On this beautiful Monday morning, remember the words of my late friend Beef: “Life gets better after you give up all hope.”

ps go look at the most perfectest strawberries I grew! Yeah, they grew themselves, I had nothing to do with it. And this is the gorgeous blue heron who parked his feathery butt on the neighbor’s roof.

“Solitude has but one disadvantage; it is apt to give one too high an opinion of one’s self. In the world we are sure to be often reminded of every known or supposed defect we may have.” — Lord Byron, poet (1788-1824)

“I believe I have no prejudices whatsoever. All I need to know is that a man is a member of the human race. That’s bad enough for me.” — Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)

We’re getting my Dear Granny’s things sorted out — photos, letters, cookbooks, everything. Her life. Quilts, Estee Lauder perfume, surgical razors (the kind that scarred my leg when I used one shaving, age 12), nitroglycerin tabs left over from my Grandpa, in teeny-tiny bottles, safety pins, bobby pins, Chicken Soup for the Country Soul.

When the Bough Breaks, my favorite Lois Duncan book, Christmas earrings, journals, more safety pins. Emery boards, probably 50 of them or more. A girl just cannot have enough emery boards. Christmas, birthday, thank you cards; ones she received, blank ones she was going to send.

We used to build little houses out of the old Christmas cards — we’d punch holes in the sides and weave them together with yarn? Something, I can’t remember and neither could she. We used to do them every year. And we’d make little gift cards out of them, for the next year. She would have loved this site. “I was young during the Depression, honey, we didn’t throw anything away.”

She told my uncle, Make sure Nancy gets these, and left me a few boxes of old cards, letters and clippings. My mom is going through each item, painstakingly. She’s transcribing the old journals, they’re wonderful.

Such a temper in real life, my Dear Granny, but in the journals? So happy. Going up to Larch Mountain to gather firewood, building a corral for their mean-tempered pony, cooking strawberry-rhubarb pie, pork roast, scalloped corn and a million other things for us.

“Nancy’s birthday” she wrote on one page, “and our anniversary in four days. Would I marry the same man again? I WOULD!”

Someday I’ll write more about her, about this, about how painful it was yesterday to sort through her entire life in one fast afternoon, blurred and illustrated by photos. It won’t be today.

Steve is at a birthday party with the kids, I’m studying for my first exam this week. (Psychology 311, Human Development.) Other than Linguistics 390, this is the most difficult course I’ve ever taken. I’ve been out of school so long, married now, I have two little kids I’m chasing after (the hours between 9 and 3 go sweeping by), there has been work, caregiving, grieving, housework.

I need to finish my prerequisites and start on a master’s program. When? How?

Back to studying. And trying not to recall my Dear Granny’s voice, her smile, her telling me, Happy birthday, honey, and “our anniversary is in four days!” (their anniversary is sandwiched between my birthday and my mom and Granny’s birthdays; my Grandpa’s birthday, always overlooked, was just after Christmas), trying not to think of sunny weekend afternoons, lazing in her living room, reading Lois Duncan for the 50th time and listening to her banging pots and pans in the kitchen.

Yelling, One of you kids, come get this down for me! because she was so short she couldn’t reach her highest cupboards. My late cousin, Travis, ambling into the kitchen, reaching down whatever it was, saying, There you go, Little Grandma, and patting her on the head.

Oh, you! and she’d chase him out. But before he left, he’d raise up his arm parallel to the floor and tease her, See? You could walk right under.

She was buried next to Grandpa, not far from Travis, in her favorite red dress and her favorite necklace, the “crystal” beads that my Grandpa gave her, that she loaned me to wear on my wedding day. I found the matching earrings yesterday, going through her things. They’re mine now. None of it is worth any money, her stuff, but it’s priceless. We’re talking about a woman who labeled the slides of “truck in ditch” the “good slides” and stuck ’em in a box.

Internets, why does so much rotten stuff happen all the time?

(OK. I wrote that, then I read this post and I’m thinking, you got to take the sweet along with the bitter, don’t you?)

I liked living in New York, for the short time I was there. Well, the several short times I was there (a few times for just about a week per visit, once for a few months). Esp. when my favorite bartender at Life Cafe asked me which Portland, “Ore-gone or Maine? Ore-gone! Oh, you got the killer green bud out there…” Glad we’re known for something besides the rain.

Funny story in today’s New York Times about golfing at Edgefield. I like McMenamins fine as long as I don’t have to eat their food. Also, I first ran into my sexy husband, Hockey God (thank god he finally updated his blog, woooooooot) when he worked at another McMenamins, the Barley Mill, when we used to live off Hawthorne. Also, when I finally got the nerve to break up with my gay boyfriend my new boyfriend and I used to hide out at Tavern & Pool in NW because if we’d gone to the Blue Moon he would have found us and honestly? I liked the new boyfriend a LOT more than the old boyfriend and didn’t feel like being found. I like men and bars is that so wrong? So you can see that McMenamins has played a big role in my love life.

Here’s my favorite Portland comment from the story:

it rains all the time. the people are mean. the streets are dirt. bears eat people in their back yards. Oregon is horrible. you would never, ever, ever, ever want to move there. don’t even visit. it is a scary place. rains all the time. rains all the time. no jobs. rains all the time. don’t even think about even stopping here, even for a day.
— cecil

cecil, u r soooooooooo rite! People here are the meanest. Esp. these girls. Can you believe they throw around phrases like “circle jerk” and no one even deletes the comment? Esp. since it’s in a post about a sweet little school where innocent little children are going to go? (In regards to my husband’s other blog: All Power to the People.)

Portland Girls: We Blog Dirty

“Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many colored lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Pet peeve: When someone says, I’m only playing devil’s advocate, only they are screaming it at you and not taking time to even attempt to hear where you’re coming from. No, you’re not “pretending” to give me someone else’s opinion, as some cat-and-mouse “devil’s advocate” thing (more…)

“Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Happy Earth Day, y’all.

–wm

“Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today; And give us not to think so far away;

As the uncertain harvest; keep us here, All simply in the springing of the year.”

— Robert Frost

My son, admonishing me: “You’re not supposed to say ‘butt,’ Mom. You’re supposed to say ‘rear end’ or ‘beehive.'”

On the way to school:

Wacky Girl: “Is ‘screw you’ a cussword?”
me: “No. I mean yes.”

“I said I don’t like hippies
And I don’t like cornbread
And I don’t like much”

— “Fat Babies,” Lyle Lovett

You know how when you go to someone’s house, and their kitchen is filthy? And the bathroom is filthy? And you think Please God let me not have to take a pee while I’m here. And please, please…

…and then they say, Here, I fixed us a little something to eat!

And you’re thinking, If I eat that, I’m gonna get botulism or salmonella or something bad and damn, I don’t even like coleslaw get me out of here.

Or maybe that’s just me. Anyway, my goal, small though it may be, is to not be that person.

Here. Have a cooky.

Goddess Dooce is in Portland tonight, you going? I can’t make it, too much going on. Bummed about that but I’ll deal.

Have a superfine Monday. The kids are back in school, finally.

xxox

wm