Everything's Coming up Roses

Something is blooming.  I'm not sure if they are roses or something rose-like, but there are bushes with 5" hot pink flowers cropping up all over town.  This place is surreal, mostly in a good way.  Oh, yeah, and then there are a couple of pockets of daffodils.

I am coveting a phone that would allow me to upload pictures on the fly, but those cost a bit to buy and a lot for service.  Still, know that I am at least thinking about sharing pictures with you. 

What else is new?  I had my six-month review a couple of weeks ago at the athletic club and my boss basically told me that I could increase my chance of a good raise in the future by become a backup Subbasement "Area Warden".  This means I would get my own hard hat, safety vest, key that opens every door in the building, and I'd be in charge (well, backup in charge) if the sh*t hits the fan.  As in, we live in an earthquake zone.  Oh, and there are volcanoes.  Then, there's normal stuff like fires and power outages and fun stuff like that.  I get to go all Al Haig and boss people around, telling them to guard elevators and carry maimed people out of the building.  I'm a bit nervous about the responsibility (I'm really afraid of the building falling down on top of me... hello, Subbasement...) but also excited to be the boss of something.  It's not official yet, but it could be as soon as I do my studying.  I don't even know where all the fire exits are right now.  Oops.

I wore my new boots again today.  I got these glorious highly decorative tan Doc Marten mid-calf boots on onlineshoes.com on clearance and they are almost appropriate for work when I cover up all the cool punk rock parts with trousers.  I get compliments on them, including from the Russian lunch lady, who is a huge comfy shoes aficionado.  Comfy shoes was one of the things I'd been lacking in Portland.  Well, no more.  Well, I do need black boot that aren't thinsulated, but I hear there are sales in April.

Here's a weird Portland thing.  Almost every public bathroom, even the sort-of-sketchy ones, has a container of paper toilet seat condoms.  For an environmentally friendly place, it's a little surprising to see all this extra paper.  Nice, however.  So civilized, in a slightly wasteful, germ-phobic sort of way.  You can't be too germ-phobic in a public rest room, as far as I'm concerned.  I've been in only one or two public bathrooms in a year and a half here that don't have them, but I've only been in a few bathrooms in Vermont during my whole life that did.  I had no idea I was raised as such a barbarian. 

I'm feeling a bit better than my black mood which surfaced in my last post, but I did replace my happy butterflies computer wallpaper at work today with a big red mushroom cloud.  I guess that's just more me.

I drew in my sketchbook on my breaks today and boy, did that feel good.  I did some thumbnails involving personal weather and dark clouds that gave me that weird little oh-I've-got-a-good-one thrill I haven't felt in days but live for.

I have a birthday gathering I've got to get out of the house for.  Perhaps there will be cocktails.  Okay.  Definitely there will be cocktails.  If I don't go soon, I'll find myself drifting toward bed and that's not a good way to make friends.  

Here's what is possibly my favorite poem in the world to inspire you:

How Is Your Heart?
by Charles Bukowski

during my worst times
on the park benches
in the jails
or living with
whores
I always had this certain
contentment-
I wouldn't call it
happiness-
it was more of an inner
balance
that settled for
whatever was occuring
and it helped in the
factories
and when relationships
went wrong
with the
girls.

it helped
through the
wars and the
hangovers
the backalley fights
the
hospitals.

to awaken in a cheap room
in a strange city and
pull up the shade-
this was the craziest kind of
contentment

and to walk across the floor
to an old dresser with a
cracked mirror-
see myself, ugly,
grinning at it all.

what matters most is
how well you
walk through the
fire.

Comments

[Sara]

The poem gave me chills. Thanks for sharing that.

I miss you!