The Ocean

We took off for the ocean this past weekend. Packed to boys into their car seats put the cooler in the back and off we went. It’s been awhile since we’ve been out there, at least in the winter, when you brace yourself for every storm that passes, by sitting in front of a fire and watching the rain.

We went to Moclips near the Indian reservation where we used to go before Tommy died.

My brother-in-law was a large man, who had spent his life in produce, working the various grocery stores in Tacoma until he was no longer able. Two years ago last Thanksgiving he finally got caught by the cancer that had been chasing him.

I have a picture of him flying his kite out there. Standing at the golden hour right before the sun sets: hood up, beard poking out and a great flash of white teeth in a smile that said it all.

Tommy was someone whose great joy was just being in the moment. You can see it in that picture by the ocean, kite string in hand and you could see it the first time you met him. His daughter sent me a picture taken a little while later, empty spool of kite string in his hand and that same smile on his face. On the back she had written, “the kite is gone but the smile remains.”

Out on the coast, with the howling wind and rain beating against the window of our room, that comes back to me. Every day we choose what makes us happy. Every day we chose what were going to do and whom we’re going to do it with. Every day is a choice.

Most people go through life asking “if I could be anywhere on earth right now, where would I be?” but I like to think that Tommy would have asked the better question, “If I could be anywhere on earth right now, why would I be anyplace else?

The Blind Cat

It had all the makings of an ordinary weekend. Sweetie had to work on Sunday and that left the boys and I to hold down the fort. Earl and Heather had a get together for all of us living in the trailer park on Sunday afternoon. I guess Heather had gotten most of the numbers right on her lotto ticket and thought it would be fun to use a little of it for a party.

Corlis and his new fiancé were there having trouble keeping their hands off of each other and I met our new neighbors Chris and Sondra that are living in the Hubert’s old spot, down past the community lodge. They seemed nice enough and all but my mind wasn’t too focused on the party to tell you the truth.

Zane, our old cat lost her sight this weekend. We noticed it on Saturday when we were trying out a new vacuum Sweetie found at a garage sale down on Carr hill. She had been hiding under the bed and when sweetie started up the vacuum she took off like a shot. Only she couldn’t find the way out, she just kept bumping into the wall right next to the door where the sun had come in through the window. After that we noticed her tripping over things at her feet that she couldn’t see and kind of going about the trailer by feel. Her pupils were dilated and didn’t seem to respond to changes in the light.

She’s an old girl, going on fifteen this spring. Sweetie and I got her right after we finished school and found our first apartment together. She was a nice cat for the first year or so. In fact we liked her so much we thought we’d get another cat as a friend. Unfortunately we forgot to get her opinion on the matter and she spent the next six years pissed off at the two of us for bringing another cat into the fold.

She had just about gotten over this indiscretion when Sweetie got pregnant with our oldest. Zane took to peeing all over the place after the baby was born. In fact it started getting so bad that she would do it right in front of us yelling at the top of her lungs. After that I threw her outside for a week straight, moving her dish and water to the back porch. She seemed to get the hint. After that she just chose to avoid the kids all together, she co inhabited the space with them but that was it. At least that was the case until our second boy came home from the hospital after he got his new liver.

The youngest boy has a lot of complications left over from his first disease. He doesn’t have use of his hands much, doesn’t walk or crawl or anything like that. Somehow after he came home Zane just took to the boy. Now she lets him drool on her and yell at her and will sit still while he tries to pet her. The boy thinks Zane it the greatest thing in the world and will work as hard as he can just to grab a fist full of fur. She doesn’t seem to mind as far as I can tell. Sweetie calls it “Cat Therapy” and that seems about right.

Monday, Sweetie wanted to take the cat to the vet to see if there was anything we could do for her. There wasn’t. The vet just said that her pupils weren’t responding to light and that sometimes in older cats this can happen. I wish Sweetie had given me the thirty-five bucks instead.
After we got home though, the strangest thing happened. Zane is standing in the middle of the room having figured out that that we were home again when Sweetie says. “I think she can see” and sure enough Zane’s eyes were little slits looking up through the window past the deck and out into the afternoon sun.

The littlest one is lying on the couch, both legs kicking in the air and yelling as loud as he can. The older boy has found some long lost piece of Lego that vanished after a robot war with his friend from across the way. Sweetie and I are a little confused as we wave our arms back and forth trying to get the cats attention to see if she really can see again and Zane, taking it all in stride, makes her way into the kitchen to see if there’s anything left in her food dish from breakfast.

Data Transfer

Well I’m not sure how well this is working out…I keep exceeding my “data transfer” amount since I put the music up. So, if there have been some times when people have tried to get on my site and have been unable to this last week, I apologize. Before last week I didn’t even know there was such a thing as “data transfer” rates and now here I am, getting the site shut down.

Well the good news is they just shut the site down for an hour when it happens and then send me a nasty letter telling me I should upgrade my site. I’m not sure what I want to do about it. I could just put up less music, like just one song a week or something. Or I could spend the nine dollars a month, have my own domain name and there would probably be no “data transfer” problems.

I’m not really sure I want the added pressure of writing under a financial burden. I try and update the site at least one a week but if I were spending $100 a year on it I would probably feel obligated to get my moneys worth. Would I start forcing myself to write or maybe start self-censuring?

What attracted me to Yahoo in the first place is the fact that it was all free. I was able to learn HTML (limited though it may be) and have a place where I could post some of my writing. I’d have never thought of it, nor would I have started it, if there were a cost involved.

On the other hand, I like being able to put up some of the things I’ve been working on in the studio. What’s the point of recording if it’s just going to stay in my basement? I like being able to tell friends that they can download something that I just finished recording and they don’t have to wait for me to send them a CD.

Now I have some friends who put their music on MP3.com and then just linked it back to their home page. This sounds like a good idea but I have spent a considerable amount of time at MP3.com and for the life of me I don’t understand how that site works. It is, in my mind, one of the most confusing sites I’ve ever been to. So if anyone who reads these pages has the slightest idea of how I could post my music there please let me know. I have spent all the time I’m going to spend at that site.

I think the idea of just posting one different song each week might be the way to go. If I posted a different song each week that could last for quite a while I think. Even if I didn’t record anything new. I could always post requests as well...

I think that’s what I’ll do for now. If I keep getting these “exceeded data transfer” letters from Yahoo then maybe I’ll try something else, like throwing some money at them.

The Prairie Dogs have been doing a lot of recording lately and I’ve just started mixing down some of the first stuff we did. Perhaps next week I’ll get one of those up on the site.

The Dead Crow

There’s a dead crow lying on the ground right next to where I park my car. It’s been there for the last week looking for the most part intact and unharmed. No blood or torn wing is showing. No hole where he might have been shot. I park in a covered garage at work and have to use a key to open the large doors that let me inside. I don’t know how the crow got there, how he died or anything. I suppose he could have flown in, in the brief moment the large doors were open. I suppose that’s the way it must have been.

Next to where I park are a couple of full trash cans and a wheelbarrow full of rotting gypsum that fell when the roof leaked. People clean their cars out and leave it all around the cans. I don’t remember the cans ever being cleaned since they appeared last spring after the heavy rains flooded the building. A mound of paper bags rise above the trashcan like a Klaus Oldenburg sculpture: An ode to the excess of fast food consumerism.

Years ago when I was in school I had a roommate that would boil the flesh off of clean road-kill birds to study the bones. He was there as a part of an ornithological exchange program from a school back east. He and his partner, giddy as children, would take whatever dead bird carcass they could find and boil it in a pot on the stove of our little kitchen.

I look at that crow and think about that. About that smell and those little model skeleton statues he built. About the little plastic bags of dead birds he kept in the freezer. How his room looked like a miniature dinosaur exhibit at the Field Museum.

His crowning glory that semester was a barn owl found with its neck broken on Schuster Parkway.

Every morning on my way to work I park next to this dead crow. I struggle with the thought of throwing him away before he starts to rot: What will I do if he starts showing signs of decomposition? I think about what old roommates are up to. I wonder about this crow’s death and my youth and this town.

Then I take my coffee, close the big doors of the garage and head into work. I try not to think that in just eight hours I’ll turn around and have to do it all over again.