June already?

Whew. And the last time I posted in here was April? How did that happen?

It's not as if I've been doing anything even remotely interesting. I did, finally, catch the Flu From Hell that was making its rounds in Portland, and that little episode lasted a good two-and-a-half weeks. But that's not why I haven't posted here. It's mainly because my life is so damned boring. I don't do much of anything (other than the morning cat-related duties, an hour's volunteering at the local animal shelter, and a little volunteer writing for Onward Oregon). That, a weekly lunch date with my wonderful son Zack, and the usual, boring household/garden chores seem to be the sum total of what I do most days. I see friends for breakfast, and we get together with friends in the evening from time to time, but my life is - for the most part - deadly boring. I mean, how many times can I post reports about our garden or the hummingbirds or the pesky squirrels that insist on raiding our bird feeders on a regular basis? Ho hum, ho hum, ho .... zzzzzzzzzzz. Oops. I put myself to sleep just then.

However, I can report that, after one year's residence with us, Caruso (the now-15-year-old kitty we adopted from Animal Aid) is doing beautifully. He and Sam (our HUGE black cat) chase each other around the house and play together as if they've always been buddies. Harley still doesn't like him much, but her reactions to seeing him are a little less intense than they used to be. I don't think I can say they've reached a detente, but at least they're not engaged in active warfare. Most of the time.
I doubt that my fantasy of a three-cat night will ever happen, but it's pretty clear that Mr. Caruso has settled into his new home quite comfortably. Which isn't, at least to me, boring at all.

2008 Oregon MS Walk

Our intrepid team participated in the MS Walk again this year, and so far we've raised a little over $4,800 for MS research. My thanks go to the team members and to all of our friends, family and associates whose generous contributions to The Lib*erators resulted in such successful fund raising.

Unlike the first year we participated, when it POURED the entire time, this year's weather was spectacular. It was sunny and warm, but the breezes from the Willamette River made it just right for spending an hour walking (or, in my case, being pushed in the wheelchair). According to the folks from the Portland office of the Oregon MS Society, this year's turnout was the biggest ever (including all kinds of dogs from our own Waggoner, who joined for the second year in a row, to a group of Basset Hounds who seemed to be forming their own team!). There were several of us in wheelchairs and/or motorized scooters, obviously folks with MS who found their own way to participate in the Walk, despite our inability to do it on our own two feet.

At one point, a woman I'd never seen before (and probably won't see again), walked past us and asked my friend Reva if she'd take a picture of the two of us. This wasn't easy, since Zack was still pushing me in the wheelchair, but Reva managed to do it somehow. The woman patted me on the shoulder, said "Bless you for doing this" and walked on ahead of us, disappearing into the crowd. Amazing.

It's events like this one that remind me how deep the human capacity for kindness and generosity can be. I'm grateful to everyone who participated in Saturday's Walk, to those I know and love and to all the strangers with whom we shared a glorious morning along the banks of the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon. Who knows? Maybe the money we raised will fund a research experiment that finally discovers the cause of Multiple Sclerosis. Wouldn't that be wonderful?

Anniversary Celebration

Yesterday was our third wedding anniversary (I tell folks that we had a decade-long engagement and decided it was safe to make things legal after that). We were married in San Francisco City Hall, just two weeks before I arrived in Portland (I'm a firm believer in cramming as much major change into as short a period of time as possible in order to maximize the stress factor). We chose to be married in that venue in solidarity with our gay and lesbian friends whose deep and loving relationships were given all-too-brief legal recognition by the city of San Francisco in that same place. It rained buckets the morning we were married, but the weather cleared later that day, and yesterday's weather was much the same.

Since I'm into the fourth month of my Year of Not Buying Stuff, we didn't exchange gifts (actually, we stopped doing that years ago), but we did exchange cards and David bought me a beautiful bouquet of French tulips (my favorite flower). Best of all, he made reservations at one of the restaurants we've been wanting to try for a while - Genoa.

I was a bit apprehensive when I looked at the menu (seven courses!?) but the meal was about as close to perfect as any I've ever had. Portions were small, thankfully, just enough to allow full enjoyment of the presentation and amazing mix of flavors without being overwhelming, and the menu itself was outstanding. I wish I'd thought to grab a menu before we left, because the menu was much too complex for me to remember, much less describe here. A few highlights:

• Spectacular watercress soup (who knew?)
• Kobe beef (David's)
• Roast squab (mine)
• The best selection of cheeses I've ever had

I loved that the waiter brought David a glass of red wine to accompany the beef course, since I mentioned that David kindly allowed me to order a bottle of white wine, even though he preferred reds. And that he put a slender candle in each of our dessert plates to commemorate our anniversary.

It was a quiet, elegant and totally satisfying celebration.

Spring Snow

I was talking with my ninety-three year old mother-in-law last week, saying I was hoping to find the energy to clean out the flower beds around our house later in the morning. She is a life-long gardener, and lived most of her life in Oregon, so when she cautioned me to wait a few weeks before doing anything like that, I listened to her. "It will get cold again," she said, "and there's always a chance of snow in March."

When I woke this morning, I silently thanked her for her sage advice, because the first thing I saw when I looked out the kitchen window was - snow! There's not a lot of it, and it looks as if the precipitation has already turned back to rain, but there are patches of snow all around our house - on the lawn and the decks, on my car, and coating the clear plastic domes that protect our two bird feeders on the back deck.

The daffodils still seem just fine.

This reminded me of the first spring I spent in Boston, after moving up there from Philadelphia. We'd had a week of absolutely perfect, glorious spring weather, after a very hard winter. My son's dad and I went for a long walk along the Esplanade, abandoning our parkas and gloves for light jackets, breathing in the smells from the trees and the newly grown grass, and loving the feel of the warm sun on our faces.

A week later, on May 11th, it snowed - big time. I think we ended up with a foot of snow in that freak storm, and the gorgeous magnolia trees that grace Commonwealth Avenue lost every single blossom. Gah!

When I lived (and gardened) in Massachusetts, I learned that it was wise to wait until May 31st to plant a garden. So when I wake to snow here on the other side of the continent, in a city that could have been called "Boston" rather than "Portland", had a coin-toss gone differently, I know that I'll be out in the garden within a couple of weeks, doing as much as I can to clear things out before my energy disappears.

I can't wait to plant vegetables again this year. But I will.

What we need is leadership

I can’t count the number of times I said those words when I worked in large corporations. I can’t count the number of times I sat in a coaching session with someone struggling to move up the corporate ladder, trying to explain the difference between a manager – even an exceptional manager – and a leader.

Here’s the thing: organizations need both. Managers – good, skilled managers – are absolutely essential to the health and ongoing success of any organization (and the U.S. is one huge organization in dire need of exceptional management skills, for sure). But leadership, that almost intangible ability to envision how a successful future will look, to communicate that picture over and over again so others can see it and taste it and feel it and (most importantly) to motivate people and convince them to pull together in order to work towards that future – well, that’s leadership, not management. A truly extraordinary leader hires talented managers without the need to micromanage them. A true leader knows how to trust.

I turned sixty in December 2007 (astounding though that seems to me, since I still feel a LOT younger inside). I’ve been politically aware and off-and-on active for over forty of those years. When Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon was one of only two members of that prestigious body to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964 (I was still in high school at the time), I wrote a letter thanking him for his courage. At the time, I lived in Philadelphia, and Oregon was one of those big states out west that I figured I’d never see; who knew I’d find myself lucky enough to live in Portland forty years later? Since that time, I’ve listened to more motivational speeches than I can remember, much less count. But not one of them ever moved me the way Barack Obama’s speech in Philadelphia on March 18th did. I sat here at my desk in our home, watching the video on Obama’s web site and listening carefully to every word. When he was finished speaking, I realized that this man embodied everything I thought a leader needed – including something I didn’t list in the paragraph above – integrity.

Hillary Clinton is a brilliant woman whose talents should neither be denied nor discounted. She strikes me as one of the most competent and effective managers I've ever seen in action, and that's saying a lot. However...

There hasn’t been a time in my life when this country was more in need of a real leader, someone who (in my husband’s words) can present both a literal and figurative face to the people of our country and the rest of the world that the United States is more than just a place where wealthy white men live and prosper. I absolutely believe Barack Obama is that man.

So why the Monster Story, anyway?

It occurred to me that people might think it a wee bit odd that the URL to this blog is TheMonsterStory. What's that about?

Giving credit where it's due, it was a friend in California who used to call the disease The MonSter (get it?) and hoo boy, was she right. This really is a monster of a disease, especially for those of us who want to believe we have even minimal control over our lives. For years, my life was ruled by my calendars. I shlepped a blue leather binder that sported a little brass place with my name etched on it everywhere -- at work, at home. It was ubiquitous. The more appointments and dates I could cram onto each page, the better I felt about myself. I was doing stuff. I was accomplishing stuff. I was competent! I was worth something. That binder represented so much to me, now that I think back on it (and I have no idea where it is these days - I might have tossed it when we moved to Portland). It carried more than physical weight - it represented my success, as surely as my job title or the number of people who clamored for appointments on my crammed schedule at work.

Of course, that was all illusion, sure as I'm sitting here in an old t-shirt and fuzzy slippers. I'm not saying that my efforts at work weren't valuable, or that I wasn't effective. It's just that those jam-packed pages listing meetings and assignments had just about nothing to do with my worth as a human being, even though that was the value I ascribed to them. Unfortunately, at least as far as the rest of the world knows, whatever contributions I was able to make in the past, or those I make today, really can't be represented with numbers or entries on a calendar. If I made a difference, it was with the people with whom I worked, and it's almost impossible to quantify those experiences and interactions.

The MonSter continues to try and teach me that Life Lesson. The first thing I think about every morning as I wake is a 'to-do' list. What do I need to accomplish today? There's the usual morning routine (focused mainly on cat-related tasks). I can add a few more chores like cleaning and re-filling the hummingbird feeders or trying to run the Dyson vacuum without tripping over the cord or losing my balance and tumbling into a chair. Maybe I can manage a half hour on my trusty Theracycle, getting my arms and legs moving and my heart rate up a wee bit. It's pretty certain that I can't add a visit to the supermarket if I've already done the stuff I listed above. That will need to wait 'til tomorrow or the day after - or maybe even the day after that. So I've gone from being a much-sought-after, high-paid corporate manager, one who traveled extensively and worked 24/7 to - what? A sixty-year-old woman with a not-very-interesting life who can barely fit one outside event on her calendar, much less a long list of appointments. Does that mean I'm worth less (or worthless, either will work, I guess)? That I'm a walking waste of oxygen?

Intellectually, I know that's not true. But damn, there are days when the MonSter's impact on my life makes me feel that way.

So it's not all about MS, is it? Isn't it also about the way we - our society - values people?

Whew. This is way too heavy all of a sudden. I think I need to climb on the old Theracycle and watch a light-hearted DVD...

Watching the seasons change

I've been a little down these past few weeks, thanks in part to The Cold From Hell that's been cutting a swath through Portland. There's a part of me, the self-absorbed crazy part I s'pose, that always thinks something like "Wait a minute! I already have my disease, dammit! What's with this add-on? Enough is already way too much!" But the Universe, in its perverse and unknowable way, has piled a cold that simply won't go away atop my regular list of MS-related physical woes, and that's been enough to eat away at my reserve of positive thinking. I'm not suicidally depressed - nothing dramatic like that. But I'm feeling blue and kinda sorry for myself (and boyohboy do I miss shopping).

All around me, though, our gardens are shaking off the last of winter's dormancy and coming back to life. I first noticed a sprinkling of crocuses in the beds around the driveway in front of the house. Light and dark purple (my favorite color) suddenly appeared among the dead leaves and brown branches - the first harbinger of spring. In the past week, the daffodils have come to life, and there are banks of bright yellow blossoms just about everywhere I look, turning what was a typical dull and unhappy-looking winter landscape into something bright and optimistic (yeah, I know, I'm projecting just a wee bit here, but - what the hell - it's my blog, right?).

This morning I noticed that the pear tree outside our dining room window is covered with pale green buds. And the camellia bushes are beginning to flower, as well.

The cycle of life continues around me, despite my blue interior. This is a Good Thing. It helps pull me out of my self-absorbed self and focus back on all of the beauty that surround me every day. As the two or three people who read this blog know by now, I spend a lot of my time clambering out of emotional rat-holes - dark, dank, unpleasant places where things always look grim and impossible. Thankfully (cheap date that I am), something as simple as a bank of daffodils swaying in the breeze can help me refocus on the good stuff in life.

So even though I still feel lousy, and keep sniffling and coughing and sneezing and keeping the Kleenex people in business, I'm not down in the rat-hole this morning.

But I am saddened at some news that arrived in an email from my son's dad this morning. One of my son's uncles, a very kind and loving man, passed away this morning after a long battle with brain cancer. I haven't seen Bruce in almost fifteen years, but I remember him very clearly, and with affection. Once again, the wheel of life turns. The daffodils spring back into life, and one human being passes away. Forgive me if this sounds maudlin - that isn't my intent at all. But these two polar opposite events hit me this morning, and reminded me that change - good change, bad change, neutral change - is as integral a part of our lives as breathing.

Whether you're out there actively working as an agent of change, or simply watching the seasons change from inside your home, it's gonna happen.

Condolences to Bruce's family, and a peaceful passing for him. And for you three or four friends who read this blog - remember that spring will come again this year!

Valentine's Day 2008

These are the roses David gave me for Valentine's Day

We celebrated Valentine's Day in Portland in 2005, when we came here to check things out and see if we were ready to commit to a move from the Bay Area. David made reservations at a funky little restaurant called "Wild Abandon" (he liked the name) on Belmont Street. We sat in a booth, way in the back of the restaurant, and we both loved the venue as well as the meal. Since our reservation was on the early side, we decided to go to a movie after dinner. We ended up at the Moreland, an old, neighborhood theater that turned out to be the second oldest, continuously running movie theater in the country (the first oldest is also in Portland!). We saw Sideways, which was a first-run movie at the time, and paid $4.50 each for admission. Movies in the Bay Area had just hit $9.00, and parking was always an issue unless we opted to go to a suburban movie complex instead of one of the smaller theaters in Berkeley or Oakland. We anticipated having to drive around looking for parking, but we ended up parking in front of the theater (well, not in front, exactly, but in the first available parking space next to the entrance). Amazing!, we thought (and still do). We get to see a movie for half of what it would cost in the Bay Area and manage to find a free parking spot within spitting distance of the front door! It was a very cool way to spend Valentine's Day.

Last night was much more quiet, but equally as lovely. I made dinner (lamb chops glazed with honey, cumin and coriander and curried couscous with dried cranberries, saute'd onions and cilantro. We opened our last bottle of a beautiful Rosenblum Zinfandel, toasted our third Valentine's Day in Portland (and each other, of course). The venue this year was much more familiar (and had a lot more cat hair wafting all over the place!), but the feelings were as strong as ever.

I am one lucky woman.

A Year Without Shopping

This started as a way to deal with the cost of Avonex, once I've fallen into the Medicare Abyss, but it's turned into a much more interesting - and potentially richer - process.

I decided to stop buying stuff, stuff like shoes (I ask you, how many pairs of black shoes does someone who walks barefoot in the house and doesn't go out much really 'need'?), or ceramic bowls, or computer games, or even books. We have one of the best library systems in the country here in Multnomah County, OR. If I want to read something, I can go online, put in my request, and it ends up waiting for me at the local branch of the library. We have more ceramic bowls (and glass bowls and stainless steels bowls and wood bowls) than any two people can use in a month. Why add anything more to our collection? My closets are stuffed with blouses and coats, jackets and slacks (and, of course, shoes). I have more sweaters, tunics, turtlenecks and other assorted tops than I care to count. Do I really need another purple one?

No way. I may want another purple blahblahblah, but I sure as hell don't need another purple blahblahblah.

And therein lies the real richness and learning opportunity in this self-imposed denial of retail adventure. Whenever I find myself thinking "Boy, I really need a purple blahblahblah" (which happens, sadly, a lot more frequently than I'd wish) I ask myself "Do I really need that purple thing, or do I want that purple thing? And if I want that purple thing, what is it I really want?"

Believe me, that last question isn't an easy one to answer. Often, I can't figure it out, and have to put it away. But once in a while, I'll realize what I really want is my health, or my work, or to be fifteen pounds thinner or fifteen years younger - none of which happens if I buy a purple blahblahblah (hell, none of which will happen again, at least in this lifetime). So instead of buying something, I spend a little time thinking about the real thing I'm missing, not finding answers, but learning in the process.

We find mindfulness wherever we can, if we try.

Out with the old year...

...and in with the new.

Except I neglected to write about a couple of cool things that happened last month, so please forgive me for a quick look back?

David, my wonderful husband, managed to orchestrate a surprise birthday party for me on the evening of the Day Itself. I wasn't much into celebrating the day, since I'm still not quite believing that I'm actually sixty years old, and since he hadn't suggested anything to me by Friday afternoon, I asked if we could call my son Zack and his sweetie Emily, and invite them over for Pizza And A Movie. David, looking a wee bit uncomfortable, answered that he'd made reservations at JoPa, a terrific restaurant just a quarter mile from our house, figuring that it was a safe venue even if I ended up being tired in the early evening. Since this interchange occurred just before I crashed for a 3-plus hour nap, I completely spaced on the fact that JoPa doesn't take reservations for parties under six.

Later that afternoon, the phone rang and someone asked to speak with David. I asked who was calling (all those years of working in offices has made it impossible for me to answer the phone and just hand it over to someone!) and the guy on the other end of the line said "I'm calling from JoPa to confirm tonight's reservation". David took the phone and walked out of the room to continue the conversation (another clue) and I realized that something beyond dinner for the two of us was afoot.

When we got to the restaurant, David asked if we could 'check out the upstairs room' (okay, that's VERY odd, I thought, we've been here dozens of times, and he's never even glanced towards that space) but I slowly climbed up the steep staircase, expecting maybe a small party of six people to greet me when I finally made it up there.

Nope. The room was filled with almost everyone we know in Portland - a real party! There's something special about being in a space like that, surrounded by folks you love and who love you, and I can't imagine a better way to celebrate my sixtieth turn around the sun. Thank you, dearest David, for pulling it together so beautifully!

There are photos from the party on some digital camera or other, and I'm hoping to share a few of them if/when I'm able.

On a completely different note, let's go back to the letter I posted here a week or so ago. I sent a copy to the Oregonian newspaper as a letter to the Editor, and it was published last week. An interesting thing happened yesterday - maybe a little hint that it's worth taking the time to voice my opinions and share my experiences.

The phone rang in the late morning, and a voice I didn't recognize asked if I was Libbi Lepow. Assuming it was a telemarketer, I answered in the affirmative (but warily) and the man proceeded to tell me that he'd read my letter to the Editor in last Friday's _Oregonian_, and wanted to let me know about a prescription assistance program in Oregon that might help me with the exorbitant 'donut-hole' costs for medication. Turns out that he's a retired dermatologist, and knows the program's director quite well; he gave me their toll-free number and her name, and encouraged me to call them. As he said "You've got nothing to lose - even the phone call is free!"

I'm still a wee bit amazed that someone would take the time to track me down and share that information. It was a ray of light in a year that will live in my memory as pretty damned dark overall. It's little acts of generosity and kindness like the phone call that keep my trust in humanity from disappearing completely.

So, on that note, I wish everyone who takes the time to read these rambling, stream-of-consciousness missives the best possible new year. I hope it brings you light and love, abundance and joy (and for all of us, regime change at home and a return to the core values upon which this country was founded).

A birthday...

...and a death.

This wasn't quite what I was thinking about posting here today, but my plans were altered by the news this morning of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan. She was fifty-four years old. Today, I enter another decade of life as I find that I've somehow managed to survive sixty turns around the sun. It's my sixtieth birthday.

Like so many of my friends, I don't feel like I'm sixty years old.

Some days, when I'm tired and cranky, I feel like a five-year-old. Some days, when the symptoms of MS are on a rampage, I feel like a ninety-five year old. But most days, I feel like I'm somewhere between thirty-five and forty-five - old enough to have stored up some wisdom, but young enough to laugh like a maniac when I watch an episode of "Family Guy" on TV.

So maybe the reality is that no one really feels their true age? Or that age, as so many people insist, is irrelevant?

When I look in the mirror and see that the gray hair is starting to win the battle with the dark brown hair, or that those once-imperceptible lines under my eyes are suddenly a lot more apparent, it becomes quite clear that I've lived each and every one of those sixty years. But inside, where it counts the most, there's still a young woman with a silly sense of humor and a desire to keep on living life as fully as possible - in spite of the passage of years and the damage to her fragile central nervous system.

As the sad news this morning reminded me, yet again, life is both fragile and miraculous, and never something to be taken for granted.

So on this day of my birth back in 1947, I remind everyone who bothers to read this little blog to take a moment to breathe deeply and be grateful for your life. I'm sure grateful for mine.

Teetering on the edge...

...of the Medicare Abyss.

I just sent this letter to my Senators:

"I am one of the many older or disabled residents of Oregon for whom the 2008 Medicare D coverage changes will cause tremendous hardship.

I have Multiple Sclerosis. In 2001, I suffered a severe, and ultimately disabling, MS exacerbation that abruptly ended my working career. I intended to continue working as long as possible, to continue contributing to my 401(k), and thus be in a position to supplement my Social Security benefit when I retired. So much for plans...

Compared to many others, I’m one of the lucky ones. I had Long Term Disability insurance when I got sick, and my benefit continues for another five years. But now that I find myself facing the dreaded ‘donut hole’ in Medicare D (I’ve started calling it the ‘Medicare Abyss’ – donut hole is too nice a term), I worry that I won’t be able to pay for my medication without great difficulty.

Avonex, the medication that slows the progression of MS, will cost $1,600 a month once I fall into the Medicare Abyss (some time in the first quarter of 2008). I’ll need to come up with $4,090 out-of-pocket if I want to continue this treatment. When I see my neurologist in January, I’ll speak with him about the risks involved in stopping Avonex treatment. I don’t want to take that risk, but I may have no other choice.

I know I’m just one middle-class person, representing just one vote for you. But I’m joined by thousands and thousands of people, many of whom can barely afford to heat their homes in the winter, much less pay exorbitant prices for medication they desperately need.

Please support me and my fellow citizens and do something to fix Medicare D?"


I guess I should be glad that we bought the wheelchair and walker when I was still working and had decent health insurance (my used, portable wheelchair cost over $900 when we bought it in 2002!), and that David's mom gave me his dad's motorized scooter when his dad passed away. We need to get it repaired, since it got screwed up when we moved to Portland, and I'm hoping it's repairable, since those little machines cost several thousand dollars. The thing is, if I do stop Avonex therapy, I may well find myself needing all of those mobility-assistance tools a lot more than I do today.

This is one helluva sixtieth birthday present.

The "Ladder of Abundance"

Yeah, I know. Everyone blogger and his/her mother (at least in the US) is writing something about Thanksgiving today. So I'm not original. Big deal.

Here's the thing. I spend a lot of the time in my head being negative, grumpy and cranky. I think about getting old (hell, I turn sixty next month), being sick with an incurable disease, facing increasing medical costs with a shrinking income, the horrific political climate in this country, war, climate change... well, I could go on, but I'm not gonna do that. Whenever I find myself peering up out of one of my emotional rat-holes, I force myself to look, instead, at the amazing abundance in my life, and all the things I have to be grateful for. Doing that actually does help a lot, even when my climb out of the rat-hole seems impossible.

So this morning, this absolutely, drop-dead-gorgeous autumn morning in beautiful Portland, Oregon, I will share my list of Things I'm Thankful For (even though I ended that phrase with a preposition).

• My husband, whose unfailing love and support keep me going every day. David, I can't imagine life without you.
• My son, Zack, who now lives a scant five miles away, and who is willing to meet his old mom for lunch once a week. Seeing your smiling face lights up my life, my son, more than you can imagine.
• Emily, Zack's sweetie, whose love makes him happier than I've seen him. Thank you, Emily!
• Frank, my son's dad, whose love for Zack helped us all navigate through some tough times. Frank, I'll always be grateful to you.
• My small-but-beloved birth family. I love you all very, very much, and am so glad that we can stay connected through email, even though we live a continent apart.
• The Dunning clan - all of them - for accepting me into their family with such unconditional love. You guys are the BEST!
• My friends - here in Portland, in the Bay Area, back east, wherever. Whenever I get crazy about finances and the future, I think about the true 'wealth' in my life, and realize that I'm rich beyond words when I consider my friends. I sure do love you guys, too!
• Our three kitties - Sam, Harley and Caruso. I love you little furry creatures, even when I'm greeted with a pile of cat-puke first thing in the morning (like this morning!). There's nothing better to counteract the blues than snuggling with a warm, purring kitty.
• Our beautiful, whimsical, colorful home. I spend a lot of time here, and it's about the best place to be on house-arrest that I can imagine.
• The ability to volunteer, even a little, with organizations that matter to me. Whether I'm petting cats or doing a little writing for Onward Oregon, being able to contribute a tiny bit to my community is a real blessing.
• Living here in Portland, a city of communities, where commitment to maintaining a livable environment is still a core value (and the politics are Blue!).

Whew. Okay, that's enough for now. I could probably keep going, but you get the idea. Everything I wrote about is a rung on the Ladder of Abundance that I can use to hoist myself up out of a rat-hole back into a brighter reality. So thank you for helping me!

And have the happiest Thanksgiving ever!

Rumors to the contrary...

...I'm still alive.

The thing is, there's not much new here at Rancho Dleepow del Norte, so every time I've begun a post here, my internal dialog goes something like this:

"Who's gonna care what your stupid back yard looks like? Probably no one. I mean, how many times can you write about the way the trees look or the squirrel who has figured out how to circumvent the 'squirrel-proof' bird feeder or how much you love autumn in Portland?"

"Hmmm. Good point. I'll log out instead."

And I leave Blogger and do some fantasy online shopping for a while.

But several of my friends have mentioned in email that they check the blog regularly and wonder if I'm okay (this is what happens when you're a life-long extrovert - silence implies disaster!), so I'm here to report that I'm doing as well as an almost-sixty-year-old women (gasp) with Multiple Sclerosis can do. The truth is, as I think about it, a lot has happened in the weeks since I posted here, but I'm not sure how much of it I can (1) remember and (2) seems worthy of sharing here.

One very recent event, however, is haunting me. I received an email from a friend/ex-colleague, letting me know that the 23-year-old son of another colleague had been killed in Afghanistan on November 9th. Twenty-three years old. My beloved son will turn twenty-three on his next birthday.
Sean, the young man who was killed this month, was married in January 2007. His wife will give birth to their child in February, 2008. And he's gone - killed while on patrol in Afghanistan, along with four of his fellow soldiers. Just - gone.

Can I tell you that this is a parent's worst nightmare?

When I first held my son, I was almost overwhelmed by the rush of love I felt for him. I'd never felt anything like that before, and could hardly believe how deeply I loved that tiny, red-faced little guy. I still love him like that - a deep, fierce, protective love that often feels overwhelming. I worry when he doesn't reply to emails (even though I remind myself that he's very introverted!) or when he doesn't call for a week or so. I cannot imagine living with the the unending fear that all the parents with beloved children in Afghanistan and Iraq must contend with each and every day. It is beyond heartbreaking.

Sigh.

Do you ever wonder how the President and his band of merry men sleep at night? I sure do.

Living in a (kitty) war zone

It's been quite a while since I've posted here, so it's time for a quick update on Caruso and Co. Caruso is doing beautifully. He now owns the living room, and spends most of his time curled up on the big sofa in a little gray-furred circle, sleeping peacefully. When he wakes and stretches, he'll usually do his little "Where is everybody?" yowl; if I'm awake, I'll lumber out to the living room, scoop him up, and we'll have a short love-fest before he settles down at his food dish for a snack.

He and Sam have reached a detente of sorts, and we've seen them sleeping near each other on the guest room bed, or lying on the sofa together. Every once in a while, they'll pause next to each other and Sam will attempt to groom Caruso, while Caruso sniffs at Sam's face. All in all, they've found a way to co-exist.

Harley, otoh, is a completely different issue. She refuses to enter the living room, preferring to go through the kitchen to get to the food bowl in the sun room. If she catches sight of Caruso and he moves a muscle, she's after him, hissing all the while, chasing him into his hiding place behind the sofa. It doesn't matter how often we reprimand her, or try to carry her into the living room when we're sitting in there together, she morphs into the Terrible Tortoiseshell Torpedo whenever she realizes Caruso is nearby.

Harley is a big cat (and she can't get away with the 'I'm not fat, I'm just big-boned' excuse - she's a porker). Caruso is slender and probably weighs half of what Harley weighs. So far, they haven't tangled (he clearly understands that discretion is the better part of valor, choosing to run and hide rather than attempt a fight with her). I sure hope he continues to do this, and that she eventually learns to accept him.

Lately he's been following me around the house, and he's even ventured into our bedroom, where Harley tends to sleep most of the time. So far, she hasn't realized he's been in there. Thankfully.

Of course, my fantasy is that our war zone will eventually turn into a place where all three of these kitties will learn to tolerate each other -- but I'm not holding my breath!

More about the garden

The forecast for Portland is hot - temps near 90 degrees. So I went down to the vegetable beds just now, before it heats up and I need to cocoon in the house, and picked a few ripe cherry tomatoes, a handful of lettuce leaves and a few sprigs of oregano and thyme. I anticipate a significant crop of tomatoes - yellow pears, red cherries and Roma tomatoes - in a week or so, but the zucchini, cucumbers and eggplant are still not really producing much. Next year we'll put things in much earlier, in hopes of a bigger harvest ('big' being a relative term, of course!).

The pear tree is bursting with fruit, and our niece Bobbi is coming over mid-week to help me can a bunch of pears (bottle, really, not can, but the old-fashioned verb seems to linger). The muscat grape vine is covered with fruit as well, not enough for wine and too much to eat. I need to find some recipes for using these grapes since the vine produces prodigious amounts of fruit every year.

I saw a large, brown maple leaf on the front deck this morning, and the Japanese maple in the front yard is showing its first bright-red autumn leaves. It's odd to think of autumn with such summer-like temperatures, but it's clear that autumn is definitely closer than I'd like to think.

I sure did miss the change of seasons, and am very glad to be living in a place where we can experience all four, distinct seasons again.

Summer's ending

The end-of-summer spiders have arrived, and are spinning their webs everywhere. I wasn't aware of this phenomenon until a few years ago, when I read an article in the San Francisco Chronicle that described it; ever since then, I watch for their return and that becomes the first indication that summer is on the wane. There are lots of other signs that autumn is approaching around here - the leaves on some trees are beginning to turn, many of the plants in our yard are slowing down and/or stopping entirely (I've been clearing out piles of lily-leaves and dumping them on the ever-growing compost pile in the back yard), the pear tree is laden with fruit and the grapes are ripening as well.

We started our vegetable garden in early summer, and I wondered if we'd get much of a harvest from the things we planted. I saw the first cucumber on that vine yesterday, the tomato plants are covered with fruit (not yet ripe) and it looks like we'll have more carrots than we can use. I'm not sure about the eggplant and zucchini, though. And we've been picking yellow grape tomatoes from one of the plants we put in a big pot on the back deck - those are just wonderful.

I'm beginning to understand why harvest time was such a huge thing back in the days when folks lived and worked on their own farms, and depended on those farms for their food even though my experience is on a very small scale. I've prepared and frozen a dozen containers of pesto, made with organic basil from our weekly box of veggies (our subscription is with Winter Green Farm, a wonderful CSA that delivers to the Portland area) and with basil from our own little herb garden. I froze a huge bag of garlic (also from our veggie box), and won't have to buy garlic in the supermarket for months and months. I'm researching all kinds of information on freezing veggies and herbs so we don't waste any of these delicious veggies and fruits, and so we can enjoy them in a few months, when locally grown summer produce isn't available. We already have a dozen or so freezer bags filled with blueberries and strawberries, and I anticipate adding a lot more produce to our stash before summer ends.

Of course my experience is nothing like the lives of real farm folks. I'm quite aware of that, and don't mean to imply that it is. But I began thinking about this whole issue while I was cleaning the basil yesterday, so I thought I'd ramble about it here today.

Oh, and the pesto was killer! I'm so glad we'll have some to enjoy in the dead of winter.

Cat Update

It's been a while since I've posted about our three kitties, I know. Life has been - um - just a bit hectic for the past several weeks, and I've barely been able to feed and cats and keep the litter boxes emptied, much less write about them. But things seem to be settling down again, so here's a quick update.

Sam and Caruso have reached a detente of sorts - I've even seen Caruso sit patiently while Sam grooms him (something Harley rarely, if ever, does). They're not yet what I'd call 'friends', but they more than tolerate each other.

Caruso and Harley, otoh, have a much less friendly relationship. This morning, I saw Harley crouching under the dining room table, glaring at something in the sunroom (which turned out to be Caruso). She waited until he scampered into the living room before venturing out to the food dish in the sunroom. I suppose it's good that she's no longer actively hostile towards him, but my fantasy of having three cats sleeping together with us on our bed is clearly just that - a fantasy. Hopefully, Harley will be comfortable enough with Caruso to come back and join us in the living room, though; I miss that.

So - it's not perfect yet, but it's getting better.

Caruso's newest activity is to curl up and nap on a pillow in my lap whenever I'm sitting on the sofa in the living room. It makes reading a bit difficult, but I sure love that he's comfortable enough to sleep on my lap!

Minnie Driver rocks!

Last night we heard Minnie Driver at a local music venue, and I gotta say, the woman can sing. I've been a big fan of her acting, and we both loved The Riches (and can't wait for the new season to start). Neither one of us knew anything about her singing career, but she sounded terrific when we listened to a cut from her album online and decided we'd spring for tickets.

I'm really glad we did. Her band was great, she's got a terrific voice, and the material she writes is pretty damned good, as well.

If you get a chance to see her perform, do it!

Zack and Emily

Yesterday, Zack's dad took Z&E on a sightseeing ride up to Mt. Hood (one of the myriad 'must-see' places in and around this beautiful city). He sent me this photo, taken during their wanderings.

I had to share it here.