California Girls

Posted on September 21, 2012 by Pamela

1973. Me and my sister on the slip and slide.

This summer, the kids across the street got a similar thing and I heard them out there squealing and laughing one afternoon.

This morning I bought 150 bulbs, half tulip and half daffodil. Take a second to jot down your guess for how long it takes before I whine about buying all these bulbs. When I do that post you can see how close you were.

One of the problems is I need to do some major excavation out front to make space for the bulbs. I don’t mind yanking the old dried up stuff out but the problem is that as soon as there is open dirt, all the cats from miles around shit there. The past couple of years I’ve gotten into the habit of leaving all the dead stuff in until spring.

But also, 150 – yikes. Then I have to wait all winter before I can enjoy the results of my work. Worse case scenario I’ll just dig one big hole and dump them all in.

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Check It Out Now!

Posted on September 13, 2012 by Pamela

Look! I have tomatoes. All this many.

And there are at least that many more that are almost ready for picking.

Bob said, “Wow, those came on fast.”

I said, “It’s September 100th.”

For contrast here’s my kitchen on September 6 last year.

Did I ever write about my jeans shopping day? My favorite jeans are one year away from disintegrating and for my replacement jeans I accidentally bought saggy Mom jeans. I decided I was going to go out and find some fancy jeans that would make me look like a stylin’ lady.

I tried on at least 30 pairs, all different brands and styles.

Not one pair fit. Not even close. They were all tight in the butt and/or thighs and gaping at the waist. I finally gave up and figured I’d try again another time.

A couple weeks ago I said screw stylin’ and went to Eddie Bauer. I knew which size I needed but of course they’ve changed their sizing scheme.

All these stores have a complicated scheme of pants styles.

There’s another store I shop at and they now have 4 styles. It’s like: the Metropolitan- slim at the waist and thigh, firm through the hips; the Sassy – slender at the thigh, low at the waist and full through the hips; the Henrietta – higher in the waist than the Sassy but lower than the Metropolitan, straight through the hips; and the Flirty – slim at the waist, firm at the thigh and relaxed through the hips.

I wanted to send them a message that said: Fire your translator. Nobody knows what that means.

At Eddie Bauer I tried on the Sassy, the Curvy, the Rainier and the Bainbridge. And then I had to pick from classic blue, Puget blue, faded, ultra-faded and the ranchero fade. Not to mention skinny, boyfriend, bootcut, slender cut, relaxed cut, beefy cut and astronaut cut. Of course they didn’t have what I needed in the store but I could order it from a phone in the store to get free shipping, plus a coupon for trying on 15 pairs of pants plus a buy one get one for 50% deal.

They finally arrived. I love my new jeans.

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Publications Update

Posted on September 10, 2012 by Pamela


My most recent publication “The Last Willow Stick on the River” is finally out and available if you know where to look. You can order it directly from Yellow Medicine Review. It’s a journal of indigenous poetry and prose. The guest editor is Steve Pacheco.

I’ve read it cover to cover and there is some terrific stuff in here. In particular, I loved the poems by Tiffany Midge and Paul Rowly and the prose pieces by Carter Meland.


Also, Prime Books has come out with an edition of Future Lovecraft which includes my story “Lottie versus the Moon Hopper.” The anthology was originally published (and still available) by Innsmouth Free Press. The Powell’s link has the wrong cover. The book looks like this. According to the Powell’s page the book is in the Burnside store. I need to go over and look at it. This is a personal milestone that I can find a story I wrote in a book at Powell’s bookstore. Silly, maybe, but still cool to me.


Finally, updates to my ebook collection Red Tape Stories from Indian Country.

It’s still available for Kindle at Amazon and every other format at Smashwords.

But wait, there’s more. You can get it at
the itunes store (I’m in the itunes store! Another silly personal milestone) here it is at the nook store, Kobo and the Sony ebook store. Maybe even other places I don’t know about.

If you have any trouble tracking it down, drop me at note at pam(at)pamrentz.com and I will help you out.

And thanks to everyone who supports my writing. It’s a slog sometimes so it’s always nice to hear that someone checked out my work. I appreciate it.

I’ve been on semi-hiatus for the summer but I am just now kicking back into gear. Hopefully I’ll have something new out there soon.


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My Delicate Things

Posted on September 9, 2012 by Pamela

I don’t think you can tell how heavy this apple tree is from the photo. I tried the photo from a few different angles plus some Photoshop tweaks but this is the best I can do. There are TONS of apples out there. I had the brilliant idea of trying to rent a cider press but apparently I should have reserved one months ago. We’ll have applesauce and compost.

Sloppy transition.

I bought a bunch of linen bags awhile back and it looks like these are magical linen bags. Every time I use them I carefully put my delicate piece of wash within, zip the bag closed and throw it in the wash. And every time I open the washer my delicate piece is tangled up with the regular riff-raff clothes and the linen bag is intact. I’ve checked the seams. The first few times it happened I assumed I was a moron and didn’t zip them shut. No, I’m sure I’ve been zipping them shut.

Maybe rather than magic these are self-(un)zipping linen bags. I still keep using them. My delicate things had better toughen up.

Posted in doing it wrong, garden | 1 Comment

Garden Update

Posted on September 1, 2012 by Pamela

Here’s the crazy neighbor cat. Running over the second I step outside. I was there to take photos of the flowers and garden stuff.

Demanding. She was all whiny and trying to climb up my leg.

“You don’t even live here,” I pointed out.

Later it punished me by ignoring me. Sure, ouch, dummy.

I love this white dahlia. So elegant.

More dahlias. They aren’t quite as pretty as last year. I’m not sure if it’s mild weather or my lazy watering.

Check out one of the prettiest pumpkins. I have a decent pumpkin crop although the fauna has made a gouge in almost every one.

Does this look close to ripe to you? Looks close to me. I think this is the first time in my history that I didn’t get a tomato before September. At this point I’ll settle for anything.

Also: I learned how to make animated gifs today: Bright Dike back flip!.

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What It’s Like to Love the Last Place Team

Posted on August 29, 2012 by Pamela

Seattle game tifo with Clive Charles.

You’ve probably been wondering, what’s up with these Timbers she’s so crazy about? She never talks about them anymore. Has she moved on? Was that just a passing obsession? Is she now into collecting expensive purses or going to foreign film festivals?

No.

I still love the Timbers. I still go to every home game including the reserves and exhibition games if I am in town.

When I started writing this I hadn’t seen them win since June 24th. They actually won another game on July 3 but I was out of town.

They won big this weekend breaking an 8 match winless streak and sending the fans cartwheeling into the aisles.

Here’s how I was summarizing the season before that win.

Positive things.

I’ve been on the jumbotron 4 times! I visited the Timbers locker room! One of my tweets was on the jumbotron (at a reserves game). One of the Timbers retweeted me and one of the Timbers responded to one of my tweets.

We’ve gone through two buy-12-get-one-free pint cards and two frequent buyer slice cards.

I know what you’re thinking: “Uh, this positive stuff is all about you.”

That is true.

My beloved team is in last place in our conference. When I started this post there was only one team in the league with fewer points than us. By 1. Since Saturday’s win there are 2 teams with worse records.

It is rugged being in love with the last place team. Some team has to be in last place but it’s usually someone else’s team.

My team leads in all the worst statistics. We’ve never won a game on the road. We’ve lost games in the last minutes. We’ve lost leads. We’ve never come from behind. If there’s a miracle goal or a miracle play, it happens for the other team against us. We’ve had games where we made millions of shots on goal but none in goal. Too bad the game isn’t whomping the ball over the top of the net.

We hosted an exhibition game against EPL team Aston Villa. Almost the entire roster was out on the field which I loved.

Every week on our TV show we’re building on some tiny moment of non-horribleness. One game we tied 0-0 and they were talking about building on that. We tied on the road. We’re building on that. At least we scored on the road.

These are the things we’re building on.

But this team has the most loyal fans in the universe, including me. And they know it. Well, they don’t know about me personally. But check out the Army section:

Green smoke means GOAL!

I don’t mind if we’re not the best. I don’t mind losing sometimes. But holy moly, every game takes 10 years off my life because even if we’re ahead I can never enjoy it. I can’t trust my guys to keep it together. That lady screaming “whistle!” starting in the 79th minute is me.

I still love them and I’m still RCTID. This life and the next.

Check out Boyd’s smile. I also like media guy with his pointy finger. This was from an earlier match before Troy Perkins was traded to Montreal.

Lots more photos here: Timbers! Here’s the photoset from the Sounders rivalry match.

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Sixteen Years!

Posted on August 25, 2012 by Pamela

Here Bob is pretending to drop cake in my face. He didn’t really. And there was no cake smushing.

Guess what I’m doing for my wedding anniversary?

Going to a Timbers game. My honey gets to sit in general admission while I sit in my reserved seats with ticket partner. Romantic, huh? This is a huge game against our rivals the Vancouver Whitecaps.

You might be wondering why I haven’t been talking about the Timbers as much as I used to. You might have thought I’d grown bored with it or moved on to other interests.

Nope. I’ve got a post in draft talking all about the Timbers. You’ll know it all soon.

Last night we went through our photo album and guestbook. Lots of terrific memories but we’ve lost a lot of people. Every time we turned a page we were reminded of someone else. Here we are with our Grandmas. Both gone.

Here’s how I found my car when we left the wedding site. As I recall I went back to work that week and then we left for our honeymoon at Labor Day. We went to Bumbershoot and then to the San Juan Islands and Victoria, BC.

This is the guestbook. For the inside we took Polaroids of all the guests and had them sign.

My cousin Jennifer (she’s the one in this photo) was very persistent and walked around during the reception to make sure she got everyone in there.

This is us on the first page.

It fun was fun to go through it. People we don’t see very often. Little kids who are in college now. All our favorite people together.

Great day. Now let’s go Timbers!

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The Fun Starts Here

Posted on August 24, 2012 by Pamela

Remember when I cleaned the garage? Well now we can go to boxes of crap without having to climb over a broken exercise bike, 6 rusty tomato cages and a pair of lamps we don’t use.

Since tomorrow is our wedding anniversary, I pulled out the wedding box and will have more tomorrow.

But I found this photo in there. This is me writing with my Powerbook 520 and my old timey superfast modem (14.4? How did it work in those days?). Also my cute glasses frames. I took them in and asked if they could be remade into my new prescription and they said no.

I desperately need new glasses now except my eyes are 100x worse than they were in this photo. Now I need quadrifocals or who knows. I keep putting the appointment off because whenever they’re giving me the eye test I feel like I’m personally letting the doctor down when I get the letters wrong and I haven’t been in the mood for that sort of emotional roller coaster. But I broke the arm off one of my cheapie reading pairs so the glasses situation is pretty desperate. I’m going to make an appointment on Monday.

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Back!

Posted on August 21, 2012 by Pamela

Just yesterday returned from another amazing family visit in Northern CA.

Obviously any minute now I will be writing a great post catching up on everything.

That was a joke.

Posted in doing it wrong | 2 Comments

Summertime

Posted on August 11, 2012 by Pamela

This is a photo of the shop from 3 years ago. Long story about how hard it is for me to get to major projects omitted. I wrote about that round of the project here.

This was my marathon project I worked on yesterday.

These before and after pictures aren’t very representative. I cleaned out the shed in the backyard, too.

The scrap metal guy hauled off a load and we took a load to the dump. It costs $28 to take a crammed-to-the-top truckload to the dump. A couple weeks ago I phoned the garbage people to ask about tossing two plastic chairs. The kind that are super cheap and look like crap after a couple of years. She said if I tied them together they could consider it one item and they could schedule a special pick up for $13. Rip! Glad I waited.

Still to come: electronics recycling, Goodwill and hazardous waste disposal.

I threw away stuff that has been sitting around since we bought this house.

We also tore out this crapily built-in cabinet thing that we didn’t use. That’s going to make room to put the old fridge when we finally buy a new one.

This is the shop yesterday.

There’s still some stuff to do but I’m feeling there should be a parade with fireworks in my honor.

I finally saw Bridesmaids.

Oscar attention? Really?

I thought there were funny scenes. Was it just the novelty that women can make a gross-out comedy, too?

There was a point where I thought maybe the movie had something interesting to say about female friendships and competition. Or maybe taking a risk and how to come back from failure. But it never did. I get it as a funny movie and I *love* Melissa McCarthy but I don’t get the AA nominations.

I finally wrapped up the dental saga that started last month with a root canal. The dentist gave me a temporary crown when I returned from vacation and I broke it after a few days. I wasn’t even eating anything crunchy.

The new crown was installed this week it so fun to eat with a full set of teeth. It was a back molar that used to be crooked but she shaped the nubbin somehow and made it look straighter so now if I smile at you with my mouth wide open and my chin down you will see pretty straight teeth in the back.

Let’s hope I don’t have any more dental adventures for a while. That was expensive.

My sweetheart has been out of town for a week. Last weekend I made a bunch of salads thinking how easy it would be to grab salads and not have to cook. Of course after the third day, I hated salads. Plus when you eat healthy foods you’re hungry every two hours. I’m still trying to finish up what I made but a Burgerville run sounds pretty good at this point.

Posted in doing it wrong, the shop | 5 Comments