gl.

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Sunday, October 19, 2008

 
2:22 PM: rolling with the punches [#] [3]

this has been a crazy couple of weeks: two people dead, one new cat, one person divorced and one person sent to the emergency room.

first, sven's friend lane attempted suicide and died 5 days later at the hospital. sven had been spending quite a lot of time with lane over the last month or so: as her disability situation has gotten worse, sven helped her find 24-hour in-home care and began organizing her end-of-life details. but lane decided she didn't want to wait to die and took matters into her own hands. unfortunately, it meant that she was sent to the hospital in a coma for a few days and when she came out of it, couldn't breathe on her own. so family & friends gathered on tuesday to say goodbye after they disconnected the breathing tube. (if you want to make this into a life lesson, please create your living wills and communicate to the people closest to you about how you want to die or what measures should be taken to save your life.)

so we adopted lane's cat, cleo. just call us the powell butte foster home for wayward cats. she's been settling in for about a week. cleo is a beautiful cat but doesn't have good listening skills like amelia or nina. you can shout or clap at her and she shows little sign of having heard you at all. she likes to jump on things. but she gets along with toby and likes being around people.

[cleo]

in the meantime we discovered michael's friend joe died climbing triple falls. joe used to take michael & i to the beach whenever i'd visit portland. we went to the simple & heartfelt memorial service last night at the old church.

also, an old friend wrote to tell me he was getting divorced and moving away from everyone. i was glad he wrote me but really sad about it, too. nobody gets married thinking they're going to get divorced in 8 years.

then someone threw an apple at mph while he was biking to pick up his son at preschool. he ended up in the ER with stitches in his eye! i wrote his story up and sent it, along with the horrible day-after picture of his bruised & bloody face, to all the news organizations and bicycle advocacy groups i could think of, including the transportation office (home of mayor elect & bicycle proponent sam adams). i don't think it did much good, but it made me feel like i was doing something remotely constructive. it looks like mph might not need plastic surgery like originally feared and he's already going for bike rides again with the blood on his helmet as warpaint. (braver man than i!)

speaking of bicycling, i hope my bicycle season isn't coming to an end yet. so far this year i've logged 280 miles, which, as an unathletic geek girl who never liked bikes before, impresses me. i'm still biking to my thursday writing class (even through rain! eee!), but i didn't make it to the final lents farmer's market. i'm really going to miss that as a sunday ritual. once on the way home a man passing me told me my flowers were beautiful, but i didn't understand what he said until it was too late to thank him. :)

politically, we just got our ballots in the mail. i supppose it would be obvious how much i hate the republican ticket, but sarah palin really took it over the edge into almost pure fury (with only occasional twinges of sympathy for the sexism she has to put up with. there are plenty of reasons to be infuriated with her without going there, really). nationally, california has two initiatives i hope don't pass: the one to ban gay marriage and the one to require parental notification for abortions (though it makes me mad people are pushing it again since it failed last time). and south dakota is trying to ban abortion for the whole state again. argh! and colorado is trying to amend the constitution to include the maddening definition of "embryonic personhood" which will erode the rights of the person carrying it. i went to a "politics & pastries" tea w/ cecile richards (the head of planned parenthood), last week and it made me teary. alas, it didn't make me hopeful. all i can do is keep volunteering, voting and contributing to organizations that try to protect our lives and liberty.

also, sven got a new laptop this week (just moments before the announcement of the new macbooks). we also got a time capsule so we can get all the laptops backing up more easily -- but i haven't been able to get time capsule working yet! i'm surprised because all the other airport wireless options i've owned have more or less worked flawlessly. the airport express we bought 4 years ago still works perfectly, thank goodness. but i really want our backups to begin again.

artwise, the sacred circle went into a bit of a meltdown. i keep telling myself i'm just here to provide the opportunity; it's time for others to help provide the community. sven & i attended a great white bird performance (where we were unfortunately seated next to a person with the worst body odor i have ever smelled). we watched "the butterfly effect" (meh), attended two weekends of open studios, attended the portland theatreworks insomniACTS fundraiser, stopped by to see linda's installation at mad/50, roamed through the vegan ghetto at 12th/stark, and tried to catch the first scratchpdx of the season least night but didn't check the time and got there an hour late. oops!

next week i'll start rehearsing for the portland opera's production of fidelio (and i don't even have to sing!) and writing something to be read at the end of the month to conclude the writing workshop at zenger farms. whee!

Comments:

Good gawd we've been up to the gills...

# posted by  Sven Bonnichsen : Wed Oct 22, 12:56:00 PM PDT

 

Sheesh. Bad juju and more. Too much to comment on. I'll just pick up two threads from this post and put them together- Apple donated $100,000 to the campaign to defeat Proposition 8 in California. Makes me pat my iMac on the head.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=19&entry_id=31899

# posted by  Anonymous : Fri Oct 24, 08:53:00 PM PDT

 

@sven: almost... over...

@dang: go, apple! i'm surprised, but pleased. let's hope it makes a difference.

# posted by  gl. : Sat Oct 25, 12:42:00 AM PDT

 

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