Meet Caruso!

A few weeks ago I wrote about having met (and bonded with) an elderly cat who was living at Animal Aid, the shelter where I've been volunteering for the past month or so. Caruso is a beautiful boy, part Russian Blue, whose owner died in January, having ensured that all three of his cats would go to a no-kill shelter.

Caruso (so named because he was very verbal!) was quite depressed when he arrived at the shelter, and spent most of his time hiding. It took the wonderful folks at Animal Aid a long time to coax him into eating a little bit, but he was clearly still quite frightened and skittish when I met him.

I'd promised David not to turn into a Crazy Cat lady, bringing a new cat home every week (although I gotta tell ya, it's a HUGE temptation), but Caruso just tugged at my heart as soon as I met him. I convinvced David to accompany me to the shelter to meet Caruso, and the two of them hit it off as soon as they met, so we agreed to start the adoption process.

We had to take our two cats to the vet to be tested for feline HIV/leukemia, and we were distressed to discover that Sam (thanks to those years of brawling back in California) is HIV positive. Harley, on the other hand, is fine, and our vet assured us that it was highly unlikely that Caruso would contract the virus, but we assumed the folks at Animal Aid wouldn't let the adoption go through.

Much to my joy, the day after I'd left a message letting them know the results of Sam's blood test, I got a call from one of the women who works at the shelter, telling me that she'd called our vet and was willing to let the adoption go through.

Two days ago, I bought a new cat bed, and I set it up in our hall bathroom, along with a small litter box and a food/water dish, and sweet Caruso arrived at our front door about an hour ago. He found his bed in seconds, and has been curled up in there ever since (except when he ventures out to do a little exploring). He started to purr as soon as I began to scratch his ears, and it seems as if he knows he's out of the shelter and back in a home.

Now we need to work to ensure that our two cats accept him, so he can join the household. Wish us luck!

Graduation weekend

Zack and his ancient mom, just after the graduation ceremony

We've been back from Minnesota for a couple of days, and I'm still in Major Recovery-From-Travel mode, but I did want to write a bit about my son's graduation from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD).

MCAD is a small art school (there were less than 100 people in his graduating class) located right next to the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Zack graduated with a BFA in Comic Art, MCAD being one of only two colleges that offered a degree in Comic Art when he was applying to college four years ago. From everything we've seen and all he's told us, it's a terrific place, and the graduation ceremony definitely confirmed that impression.

Graduation was held in the Children's Theater, which is part of the art institute complex. The room was large and comfortable, and the stage set was gorgeous (done in my favorite color palette, with lots of blues and teals and purples, so what could be bad, right?). The ceremony itself was a wonderful mix of formalities, whimsy and humor - just perfect for an art school that encourages creativity and individuality. The masters' degree recipients all wore commencement garb, but the bachelors' degree recipients could wear whatever they wanted; this led, as you can imagine, to a fascinating range of garb, from the graduate who wore the tux he'd rented for his wedding (which happened the following day), to the guy who graduated in a black toga covered with green glitter drawings, to Zack, in the 'dressy' outfit you see above. Some of the guys wore jeans and t-shirts spattered in paint, which seemed totally appropriate. Each masters' degree graduate had a mentor, and I loved the fact that each and every one of those pairs hugged each other when the diploma was delivered.

Best of all were the speeches (one speaker for each class and a keynote speaker), each different but all three were terrific. Who knew that it was actually possible to enjoy a graduation ceremony? Not me, for sure!

After the ceremony, there was a reception in the main MCAD building, where we got to see the display of Senior Projects (an amazing range of work, from comics to illustrations to furniture to fashion). It looked like every graduate had designed a business card, and I have two of Zack's new cards right next to my monitor.

It's very rare for someone to know what he or she wants to 'be when I grow up', but Zack has known since he was nine years old that he wanted to be a comic artist. I'm so grateful that he found a school like MCAD, where creativity and individuality are encouraged along with the highest standards of performance, that he was admitted to study there and that he's graduated!

Congratulations, Zack! You rock!

How does our garden grow?

Well, up until yesterday afternoon, the answer would have been 'awash in weeds'. Dandelions. Fireweed. Popweed. This fuzzy-stemmed stuff that re-seeds EVERYWHERE. Same with a yellow-flowered weed that is not only invasive, but about impossible to wrangle out of the ground.

I put in three hours of weeding last week, one hour a morning, and managed to fill a 30-gallon green-waste bag with the results of my labors. But David put in about six hours over the weekend, filling another two bags in the process. Some of our work was pruning/thinning (the strawberry patches needed thinning really badly, and the grapevine was begging to be pruned back). He cleared out all of the popweed and grass that had grown between the stepping stones on the various paths down into the garden - a painstaking task that required tremendous patience (which he has, and I definitely do not!). He found a half dozen stepping stones buried in the weeds in one of the garden beds, and used them to fill in the main path that leads down from the gate. That path got pretty treacherous in the rain, especially for a gimp like me, but now there's a safe pathway that even I can manage!

It's still a bit too early to think about new planting, but when we return from Minneapolis in mid-May, I'll start planning for some summer-blooming additions to the garden. For now, we're both enjoying the new, green barrier that surrounds our back yard, blocking out any glimpses of rooftops or the unsightly billboard we can see in the winter months.

Ah, spring!

The Seat of Enlightenment Rulz!

The Chair Affair auction was held last night, and I gotta take this opportunity to say that The Seat of Enlightenment kicked butt! The chair was one of only a dozen entries that made it into the live auction (the remainder of the fifty entries were sold in silent auction) and we were hoping it would bring in a lot of money for the Community Warehouse. It sold for THREE THOUSAND, SEVEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS!!! When you consider that this was the first time David and Larry collaborated on a project, and that it was the first time David attempted to build any kind of furniture, this success becomes truly amazing. I'm not surprised, mind you. The chair is both unique and beautifully crafted. But the competition was fierce, and included quite a few well-known artists/artisans, so it's clear that these two guys make one hell of a creative partnership. Oh, and not only did the chair sell for that astounding amount of money, the next-highest piece sold for $1,000 LESS than the Seat of Enlightenment! We found out last night that the Warehouse estimates it costs about $100 a family to provide the household goods/furnishings people so desperately need, which means the proceeds from the sale of this one chair will help close to forty families at some point in the future. Not a bad outcome, huh?

At the animal shelter

This is Martin

I've attempted a couple of options for volunteering since we moved to Portland, none of which really felt right to me -- until I was accepted as a volunteer at Animal Aid, a no-kill shelter that's less than a half mile from our home. Our wonderful neighbor Deb suggested that I check out volunteer opportunities there (since she knows what a sucker I am for cats), so I downloaded the volunteer application and mailed it in about a month ago. I got a call from the Volunteer Coordinator who signed me up for an assignment socializing (read 'petting') cats one morning a week. I started two weeks ago, and had to force myself to leave without committing to adopt at least one cat (my mantra is "remember the litter box!", a gentle reminder that we already have two cats). I skipped last week after hearing there was an outbreak of ringworm at the shelter (we of the Suppressed Immune System can't risk exposure to something like that), but I was back again this morning, visiting every room except the ringworm-ward, and falling in love with several cats while I was there.

I spent a lot of time with Martin, a somewhat shy guy who lives in one of the four smaller rooms (for cats who are skittish or too shy to live out in the biggest room). He is an absolute love, and it was hard to leave him after I'd spent a full hour at the shelter.

Before I met Martin, however, I spent a good deal of time with Caruso, a 12-year old gray cat whose owner passed away, leaving three cats behind. Apparently, it's taken him quite a while to recover from the trauma of losing his beloved person, but today he was about as sweet and friendly as a cat could be. At one point, while I was petting him and talking with one of the women who works in the office, I stopped scratching his ear momentarily; he put out a paw and gently grabbed my hand as if to say "Hey! You're here to pet me, not talk to some other human!" He's another love of a cat, and I sure hope he finds a home soon.

The truth is that I feel as if the cats are doing as much, if not more, for me as I am for them. There's nothing quite as wonderful as an hour spent scratching kitties behind their ears and listening to their purrs...

Being human

David and I were talking yesterday, about the horrific events in Virginia. I keep thinking about those lives, snuffed out by a sad and obviously disturbed young man, and am overwhelmed with sadness for all of the people who loved them. This event opens the door to my Fear Closet, the place where all of my deepest fears lie in wait (the door tends to open in the middle of the night, when I awake from a sound sleep), where I worry that something like this might happen where my beloved son attends college. It's usually easy to close the door to the Fear Closet, especially during the day, and I do so with great relief every time.

What we'd both thought, within moments of hearing about the carnage in Virginia, was that the loss of only 32 lives in one day would represent a good day in Iraq. It seems as if the number of innocent people killed in daily violence in that war-torn country escalates every day, at least according to the headlines in the Oregonian. If you think about it, we should be damned grateful that only 32 lives were lost to madness and hatred this week. We could, after all, be living in Iraq.

So where is the sadness and empathy for the husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, children and grandchildren of each and every human life snuffed out in Iraq? Do you feel that every time you read a newspaper headline or watch the news on TV? To be honest, I didn't. As so often happens, I've become accustomed to these awful statistics, just as I did during the Vietnam War. I'm not proud to admit this, but sadly, it is true.

So here's my latest resolution: I will stop every morning, if even for a moment, and think about the people whose lives are ripped apart each and every day in Iraq, with love and compassion. As if they were Americans. As if they were just like us, human beings. What a concept, huh?

We did it!

"The Lib*erators", nearing the end of the 2007 MS Walk

For the second year in a row, our little team of friends and family participated in the annual MS Walk, a fund-raising event in support of MS research. The final tally isn't in yet, but it looks like we've raised close to $5,000!

Unlike last year, when it poured buckets for most of the morning, we had perfect weather for a 5k walk (or, in my case, a 5k roll!). Several of us learned from last year's wardrobe malfunctions (one should never sit in a wheelchair in rainy weather without some kind of waterproof protection on one's legs!) and we were prepared for rain and wind; luckily, we didn't need that protection this time!

I want to thank my beloved friends and family (those who walked and those who contributed to our effort) for their love and support. You guys are the BEST!

A few more photos

...of The Seat of Enlightenment.

Transformation

This is something we used to talk about a lot, back when I was working. We did a lot of work focused on 'transforming' organizations, or departments, or teams or individuals, mainly so the corporation could sell more widgets and make more money.

Now that I've been forcibly removed from the corporate universe, now that I spend the majority of my time in and around our home, I had a thought about transformation - real transformation.

I know I've rhapsodized about spring in Portland a few times (maybe even a few too many times?) in earlier posts. I'm not here to retract one word of what I've written (spring in Portland is absolutely the best) but watching the changes - or, if you will, the transformation - taking place daily in our back yard, has caused me to think about that process in a very different way.

A few minutes ago, I cut the first tulip (a lovely, yellow blossom), brought it into the house and put it in a vase. It occurred to me that the tulip buds hadn't even appeared at the beginning of last week, and now - presto! - we have buds and tulips appearing all over our yard. Trees (there are several huge trees in yards that abut ours) that were just barely showing green if you looked carefully a week or so ago are now so covered with green blossoms that we can no longer see through to the road below (which means, thankfully, that we can no longer see the billboard either!). Within a week or so, we won't be able to see the houses to our south, and we'll again feel as if we're living in semi-isolation, rather than in a thickly-settled neighborhood in Southwest Portland. The split-leaf Japanese maple that traveled with us from Berkeley, and now sits on our front porch where I can see it from the kitchen window, is suddenly covered with open leaves. Two weeks ago, I had to strain to see the first buds appearing on its branches.

In my current incarnation as a stay-at-home, non-working person, I see all of this amazing change in our landscape as different kind of transformation, one that doesn't have to be taught or mandated or demanded. This beautiful, quiet, delicate, elegant and silent transformation happens because - well, because it's part of an organic and natural cycle.

I very much prefer this natural transformation to the kind we tried to facilitate back when I was working. With 20/20 hindsight, I finally realized that the best we were able to do was effect temporary changes. Calling what we did 'transformation' was the ultimate in arrogance.

It's the trees that really understand transformation.

Running on empty

If you've ever been so sick or so tired that the thought of doing anything beyond brushing your teeth and throwing on some clothing makes you want to weep, then you have some idea of how MS-fatigue feels. A friend of mine said it was like sinking into quicksand. I used to think of it as a heavy, dark curtain falling over me, forcing me to stop whatever I was doing and rest. Regardless of the metaphor used to describe it, MS-fatigue is both unrelenting and overwhelming.

It's been six years since the Big Exacerbation hit, six years of gimpy legs, canes, ever-more limited physical capabilities and fatigue, fatigue, FATIGUE. Fatigue is my appointment secretary. It dictates what I can and can't do every day, whether I can manage to exercise and go to the grocery store in one morning or whether I'll need to spend all day doing nothing but checking email, watching DVDs and sleeping. On a 'good' day, I can manage 40 minutes on my trusty Theracycle, a drive to New Seasons for groceries and maybe even a light chore or two before I have to collapse and sleep. But I still haven't adapted to this way of living, not even after six years, not really. Because I still want so very much to live my old, 'normal' life, the one where I could do pretty much whatever I set my mind to do. Change jobs? Sure. Change careers? Absolutely! Move across the country and start a new life on the West Coast? Hell, why not? Travel to China - alone - for work, in the early 1990's, before China had truly opened up to western visitors? You betcha!

Now? It doesn't matter one teeny, tiny bit what I want to do, or how much I will myself to do it, because my new Appointment Secretary controls what I'm able to do, regardless of what I want to do.

So why am I whining about this issue again today? Because I'm trying to recover at least some of my energy after a week-long visit from my beloved son and his sweetie, who spent their spring break week with us. I LOVE having my son nearby. I love being able to talk with him, to hear what new things he's into, to see him so in love with his sweetie and, best of all, to hug him whenever I feel like it (he's very tolerant of my need for hugs, which I appreciate). He and Emily are extremely undemanding visitors, asking for little more than visits to the Japanese and Chinese Gardens, access to cats, and an adequate supply of Diet Pepsi. But I'm determined to make the visit something good, something special, and I always end up doing too much, resting too little and running on empty, energy-wise, when they leave. This visit, I was too damned exhausted to sit in the car when David drove them to the airport, so I stayed home and rested instead. This damned MS Appointment Secretary made it impossible for me to spend an extra half hour with my son even though I desperately wanted to grab that extra time with him before he left.

And I've been more limp than the proverbial wet noodle ever since. I sleep eight or nine hours at night - deep, uninterrupted sleep - and I'm too tired to do anything requiring energy within an hour of waking. I'm too tired to cook (last night, I made a tossed salad and that was exhausting). I'm still running on empty, three days after they went back to Minneapolis (three lazy days spent doing nothing) and I'm not quite sure how to fill that energy tank back up.

Maybe I should end this post and rest a while, huh? Or even better, maybe I should figure out what my limits really are.

The Seat of Enlightenment

The Seat of Enlightenment

A good friend of ours has been working, non-stop, on a fund-raising event in support of the Community Warehouse here in Portland. The Community Warehouse is a righteous place that provides furniture and household goods to people in need, at no cost to them. This year's fund-raiser (The Chair Affair) is an auction of about fifty chairs designed or re-created by an amazing group of artists and artisans -- among them, my husband David and our good friend Larry Shifrin.

Larry is the 'Owner and CIO (Chief Illumination Officer!)' of Lumen Essence Lighting, a fascinating and creative shop in the Pearl District selling an impressive range of reclaimed-and-refinished lighting fixtures as well as fixtures Larry has designed and created himself. It's a terrific place, and well worth a visit even if you're not in the market for a new wall sconce at the moment!

So when Larry approached David with an idea for crafting a chair to include in the auction, there was no doubt in my mind that this duo would create something absolutely spectacular. Which they did.

Here's their description of the chair:

The Seat of Enlightenment

Designed and constructed by Larry Shifrin and David Dunning, this chair is an expression of West Coast Pacific Rim fusion. The Buddha floats in repose over translucent arcing waves of Pacific tranquility. He sits centered, at home among forms reflecting both East and West. As Frank Lloyd Wright drank in the aesthetics of the orient and drew them into his forms, we seek an expression that makes the old new, and the new, timeless.

For his part, David built and shaped in hardwood, forming over ninety wood-to-wood joints involving no metal fasteners. The chair form is seven feet tall and features fifteen legs. He developed the layered, crackled paint effect and finished the hardwood in urethane. Meanwhile, Larry selected the brass and bronze elements and produced the rich blend of subtle polychrome finishes seen on those pieces. Larry also chose, from his extensive inventory of period glass, the 1912 leaded glass shade illuminating the Buddha. The gifted glass artist Carol Hall was kind enough to contribute the highly textured curving glass from her studio, recycling and re-slumping it for this piece. To complete the piece, Larry illuminated the forms with ten integrated light sources.

MATERIALS

• Lost wax cast bronze Buddha
• Recycled, re-slumped art glass donated by Carol Hall Glass Design & Lighting
• Leaded glass from the venerable Jefferson Glass Company, dated 1912
• Hand-blown aurene glass with delicate glass webbing
• Hardwood
• Brass and copper
• Paint

What the description doesn't talk about are the 12-plus hour days spent creating the design (and fine-tuning it a gazillion times - these Myers/Briggs 'NTs' are all about perfection), cutting the wood, measuring the various elements to ensure that each and every piece/cut/joint was as close to perfect as possible (and measuring again, just to be sure), talking on the phone, consulting in the workshop, figuring out how to place all of the wiring required for the amazing lighting, sanding, gluing, painting layer upon layer upon LAYER to create the final crackle finish -- and making at least one wife (and probably two!) totally CRAZY in the process. Larry got to experience me in Full Cranky Bitch Mode one evening when dinner got postponed way, way too late; I must have scared him, 'cause he came over the next morning with a peace offering of beautiful Shasta daisies (Which worked, of course. I'm a sucker for fresh flowers). And that's just the stuff I got to see. I'm quite sure that Larry put in tons of time when he wasn't in the workshop with David!

But I gotta say that these two men (along with Carol Hall, the glass artist who donated the two beautiful pieces of slumped glass) have created something beyond special.

If you're in Portland, OR, or can get here on April 26th, why not buy a couple of tickets and attend the auction? It's for a very good cause, and you'll get to see some amazing, beautiful, quirky and interesting creations (and who knows - maybe you'll bid on something and take a piece of art home with you!).

I'm in love with Jon Stewart

Every time I watch the Daily Show, every time I watch Jon interact with the people around him, I fall a little more in love with him. (btw, I do NOT mean this literally) Aside from his amazing wit and enviable ability to think on his feet, it's clear (at least to me) that he genuinely cares about the people with whom he works.

Let me ask you a question. Did you ever have a manager who did everything possible to prevent talented people from succeeding in the greater organization? You probably know what I mean - the boss who guards his or her staff like a bulldog, not in a positive protective way, but with the goal of ensuring that good people never get a chance to get promoted or moved into a more challenging position. I've worked at companies where that misplaced sense of ownership was so rampant (and ultimately so damned destructive - because good people eventually leave companies where they feel trapped or unappreciated) that we were forced to include the number of promotions out of a department as a positive factor in the executive and senior management bonus plans. Imagine this: the only way we could pry good people away from these pathetic, insecure bosses was to PAY them extra money if they encouraged their employees' growth and success. "What the hell?!" you might ask. And all I can do is nod my head in agreement, and assure you that I saw this happen more times than I can count during my tenure at several large, successful organizations. I'd leave work after a session with one of those managers, and wonder if I'd somehow died and was now living the Myth of Sisyphus in some weird version of Hell, constantly rolling the same damned boulder up the hill, only to have it roll back down the second I'd gotten it up there. Why was it so obvious to me, with my B.A. degree in American History and no business school experience at all, that ENCOURAGING THE GROWTH AND SUCCESS OF PEOPLE IN AN ORGANIZATION KEEPS IT HEALTHY? Beats the hell out of me...

So look at Jon Stewart as a manager (which, I assume, he is). Stephen Colbert, once a reporter on the Daily Show, now has his own highly successful show (and Jon Stewart is an executive producer for the Colbert Report). Steve Carell, once a reporter on the Daily Show, has an amazing career in movies as well as starring in one of the funniest comedies on broadcast TV these days - The Office. Rob Corddry and his brother Nate are also Daily Show graduates, both having moved on to rolls in other TV shows. I'm sure there are more examples, but you get the point.

I'm not presuming to imply that Jon is directly responsible for the success these other guys have achieved. But I feel pretty certain that he has encouraged them, that he continues to encourage everyone who contributes to the success of the Daily Show, to hone their skills and increase their competence. And I'd bet that he has never tried to hold anyone back from pursuing new opportunities, even if it means a loss of talent in his organization. My guess is that Jon understands that a healthy organization needs not only to nurture and reward talent, but also to let people move on when it's time for them to do so.

So beyond his awesome sense of humor and timing, his not-to-be missed imitations of our president and vice-president, his courage in facing many guests whose hostility and anger is palpable to most viewers, and his very occasional fits of giggles when it's clear he's just loving someone else's performance, I love Jon Stewart because I think he's exactly the kind of manager I dreamed about working with when I was still able to work.

Yep. I'm in love with Jon Stewart (even though I'm old enough to be his mom).

My son, Zack

I know most parents say this a lot, but today, right at this moment, I feel the impact of these words more than I ever have in the past: Zack is an incredible human being, and I love and respect him more than I can find words to say.

There's no reason to go into the situation that prompted me to make this post. But watching him wrestle with a difficult, painful problem, and seeing the amazingly mature result of his deliberations, fills me with love and deep respect for him.

The majority of parents would tell you that they love their child(ren). But I've often wondered how many, if asked this question, would also say that they like their adult children. I'm definitely in the 'love-and-like' camp, and being able to add the word 'respect' in the mix is a real gift.

He's quite a guy.

Cooking Cabbage

Last night, I made something called "Savory Cabbage Strudel". I found the recipe because we had two heads of cabbage in the refrigerator, both delivered in the bushel of organic vegetables that's delivered to our house every week, and I was determined to use them, rather than give them away (or worse, dump them directly into our compost bin). The recipe involved saute-ing a bunch of veggies and fresh herbs, rolling the mixture up in phyllo dough and baking the resulting 'strudels' for about a half hour. In retrospect, I'd pump up the onion, add garlic and a few more herbs to the mix, but overall, the strudels turned out to be quite tasty. Whew! No more guilt about wasted cabbage!

So here's the thing. I'm not really just writing about my Culinary Success With Cabbage, but more about how important it is to push myself to try new things these days. I mean, I have dozens and dozens of tried-and-true recipes, some that I've been making for three decades by now, and it's often so much easier to pull one of them out of the file rather than attempt something new.

This whole tey-something-new-in-cooking thing happened when we first got involved in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), and subscribed with Full Belly Farm, a truly wonderful CSA that serves the Bay Area. I had no trouble with the contents of the summer and fall veggie boxes; after all, I'd been making stuff with tomatoes and zucchini and stuff like that for a long time. But as we moved into winter vegetables, and I found myself gazing at four or five leeks (yep, I'd never cooked leeks before) or celery root or Jerusalem artichokes, I suddenly realized that I'd either have to learn some new tricks or give away half of what had turned up in the box every week. As it is, I do have to gift someone with the kale and chard that comes every winter, because David, whose mother had a huge vegetable garden when he was a kid, has eaten enough of those greens for several lifetimes, and refuses to eat them anymore. But I really wanted to figure out how to use some of the ingredients I'd never used before, so I pulled out three or four of my vegetarian cookbooks and, among other things, discovered a killer recipe for potato-leek soup that has become a new 'old favorite' around here.

But every recipe I found for cabbage either bored the hell out of me, or sounded ghastly, or was too boring for words - until I found the Savory Cabbage Strudel somewhere online. We both agreed that this was a keeper, and I think we'll be adding cabbage to the list of veggies we eat at least semi-regularly.

Which doesn't sound like much of a step into Doing New Things, I know, but the experience was a reminder that I really do need to seize every opportunity that presents itself for new and interesting stuff to try. Hell, even if the new thing doesn't end up being all that interesting, at least I'll be open to possibilities. Once that happens, the likelihood of stuff being fun and interesting increases, I think. And heaven knows, I need as much fun and interesting-stuff in my life as possible these days.

So. A new mantra of sorts has arrived in my life. Whenever I find myself reluctant to try something new, I will repeat the phrase 'cooking cabbage' in my head - a reminder to be open to the possibility that something very tasty might be waiting out there to be experienced!

Feeling sorry for myself today

Most of the time, I can talk myself out of starting my own little pity-party. I remind myself of how lucky I am for dozens of reasons. I live in one of the most beautiful places in the country. Our home is comfortable, filled with color and quirky things everywhere you look (like the wood flying pig we bought years ago in Carmel Valley, or the little wood birdcage where we've put a ceramic fish instead of a bird). For the moment (who knows what will happen next month or next year?) we can afford to pay for health care coverage, and we have access to an HMO that was rated the best in the country by Consumer Reports last year - no small thing when one takes medications that would cost close to $3k a month without insurance. We're warm in the winter and cool in the summer. We see and hear songbirds every day. Signs of spring come early, in February, when the daffodils burst open and the camellia bushes are covered in magenta blossoms.

I could go on with the list, but you get the point, I'm sure.

In the scheme of things, compared to 99% of the people living on the planet today, I have no reason to feel sorry for myself. But I do.

I miss my work so much. I even miss getting up at 5 a.m. and starting my arduous commute to Silicon Valley 40 minutes later, just to avoid the traffic back-up on the approach to the Bay Bridge. (I don't miss having to stay in the office until 6:30 p.m. for the same reason, or working in a company that demanded "24/7" of its managers, though.) I guess the thing I miss the most, smarmy though it might sound, is the connection with a diverse and interesting group of people and the clear knowledge that my work actually helped a lot of them survive the rigors of life in the DotCom universe a little bit better than if I'd not been around. I miss knowing that I was someone people could trust. At one point, my boss called me "The soul of the company" (okay, he said it as kind of a guilt-trip, when I was thinking about quitting, but still - I like knowing that someone valued my integrity).

Hmmm. So as I read what I've written here, it looks like my Ego is what's hurting, doesn't it? I'm such a competitive being, and I've lost the ability to compete in the one place where the ol' Ego had the opportunity to shine, to get all kinds of positive feedback, all kinds of strokes. So when I tell myself I'm feeling sorry for myself because I have Multiple Sclerosis, that's really bullshit, isn't it? My poor little Ego is feeling neglected - that's what's really going on here.

So maybe the way out of this rat-hole is finding a way to soothe that part of me and find contentment elsewhere?

Oy. An AFOG (Another F***ing Opportunity for Growth) appears. Maybe I can take up the challenge and do some real work around this not-so-new- but-still-uncomfortable life of mine? If I do, at least I'll stop whining, even if I only whine inside my head? Who knows? But stay tuned, 'cause I'll probably end up bitching about the process here!

The goldfinches are back in Portland

Last year around this time, I was gazing out at the back yard and I noticed a swarm of little, gold-colored birds fighting for space at the thistle feeder that hangs from a branch of the Japanese maple. "Hey," I said to David, "there are parakeets at the thistle feeder!"

So he came over, looked out at the birds, looked at me (with a faintly pitying glance) and replied, "Uh, no. Those are goldfinches, hon."

In my own defense, City Gurl that I am, I'd never seen goldfinches outside of books. The sad truth is, even if I'd been walking through a flock of goldfinches, I probably would have ignored them, or tried to shoo them away. In Life Before the MonSter, birds didn't make a blip on my radar screen (unless one of them pooped on my car, in which case my reaction was momentary annoyance and then indifference.

Sad, huh?

Now, the comings and going of the birds in our back yard is a constant joy - and very interesting, indeed. So the I was pretty excited when I noticed that the goldfinches (or maybe, at this point, lesser goldfinches) had returned to our back yard. At times, the flurry of activity around the sunflower chip feeders is dizzying; a few days ago, one of the house finches bonked himself against the dining room window (one assumes in a frenzy of sunflower-chip lust), making a loud THUD in the process. Ack.

The bird equivalent of the jungle-drums must be in full force, 'cause every tree in the back yard is filled with birds - perching, swooping over to the feeders and jockeying for one of the perches, and swooping back to the pear tree or the Japanese maple. It's not necessarily a graceful process, but it's endlessly fascinating.

Once again, I have to stop and thank the MonSter (a term for Multiple Sclerosis coined by my friend Cindy, a fellow sufferer) for forcing me to stop and pay attention to what's going on around me. There's a lot to watch and think about when the pace is slowed and attention focused on the here-and-now.

The crocuses are up in the yard

Can spring be far behind?

Even better, it's a little before 6:00 pm and it's still light outside! Not bright sunshine, of course, but not darkness, either. I ask you - is there anything that can lift one's spirits more than the sure knowledge that spring is on its way?

In honor of the Coming of Spring, I stopped off and bought a few flats of flowers - primroses and pansies - and planted them in pots on the front porch. There was one valiant primrose, one with deep purple blooms, that survived snow and temperatures in the 20's, and is sporting a half dozen blooms right now. I added two more to the planter - one yellow and one pink-and-white - and I've got my virtual fingers crossed that we won't have another deep frost this year. Pansies and primroses - harbingers of spring.

If it doesn't rain tomorrow, I plan to scope out the back yard, to see what kind of clean-up is needed, and to check on the shoots coming up all over the place back there. We have dozens and dozens and dozens of daffodils; not only are the stems out and growing, but the tips are showing light yellow, which means we should have bright yellow blooms scattered all over the yard within a week.

I LOVE spring. It's by far my favorite season, made oh-so-much more sweet after a cold and snowy winter.

I'll get a few photos up in a couple of days, when David returns with our digital camera!

Signs of spring abound

I went out to retrieve the Sunday Oregonian a little while ago, and spotted what used to be the quintessential hallmark of spring when I lived in Philadelphia - a robin redbreast. Winters were a lot more severe back east, so catching a glimpse of a robin was a really exhilerating event, one that heralded the end of boots and gloves and scarves and hats and heavy, wool jackets and the possibility that summer vacation really, truly would arrive.

Things are quite a bit different these days, for lots of reasons beyond the weather, but seeing that big, plump robin pecking away at the grass on our neighbor's front yard produced that same reaction in me -- "Wow! There are green shoots coming up all over the yard, and the buds on the rhododendron bushes seem bigger and fatter, and things are getting green everywhere I look. Yes!!"

A few days ago, I saw two, tiny buds on the fuchsia plant that's been hanging in the sun room for several months - another sign o'spring, for sure.

It's amazing, isn't it, how these tiny, seemingly inconsequential changes in one's environment, can make such a difference in one's attitude?

Or at least in this one's attitude!

The thankless life of a housekeeper

As I was making coffee this morning, and admiring my (temporarily clean) kitchen, I realized that I've been given another Life Lesson and glimpse into my mother's thinking. She and I fought bitterly from the time I was in high school until I was in my mid-20's, and we never managed to craft a decent relationship. I did a lot of work around our relationship at an intense spiritual retreat about seven years ago, and was able to see and understand some of her behavior in a much less critical, and much more adult, light. But some of my memories about her still baffle me, and make me wish we'd been able to fashion a minimally close relationship while she was still functioning so I could have gotten to know her better as an adult.

Anyway, I noticed a few smudges on the white countertop tile, and began an internal fume about how HARD I'd worked to clean the damn thing yesterday and how NO ONE appreciated that work, and how David, damn him, didn't wipe up after himself, and, and, and ... and suddenly, I understood my mom in a way I never had before.

My mom was a fierce housekeeper. We used to joke that one could have open-heart surgery on her kitchen floor without any concern about infection. She had a hard-and-fast schedule for cleaning, and the only days where she wasn’t cleaning something in the house were Friday and Saturday. And she CLEANED. She didn't muck around with sponge mops, she got down on her hands and knees and SCRUBBED the kitchen and bathroom floors (hence the open-heart surgery joke).

Our home did look wonderfully neat and sparkly - as long as none of us did anything to mess it up. Of course, we did, which meant that she was almost always pissed off at one of us - at my dad for spilling pipe tobacco on the rug, or at me for being such a complete slob (I’ve matured into a somewhat neater person than I was back then), or at my sister for doing something equally horrific and inconsiderate.

Back then, I thought she was a raving maniac. But now that I'm home so much of the time, now that this house really is the center of my corporeal universe, and now that I'm hyper-aware of cat litter trailed on the floor by the cat box, or crumbs on the countertops, or how gross the bathroom sink gets after a couple of days, I finally understand how she must have felt. Because keeping that home sparkling clean was her JOB, a job she did magnificently, and most of the time, we didn't appreciate a thing she did. If we did appreciate her efforts, we rarely acknowledged them.

When David crafts a magnificent hardwood cutting board, everyone can see and appreciate his hard work. But when I spend several of the very precious hours when I have energy scrubbing the kitchen down, not only do things get dirty almost instantaneously, no one notices my efforts. That kind of ‘work’ is pretty much taken for granted. The work of a housekeeper isn't valued all that much in our society, is it?

No wonder she was so angry all the time. At least I’ve had a 30-plus-year long working career, the last years of which were interesting and fulfilling and (at least some of the time) fun. I sure wish I'd figured out all of this stuff before she disappeared into dementia so I could have apologized for being a self-absorbed, unappreciative teenager, acknowledged her hard, fierce, loving work, and thanked her for it. It’s too late now; she passed away on New Year’s Eve, 2003. But I’ll never discount what she did for us – ever again.

Thanks, Mom. (And I'll never have a house as sparkly clean as yours was. Not ever!)

An (almost) shameless pitch for a contribution

Truthfully, I am feeling kind of weird and uncomfortable doing this, but I'm hoping the three or four people who actually read my ramblings will understand my motivation.

The National MS Society holds a bunch of fundraising events every year, including the "MS Walk". Last year, they held the Walk in Portland on our first anniversary (and Buddha's birthday), so we decided to form a team and participate (I sat in my wheelchair, of course; otherwise, I'd still be walking somewhere on the Hawthorne Bridge). We called the team "The Lib*erators" and were joined by a wonderful group of family and friends -- and somehow I managed to end up the highest individual fundraiser in the state of Oregon. This was very cool on several levels, not the least of which is my still-active sense of competition, which will probably end a few days after my body ceases to function and I leave this life - not before. But best of all, we managed to raise over $5k (appropriate, I guess, since it's a 5k Walk) as our contribution to ongoing research into the cause -- and one hopes -- a cure for this lousy, stinking, bizarre disease called Multiple Sclerosis. And I type those descriptors on a day that's started out fairly well so far.

If you have a few extra bucks, and are able to earmark a little of it for a very, very worthy cause, please visit this link at http://main.nationalmssociety.org/site/TR?px=2344324&pg=personal&fr_id=1850. Look for the heart at the top of the page, click on "Pledge/Sponsor a Participant and make a contribution either to me (Libbi Lepow) or to The Lib*erators. Either will work, and either will make a difference. Hell, just make a contribution to the MS Society if you can!

The MS Society not only funds research, it also provides incredible support to those of us with MS - from written materials to workshops to support groups. They have a kick-ass web site, something those of us who aren't as mobile as we once were really, really appreciate. I can't count the number of times I've gone to their web site to look something up, or to try and learn more about one of my more bizarre symptoms; I'm very grateful for that resource, believe me.

So, like I said, I do feel a wee bit sheepish asking for support, but know that the only thing I'll get out of this (aside from a morning spent with a team of amazing and beloved people, several hours outside in the pouring rain, and maybe another t-shirt) is the hope that maybe a few of the dollars we collect will be part of a major breakthrough in MS Research.