Showing posts with label Seattle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Seattle. Show all posts

Friday, March 19, 2010

Long Time, No Blog

The Sprain took two months in a walking boot-cast to heal. It wasn't pretty but after six days in regular shoes I guess it was inevitable. The weather locked me in & my lack of options locked me in. I shut down in order to survive myself. The only things I was interested in were farm games on Facebook, chick lit novels & dessert. I had to hire a walker for Daisy for several weeks. Do you know how wrong that felt?

My ankle hurts a little today but I guess that's inevitable as well. As soon as I began to be more mobile, even in the boot, I began to pursue errands that had piled up. Today I walked all over Montague Street & environs, getting my hair cut & going to the bank & picking up a prescription. I wore shoes that weren't bad for my still-swollen foot but weren't as supportive as the others I've opted for. I find myself tired this evening, too tired to attack cleaning the top of my desk or looking for some software that's gone missing (which has entailed cleaning where no man -- but all the dog hair -- has gone before). I'm writing a dull blog at the plaint of a friend. I'm afraid my words are few.

For the duration of the Sprain, I depended mostly on my cell phone because my portable phone didn't work & my back up old-fashioned phone threatened to trip me & has no capacity for storing numbers. This meant I didn't make many calls either. Finally, today, I went to Radio Shack with the two-year warranty I'd for once taken out on it. The manager opened up the receiver and reconnected the battery.

Can you say stupid?

It's been that kind of winter. Telephonically challenged. I misplaced the software for my new camera & even though I couldn't go voyaging for snow photos & even though I wouldn't admit it to myself, it was like another language gone missing. The Radio Shack manager also suggested I go to the Canon website & simply download the software.

Score two for stupid.

But in my mobile state, I'm itchy to...I don't know what the verb is. Live? Join my species? I love my Canon but it's a big hulking thing so I bought an Olympus that was on sale and will fit in a pocket. It will be good to start speaking & conversing in images again.

We won't talk about my weight although I may be more gloomy about it than the reality. My therapist said he didn't see a change in my body.

My therapist also edged around the possibility of hospitalizing me for depression. That scared the shit out of me. I worked very hard to rise above that need. Laundry one day, bed the next -- for a week or so I vacillated between getting dressed & staying in bed with Daisy, who has been a real trooper through this. In retrospect, which is really only two weeks or so, it seems as though my "accomplishments" included laundry, doing the dishes, taking a shower. I will remember this winter as the Sprain but I won't remember much of what I did beyond raising vegetables on Farmville & the grit in bed that the dog & I collaborated on because I had to wear the boot all the time. Oh, & Vicodin. That was nice.

Life is going from zero to sixty now. I'm seeing Riverdance tomorrow night. Friends from Seattle are in town for the next few days. I leave for Seattle & Portland to do book stuff on Wednesday. Somehow or another the publisher of Berkley has handed off the form & price of my next book(s) to me & my editor. My agent called earlier to tell me to make an appointment with my editor to figure it out but a day of errands left me too tired to really understand what the hell this means. It hurts my feelings that Angry Fat Girls has had such a lousy run of it, that even my fucking hometown newspaper hasn't reviewed it. It's a more important book than Passing for Thin because it is NOT a fairy tale & the hope it offers is the hope each of us has to find in our own truths.

For a couple of difficult months, my truth has been a small dark ghetto. I didn't have hope. I barely had endurance. But endurance had to be enough.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Some Things

Bank Mergers
My bank, which had free everything but wasn't the most stable institution in the world, merged with a Big Bank last year. This has created some inconvenience for local customers because we've had to re-configure our ATM cards in order to transfer money between accounts and can only make deposits to a human teller.

This is a problem for people like me who have a hard time getting to the bank during working hours. I've tried taking a dog with me but each one I've experimented with has not at all liked the revolving doors and one was scared of the fancy mosaic tile floors.

& fancy the bank is! I'm not an expert on architecture but I think it must be art deco, judging from the chandeliers. I've never banked anywhere with chandeliers.

This is what I find hilarious about it, however, and if I was that bank's nibs, I would hang large meaningless posters or paintings over them.

Engraved high above the north door:

Society is built upon trust and trust upon
confidence in one another's integrity.

Tell that to Congress and the A.I.G. executives who are willing to give back half their bonuses which would still be 6% of the bail-out they've received so far.

Over the south door:

Commerce defies every wind, outrides every
tempest and invades every zone.

Anyone want to pass that on to the line workers in Detroit?

The bank, whether Victorian, Edwardian or Art Deco, was obviously built in the days when the United States was Young. It does not feel Young these days.

Why Seattle?

As many of you know, I was born and raised in Western Montana. My life as a New Yorker has ceased to exist and I am increasing irked by the tininess of my apartment, the entitlement of Brooklyn Heightsers walking down the street and my loneliness. Lately it seems like every walk I do with the dogs reveals yet another hole in the pavement or sidewalks, as though Brooklyn in breaking up.

I want to move West again. I want to be near my family. My hometown, despite being a college town, is too small for me and my ghosts. There isn't another town in Montana I would want to live in and I realize that I probably wouldn't be happy unless I'm in a city. That pretty much gives me Portland, OR, or Seattle. I have more friends in Seattle and more close relatives at hand than I do in Portland, and as a compulsive overeater I find myself to be a burden, to other and to me. I feel better thinking my neediness will be spread around.

Either city is fabulous but Seattle feels homier, possibly because I've lived there before. I want an easier life where a dollar will go a little farther than it does in New York and where Daisy and I will have a chance to get out in the woods and lakes on a regular basis.

When I first started to lose weight The First Time, I had those three dreams: to be thin, to fall mutually and sanely in love, and to publish a book. Love is not under my province, but I got the other two. And it was part of my downfall. I might have wanted stuff but I had no dreams. Seattle and the novel I'm working on are the first dreams I've had in all these years. They are part of my motivation for abstinence, working, waking up.

Eleven years ago I didn't know that I need a dream to keep me going. I'm so fucking relieved to have some again that it's like being able to breathe clearly.

Did I mention Seattle is a coffee-drinker's paradise?

More of the Magic of Abstinence

Day 34. I bought a digital scale because my eyesight isn't good enough to distinguish what's going on with those vague two-pound increments. 250 this morning, just so you all know. I'm going to replace the plastic tab over the lithium batteries, wrap it up and put it away. My sponsor and I have agreed I'll weigh once a month, although she hasn't told me when that month starts...So I can have a little more insanity until she lays down the Scale Law.

I'm waking up more consistently at 7 a.m., despite what kind of day I had before. I bought an HDTV and new VCR/DVD unit because mine were really really dead. I've been loving watching a movie in bed at night. I actually have the attention span to do it for some reason. Abstinence often makes me hyper but I seem able to give in to my new toy.

It's a 22"-screen, by the way. We are NOT talking home theater here.

I've been busy with dogs and find myself unable to think ahead to what big thing I can cook and live on. It's enough that I get food in the house for a day or two right now. I'm living on salads for two meals a day for the time being. Sesame seed oil at noon, olive oil at night.

I'm dying to have one day truly off from dogs and cats. That could happen the first weekend in April. But my busy-ness is paying my state taxes for 2008. I try to keep that in mind.

Just some things. That's all.