Pirate Dog PDX

Hotel California

Listen, Portland. It's not you. It's me.

I hate to say it, but our time together has probably ended. It's been a great run, really, but I have to get back to my life now. The Mothership (California) calls.

Whether you are from the Mothership, an Eagles fan or both, you know the deal: You can check out, move to Portland, DC, New York, Boston, Dayton, or Pittsburgh (as I have), but sooner or later, the Mothership will call your wayward ass back to California. To quote the Eagles, "You can never leave."

The Mothership has some pretty manipulative tricks to get a gal back here, too. Here are my favorites:

That would be my niece Sadie right there, in her "I heart my auntie" tank top, sans pants (can you tell we're related?), proudly displaying Rico's favorite toy, "Handicap-able Tigger," which he showed his love for by only pulling off one arm. Generally, he leaves nothing but a plush carcass surrounded by disemboweled piles of fluff. Handicap-able Tigger has been maimed, but meticulously preserved. For Rico, that's love. Yes.

There's my sister Annie and nephew Cooper, Sadie's mom and brother. When I'm old and gray and needing someone to mash my bananas and turn up Lawrence Welk because I can't find the clicker, let this kid not find the blog post in which I out him as an underwear head. Do you think you know cuter kids?

You don't. Here's more of their cuteness.

Add these tempting Mothership treats: My Marin, San Francisco, Berkeley, Monterey, and Santa Cruz pals, the handsome David, sailing skills just itching for a day on the bay (Monterey or San Francisco, thanks), actual opportunities for professional advancement, plus a renewed sense of state pride hewn from eight months of tirelessly defending California to the state of Oregon, and ... how can I not come home?

Plus, as I said, the Mothership plays dirty when it comes to calling her pirate dogs back home. How can I fight against this kind of cuteness?

Or this ... Look at her!!!

Rico is absolutely gonna rip Sadie's puppy's fluffy guts out.

Viva California!

Culture Shock

My favorite travel show host, Anthony "the alcoholic who will eat anything" Bourdain, just did a show on Viet Nam. It's a great episode. One of the best, really. He touches on the invasion, the culture today, and how communist Vietnamese tourism is on the rise.

However, there are two moments of concern. First, while eating at a Vietnamese roadside stand, Tony eats an animal that turns out to be (as translated into English by the woman cooking it) "squeezel."

Second, Bourdain visits a noodle house and we get the full monty of slurp noises. Agh. Then, we learn that slurping is not only NOT rude by Asian standards, it's considered a compliment to the chef. Double agh.

Slurping is my personal kryptonite. I hesitate to say that because there are those of you who will now slurp in front of me to see if it really pisses me off. Please don't. I hate to fight and it makes me want to rip the slurper into bloody ribbons. (Menopause? Maybe. Why risk it? Bloody ribbons are bad.)

Truly, if I was Superman and Lex Luther was just plain finished with my heroic ass, all he would need do is unleash a team of noodle house patrons (or even just one cereal commercial kid) to let loose a big old slurping session on my withering powers. It simply kills me. It so unhinges my psyche that although Asia figures prominently on my to-do list for travel (my dad lived in Beijing and Singapore and loved it), in that slurp-learning moment, I was willing to cross all Asian nations off altogether. So painful is my aversion to the slurp. Blech.

Which brings me to my own pressing case of culture shock.

Tomorrow I undertake a road trip of epic proportions. For eight weeks I'll be in the bay area. I'll be staying in Santa Cruz, Monterey, and San Francisco. My sister, friends, colleagues, and paying gig are all kept in the bay area, so there will be no boredom. No down time. Much rejoicing and merriment.

I'm from there. So where's the culture shock?

I moved from California seven months ago. Since the move, my life has been, gosh, monastic. I write. I walk my dog. I write some more.

Oh, and I go to Weight Watchers meetings. As a result, I've lost 31 pounds and produced as much prose as I'd have expected to do in a lifetime. I've gotten more jobs. I've started working out, cut the daily fret-fest over office politics (which are pea soup thick in a university, in case you didn't know), and stopped stress gorging on the piles of office muffins/bagels that surrounded me.

Since August 23, there are many days when I see only Tracey (who makes me coffee) and Rico (who is mostly only nice to me because I take him to see Tracey)-- and that's it. As of Monday, I will be soaking in it.

And, "it" includes a very different world than Portland. Besides  a community of people (most of whom I love) who actually know my name, there's a bit of a trick to street savvy in California. I wonder if I've forgotten how to wield that strangeness, without gettting it on me.

See. I'm one of the few people I know who was actually born in California. So, like black people who are allowed to say the "n" word with impunity, I feel I have special priviledge to say that the mothership (California) has some kooky characters. I know. EVERYBODY says that ("Land of the Fruits and Nuts, yadayada"), but like black people listening to white people say the "n" word, it's not the same.

BTW, the biggest California kooks are from other parts of the country. Y'all can come pick them up if you'd like. We keep them because the mothership is tolerant of entertaining weirdos. I'm just saying.

I'll let you know how it goes. Pink Umbrella Guy, here I come!

Plan B

On the off chance that HGTV doesn't see fit to set me up in my Hemingway house, I may have mentioned that a live-aboard boat is my (far more likely) plan b. Currently, the objects of my affection include a hottie Beneteau in Washington state (which I linked to, yesterday) and this 31' Hunter.

Oh hey, we don't have to rely on the broker's page, WE got to sail on it with OWSA today.

Our skipper is Sharon, the broker representing the 31' Hunter. Here we are listening intently. (You can't tell that I'm listening intently, because I'm taking the picture. I should be wearing a bib, I'm drooling so much over this boat.)

Susan and Linda are pulling in the fenders as we head out on a gorgeous, not raining day. May I just say, that on days like this, I never want to leave Portland.

That's me! More impressively, that's Mt. Hood off the port side. It's about 60 miles away, and covered with snow, so against the blue sky, I haven't been able to get a great photo. In person/mountain, though, it's beautiful. We are surrounded by snow-capped volcanos, and it's 60 degrees. Ah, Portland.

Okay. The great thing about sailing on my dream boats is that I'm learning what I don't love. This boat has a furling main. That means that the mainsail rolls up into the mast like a window shade. It makes for a purty boat line, and a  minimum amount of flaking (stacking) the sail onto the boom.

However, as this photo shows, it also means that the sail isn't attached to the boom so wind is pouring out the bottom between the sail and that metal stick across the bottom. Theorhetically, that means I'm losing power that could be pushing me to my next port of call ... bar ... shower (depending on the sail).

Also because it's a furling main, the sail can't have "battens." Those are sticks in the sail that keep the sail stiff (I said "stiff") when the wind blows against it and therefore allows the sail to be larger than the triangle line between the mast and the boom.

Because the whole Hunter sail rolls into a tube, you can't have sticks in the sails--which sucks because it means my sail is little. I hate sail envy. And, being slow.

Anyhoo, it was a great day. And I learned a lot more about sailing and the boat I may or may not love.

Another key bit of news, this bad boy would cost more than $100,000. That's not much for a house, I know. But, it's a big loan to take on when so many shiny things are tempting me this way and that.

Ah, to be anchored.

Pirate Dog Dreams

There are two kinds of people in the world. (Don'cha just love boiling down humanity to two choices? Me too.)

First, there are the "I know what I want to do until the day I die" people.  There is a sub-category of these folks that includes the people who end up doing the same thing for their whole lives because they have kids or, you know, a sense of commitment and focus. Generally, I date these people.

Then, there are the "Oh, hey, THAT's shiny over there" people. I am one of these people. Moreover, I tend to be friends with and/or related to these people.

I don't need to go into the litany of all that has been shiny for me, but today's agonizing choice includes these diametrically different career/life paths:

1. Ernest Hemingway, Sans Alcoholism/Tragic Death

I've been slogging down this very happy, surprisingly easy path for several years. Uncle Charlie is tolerant of my gypsy ways and really, explorations into uncharted territory, like online content, has yielded few unmanageable hazards. Oh sure, I'm new to the domain world. My biggest sin: Having only worked for dot orgs, the idea of having dot org in my site didn't phase me.

However, according to my writer pals, using dot org isn't necessarily the best idea unless I REALLY am saving the gay, black whales for Jesus. I comfort myself in that it's not the worse offense. The worst offenders don't consider what happens when their clever names are smooshed together in a single word url. Like these guys:

• www.speedofart.com (An agency representing artists. Stinky artists in banana hammocks.)
• www.whorepresents.com (This is a search site to help you find the agents in charge of celebrities. And, maybe a pair of thigh high boots for that special someone.)
• www.expertsexchange.com (This is meeeting site for computer programmers seeking advice from one another. Special computer programmers.)
• www.therapistfinder.com (Find a therapist. You probably need one right now.)

Ultimately, my Hemingway dream includes a great home where I can write and pull in a sustainable income beyond what I make on thank you notes and a philanthropic advice column. Sadly, writer money isn't exactly what you'd call fat, pimp cash--a.k.a. homeowner income.

That's where winning the HGTV Dream Home (pictured above, with Rico's own "Canine Cabana") comes in. If I win that, we'll arrive, poste haste, at Hemingway Central, since the home is actually in the Florida Keys. Close to my dad, his lovely wife, and potentially fabulous enough to lure my mommy down, it has lots of shiny pluses. Of course, there's the needing to win it.

Option B for my Hemingway home is a sailboat to live aboard. I've been checking out the boat porn, in between sailing lessons, trying to get there, too. Again, though, I gotta make with the moolah.

Then there's this shiny new lifepath option:

2. High Powered Save-the-Planet Executive, Sans Insanity

If you've been tuning into the Pirate Dog "live" show for the last 14 years, you know that we've already managed a series of nonprofit projects, with considerable mental anguish to show for it. Yet, like the mafia, charitable work pulls me back in. Without knowing how it all happened, I found myself on the board of OWSA. And now, the Girl Scouts of Oregon are promising a challenge that I could really enjoy. Or hate. I can't tell.

God. They'd have an actual corporate structure, rather than "entirely volunteer and at the erratic whim of 80-year-olds" structure. The mission is awesome. Plus, I love working with teams of women AND the potential to impact gobs of people. All that appeals to me. And cookies. Free Samoas for life could be really, really good ... or really bad for a chubby pirate.

In pirate dog dream world, wouldn't it be cool to make this one happen?

3. Professional Fill in the Blank

Then again, I could be a fireman/ princess/ ballerina. Or Elvis. I only thought of that last one because my other favorite "two kinds of people in the world" humanity slicer is the Elvis people vs. Beatles people (from Pulp Fiction).

I'm an Elvis person. Thank you very much.

Color+Light='MILF' Flattering? Horrifying? Both? Don't the Germans have a word for that?

With a wardrobe that would make a UPS guy say, "Enough with the neutrals," plus brown hair and blah earth-tone makeup, I was ripe for a fashion intervention. A brown-ectomy. My dad was kind enough to provide this photo, illustrating the problem. (Did you know I used to be short, in addition to being heavy?)

Frankly, the long Portland winter hasn't helped. I was plodding along, head down, until Groundhog Day. When Punxsutawney Phil doomed us to six more weeks of winter, I thought, uncharitably, "They should fricassee that fat squirrel." Winter must die, no matter what the groundhog thinks.

Thus, I spent most of the rest of the week pining for sunshine. Which the universe generously granted on Saturday ...

If memory serves, this is what is known as "blue" sky. The glare is from what we Californians call "sunshine."

FYI, that's my apartment building, right above the boat in the middle (with the pointy terra cotta roofline). It's a great neighborhood, when the sun is out.

The sunshine even perked Rico up.

(Or maybe it was the geese. "Hi geese!") Either way, Rico and I went for an epic three-hour walk to bask in the fine day we'd finally been granted. Hello, outdoors! It's us!

And, of course, the universe had plenty to say on our tour:

Right. We'll get to back to my "wear no evil" quest in a minute. Remember, the point of the weekend was to take me out of my UPS-inspired fashion rut and into clothing-of-color, blond highlights and a Bobbi Brown color-i-fied makeover. Ahhhh, three hours is a long walk in the sun. Bask, bask. Copywriters (and probably groundhogs) could see their shadows downtown on Saturday ...

The sun even made the downtown sea lions sparkle. As a boaty girl, I hate to say anything sparkly about those rotten bastards (even the bronze ones). Sigh. Dry sidewalks and sun render me charitable towards sea lions ... and, now that I think of it, groundhogs.

The time flew. I had to run Rico home so that I could get to my color makeover. And, here it is:

To get the blond highlights and makeup in one photo, I have to do my best Clockwork Orange pose. Even so, you still can't see that I have big, chunky Cruella-de-Ville streaks of bu-londy blond blond.

Here is my best "Muppet doing the Clockwork Orange pose."

Screw you. It worked. On my walk home from my makeover, a carload of 18-year-old dudes yelled out their window that I was a MILF. I have decided to be flattered, particularly since I haven't had 18 year olds shouting out of their cars since I was 18. So. Yes. Flattered. I still look like a soccer mom, but as I've said, I believe that's terminal. Besides, that's what the "M" in MILF is for.

David said that since I am unmarried, and have no children of my own, I'm actually a "SILF." "Spinster-ILF," which makes the soccer-mom-face especially unjust. Lucky for David, it's sunny and I'm granting amnesty to sea lions, groundhogs, and boys who call me "spinster." As long as I can maintain the "-ILF," regardless of the first initial, I'm doing okay. Beats delivering packages in brown socks and shorts.

Dali Mama

Today is my mom's birthday. I had been thinking that I'd like to post something about her so that you could know how great she is, too. Accolades make a great gift (hey, I gave her stuff too!).

It's just too big a job. If I were to write her profile, I'd tell you that she's a great writer and editor and an EMT who has pulled accident victims from cars in frozen rivers and held babies who died in her arms. Then, for a lark, she became a bartender a few years ago. She has fans for her work there, too. I could tell you all that, but I'd forget to mention that she also does research for the Judge Judy Show, and then, just to keep me honest, she'd turn around and learn the Texas two-step ... which I suspect she can already do. It's hard to keep up.

My mom is a world traveler who has always included us in her adventures. I could tell you that she took me to Europe, my sister to Japan, and we both accompanied her to Mexico, but I'd forget some of the details of her cruise ship job she took so she could see the whole world, and studied for a semester in England when she was in her 40s. Oh, and she was visiting friends in Croatia when they went to war, pish-poshing our requests that she come home, please.

I could tell you that she loves her family and is always, always there for me, but that wouldn't do justice to how much she loves her friends, her boyfriend, her pets, and people I don't even know ... but who rely on her for emotional support just as much as I do.

I could tell you that she is beautiful. Before I was born, my mom competed in beauty contests. To diminish her participation, she used to tell me that she won "Miss Congeniality," which she tried to explain was the consolation prize for the less pretty girls. Um. No. Pretty and nice, in one package, is just worth rewarding.

Today, she still stops traffic. And, in a world of divorces that end in ugly decades-long venomous battles (y'all know who you are), my mom has remained supportive of her ex-husband, my dad, never having said a negative word to me about him. Ever.

She is that positive. The Dali Mama.

My mom doesn't have time for that kind of ugliness. As ANOTHER Dolly says, my mommy gets to livin'.

Peddling a Peculiar Brand of Hotness

There's a saying that if you remember the '60s, you missed it. Not so if you were born in 1965 and got to live through the Summer of Love as a toddler. As children, we just saw a different 60s ... a Dr. Seussian '60s, which was probably not all that different than how the adults saw it, now that I think about it.

As a little kid, I went to parties with my super-hot, single-gal mom and witnessed the passing of "peace pipes," as I helpfully relayed to my grandmother when my mom and I came home. Mom was quick to add that she never "played Indian" (that I saw). (ahem) Yet, I remained unspoiled. That's what a good hippie mommy can do for a kid.

On the Ed Sullivan show, I remember seeing the Rolling Stones in their blue and white striped sailor suits, all freaky and skinny and rock-n-roll scary. I was laying on my gramma's rug watching the big console television through a haze of my grandparents' cigarette smoke (before second-hand smoke was invented). Neither gramma nor I had ever seen such a thing as the Rolling Stones. We agreed that we were disturbed by them, a gramma and her three-year-old fuddy duddy.

At the other side of the musical spectrum, grampa and gramma wouldn't miss Lawrence Welk on Saturday night at 7 p.m. A big bowl o' wholesome (enough to choke a Mormon), the Lawrence Welk Show provided "family values" entertainment, at its Arian-raciest. Welk fired creepy Bobby Burgess's dance parter Cissy King for her upstart attitude. Cissy was a ballroom dancer. What could she have done?

The Stones never played the Welk Show. The Osmonds did. So did Pat Boone. And, Anita Bryant. Creationist-pop for America's most chaste television viewers, that was Lawrence Welk. Over the show's 27-year history of original episodes, Welk's band played Tea-for-Two an unbelieveable 67 times.  Technically, that's Tea-for-134. Welk loved tea. It's the most wholesome breakfast beverage, you know.

That said, even Lawrence Welk did the '60s. At least for the five minutes it took to take this photo. Don't miss the second person from the left. He's giving the famous three-finger peace sign, unique to Welk hippies.

Lawrence Welk is on the far right--in drag. Hey, that might be my single favorite sentence since I started this blog.

Oh! Oh! That's Arthur Duncan next to him. He was the black guy on the show. Besides the Mexican girl who only sang in Spanish, Arthur was the only Welkie of color. Period. Arthur did sing, yes, but his special skill was ... tap dancing. Naturally.

Diversity, you might be thinking right now, is not a word coined by the Germans. True. But, for the record, though he retained a "Wunnerful" German accent his entire life, Lawrence Welk was born in North Dakota. (Another hotbed of diversity.) Consider that Welk didn't learn to speak English until he was 21, living in the smack-dab middle of the United States.

Still. 27 years on American television. Lawrence Welk was the second richest television entertainer of his time. Only Bob Hope had more dough. Someone besides my grandparents thought he was hot. You gotta respect that in a guy.

Mom Builds Igloos for her Dog

Did I mention that the winters are very, very long in New Hampshire? Lucky for Larry the AKC-rated "muffinhound," mom got an igloo building kit for Christmas (Didja know L.L. Bean had such a thing?). The flag adds a nice flash of color, but I believe it is designed to make the cat jealous. I have a proud legacy.

Sail through History

My dad is sorting through the family photo/art archives, which is a mammoth project that he's pulling together into a manageable collection of stories and artifacts. Basically, he's curating his own childhood and the fascinating concurrent political/artistic/journalistic career of his dad, Leo. Witness the following excerpted slides, and understand that:

1. We are a seafaring people.
2. My dad is supremely versed in the PowerPoint milieu. And, of course,
3. My grandfather Leo was an artistic badass.

   

   

Spit vs. Swallow: The Great Debate

Back in the day, if the already brilliant and adorable VA was drinking with the then-youthful and well-gosh-even-then belligerent Shawanda, the night was over when the rhetorical question, "Do you know what the problem with you is?!?" was shouted across the bar by either of our heroines. Whoever heard that phrase knew to grab the keys, her inebriated twin, and take to the highway. Okay, we were living in the wild woods of Nude Hamster, so we didn't "take to the highway," so much as we "took to the downhill side of the street" careening toward the part of our small town that contained fewer bars and more barns, a.k.a. our homes.

These days, the now highly successful, very important wine executive VA travels to the Pacific Northwest on her wine gig dime and informs me that my blog post describing our wine tasting experience on Sunday would have been different had I only "spit." Says she, the post would have been less headachy and more articulate if I'd been more dribbly. I can't do it. I'm a swallower. Just raised right, doncha'know.

I hate to be the old fashioned gal here. Where I come from, spitting is distasteful. Even if your host provides you with a lovely spittoon (which all wineries do), lovingly fashioned of intricately embossed hand-thrown clay,avec pretty grapes and the name of the winery all swirly in gold, it's still a spit pot. Ew.

Yet, VA and a bunch of wine tasting websites agree that spitting is where it's at. It's confusing. VA is the picture of wine savvy. I listen to her on all things enological because she's supah smaht (as we say in New England) and, she's been working in wine and paying attention for a long time, but again. Blech.

In my defense, even VA had to admit that some very socially reputable characters are swallowers. So powerful is their social acumen and so devoted are their flunkies, that rather than spit and risk retribution, flunkies eschew what's "right" (spitting) and wear their big red wine headaches like throbbing, blinding badges of courage and acceptance.

I feel vindicated. For my money, swallowing is just good manners. A headache might leave you cursing your evening of drink, but like corsets and bikini wax, sometimes, pain is the cost of socially appropriate behavior. VA says no.

I wish I had flunkies.