6000onions

Summer

Posted on June 21, 2026 by mygothlaundry

It is fully summer, even here on the Oregon coast, where some years (looking at YOU, 2025) we don’t even get a summer. This year is so extremely summer that I do not quite know what to do with myself, but I’m regretting my fully rational decision not to even try growing peppers and basil this year. This year, I could probably do it.

Summers are glorious for me because my workplace closes on Fridays in July and August. Thanks to Juneteenth and a sane PTO policy, I have added the last two Fridays in June to that already generous and wonderful list. Three day weekends! Three days! So I have started a little art project I’m calling the One Hour Painting, in which I am going to make at least one painting or print or piece of actual art every weekend in, you guessed it, One Hour. Well, actually, it could be longer I guess, but One Hour is the minimum and, knowing me, it will just be One Hour. This is a great idea and I already feel better than I have in a while, even though I drank 4 glasses of red wine on the phone with my Canadian friend yesterday and my digestive system is furious.

Here is my painting. It is the very first of a series I’ve been planning called 100 Views Of Saddle Mountain. By planning I mean it keeps running around my head and I think, oooh, I should do that, plus occasionally I take photos to use as references except then I lose them. I recognize that this is a hubristic take on Hokusai, who famously did 100 Views of Mt. Fuji, and none of mine are going to be even half as good as one of his, but! I too live near a volcanic mountain! Plus I don’t think anyone has ever done it on account of Saddle Mountain is just not that famous. So here is #1. We can but hope that they get better as we go along.

And now, the week, in which I really didn’t take any very good photos. Well, one. Maybe two. Some weeks are like that. On Sunday I stayed home and here’s a little collage of my messy bedroom on one side and my messy courtyard on the other. Monday we all went to the beach and here’s Four striding along with Harvey the dog. It was an awesome walk. Four has been going through a Thing where she had gotten a terrible fear of sneaker waves (this is mostly my fault, see February 22 although her mother says it has happened at least twice before) and has been refusing to go to the Beach. But she was very brave and stayed up at the high tide line* and a nice time was had by all. I like this photo a lot. Tuesday, this was so beautiful, the fog and the gillnetter and the still sky that I had to stop and try to take a picture on my way home. This photo is just okay. I wish it was better. Wednesday the palliative care nurse who comes to visit my brother every six weeks or so was here and after everybody left I made myself an egg sandwich before I went back to work. Thursday morning on the way to work we had to stop the car for this deer and twin fawns and then, eleven hours later on the way home from work, we had to do it again for the same little family. So these are two terrible phone photos jammed together. Friday, I finally got the whole courtyard settled and I love it so much. And yesterday, Saturday, I was mostly home and this is from quality time on the couch with Mr. Binks. I just discovered that there are several seasons of Downton Abbey I never bothered to watch because I got so fed up with everyone, so I’m trying that again. And that was last week, the week before the solstice, and here we are, midsummer!

* I like to walk the high tide line sometimes as a sort of meandering meditation, like a labyrinth only with seaweed. I recommend it!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged art, family, life, photography, writing | Leave a comment

Heat

Posted on June 14, 2026 by mygothlaundry

It is 86 degrees right now as I type this. That’s the sort of temperature that I would have scoffed at when I was still a Southerner: why it’s nothing. A bagatelle, a balmy summer day. I am not a Southerner any more: I am a Pacific Northwesterner and I am DYING. I am, however, wearing my fabulous caftan and drinking a pellegrino soda so, ok, I’m dying with STYLE. But, in my considered opinion, it’s too damn hot to do anything. I did things this morning. I went to Sunday market and walked about and then went to several downtown stores where my daughter chatted with her friends and I sort of stood about. It was hot. The stores were lovely. Unfortunately, I’m too old and too poor and I don’t, actually, need anything right now except red onions, medicare for all and a universal basic income. So I bought nothing except the two pieces of art I foolishly signed up for at the 8×8 show. I love these two pieces of art but I’m really broke right now and I did not, actually, intend to buy them. I was the first bidder and I thought I would start a bidding war. Alas for my wallet, I got them. They’re gorgeous and I had to use a credit card to buy them. Like most Americans, I am hemorrhaging money right now trying to live my usual extravagant lifestyle of, oh, keeping the lights on and going to the grocery store once in a while. That’s okay! There are gladiators at the White Supremacy House – the outrage, the shock, the offensiveness of everything just keeps on going but nothing stops – and I guess they need it more than we do! Even though they probably won’t get paid.

The week that was: On Monday it rained all day and here is the deer who, probably, ate my sunflowers and my cosmos. Bah. The hell with deer. On Tuesday the rain let up for long enough to go for a walk but the clouds were thunderous. And beautiful. On Wednesday it cleared up and we went for a walk on the sawmill trail and saw this bright modern ship. Thursday, Harvey was extremely comfortable while I was getting ready for work. Friday was commencement at the college where I work, always a lovely and slightly tearful occasion. They’re all so young! Saturday, which was yesterday, I took Four – who can write her name! – to Battery Russell and then when we came home there was this dragonfly in the garden.

On a darker note, there’s another protest today and I did not attend. I’m done, I think. I have stood around holding a sign in all kinds of weather for a year and a half this time and four years the last time and it has accomplished exactly fucking nothing. I get that building community is important and showing people that they are not alone is important and, well, I still have no community and I don’t think anyone thinks they are alone any more. They just think they are powerless and unfortunately, it sure looks like they’re right. Could we change this? Oh yes, yes we could. Will we? I doubt it. We’re full into the collapse of the United States and nobody seems motivated to do anything except occasionally stand on Marine Drive waving a sign and a flag around. This is how unimportant that is: the fascists are not even making lists. They’re not even bothering to counter protest. There’s nothing brave about protesting at this point: nobody cares. The fascists are just laughing at us, all the way to the bank.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged blog, heat, life, mental-health, photoaday, politics, weather | Leave a comment

Fear

Posted on June 8, 2026 by mygothlaundry

opened razor clams in a metal bowl — Sunday, May 31

an elk in a very green field, taken from the car and in the lower right corner is a side mirror very blue with a dog's head peering out the window — Sunday, May 31

I got busy yesterday – I got most of the courtyard planted and done, so I didn’t get to this blog. Here it is on a Monday instead! Let’s start right off with the week that was. On Sunday, as previously noted, I had clams courtesy of my clam diggin’ friend. They were delicious even though cooking them is always fraught because, eeeesh, I am not good at killing things. I’m not a vegetarian for my damn health, you know. Monday, here is Harvey looking interestedly at an inexplicably green elk. Harvey is, thank the gods, a perfect gentleman around deer and elk. On Tuesday, well, the next paragraph is going to be about Tuesday. This is the view from where I got my oil changed, though. On Wednesday I was in the college library conference room and this is the view from there. Thursday, osprey! Friday my daughter and granddaughter and I went out for a spontaneous very fancy and delicious dinner which we could in no way afford: no regrets. And it turns out that granddaughter loves clams and I love Negronis and all of us love Fede. This is the view from the pier. On Saturday, which is of course Caturday, Mr. Binks made his opinion known and on Sunday morning Harvey and I went to the beach for a lovely walk.

And now, let’s talk about Tuesday. This is the painting that is in the sonogram and procedure room, I guess you call it, at CMH. This is what I looked at while I had a sonogram two weeks ago that discovered a mass in my left breast. It is also what I looked at, or would have looked at except I had to lie in a way I couldn’t see it, while the very kind and competent and altogether lovely team did a sonogram guided needle biopsy in that mass last Tuesday. That was just as much fun as it sounds. They took four samples. Every time the needle takes a sample it makes a loud CLACK noise which they demonstrated beforehand but was still startling. It was not as painful as I thought it would be but it was not painless. Afterwards, I did not go to work. I went and got my daughter and we ate pastries at Blue Scorcher because for some reason I was starving all day afterwards. Fear, I guess. I have been in fear since the mammogram / sonogram that I had two weeks ago, the one where they found the mass. Then, in the afternoon, I went and got my car oil changed because that was overdue.

Because this is America, it cost me $100 to have the mammogram/sonogram. I have to always get a special mammogram with a sonogram because I have very dense breast tissue. Then, which felt a bit like adding insult to injury, it cost me $100 to get the biopsy. I have very good insurance which costs my employer quite a lot of money each month. Just in case you are lucky enough not to live here in the good old US of A and are foolishly considering it, consider that. I thought a lot, over the last two weeks, about how much it would cost if the results were positive (so weirdly backward, to say positive results for a negative outcome) and realized that it would probably ruin me. As in I would probably lose everything. Imagine that. What a great country.

But! It is all, I think, okay!! They called me on Saturday and the results were NEGATIVE! A positive outcome! I do not have breast cancer! They still want to do an MRI, because of the dense breast tissue and some weird ass symptoms I have been having, but I might not do it. I haven’t decided yet. Neither has my insurance, so this may be out of my hands anyway. And here we are. I get to live and not, hopefully, go bankrupt due to medical bills AGAIN, or at least not right now. And also Mr. Binks went missing for 30 hours and came home, which was also a huge and enormous relief. I love that rotten cat. And, I have said the word BOOB and BOOBS so much recently that I feel rather strange. It turns out that boob is the preferred nomenclature in the breast cancer world, which makes sense because breast is so formal and what are you going to say anyway? Tits? Bazongas? Boobs it is and yes, my boob hurt and then it didn’t and now I am just waiting for the steri strips that mark the x over the incision to fall off. Did you know that after every surgery, including a biopsy, they leave a little tiny piece of metal in you to alert future radiographers? Neither did I, but now I have two: one where my gall bladder used to be and one to say, no cancer here! It’s all okay!

And the courtyard looks pretty good. It will look even better in a month.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged aging, biopsy, breast cancer, cancer, dailylife, Health, life, photoaday | Leave a comment

Film Interlude

Posted on June 2, 2026 by mygothlaundry

a black and white photo of a huge tripod holding up a buoy; it is low tide and the whole thing is visible

2 black and white photos of a wooden walkway on piers in the water with a railroad track alongside

Black and white Ilford HP5 from the beloved half frame Chaika II which has clearly developed some kind of scrapey thing at the end of the roll, leaving a thin line across the top of the frame in a lot of these. That’s okay! It adds to the glamor! My glamourous life! 😀 These are not the best photos ever, sigh, but there are a couple that I think are pretty nifty. Yes they’re grainy or the scans are noisy, idk, it is what it is. I love my Chaika! Whooo film! Whooo 1970s soviet cameras! #crappycommiecameraparty

More seriously, this expensive hobby, or art, or whatever it is, really does make me happy. I wish I had access to a darkroom so I could print them myself, but in the meantime, there’s lightroom and I have given up feeling guilty about using it. I love the half frame diptych, the randomness of it and the juxtapositions that make more than the whole of 2 photos. I hope you like them too!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged believeinfilm, blackandwhitefilm, chaika, dailylifethroughalens, filmphotography, half-frame, oregoncoast, photography | Leave a comment

Clams

Posted on May 31, 2026 by mygothlaundry

A blurry child runs by the square blue wall of a house — Sunday, May 24

A deer in a green yard seen through a rainy car window — Sunday, May 24

A friend asked me to go clamming this morning, but she wanted to leave at like 6:30 and while I am in fact usually awake at 6:30, I am not usually happy about it. So I gracefully declined and did not go clamming but she brought me clams anyway. This was lovely. I like clams. My brother, on the other hand, is afraid of them, partly because at some point in his life he internalized a gout diet directive that strictly forbade clams and partly because, I have no idea, but I suspect a horrifying story is involved. It is okay. I ate his clams.

I got my brother a cheeseburger and I made the first recipe from this pdf, kinda sorta, and ate it on french bread, and it was scarily delicious and also, I recognize that I might die. That is the thing with shellfish. You might die. There is no predicting it. My father used to tell a story about a friend of his who ate a bad oyster and that was it, cut down in the prime of life. I will probably have a panic attack later but right now, full of clams – I ate a lot of clams, y’all – I don’t much care. It was worth it. Still, DOOM!

Well, DOOM! CLAMS! Clams also mean money, or they did at one point like a hundred years ago. Not really in my lifetime, although in my childhood it came up often enough in ancient cartoons that we got the gist from context. And money is no longer worth what it was just, oh, like two months ago? Or something? I got paid on Friday and took myself to the gas station, where it cost me $75 to fill up my tank even though I had a discount from the grocery store. Then I bought a very few things from the natural grocery store – not, mind you, the fancy good natural grocery store, the chain one – and that was $50. For 2 dozen eggs, 6 gallons of water in containers I brought with me, soap and a piece of salmon jerky for me and Harvey to split in the car. Doom, doom, doom, doom I sang in the car. Doom! Doom dee da doo dah DOOM! I have several doom songs I sing these days. If you have a bleak enough sense of humor you will find that the word DOOM just lends itself to all kinds of songs. Just swap it in. As the country collapses and runaway inflation takes full hold, the DOOM song gets louder and louder and louder. I went to Costco today. I’m not even going to say how much that was, or comment on how things have gone up another dollar since last week but I will say, y’all. $10 for strawberries in May seems a bit steep for, I don’t know, most of the citizenry? Things are getting dire around here and strawberries are not on the menu. We already eat beans and rice two or three times a week. There is not much more we can do. Our bootstraps are breaking with a terrible plunk sound every time another bill comes due. It is kind of like the sound I think it might make when somebody builds a six flags looking arena wall of death thing on the fucking white house lawn. Plink, plank, plunk, this is the sound of doom or a boiling frog.

On to the photos and the news from last week! On Sunday Four was at my house, helping with the garden by making a waterfall with the hose on the steps. She managed not to get soaked, which was nice. I am slowly trying to reclaim my front yard garden even though it is really just a circle of mint, rosemary and tall tall grass now. On Monday, which was Memorial day, it rained and here’s a deer. I love photos with raindrops. On Tuesday another deer, this one at my work with the full glory of the Columbia* behind it. Yes, indeed we do have a lot of deer here. That would be why my garden consists of mint and rosemary. On Wednesday I only took one photo and this is it: Harvey on the other side of the airport trail. Thursday, I went to two openings. This is the 8×8 show at AVA, Astoria Visual Arts (note my sneaky selfie) and I have two pieces in it. It’s a benefit show and you should go buy something to support them because they are awesome. The second one was the student show up at the college, also well worth checking out. On Friday I went to work and then when I came home I watered my pathetic kitchen pothos. Saturday, in a beautiful illustration of the triumph of hope over experience, I finally got my four tomato plants into pots. I planted them with hope in my heart even though I have been trying for seven years to grow tomatoes in pots in my courtyard and pretty much failing. There is just not enough light and it’s too damn cold. I know this, but I’m still trying. Maybe this year will be different! I’m only doing cherry tomatoes and two of them are specifically Oregon cultivars.

* Four goes to a proper hippie school as all children should and they have learned this song, so now it plays in my head every time I say Columbia! Gods bless Woody he had his heart in the right place even if we nowadays do not celebrate dams so much. If he was alive he’d be helping tear them down too.

So, doom doom doom notwithstanding, let’s all hope we have a good week. I have an extremely scary medical test on Tuesday, so send me good thoughts and well wishes, internet people, I need them now. Love to you all!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged aging, clams, dailylife, doom, food, inflation, life, photoaday, politics | Leave a comment

Uncertainty

Posted on May 24, 2026 by mygothlaundry

blue sky and clouds reflected in harbor water — Sunday, May 17

a fern grows out of a dark stone wall — Sunday, May 17

The week got a bit overshadowed by some shit that went down on Friday. I am going to vaguebook the hell out of it – I don’t really want to talk about it, I mean, I do, but also it’s just, well. It’s shaken me up a bit. Hopefully it will all turn out to be nothing – everything is uncertain right now – but I won’t know much for sure for probably, oh, six weeks. Possibly longer. I will say that the scariest four words in the English language actually turn out to be We’ve found a mass unless – and it’s a big unless – you are in the immediate process of running away from vampires, in which case, this is awesome news.

I am running extremely hard away from vampires right now.

In other news, as you can see from the photos, it is spring edging into summer and an old woman’s thoughts turn to birds. I live the cliche: yes, I like knitting and gardening and birds and the BBC. To be honest I do not knit much these days – I’ve been trying to finish a Norwegian resistance hat for months and months now and I’m not getting far. Probably because it is all ribbing and I not only hate ribbing, I suck at it. Not, alas, that you can tell that it is supposed to be ribbing, sigh. And the BBC? Have I talked about my weird project to watch all of the 1970s/80s/90s All Creatures Great and Small yet? I have given it up because by the time I got into the last season but one, I started to intensely dislike everyone. It was great for a while, even though the world has changed and 45 minutes of drunk jokes are no longer hilarious. Sexism is no longer hilarious either and I think that is what pushed me over the edge at the end. I have switched over to Poirot, because also British. I am trying to figure out how to get Shardlake, because I’m completely hooked on the books, but.

But, I am supposed to be able to get free Hulu through my TMobile plan. Cool. Turns out I was paying for Hulu already – of course I was. I think maybe I’m paying for all the TV channels in the world, despite the fact that I watch maybe, on a particularly dismal week, like 12 hours of TV absolute max and that includes hanging out with Four while she zones out to the latest 3D “animated” “fairies” “mermaids” “unicorns” “ponies” “dragons” interchangeable show – We rescue and we ride! (that will get stuck in your head, sorry, but it’s actually only a moderately terrible show.) Anyway, to get the free version I had to end the paid version which meant I had to find the passwords and, well, you know how this goes. 45 minutes later, after QR codes and texted codes and changed passwords and spinning in eternal circles, I admitted defeat and gave up. Today when I was at the grocery store, the cashier asked for my license to scan it so I could buy wine. Look, I am a grandmother and I look the part, Kroger, WTF? Just let it be. I said, why can’t they just save it attached to my Kroger card? Why can’t, I said, technology work to make our lives easier for once? And the cashier smiled wearily and we both sighed. People are getting fed up, with the tech bullshit and the inflation and the general sense that we are all doomed, DOOMED. And it’s about fucking time.

Photos of the week! On Sunday I met a friend for coffee at Coffee Girl and the reflections were amazing. Also we survived walking along Pier 39 but I am telling you, that walk is getting scarier every day and, I don’t know, but I think it should be closed to cars before somebody dies. On Monday I went to work; this fern is on my way. Tuesday I stopped to take my first 2026 pictures of the white pelicans! There will be many more! Wednesday, I walked the dog on the sawmill trail – in the background is one of two wrecked yachts that have been out there for months now. I guess they will just sink, eventually, and be small hazards to navigation or something cool for future marine archaeologists to discover. Thursday’s dog walk featured this heron – I keep seeing a heron at this exact place; I think it might be the same one – and Friday, I took the day off work since I knew I had lengthy mammogram thing in the afternoon. Friday morning it was cold and foggy and raining slightly and there were still other people on the beach at 8:30 am, argh. I need to move my introverted hermit ass and dog reactive dog to Alaska or something. On Friday evening I sat out by myself on my daughter’s porch for a bit, knocked back two canned cocktails in quick succession and had a nice chat with a deer. On Saturday which was yesterday I did not leave the house except for a little bit to drop off Four at her mom’s. There is pretty much always a deer in her backyard and that was the deer of that day. And that is that, another week of this cursed damn year in the can.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged aging, dailylife, family, life, photoaday, TV | Leave a comment

Hilarious

Posted on May 17, 2026 by mygothlaundry

Friday morning on the way to work I thought to myself, my stomach hurts. Your stomach, I said to myself severely, always hurts. I have these conversations with myself every time I’m in the car but always on the way to and from work. My car is basically my therapist. Yes, I said, my stomach always hurts but today, it hurts more than usual. Maybe, I hazarded, this is because yesterday you woke up at 6 and then you took your brother to the urologist and then you went out for coffee and then you worked for 9 hours and for dinner you had, first, in the car, a tiny can of tuna salad and four Ritz clone crackers. Then you had a large gin and pink stuff (thanks, tiki bar!) Then you came home and ate a piece of toast with peanut butter and five tiny antique vegan egg rolls from the depths of the freezer. Hmm, I said to myself, you may be on to something.

I laughed at myself for a long time that morning. I do find myself hilarious. It is a good thing to laugh at yourself, particularly when you are prone to overly dramatic statements like, I would rather die than go on like this. At that point you can say politely, isn’t death a tad extreme for, like, dropping an egg or having to wash the dishes?

There’s a lot going on right now and I’m feeling overwhelmed and ineffective. This is not unusual; it is, in fact, the way things are. It is possible that I need a more proactive therapist than a 2016 Acura. I also do need to learn how to manage my unruly digestive system better. My current plan is to only eat small amounts here and there. This is a good plan – it’s one of the things they tell you to do if you, like me, have GERD and a medium sized hiatal hernia and acid reflux. So far I have not been stellar at managing it. They tell you to do a lot of things and I have succeeded in doing one of them: I don’t drink white wine anymore. Turns out it is more acidic than red! I prefer red so that’s all right, although I suspect that this switch is, perhaps, not wildly effective in tummy management. It doesn’t really matter, because I have long been diagnosed as fat, and I can’t seem to do anything about that. I mean, every other year I starve myself for six months and lose 30 pounds. Then for the next eighteen months I eat everything in sight and gain 40 pounds. As a long term strategy this, I believe the technical term is, sucks. Also it’s insane and I do recognize that. But my therapist says it’s ok.

On to the photos of the week! Here is my crazy rose again on Sunday, May 10. On Monday, May 11 I met a friend for a glass of wine at Peter Pan; it was lovely to sit outside and drink wine like someone from a vastly more civilized nation. On Tuesday, May 12, I could not face making dinner so we went out to Fort George, which was also very nice and civilized. Wednesday, May 13, Harvey and I walked on the sawmill trail and discovered that these yellow flag iris were in bloom. They are invasive and evil so it’s okay to pick them although, damn, they resist being plucked with a mighty strength. They also grow in the mud, so this bouquet is evidence of extreme valor. If you see them, go ahead and take them. The wildflower that it’s ok to pick! Thursday, May 14 is the day from the first paragraph and this is from having post urologist coffee. On Friday, May 15 we went to the historical section of Fort Stevens, where this osprey, who has appeared in this blog before, has a nest on top of a column. Every time you walk by she gets upset and flies around screaming. This is unfortunately about as effective in deterring predators as drinking only red wine is in deterring acid reflux, because it means her nest is undefended – she seems to be a single mom – and there are a lot of eagles and ravens about. But I get it. Flying around screaming can be very soothing. Then on Saturday I took Four to a birthday party in Hammond and this wet and watercolory photo through the windshield was taken when I left. I like it.

May next week be, if not better, perhaps a bit calmer for us all.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged aging, dailylife, Health, life, mental-health, photoaday, photography | Leave a comment

Fleeting

Posted on May 9, 2026 by mygothlaundry

Two weeks of photo a day! Time is speeding up again, whipping by so fast I can barely keep track. That’s another thing you don’t find out about aging until you get there: the sheer speed of it. Weeks used to take, well, weeks to go by and now they are gone before you even really notice they are there. And then when you look back they seem to have happened to another person, far away. Time is fleeting, in other words, and I’ve got to . . . take control.

Sunday, April 26, Harvey and I went for a short walk near the Forestry department. Monday, April 27, my feral, unkillable, malevolent but beautiful back porch rose is in bloom for the first time this year. Tuesday, April 28, that’s the garden by the driveway; it really only looks nice in spring, but oh, in spring it is just so amazing. Wednesday April 29 features Mr. Binks in the sun in that same driveway. Thursday, April 30, I left work early to start my mini vacation and went. . . to the dump! Whooo! Livin’ large! I actually am fascinated by the dump and the seagulls and the whole. . thing. It’s incredibly gross but also, whoa. Look at all that horrible trash! On Friday, May 1, I took Harvey for a long morning walk and made a little triptych of the elk and the river. On Saturday, May 2 Harvey and I repeated that walk with Four. This is cheating, a little, because I didn’t take anything with the good camera, so I’m using a Friday photo and calling it Saturday. In a year or two I will no longer care one iota about this. Possibly much sooner. On Sunday, May 3, we drove down the coast to Lincoln City and this is the famous place in hmmm I think it is Nehalem Bay? Or Tillamook Bay? Anyway it is so beautiful and I usually don’t stop but because it was my birthday trip I did, and took a ton of pictures with all the cameras. Maybe I will swap this one out for film some day. Then on Monday, May 4, my birthday, here are technicolored starfish eating mussels and I love them so much. On Tuesday, May 5 I was back and walking the sawmill trail with Harvey. Wednesday, May 6 was Trantlerfest which is an odd little arts festival at the college where I work and the bubble guys were there. Thursday, May 7 I was extremely tired thanks to Trantlerfest (I am also ridiculously tired right now, thanks to Four, who woke up at the crack of dawn – and I think allergies are making me very tired these days) and thus Thursday, May 8 was a small walk by the other side of the airport. Friday, May 9 I went to a meeting at the MERTS campus and walked right into some kind of fire departments training exercise that looked like so much fun. Pretty much all the fire departments in the area were there, competing with hoses to push that ball back and forth on a rope. Which brings us to the weekend and today, which was the Master Gardeners Plant Sale and this is my haul. Now I have to go plant it all. Or I have to go to sleep, which would be better, but I am extremely caffeinated.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged aging, dailylife, photoaday, photography | Leave a comment

Birthday

Posted on May 4, 2026 by mygothlaundry

Hello! I am writing this on my phone from a deluxe motel room in Lincoln City, Oregon, where my beloved daughter and granddaughter have taken me to celebrate my birthday with a whirlwind mini vacay. It is fabulous. Tomorrow is my birthday and I am now as old as the year I was born, which is to say, one thousand nine hundred and sixty something. And I barely even feel 850.

It was about 80 degrees today, or at least it was until about 5; the photos in the diptych at the top were taken just three hours apart. There were people on the beach in, gasp, bathing suits! In Oregon! In May! It has never been 80 the day before my birthday, ever. Even when I lived in South Carolina.

So the weather was terrible and wonderful and, seized by the moment and the aroma of the seriously weird cake I was baking this morning – you know that viral thing where you swap the sugar for jello? Yeah, don’t do that – I packed like I still lived in South Carolina. T shirts and shorts and linen capris. That is how I ended up on the beach tonight in floral cotton pajama pants, a cotton dress with dogs on it, a t shirt, a hoodie and, thank the gods for anxiety, the emergency hot pink hat and fuzzy jacket that always live in the car. Yes I looked dangerously insane but, hey, I threw my shoulders back and said to myself, behave as if you are not just a crazy old lady but a world famous crazy old lady. So I marched down the beach in the fog and wind and crashing surf, found an excellent rock with a hole in it and had a glorious time.

Happy birthday to everyone!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged aging, climatechange, dailylife, oregon | Leave a comment

Short

Posted on April 26, 2026 by mygothlaundry

a photo of a small boat in a harbor blocked of by a metal sea wall. There are sea lions in front of the wall and a huge cargo ship called the New Era behind it. — Sunday, April 19

2 deer crossing a parking lot — Sunday, April 19

It was a really busy week at work and now even though it was supposed to be a quiet weekend, I’m feeling frantic and frazzled. Have you ever noticed that if, on the weekend, you do anything at all besides constant chores without stopping, nothing whatsoever gets done? Yeah, me too, and I’m sitting in a filthy house at 5:45 on a Sunday. The dog has barely been walked; the laundry is in process; the kitchen is completely trashed yet again and I have to go make dinner right now, then clean it up. Bah.

The photos of the day! Last Sunday I met a friend for coffee at Coffee Girl and saw this adorable little vessel. On Monday there were deer everywhere, including the campus parking lot. Tuesday, it was rainy and foggy and there was a late meeting, which was over faster than I thought it would be, whoo. Wednesday, I took a picture from not the campus but instead next to the Safeway. Branching out! Thursday I was down at the MERTS campus setting up for an all day open house on Friday and this is my favorite picture of the week. Doesn’t that lifeboat look like something from the Yellow Submarine? Another adorable little boat! It’s Peter Max! It’s cartoony! “Lot of people die in those” said my brother darkly when I showed him the photo. “They’re hard to launch.” And so it goes. On Friday I decided not to use a work photo for a change but instead here is Binks in front of Old Flattop, my pink azalea which is now square. I didn’t do it. Don’t ask. He come groovin’ up slowly; thank the gods I have not yet spotted mojo eyeball. And yesterday, which was Saturday, I saw these ducklings at the sawmill trail.

In other news insane politics continues apace – isn’t it FUN living in a post collapse empire? – and I hope to have more to say next week, although it will probably be either early or delayed, because I am (hopefully) going to Lincoln City for my birthday, which is Monday. We’re going on Sunday for a whirlwind trip. Maybe. I have a dark feeling it may not happen, but we shall see. I need a therapist or a psychic, I swear to the gods. Anyway, I hope for winning lottery tickets and castles in nice sane safe European countries for us all.

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