it takes courage

not enough courage to show this is a Sexson shirt.

Baseball season is upon us, we are now two full weeks in.  Last Friday I attended opening day at Safeco Field for the first time in years.  My family has had season tickets since the teams maiden voyage in 1977 and for the twenty eight seasons that I have been alive, most have been... pretty ugly.

It’s rarely easy to root for the Mariners, they’ve been to the playoffs only four times, they’ve never won the American league championship and or even played in a world series game.  Most of our star players leave us right as they reach their peak.  We have no curse to lean on, no rich history of baseball legends, or almost mythic figures and historical feats.  One thing that Mariner fans have an abundance of is courage.  

At the beginning of every season we have high hopes, even when we know we shouldn’t.  Each new year is a clean slate and as fans we press on like anything can happen.  We cheer on opening day like it is game seven of the world series, a euphoric rush will take over us and last between a week and a month.  By the time that rush fades it will be replaced by disappointment and heartbreak as once again our team tries feebly to scrape together wins.  Yet we still root, we wear our Mariner blue, and we cheer every Mariner run no matter how insignificant.  We have courage.

This season Opening day was bittersweet, with the passing of the most famous Mariner Dave Niehaus.  The voice was gone but it was another new season and we were eager to erase the embarrassment of 2010’s 101 losses.  Coming home for opening day they had lost four games in a row and were carrying a record of 2-4.  As I expected however we got geared up through the opening day ceremonies and cheered with great anticipation as Jason Vargas delivered the first pitch.

That excitement lasted all of one out when the Mariners fell behind one to nothing on a home run.  Three innings later the wind was completely taken out of our sails when the Cleveland Indians demolished us for a ten run fourth inning.  It might have been record timing for the Mariners to break my heart but when they made a mild comeback for two runs in the bottom of the ninth, I was right there on the edge of my seat screaming at the top of my lungs.

Unlike being a Mariner fan it takes no courage to root for the Yankees.  Rooting for the Yankees is easy, they will always compete for the World Series.  As Chris Rock put it two weeks ago on Letterman “rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for Steve Jobs to win the Lotto.”  I couldn’t have said it better.  I acknowledge that there are genuine fans of the Yankees, those who grew up in New York and root for their home town team just like me.  There are also these other fans out there, those who don’t have a hometown team or even worse those who do but choose to root for the Bronx Bombers regardless.  This is simple cowardice.

I will never consider the fans without a team who root for the Yankees true baseball fans, they wanted only to find the best and the easiest team to cheer for.  The Benedict Arnold’s who abandon their home town team by selling their souls to the heartless New York Yankees have absolutely no courage.  These people wanted a winner and weren’t willing to put in the sweat, blood, and tears necessary to understand what it means to truly love a team.

These Yankee fans are like that couple you meet who claims to have never had a fight.  They think their a special and extra connected couple but everyone else around them knows the truth.  That isn’t a real relationship, real relationships require emotions good and bad, frustration, anger, joy, and heartbreak.

On opening day despite all the “experts” low expectations, I walked into Safeco field with high hopes, it was early and anything could happen.  Maybe just maybe this could be the year that the Mariners went to the World Series.  I rooted my ass off despite the unholy beating they suffered, and regardless of the fact that I knew that this will be a season full of heart break and tears.  They will test my dedication over and over, but in the end my courage will help me endure.

Eventually when the Mariners achieve that elusive World Series victory it will be much sweeter and for more hard earned and deserved than any Yankees win in the long and storied history of their franchise.    

daily observation #003

this is what I look like after 10 min of hiking

Everything hurts!
I had planned another blog post for today however after working out with Jaime tonight I just didn't have the energy to type it out.  I feel like I was just walked all over by women wearing high heels.  I feel like I was viciously beat with cold dead fish.  I feel like I stumbled into 37 electric fences.  I feel like at any moment my body will liquify and I will collapse into  a puddle on the floor.
After a solid 25 min of jogging, another 25 min on various machines that were designed by sadists for their sexual dungeon, and 10 min of sit ups where I did 97 (I couldn't do the last 3) I have no will power or brain function remaining.  So hang in there till next week where some really great posts will be coming your way.

what do you do?

this penguin wants to know what I do for a living

There is a question that I absolutely loathe, one that I can easily see coming, one that I hate to answer.  “What do you do for a living?”  I suspect that many artists and even some non artists hate this question as well.  I will focus specifically on artists because we have chosen a profession that often requires us to hold a day job.  In answering that question we have to make a choice between how we actually pay our bills and what is our career.

For me the answer is complicated, and usually it goes like this, “Well, I make my money as a ________, but the rest of the time I am a writer.”  This is just too much information, with more layers than the questioner was expecting.  The first part says that I make my money doing one thing, but I don’t really care about it.  The second part says that there is this other thing I do care about, but I don’t actually make any money at that and I want you to know that is what defines me and not what I do to make money (holy shit).

That is what the question really comes down to, what defines you?  People assume that how you make your money is something you went to school for, something you love, something that they can draw conclusions from, about who you are.  That doesn’t really apply to me and all the rest of us who have a day job to support our ultimate career goals.  I don’t really care about the various ways I’ve made money and aside from the fact that they employ me, I am not defined by those jobs.  I fear that if I leave out how I eventually want to make money the questioner will get the wrong impression of me.

Just the other night this question was asked of me.  I was prepared to give my standard answer when I paused, in a split second decision I said something else.  “I’m a freelance writer,” I answered confidently.  This wasn’t exactly false, but not totally true either.  In my fantasy life this is how I make a living.  It’s not like I said I was a lawyer or a computer software designer.  I know a lot about being a writer and can hold a meaningful intelligent conversation on the subject.

Does it really matter that technically this is not true?  I was more engaged in the conversation because I could discuss the art of writing and not, HVAC or pharmaceuticals.  I wasn’t being interviewed for a newspaper article and I wasn’t asked to sign an affidavit.  So what is the harm?

From now on in conversations and all non legally binding documents I am a freelance writer.  I won’t shy away from the fact that this is not how I make my money should they inquire further.  But why would they?  Wouldn’t they rather hear what I’m passionate about and not something that I just do because I have to?

I suggest everyone try this out, artists and non artists alike.  Don’t just lie, but if you’re a practicing writer, actor, director, dancer, painter, designer, or musician it shouldn’t matter that this isn’t how you make your money.  Perhaps one day you will.  After all is saying that you’re any one of these things different than the thousands of twenty one year olds out there claiming to work for ad agencies or law firms, when really they’re just unpaid interns?

how does your garden grow?

not much now, i do plan on expanding

I’m fairly confident that no one has ever looked at me and got the impression that I was much of if at all, a gardener.  I’ve killed more plants in my life than I’ve kept alive.  A small pine sapling, a rosemary bush, two basil plants, a whole planter box of dill, english mint, sage, and lastly a lemon tree which despite constant blooming, after three years it never grew any fruit.  I don’t believe in green or black thumbs, but I definitely don’t have a green one for sure.  My one and only achievement in growing was a chestnut tree I accidentally planted in my mom’s back yard and which is now fifteen feet tall.  Needless to say, if plants were children, I would be in jail.

Just over a year ago Jaime and I made a drastic life decision, we would begin to buy locally grown organic produce only, local grass fed beef, pork, chicken and eggs, as well as wild caught fish only (no farmed fish).  In turn we cut out most processed foods.  I resisted this initially dreading the loss of my beloved Dr. Pepper and cheap Costco bacon.

In Los Angeles this lifestyle was really quite easy, due to their warm climate, a cornucopia of fruits and vegetables are available at the farmers markets year round.  We were also rather lucky that just three short blocks from our apartment was McCalls Meat (I demand that anyone who lives in LA who eats meat go there) where we were able to buy locally raised and grass fed meats.

I knew moving to Seattle that the conveniences we had previously enjoyed in LA would not be so easy.  I wan’t prepared for just how hard it really would be.  Washington winters are cold and wet, the farms must endure frozen soil and flooding on a weekly basis.  This drastically reduces the availability of fruits and vegetables, about all you could find consistently were; squash, brussels sprouts, carrots, some leafy greens but not much beyond that.

We also found it very difficult to find a nearby supply of meat.  There was some meat available at the market but the best local meat company required an hour long drive north.

We are now renting a house in Bellevue which had a substantial back yard.  Lamenting the convenience of LA I decided to make my life even harder by attempting to grow my own garden.

My gardening guru is my mother who has kept a fantastic looking yard for years.  Her breadth of knowledge concerning vegetables and when to plant them is immense.  Inspired by Michael Pollan’s Omnivores Dilemma, I will be reporting on the progress here in my blog.  While some of what I am planning on planting I will be consuming throughout the summer, I also plan on having a feast towards the end of the growing season utilizing the fruits of my spring and summer labors.

My first set back occurred two weeks ago when my garden guru informed me that the patch of dirt I had been hoping to use for the garden would not work because of the lack of sunlight.  Instead I will be using a network of long rectangular planter boxes, which while they won’t look as pretty or natural as a conventional garden, will provide me the ability to move my garden should I so desire.

I will be planting (and with some luck growing)

carrots

tomatoes (not from the seed but from on offshoot)

lettuce

strawberries

greenbeans

green onions

onions

peas

radishes

cucumber

asparagus

Additionally I will be growing; rosemary, basil, mint, sage, and chives.

I know that these are lofty goals for someone who has never eaten something that they grew and nurtured themselves.  I am determined to grow as much of my own food as possible.  With my guru at my side I will hopefully have a crop of vegetables with a Summer’s end feast for my friends and family to enjoy food grown in my own back yard.

familiar faces in an unfamiliar city

My wife Jaime grew up in Burien Washington, a small town just southwest of Seattle.  It’s the kind of place that they modeled Dawson’s Creek after.  Even now eight years after it went off the air, people still act like they are on that show.  I dislike Burien with the snobbish attitude of someone who spent the first fourteen years of their life in farm country.

I can fully admit that my distain for Burien is completely irrational.  The reason I hate going there is because every visit is never complete without Jaime exclaiming in a bar, or a store, or just walking down the street,

“I went to high school with that person.”

We would be sitting at a table in a restaurant and after a few minutes Jaime will disengage from our conversation and her gaze will drift over my shoulder.  Though I already know the answer I ask anyway.

“Did you go to high school with that person?”

She will shift in her chair to get a better view and reply,

“Yeah.  I did.”

There is one bar in particular that I have sworn off completely, not because it’s not a good or fun place to hang out, but because every night it is like one big high school reunion.

This might all have to do with a tinge of jealousy.  I am not in close contact with hardly anyone from High school and even fewer from junior high or elementary.  In the eight years that Jaime and I have been together, she has met maybe five people from my past.  When passing through my home town I will often point someone out I went to high school with but hardly even know.  Jaime on the other hand has had the same best friends since elementary school.  They are unusually close and could make anyone wish that they had friendships like their.

College was a difficult time for many in Burien, as they were forced to build friendships outside of their hometown.  Jaime was the first to date someone who they didn’t go to school with, and in return I was treated like an intruding alien.

When we moved to Los Angeles I expected these run-ins to end.  With the exception of two college friends, we knew no one.  I assumed that it was up to us to make new friends who we could run into.  At least those were my expectations.

Within the first week while walking down the street in our neighborhood, we ran into Joy, a college acquaintance who graduated the year before us.  We spotted Yolanda, another college acquaintance driving in a car behind us on Sunset boulevard.  Jaime and I stared inquisitively at a girl in the bank trying to determine if she went to our college as well.  It turns out she did.  An actual college friend worked as a buyer for Intelligensia coffee.

It seems that Cornish College alumni and drop outs were crawling all over LA popping out of cracks in walls and loose plumbing knobs, like the sugar ants who eventually infested my apartment.  Eventually the question changed to, “Did we go to college with that person?”

There would be similar incidents over the next three years, at restaurants, stores, and street corners.  At one point Jaime and I spent days trying to figure out how we knew a woman we’d spotted jogging past the Silverlake dog park.  Her face was so familiar that I could actually hear her voice and vaguely recall interactions we’d had.  Ultimately it was decided that she worked in the admissions office at Cornish.  We accepted this as truth until a week or so later when we sat down to breakfast at the Mustard Seed (our favorite breakfast spot in Los Feliz) where we realized that she was our waitress.

Gradually we made friends with locals as we became locals ourselves and the sea of faces became more familiar.  Friends moved to the city and friends visited, we would discuss people we knew mutually who’d crossed our paths and the strange incidents surrounding the likely hood of those run ins occurring in LA.

On a Saturday in September, a month before we moved back to Seattle, Jamie attended a Law School forum at the Biltmore hotel.  I went with her, mainly to hold stuff while she discussed the law programs with the various school representatives.  If there was ever a place that I expected not to see anyone we knew, this would have been it.

While waiting in line to meet with a prelaw advisor Jaime glanced over at a nearby booth, I could feel her gaze rise over my shoulder and she went silent.  

“I think I know that girl.  I think we went to high school together.”  I laughed realizing how long it had been since I’d heard her say that.  “I think that’s Lisa.”  She continued.

I assumed that Jaime was mistaken, that she was taking this game way too far.  She continued to analyze the girl for a time before determining that;

“Yes, it is definitely Lisa.”

We got out of line and skeptically walked up to her.  There was a pause for a moment of recognition before her face lit up and she smiled.  I couldn’t believe it.  1,100 miles from Burien and Jaime still managed to find someone she went to school with.

I realize now that nowhere is safe.  In any city, of any country, at any moment Jaime’s gaze could rise above my shoulder and become fixed on someone.  I will refuse to say anything and soon she will adjust in her seat and exclaim,

“I went to high school with that person.”

the phoenix cat

scout was impossibly tiny when I brought her home

A few weeks ago I discussed my love for our cat Dada.  We adopted him in December of 2008 from the Burbank animal shelter.  From the first moment I picked him up I could tell he was a special cat.  If you would like to read more from that first post about him click here, dada was my favorite.

Jaime grew up Catholic, I am not nor have I ever been religious.  The closest I ever got were a series of Hanna Barbera videos depicting bible stories through animation.  Easter was not a particularly special day for either of us.  We decided to make the most of a day off, which began with a nice brunch at Jaime’s restaurant.  We followed that with a walk around Silverlake and a trip to Trader Joe’s where we bought a leg of lamb for dinner.

The rest of our day was spent lounging around watching movies and snacking.  In the early evening I decided to go ahead and get dinner started.  I was prepping the lamb when Dada came over to his food dish in the kitchen and proceeded to pull out all the food onto the floor.  He then stood over the dish and squatted over the dish, clearly trying to go to the bathroom.

I don’t have to explain to you that this was not normal behavior.  I reached down to touch him and it took only a soft stroke on his back to raise his hair.  He let out a low base moan, one that you only hear when a cat is either extremely pissed off or in a considerable amount of pain.  Something was seriously wrong.

I called over to Jaime and we watched as Dada moved about the apartment finding different corners trying to pee and letting out deep moans of pain.  It was Easter Sunday so there were no Vet clinics open, but after a search on the internet we were able to find an overnight clinic in Pasadena.  We hopped in the car and rushed in over, hoping that this was a minor problem with an easy fix.

The Vet determined that he had a urinary tract infection. The infection had swelled so that he could not pass urine through his urethra.  It was explained to us that we had two options, either a surgery to remove the blockage or antibiotics which hopefully could begin to open things up a bit.  Just as with Esteban, money was tight and surgery just wasn’t feasible.

We decided on the antibiotic treatment which the Vet explained to us should begin to take effect immediately.  However if he wasn’t better by the morning we should take him back in for the surgery.

We took Dada home and forced the antibiotics down his throat.  By this point he was refusing to walk more than a few steps, he just stood in place trying desperately to pee.

We went to sleep without eating our lamb dinner, neither Jaime or I could choke down anything with Dada in such pain.

I made up his little bed next to ours and gently laid him down.  That night was full of dreams, eerily similar to the ones I had about Esteban when he was sick.  In the dreams I would wake up to find Dada out of his bed and cured, he was happy and rubbing up against my leg purring so loud that the floor boards shook.  In reality I woke up early in the morning to find that during the night he’d  crawled from his bed into the living room where he refused to stand, instead he just laid there shivering.

His regular Vet still wasn’t open and the overnight clinic we’d taken him to the day before was closed.  The closest we could find was an emergency clinic near Culver City.  Once again we got back in the car and rushed off to another animal hospital.

The Vet took us to a room right away and after a brief exam she hurriedly took him to run a quick test.  Jaime and I waited in the room not saying anything to one another, but we were both thinking the same thing.  “How could this happen again?”

When the Vet came back Dada was not with her.  She explained to us that she’d had some difficulty feeling his bladder, they x-rayed him and found that it had ruptured.  Jaime immediately began to cry while I stood in shocked stillness.  There was nothing we could do, no surgeries or medications could delay the inevitable, Dada was going to die.

It wasn’t until the moment that the Vet told us that his bladder ruptured that the idea that he might die entered my mind.  The night before the Vet had been so nonchalant that I didn’t believe that death was a real possibility.

They took us to a special room, one that was clearly designed for grieving pet owners who’s pet were about to be euthanized.  The room had dim lighting and a couch that looked like it had been stolen from a Venice beach hotel in 1991.  We sat down our eyes so full of tears we could hardly see when Dada was brought in wrapped in a blanket.  Before we left the apartment that morning I assured Addison that Dada would return just as soon as we go him fixed up.  I just couldn’t believe this was happening, seeing him sedated and barely conscious.

In many ways Dada’s death was much harder to accept than Esteban’s.  With Esteban we were prepared to make this decision if it came, we were able to spend a long weekend with him, making him as comfortable as possible.  For Dada it was so sudden and unexpected that neither of us could really believe that this was happening.  Dada was still just a kitten, just barely half a year old.  We bawled uncontrollably as the phenobarbital was injected into his vein.  We had such a brief time to try and say goodbye before his body relaxed and his eyes went empty.  Jaime quietly asked if he was dead, and I assured her that yes, now he wasn’t in pain.

The clinic was really wonderful, they charged us only for the euthanasia, not the visit or the x-rays which they had not received our consent for before hand.  

Back at home we greeted Addison empty handed.  She was expecting to see Dada, she was expecting that fuzzy kitten to rub up against her and purr, but now she was alone again.

Jaime and I cuddled on the couch and watched Pet Cemetary.  For dinner we ate our lamb Easter dinner in memory of Dada.

* * *   

Two Days later Jaime and I drove twenty three miles out to the Baldwin Park animal shelter.  We spent the day before calling around and this was the only shelter with a kitten.  Baldwin Park is not exactly a beautiful place and the animal shelter was even more terrifying.  A bunch of rundown buildings and litter strewn walkways, if I hadn’t know better I would have thought I walked into a war torn city.  The cats were kept in outdoor cages, the pen next to the cats was full of chickens snacking on a half eaten bag of Dorrito’s.  On the otherside were bunnies and inexplicably, squirrels.

There was as promised, just one kitten, a black and white shorthair.  Just four weeks old she was impossibly small, her eyes still sapphire blue.  Her microscopic frame dwarfed by the size of her cage and all the older cats surrounding her.

Just as with Dada she would need to be neutered before she could be taken home, though both Jaime and I knew that she was still far too young for the operation.  I was told that I could pick her up the next day after she had a check up and was neutered, (Jaime and I rolled our eyes when the animal control employee insisted that she was old enough).  On our way home Jaime and I discussed whether it was the best choice for us to adopt her.  It wasn’t that we didn’t want her but there was concern that she would not be healthy, I was especially afraid that because she was so young that she might end up having health complications and we both knew that we could not put down another cat.

We wouldn’t come to a conclusive decision until I found myself the following day driving back out to Baldwin Park.  I rolled my eyes again when the animal control employee informed me that she was too young to be neutered.  I was told however that if I made a deposit for the neutering I could bring her home that day.  She then followed that by saying,

“You don’t have to take her, but if you don’t she’ll probably die.”  To me that meant that really, I didn’t have a choice.  I paid the deposit and took this tiny kitten home.

Addison should have rejected her, three cats in two years should have hardened her, made her act cruelly toward this new kitten.  She accepted her with open... paws.  There was no question of what to call her, she had no fear, after walking through the door we plopped her down on the floor and he immediately began to take charge.  Scout would be her name.  Scout, the mischievous tomboy of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

As I prepared to write this story I was reminded of the mythological Phoenix bird, who bursts into flames at death, then from those ashes is reborn anew.   Scout was the total opposite of Dada but my fears of an unhealthy cat have, three years later been proven incorrect.  Then I began to think about Jesus, who according to my Hanna Barbera videos was resurrected on Easter.

the underground

hookers from the 1800's.  look closely one of them is a man

Last weekend while a friend from Los Angeles was visiting, we decided to go take the Seattle Underground tour.  It was not my first time taking the tour, I’d gone with my parents some twenty years earlier, which basically meant that it was my first time.

If you’re not familiar with the Seattle Underground, this is a very brief explanation:

Because Seattle had been built on the Duwamish river delta, it was originally mostly soggy marsh lands.  The early settlers had constant problems with flooding from the marshes and the Elliot Bay tides, which could swing as much as ten feet.  After the city burned down in the Great Seattle Fire of 1889, architects were given a unique chance to rebuild the city from scratch, addressing the previous flooding problems.  Their solution was to raise the city above the flood levels, about ten feet.  Long story short, this created an underground city that was eventually abandoned.

If you wish to know more I suggest you go down to Pioneer Square and take the tour yourself.

After the tour was finished everyone seemed a little... disappointed is the wrong word, but if you were expecting to see some kind of incredible underworld city full of pale and dirty mole people you would leave sorely disappointed.  If you’ve ever gone into the crawl space of a house then essentially you’ve seen the Seattle Underground.  Perhaps the main reason to go is for the history lesson, and the tour guides bad humor.  If nothing else it serves as a public safety announcement that all of the old Pioneer Square buildings are being held up by little more than 120 year old moldy wood.

The next day I realized that this tour is the heart of Seattle, odd, quirky, full of toilet humor, hookers, and poorly thought out city planning (a Seattle institution).  The Yuppies have tried and failed over the decades to yuppify the city.  In the last ten years that movement has been strong and the gentrification of places like South Lake Union, the University District, and Capital Hill has turned these oddballs into condos, Starbucks, and Whole foods.

I do have hope however that the Undergrounds of Seattle will prevail and that eventually these Yuppie strongholds will fall.  Soon people in those condos will find themselves living above a peepshow, an artists colony, and a store full of taxidermied animals or Mummies and gag gifts.

Everyone still seemed at a loss for words to rationalize the $15 they spent on the tour.  I, on the other hand got it completely.  People don’t come to Seattle for the EMP or the Spaceneedle.  They come to hear a struggling actor spend an hour and a half talking about “crappers” from the 1800’s and pointing out dirt covered corridors where 100 years before hookers propositioned the geniuses who decided to build a city here in the first place.