My last day of travel remains a blur in my memory. I remember sitting in a car seat that seemed to have become welded to my frame. I was always soaked with sweat. There was a persistent itch between my shoulder blades that never seemed to go away. In fact, I seemed to have that itch for the better part of the next several years. I suspect some kind of interstate-travel-spawned fungus took up residence in my skin as it pressed up against the soggy upholstery for so many days.

I think I started cackling when I crossed into Wisconsin. I may or may not have started yelling “MOOOOOO!!!” out the window, while making unfair comparisons between Wisconsin dairy products and those from Tillamook, Oregon.

While planning my route through Illinois, I noticed several highways marked “Tollway”. What was this? A highway you had to PAY to use? I’d never seen such a thing. Toll bridges, sure, and the occasional state ferry, but a road that actually charged a toll for access? I was highly suspicious, and resolved to steer clear of these playgrounds of the devil.

Fortunately, I could turn south from Madison and run straight down to Bloomington, then skip east on I-74 to get to Champaign. This provided my first view of Illinois farmland, the giant rectangles of corn and soybeans that extended for mile after mile after mile. The highway occasionally zipped through some tiny little community, but mostly the population density was uniformly even and uniformly thin. The terrain was dead flat, the road was dead straight, and you could have drawn the horizon with a straight-edge. This was the precise opposite of a mountain range. No, the opposite of peaks and hills wasn’t some kind of deep chasm; it was this tabletop topography, this ironing board evenness, that was the antithesis of mountains. I looked at the flat miles speeding by and my soul died a little bit.

Finally, I pulled into Champaign, and kept going. I knew almost nothing about Champaign, except that it was the larger and more commercial of the two sister cities. So, I drove east to Urbana, and checked into a motel off the freeway for the night.

The next morning, local paper in hand, I started looking for a place to live. Time was of the essence, as I couldn’t keep paying for motel rooms, and also because I half-expected to see the rear window of my car smashed in every single morning, with all my earthly belongings missing. Looking at the apartments for rent, I considered my basic criteria for housing:

1. Affordable
2. Quiet
3. Near a grocery store
4. Convenient to campus

If you have spent any time at all on college campuses, you will immediately recognize that nos. 1, 2, and 3 are largely incompatible with no. 4. Knowing myself, especially after my last year of college, I knew that no. 2 would be the most critical for my mental health.

I quickly eliminated every apartment in Champaign. I liked smaller towns, and although the two cities had merged together like lumps of warm Play-Doh, Urbana clearly remained the country cousin of Champaign. I then drew a large circle around the University, and eliminated any apartments within that circle. This definitely limited my options, but that was the point, wasn’t it? I selected the most attractive-sounding apartment out of the remaining ads, and drove out to see it.

The apartment building was located in a residential area of established homes and tall trees. It was one block away from a supermarket, and just down the street from a shopping area with a K-Mart and a video store. The vacant one-bedroom unit was on the third and top floor of the building, on a corner (eliminating the noise from one entire neighbor). The layout was very spare and very cute, and it was furnished with some of the most astonishingly cheap press-board furniture I had ever seen.

And it was quiet. I was on the outskirts of southeast Urbana. It would have been hard to get any further from the University and still remain within the city limits. I’d have to commute to school, sure, but it would be well worth it if I could avoid the kind of noise-induced stress I had experienced while living in the dorms.

I went down to my little Mazda GLC, and pulled the wad of cash out from under the driver’s seat. Sitting down with the building manager, I filled out the paperwork, counted out first and last month’s rent, and a security deposit, and got a key.

It wasn’t a lot of fun carrying everything I owned up two flights of stairs, but my euphoria at being done travelling, my joy at having a place made it quick work. No more motels! No more long days on the highway! I sat on the ugly brown couch, surrounded by boxes of stuff, and sighed.

In nearly every possible way, my journey from Washington state had been a profound transition. I’d left my comfort zone, left every place I’d ever lived, and traveled 2,500 miles to an alien environment. I had a place to live, by myself. Soon, I’d be starting graduate school, in what I had been assured was one of the toughest graduate schools for chemistry in the country.

My long strange trip was just beginning.

To be continued….

I did this all by myself. I’m very proud of myself.

Unfortunately, it’s about 170 K too large to use at Project Wonderful.

Curses.

Update: I guess this was a blessing in disguise, as neither Chrome nor Safari can display animated png files. So, here is the gif version:

Which is slim and trim and perfectly cromulent.

Update 2: And here’s one for nonobvious.

My daughter packed enough gear for an entire week away from home, we loaded her battered tuba into the back seat of the Corolla, and then away we went.

It was a beautiful, beautiful day. The sun was blazing down, but the temperatures were still mild, and there was a lovely breeze. It was a perfect day for rolling the windows down, putting on sunglasses, and heading to the ocean.

As is usually the case when we are alone, my obnoxious thirteen-year-old girl turned into a delightful travelling companion. She has discovered Monty Python, and so some time in the car was spent reciting favorite quotes. We talked about band, and music, and being away from home. It was a great drive. Right now these moments only happen rarely, when we can be alone together, and away from home, but they give me hope for the future. I feel like I can almost see the kind of relationship we might have once she is an adult, and it fills me with joy and anticipation. Just as long as I can keep from killing her before she gets there.

I wanted her to have some lunch before we got to the camp itself, so we stopped in Rockaway Beach and looked for a bite to eat. As we walked up the sidewalk on Highway 101, she suddenly she pointed at a ramshackle little building set back from the street, with a sign indicating that it was the “Old Oregon Smokehouse”.

“This place is great! I went there with Uncle Bear! And they have lots of cats!” I was somewhat dubious, but we were running out of time, so we ordered some clam chowder for her, and halibut fish and chips for me.

I’d like to apologize to the Old Oregon Smokehouse for any reservations I might have had about eating there. The food was exquisite. The very lightly battered halibut was firm, flavorful, and moist. It really had an excellent flavor, the kind you can only achieve with fish that’s painfully fresh. The french fries were crispy nuggets of awesome as well, and served with dipping sauce. The chowder had a strong and distinctive flavor, different from the majority of chowders you find at every cafe on the coast. I’m thinking there was a lot of thyme in there. But most of all it was thick and creamy without being the slightest bit glutinous, which I hate in chowders.

There is a much better picture of the Old Oregon Smokehouse by Justin Hawthorne here on Flickr. If you’re passing through Rockaway Beach, you owe it to yourself to stop in.

Checking into camp went smoothly, and included an audition. The Girl was looking at her music, warming up on her tuba, and generally being very nervous. She was concerned about the audition, but surprisingly also concerned that she wouldn’t know anyone at camp. Fortunately before I left she had already connected with someone from her school band, and I don’t doubt that there were more there.

It’s a side I rarely see from her. She’s got so much self-confidence (perhaps a touch too much?) that I never picture her faltering or hesitating. Maybe this is another aspect of her increasing maturity shining through.

After her audition, we put her stuff on her bunk, and I said goodbye. I know she’s going to have a good time this week. The camp looked like a hotel, with well-tended grounds, a lake to swim in, volleyball courts, and multiple outbuildings. As long as she finds one or two friends to connect with, she should be fine. And I know she will try to get the most out of the music instruction there.

Now that I was without child, I pondered what to do before heading back. Unfortunately, I really didn’t have all that much time, and my knees in particular were bothering me. Nevertheless I went to a nearby state park and hiked over the dunes to the beach.

The wind, which had been a well-mannered breeze inland, was howling across the sand. Aside from the wind-driven sand particles exfoliating my face, the resulting windchill made it a less than delightful oceanside experience. I didn’t spend too much time there before hiking slowly back over the hill and heading home. That was when I realized that the cooling effect of the wind also kept me from noticing how sunburned my forearms were getting. They are glowing a nice cheery red today, thank you very much.

We pick The Girl up next weekend, and I’m honestly looking forward to the concert they will provide. The bickering and fighting after we get home? Not so much.

What that means is that we have co-opted Beer and Blog for this afternoon, and you can join us authors at the Green Dragon bistro and brewpub for celebratory libations starting at 4:00 pm.

If the prospect of meeting me in the flesh does not stir you (and frankly, why should it?), I have also foolishly consented to join the OurPDX crew for a special addition of Strange Love Live starting at 10:00 pm. If you miss the live stream, you can always catch it later at blip.tv.

While I am not entirely comfortable with the idea of being on camera, I console myself with the knowledge that I will certainly be sufficiently inebriated by that point that any such concerns will have been dissolved in ethanol.

Happy dog.

It just so happens that this week the Oregon coast is experiencing terrifically low tides, some approaching -3 feet (for you landlocked flatlanders, that is very low indeed. This means that low tide will be uncovering some real estate that usually goes unseen. In addition to the various and sundry shipwrecks and ancient forests that will be revealed, these low tides will also uncover tide pools that don’t usually suffer from periodic exposure to the sun and air.

That is, they should be chock full ‘o critters.

Which is why, in an uncharacteristic fit of spontaneity*, The Wife packed up the kids at 5 am this morning, and drove out to the coast to go tidepooling.

*Okay, The Wife considers this wildly spontaneous, and is somewhat giddy at the prospect of cutting loose in this fashion. Just so you know, in my wife’s case “spontaneous” means she’s only planned it for two days, consulted just a few maps of the area, prepped the car beforehand, and carefully planned her route to and from the beach. Oooh. Go wild.

Since Gus is a dog, it should go without saying that he LOVES the beach, and out of the kindness of their hearts, they took Gus with them. He deserves some time romping in the sand. Although I am sad that I won’t be joining them, I’m glad they’re taking this rare opportunity to explore some cool real estate.

The end result, however, is that when I got out of bed this morning, the house was silent. Completely quiet. It’s rare but not completely unheard of for me to be alone without the rest of the family, but I am almost never home without the dog. I’ve grown so accustomed to his presence by my side that I forget that he’s always there. He follows me from room to room, laying down by my chair when I sit, looking longingly at me when I eat, and pleading with me when he has a tennis ball in his mouth. His presence is such a constant that his absence this morning set me back. I kept listening for the click of his nails on the floor. I kept looking for him underfoot.

As nice as it was to be free of the yelling, singing, bickering, thumping and banging that usually underscores my mornings, I didn’t linger in the house. It was a little too quiet this morning for comfort.

Well, my first thought was that the van was owned by some crazed cat lady. Some poor scraggly-haired spinster who had focused all of her attention and affection on her little furry “children”. She was probably living in a double-wide that was pungent with ammonia fumes, shuffling through ankle-deep cat shit in faded bunny slippers.

Well, as satisfying as that mental imagery was, that bumper sticker still struck me as remarkably provocative. Clearly, this was a cat owner that wanted to not only brag about how clever their little Fuzzball might be, but was also making a statement about the relative value of my child.

Let’s think about this for a moment. Some schmuck off the street goes into a shelter and picks out some slightly wall-eyed, drooling kitten with kennel cough and brings it home. Over the next several years, if you’re lucky, it learns to crap in a box full of gravel instead of all over your pillow. Beyond that, the intellectual demands on a housecat are fairly minimal.

And the cat owner’s responsibilities are fairly laughable to boot. If you get the damn thing to the vet for shots and feed it twice a day, you’re a loving pet owner. At any rate, the silly thing sleeps 21 hours a day, so how hard could it be?

Contrast that with the work of a parent, which starts with labor and delivery, then through 2 am feedings. The cavalcade of illness begins with ear infections and mystery fevers, often requiring midnight dashes to the emergency room. After a few years of that, you escalate to concussions and broken bones, as your little darling becomes a more accomplished climber.

Don’t forget the diapers, several thousand of them, and all the fun and games that come with them. Like the beautiful finger painting on the living room wall that your child executed in their own crap.

Finally, little darling moves on to daycare/preschool/playdates, and when you pick them up you get to endure the frigid stares of the parents whose kids were bitten by yours. Then the conferences with care-givers begin: “Little Suzie has been acting out a bit. We can’t help but wonder if there’s anything unusual going on at home. Divorce? Abuse? Dark rituals to appease unholy gods?”

In another few years, your darling leans how to lie, and lie convincingly. Now you have to become a detective: Searching under beds, snooping through backpacks, calling teachers at home. Accusations fly, harsh words are exchanged, and you start buying Maalox at Costco.

And through it all you grimly soldier on, weathering calls from vice-principals and angry neighbors, setting limits, then setting consequences as limits are laughingly demolished. Now you’re buying booze at Costco, and spending an unhealthy amount of time figuring out how hard it would be to create a new identity in Latin America.

Then a small miracle occurs. Your child discovers something they like to do, and they become good at it. Screaming fits become nearly reasonable discussions. They might even ask your advice about something. The calls from school become less about violence and theft, and more about congratulations and awards. Their grades creep up, and they actually become interested in their schoolwork.

And then, your child becomes an Honor Student. You look back at all the sleepless nights, the fear, the pit-of-your-stomach dread, and all the angry words. You look back, and you begin to see that it was all worth doing. Little Suzie is going to be a productive member of society. She might even do great things. It was hard, but in the end, you’ve made a good person.

And then some shithead tells you their cat is smarter than your kid. Which is why I ran that minivan off the road and down an embankment. Then set it on fire.

Visiting hours at Washington County lockup are usually 9:00-10:30 am, 1:00-3:30 pm, and 7:30-9:30 pm. Please bring cigarettes, but not menthols. My new BFF Zeke doesn’t like menthols.

I say that because my back is out, and so it hurts. It hurts to sit, it hurts to stand, and it hurts to lie down.

It’s odd that we say “my back is out”. Where did it go? If it left, then it shouldn’t hurt anymore. Trust me, my back is still there, in a BIG way. The original expression was, I think, “I THREW my back out”, which makes even less sense. Who would throw away a perfectly good back? But I digress.

You might think that my recent inactivity means that everything has been going swimmingly in the PAgent household. That I have nothing to complain about. That writing has taken a back seat to blissed-out contemplation of the whichness of the why. And you would be wrong.

If anything, I have an abundance of subject matter, so much that it creates a logjam somewhere behind my forehead, and absolutely nothing comes out. In the interest of dynamiting that logjam, I’m going to try to dispose of a plurality of topics in one shot. Ready, steady, go.

The Economy

The economy sucks, as you all know. While we have been fairly isolated from most of the effects of the recession, they have been slowly and surely percolating through the marketplace until arriving at my firm. We’ve had a couple of layoffs, and have been asked to take paycuts until the situation improves. As I’m sure you know, your spending tends to match your income as it increases. It’s easy to get rid of a little extra cash in the paycheck, but it’s a nightmare to go the other direction. Plus, the wife and I aren’t the most economical of people.

Nevertheless, we are tightening our belts. The immediate effect of this has been a sharp decline in eating meals out. I’m eating breakfast at home, taking my lunch when possible, and have been trying to fix more economical meals.

Fortunately, I was raised by a cook who grew up during the Great Depression, so I have an idea or two about thrifty cooking. I’ve been trying to fix skillet dishes and casseroles — meals with lots of potatoes or pasta, but little meat. Ideally, those meals generate leftovers, which help me take a lunch. I’ve started taking a harder line with picky eaters in the family. If they don’t like it, I sympathize, but I’ve quit trying to come up with meals that will please everyone.

Saturday night I made a big batch of halushki, a traditional eastern European dish of onions, cabbage, and egg noodles. My version had bacon and a dollop of light sour cream. So tasty. Sunday I fixed a big pot of frijoles a la charra and grilled some beef tri-tip that had been seasoned with a layer of dry rub. It turned out very nicely, and not too tough.

We continue to make adjustments. Hopefully this won’t last for too long, and in any event, I think it’s doing us some good in relearning how to set priorities.

The Girl

My daughter, who is 13, has been responsible for most of the drama in the house lately. She has embraced being in the band, which we heartily approve of, as well as the school orchestra. Lately, the marching band has been performing in area parades, and doing quite well. She’s getting some excellent preparation for high school marching band.

But our enthusiasm tends to fade away when we get progress reports that show her getting grades below Cs. When confronted, there are a variety of excuses offered, but when considered in total, they amount to the fact that she just didn’t want to do the work. Her assignments get handed in late, when they get handed in at all, and so her grades suck (not in ALL her classes, just the ones she doesn’t like).

Attempts to light a fire under her and/or instill a sense of responsibility have been largely ineffective. This led to the implementation of a “big stick” policy, the big stick in question being a big summer camping trip with her girl scout troop. If she couldn’t get her grades up to at least a B, she wouldn’t be going.

Unfortunately, she has so much work to do, with so little time remaining in the school year, that she has been freaking out. While she’s made a valiant effort in some areas, she’s made less of one in others, and overall it looks like she won’t pull it off.

Of course, I mentioned that she’s 13. That means that this is all OUR fault. Somehow WE are responsible for not getting her motivated to get her homework done, back when she had time to make it all up (before we knew it wasn’t done). WE have made her life miserable, and WE have made her so stressed out that she’s sick.

This all came to a head the other day, when the Wife laid down a consequence for some earlier willful disobedience (having to do with the dog) and pointed out that the Girl would likely not be going on said camping trip. There was much wailing, screaming, crying, and gnashing of teeth. She fell asleep on her beanbag chair, doubtless cursing us under her breath.

The next morning, she refused to get up. Literally refused. Wouldn’t budge, wouldn’t acknowledge our presence. I wasn’t willing to go toe-to-toe with her, so I went to work. It turns out that after I left, the fireworks really started. Upon being told in no uncertain terms that she was going to school, a full-on tantrum erupted. My wife reported being able to hear her scream and throw herself against walls from the driveway, while inside the van. Inside, the carnage was impressive. Among the chaos, she’d managed to toss our Mission Style couch around, and slammed a door so hard that the moulding came off the wall. The kid’s got a temper, and she still can’t quite see cause and effect when it happens to lead right back to her.

So. That’s what’s happening with her. Stress and craziness, and we find ourselves tiptoeing around certain topics. I don’t know what’s going to happen at the end of the year, but it may be spectacular.

Writing

I’ve been trying to do more writing, but that’s been derailed by the blockade of my little retreat while my son’s room was getting painted. I did a little character study, and posted it, but have received ZERO feedback. I guess that’s better than having rotting vegetables hurled at you, but it sure feels like I’m yelling into the Void.

Now that furniture has been moved back into the Boy’s room, I can try to put my little refuge back in order. That will get me away from the XBox more often, and hopefully give me an opportunity to put words together.

It certainly hasn’t been boring.

However, once we had a house, and I had a new job, having a single vehicle just wasn’t practical any more. Along about 1993, our neighbors down the street decided to sell their 1990 Ford F150 pickup. As a new homeowner, with a lawn that was 2/3 of an acre, I found myself often needing to haul stuff around. Long story short, we bought it.

“Big Red”, as we christened the red truck, was awesome. It was a full-size pickup, with a short bed. That meant it had plenty of hauling capacity, but wasn’t so long as to be cumbersome in traffic. It had a custom rear bumper, and a second gas tank, and was I think the last full-size pickup that you could order with a zero frills interior (no roof liner, no carpet, no fancy seat upholstery). It had a straight-six engine, virtually bullet-proof, and there was enough room under the hood that you could practically stand next to it when you were working on it.

I loved that truck. I used it to haul yard waste to Rexius, and often returned with a load of bark dust. I could get lumber from Jerry’s hardware, or haul a couple cubic yards of gravel. We helped numerous people move. More importantly, I could take that thing down logging roads and up to distant trailheads with impunity. Although it didn’t have 4-wheel drive, it rarely got stuck. It was user-friendly too: I replaced the heater core all by myself one night, in the pouring rain, because antifreeze mist was blowing up out of the defrost vents. It was a great truck.

When the kids came along, they loved it, too. I used to put my daughter’s car seat in the truck and we would go for drives together. She liked being high enough to see what was going on. And of course, climbing in and out of the bed was good for hours of amusement.

The truck became less practical once we had two kids. Now the whole family couldn’t pile into the truck any more. Then we relocated to Portland, and I started using it as a commuter vehicle. I drove Big Red to the Sunset Transit Center every morning and caught the MAX into town. I didn’t get to take it out into the woods as often, but the kids still loved to play in the bed.

One sunny morning in 2003, I was sitting in the turn lane waiting to turn left into the Sunset Transit Center, and the light changed. I began making a left turn, and had just enough time to think “That guy isn’t stopping…” when a convertible ran into me. The guy was taking his kid to school, and the rising sun was directly behind the traffic light as he came up the hill to the intersection. I don’t think he even touched the brake pedal.

I got my glasses knocked off by the impact, and they somehow ended up behind me and got crunched. The seatbelt kept me from getting too banged up, but I had a bruised knee, and bruises across the sternum from the chest belt. I got checked out at urgent care, but I was fine.

Big Red, on the other hand, was totaled. You can see the right front wheel was shoved sideways under the nose of the truck. What’s not quite as evident is the fact that the entire cab was bent at an angle with respect to the bed. It was seriously broke.

Unfortunately, I had to have a car. Equally unfortunately, we didn’t have any kind of a cash sum to use as a down payment (and obviously no trade-in). I ended up getting a 2000 Toyota Corolla, and it’s been a good little commuter car. It gets me to and from work, it gets good mileage, and we can fit the whole family in it, if the trip isn’t going to be too far.

But you can’t haul lumber in it. You can’t take it down remote logging roads. You can’t switch gas tanks and watch the needle magically rise from “E” to “F”. And your children won’t get much out of climbing in and out of the trunk of a Corolla.

At this point in my life, I couldn’t possibly justify getting another truck. The mileage is too poor, and I really do need something small and economical. But I still remember Big Red, oh so fondly; the throw of the stick shift, the bounce in the suspension, and the sure knowledge that when you merge people will get out of YOUR way. Oh, how I miss that truck.

This represents a real departure for me, as I generally try to keep my writing PG-13. This isn’t, so it is not suitable for children. It may also be offensive to you, but I assure you that no offense was intended. It is what it is.

“From the Gospel of Trixie”

You can find a permanent link to “From the Gospel of Trixie” in the new Creative Writing section, which is accessible via that brand-new tab in the page header. Hopefully I will be able to add more material, over time. Your feedback, as always, is appreciated, unless you just want to tell me I suck. Because that I already know.