No Particular Place to Go

So, Hawai'i...

2011-12-05T19:09:00.000-08:00

Things I'd heard that were really true: Gas is expensive (over $4.60 a gallon), milk is expensive ($5 or $6 a gallon), everything else is expensive (everything), and the weather is reliably good (if you don't mind your warmth occasionally very windy).

Things I'd been given to believe that were not so true: Snorkeling is always great on Maui. Of course, my first and only experience of snorkeling was in the John Pennenkamp Coral Reef (underwater) State Park near Key West Florida, so that'd be hard to match with wade-in-off-the beach reefs, I suppose. And maybe we just picked the wrong time to go, but we got only one good morning in before the aggressive waves murked up the water so much we could barely see or stay off the rocks ourselves. Oh, well. It was water we could swim in; don't get that at home.

Also, I never knew I liked Hawaiian music until I went on the dinner cruise that I admit I thought was a cheesy idea. A young man started singing and didn't stop for most of the two or three hours that we mostly just rocked on the water and scanned for the occasional accommodating whale. It was the best part of an excursion that was in every way quite lovely. That language that can all be written in 12 letters (13 if you count the ', the glottal stop consonant that really should be in the word Hawai'i) is so musical. When I heard that the movie "The Descendants" was entirely scored with Hawaiian music, it was a new reason to see the movie, more even than GC himself.

Can you correct this breach of etiquette without being, well, impolite?

2011-08-06T12:58:00.000-07:00

I tend to leave the office latish on Fridays. After catching up calls, reviewing lengthy old records from patients' previous doctors, etc. I walk down to the MAX station, avoiding the rush that I imagine exists at 5:30 or 6. I was having an impromptu visit with a nice (previously unknown to me) lady who works at the Salvation Army youth center when a large pleasant man in a red T-shirt, longish hair, and a baseball cap asked us if we knew which train to take for North Interstate and Lombard. We told him that would be the yellow line and I told him that was my stop. He said, "Thanks, ladies," and walked off. Ten minutes later he came back and asked if he could go on with us and make sure he got off at the right place. The other lady said that wasn't her train, but I told him, sure, I could show him where to get off. He said, "Thanks, darlin'", and I said, almost reflexively, "Please call me 'Ma'am'". Don't misunderstand, I can't tell you how gentle and unthreatening this guy seemed, but I really, really don't like people who are not my friends calling me "Hon", "Sweetie", "Dear", "Darlin'", or any other term of endearment when I am not endeared. It feels disrespectful, and I used to not let it go by uncorrected when it came from a man, but I don't think I'm saying it well, because there is always a chill that descends. I follow it with "You can call me Kim, if you like", to try to communicate that I'm not trying to be snobbish, but I think I need a better line than, "Please don't call me __________", or "Please call me Ma'am".

It may be that "Please don't call me (Sweetie)" is better. One gas station attendant I remember saying that to said, seemingly sincerely, "What should I call you? Honey?" The episode that left me feeling saddest was when the really sweet resident oral surgeon who was taking the screws out of my mouth, seeing this was painful, said, "Oh, I'm sorry, hon!" and I said (yes, at such a moment I decide to be Ms. Manners), "Please don't call me hon. It doesn't feel respectful." After another screw or two came painfully out, I managed to commit my own faux pas--which maybe wouldn't have been one if I hadn't just corrected him--and patted him on the arm, so much as to say, "It's okay, I know you can't help how much it hurts", and felt the need to apologize for that. It just didn't feel we ended the visit as warmly and it had started and I wished I'd just taken the "hon" on the chin and kept quiet.

Anyway, suggestions welcome. I'm clearly in need of my own etiquette advisor.

The Meeting of the Waters

2011-05-31T21:50:00.000-07:00

Sunday Merlin and I rode out to Kelley Point Park, about six miles from our house, to see the place where the Willamette River flows into the Columbia. It is not as dramatic as the meeting of the waters of the Amazon and the Rio Negro in Brazil, where it looks like cream being slowly poured into black coffee. In fact, the marker says Lewis and Clark failed to notice the Willamette as they went down the Columbia and again as they came back up it, even though they'd been told there was another great river right in the neighborhood.

That point is also the spot where the city of Portland ends. Even though we now live in the big City, we live at the extreme end of it, and it is a place where extreme beauty and extreme ugliness can be seen with just a quick turn of the head. Or without turning even. To get to Kelley Point, you ride a bike path with Smith and Bybee lakes on your left, a beautiful wildlife area, and the rather sci-fi-ish Marine Drive industrial landscape on your right. Over your left handlebar, woods, waterfowl and fish, over your right, large square buildings, all deserted for the weekend (or WERE they?), and railroad tracks. It's eerie.

Our own home is barely south of Columbia Boulevard. So we are surrounded by an old Portland neighborhood (not a fancy one, but kind of a cozy one), yet one block away to the north is an area that will never be residential and is covered with railroad tracks, a water treatment plant, heavy manufacturing. That area is also home to the Columbia slough, a great place to walk and see wildlife, provided you don't mind your wildlife against a backdrop of aging warehouses or the Portland International Raceway. (It's also home to the lost city of Vanport, which washed away 63 years ago last weekend, about which we've been reading and Googling obsessively lately, more about which another time.)

Oddly, I don't mind too much. It's surprisingly quiet here despite all that so close. And train whistles sing me back to sleep when I wake in the night. I live where humans live, and we are unfortunately a messy species. And really, you can't spit in this place and not hit some sort of a park (I have no idea how we pay for that!), so I take the blessing with the curse and try not to add too much to the latter.

The Old Homestead Goes on the Market

2011-04-30T19:06:00.001-07:00

Today we signed all that paperwork you sign when you are about to put up a Realtor's sign in front of your house. Yes, funny to think it, but that big green house in Dallas is still ours, even though we no longer sleep there or cook there. It is now all various shades of beige, neutralized for the next couple who walks in, so they can picture making it their own, and maybe give us lots of money for it. I did leave the crayon-red room crayon-red, because it was too beautiful that way to paint over so soon, and because red is really hard to cover with beige.

Our real estate agent Yolanda was impressed. She saw it at its worst last fall and helped us set a tentative price; before she came over Friday, she tried to prepare us for a possible down-pricing as the market keeps slipping, I guess, but when she saw it she decided to keep the starting price where we first decided it would be. It definitely confirmed our conviction, formed long ago, that it would be a much more attractive house with us out of it.

It still makes me sad. I loved that house, and especially the things I thought I would do with it 10 years ago, but never did. Now I am in a much smaller house with all kinds of Ikea ideas about what I want to do with it; we'll see. But I hope that now that I live here full-time, I'll dive right into what I want to do most, even before I paint over the depressing Spanish Moss green walls: Fill it with people once every week or two (it won't take many to fill it) and feed them with the non-foodie food I know how to make, and thus, and in many other ways, fulfill the law of Christ.

The Bus

2011-04-12T23:28:00.001-07:00

I ride the #4 bus now. I haven't ridden a city bus in the US for over 25 years, and now I have a bus. It's the 4. It picks me up two blocks from home, and after 45 minutes it lets me off 10 blocks from work. Or vice versa. That doesn't sound like a good ad for public transportation, and I still get driven to work by the love of my life most days, but I like the 4. It makes me feel like I live in a more diverse city than I do live in.

Today, about a mile into the ride, a whole class of 7-year-olds from Boise-Eliot school got on at one stop, with what looked like 2 adults. This made me smile. They were noisy and well behaved. Except for one of their supervisors who kept yelling at them to stop talking: "ZERO TALKING." "How much talking did I say? ZERO." She did eventually almost succeed in silencing them. I liked the chatter better.

My husband goes to Dallas every Friday to cut the grass, work on the house we are about to put on the market, and play volleyball late into the evening with his friends. He drops me off at work and I go home on the 4. I do what everyone else does, find a seat, pull out my faux-pod (a cheap Sansa MP3 player my kids found me on one of those websites where you have 24 hours to decide) or my book, and leave the driving to a very nice man or woman who is, I hope, paid well to put up with us all. I watch people of every color, age, and capability get on and off. I watch Portland go by. I pull the string. I walk the two blocks home. I feel kind of like I live here.

In case you know someone else who...

2011-04-11T22:49:00.000-07:00

Can't open her mouth, I have a few observations and suggestions that I wish someone had given me a couple of weeks ago:

Safeway Signature soups (the kind that come in a refrigerator case and cost about $4 for 24 ounces) blend better than anything else that tastes good. Coconut Thai Chicken Bisque is incredible. My mother justly termed it a "beautiful soup".

If you've ever thought you only like food and drink really cold, or really hot, this situation will change your mind. When you can't sip and everything has to go past your teeth, tepid has its virtues. Oddly, Ensure is better fairly hot.

Ask for that wax they give people with braces. Buy Anbesol and Biotene. And those little plastic toothpicks with green rubber tips. And Benefiber. (It really does dissolve completely in liquid, and you may be sorry if you don't use it, because juices, it turns out, don't contain much fiber. Especially that stupid "Green Machine" which has the look of virtue and the fiber content of pudding.)

It's surprisingly easy to turn away from real food and just not think about it when you have no real choice. And I love, love, love real food. I will run back to its arms as soon as they let me. But now, I just turn a cold eye and keep moving.

I have not found anything that helps me talk better. I know someone has tips, I just don't.

You will be tempted to think and talk about this condition all the time because you are inevitably obsessed because it affects almost all you do. It would be wise for everyone's sake to resist the temptation as much as possible. I have failed. As you can see.

I Fracture My Jaw

2011-04-07T21:17:00.000-07:00

What has finally driven me back to the blog is this: My jaw is wired shut and two things I most enjoy doing most (yes, deliberate use of two "mosts")--talking and eating--have suddenly lost about 3/4 of their attraction for me.

I earn my living by thinking and talking, and I think in part by talking. Since I tripped on a piece of Portland sidewalk 10 days ago, landing squarely on my chin and breaking my mandible, talking is tiring, a little painful, and seriously embarrassing. I have been grateful for all the people who have said to me, "I've tried talking through my teeth to see what that's like for you, and it's awful!" The effort to empathize warms my heart, but I know they know trying it out is nothing like having it imposed on you. I sound slushy and sticky. Apologizing to the few patients I've seen or talked to on the phone is how I start my visits. And the muscles of my face constantly tighten and try to force my teeth, already as close as they can get, closer.

This happened at a time I wouldn't have chosen, at the juncture of two jobs. While I'm thankful for COBRA (health care portability law), and a new employer who is willing to give me a light schedule and several more days off than I'm sure she wishes I had to take, some of my anxiety is that I am now dealing with people who don't know me, who don't know that I never take sick time, and who don't know how much I really want to dive in and learn the new job. (Also, at my old clinic, my patients would have patted my hand and said, "There, there, we don't mind that you sound like you're talking through mashed potatoes, we're just glad you're okay". Probably in Spanish. My new ones probably won't. And actually if they did, it'd be weird.)

But you don't get offered choice in this kind of thing, only in how you respond. So I am off on a hopefully brief adventure of character building and ego adjusting and perspective acquiring, trying with very mixed success to use my shamefully frequent self-pity as a trigger to pray for, oh, say, quake victims in Japan, women with rectovaginal fistulas in rural Africa, girls being sold on the street in Portland, and people with real, intractable pain who will come into my office and for whom 2-6 weeks of eating slurry will not make things all right again.

Put up with me if you can, call me if you want to, and remember to give thanks that you can, any time you want to, lick your lips.

Observations while packing to move. And downsize.

2010-10-28T13:09:00.000-07:00

Books that have been on your shelf unread for years (many never read), will suddenly look exceedingly interesting when you are faced with giving them away.

A job that at the outset looks like no big deal will after a few days reveal itself to be a very big deal.

Most of what we have is junk. We are fortunate enough to recognize that; it will save us from thinking that we would have made a mint off of it if only we'd had the time and foresight to have a garage sale. Our gift to ourselves is not to have a garage sale.

Our gift to our children is to move to half the space now and only keep what can fit there. This is written from the perspective of a child-in-law who had to help clear off a 60-year-old farm a few years back. (Their gift to us will be to come take their stuff away now).

It is surprising how nostalgic I can get about an oversize one-car garage on my husband's account.

Suddenly I'm obsessed with flat screens and other things that take up less space. Unfortunately until we sell our big roomy old house for less than we paid for our slightly less old compact model, budget is tighter. (But this computer monitor is about 3 feet deep. It's gotta go soon.)

Word of advice. Before you buy, you might want to check and see if your new house has cell phone reception. Farewell to the T-Mobile plan that has served our family well for 5+ years.

This is an adventure. People are shockingly impressed that we are doing it at all. It's good to go on an adventure.

Not Better Than Average

2010-10-10T14:43:00.000-07:00

Have you read/heard of the research that says most people think they are better than average drivers? I'm not one of them. I think that I am a worse than average driver by nature, and try to compensate by being a very vigilant driver, taking caffeine for the morning commute, driving a very small car to minimize the damage I might do in a moment of inattention, trying not to pay attention to anything around me that might be more interesting than what is ahead of me, never talking (never mind texting, which is inconceivable) on the cell while driving, or drinking before driving.

I also don't find myself to be a woman of better than average character. My motives for much of what I do are base self-preservatory motives. When I pray not to do harm in my work, I'm praying not just for my patients' safety, but also for my ability to go on doing my job and being able to live with myself. Doing one's duty is the duty of all, and many if not most do theirs; I try to do mine. That makes me, at best, a person of average character. But my obstacles are not as high as those of most people in this world, so maybe average is an overestimate.

Of the things I love to do--read, write poems, sing, care for (and entertain) those I love, and those entrusted to my care--most people who love to do those things do them better than I do. And among those who love God, God knows I am not his most passionate and dedicated soul, loving with all my heart, soul, mind and strength. But, because of his grace, I haven't given up. I still hope for those occasions when I forget myself and where I fall in the continuum of the rest of sin-touched humanity, and do the right thing for the right reason, and love for the sake of the beloved, and rise above not all the others, but myself, by pure grace. It stands to reason that if that ever happens, I won't notice.

And just so you don't find this morbidly depressing or think I'm obnoxiously self-effacing--like that could ever happen--there are a few things I do well: Whereas I'm not normally a good judge of character, tending to trust those who are up to no good, I was, when it mattered 37 years ago, a profoundly good judge of husband material. And I'm a great speller and punctuater. Or is it punctuator?)

Undeep Thoughts

2010-09-25T12:10:00.000-07:00

Doesn't anyone but me find the Tree in "The Giving Tree" more than just a bit of an enabler? I never found this story as heartwarming as my friends did. And I really wonder if Shel Silverstein meant it that way.

One good thing about electronic medical records (and there aren't a lot of good things yet) is that I get to spend a little less time on hold to medical organizations (labs, pharmacies, hospitals, nursing homes, radiology clinics) and listening to their music, ads, etc. Salem Hospital is currently the worst. Yesterday I was victimized by a sad, dreamy, slowed-down piano version of, yeah, this is weird, "The Candy Man". To judge from their hold music, SH wants to be your hospital if you are into Lawrence Welk reruns and '50's movie theme music. Oregon Health and Science University favors Top 40 classical, absolutely nothing you can't hum along to even if you own fewer than 5 classical albums. Walgreen's at least has decent pop sometimes--I've occasionally been disappointed to be interrupted in my sing-along by the actual pharmacist answering the phone. Nursing homes/retirement centers are the other worst: They seem to assume that almost everyone who calls is actually looking for a nursing home so that the innocent nurse practitioner answering an urgent call from a nurse is assaulted with ads telling her what a great place this would be for her or her loved one to live. With some spritely music to punctuate. These are the times when electronic access to records and order forms can't come fast enough!

Things I will miss when we, Lord willing, in a month or two, move to Portland:

My clothesline (new place has no place private to put one and I don't like to hang even my clean laundry in public).
The Santa Rosa plum tree. Grabbing a plum off it and eating it bent over to let the juice hit the grass instead of my clothes.
The wood stove, as even the smallest would probably blast us out of the new place, which is, well, little.
The Evilberries, as my daughter named the unreproducible thorny blackberryboysenberryloganberrywhoknowswhatotherberry hybrids that were an attempt to keep the neighbor kids from coming through the fence (ineffective) but make the best jams and cobblers we'll never see again.
Having the kids spend the night and eat several meals in a row with us. But we should see them more often, if for less time at a pop.
Sunday walks with Susan. I'll always talk to Susan, thank God for the technology that makes that easy, but we won't get to walk as often. Maybe I'll have to get a dog, name it Lucy, and be Susan to someone else on Sundays.

Speaking of whom, this is the poem which really kicked off my poem-writing jag of the 20-oughts:

Poem for Susan, Epiphany 2007

Sitting on the sofa at ten.
The phone still warm from my ear.
Pondering why I am glad I didn’t accidentally say
before hanging up
“Love you” (as I say to my family) instead of
“Take care” (as I say to my friends).
Wondering why that would have embarrassed both of us
because we really are good enough friends that it is certainly true,
and we certainly both know it.
But still glad I didn’t accidentally say it.

And because of our conversation
About the common disaster that has overtaken our family,
the sudden decline of a loved old one
and the hardship that creates for us all,
I am happy to sit,
hearing in the near silence
the hum and blow of the furnace,
feeling in my motionlessness
the pulse of my blood,
noticing in the not-noticing
the absence any real pain in my body.

This won’t last.
I’m not entitled for it to.
But I’m grateful
for hearing, pulse, and painlessness.
And, of course, for you.

Not a Bad September Day

2010-09-11T18:40:00.000-07:00

This morning, one of those pitch-perfect September mornings, the first Saturday after school started, I ran past the soccer fields, and it was all as it's been since my kids were kids. Tiny creatures in crayon yellow and crayon green T-shirts were buzzing around a black and white ball, with adults hovering above and around them with whistles and snacks and sweatshirts. Of course it took me back to my days sitting sideline, often with a nursing textbook, always with other grownups with whom I may or may not have had a lot in common, but if nothing else, at least those kids. It was a ritual, a rite, in our case one that our son always seemed to regret having gotten involved with shortly after the start of the season. I kind of miss those days, and I kind of don't. I felt much more a part of this community then, which was cool.

This afternoon, a pitch-perfect September afternoon, I did a Dallas afternoon romp, first to the library to return overdue books, get seduced by some others I don't have time for, and to check out my those books without human help. Okay, I needed a human to help me learn to do it, but now I can do it alone. When the lady cheerfully told me I could check out books without her, the first thing out of my mouth was, "But what about your job?" She assured me she'd still have a job. (I hope she wasn't insulted, thinking I thought her job was only about passing things under a scanner and collecting the only kind of fines most people don't mind paying. She didn't seem to be.) Then I went to a vacant lot and bought apples, corn, and shiny red pears from the blind man and his family who always sell them. I had to read the scale and report honestly so they could charge me correctly. He did the math in his head. Then I went to a coffee kiosk in the Safeway parking lot and ordered a cherry Italian soda without cream, which is one of the prettiest and most refreshing things in the world. THEN, a glutton for a good afternoon, and mainly just a glutton, I went to the deserted noodle and sushi place on Main and got the evilest yummy sushi roll, now known as a Dallas Roll, which is deep fried. I was the only one in the perfectly un-air-conditioned restaurant and enjoyed a peaceful feast over a book I like but expect to end badly, and it all only was broken by my pager bleating at me, because, yes, I'm on call.

A little later my daughter called, and I told her of the roadbumps in the way of our efforts to move to her general neck of the woods, North Portland, but that I hadn't lost hope. She told me that she has some adoptive grandchildren in that neighborhood she thinks we might take advantage of (and their parents of us!) and I was glad to hear it.

Now, this evening, I'm going to do a bad job of cooking steak, and eat the corn I bought, and try to polish off a children's feature (is there a better word than "feature" for this kind of thing? It isn't really a story, so...?) about lost and found sheep and people. Sometimes I think my life is a little bland. I imagine by now you do, too. But a normal day like this is such a pipe dream for so many, and I will not despise that, and I will be, am, grateful.

Generations

2010-08-14T17:42:00.000-07:00

Last week was the annual Doyle (my side of the family) gathering at the beach. I realized we've been going to the beach together every summer for about 35 years now. There are 14 of us all told now, down from a high of 15: Mom, her three children and our spouses, our collective 7 children. None of the seven currently have spouses, and Mom has no great grandchildren.

At times I feel a little wistful about this, but my sister reminded me that we in our generation are all still very tethered to the working world, all work more than full time, and would probably not be the grandparents our mom and dad were, as they retired with energy to spare. It actually made me feel better, oddly, and it also helps to recall that we have marvelous children, who are making their way in the world and making life better for others, and who don't break our hearts on a daily basis, as many children unfortunately do.

If there were no God, having children would have to be considered a crap shoot, with the likelihood of pain and pleasure about equal. Recently on NPR I heard about a study (or several?) indicating that most people are less happy after they have children than before. This is hard to believe from where I sit, but may be true, I suppose. But there is a God, who I believe arranges for our spiritual progress through the fruit of our loins, and theirs through us, if we're expectant and alert. Which is a bigger deal than mere Happiness. I'm grateful for the progress and the happiness mine have provoked.

I'm also grateful for the Doyles who are great cooks, great laughers, great listeners to music (and some of us great sing-alongers, even if others of us disagree), great junk-shop trawlers, and who, though we only do it three times, a year, love to hang out with each other.

Bad memory

2010-06-07T14:53:00.000-07:00

I read a riveting neuroscience blog called The Frontal Cortex at http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/. (Yeah, you heard me. Riveting.) A recent post called "Memory is Fiction" discusses the mutability and unreliability of memory in a way that is quite depressing.

Evidence exists that the more often you remember something the more inaccurate the memory becomes. Apparently it gets trimmed down, embellished up, worked over, and plowed under the soil of other memories, and you really can't trust it as well as you wish you could. Was I really going to a church quilting day when I heard of the Challenger disaster? Was I really standing is line to eat lunch in 7th grade when the PA system began broadcasting radio coverage of the Kennedy assassination? (Did I really eat a whole bag of potato chips every time I babysat for the Kirchbergers?) Studies that have asked for these vivid kinds of memories to be recalled immediately and a long time after the events they recall show that it all really breaks down something awful. And yet, much as I love studies, and Science, there is a level on which I really can't believe this is true. Memory is sacred.

But I wonder if the science isn't a case for reunions and hanging out occasionally with old friends you never see and don't think you have a lot in common with anymore. Just going over the old stuff you did that made you who you are, and getting their take on it all seems worthwhile.

My little sister often "reminds" me that I went to bat for her when she was arguing with mom over the right to wear nylons to school in junior high. Believe me, this was once not only fashionable, but essential to avoid being a fashion pariah. Really, it was. She says I told mom to please not make her go through what I had gone through in my 7th and 8th grade years (when mom's position was firm--nylons were expensive and stupid). I used the quotes around "reminds" above because I don't actually remember doing this. But I'm glad to know it. It makes me look like a good big sister, and that makes me happy. And if she didn't "remind" me, I wouldn't know it.

I think the unreliability of memory is also, obviously, a case for writing things down fresh, in an indelible format. Like blogging (snicker) or a real paper journal.

Visit, write. Beat those unfaithful neurons!

Visit to the cemetery

2010-05-31T20:19:00.000-07:00

Today, we did something we've never actually done before. We (Merlin, kids, and I) went up to the Dallas cemetery and put flowers at the grave of Merlin's parents and our aunt. I know Memorial Day is established to honor war dead, but we are Mennonites, as were the Brandt elders before us, and so have no war dead of our own. But I remembered that Mom and Dad used to go up to their parents' graves on Memorial Day, and it seemed for once like we ought to honor them the same way. I suddenly wanted anyone who passed by the section where they and their parents lie to know we hadn't forgotten them.

I was surprised how widely decorated the (huge, beautiful) cemetery was, including the section near the road that contains the bones of Dallasites buried over a century ago. Many other headstones of folks we knew already had been visited and remembrances left. One headstone had little glass beads and stars arranged around the flowers. Molly had suggested we leave a few chocolate covered cherries (which, I guess, sounds a little "Dia de los Muertes" to me, although kind of appropriate to her grandparents), but I forgot to get them.

Not sure when we'll do it again. Not sure I know why we do it. But I think however we go about it, it's good to recall with gratitude the great cloud of witnesses who are no longer running the race, but who enabled us to run it, and who I believe still care how we run it.

Because it is time to blog again....

2010-05-23T17:18:00.000-07:00

I've been on vacation, and back, and the coming back was with a vengeance, as the saying goes, to an office under stress. Well, under more stress than usual. I've stared at the screen for some indeterminate amount of time, trying to think what to tell you. It would be a boring little kvetch, if I talk about work.

So I'll share the few poems that came out of the travels this time. The first two have an obvious connection to the trip, and the last just popped out after I came home. If history is any indicator, it could be a while before any more poems happen.

The Right Coast

I am home from Florida.
Only two margaritas in ten days,
but I got drunk on the ocean,
so different from my Pacific,
recalling which,
I felt the guilt of unfaithfulness.

So drunk on the ocean, I couldn’t drive.
I could only
stare and stare at the green and greens
of the bay, the ocean, the bight.
On the last day, that ocean turned nearly
blue for me.
So I could stand to come home.

May 2010

Old Folks

Wed seventy-three years, they were
Parted by death for only seven months,
and then reunited by it.
They were in love the whole time
(truly, though not always smoothly,
I learned near the end).

Coming past Mt. Hood on a Continental flight,
I wrap their third son’s arm in both of mine,
perfectly content, and aware of it,
to be watching Mt. Hood with this man after a paltry
36 years, knowing at some point, unfathomably,
death will us part.

That son, a man, married a child
who knew what she wanted,
has always known what she has,
and never questioned her choice.
Grateful, as other children-in-law,
to those old folks who lasted

longer than any of us will.

May 2010 (Pete and Sally Brandt’s 77th anniversary)

Aromata: Three Haiku from Runs

Fallen fir needles
smell like wild blackberry pie
baking in the sun.

*

Someone must have brought
Ariel laundry powder
home from Mexico.

*

Mimosa’s out there,
but where? Follow the nose out
over a high fence.

May 2010

A Few Thoughts on Aging

2010-04-19T22:52:00.001-07:00

The drive to correct grammar and spelling does not diminish with age. You just learn to only do it on your own stuff.

A good pair of glasses that will not embarrass you in front of your 20- and 30-something friends, with progressive (read, "line-free") correction for reading and computer work, costs you $400. After the AARP discount.

We look younger than our parents at our age because they helped us keep our own teeth.

We should be enviable company to our youngers--we know a lot of interesting stuff (and yet know that we know nothing), can see the humor in anything, can add humor where we can't find it, and we are so humble.

They will be us before they know it.

When I was in my thirties, I thought those 40-something women who wore shorts over their swimsuits were just being silly. Around 15 years ago, when I was 40-something, I got it. I'm now buying "swimskirts". Never say never.

I repeat myself, but... Never say never.

A poem from two years ago:

Sleeveless dress

My arms, somewhat dimpled,
a little slack,
must offend some who see them.

But I already retired my thighs and my belly
from public life.
Everything from chin to cleavage is at risk.
And the toenails. Please.

I can’t retire my arms.
They will go beneath summer sleeves
When I take a veil over my face.
Not a day sooner.

Hey, Poppa Bird!

2010-04-10T14:42:00.001-07:00

Today is my dad's 86th birthday, and although he left the mortal phase of his 11 years ago, I think of him and his mark on us often. "Poppa Bird" was one of his favorite nicknames for himself. Here are some of the things he did:

Balanced me standing on one hand at age 5 months. Must have driven Mom nuts. I have a picture of this blown up to blurry proportions in my stairwell, so I see him and me in 1952 every time I go downstairs.

Scared (or tried to scare) my few boyfriends. Mainly by use of his strange sense of humor. Couldn't scare Merlin.

Taught me to drive, and especially how to skid to a stop on gravel. He always said to keep my eyes far down the road, not at what was right in front of me. Good advice on all levels, especially for a girl who tends to fixate on all the obstacles within three feet of her instead of just mowing them down.

Taught me (albeit through the agency of mom after he died) to make the best homemade dill pickles anyone has ever eaten. Really. The Best.

Went frequently to Monty's Bar, and the Old Heidelburg Inn, and brought back the foods that are still my downfall, namely anything pungent and salty, especially pickled polish sausage and greasy fries.

Told me I didn't need to go to college since I was a girl and then sent me and bragged about me to his friends.

Got lung cancer at 45, survived, I assume miraculously, and kept on smoking. Yeah, I can't recommend that, but he was (all due respect) kind of a cuss that way. This retired him, so he spent lots of time gardening and ferrying his elderly friends around to appointments.

Loved to send flowers to all of us. (Maybe not to my brother. Casey?)

Went to the mall the day I delivered his first grandchild and had a T-shirt made that said "Call me Grampaw: Molly". Then every time another grandchild appeared, went down to the mall and added a name to it. Actually wore it a lot.

Could find a bargain on anything, and no matter what you bought, if you told him what you paid, assured you that he could have gotten it cheaper. I know, lots of you have that kind of dad. I think it's Y-chromosome-related.

Loved going to the doctor. Didn't live to see his "First-borned" (nickname for me) become something close to one.

Had very strange taste in clothes.

Had excellent taste in women. Happy Dad's Birthday, Mom!

Running Mercies, Traveling Plans, Poems

2010-03-29T11:31:00.000-07:00

I awoke at 0645 and freaked out briefly thinking it was Tuesday (0600 is my rising time Tuesday, because that is my first day of the work week, and I face about two and a half to three feet of charts that want something from me before the pressure-cooker really starts rattling).

But it wasn't. I rejoiced that for the first time in a week I had fallen asleep and stayed all night in the same bed without the help of anything but God and Advil. Then I was spared having to face the dreaded treadmill by the unexpected appearance of the sun after an all-night rain. Well, it was probably an all-night rain; as I said, I slept uncharacteristically soundly. Here's what I observed on my run:

1. The longer the rain, the more earthworms on the sidewalk. I hate stepping on earthworms, simply because I don't know if they suffer or not. I sometimes rescue them if the rain is over and I think it is safe for them to climb back into the earth. But today I didn't, because it is supposed to keep raining and they might just have to find the sidewalk again, and there were far too many anyway. I wish them well; they are an honored part of the great chain of life.

2. Sun and rain can coexist for considerable stretches in this part of the world. I don't know that it ever stopped raining the whole time I ran. Lots of blue, lots of gray, and at the end, I was able to stop and find the rainbow that pretty much always has to be there in that kind of weather. I love sun and blue-black clouds in the same sky. I always have to stop and stare.

3. The creek is fast, deep and brown now. The creek is to Dallas what the Willamette is to Portland: Runs through the heart and gives it some of the best of its personality. I dreamed about the creek and the ways to get down to it that don't actually exist last night. I think I will miss it if we do move to the Portland area. I'm unlikely to live so close to natural water at play ever again.

4. I have a favorite song I like to listen to as I sit on the porch and cool down after a run: James Taylor and Yo-Yo Ma's rendition of "Here Comes The Sun". It was especially appropriate today. It's from YYM and friends' album "Songs of Joy and Peace" which I recommend with all my heart to all. It is a song I hope someone can find and play at my funeral. I wish I could be at my funeral with James and Yo-Yo and sing along; I love it that much.

So, speaking of sun and rain, we spent much of the rest of the morning working on vacation plans online. We need to warm up, and so decided on a trip to south Florida. Everglades, Keys, beach. It helped that the fare is $218 round-trip, and will add a LOT of air miles. I have called my brother to borrow a couple of his Jimmy Buffet novels and we are taking suggestions from friends who have been there. It will be the off-season there (we try to pick off-seasons, but not too off). We are taking suggestions from those who've been there, so feel free.

Here are two poems from the past couple of years, one sparked by a run near the creek, the other by loopy weather.

Crick

Rickreall, I married on your bank
A boy who grew up wading in your water,
Catching your crawdads,
Moving pipe on a farm that drank you.

I became a nurse so that boy
would not one day work both that farm
And a full-time job.
But we never made that move.

I don’t regret nursing or not farming.
Nowadays I sign little pieces of paper
So people can swallow little pills
That they hope will make them feel

The way they might naturally feel
If they had grown up beside you,
Raised by the people who raised him,
Or if they’d married that boy.

(2007)

Moment in Yellowstone

The fountain at our feet was nothing special
by Yellowstone standards—
a butterscotch hole bubbling
with hot, noxious water.
Not surprising if people once thought
this was where the vapors of hell
condensed and boiled to the surface.
But the pools just beyond it were liquid
opal and peridot, iridescing in the
sun pouring over our shoulders.
And the pines beyond them radiated back
that same sun’s green-gold rays.
But between us and all of that heat and light—
snow.
Not on the ground, no, but
falling, driving,
straight across the whole sunny scene.
Ridiculous, stunning.

(2009)

El Salvador Anniversary

2010-03-15T22:13:00.001-07:00

The ides of March means different things to different people. Maybe it makes some of you think of junior-year English class, back when they used to make us read Julius Caesar because it was just about the only Shakespeare play with no sex in it. Maybe it is just another day in your countdown to St. Patrick's Day (I know I am always thinking ahead to be sure I have something clean and green ready to wear on my mom's birthday) or to the first day of a longed-for spring. For me, it's always going to be the anniversary of the day I spent patrolling the courtyards of a large school in Izalco, Sonsonate, El Salvador, as an election observer.

That'd be one year ago today. I had been sitting in church a few months earlier when our pastor mentioned that a local organization was recruiting people to be official election observers to help keep honest the first Salvadoran national election that had a good chance of changing the nation's ruling party. With persistent trepidation I just kept saying I'd think about it until I had drifted into saying "Yes". So glad I did. The whole thing was like a crash course in grass-roots democracy in action.

I didn't catch anyone stealing a vote, stuffing a ballot box, stopping a legitimate voter from voting (although there a lot more things that can keep you from voting in El Salvador than in the U.S.--for one thing, you have to register six months in advance), or exchanging money or weapons for votes. I didn't see anyone that seemed to have been brought in from across the Nicaraguan border to impersonate a Salvadoran voter. I just saw an enthusiastic body politic doing its job, and then getting its thumbs dyed purple to prove it had done it.

And then, just before we left, we were thanked, over and over, for doing nothing but being there to bear witness. Here is the poem I wrote a few days later:

March 15, 2009, Izalco, El Salvador

We rose in the dark and raced through the streets
to see the set-up: rivals settling into their chairs
side by side, hip to hip, cheek by jowl
to do the country’s business,
showing their loyalties gently if at all
(unlike their neighbors who would come from church
to vote with their children beautiful in party colors).
At those tables, I couldn’t tell
who was ARENA, who was FMLN
until I saw who brought them food and drink.

The word “VIGILANTE” rode the backs of
watchers who stood all day, two at each table,
dressed in red, or
dressed in blue, white, and red.
Smiling at me all day,
the middle-aged foreigner
in the white vest with the black letters,
they answered my questions,
and asked me theirs.
That word will never again sound like
The evil that it sounds like here.
They were vigilant, steadfast
on their feet all the long day, until

The doors were closed,
the boxes opened,
the ballots unfolded,
the votes read aloud,
counted by the rivals
before the vigilantes
so no one could question
that this was a real election,
a real election.
At last, a real election.

Training my Dragon

2010-03-06T14:09:00.001-08:00

We were offered a $2000 bonus to switch from dictating our office visit notes onto a cassette tape which another human then transcribes, to dictating to voice-recognition software. The software is called Dragon Naturally Speaking 10. The advantage to the office is probably cost (and yes, I am worried about the ladies who've been doing our transcription, but also a little mad at them for deciding to eliminate all apostrophes a few months back; I dont like things that make ME look poorly schooled). The advantage to all of us is an instant record; no waiting days to weeks--usually weeks--for the chart note to come back, be checked (apostrophes added) and signed off by us, and then to be pasted into the paper chart. It's all part of our move to electronic medical records, hereafter referred to as EMR. I think EMR will eventually be good for all of us, but the switchover is a bit like a 50-week pregnancy followed by a difficult labor.

So, for those of you who don't use voice-recognition software, I will describe some of the adventures of "training" the Dragon to hear what I am really saying. For some reason, the version the office bought is not the medical version, and, this will not surprise you, I use a lot of medical terms in my dictation. Setting aside the fact that the world might be better off if we used normal English to describe the patients' symptoms and the findings in their exams (I once said I would never use the term "erythematous" when the term "red" was available, but I have reneged for purely cultural reasons), sometimes you just need to say "paralumbar" to denote those back muscles alongside the lower spine, which often hurt. Dragon insisted it heard "parallel bars". My job is to convince it that when I say "paralumbar" I mean "paralumbar". This was a hard sell. What you do is say "select paralumbar", then it highlights the words "parallel bars" and you say "spell that" and you spell the term out for it. Then you hope it recognizes it the next time. I think it didn't. Maybe you have to do it a couple of times for it to take you seriously. I picture it thinking, "No, honey, you didn't mean that; that makes no sense. Go with me, I know what I'm doing, and you clearly don't."

A sentence I dictated something like, "The patient couldn't get his Geodon" (Geodon is a common antipsychotic drug) comes out "The patient couldn't get his jihad on." Poor guy. Dragon just lost it on "otorhinolaryngology", which I admit I spoke just to mess with it. It did recognize "ENT", so I'm going with that in the future. It has drugs it knows and drugs it doesn't. I wonder if there are prescribers who've just decided to limit their personal formularies to drugs that Dragon recognizes to save themselves misery. There is actually some medical rationale for that approach if you subscribe to the theory that old drugs are often better and safer than newer "me-too" drugs.

After I got it installed and a little bit trained, I logged off the computer, and when I logged back on, I found it wouldn't even let me in as I'd installed it with an administrator's password. My Dragon refused to recognize me as someone it had to obey, or even deal with. So I got it put on again, by a real administrator, and now I have to start training it all over again. I just keep saying to myself, "$2000...$2000....$2000...."

Lent

2010-02-22T21:58:00.000-08:00

This year I am giving up facebook for Lent, and I pretty much announced it on facebook. Judging from the people who think that's a good idea, I gather that I am not the only person who finds it a timesucker, a mild addiction that does not give you the buzz it once did (or maybe never did). And it turns out it's pretty easy, so not much of a discipline. But it will save me some time--for something better, I hope. And it is a reasonable jumping-off point to ponder why we do this Lenten thing.

We watched an old episode of "The Vicar of Dibley" about Lent last week, and each of the characters was suggesting annoying habits that the others should give up. That concept was what I guess you could call Temporary Character Correction--doing something you should do all the time, but only for Lent. The irony of that approach is that on Easter, arguably the holiest day of the Christian year, you get to resume your evil or annoying ways.

I've tended to give up something that is harmless but has me a bit in its jaws, such as salty snacks, or shopping, or, well, facebook.

There is also the option of adding a positive discipline that you think would do you good, but which you can't commit to for the long haul. Last year I tried going to bed before 1130 p.m., something a lot of my friends would have to try very hard not to do. I simply never made it. It was the biggest failure I've ever had at Lenten disciplines. Second only to the other positive action I tried a few years ago, keeping a journal (12 out of 40 days). These may actually be better for the soul, but harder to do than a "fast". Who would have guessed?

My daughter is much more heroic than I; she has actually given up fiction, and chocolate. I have never even fasted from coffee.

It all comes down, I suppose, to, what is the point, and that is something I am still trying to figure out. I think Lent is a time to get a little more interior and God-ward, and anything that helps you do that, or reminds you how enslaved you are to everything that makes that hard (the truth is supposed to set you free) is at least potentially helpful. If anyone actually reads this and has any thoughts on the value of Lenten disciplines, or avoids them entirely for good or bad reasons, let me know. Just don't post it as a facebook status update, or it'll never do me any good.

No idea I'd been away so long

2010-02-21T19:30:00.000-08:00

Seems like about two weeks, but I just noticed it's been four. Well, you can count on me to say nothing when there's nothing to say, as I said once before.

Or maybe you can't. Random thoughts about my most recent week or so:

1. Today Merlin and I went to see, in one sitting, all the Oscar-nominated short animated films. (Being the first-degree relatives of an animator, we go to collections of short animated films when they pop up within a 60-mile radius.) That means this will be the first year in my admittedly so-so memory that there will be a category in the Oscars in which I have seen every bloomin' film.

2. Some movies are better when you see them completely alone in a theater. Especially those you have heard are bad but you really want to see them. I did this with "Leap Year" two weeks back. A sappy chick flick in which Amy Adams goes to Ireland to propose to her boyfriend (whom NOBODY will want her to marry) and has to hire a cranky, hunky, down-on-his-luck, hunky (I know) Irish innkeeper to get her from Dingle to Dublin. Lame zaniness ensues. Dumb, but I loved looking at Ireland and singing along with the soundtrack and lurching along toward the inevitable s/happy ending, not wondering if anyone I was with was enjoying it. Yes, singing along. When I said "alone", I meant ALONE. No one else in the theater. Nothing like it. I commend to you Monday mid-afternoon matinees.

3. I met the first patient I have ever wanted to steal from another provider on Friday. To protect her privacy I will refer to her as Susana instead of by her real Biblical name. She's 9 months old. I have a lot of cute tiny patients, but this kid was so intensely charming and entertaining that I couldn't look at her and keep my mind on what I was doing. She had a mild eye infection and it made her want to squint a little, and when she realized that it was kind of funny she kept coming up with new variations on it that kept her mom and her aunt and I in stitches. I was trying to explain something to her mother and I looked at her and she did it again and I just lost my concentration entirely; she had me at [crinkle]. I'll do the right thing and not steal her. But if her own NP ever quits, that kid is mine.

4. I have really been enjoying the jokes about the iPad's absurd name. The best so far is Andy Borowitz's at www.borowitzreport.com/2010/01/29/apple-launches-text-sharing-device-the-cotex/ I assume only women read this (my) blog, so I figure it shouldn't cause much offense to direct you there. I mean, these guys had to expect....Hmm, they are boys. Maybe this is what they wanted?

Would you have done this? Would you now?

2010-01-25T21:11:00.000-08:00

Last evening I decided to walk over to Starbuck's in the rain and spend a little gift card. My usual walking partner was under the weather, but I needed the walk and figured an umbrella and my recently downloaded Hope for Haiti music would have to do for company. It was nearly dark when I left and good and dark (and still raining) when I started for home. Crossing the North Dallas intersection with the light, I was three-quarters of the way to the opposite sidewalk when I saw a black pickup who clearly didn't see me barreling into his turn, into my path, so I stopped. He saw me at the last minute, hit the brakes, and skidded maybe an inch or two on the wet pavement. I looked up, breathed a word of thanks that neither of us would suffer what we might have, and kept walking.

About a block later, a black pickup pulled up into a parking lot I was walking by, and I thought, Is that the guy? Is he going to chew me out for wearing black in the dark on a rainy night (as I had already silently chastised myself for doing)? Should I be scared? Out bounded a young man about 18, with a pencil-thin mustache and a white hoodie, saying as he walked toward me, "I am SO sorry!" I said, "It's okay; I've done that myself before. Don't worry about it, just be careful the next time. And thank you so much for stopping to apologize. That is so kind." He went on to explain that all he saw was his own green light and just wasn't looking at me. I said I understood, things happen, be careful, and he wished me a good night.

I realized that he had actually turned his car around in the opposite direction from where he was headed just to say he was sorry to a lady he hadn't actually harmed. I was so warmed by that, it didn't even seem like a bad thing had happened at all. He will not know how much his action meant to me; I've been thinking about it all day.

The question on my mind is, would I have done that? I don't know if it would even have occurred to me to do that. I hope, if I should ever give someone a close call again, I'll have the concern, the class, and the guts, to do exactly what he did.

And I don't believe I'll go out at night dressed like a ring-wraith anymore.

Please read my niece's brilliant blog post

2010-01-23T13:02:00.000-08:00

The blogger heatheradair, who wittily writes mostly about pop culture, is a relative. I was blown away by her analysis of the recent Supreme Court ruling that blessed corporate buying of the political system as "free speech". Check it out at www.champagnerising.blogspot.com .

I'm scared. I think it is corporate fearmongering that has all but scuttled good healthcare reform legislation, and maybe any health care reform. Think what you like about the current mishmash of proposals that are about to be ground to bits in Washington once more, but something has to change--the U.S. has a miserable record (take just our infant mortality rate) among the developed nations vis-a-vis the health of her citizens. And a lot of why we won't get good reform is that corporations don't want us to. (My very humble opinion, of course, and I'm open to alternative views. I just want things better!)

Anyway, I think heatheradair gives us something to think about, and she's fun to read. Check it!

Run

2010-01-16T14:21:00.000-08:00

Today on my run I saw two men in khaki and camouflage colored pants and T-shirts taking cell phone pictures of their two dogs sitting calmly over 4 or five dead ducks. Or maybe they were dead geese.

Last week on my run I saw a bunch of Union Army soldiers drilling in the high school parking lot.

Once while running Molly and I encountered a couple dozen army reservists running in the opposite direction. Do you think they moved aside for two ladies in their path? No, we moved aside (into the roadway, if I recall correctly) for them.

I don't really like running, but it makes me feel less old. It would make me feel even less old if I could run in cool running clothes. But that never works out. Either the cool running clothes are uncomfortable, or washing makes them shrink into an uncool shape, or they are too revealing or age-inappropriate to buy. It may be that God just wants me very, very humble.

Here is my poem about running.

Run

I’m not a runner.
I just run.
It makes me feel like
someone who runs.
It makes me sound like
someone on the preferable side
of the Hill.

I don’t like the sweat
or the windedness
that gets others high. But
I do like the moments
when the music captures the stride,
stretches it out,
and holds it for awhile. And

I do like the sweet, smooth, and sharp things
that stop me:
The blood-red tree,
the shimmering thread of barking geese,
the breath of late-blooming mimosa
I have to search the fence-tops to find.

Kim Brandt, October 18, 2008

On Call Weekend

2010-01-09T18:29:00.001-08:00

I never expect nor demand myself to get anything done when on call. Maybe laundry. Oops, excuse me while I put in that load of light stuff.

Done.

I know people who live life on call like any other day. Go to that concert, entertain guests, do the grocery shopping. Not me, not usually. On a day like this, when only a handful of people call me for simple stuff ("My child's doctor accidently put 1/10/10 on the amoxicillin Rx and the pharmacy won't fill it") it seems silly to set the bar so low. On one of those days when I can barely get through a shower or a meal without someone running out of her pain medication, I remember why I feel less than horrible for vegging at the computer, where no one will be offended at my phone conversations about someone's most recent BM. I sometimes do go out to eat, and I will go for a walk with my friend Susan, who understands, and kindly comments on how beautiful my Spanish sounds when it's called into service.

Today, here is what I did with my on-call time. 1.)Woke up late to the tune of my pager, tired because I'd had an irritating middle-of-the-night call in which the patient repeated herself 4 or 5 times about each symptom and I (gently, sort of) snapped at her for it. I can never fall back to sleep when I snap at a patient, even if they probably deserved it. I actually lie there wondering if I should call back and apologize. 2.)Went for a wimpy, middle-aged 3-mile jog which I like to refer to as a run. 3.)While still in my running clothes and sweat, was reminded by my husband at 1130 of a 12-noon reunion of people I used to work with, necessitating a hyper-speed shower/blowdryer/facepainting session, only to find very few people I knew there. 4.) Surreptitious stop at the library to check out the new books rack when I really have two or three other books I actually paid money for that I am already reading. 5.) Built a fire and made coffee. 6.) Walked over to H20 with Merlin to glean from the last of the week-old bread and pastries. 7.) Went to the NPR site to listen to a free preview of an album by Portland singer/songwriter Laura Viers. She's good! (Oh, and between 5 and 6 above visited my friend Aaron's short-story blog and left a comment.)

That's all I have to show for my day. I don't feel too guilty though, because I'm at work. Maybe I'll get ambitious tomorrow and take down the Christmas tree. Or maybe spend some time browsing the works of Elmore Leonard, Garrison Keillor, Joyce Carol Oates, Mark Strand's favorite poets, Nick Hornby, or the coffee table book of 500 Iconic Buildings, all of which I checked out at the DPL today.

Oops! Gotta go. Two pages since the end of the last paragraph.

Walk Away Renee

2009-12-29T23:16:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite songs. A friend at work, who is also sort of obsessed with the song, told me today that if you get it stuck in your head, you could get it out by singing [I actually cannot remember the name of the song but it was sung by Peter, Paul and Mary, and also by Rod Stewart]. I am not trying to remember the name of the song he suggested, because, really, why would anyone want to get "Walk Away Renee" out of one's head?

Insomniac Lite Utopia

2009-12-27T16:20:00.000-08:00

I am an insomniac, lite. I sleep at least 5 hours most nights, more than 6 many nights, and usually am not awake when the alarm goes off the first time. I get up one, two, or sometimes more times per night, and frequently don't fall back to sleep for a while.

I know this is "lite" because I deal with insomniacs all the time who tell me that don't fall asleep for two hours, or they sleep two hours a night or even, "not at all". I don't believe anyone who tells me he, or usually she, sleeps not at all, but I think some do believe it themselves, and believing you don't sleep at all would have to be almost as bad as really not sleeping at all.

For us lite-weights in the insomnia department, the seeming uselessness of time spent trying to do something you can't do by trying is the worst of it, that and the wondering if you'll make some awful mistake the next day because of the shortage of REM or Stage Four or whatever it is you're missing. Unlike saints and artists, I cannot seem to use the opportunity to let my mind travel the mystic spaces, pray, or create with my mentally free bed time. So I've wondered why I don't follow the advice I give to my patients about getting up if they're not asleep in 30 to 60 minutes and doing something with that time.

I think it is this: Getting up is cold and uncomfortable and I think that maybe waiting another five minutes will put me where I want to be, that is, unconscious.

So I have a little project in mind. It goes like this. Instead of just a bed in the next room, I put an armchair and a floor lamp. I put a blanket or a fat robe next to it, and a stack of books of poems or essays or ancient saints' writings so I can't get caught up in any plot. And a basket of yarn and a crochet hook or two. And a legal pad with two or three colors of pens, so that anything I want to remember or think about later, I write down. The things it shouldn't have would be food, or medical literature, or a computer (in any form). I haven't decided about my faux-pod or music; might need to experiment with that. My hope is that, if I do this, I won't feel the time I spend awake is such a waste of time. Maybe I'll even wake up disappointed occasionally that I got such a good night's rest that I didn't get any reading or crocheting or writing done.

Nah, probably not.

Writer's Block and the Pedestrian

2009-12-26T21:19:00.000-08:00

This evening on the way home from our Christmas busyness, I heard a songwriter say that writer's block is a bourgeois luxury. He said if you have nothing to write about it's because you aren't paying attention. Every object in the world is singular and important and a worthy source of inspiration, he said. I'm pretty sure I'm mangling what he so eloquently said, but I took it as a reasonable challenge. The next object I looked at was one of those wordless yellow diamond signs, the one with a generic human being walking, that lets you know that pedestrians might be about. That guy is leaning into it, walking with purpose, maybe about to break into a run. And I realize I've been thinking about walking a lot in the past 24 hours.

This is mostly because of the Christmas Day ER trip we made last night, when my mom fell down on my sister's front walk after merely going out to the sidewalk to look the lit-up Christmas house. Walking outdoors is for my mom, beginning her 9th decade, a challenge, a risk, and although I obviously wouldn't want her to give it up, potentially life-threatening. I've been thinking about why it has become so, how to make it less so, what are the elements in walking that seem automatic but that have to be taken down and analyzed and fixed when they get broken. I want to figure out how to see her walk again with some of the boldness and dynamism that guy on the Pedestrian Xing sign displays.

Then there was the comment my son made when I (sounding pompous, surely) described a certain novelist's writing as "what critics might call 'pedestrian'". He wondered if that was fair to pedestrians. He's right. Pedestrians are good guys, responsible planet-savers, in touch with the air around them. Walking is good, at all times, except when the situation calls for running, or stopping still to listen or look. It is the opposite of what tired writing is. It is a huge piece of what makes humans human. I'm not going to use that term for lousy writing anymore.

I say it again: Walking is good. It is immense among our blessings, not to be taken for granted, an aid to thought, prayer, and friendship. And probably to writing.

Poetry Night

2009-12-19T23:07:00.000-08:00

My church dinner group (used to be called Bible study group, but when the person who actually liked to lead Bible studies moved away, so did studying the Bible, so we try to be honest about it and call ourselves "dinner group") meets for potluck supper one or two Saturday nights a month. I think some of our most memorable get-togethers have had a theme, so I suggested last time that we each bring a poem. My recollection is that they treated the suggestion less than seriously, so I was surprised when two members of the group, the newest two, brought poems. Dave brought a sort of rap he had written about a wilderness camping trip, really impressive for a 40-something white dad. (Really.) And Marj brought a politically corrected version of "A Visit from St. Nicholas" that was funny and scanned beautifully. It drives me crazy when a rhythm-and-rhyme poem is careless about the meter, unless of course it is Ogden Nash, who butchered meter and would make one line ten syllables long and the next forty-five syllables long and got away with it by virtue of wit.

Realizing they had taken me seriously, I ran to the car and pulled out my William Stafford collection and read "The Way It Is", and "Easter". And some other anti-war poem whose title I forget. I get excited about this stuff, but I don't expect anyone else to. And except when I read something in church and people ask me how they can get a copy of it, I can't tell if anyone else gets excited about this particular way of playing with words (Bill Moyers' phrase, I think, not mine). I love reading a few lines or a long trail of lines that make me go, "Mm," and read it again. And I love sharing it. But I'm not sure which of you are going, "Wow, yeah," and which of you are just thinking "Well, yes, isn't that nice, dear?"

I'm giving up my subscription to Rolling Stone this year, and I'd love to replace it with something more edifyng. If I knew someone who would like it, I'd be sorely tempted to take Poetry magazine up on its two-subscriptions-for-the-price-of-one offer.

Oh, Christmas Tree...

2009-12-12T17:15:00.000-08:00

After actually considering not getting a tree this year, we went up in the near freezing drizzle today to the usual place in the hills near town, slogged through the red mud, cut down a Grand fir, paid the poor guy whose only customers we were at that hour $20, and took it home and dragged the messy beast into the house. We planted it in our heavy-duty tree stand made from the top of an old milk can welded onto a base that is forever threatening to leak. It went easier than usual from my perspective, although I am not the one wielding the hacksaw, nor twisting the socket wrench while lying on the hard tile under the tree. I picked a nine-footer because I once again forgot that we were putting it in the dining room which has an eight-foot ceiling instead of the living room which has a nine-foot-plus ceiling. This tree is big, as have been all our trees for the 23 Christmases we have lived in this little bungalow. One year we bought an eight-foot tree for the nine-foot-plus room and one of our children, who will remain unnamed, cried. It just wasn't enough tree.

Not having a tree didn't seem right, despite the possibility that the kids would not be home while it's up this year (we are planning to spend Christmas in Seattle, and didn't want them to drive in the opposite direction for just Christmas Eve), and despite the fact that we seldom have company in at Christmas (a fact of which I am considerably ashamed, but a fact still). I realized that something I loved is gone for me if we go completely green and spiritual at Christmas, giving only to charities in the names of those we love, and pondering only the true meaning of Christmas, narrowly construed, to the exclusion of all the things that I looked forward to as a child, and as the mother of small children.

Make no mistake: I don't like the rush, and I do love the mystery of God's descent to us, best expressed for me in the song "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence." But I also do like the tree decorated with all those old ornaments and a few new ones I pick up each year at One Fair World and its ilk. And I do like giving and receiving presents, especially when they show each other that we've been listening and hearing something someone else might have missed. And I really like finding something in a store for someone I wasn't necessarily planning on giving a gift to at all, and getting it for them. And the cherry walnut bars and the M&M cookies. And flashy, flashing sweaters--on others--and the absurd 17-billion watt yard lights in that one house down on Fir Villa Road. If I get none of that, I feel sad. Too much, and I feel frantic.

Here's to a perfect mix for all of you. Oh, and here's that song:

Let all mortal flesh keep silence
And with fear and trembling stand.
Ponder nothing earthly-minded,
For with blessing in his hand
Christ our God to earth descendeth
Our full homage to demand.

King of kings, yet born of Mary,
As of old on earth he stood,
Lord of lords in human vesture
In the body and the blood,
He will give to all the faithful
His own self for heavenly food.

Rank on rank, the host of heaven
Spreads its vanguard on the way
As the Light of lights descendeth
From the realms of endless day
That the powers of hell may vanish
As the darkness clears away.

At his feet the six-winged seraph,
Cherubim with sleepless eye,
Veil their faces to the Presence
As with ceaseless voice they cry,
Alleluia, Alleleluia,
Alleluia, Lord most high.

If you only read one book this Advent...

2009-12-07T16:26:00.000-08:00

I am reading a book that I will not wait until I finish to recommend to you. I read about it in the Oregonian a few weeks back, where the reviewer sort of guaranteed you would not finish it without wanting to do something about it. After reading a hundred pages, I would be worried about anyone who does not want to do something about it.

Half the Sky is by husband and wife journalists Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn, and is about the varied plights of millions and millions of the world's women, and the horrors they face simply because they are women, and the greater horror that much of what they suffer is not even considered worthy of the notice of their communities and the wider world...because they are women. I suppose I should not tell you this, because it will probably put you off from reading it, and I really don't want anyone not to read it.

Extremely well-written, and never boring, it has lots of heroic stories about women overcoming victimhood as trafficked sexual slaves and rape survivors (rape is a systematic form of terrorism/war weapon in many places, and a way of acquiring a wife you can't afford in other places, and a way of punishing a man or a boy in a girl's family for something the man is thought to have done in other places). But it also deals with other issues, and is just now getting into the problem of maternal mortality.

Their main thesis seems to be, of course, that the world needs to act as a matter of morality, but also that the world's economic and terrorism problems will not be solved without elevating the situations specifically of women and girls in the world. But they also have loads of information on what works to do this. Please get hold of this book and let me know what you decide to do with it. I'll let you know what I decide, too.

One interesting aside in the book is the fact that research shows that people will give more readily and generously to something that they are told will help just one child than to something they are told will help eight, or millions. Generosity is personal, apparently. Generous friends, all--check out this book.

Things I love right now

2009-11-28T20:17:00.000-08:00

William Stafford, especially his title poem from "The Way It Is".
Denison Farms Harvest Boxes.
The colors of my children's hair.
A beautiful pair of eyebrows on anyone.
The woodstove.
The Swell Season's new album, and the poem, "Strict Joy", that its title comes from.
Very dark fair trade chocolate (as close as you can come to eating chocolate with a clear conscience).
The medical assistants at my office, every one of them.
NPR.
The smell of my husband's face at bedtime.
One Fair World (this is its third name, after Self-Help Crafts and Ten Thousand Villages, so that I am tempted to call it Ten Thousand and One Fair Worlds of Craft or some similar permutation).
"Play With Your Food" calendars.
Orange rising moons.
Sourdough bread, the sourer the better.
Pozole.
The winter sun.
"And the Glory of the Lord" from "Messiah". Because altos lead, and because it is the best.
Singing with the Lindas.
Singing with Mennonites in general.

When you've got nothing to say...

2009-11-27T22:02:00.000-08:00

I know what happens to bloggers who don't blog for a while; they lose their two or three regular readers. (Actually, if it's me who's your regular reader, it's likely to take me two or three months to believe you're not coming back. Hope dies hard.) But I'm kind of a believer in not speaking if you've got nothing to say.

This is something I hope I remember if Channel 12 news puts a microphone in my face some day and asks me for my reaction to a crime in my neighborhood. I have noticed that in the "If it bleeds, it leads" world of late-evening news, locals and bystanders are often asked to comment; they usually say something like "I've always thought this was a safe neighborhood....He was quiet, kept to himself, I had no idea he was capable of this....My kids play with the kids who live three doors down from there....I walk by here all the time, you just never know." It's hard to blame the man on the street for having nothing to contribute to the story but talking anyway; after all if the news guys are asking you to say something, you must have something to say, right? But we have to stop encouraging Channel 12 and its siblings. I hope if I am ever asked to comment when my next door neighbor sets fire to the warehouse down the street, I say, "I pray for mercy on everyone involved," or, "I wish I'd known him better, maybe I could have kept this from happening,", or maybe better still, "How could you possibly think my reaction is news?"

Why I Should Quit My Job and Write for Women's Magazines

2009-11-14T10:32:00.000-08:00

I don't chew out my patients much, but this is one thing they get yelled at for: Taking "innocent" overdoses of (especially over-the-counter) meds. By innocent I mean, they don't intend to kill themselves, or even necessarily to get off into some blissful state. They just decide if two Tylenol isn't helping much, then maybe four will do the trick, and maybe every two or three hours instead of every four to six. I march those people right over to the lab--after a brief raking over the coals--to draw their blood STAT and make sure they are not about to die. They act like "What? It's just Tylenol!" which just happens to be the number two (or is it number one now?) cause of acute liver failure/need for liver transplant in the U.S. these days.

Want to knock out your kidneys or bleed to death? Help yourself to extra Advil (ibuprofen) for a few days. Want to see what Reye Syndrome looks like? Give your child Excedrin Migraine, which contains aspirin, acetaminophen, and caffeine, in flu season. By the way, we're likely to be in a perpetual flu season for the foreseeable future, so please, just don't do it! Read labels, and if you want to depart from their advice in any way, consider taking less, not more. I mean, it, people. You want to see me mad?

Rhythm of the Rain: Three thoughts

2009-11-08T22:16:00.000-08:00

One: Rain and shine have chased each other back and forth across the sky the past few days. I'll leave for work in the rain and arrive in bright sun, shortly thereafter to look out into a downpour, then go see a couple of patients and come back to find one of one of my all-time favorite sights out my office window: A blue-black sky before me and all the trees between me and the blue-black sky lit up like fire.

Two: I've always loved the sound of pounding rain at night while I'm wrapped in my sheets and comforter, but that sound is bittersweet in recent years as I can no longer hear it without thinking of people who don't have the luxury of their own bed on a rainy night.

Three: And then there is the way the rain conspires to mess with my fragile exercise habits. I cannot bring myself to go out for a run in more than a light shower, but if I leave the house on dry pavement and it starts to rain within two to four blocks, I complete the whole 3+ miles without looking back. My friend Susan is a very talented amateur meteorologist who can actually read a satellite picture on the web and determine whether we will be rained on withing the next hour, so we don't have to miss our Sunday walk, just alter it a bit.

Warning: A very shallow, peevish post

2009-11-01T21:48:00.000-08:00

A number of years ago I began to notice bare legs where I didn't expect to find them. The first time it struck me I was in a mall and saw a group of girls dressed for what I think must have been a winter formal. One was in a blue sparkly thing, very cute, but I commented to my daughter that she was wearing no pantyhose and her legs were starkly white. It looked like an odd oversight, but I was informed that it was in fact not. Over the years I've realized that neutral legwear has disappeared from the fashionable: Everyone is either bare or in boots or in opaque tights or colored (usually black) or patterned stockings. It doesn't bother me that all these options are available, but it does bother me that you can't wear the neutrals anymore. I thought maybe I was just imagining this, and then yesterday on the "What Not to Wear" website it was confirmed by the authorities: If you want to wear pantyhose, they can't look like your real legs only better.

That was the virtue of good old L'Eggs. Your own legs only better and a little warmer. It feels like I've been robbed, and/or the victim of a conspiracy against women my age who just don't look or feel good in bare legs in winter. And most of whom can't afford a huge wardrobe of boots and tights (the average life of a pair of which is about 3 wearings). Or the "shapewear" that you'd have to buy to replace the little bit of smoothing the $4 pantyhose did just fine.

I know, the obvious solution is for this natural-born dress wearer to switch to all-pants-all-winter or just to get over wanting to keep up with it at all. But it seems so unfair, and I want to know who is responsible and how I can get the rules changed.

H-one-N-one-big-pain-in-the-derriere

2009-10-24T14:38:00.000-07:00

I got my arm injected with the new stuff this week. We received about 200 doses and between our staff and our pregnant patients we just about used it up. No, I didn't get the shot in the butt, and it didn't hurt any more than the seasonal flu shot (which it shouldn't, since it's made in the same way and given in the same way). But I'm on call this weekend, and the phone never stops ringing for long. Taking calls from worried parents with sick kids doesn't bother me much; that is why I get paid the medium bucks. What troubles me is that this bug seems to be changing the rules that we've worked so hard to adhere to, and that our patients have come to accept, that is, the rules about confirming a diagnosis to some extent before throwing medicine at it, and being conservative about using that medicine, to avoid teaching the bugs how to resist it.

The CDC wants us to strongly consider prescribing Tamiflu or Relenza to patients "at increased risk of complications" without examining them if they have fever and respiratory symptoms. That risk group includes all pregnant women, children before age 2, and people with common chronic health problems (think asthma, diabetes, heart disease) that make suffering through the flu more dangerous. I am prescribing according to those recommendations, because I think it'll save lives this year, but wonder what this practice will do to the long-term usefulness of the very few anti-virals that work for flu. Already Tamiflu no longer works on seasonal ("regular") flu. But we weigh this against the slow output of vaccine, and the value of keeping sick people out of waiting rooms and emergency departments, which are full of people who shouldn't be exposed to coughing/sneezing flu victims, and the danger of this illness to some young people, and this is where we are, treating people with a phone call.

For the record, I've been exposed to lots of this crud, and I'm fine, as are all my fellow providers. I think this is one wonderful case where being old is a good thing. (If any of you reading this can think of other such cases, I'm always looking for things to be thankful for.) Also, if you are one of the many who thinks animation and viruses are a natural match, check out http://www.npr.org/health and scroll down to "Flu Attack! How a Virus Invades Your Body". It is creepy but cool.

Birthday

2009-10-21T23:11:00.001-07:00

It is odd what can make a birthday good. I expected little of this one. No one at work knew, as far as I knew. I wasn't sure my husband would remember, and I was tempted to test him on that by not saying anything. When that thought occurred to me, I realized how wicked that would be and reminded him just so I couldn't play that little game. This morning, facing the usual grueling day at work, I told myself that I would not dare the world to neglect me and then be mad at the world for it, but would just try to practice my gratitude.

That is not why it was a good day. There were just lots of little gifts in it. Merlin made me a hot breakfast. A tough little patient who has always cried whenever I came near her decided I was not that bad today. A patient who really needed to go the the crisis center didn't fight me on the point. I took a lunch break (yeah, really!) with a friend. A patient on my (very behind) schedule who looked like she was having a stroke wasn't, and her own nurse practitioner recognized what was going on stepped in and calmed the situation. I got to sing with friends at the end of the day. Granted that the singing was preparation for a memorial service for someone I wish weren't gone, it was still a privilege to be asked to do it, and a joy to do it. And then, another hot meal at 10 p.m., wrapped up with apple cake fresh out of the oven with lemon sauce.

And eight or ten friends from all different corners of my life, if a life can have eight or ten corners, wished me a happy birthday on facebook. I know that's paltry by some standards, but I feel pretty rich right now.

Heaven

2009-10-17T22:52:00.000-07:00

I've had two friends go there in the last month, and it's made me think about that kingdom differently. It is easy to think of heaven as where old people we love sit around having tea and cookies and wait for us to show up. Today I remembered that my ninety-something in-laws and aunts who crossed over in the past few years aren't old anymore. Hard to know what they are like now, but not old, I bet.

It all occurred to me as some fallen walnuts crunched under my feet as I walked down the street in the rain. The crunch of nuts on the sidewalk is one of the fine pleasures of living in this world in this season. I wondered if our young friend Grant who just died suddenly four days ago would miss that feeling or look back on it as nothing compared to the pleasures of the kingdom we were made for. Probably neither, exactly. I suspect that the pleasures of life on earth will be seen in a new and brighter light and will actually be greater in the remembering of them than they were in the experience of them. Maybe. Of course, I think that in heaven if we want to crunch nuts under our feet, we'll get to. Please, this is not being flip. It just becomes more necessary to think about the next phase as more people I know move into it.

Fly-by-night blogger tries again

2009-10-14T22:18:00.000-07:00

I cannot multi-task. A friend--was it you, Susan?--told me about someone who cannot read without something on TV to watch at the same time. That's nuts. I am trying to listen to Pandora (right now, the Decemberists are on the Neko Case station; I don't think I'll ever learn to like Mr. Meloy's voice, but I like his songs) and write this at the same time, and can barely do it. Music is not really background to anything that takes up cortex for me. And music is for singing along with, or at least for humming a harmony to. Or escaping inside of.

I can sometimes sign prescription refills while on hold (that's right, being on hold is a task for me, maybe because there is music to sing along with). I can listen to NPR and do dishes. I can sort of drive and drink coffee, although that's iffy. But talk on the phone and check facebook? Give advice and take notes? Sing and blog? Not so much.

Of some comfort is research that shows no one is really good at multi-tasking. Most people just don't know it.

NPR 50 Great Voices

2009-10-08T22:56:00.000-07:00

Not that anyone is reading this, but if you do, there is one week left to nominate the best voice you've ever heard, or several of them, on the NPR website. I only nominated two (Alison Kraus and Ray Charles), but it made me think of other voices that have taken me away over the years.

As a little kid, I loved Doris Day. (That's right, and I'm not embarrassed about it.) I loved, and still love, Ella Fitzgerald. My mom let me have her vinyl Ella albums, Ella sings Gershwin, and Ella Sings the Rodgers (Rogers?) and Hart Songbook. My mom's record collection, by the way, is why I know a lot of songs you don't--we were not wealthy, but that is where the fun money went. She was very eclectic.

I liked what everyone else liked in high school. In college, James Taylor, Elton John, and Neil Young. I could sing just like Neil, probably still can, as his range is my range and he's very imitable. Now, Natalie Mains and Alison are the voices I'm guilty of envying. And anyone who sings in Portuguese.

2009-10-07T22:27:00.000-07:00

A man cried on the phone with me today. I called to give him a little good news, and he said he just couldn't care, because his child had cut off his contact with his grandchildren. He apologized for breaking down, but what else could he do? What worse thing can you do to anyone than to take away, by any means, all contact with someone they love? There isn't anything sadder.

A woman called me last month just to say she was stumped over what to do with her husband who is drinking himself into an early grave while her son is deployed in that other hemisphere. She had to know I wouldn't know what to do, but just wanted to tell me. Two of the three great loves of her life are in peril, and each far from her in one way or the other.

My brother-in-law's wife took their children to another country and has kept them there for 10 years. He's seen them twice in that time. He hasn't grown to love them less. He hasn't grown used to it. I don't know how he stands up under it. God has made him amazingly tough, but he's always in crisis.

Guess I think we should take every chance to love the ones we love, and be the best friends we can be to those bereft because of war, craziness, meanness, booze, or the plain old mortality that parts us all in time.

2009-10-06T22:24:00.000-07:00

I renew my license along with the other credentials attached to it every two years in October. You have to present a list of all the education you have acquired in the intervening two years (which must total at least 100 hours, which seems eminently reasonable to me), but it seems that every two years they add something that you didn't have to do the last time. So that every two years, no matter how many hours I have racked up, I am in suspense as to whether they will find me wanting, and come down on me with their wrath, and strip me of my only way to make a living. No matter that I've done this five times now, and they have always just said, "Yes, fine, here's your license," I still expect to have the board of nursing show up on my doorstep and say, "Ma'am, we need to speak to you about this alleged course in bio-identical hormones, and by the way, are you sure you gave an honest answer to this question about any mental health conditions that might affect your ability to practice?" It came in the mail Saturday, along with that same familiar sense of relief.

Gratitude

2009-10-05T20:00:00.001-07:00

No one at work is out to get me. My friends are not catty. My husband makes supper for us most worknights. He is healthy. So are my kids. They support themselves, and when they come for the weekend it is a good weekend. Both sides of our family love us. I can hear. My bifocals work. The only pain I have I can avoid by not lying on my right shoulder. I have a very cute car but not a very cool car, so I never worry about it getting stolen. I get out of work after dark 6+ months of the year to a deserted parking lot, and haven't been mugged once. I don't like running (after the first 4 blocks), but I can do it, and I can make myself do it even though I don't like it. I have a fortunate metabolism. I go to a very kind-hearted Mennonite church where they help me keep believing, as do lots of other people. No one I love seems to be addicted to anything. God looks after my patients. I still have a mom. I am just so grateful, and not nearly grateful enough.

Those Blasted Curly Lightbulbs

2009-10-04T23:04:00.000-07:00

I actually hope someone will set me straight on this. I hate energy-saving lightbulbs, and I was thrilled to find that the one over our staircase had finally burned out. My theory about them has been that they don't ever burn out. They are like that imaginary trip across the street where each step is half as long as the last, and so you never arrive. The bulbs simply burn more and more dimly with each passing year and never really get to the place where you can say it's burnt out and throw it away. Which is good for the environment, because, as far as I know, those bulbs are very toxic and have to be disposed of like nuclear waste, in a sealed bag, at a secret site in a city you don't live in. Am I wrong? I read about this as recently as a couple of years ago when we were getting Consumer Reports. Nevertheless, the upside of having one burn out is that you get to replace it with one with decent candlepower.

And then my personal handyman went to replace it, and it turns out to have been the fixture, not the bulb. So my theory is intact, and the thrill is gone.

Is This Thing Working?

2009-10-03T13:23:00.000-07:00

Tonight we are going to a potluck. We are lazy potluckers, or, in my case, maybe too egotistical to want to trot out my best stuff only to be obscured or eclipsed by other people's best stuff, or maybe even by their less-than-best. So we always take brownies, with something extra thrown in, like chocolate chips, mint chips, raspberries or cherries from the yard, etc. Today I am thinking of going down to the hardware store and buying a variety of local apples from the vendors in the parking lot and just taking the beautiful apples (with the brownies, but not in the brownies). Lazy, see?

I am happy about Rio de Janeiro being chosen for the 2016 Olympics, my being a fan of the Obamas notwithstanding. I really do think the president wasted his international capital on this one. Not sure if Rio is really deserving; it is pretty weird and crime-ridden, although, as God really does love and look after fools, we suffered no victimization there on our brief sojourn last year. But it is Rio, and exotic, and loveable in its way; I really hope the poor of the city benefit and don't suffer in the rush to be Olympian. And I will watch as much of the games as I can (though I will be really, really old then), hoping to see something of the streets we wandered through on my one and only visit to Brazil. Obrigada, IOOC!