the worst smell on earth

Dear Secret Kitty:

I don't know if you know this, but that's your name. We named you after you ran into our house the first time we opened the front door on that hot summer night a year ago today. We decided you would be our kitty and you would have to be secret since there are no pets allowed in our place.

Then we lost all romantic ideas of adopting you, Secret Kitty, when we realized that not only did you actually have some place to live other than our front room, but that I'm allergic to cats, and the idea of a litter box in the same place that I live makes me gag.

Despite these facts, we loved anyway. You're a spunky kid. You look as if you've lived under dripping oil pans and in dusty crawl spaces.

You are a scrapper.

I'm writing this, kissing your little ass, in hopes that you're not the one who peed in my running shoes that I left out on the porch.

I left them in that small space between the front door and that mini wall that separates our porch from the neighbors. I know that either you, or one of your rebel street thug buddies that roam the streets at 5:30 PM when you're let out of the house, peed in that space before.

Our phone books that called that corner home for a couple of weeks after they were delivered got a heavy shot of your toxin. Thankfully we rely on the internet like normal people and had no use for old fashioned book things.

So yes, I now realize that I left my shoes in the place that you kids like to claim as your own, but that was a seriously shitty thing to do. Could you not mark a place that really matters? Like on top of the old garage where you guys like to bird watch? Or under the camellia where you like to poop?

And why WHY has your pee stench not evolved to not melt and destroy every thing it touches? You and your five little buddies live in houses with kids and teenagers and stoners and hippies and accountants. I'm sure there are things to mark in and around your own house to show everyone who's boss. You are! I get it!

Just answer me this: Why my pretty orange running shoes?

I must go soak them for a second time in Super Duper Smelly Oxi Lilac Detergent, but I will leave you with this: If'n I find out it was you, I will be peeing in your little snuggly bed in your hippy owner's house. Watch your back, Secret Kitty.

Regretfully,

Orange Running Shoe Lady

I'm starting to think that the four-ish years I wrote reality television has now affected my own writing.

Okay, I tried to justify the above statement in my head as it is easy to blame everything bad in the world on reality television (although I think I can speak for everyone when I say that Janice Dickinson--train wreck or not--is enthralling), but really, I wrote more when I was working on the show than when I was unemployed and my waking hours revolved around running and that firecracker Judge Judy's schedule.

From what I can tell-what my well researched data is showing me-is that I haven't written regularly since Russ and I decided to quit Los Angeles and find out what we really wanted to do for the rest of our lives in another part of the country. No pressure.

Russ may have quit his job, but I kept mine knowing the end would be near if I moved 900 miles away from it. It's like having a boyfriend in Canada during college and then moving away from him. You know you're just saying what sounds good so you don't sound like an asshole or a quitter. But really there is no future. He puts "u"s after his "o"s and drinks Molsen.

So here I am, broken up with my Canadian boyfriend of a career and until recently at a standstill job wise and with only three months until forty, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do. I think I'm doing it.

Life hurts my brain.

8 Hours Of Waiting

Tomorrow morning my dad finds out if he has an easy surgery, a not so easy surgery, or a pain in the ass surgery. All this will happen after the surgeons take a biopsy of the lump in his right lung. They know it's there and they know it's cancer and it comes down to a chunk of the lump taken out through his trachea to find out which sort of surgery dad gets.

And actually, when I think about it, he'll be asleep for the whole thing and won't know what sort of invasive procedure he's having until after it's done. I'm 1000 miles away and I'll know before he does.

The cancer was found from the body scan they gave him after his stroke in December. Everyone says it, and it's true, but without the stroke they wouldn't have found the cancer until maybe it did a bit more damage. I still don't know what I think about that line of thought. I mean, maybe he's had this little old lump for a very long time. Maybe he could have lived a long and happy life with that little lump.

I suppose I'm just worried. I'm assuming he's going to have the simple solution--lump out through tiny tube--but worried that it will be the worst: take a lobe of his lung out and chemotherapy. How much can a body handle a mere 4 months after having half of that same body shut down?

When he first told me about the lump he said, "Well, I did smoke for a long time."

I reminded him that he quit 40 years ago.

"Well, maybe it was the asbestos I worked with. Or the uranium. Or plutonium."

Yah, I would say that it could have been any of those.

Or it could just be any of the environments he's lived in over the past 71 years of his life. The neighborhood that I was raised in was on an old apple orchard. At least four of my neighbors developed lupus, with one dying from it. I mean, any house, any foundation, any city is going to have something that does not do a body good.

Or it could be that he's 71 years old.

For tonight, I'll just assume that dad will have the biopsy, have the easy surgery, and I'll be able to visit him at home where he'll continue to be learning how to balance again, to walk up and down stairs, just as he's been doing for the past four months.

This is what I'll assume.

Spring Is Mean To Me

Today I am a two year old child. I can't remember the last time I was so restless and irratible. Today, my bra annoyed me. I'm so bitchy that the underwire which on any other day would rest comfortably under my teets actually generated anger from deep within my soul.

And I woke up this way. When I was falling asleep, the crankiness was on the verge of emerging. I was hoping eleven hours of sleep would soften the toddler within, but I woke up with my head congested and my attitude full of piss and mucous.

I have Spring in Portland to blame. Beautiful daffodils, bursting cherry blossoms, unfolding magnolias and sprouting cedar put a cork into whatever good mood I could have been in today.

What I'm trying to say is I feel like total shit. Did you pick up on that?

I was raised with Chlor-Trimaton liquid [yellow flavor] flowing through my veins. Hayfever and general allergies being the Suckow burdon to bear. That along with bad eyesight, sarcasm and impatience. Our people should have died off long ago in the chain of evolution. We are a miracle in Darwin's book. He really should have written a book about The Suckows. You snooze you lose, Chuck.

My father warned me about Portland. Mainly about the unrelenting mist, but also about how bad springtime in the Northwest is not for our people. He was raised here for the first part of his young life and, alongside his multiple visits to the hosptial for asthma attacks,  he remembers as a grade schooler taking the Broadway Bridge bus over to downtown to get his allergy shots. He did this for about four years and now has a deep seated fear of anything hospital related, not to mention a strong aversion to public transportation.

Both my pops and my mom passed along this genetic defect onto their four children and two grandchildren. About half have gone for the allergy shots and half of those swear by them. I don't know about those odds. Well, shit, what I should say is that with my insurance those aren't good odds.

I grew up believing that sneezing, puffy eyes and constant exhaustion during half of the year were the norm. Some of my school photos can prove this. They should really take school photos in December.

When I moved from my birth town of San Jose (ranked 49 in the most allergic US cities to live in) to Los Angeles (# 50), I was living off of Taco Bell's 69¢ menu and homemade margarhitas with nothing left over for health care. If Planned Parenthood could start treating other things then my hooha that would would have been really helpful. I may start a petition.

So without insurance and prone to sinus infections, I ended up in the ER with a sinus induced migraine and a student doctor trying to convince me that a spinal tap was necessary. 

In the ten following years in Los Angeles, my body and the City of Angels sort of got along. They learned to live with each other without totally destroying me. Thank you very much. But it was about a year ago that my previous eleven years of bitching about Los Angeles (which you must do if you have grown up in Northern California and have moved to Southern California. Northern Californias, it turns out, are snobs. Who knew?) had finally forced me either shut up and make good on my promise to get the hell out of hell.

Russ and I were wavering between Seattle and Portland, but after landing at PDX and using the eco-friendly toilets  (pull handle up for pee and push handle down for pooh), Russ came out of the restroom and said, "I love it here." And he could give a shit about the environment, that's how poweful those toilets are.

Russ quit his job and I convinced mine to give me at least three months to see if working from afar would work. Four months into, it was obvious it wouldn't. Fuck.

But that's an entirely other story which is filled with fun facts on how to survive without a job in a state that is number three in unemployement. Oregon, you need to try harder if you want to be number one.

We love Portland (ranked 45th on America's Allergy Capitals). But, fuck, this Spring may turn all that "I love Portland" shit I've been spouting for the past 8 months into vinegar.

Damn you, Portland.

But damn you, Los Angeles.

And seriously, damn you, San Jose.

Thankfully, I will never, ever have the urge to move to Louisville, Kentucky (#1).

OMG! I STILL HAVE A BLOG!

Seriously...It's been, like, what...7 months?

That's ridiculous.