Notes on a Norwegian Walk

My friend Zach has been taking a lot of what he calls Scottish walks lately. He goes out in the miserable, raw dampness of November on the Oregon coast in an effort to keep his ass from getting winterized.

My metabolism seems to have adjusted to the drop in temperature and I'm no longer magically shedding pounds as my body tries to keep itself warm. In an attempt to keep the truly horrifying things that started happening to my own ass on my 30th birthday from progressing any farther or faster than necessary, I put a pair of polar fleece long underwear on under my jeans, slipped on my only waterproof pair of shoes, grabbed my camera, and ventured forth on a Norwegian walk of my own.

I didn't go far. I walked for maybe half an hour, and here's why: (1) Just because a pair of shoes is waterproof, does not mean they're good for walking in the snow. I need to get something with superior traction. Do they make studded snow shoes with good arch support? (2) Just because one's ears don't get cold on a few short sunny trips between the woodshed and the back door does not mean that one's ears will not begin turning purple after walking a few dozen feet along a shadowy lane when the temperature is well below freezing. Little tip from me to you. (3) I didn't get more than 20 yards before my back started hurting from the many many many hours I've spent sitting in my cozy leather chair next to the fire over the past few days. One might think that walking would be the perfect cure for sitting induced back pain, but one would be WRONG as I know from bitter past experience. The only cure is ibuprofen, time, stretching, and moving my lazy ass a little more around the house. I don't know if it's my stride, or my posture, or the general perversity of my body, but something about the way I walk just turns mild twinges in my lower back into agaonizing spasms. 4) I'd forgotten how much the sound of shoes squeaking on dry snow makes me want to beat my head against a particularly sturdy pine. Oh my god. Annoying. Maybe someday I'll write a fascinating post about all the sounds that make me clench my jaw and want to kill myself from the overwhelming annoyance. Or not. But next time I walk in the snow I'll be carrying my ipod.

Despite the brevity of the walk, and the few little errors in judgment on my part that made it a little less lovely than it could otherwise have been, it was beautiful. And as always, it made me wonder why the hell I don't do this more often.(

One might start considering oneself underemployed when . . .

for a not-so-brief instant, one legitimately feels deserving of a freaking medal for managing to both wash one's hair and shave one's legs (though only to the knee, I mean, come on, it is almost December!) on the same day.

Thanksgiving Update

My grandmother called this morning and told me that about half the family was meeting for breakfast tomorrow at Cracker Barrel and then a matinee of Bee Movie. Seriously. That's the plan for Thanksgiving. God love them. Anyway, I jumped at the chance. Not because I really want to get up at 6 am to drive 100+ miles to eat at a Cracker Barrel on Thanksgiving, but because it saves me from the consequence of my poor planning. Yesterday, in a GREAT example of not thinking clearly when in the midst of social panic I told my neighbors that yes, I did have plans for Thanksgiving, I was spending it with my bosses. (Which, at the time, was not true because I'd already decided to spend Thanksgiving doing nothing.) So . . . I lied. Which . . . is not unusual. I do it all the time to avoid social occasions. (I told my bosses I'd gotten a last-minute invitation from my step-brother.) But it was a STUPID lie. Because . . . they're my neigbors. They can see whether I'm home from their front window. Their dogs bark every time I set foot ouside. So . . . before my grandmother called I was honestly trying to figure out what to do for a couple of hours tomorrow afternoon so that my neigbors wouldn't realize that I had no plans. I'm an idiot.

It's Addictive

Once I start taking pictures of the cats I just can't stop. These photos are pretty representative of the differences between the two. Freckles is such a little ham. An adorable ham, but one just begging for someone to rub her belly. And see what I mean about the complete destruction of the carpet?


And then there is sweet, elegant Sugar. Has there EVER been a cat as skilled at posing? I mean she takes the effort to choose the most suitable background available! Unlike Freckles, she would never be photographed rolling around in carpet shreds. Sugar would totally win ANTM if Tyra would stop being so obsessed with only letting people compete.The camera loves her.

Go Brown

Red Fraggle and I were just IMing, and for some reason I mentioned that FedEx doesn't deliver to my house. She was aghast. I explained that it was OK, because UPS does deliver, and I've always liked them better anyway. The big brown trucks remind me of the excitement of getting a package when I was a child . . . and she totally couldn't relate. So I explained that when I was young, seeing the UPS truck was exciting in the same way that the arrival of the Sears catalog was exciting. Her response: "LOL! Sears catalog! I always wondered who that was exciting to. I remember reading a story when I was young about someone waiting with anticipation for the Sears catalog and thinking 'REALLY?!'"

See, Red grew up in the crowded northeast, near New York. For her, the ability to go shopping for a new skirt or to a toy store wasn't a big deal. But in the 1980s, in this part of the country, it was a HUGE deal. In some ways, my childhood bears a stronger resemblance to the average American childhood of the 1950s than the 1980s. The available shopping options, as I remember them, were Shavers, a sort of dry goods store combined with a grocery store, (sort of a smaller precurser to SuperTarget without the high-falutin obsession with "design" for the masses) and the old-fashioned drug store across the street that sold cards and tchotchkes and stuffed animals in the aisles between the drug counter and the soda fountain.

And even making the 200 mile round trip Boise didn't net much of an improvement. Back then its population was well under 200,000 and the shopping opportunities were accordingly slim. Boise didn't have many of the big chain stores . . . I think there was a JC Penney and a Sears . . . and the only mall in the entire state was in Nampa (another 30 miles away) and it boasted a Bon Marche, a fabric store, a three screen movie theater, an Orange Julius, and maybe a Foot Locker? It was TINY by today's standards. And that was it.

So for the things my mom couldn't make herself (she made lots of my clothes), and the things we couldn't find in town, the Sears catalog was IT. I remember poring over the pages and pages of toys for hours. And on the rare occasions that my parents could justify the expense of purchasing something from that glossy book of delights, the package would come via a big brown UPS truck struggling up our horrible driveway. And the excitement was real, and it was gleeful, and I still feel a little faint echo of it every time I see a man or woman in brown polyester shorts bearing boxes.

More photos to relieve the monotony

I don't think I've posted a photo of Freckles since she had the kittens have I? Well, here she is. She was purring during the photo shoot, even though I hadn't touched her. I think strays have to be ingratiating to survive, and she is a pro, purring as soon as I look at her. And if I'm walking around the house, she has to be under my feet at all times, or at least until I acknowledge her existence by pausing in whatever business I have to pick her up for a quick cuddle and chin scratch. Then, satisfied that I still like her and don't intend to throw her back out into the wilderness, she'll run off and attack the carpet some more. Good thing I hate this carpet, because Freckles is destroying it.

And here's the oh so pretty glass and tin chandelier type thing I got on my last trip to IKEA. I love it. Its shiny glamorousness looks so out of place, but pretty, with the rustic post and beam construction of the house.

Non-Procrastination Post

As my friend Red Fraggle pointed out recently, there has been a bit of a procrastination theme to my posts/life lately. Sorry to be the one note pony (intentionally mixed metaphor), but you know me . . .

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In non-procrastination news, I have a big decision to make about Thanksgiving. I'm not going home to Newport for the holiday for a couple of reasons: (1) I don't necessarily want to spend more time with my stepsiblings than necessary. One visit every couple of years seems about right. (2) It's a long-ass trip to take twice in three weeks. (3) The weather there has turned from fall beauty to crappy constant rain, and I've seen enough of that to last me a lifetime. (Of course, as I type this it's 38 degrees and pouring buckets here. You can imagine my mood. If it were just a few degrees colder, it would be an awesome blizzard, but no. Must be rain. Ugh.) (4) I have to work on Friday, so even if I made the trip to Newport, I'd have to drive back on Thanksgiving Day anyway.

My Dad's family (minus my dad and stepmom in their Belizean paradise) always celebrate Thanksgiving on Saturday (my grandparents' thought being . . . "let the kids have Thursday with their in-laws and not have to choose sides." That way they get to see all their kids (except my ex-pat dad) nearly every year. They're smart like that. This is also why it took me YEARS to figure out why I associated Thanksgiving with college football, even though there were never any college football games on Thanksgiving Day.) So I will have a traditional family holiday, just not at the officially sanctioned time.

Here's the decision: do I spend the day alone (which I've done on many many years and really could not care less about) or do I accept my bosses' kind invitation to celebrate with them? They're great people, I vaguely know some of the other people who are going, it would probably be fun, and it would be one more opportunity to start really creating a life here but . . . I'm anti-social. The idea of driving on my own to a party with tons of people I don't know sends me into a blind panic. What if no one likes me?! What if I don't have anything to say to anybody?! What if I just sit in a corner like a lump and feel pathetic all afternoon?! (None of these are unprecedented occurrences.)

So that's what I'm thinking about this damp morning.