I made it. 30 days. I am completely out of juice, though.
This photo is from 1971 and is from a series my dad was doing for the annual Christmas card.
I love everything about this. My bangs in my face. My asymetrical ponytails. My giant ear.
The striped matching outfits!! My coat is buttoned but my sister’s is opened, revealing a dress that matches the coats. White tights and black patent leather shoes.
Adorable!
This is on Highway 96 in Orleans
Did I ever write about that time the alarm was going off at Little Tree?
There was a restaurant nearby that we really liked called Little Tree. We were really bummed when they closed. They seemed so conscientious and had a great menu. They probably went out of business because they didn’t cut corners.
One night we went in there and the alarm for the building was somehow going off. It was a terrible sound. You couldn’t have a conversation.
There were people having dinner in there. One guy had rolled up paper napkins and stuck one end in his ear and the rest just hung down like wilted ears.
It was strange — almost like a candid camera or something to see how we would react.
At first we were going to stick with it but we told them we’d come back another time.
(edited to add: I can’t even do calendars right. Clearly Tuesday was not “the day” — today is the day. Happy Thanksgiving. xo)
Three more posts — I am running out of juice.
Another one of our favorite downtown food carts just ended their business. This has been our go-to burrito cart for years.
There are still a few carts close to the office but the food cart culture is mostly elsewhere these days.
We’ve been going to Fuego (the cart) once a week since we found out they were closing.
Another long gone cart: Go Fish — they had really yummy soup and made these little cheesy biscuit things in the shape of a fish. There was Shelly’s burrito cart. There was the whole giant pod on SW Alder where a fancy hotel/condo building went up and they were supposed to create a space for food carts but mysteriously it hasn’t opened yet.
I had to get a medical test down by the south riverfront (is that what they call this area?) and took a few photos from the hallway. This was a couple of months ago. I completely forgot I had these. This one is looking south — you can see the tram tower. The photo below looks north and you can see the Willamette River.
Bob gave me a book called “We Had A Little Real Estate Problem” (Not an affiliate link, I don’t have those anymore.)
The book is about Native comedians and quite a bit is about Charlie Hill.
At one point, Charlie Hill is in an episode of The Bionic Woman. which I *loved* as a kid. I went and found the episode on Roku channel and watched it.
It aired in the 70s so obviously Charlie is a magical NDN and there is a magical amulet and lot of goofy “my soul your soul” talk that’s super ridiculous. At that age I think I was oblivious to NDN representation in the media. I have no memory of seeing this so I can’t create some tale of how I was moved to see a Native person on TV. The episode was kinda vague — it seemed like they were romantic but the actual words made it like they were friends.
In the comedian book, Charlie said that he and Lindsay were into each other but she was so famous at the time and her handlers discouraged them from having an interracial relationship. Yikes.
It was still fun to watch. I love how Jamie had such amazing hair that she flipped around while doing her bionic things. There is also a moment when she turned around: Ditto jeans! They had a very distinct seam on the butt. I had Ditto jeans! I think I had light blue corduroy Dittos. What a great memory.
If all goes as planned I am having a quiet dinner with Bob and Dad.
This is a selection of my cookie cutters. I offered to loan them to colleague in case he makes cookies this week while his family is in town.
I haven’t had good luck making sugar cookies the last couple of times. The dough was hard to work and the cookies came out lumpy and not pretty.
Who knows, maybe I will try again this year. I found a receipt somewhere that is supposed to be foolproof. HAHA. I know from experience there is no foolproof recipe that I can’t beat.
If you like such things I wrote a Bridgerton fan fic with Colin and Penelope (#polin).
It is very short and sweet and set in high school in 1986. Regency High Senior Spy. The goal was to enjoy writing again and it worked.
Earlier in the year I wrote about how I joined the neighborhood tree squad.
One of our goals is to increase the tree canopy in our neighborhood. Our urban forester got a grant and if a household meets certain qualifications, they can get trees (from a short list) for $10.
I’ve gone around a couple of times to put fliers on doors. It’s really fun. We look at trees and get to know the neighborhood better. Both times we had a person who really wanted to talk about trees.
This last time we saw a neighbor and let them know what we were doing. They told us they didn’t like trees. Trees make too much mess. Have we seen the streets a few blocks over?
I don’t know. I think a few leaves are worth the benefits like shade and don’t you think this looks pretty?
If you recall, earlier I posted about how squash bugs ruin everything.
This is my entire squash crop.
Impressed?
I don’t even know where those white ones came from. Are they just ornamental? I don’t know. I’m going to try to eat them at some point and I will let you know.
I’m going to try to cook the pumpkin for my Thanksgiving pie. I still have pumpkin in the freezer so all isn’t lost but this is a sad year for squash grown in my own garden.
I can’t believe I am cooking Thanksgiving dinner next week. I used to fret about it and do a planning calendar.
This year is the same as last year. I’m making a super basic dinner and Bob and I will bring plates over and eat with Dad. We just got a turkey breast. I’ll make mashed potatoes, stuffing, rolls, and pumpkin pie. We’ll eat something green on Friday.
How do you even get 15k unread emails?
This friend hides their technology from me because I can’t process this many unopened email. When I have 50 emails I feel like everything is out of control and I’m losing my mind. Then I unsubscribe from everything and delete everything that is non-essential.
Most email is non-essential. The endless firehose wears on me sometimes.
Especially at the office at certain times. I start with the oldest email and work my way to the present and it starts coming in faster than I can answer. Eek. Anxious. Anxious.
It’s not like that all the time.
Remember when email was exciting? Kinda of like the days when you came home and were hoping there was a message for you on the answering machine. (Kids: back before cellphones people had a recording gadget on their counter that worked with the landline. Callers would leave messages and if you were dating that red blinking light was important.)
Then there came a day when phone messages were a burden, too.
I remember when I graduated from college and I had so little confidence about what I could do.
I wanted to get into publishing and had zero luck with that. And as I posted earlier this month, I wanted to work in the music business and that didn’t work out for me either.
I did work in the entertainment business indirectly and I hated it. People were snooty and angry and it was hard to believe some of them could remain standing under the weight of their own self-importance.
But then went I started working in federal Indian law I thought I would never figure that out and didn’t see what my place could be.
But anytime I looked at job ads over the years, maybe thinking I would try for a change, I never thought I could do anything.
Now that I’m old and near the end of my working years, I think I can do anything. Maybe I’d need a class or someone to help me figure it out, but I’m confident I can figure it out.
There’s a lesson in there somewhere.
I used to chew so much gum.
I always had gum in my bag. It’s hard to remember now. Did I chew gum all day long? Just when I was kinda hungry but didn’t want to eat? Because I was worried about my breath?
At one point I did physical therapy for TMJ. As I recall one of the orthodontists I consulted with was concerned about a click in my jaw and didn’t want to treat me until I did the PT. So maybe around 2017?
I did the PT but didn’t go to that orthodontist. But that’s not part of the story.
The PT person told me no more gum.
Maybe I missed it at the time but I never even think about gum now.
It seemed like at the grocery store there was a bank of gum next to the registers and I don’t notice that anymore.
I looked it up and gum chewing has declined and picked up speed during the pandemic. Probably not a bad thing.
This reminds me of a story: when I was in middle school there was a bubble gum called Bubble Yum and somehow there was a shortage? There was a girl in our grade and she had an uncle who was connected somehow and she would have boxes of Bubble Yum in her locker.
