indecent exposure

I was at a home visit Monday, making up a fee chart for a client when she noticed a man in her side yard with his pants down. 

He was just standing there, blank faced, maybe peeing, maybe not, it was hard to tell. 

I suggested throwing something out the window at him,  like the pot of hot coffee she had just made, but she called her husband, who was sleeping upstairs. 

Her husband, a burly, cheerful fellow came bounding down the stairs.

"There's a guy outside with his dick in his hand! "

So off the husband goes to investigate, while his agitated wife yells instructions out the window.

"tell him to stay the $#%^ off our property!"

stay off our property!

"Tell him you are going to *&^% him up"

or I am going to %$#^ you up!

"Tell him, he is a nasty mother*&^%#$" 

You are a nasty mother(*&^%^!

At some point it became clear to me that this fellow is a neighbor, a neighbor from an otherwise nice family, I am told.

Why you want to be showing your dick to this nice lady, that is just here trying to help people and shit?  

It was the grandest display of chivalry I had seen displayed on my behalf in a long time.  Eventually dickman staggered off and things quieted down.

When I got back to the office I told my boss what had happened. 

The first time someone exposed himself to me in Portland, was 1978. Downtown Portland was a real dump in the 70's. 

Oddly enough Mark and I had watched the news the night before and there was a story about a sex offender that has been rubbing against women on the bus.  He also had a history of cutting women's hair and super gluing,

I'm not sure if he super glues the hair, or what, I missed that part of the story.

Mark said,  
every woman I know, every girlfriend I have ever had has had that happen.

The exposing, not the super gluing.

I told him about the time I was sitting in a bus shelter, downtown in front of Meir and Frank and the guy next to me was pulling down his pants. 
I just got up and walked away. 
What can you really do?  Downtown Portland was kind of a dump in the 80's.
In another bus shelter, the one next to paranoid park, another fellow was openly masturbating next to Leo and I while we were sitting there.  
We were facing the other way and didn't notice at first.  Leo poured a cup of soda on him and we rushed off.  It is an image burned into my brain, even though I didn't feel particularly traumatized, more annoyed and revolted. 
Another time, when I had fallen asleep on the bus, I awoke to a man rubbing my feet.  
That was terribly upsetting.  It was the icing on the top of a very bad night cake. 

Don't touch my fucking feet! 

At that moment on the bus, I wished very much that I had some tough guy, with me,  to beat up the foot toucher, but I was all alone, so I moved up and sat near the driver.  It was a long ride from downtown to Lake Oswego.

You are going to get me killed someday

Is what Mark has said, more than once, when I needed him to yell at someone for me.  Fortunately no one has pulled his pants down since I have been married to him.  

 He did have to yell at the rude bank customer service guy two weeks ago, which made me feel much better.

Lighten up while you still can

http://open.spotify.com/track/2Dl2i1mCLy7orIGtIHgsmb

Clotheshorse

My mother is driving me crazy.

Yesterday she brought me a large pile of clothes.

Not a single thing was anything I would ever wear.

My mother worries about me and she expresses her worry by doing things like bringing me weird clothing and home furnishings. She means well. 

The problem is that when my mother gives me something, it is symbolic of something she perceives is lacking in my personality.

In this case, she is worried that I will go to work dressed in the yoga pants and threadbare brown sweater she often sees me wearing at home.

I wear the sweater because I like it, and no one sees me at home and my house is old and chilly.

My mother is terribly disturbed by this particular sweater, despite the fact that I have reassured her over and over that I do not wear it to work.

I know my mother well and can see the wheels of her mind turning.

She is just waiting for the day that I am sacked for looking frumpy. 

What can I do to help.   

Help in this case means- you are fat and unkempt and I can't stand it.

I don't know, I never really felt bad about my appearance until you mentioned it.    

Last week she forced me to go to a nail salon with her.  My cuticles were disturbing.  She has not in 45 year made the connection between her badgering me and my nail biting.

I tired on the pile.  I was a reasonably good sport, for someone that had been blindsided by a pile of hideous clothing.  

  I will never wear a short beige dress.

My mother is thin, naturally.  She has long slim legs.  

I have short stumpy peasant legs, even at my thinnest, my legs look like they belong to a Polish woodcutter.  

I don't find this particularly bothersome; my mother has brought me a parade of knee length dresses and skirts that have haunted me my entire life.  

I am not someone that is cut out to wear shifts. 

I wear long dramatic skirts and dresses with fitted bodices that show off my small waist. I have a great bust, a lovely neck, a beautiful back. I have naturally perfect teeth.   I am happy with all of that.  

Put  me in a boxy shift and I look like a mental patient from the turn of the century, regardless of how cute the dress may be, on me it will look like a hospital gown.

I try to look on the bright side. At least she cares...

I am going to go wrap up in my brown sweater and do some sun salutations in my yoga pants and repeat my mantra this is not real life, this does not define you, and hopefully feel less ugly in a little while.

Clown Car

We are selling Mark's  Honda Civic to Mario, the window guy's helper.  We recently got new windows, thankfully, or we may never have unloaded that old car!

The car has been sitting in our driveway since November, when the tags expired, prior to the expiration there had been a good deal of smoke coming out of the tailpipe. 

Mario seems to be a handy fellow and has assured us that he can fix the smoking problem.

Last night we stayed up until midnight searching for the title. 

Wading through 15 years of paperwork.

A messy tribute to our life together.

Piles in brown paper bags.

Stuffed into drawers. 

I finally found the title folded in thirds and tucked in with some old medical records.

"I'm really glad you aren't dead.  I would be totally pissed if I had to go through all of this alone."

The reality of our extreme disorganization is amplified anytime there is a serious reason for needing important papers. 

We never reform.
We remain steadfastly disorderly. 
I was proud that neither one of us was snappish, that is a big deal. 
We tend to be cranky.

"I am feeling sentimental about selling the car." Mark said.

No surprise there, Mark is sentimental over stuff, not unlike me.  I like different kinds of stuff, but in the end we are hopeless hoarders.

"I might never have married you, without that car." which is not true at all, but I like to say that when I met Mark, I vowed to go against type. 

I would stop dating artsy types without jobs, dental insurance, cars or bathmats. 

He had all of that stuff and so I could green light the relationship. 

I had dated men with cars before, of course, but his car was reasonably new, ran reliably and wasn't held together with bungee cords.

The man I dated briefly, until I met Mark, was a psychiatric nurse. He worked with people that had attempted suicide.  He was chronically depressed and drove a 1968, purple Volvo, which I adored.  He totaled it one afternoon after working a double shift, driving while tried.  He happened to be drinking a beer at the time.  He was not drunk, he was just driving around on a hot day, with a beer between his knees, and someone hit him, or he hit them, but in the end the car was trashed and he got into trouble over the beer, but not as much trouble as I thought he might.  He made me very nervous, with his devil may care beer drinking and overly tiredness, otherwise I liked him well enough.  He did not own a bathmat.  He did have excellent teeth.

Before the nurse I had a long, tortured relationship with the badman, who did not own a car, or a bathmat.  He was a compulsive gambler and totally unpredictable, wildly irresponsible, yet I loaned him my car on a regular basis, for years. 
It was like my form of gambling- will him come home tonight, so I can go to work in the morning?
For some reason, I, someone that hates to loan anything, ever, felt totally comfortable with the badman driving my car. 
I never thought twice about it. 
He worked through the night waiting tables, or occasionally playing music, and would leave me a note in the kitchen, indicating where the car was parked. 
Sometimes he stayed up after his shift, smoking at the breakfast bar in my kitchen, until I got up for work, "the car is on Everett, across from the gas station."
It was a different type of life. A life so supremely unsuitable for marriage or children that I can't imagine that I lived it.

When I met my friend Don, he had never driven.  Not even as a teen in his parent's car.  Having grown up poor in a family with five kids, driving was just not in the cards.  He moved to Boston for college, where having a car would have been an unnecessary expense. So I taught him to drive at the ripe old age of 24.  I taught him to drive a stick shift, ensuring him, as my mother had me, "if you can drive a stick, you can drive anything!" I was not a patient teacher, but he learned and is still careening around Portland.

In high school I dated two boys who drove.  One was a terribly mean preppie in an orange Volkswagen square-back, and the other my dear sweet long term love, with a Volkswagen van.   The sweetie taught me to drive, when my mother bombed out on the task.  Her primary teaching method involved yelling "WHOA"  every few minutes, without further instruction.  I failed the test once before passing and getting my license.  I failed because I stalled.  That seemed sort of unfair to me, because if I had taken the test in an automatic, it would have been a lot easier.  I felt that I should have been given some type of bonus points for being brave enough to take the test on a stick shift.  The teacher didn't see it my way.

So now we are selling off the car that Mark drove from Austin to Portland in, in 1996.  The car we drove to Sauvie Island's bird sanctuary in on our first date.  I'm happy it's going to a nice man, rather than to the junk yard. 

A little Spotty

Have you checked out Spotify?

Of course you have.

I had NOT, but I love it now!

I can listen to any music I want for free.

Hooray!

http://open.spotify.com/track/0YHMLFYBLOEVVQ1ns2pnw5

So right now I am listening to "wig in a box" from Hedwig and the angry inch, which I find oddly relatable, odd because, I have never worn a wig, nor had a sex change.

Life is strange.

I dare you not to sing along.

and on a related note, there is this old thing.  http://open.spotify.com/track/15eZEJs8fJbYGR0L6FcbwE

My kids, and my brother's kids, we don't get together very often, but we had a lovely evening, celebrating my mother's birthday.  I wanted to do something special for her.  She had helped so much with childcare this school year. 

Grandma and Grandpa and the grandkids, and Rosie the dog.

I look like my father and his father, and my mom and my brother look like her people, it's funny to see pictures like this.

I cooked my ass off all day for this party.  It was a great success.

A pate so good my mother's husband, called me the next day to say "that was as good as anything you would find in a restaurant." I was flattered and pleased to make an impression.

Caviar topped eggs.

Rock and Roll Lifestyle

Maxwell plays in a African Marimba group.  He goes to the teacher's house each Wednesday after school and practices with five other children.  Most of them go to his arts focus school and a couple don't.  A couple go to regular school and come to play with this lady that is very invested in marimba, and African music.  Her husband builds the giant instruments.  Her daughter plays along.  Many years ago, my boyfriend, the badman played with this lady too, so I knew her a little bit. I knew who she was, I didn't know her.   It's funny how small a town Portland is.  I was totally unprepared for how awesome the kids would sound.  They were excellent.  I wished my father could have been there.  He likes that sort of thing.  My mother is agitated by noise.  She would have come, but she would have paced and smoked outside, and her pacing and smoking would have been embarrassing to me, and so it was just as well that she had a conflict.

Mr. Fuzzyfeet

The most beautiful boy in the world makes music

A girl who lacks patience.  A girl that is bothered by noise.

I am terribly fond of this band and this song, which has little to do with anything in this post.

sometimes you get what you need

I took the kids to Hoda's  for dinner, since Mark has his improve class on Wednesday evenings these days and I had a long draining (not bad, just really busy and I neglected to take a lunch) day at work.  
Hoda's  is my third favorite Lebanese place in town.  My first favorite is Nicolas on Grand.  It is always too crowded and only takes cash; I never carry cash.  My second favorite is Yahala, which is terribly s  l  o  w, which doesn't work well with kids.  So off to Hoda's we went when Freyja voiced a hankering for "that kind of food that had hummus and really HOT bread."
Everything was good and for once I didn't order too much food.

My last work commitment today was to attend a town meeting at city hall, which was kind of cool in concept and pretty boring in practice. I felt sort of under-dressed, like the token hippie at a business meeting, with my ruffled peasant blouse and red clogs.  I am pretty used to spending time with young children and their care providers, and most of my clothing can take crawling around on the floor, and drool. My mother has been nagging me to look more pulled together for years and as I walked into that auditorium, I wished, for a moment that I had listened to her.

We have been re-watching season I of Justified, so that Maxwell can get caught up,  he has been watching season two and three with us. It holds up well.  It's Elmore Lenard and I like it, what else is there to say?

I have been forcing more books on Maxwell.  He just finished "city of thieves" and "the road" (he took it out of my shelf, I would have suggested "the boarder trilogy". 
I am trying to get him to give John Irving a twirl, but he might be too young. 
He did dig "1984" and has declared it his favorite novel EVER.  
We learned that he has been accepted into a small arts charter school for high school.  They offer advanced placement with college credit, in tons of classes, a beautiful facility and just too many other perks to list.  I feel sort of guilty for abandoning Portland Public, but they just such too profoundly for me to trust my baby to. We have an application in to MLC, Portland alternative mainstay, since the 60's, but really, to tell the truth, Maxwell needs structure, so this goody two shoes school will be a great fit. My mother was beside herself with nerves as we waited for the acceptance letters to arrive, she some how had the notion that I was going to send Maxwell to MLC, a hotbed of pot smoking, juvenile delinquents, in the heart of NW Portland, a neighborhood she never quit trusted, even though I made it my home for ten years.  She had the same reaction when I tried to talk her into letting me go there for high school. 
I have no idea where she gets her ideas, but she has steadfastly clung to this particular one since 1982.

Freakishly warm weather, made eating outside possible!

Not feeling terribly festive

Easter decorations

window sill looking springy

Vegan banana bunt cake with apples and pears

another cheap-o Chinese foot massage place I like to go to