to point me straight ahead.

The doctor said that walking on the beach would also be good for me and I got to do that once a year. My teacher once remarked that I looked like I was falling apart when I ran. Well, if I didn’t have grace at least I had speed. A little toe-in can be of some advantage to a sprinter. Some girls take ballet for the malady, but the dance school that I walked by everyday on the way to the school bus stop remained an exotic mystery to me behind a dark store façade. I knew of no one who took dance lessons. That sort of thing took place in the fictional world of books and TV.

Real progress on my bird gait began to be made once I started looking at my feet as I walked. It became a life habit. Was that girl walking across campus deep in thought? No, just looking at her feet. Or maybe she was deep in thought. Thoughts can come to you when you’re looking at your feet.

The shoes were usually a dark maroonish red. Today they would be something funky out of AbbaDabba’s but back then I pleaded again and again for shiny white, pink or black, pointy-toed shoes with little heels. I tried to show my mom how well I could walk in them while they were still attached to each other in the store.

One magical day in adolescence I did get cheap little patent plastic shoes and my feet marched relatively straight. Still, it was with some misgiving, decades later, that I tried to ski when we moved to the Northwest. If I put on skis and my feet turned in, then by the time the angle extended to the end of the skis they would be crossing each other. Every picture that I had seen of skiers showed the skis in parallel lines. I didn’t know if my body could handle the geometry.

I found that it wasn’t so hard after all to keep the skis in a straight line, but the only way I was able to stop was to fall over. Then I took a lesson. You’re supposed to point the ends of your skis together in the snowplow or pizza wedge. That’s how you control your speed and stop. I was a natural!

Before the lesson my shins would throb with pain. The bunny hill lift operator said it came with the territory. I took two short runs and had to rest on the snow. It was difficult to find a comfortable position. I sat down and leaned way back propping my skis in the snow in a crisscross fashion to take some of the tension off my boots and shins. Soon someone came by to ask me if I was alright. The position I was in was the international sign for distress. Again, a natural!

At the beginning of my first lesson which was attended by me and two little kids, I asked how I could stand comfortably and not have my boots hurt so much. The trick is to not stand up straight but lean forward in your boot. The instructors asked us if we had our pants legs tucked inside our boots. That would be a bad thing, creating uncomfortable friction between the leg and the boot. I leaned over to pull the pants up out of one boot while the instructor helped the kids adjust theirs. Another instructor bent down to adjust my boot straps while the first instructor, finished with the kids, started working on my other pants leg. There they were, two men bowing at my feet, one on the left and one on the right. (That hadn’t happened since my nurse and my husband put my socks on after my surgery). The instructor to the left must have seen the leg stubble because he stopped, looked up and said that I was probably old enough to do that myself. Later that day, on my own, as I was swishing back and forth, finishing a run, I caught the eye of the stubble instructor. “You’re doing very well,” he said. I fell over.

At the second and third lesson I learned that you are supposed to advance to where you can point your skies in a straight line, in a parallel arrangement, even while making turns. Next year I am going to snowboard. The alignment of the feet is predetermined.

Posted by cindy at July 4, 2006 05:50 PM

Comments

Nice, ver' nice.

Posted by: Calamity Jane at July 5, 2006 08:04 AM

hehehe I giggled like a school girl at this one.

Posted by: Jeremy at July 10, 2006 09:21 PM

haha hee, Great Pictures, You look like a semi-pro :-)

Posted by: bibah at July 28, 2006 03:29 PM

Southern Skew

We were searching for origami paper in a nearby town when we drove by a Soul Food Bookstore. Many colorful African flags waved at us from the awning. I hadn’t seen much soul food since we left the south. Maybe I could find a good recipe for bean pie. Did we want to browse in there after the craft shop? I most definitely wanted to go inside. I had recently been agonizing over the loss of some of my primary source slave and African/American books in our move. Where was The Souls of Black Folks by W.E.B. Dubois? What had happened to The Life and Times of Frederick Douglas by Frederick Douglas? These and other treasures unknown to me as yet were surely waiting to be discovered inside the Soul Food Bookstore. We went inside. There were fountains and candles and incense and books by Deepak Chokpra. I took a closer look at the flags – rainbows and flowers and anhks. Oh, that soul.

Posted by cindy at June 26, 2006 05:42 AM

Comments

That was a sad discovery indeed. ;)

Posted by: Calamity Jane at June 26, 2006 01:56 PM

Oh my what a terrible discovery, but think it could have been a restaurant, think of the disapointment! ... Jeremy is hungry :-)

Posted by: Jeremy at July 10, 2006 09:21 PM

The Evening News and the Weather

Events can burn snapshots into your brain. I can turn the pages of my album and see myself, a kindergartner, in the belly of a yellow school bus. I look up and around and all the older girls are crying. What happened? JFK has been assassinated. I’m a young mother in Nashville. I pick up the phone in the bedroom and learn that Ronald Reagan has been shot. Again in Nashville, but this time I pick up the kitchen phone, to learn that John Holt, the pioneer of unschooling, has died of cancer. We leave our daughter at college in NY. The next morning we wake up in a hotel in Pennsyvania to learn that Mother Teresa has died. I'm lying. It was Princess Di. Mother Teresa did die the same week, but I don't remember where I was. One September morning in Atlanta, my children are grown, we’re watching TV with my nephew and planes fly into the Trade Center and the Pentagon. Pages later, I’m in my mother’s living room in Missouri with my niece and nephew. Iraqis tear down the statue of Saddam Hussein on CNN. Time passes, the niece and nephew are gone and I am cleaning a client’s bathtub in Seattle. That was the day that a beam of light shone down upon a fish decal. The sun had come out.

Posted by cindy at June 16, 2006 10:48 PM

Comments

Yay!

alternatively:

Poor dweller in dank places.

Posted by: Calamity Jane at June 17, 2006 09:04 AM

A Dog is Not

When you move, old friends want to know if you’ve made new ones. Who are their replacements? When will we stop writing and calling? When will we forget each other? When will time and distance swallow up our relationship and excrete loneliness? With whom have I found shelter to speak to? The question is a stumper.

I called my son, an adult, a distant friend, to tell him I was taking myself to the zoo. "Isn't that pathetic?" I said to him - not that I was going but that I was going alone. As it turned out I changed my mind as I crossed the bridge to Seattle and followed the signs to the Arboretum instead of going to the zoo. I found the Japanese garden, but it was closed. I drove on and got out at the visitor center to get my bearings on the “Winter Garden.” I thought about volunteering, especially to wash their windows as they much needed it. The rain had splattered mud dots up onto the glass, but it looked as though all efforts to keep it clean had been abandoned many inches of precipation ago. I decided to just start out with a walk.

I was going along, looking for the "Winter Garden" when I saw a long haired, long-legged man in blue jeans slouching on a park bench while writing in a journal with his old dog nosing around the bushes nearby. I nodded as I went by, hoping that was ok. I wondered again if there was some Northwest code of body language that I was missing since I always seemed to be saying, "Excuse me," in the grocery store, feeling like I am in the way.

I was a few paces past him, when he said in a god-like voice - like Bill Cosby leaning into his mike saying, "Noah, build me an ark," -"WHY DO YOU WALK ALONE?" I pivoted on the path, thought briefly if my mother would find out if I spoke to a stranger, and queried, "Why do you sit alone?" He shrugged sheepishly and gestured toward his dog. He explained that as he sat there he saw so many people walking alone; there just seemed to be so much loneliness. I blurted out that I had just moved here and didn't know anyone. An older woman with short gray hair and a small gray poodle came strolling by with a knowing smile on her face. She had overheard parts of the conversation. If I had known dogs counted I could have brought my own.

We said an awkward goodbye and I continued my search for the Winter Garden while considering my friendship and loneliness issues. Just moved here? It's been almost a year. I finally found the Witch Hazel in bloom and tried to memorize the barks and leaves of hemlock, western cedar, and that other tree that one sees so much of around here. I saw couples and families. When I rounded the bend on the trail the thinking man was still there so I petted his dog and reported that the world was not as lonely as he thought. There were couples and families in this very arboretum. Really, how much of a party did he expect to see walking the woods in winter under a Seattle grey sky?

I resumed my solitary stroll, but tried to make it brisk to burn off the 20 pounds of loneliness I picked up this winter. There is nothing like the pleasure of a half gallon of Breyer’s Vanilla Fudge ice cream in one uninterrupted sitting.

I drove out of the visitor center parking lot. I didn’t volunteer although it occurred to me that it might be a tree-lined avenue to making friends. I waved goodbye to the writing man. We left the parking lot in common. I wonder if there are many synonyms in the thesaurus for loneliness or does it sit apart.

3/2005
Posted by cindy at June 16, 2006 10:04 PM

Comments

A half gallon at once? Ewww.

Nice image, loneliness sitting apart. Like misery, it would looove some company.

Posted by: Calamity Jane at June 17, 2006 12:16 AM

That is beautiful, Aunt Cindy. You have a wonderful way of gently pointing to a thought without hitting the reader over the head with it. Meaning rests softly on your words instead of obscuring them. Well done. I look forward to more.

Posted by: Drew Talbert at June 25, 2006 02:18 PM

Truth is Bureaucracy, Bureaucracy Truth

A friend sold me her 87 Volvo for a dollar just before I left Georgia for Washington. I, in turn, donated my beloved but mildewed and dying “Little Zippy” to a charity where Christian mechanics fix donated cars and then give them to those who need them.

I tried to register my Volvo in Washington. The first time, I was told that you can’t sell a car for $1 in Washington. No one does that. Cars are worth at least $200.00. I left the office perplexed, unregistered and panicky. I had only a few days left before the registration deadline.

Perhaps I had misunderstood. Perhaps I just couldn’t get past a language barrier. I went to the website. I still couldn't figure out how to register my car.

The second time I went to a different office with new paperwork and they still said, the smallest amount a running car is worth in WA is $200. People just don't sell them for $1. I said, “But, that was exactly what happened.” I pointed out the blue book value of the car, the money I spent immediately repairing the car and the money that still needed to be spent on the car. It was actually worth less than a dollar. She said it was still worth more, but perhaps it could have been a gift. How do I handle a gift? She spoke in Bureaucratese, words that I did not understand. She didn't give me more paperwork or directions. She just looked at me. The ball was in my court, and so was the bill. I asked if she wanted me to write $200 on the bill of sale. She handed me back the paper and I wrote $200.00 where $1 had been.

The tax was only $17 but the whole bill was $90 something with $57 being in the category of "other." I asked her how it itemized out. She listed several fees all under $10, taxes that had been voted in at one time or another. She said one of the fees was a trauma tax.

I brightened, thinking of how traumatic it had been to get the car registered and said, "What's a trauma tax?"

She said that was for 911.

"Oh," I said with a rueful smile, "I was hoping the trauma tax was for therapy for you and me."

She returned with the same monotone in which we had conducted all this business, "This transaction has nothing to do with you and me."

Anyway, I would have preferred to switch to handling it as a gift but I didn't "get" how and they weren't going to hold my hand over it. And, I hadn’t been able to find the information on their website either. I'm lettttinggg it goooooo.

And when I got home, I had a certified letter waiting for me. The car that I gave to the charity had been towed and impounded and the notice came to me because the registration hadn't yet been changed. I could certainly understand that. I forwarded that letter to the charity. Hope it works out for whoever got the car.

At any rate, the dollar Volvo is a blessing and I feel I can park it outside the townhouse without bringing down property values.

Posted by Cindy 5/2006

Anger Management

I hit the door with my right fist. Then I stopped to think. Then I hit the door with my left fist. It's good to have balance in one's life.

Posted by cindy at May 23, 2006 05:08 PM

Comments

Okay, that made me laugh.

Posted by: Calamity Jane at June 17, 2006 12:11 AM

Tired and Sore with Lingering Happiness Part 4:The Fun

The Fun

Sliding down creates freezer burn of the bum, but is too much fun to care about. I have a video clip of sliding down on our feet and glisssading on our bottoms but the file is too big to download to the blog. They used to make special equipment for this activity: a pair of pants with waterproof patches on the bottom are on display in the visitor center. The odd shape in the distance is me bending over my backpack.

Going down creats thirst, too. Time to stop for a drink. Can't hold the water bottle or the camera on the way down.
Brenton started it. Preparing to throw another snowball by a snow chute. We came by several of these on the way down. Some were so well made that Brenton became a human bobsled banking on the sides of the chute. That particular shute and the one beside it ended in a rock outcropping. Brenton and I weren't sure if we would be able to stop before we got to the rocks. We hesitated. There was only one way to find out and making our guide do it first wasn't it.

Brenton returns fire.
At one with the penguin universe.



A stream flows through a rock outcropping.




My gloves were soaked and my hands were freezing. I was glad that I had packed my waterproof mittens. Now my hands are warm enough to take the mittens off to take pictures. You can see the mittens resting in the background next to my pack on the rocks.
Brenton falls and poses as though he meant to. I fall and begin a slide on my side holding up a finger to let him know I'll be back in a moment to take his picture. Unfortunately, in order to do that I have to brake with the walking stick. I'm wet in 40 degree weather and fairly comfortable. I'm glad I'm wearing the borrowed synthetic clothing which dries as fast as a bathing suit.




I wanted to be sure a got a good photo of the way the water flowed out from under the snow. I wanted to be able to capture the depth perception. Phil said, "Why don't I just stay home and take a picture of the kitchen faucet."

To be continued when I find more space.