On repeated blog entries in one day.

As you may know, I don’t have any Internet connection at home. So, when prompted, I have continued to write my blogs, but I have no way to actually post them until I also feel prompted to make my way to Albina Press to use the Internet. This usually happens on Saturday mornings (check your watches, people!), but sometimes during the week. Albina Press is just a few blocks from my house and claims some of the best coffee and best baristas in town. I, personally, don’t really like their coffee much, and I don’t like their baristas much (they seem even more judgmental and hipster than most places), but being it is so conveniently located and I have started going on a regular basis it’s growing on me. The coffee isn’t so velvety-sweet anymore and the baristas aren’t so stuck up anymore. And they are always listening to good music. Which reminds me, have you heard Fleet Foxes? I’m just getting into them now, and they are making me happy.

On not caring.

Homer Simpson said it best when he said, “Kids, you tried your best and failed miserably. The lesson is never try.” That’s right. I’m beginning not to try. Or at least not to care. Because what good comes from caring anyway? A whole lot of nothing. Just worry, anxiety and fear. I go through phases of caring. Sometimes I will care so much it will overwhelm my life. And sometimes I care so little that I actually do what is right for me, and not what anyone else thinks is right and I actually end up doing the real right thing. A co-worker from LA (who was highly ensconced in the “I care what people think LA culture) was taken aback one day and declared, “Wow, Liz, you just really don’t care what other people think, do you?” I don’t remember what made him say this, but I probably said something bad about some Hollywood deity or something. Point being, at that point I really didn’t care, and things were working out for me pretty damned well. So, in addition to taking the path of least resistance, I’m not going to care about it. Hooray for apathy! Or hooray for zen! Depending on how you look at it.

Ode to my new office chair.

My old job was obsessed with ergonomics. On my first day I was forced to watch a training video (circa 1985) to explain proper ergonomic working environments. There was an ergonomic committee. They would meet repeatedly to design workspaces to fit the body in the most comfortable position. I had a great office chair and a nice little desk.

I started my new job in January and was quite dismayed not to find the same attention put toward my personal body comfort at this office. Indeed, I am still stationed at the same “temporary” faux-wood folding table as I was on day one. And my office chair was atrocious. Within working there for less than a week I had shooting pains in my back and neck, made an emergency masseuse appointment (which did not help) and started going to yoga twice a week. I also bought a contour pillow to try and counteract the effects of my terrible chair.

I thought I was being overly dramatic and that it was just a chair is a chair is a chair until last Friday. I traded chairs with a co-worker who has inherited an Aeron chair like I had at my old job. She said it was too big for her anyway and I jumped at the chance for a nicer chair. Then she sat in my chair, and everyone else gave it a shot and told me how terrible it was. How uncomfortable and un-cusiony it was. At least it wasn’t all in my head. But, I still have the new comfy chair now. And I am happy about that.

Your mesh seat conforms to me,
My curved spine curves with your back,
And I glide so easy on your wheelies,
No longer am I on the easy track,
To being a humpback.

Reflectionisms.

The path of least resistance is always the best way to go. It’s the way water goes, and we all know that water knows what it’s doing. I do not feel like I have been doing this of late. This has been my philosophy, and indeed following the least resistant path is what sent me to LA and back to Portland again, and sort of what got me out to Portland in the first place.

When someone has their mind set on something the general rule that we are taught is to fight on, not to give in no matter how many times you fail. If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again. Although good advice on the outset, after repeated failed attempts sometimes the best thing is to get a clue and move on to the next effort. When several home buying attempts in the Austin area were thwarted for all together ridiculous and unrelated things the thought arose, maybe Austin isn’t where we should be. Within a couple months, the truck was packed and off to Oregon I went. When I found myself in a failing company with nothing tying me down and a new group of friends forming long-distance down south, I packed my bags and headed to LA. When I found myself cash-strapped, apartment-seeking, job-seeking, and generally bitchy I packed my bags and moved back to Portland. In each of these instances the big, cross-country move was the path of least resistance for me.

I now find myself trying to apply this theory to the smaller things in life. Not the life changing decisions, but the smaller steps along the way. I have found that in the last couple months I have not been following the least resistant path. With many things I feel like water trying to push itself uphill. And I just need to take a step back and see where the stream is headed and redirect myself to follow the current. Right now I am stuck in an eddy on the side of the river and I need to get back in the flow. Following the river path has not led me astray yet. And as a wise friend always used to tell me, “It will all work out. It has to. There’s no other way it could happen.”

And as a side note, the glass art gallery just outside my kitchen window is having some sort of shin-dig today. I have been listening to their music all afternoon (not all my style, in fact mostly not), but they have a live band now. And I’m getting it for free while I cook my dinner. Hooray, Portland!

On Urban Country.

I have long held a dream of living in the country/mountains/forest/not suburbia where I am as off the grid as possible. Growing my own food, baking my own bread, fixing my own home. I am at this point in my life, however, almost as far from this dream as I could be. The view from my kitchen window that should be over a sloping field leading to the edge of trees and the sound of a creek in the distance, is in actuality a view of dirty siding from the shopping center that my apartment complex butts up to. There is, however, a fountain in the courtyard that kind of sounds like a babbling brook (if you close your eyes and use your imagination).

Over the last few years as this dream has drifted further and further from reality, where my homes have been in the center of Hollywood, in the center of Portland, or other various apartments with views of commerce and no yard, I have been learning to find small ways to incorporate this dream into my everyday life. The main premise behind wanting such a self-sustaining life is because it’s simple, because it’s human. Not until the last 100 years or so have the mass of humanity (in the Western World anyway) been inundated by modern conveniences and lost the skills of the history of humanity. Although this sounds very anti-feminist of me, it pains me that women of my generation and even my mother’s generation don’t know how to sew, bake, cook, or hem a dress. These are things that hundreds of years of our mothers have done and that knowledge is stopping with so many families in this generation (Now, for the record, I cannot sew (not even a slight clue) and I cannot hem a dress, but I can cook and I can bake).

When I bake a loaf of bread and start kneading it I feel a connection, however obscure or imagined, to the history of humans behind me. My great-great-great-great grandmother and beyond did this very same thing in her kitchen to sustain her family and move time on so that it arrived at today. And it makes me happy and makes me feel human to do something so simple. And there is nothing like a fresh loaf of bread.

If you look back a few blog entries you will see that I was excited to be starting a garden. And I profiled my past failed garden attempts because break-ups or moves had interrupted them. I believe I lamented that I was cursed to never have a garden, and I was excited that I had the opportunity to start another. Well, it appears I am cursed, as a break-up/move has interrupted my gardening attempt. I am again in an apartment with no yard. But, there is some outdoor space for containers! So, I am going to make the most of it and find joy in my unhappiness. Now, outside my kitchen window, in front of the wall with dirty siding I have a little container garden. And it’s the simple things like getting dirt on my hands (even if it’s dirt in a pot) that makes me feel happy and human.

Gaden Girls.

I had a visitor this weekend. I feel, now that the visit is over, that it was pretty darned successful. I only had essentially 48 hours to show someone Portland and we got a lot done!
Columbia Gorge and Multnomah Falls, Stumptown Coffee, Belmont and Hawthorne, Jake's for happy hour, a brief visit to the Portland City Grill, impromptu concert going at the Crystal Ballroom, Deschutes Brewery, Lucky Lab, New Old Lompoc, NW wandering, the Waffle Window, got to see a couple Rose Parade floats while stuck in traffic, and of course breaking in the new apartment with two bottles of wine and some giggling. Hardcore giggling.

It was a successful weekend all around. And of course, now that my visitor has gone, it's beautiful outside. But at least I can enjoy the afternoon in the sun.....before the rain comes back tomorrow....

Happy June.

I really have nothing of note to blog about today. But, I have been told I haven't updated this in a while. So, here is my grand thought of today. It's cloudy. It's June. I'm pissed. What can I say?

My cousin is coming up to Portland today to stay for the weekend. As far as I am concerned I am going to try my darndest to convince her to move up here. But, this blasted weather is not helping my case.

Obama is the nominee. Hooray! Let the games begin. I can only hope that this election will be in a slightly different light than past campaigns. Could it be a change is really coming? History does repeat itself. So, perhaps a difference, but nothing new.

I have ridden my bike to work twice this week. I am proud of myself. Most proud of myself for yesterday, when after work I went out and biked it the whole night. Hooray! It was really very exciting, despite the fact that I can't ride up a hill to save my life and didn't read traffic right and almost got myself hit.

And, I don't have a picture to represent any of these random thoughts. So, here's a picture of a kitty!! :)