kvetching up

 Entry 1          9:13 a.m. I woke after 7 to Jenny's text, an understandable refrain, "I don't want to die."  I wanted to get up and run to comfort her. Alas, my knees didn't.  When I finally got the gumption up to locomote, the dogs were stirring, and Jenny had to take them out for their morning constitutional around the yard.   I am listening to Jenny on the phone with a newly diagnosed PDAC patient, who is a friend of a friend of her sister Moni. Jenny is the old hand, coaching her through the terrible realities that come with the diagnosis with insight, loving patience and compassion.  "I can't believe I have a friend who has the same thing as me," she says to a woman she has never met, with genuine joy in her voice.  This is the Jenny with whom I fell in love.  I can tell from the arc of the conversation, and the increasing laughter that, this woman who has never had chemo yet, is being greatly comforted.  I wis...

 Entry 1.   8:26 a..m. I was awake until 3 or so, wired from the hike.  If I hadn't been, I'd have missed a text from a friend puzzled that my first journal entry since returning seemed truncated.  Like my steps.

Posted this last night, but it didn't show up in the earlier post: I got here to this third camp about 1:15.  Dave, my BIL, arrived quite some time earlier.  We are not just in the middle of nowhere, we are surrounded by mountains and glaciers.  We had to bushwack through miles of trail today to get here. Its a treacherous route, and not for the faint of heart, or the injured.  Injured?  Yes.  I would tell you from experience that hiking with a jacked up knee is risky.  More risky, hiking with 2 jacked up knees.  I only had one until Monday, when I slipped and fell crossing a stream, only to slip and fall again while trying to cross a second time.  The good news is, I had a brace and it's on my now injured left knee. The bad news, I don't have a brace for my other knee, which lacks a miniscus.  To make the injury worse, I got separated that first day from Dave, and hiked 3.2 miles past our campsite, the first mile a 1000 foot climb....

Entry 1 It's Aug 25th. I've been off grid 3 days.  We are at some place called Thunder Canyon or Creek or Basin or whatever. I'd suggest calling it fly, gnat and mosquito hell. It's 331 p.m., and the flies have disappated, although I would wager every square foot had 100, they are down now to 50 or so, and tbe mosquitos are just rolling in, like a black cloud over Thunder Canyon. View from McCallister Camp.

  August 28 6:18 a.m Another night of sleep interrupted by throbbing pain in both knees, an essentially locked left knee, and the biting cold. I am bundled in two pairs of socks, thermal underwear , regular underwear, a t-shirt, hiking pants, a fleece jacket and a beanie , all wrapped in a sleeping bag .  If any part of me got uncovered, it quickly would become incredibly cold, so cold ot would wake me.  My right arm escaped at some point, probably putting my hat back on. My hand was so cold when it woke me, I imagine it could have been blue.  Its in the lower 30s in the night. All told, I probably woke 10-12 times. I am lookong forward to many things today, amonf them a solid night of sleep.  Time to pack. 

  ts Aug 25th. Ive been off grid 3 days.  We are at some place called Thunder Canyon or Creek or whatever. Id suggest calling it fly, gnat and mosquito hell. Ita 331 p.m., and the flies have disappated, although I would wager every square foot had 100, they are down now to 50 or so, and tbe mosquitos are just rolling in, like a black cloud over Thunder Canyon. I got here to this third camp about 115.  Dave, my BIL, arrived quite some time earlier.  We are not just in the middle of nowhere, we are surrounded by mountains and glaciers.  We had to bushwack through miles of trail today to get here. Its a treacherous route, and not for the faint of hearted, or the injured.  Injured?  Yes.  I would tell you from experience that hiking with a jacked up knee is risky.  More risky, hiking with 2 jacked up knees.  I only had one until Monday, when I slipped and fell crossing a stream, only to slip and fall again while trying to cross a second tim...

 Yesterday's service was lovely. Jenny and her sisters really went the extra mile. Jenny's eulogy to her mother was moving and quite beautiful. Omi will be missed. I am no Alexander Supertramp, but into the wild we go.

 Entry 1.    8:21 a.m. Jenny, who has taken the dogs at night in preparation of my backpacking trip, somehow managed to keep them placated until 7:30. Down in my Skinner box of a bedroom, I woke up at 6:00, around the time the dogs (on average) like to wake me.   Willow rang the bells hanging from the front door to go outside, the second time in the last few days. Progress grinds slowly with this one, but we are making headway.

  Entry 1     8;07 a.m. This house.    The bathtub is the longest and deepest i have seen in a home. A soaking morning bath is well deserved.

  Entry 1     7:48 a.m. I woke up at 6:00 a.m. to a dog scratching at my bedroom door.  Because I am leaving for a week on Monday to backpack in the North Cascades, Jenny wanted the dogs with her last night as practice and to allow them to get used to being with her at night. She crated Willow but not Buddy, apparently. Depending on the night, he may or may not share Willow's crate. While Jenny had her door closed, many rooms in our home have cat openings in the doors, and pudgy little Buddy somehow manages to fit through them.  I took him out to the bathroom while Jenny remained asleep.  I bring him in, he has some water and it's back to bed.  For about 10 minutes. Buddy fits through this opening somehow . At 6:20, as per usual, Willow is alive, alert, awake,  enthusiastic.  I climb out of bed, pull my Levis on, and walk to Jenny, who is just opening the door. She gives me a disdainful look as Willow, freed from her crate, dashes to my...

I am not a religious person. Not even slightly.  I am not an atheist.  I am not smart enough to stake out a position, or to say how or why we exist.  But when I am feeling low, give me Mahalia Jackson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Hank Williams, Roy Acuff or F.C. Barnes singing about their faith, and it buoys me. People persevere, they push on through hard times.  That's what this particularly working-class flavor of gospel music says to me.  I don't have their gift of faith, but I know that this too shall pass.   I haven't written in so long because work, the dogs, Jenny's illness, Jenny's anger, moving, unpacking and preparing for next week's backpacking trip have sapped me. I have been holed up in my room for about an hour as I write this, listening to Fern Jones sing. She was a holy roller, tent revivalist musician whose music was almost lost, but rereleased a few years ago.  She has been compared to Patsy Cline, high praise, really. I digress.  ....

Entry 1      9:45 a.m. Moving Day Part Deux Off to Ravenna to meet the movers.

  Entry 1     8:54 a.m. Willow has learned to fly, or so she thinks.   Last night, as Jenny was laying on the sectional, Willow came around the corner, jumped and cleared the back of the couch. She pulled off a perfect four-point landing.  She literally stuck the landing. Unfortunately, by stuck I mean she landed on Jenny's chest where the needle from the chemo pump enters the port to her vein.  Jenny didn't see it coming. Neither of us did.  Jenny, after pushing off a clueless and cuddly behemoth (its like cuddling Wm. "Refrigerator" Perry as a toddler at this point), doubled over, more in fear than in pain.  But finding her port was secure, she wss still understandably shaken and also angry. She went to bed. This morning, she woke to find the chemotherapy drug FolFox leaked and leaking all over her clothes, and the needle completely out from the port. She bagged the pump and needle, and called Dr. P. The best laid plans, and all that. ...

Imagine your loved one is suffering from a terminal illness.  Fighting off death valiantly, but suffering inconceivable agony while trying to forestall the inevitable. The  suffering is every day, but the agony arises several days every other week as a reaction. To the chemo.  Your loved one, after every single chemo, wants to quit. She tells you, quite seriously, she can't stand to suffer any more, her eyes pleading for you to rescue her. The misery slowly abates over several days, and she forgets just enough of the pain to keep going forward. Banner day.  I went to my office. I spent several hours on the 54th floor, alone.  Creepy. Jenny's chemo was today. She was sick tonight and is miserable.  I, otoh, have to sleep now. More later.

Tied To The Whipping Post Another busy day.  Work in the time of COVID-19 is predictably unpredictable.  The solar company representative came today to show me how the 27 solar panels on top of the house work.  I had no idea the meter runs backwards as the solar is pumping in power to the system. Pretty impressed, honestly.  Many months are electric bill will be $12 dollars, the minimum amount charged.  I like that.  A lot.   However, our thermostat isn't working, which means our air conditioning isn't working. For some reason I had it in my head that the solar company was responsible for the thermostat.  In fact, that is not the case.  So, I called the number on the side of our our HVAC system, and someone is coming out on Monday, after the heatwave.  I pleaded to put us at the front of the line should there be any cancellations, and explained Jenny's condition. Tomorrow she has chemo, and the weekend will be hell with the heat and...

Moved yesterday. It was a smooth move, for what its worth, until, after thr truck was loaded, the kid in charge told me the truck was full and they weren't coming back.  Their requisition was for one truck.  We hadn't asked for one truck, just to be moved.  In fact, Jenny who ordered the movers, called to tell them we moved the boxes, and the coordinator said, oh, then we will bring just ine truck.  Ok, she said. We assumed they'd come back if it all didn't fit in the truck. This may shock you, but no one told us, hey, you get one truck, for one load.  That's it.  This is a very expensive mover--and aside from the fuck up, its my first use of movers (we have used them a lot) where nothing was broken, scratched, or lost.   In a stroke of luck, a fb friend reached out to me last night to ask about the move. She too was livid, upon hearing what happened. I was clear that this was not Jenny's fault.  Unlike me, my fb friend knows ppl at the compa...

Entry 1     6:27 a.m. Woke up at 430 to the sound of packing tape being unspooled.  Twas, Abby, who had yet completed packing, and consistently refused to let anyone help her. Her room went quiet around 5.  The movers arrive between 8-9. She will be cranky today, to be sure. Jenny was texting with el pinché, under the full effect of her nightime meds, when I pried her off the sectional and coaxed her to her bed. I was angry about this, but said nothing. She would lie or feign surprise, or more likely, both. I am, after almost a year of this, exhausted.  I am tired.  I am weary. I could sleep for 1000 years. I think my anger today stems from the fact that everything I do is for her, whether its a vacation the week we should be moving or readying the house for a move, the extra work I had and have to do because we weren't home; the riding in the sand dunes, riding with her behind the wheel despite the risk. Shit, the purchase of the car itself.  He...

 Entry 1    9:54 a.m. Leiney and I went on a quest for coffee this morning and ended up at Stumptown and Voodoo Doughnuts.  Predictable, but also, delectable.  So, yeah.   I tried to convince Leiney that, given the beauty of the weather, that we stay in PDX today. We are right on the river.  We could rent cruisers and have a time. But, unfortunately, I already primed them for Suicide Squad at an AMC tbd in Vancouver, while Jenny attends a baby shower. Abby will back her. Given it was my idea to see the movie, I guess we are going to the movies. I found an amazing book at Powell's yesterday, The New Star Chamber by Edgar Lee Masters. He was an intellectual and law partner of Clarence Darrow, novelist, biographer, poet and serial philanderer.  The last descriptor caused Clarence Darrow, of all people, to end their law practice. Written around 1900, The New Star Chamber is a series of essays deconstructing and criticizing  U.S. imperialism....

 Entry 1.     6:25 a.m. Waxing Awake Time  I was up fretting over Jenny's health  until 3, and then woke over and over. When I managed to sleep, I had nightmare after nightmare. My last dream involved giving Willow away to Pat Morita and his adorable little grand daughter. This isn't turning into a dream journal, but I can say I was incredibly relieved when I woke up that I didn't have to tell Jenny I gave the dog away.

Entry 1    10:33 a.m. The running water went out at the campground last night around 10, and it's yet to be restored.  For those of us in bondage to the coffee bean, this was no bueno.

Entry 1    Going Nowhere, Going Nowhere I've been awake much of the.night, and gave up trying to sleep around 6 a.m.  I am sharing a bed with Jenny for the first time in a year out of necessity and a misunderstanding that when the place said it sleeps 5, that I would have my own sleeping space.  The good news is, the bed we are sleeping on, a pull-out couch, is so uncomfortable it is not possible to sleep soundly.  That last fact came in handy last night when I was having an M. Night Shyalamanesque nightmare , after spending the afternoon telling my kids what a terrible filmmaker he is. I dreamt I was at a multiplex to see a movie, not "Old" (his latest), but some movie created by my psyche. Jenny and I got into a row at the theater over the baseball hat she was wearing ( Eric's el pinché's. The real one somehow disappeared in the move. . . weird) and I stormed off. I ended up in a theater playing the faux-Shyamalan movie. The storyline was about going to ...

  Florence , Oregon  Not to be a snob, but if you are brown, black, Asian, Latinx, gay,  liberal, disabled, or are a woman with little or no hair who could be read as being queer, well, small town America is about as welcoming as a Currier and Ives tableau.  Yes, they too were abject racists. Guess I should toss my sanitized coffee table book of their works.  Florence, Oregon, ostensibly ensconced in a blue county is, well, utterly scary.  We saw Nazi bikers, American flag art (always a dead giveaway), a bar with a sign that said any government inspector would require a warrant prior to entering the premises to inspect.  Meanwhile, here we are bopping along, my brown leftist queer daughter who was instructed by me not to wear her "defund the police" mask and who couldn't quit ranting about Christian Fascists; my other queer daughter with gorgeously died red hair and out and proud; my white wife whose hair has grown back just enough so that she looks s...