Nostalgia

 I went to McDonald's yesterday.  Mom wanted a hamburger and fries.  The original one was torn down and remodeled, blends in with the neighborhood more, no longer red.

It opened in 1976, to quite a bit of fanfare. It was the first major fast food franchise in town, first of many. (Years later I remember reading that my hometown wasn't worth mentioning in a guidebook.  Just a bunch of fast food joints along the highway between Deception Pass and Coupeville.)

We had three local places: Kow Korner, Michalob's (I can't recall the exact name, I think it had formerly been an A&W's, and still served root beer in a "frosted mug" and had the old car hop stands for ordering, also no longer functioning, and closed within a year or two after McDonald's opened) and my favorite, Arctic Circle down by City Beach (might've been a franchise out of Oregon, as they still existed there after the local one closed.) Of the three Kow Korner lasted the longest. We used to go there after the end of berry season, everyone got a hamburger or ice cream or something, and they gave out awards, or announced who the fastest pickers were.  It's now a bank.

Anyway, it was a year of Summer Olympics, and McDonald's had scratch cards that if team USA medaled in listed event, you could get free food, depending on if it were gold, silver, or bronze.  Maybe gold equalled a Big Mac? So, we'd sit around watching the Olympics and run down when our tickets matched a win. I think we won medals in boxing and track. It was the Olympics of the first perfect 10 in gymnastics where Nadia Comaneci and Nellie Kim dominated, eclipsing Olga Korbut.

I don't remember much else about that summer. We'd just moved into the house at the end of the school year, and I'd switch to my fourth school at the end of the summer, and since I was bullied all year at the previous school, any place else was an improvement.

It was the bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence and I flew on my first plane when my mom, sister and I went to El Paso to visit my grandmother later in the summer. And most of my memory of that was sticking to the hot bus seats to go to the Base and eating deep-fried burritos and grape juice in the X-change cafeteria.  And one of the planes was a DC 10. 

Anyway, I bought her food, and then changed my mind and bought a Shamrock shake, nostalgic and overly sweet, but I finished it. I haven't had one since high school.

Mom said she was expecting lettuce or tomato, but I think that's a different burger joint, across town.

Some time later

When I'm in the kitchen I remember late nights measuring out pills, and later, syringes of meds to keep on the four-hour cycles. Afraid of being alone with you. Afraid it would be beyond me to keep you safe. Every time you attempted to pull yourself out of bed when your legs could no longer bear you up. And later when you slept all the time, wishing I had real conversations with you and not just fighting with you to make you understand you could no longer walk. That you were already home. That you didn't need to take care of anything at 3 in the morning.

I remember how you wanted to wash dishes as a way to contribute when your world had shrunk. How I snuck into the kitchen and rewashed then because they were never quite clean.

On the Amtrak I saw your birds and thought to tell you they haven't flown north yet for the year. Remembered the fields where they were flocking, to tell you. On the day before your funeral driving up in between squalls I saw a rainbow, and then on the side of the highway the  end of the rainbow bent into someone's front yard.  So mundane, and somehow appropriate. How an eagle circled the funeral home before the service. How it snowed after. How the deer visited every night and stood out the window, and on a night before you passed on, when we looked back after you received last rites the does were standing there watching, feet away, as if they wanted to bear witness to your leaving, too.

I'm sitting on the couch where I kept myself awake half of every night, wondering how long we could go on like this and knowing there was no other choice. Finding it within ourselves to carry on, knowing that's how we love.

After

The wind blows a lot where I grew up, and almost never where I live now. Not in the same buffeting that you feel give force against your body as you walk, or riffles through your clothing draining any warmth you had.

I look for new places that don't conjure memories, the building up of small losses almost imperceptible until they fall like an avalanche upon you and bury you in grief.  Still, eating tacos now, I remember several years ago saying I was going to buy a taco and you handed me money to buy you some, too. You were confused by the soft corn street tacos, not sure how to eat them.  I suppose I wanted you to try something new that you might like. You thought I was going to Taco Bell for hard shell tacos.  Later, I checked myself and asked the shop for hard shells plus ground beef, not necessarily on the menu, but they made it. I wanted you to have something that you liked.  And later still, even places you liked you could barely eat a third of what you asked for.  I would say you were winding down, but then remember that in high school I could eat a whole pizza in one sitting, and I can't do that now.

I walked to the thrift store to pick up something to read, found a blazer that fit and some nice t-shirts.  They gave me the senior discount.  Yesterday, waiting for a bus at a transfer station in the sudden snow, with my backpack, I think I was seen as a homeless 20-something, a couple kept asking if I was alright and if I needed a ride somewhere.  In truth I had an hour wait, and then a family friend called and offered to come get me.  Maybe the couple meant well...but it was a bus stop.  Not unusual to be waiting for a bus.  Still, it's so interesting how you're perceived based on surrounding circumstances.  The shorthand conclusion is easy, makes sense with all the information we have to constantly process, still, how much are we ever right about each other? What's hidden under the surface we bother to know?

Always the wait

 The lines to check in, the lines for a toilet, the lines to board...and always aware of the privilege it is to travel at all.

Last couple of days have felt the urge to start wearing g a mask when I step through a door. Not wearing one now, people sneezing and coughing around me; might be time to start.  Back to "normal" life, whatever that is now.

If last year I couldn't quite leave the shore, this year, while a shorter vacation I definitely did, to the point of not being able to imagine the life I'm returning to.  Does anything change?  Does that life fit?

And in other things, I'm an anxious person.  All the ways I'm not well have not changed: my arm keeps going numb, and I'm still sick to the stomach everyday now going on three months.

Memories and Summer

I'm sitting in a bar in Ballard. Ordering food. It's Sunday, I came back for the Seafood Fest because I volunteered a Friday night pouring beer and got a free meal ticket, that I came back to use today. A friend's band was playing so I stayed to listen as I haven't been out in four years. "Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory" is playing without sound on the screen in the bar and I remember I used to love this movie and make everyone watch it in college.  A local celeb is two tables over facing me.  I used to come here all the time. Lately, I haven't done much of anything. I've lost myself. 

Had another shitty work review, peer reviews said they didn't trust I was capable of getting things done, and people don't feel they can ask me things.  Also something about saying stuff isn't my job which I've never done; I don't tend toward entitled though I do tend to panic.  Staying late to get work done showed my incompetence, even though it was because I was interrupted all day and stayed to finish work that needed to be done.  I wasn't asking for brownie points.

In other parts of my life, I got elected/entrusted with being president of church council and we just hired a new pastor as of today.  Someone trusts me.

June 28, 2023

 We lose ourselves in increments, a mourning for all things lost.  Has life become just a habit of familiar and no longer a wonder a love? Would I fall into ruts just the same living here, or can places bring out different aspects of ourselves? How much more alive we feel in travel, even on a bad day?

Christmas Eve 2022

 It was over 50 F by the time I walked to church yesterday afternoon for a brief choir rehearsal.  Had picked up the car earlier in the day, during the deluge, wading through flooded intersections, the slightest slope becoming a river.  I could've driven, but I'd landed a free parking spot on my street, so chose to keep it.  Sometimes I have to park a mile away, which I didn't feel like doing.  I in caught a bus back home, I was confused when it stopped to pick me up, it said it was going "To Terminal" and there wasn't anyone else on it.  And then I forgot to pay, even though I was holding my pass in my hand; he had to remind me to come back up and pay.  Got off three stops later to make a run to the store before it closed.  Fifteen minutes, and it was still pretty busy.  They aren't open today, and I think people stayed home on Thursday.  It was chaotically busy in the morning, but maybe it just seemed that way because it so rarely is: most days it seems to primarily be people filling online orders.  The lines were long, people seemed maybe a little stressed, out of practice of shopping, being in a crowd, not paying attention to where they were going, or stopping, or blocking.

Change of plans

Well, I guess now I have all day to finally write Christmas (New Year's?) cards.  I am NOT picking up the car today.  I went out a little after noon to see how it was out there: horrible. I made it about 1/3 of a block on flat, and partially melted iced sidewalk, then walked in gravel up a slight hill, kicking at the ice as I went to create someplace of downhill traction, and then got to the intersection back down that hill and tried to kick myself a path across, and then walked on the bark against the next building.  When that ran out it was solid ice.  The street was clear, but you had to get to it, and that was a lot of ice to cross.  Not happening.  On my way back home, a man told me I had the wrong shoes, yeah, but they are all I have, and then a woman offered me her arm, but I'd kicked a path earlier at that point, so I didn't need it.  Nice of her to offer, though.  Everywhere, people were either trying to glide across the ice, or had somehow made it to the main road, and were walking in the road, and some like I had tried, were also going along breaking up the ice and kicking it aside.  Side streets are still a mess.  My street is all ice.  I called and switched the reservation, at least they had availability.  (Over Thanksgiving there wasn't any this close to the holiday.)  I don't know where I would've parked had I picked it up.

I think I have a second pair of "yak track"-type shoe traction, some with more ice traction, I'll have to dig around and find them.  I'd bought some a few years back, and then a friend had also given me a pair for my birthday that year.  One of them works on ice.  Also, trekking poles.  If I had access to a snow shovel, I'd go clear the intersection. 

Still not quite above freezing, but it almost feels balmy in comparison to yesterday.  Device is telling me it's now sleeting.

And as to what I was looking at in earlier post, areas that look icy are the ice that is breaking up; areas that looked clear are the solid, hard sheets of ice, not easily broken apart.

For some reason, I've been feeling out of practice at life.  Both with the ice (and it's unusual, it's true) and I had a cold a couple of weekends ago, it only lasted a day, but I was trying to remember how to navigate the world with a runny nose, as if I had never had that experience before.  It was odd.

2 Days Before Christmas

 I'm out of practice of writing.  I've been hit-and-miss with daily journal writing, and my computer died back in September(?) I think, and I haven't replaced it yet.  Not quite the same typing on a smartphone, though, it's been a godsend to have one.  We're in the middle of an ice storm, the radar says something is happening in my neighborhood, but I can't tell when I look out the window.  I tried opening the screen, but it wouldn't budge, I think it's frozen shut.  Still below freezing. I looked outside around 4 am, there was a man in a yellow jacket, half-sliding down the sidewalk, almost as if he were on skates, he didn't fall.  Later, he stood with a couple of others, smoking at the curb.  None of them seemed all the fazed by the freezing rain.  The snow looked like a solid block.  Yesterday, people were talking of "stocking up" on groceries so they wouldn't have to try to get out later. I thought about it, and then didn't.

Now, it seems to be melting, in spite of it still being below freezing.  The sidewalks don't look particularly icy, but perhaps that's the deception of appearances, or perhaps all the de-icer is working.

I tried to run errands yesterday, in the afternoon, seemed like the best day of the week: freezing, but dry.  North of the Ship Canal much more icy than closer to Downtown.  I waiting hours for buses.  On the screens showing the next bus, it would say "2 minutes" and then no bus would come, and it would say "next bus in 11 minutes" and then that one wouldn't come either.  Eventually just ran the closer errand first, then stood out in the ice for another 1/2 hour with a bunch of other people because a bus had broken down, and we had to wait for the next one to show up.  There were a bunch of people in the back, freezing and wrapped in blankets, but the bus was also cold as half the back windows wouldn't stay shut.  (And only three warming shelters listed, not nearly enough.)  Thankfully, after today, the temps will be in almost 50 F, but pouring down rain, too, for the foreseeable future.

Anyway, I went to the camera store in S Lake Union; I don't recognize that neighborhood at all anymore.  (And man, I miss shooting a film camera! I accidently touched the mirror on my favorite camera a few years ago, not sure if it's worth it to pay to align it again...the next camera I buy will probably be one I can shoot "video" on.  I do miss the days where you could buy a K-1000 and be good to go. Oh, I just looked it up, not very expensive, but as the man at the store said, you pay on the back end with film, though you don't have to keep upgrading as you do with digital, though it's true you need a darkroom, while you can edit digital work anywhere.)

I had been hoping to drop off film at Panda, too, but it'd gotten too late. I've got a pile of old film I need to process, I think still from Finland and Portugal, which were over 10 years ago.  Also, I have a film project I want to work on, so, I'll need to get one of these cameras to work.  Anyway, I waited for a bus for half an hour until a woman walked by and told those of us waiting that the bus was on a snow route and we needed to go four blocks east.  I'm glad she thought to say something.  Would have stood there forever (or until I got too cold, and had to go find another way home.)

I need to go pick up a rental car, so I do need to go out and see if the roads are drivable. Earlier, I could hear the traffic on the freeway, which seemed to sound at normal speeds, but it's the side roads, and little hills everywhere.  I've been off most of the week, and having trouble keeping track of the days.  Everyday feels like a Saturday, though I still find it glorious and decadent to be out and about on a weekday when I realize it's not Saturday.

All the rooftops in the distance are still covered in snow, and I'm listening to the Christmas music on the classical radio station, sitting next to my very dry Christmas tree. My device says it's snowing.  There's a crow cawing out the window, someone's on the elevator, trucks rumble on in the distance. Merry, almost, Christmas.

The Process of Departure

 I looked out the window at a Ryanair plane and wondered why everything looked so dark, briefly thinking the windows were shaded.  But no, it is still night. I was rushing at the end to get out of the hotel, repacking, etc, to get to airport on time (how many flights have I managed to miss vs how many trips I've ever taken?  Let's just say the percentage is high.) I'd set an alarm for 1:30 am, and then of course didn't want to get up.  But once I got here, the people I encountered were very awake, and the line moved slow, so somehow t forgot it was the middle of the night.

Walking to the gate, once past check-in of course, I heard snoring, and continued to pass all the sleeping travelers, passed out in corners or making use of the closed eating areas to camp out. It's very quiet. Everything is shut.

The hotel was about a five minute cab ride from the airport. 20 Euros.  That hour-long ride to Leon was a steal in retrospect, considering he had to drive the hour back; it was 100 Euros.  A woman with a bike told me she paid a similar amount when she hurt her foot, and needed to transport self and bike.

The neighborhood was interesting, reminded me more of Latin America than Europe. I wouldn't think it was Madrid. I went for a walk in the heat. I was looking for a cafe or grocery store, there was actually a huge grocery store next to hotel, but I didn't see it because I went in the other direction.  What I did encounter was a weird sound coming from the trees.  An almost metallic chirp; I think it was some sorta insect, do they have cicadas here?  The few I caught a glimpse of looked like mutant crickets.  They blended in with the bark and were hard to see.

Later I walked toward a park, stopped at a cafe.  More birds than flies, the birds were landing on people, I think many were fledglings. They were panting in the heat.  Under the covered terrace water would spray down periodically to help cool things down, and I think they liked that, too.  In the park there was a small flock of green parrots.

It's a quiet area. Reminds me of visiting my grandma in El Paso: location, landscape, heat, and quality of light.

This was the first hotel I stayed in that was staffed 24 hours.  Also, had a restaurant (where I forced myself to get up and go eat at around 10:30 last night), offered laundry service, room service, especially if you are feeling sick, and had taxis waiting outside 24/7.  Also, pretty wide clientele, now that I'm off the Camino circuit (though plenty of peregrinos, too. My cab driver to the airport asked me about it, since I had a backpack.) I think it was less expensive than where I stayed in Santiago.  That was nice enough, though the bathroom wasn't particularly clean. It was a good location, mix of hotels and locals, just outside the historic area.

The room was remarkably cold. Outside the temp said 45, but that was in the direct sun, I think it was only high 90's...arrive and leave in a heatwave.