bad day/good day

You're 13 minutes into a 7.5 mile run (on your way home after a half-day at the day job b/c you have to pick the kids up from 1st grade and preschool b/c MM is away at a retreat for a few days to be present as teacher for a local writing/publishing institution), needing to cross the street. You look left over your shoulder and see a biker approaching making your immediate crossing not possible. God fucking dammit motherfucking asshole you think. 

The biker slows, is talking to you. What the fuck you think as you pull your earbuds out. 

Hey man, he starts, some woman stopped me and made me find you. She said you dropped a bunch of stuff from your backpack, a ways back. You nod and say thanks. This isn't news b/c about half a mile back, as you were crossing the train tracks at the W end of the Tillikum Crossing bridge you noticed that your backpack had come slightly unzipped so you threw it off quickly, noting that your pants and work shirt were about to fall out and speedily threw them back in and zipped up before continuing down the path. This biker must be working on behalf of someone who saw that and is now showing unnecessary concern. Biker moves on. You stop your running app. You've been running 13 min and 30 sec for a total of 1.2 miles. Just as a precaution you take your backpack off to take an inventory. 

It's been one of those days already. Lack of sleep b/c daughter up a couple times in the night, up again at 5:45 AM. Groggy cognition. A heavy pot in the drying rack falling into the sink and breaking a wineglass, spraying glass shards everywhere kind of morning. You considered not even doing the run but you're training for a 1/2 marathon next month and you need to stay consistent w/ the training. Open the backpack: pants, shirt, undershirt, work ID badge, keys. All seems good. Wait. Wait. Where's the wallet? You check all the pockets. Can't remember exactly where you put it when you were changing in the locker room at work. It was in with the pants and shirt. Fuck. You double check. you triple check. 

A pregnant woman dressed in black approaches. She's the woman who stopped the biker. She said she saw a shirt and some headphones on the ground back there. The headphones, fuck. These are the heavy, cover-your-whole-head headphones you listen to on the bus to work. They're not in the backpack. The woman is apologetic for not having more details. She motions to her six or seven month belly and says she is running late for an appointment. You are so grateful and say so. 

Moments later you are walking back the way you ran. You can picture everything laying there. You must have been too hasty re-packing the backpack when it opened accidentally. You must have been embarrassed about your exposure to check thoroughly. You feel the gentle stirrings of panic in your belly. All the shit you'll have to cancel, all the dominos, forms, more forms, reapplications.

You attempt to still your mind. More than likely nobody did a thing and all your shit is laying there. This is Portland after all.  As you approach the intersection you can see something laying in the middle, just south of the train tracks. It's...your underwear and socks. Fantastic. No wallet, no headphones.

After walking the promenade back and forth, looking everywhere to the side you call MM and check at a nearby Starbucks. MM calls the credit union to put alert on cards. Starbucks says nope. You inventory to MM all the cards you had in that wallet: our shared cc, your filmmaking cc, 2 cc's particular to The Black Sea (long maxed out), your DL, your SSN card.

You find yourself in a nearby Cha Cha Cha asking the slightly gruff server about a wallet. He says nope. You find yourself noting the hillside littered with tents and makeshift canvas domiciles, skeevy and sketchy. You find yourself walking into a parking lot, pretending to be in the middle of a heated conversation on your phone so you can get eyes on the 3 homeless individuals huddled by a transformer next to their canvas-tethered shopping cart, to see if your headphones are around their neck, or if your emptied wallet is on the ground.

You call MM and decide to abort the run. Take the Orange line back home. You are starting to feel your stomach pulse with self-loathing. Why didn't you take more time to check your backpack you dumb fuck? You check your phone repeatedly. Nothing. You google yourself in aim to see if someone reasonable could track you down online. They could. But no one is calling, no one is emailing. You realize that a reasonable person would probably have just picked up the wallet and called you. A person with sketchy intent would have grabbed the headphones and wallet. You lost it at a heavily trafficked area, filled with Max, Bus, Street Car, Tram, nearby freeways. Anyone with ill intent could be long gone. That SSN card and DL together have merit. Lots a person could do. You google what to do if you lose your SSN card and the result is not reassuring. There is mention of someone using your SSN to buy property, to file false tax reports, to create fiscal accounts. You begin to panic. MM tells you to calm the fuck down. Get off at the Woodstock iteration of your credit union. Go in there and tell them what happened. Tell them you are home alone for 3 days w/ the kids and you need them to issue a debit card. There are pix on the wall of the credit union showing the business that existed in this same space in 1974. There are 2 people laughing on a bicycle in black and white. Their ghost/s must be here right now watching me. 

After credit union you talk to MM waiting for the 75 bus line to take you all the way home. Fraud alerts are filed. SSN alerts are filed. It's been 90 minutes now since you lost the wallet. You curse the dirty, skeevy homeless people who no doubt found your wallet and claimed it for themselves

On bus home you have moment of brief relief, thinking of non-attachment and identity. What could be more tethered to manufactured identity than a wallet, filled with signifiers, both accepted and invented. Maybe this is a good thing you think. There will be a pain in the ass ahead but maybe a good thing. Moments later you realized your day job business card was in your wallet. You call your colleague and ask her to check your voicemail. She calls back saying there is a sticky on your computer screen, left by the reception team: a woman found your wallet and has been calling non-stop. There is a phone number. The woman has the same name as your sister. You laugh in the driveway as you walk up to the front door of your house. 

You call the number. The woman says she is a runner too, was running and found the wallet and headphones, didn't know what to do. She grabbed them and took them back to work. She shares that her wallet was stolen some months ago on a business trip to Chicago - endless hassle trying to fly home and cancel cards - and she felt like this was karma, an opportunity to erase the negativity of her experience by one good deed. You agree to meet up to retrieve the wallet.

You call MM and laugh. You apologize for blaming your problem on dirty skeevy homeless people.  Your problem was your own. Your problem is your own. Your problem is part of you. 

Moments later you are in the basement, quality checking the DVD for your first feature film. You watch reluctantly having seen it a billion times in a billion forms. Your plan is just to watch a few minutes and then jump ahead but you get pulled in. It looks great, sounds great. Can it be that part of you is actually proud of this film, proud of what you made? These are strange sensations. Who are you? Having the DVD be almost done is amazing feeling. A long long road for a multiplicity of reasons. Shot 5 years ago, written across 10 yrs, intersecting with a person you used to be, the ghost of your intentions. 

You pick the kids up from elementary school and preschool. Lose your temper b/c they aren't listening. Later you will accidentally spill an entire bag of frozen blackberries in the freezer. Later you will attempt to get a peach out of a bottle for your kids and inadvertently tilt the bottle and pour sticky peach nectar across the floor. You will laugh about this. All part of a shitty day.

But then:

Later your father will tell you the oncologist has given the all clear. 

Later your sister will share some amazing, shimmering soul-stirring news. 

So, later you will decide to write it all down before you forget it. 

Before you forget about context and proportion.
Before you forget that two sentences of good outweigh paragraphs of bad. 

Before you forget about everything being an ephemeral puff of smoke. 

Here and then gone. Gone and then here.  A train arriving, a train departing. 

Your own ghost stands over your shoulder in 100 yrs, looking back/forward at you and laughs so fucking hard you can just about hear him. 

i hate you budget

Okay, so many years ago, for reasons to complex and intertwined to get into fully in this space i got into semi-severe credit card debt. (this is separate from the student loan debt that currently follows me through each decade like a spurned lover). The short version of the after-effects goes like this: enrolled in credit counseling, got on a payment plan, ripped up credit cards. This is all prelude to this fact: I do not have a credit card. I have a debit card that carries the imprimateur of Visa, but it's not the same as having a per se credit card. This can at times along the road of life be a problem, like when renting cars.

Since we knew I'd be in Atlanta all by my lonesome (ie, no credit-card carrying wife to hold my hand) we had to do research to find the rental car companies even willing to rent to someone without a credit card. The options were slender. Finally, we found a Budget that happened to be near S's house, on Roswell Road, where I could, on Sunday, pick up a rental car (so as to drive to Asheville NC to visit my friend Will). Prodded by my nervous nellie-ness, the wife called Budget to confirm that I'd be able to get the car without a credit card. Yes, was the answer, provided that I bring a copy of a recent paycheck that had my address on it. Done! Budget would use my debit card to take 200$ as collateral for the car which they would refund upon return of the car. The grand total would be 36 dollars for 24 hours. Fine. The day before flying to Atlanta I printed out two of my recent pay stubs, as well as a copy of our car insurance. "Watch" I joked to the mrs "I'll show up and they'll say 'oh no, who told you that?' and I won't be able to get the car!" We laughed and laughed.

CUT TO:

Sunday. Atlanta. Noon. S gives me a ride up to the Budget on Sandy Springs. I have a long drive ahead of me - 4 hours worth -  and am eager to get on the road. I enter the Budget, knowing that everything will be fine but having the dark background sneaking suspicion that it won't.  I show the clerk my confirmation number. I show the clerk my paystubs. The needle scratches off the record. "Oh no" she says "you don't live locally". Um no, I say, that's why we called ahead of time. "I can't accept that". She allows me to come around the counter to use her printer to print out a copy of my boarding pass. She will accept that. Okay, fine. Everything good. All we need to do now is get the 200$ deposit off my debit card and I'll be on my way. The needle scratches off again. "Your card is denied" she says. What, I say. "Your card is denied" she says.  [side bar: the card denial instantly brings me back to years hence, when in the thick of financial woe i was routinely denied, or rather my card was denied, in moments that i thought i was covered, which in turn bred a sort of distrust of anything positive related to $, meaning that i was always waiting for the other shoe to drop while my interior voice was slicing and dicing me. all of these emotions swelled up in this instant] In a panic I call the mrs. She pulls up our account on her laptop. She verifies that there is a substantial amount in our account. I say to the clerk, can you try the card again? She says "No I have to wait 24 hours". You're kidding me, I say. "We can only run the card once. Because of phishing" she says.

I am at a loss. It's Sunday so I can't call my bank. I call the mrs. We don't know what to do. I say to the clerk, Can you take my wife's credit card number over the phone? "No, she has to be here in person". I say to the clerk, Can I give you 200$ in cash. "No, no cash".  I am starting to come to terms with the fact that i won't be able to drive to Asheville and see my friend. My heart is sinking. Then S comes in with her credit card and exceeding generosity. Here's the plan: we will transfer the rental to S's credit card, she will add me as an extra driver (for $13 extra dollars for Budget's trouble) and then when i return the car I will pay for it from my debit card. S will shoulder the deposit and the risk that something happens to the car. Thank you. Thank you. Get me out of here.

CUT TO:

that night at an ATM in Asheville North Carolina. I am eager to see if my card works. it does. i extract 40 bucks. no problem. I am befuddled and confused at Budget's card denial. I look over the paperwork: I left their lot at 12:45pm. I can't tell if I can return the car anytime the next day or if it has to be by 12:45pm.

CUT TO:

the next morning, monday, I am driving back to Atlanta. I am going to head straight to the airport to return the car. I have one eye on the clock, thinking I'll need to be there by 12:45pm. I don't know if I'll make it it. I cross the Georgia state line. I use my ATM card at a gas station. Denied. I sit in the parking lot on hold with the bank for probably fifteen minutes. Worried about time I finally get back on the highway, still on hold. About ten minutes later, someone comes on the phone. I explain the situation. "Did you let us know you were going to be in Georgia?" they say. No, I said. "Ohhh, that's the problem. Georgia is a high-risk state" they say. "Card is automatically protected in Georgia" by which they mean I can't use it. I tell them that I used it last night in North Carolina. Apparently among its merits NC can claim to not be a high-risk state. I tell them I am worried because I'm an hour from the airport and I need to pay for the car. They say, "we'll activate it for use in Georgia".

CUT TO:

hartsfield airport. 1:40 pm. I return the car. Since I am almost an hour late, Budget has helpfully pro-rated my 'over time' to the tune of $16.50. Also, since the car was not returned at 12:45 they helpfully added the second driver charge for another full day, to the tune of $13 (or a total of $26 for two days). What was originally quoted as 36$ has tripled to 89$ for 24.95 hours. I hand them my debit card. By this point, I find myself thankful that it works so Budget can take more money than they would have got if I only had a credit card.

Okay, so the careful reader will rightly determine that if I had the foresight to let my credit union know that I was travelling to a high-risk state - provided i knew that GA was in fact a high-risk state - that perhaps there would have been no problem. However, the inflexibility on Budget's part (can't re-try credit card, can't use another credit card, can't use cash, must arrive to the minute) worked in concert with this to create a stunningly and singularly unpleasant experience. Thanks Budget.

buckle up

there's a yappy 6am dog. there's the long adjustment of new house.  there's a overly concerned neighbor fretting about flora crossing property lines.  there's boxes yet unpacked. there's a memoir about a brain tumor that has to be worked on daily to get to target date. there's the newness of landlord-ing. there's a video project that looks great in application but won't export properly which necessitates chopping the project into 3 parts, exporting each part, reimporting each part and editing together to recreate single part which naturally incurs a loss of image veracity on each iteration. there's another project that has a drop-dead date that also fails to export correctly and which has both personal and professional repercussion. there's a tiny stove catching fire on 'broil'. there's upcoming travel for 20th high school reunion, and all the subfloors and compartments therein. there's upcoming travel to celebrate a decade of marriage. under it all, there's a long-term project which encounters new levels of difficulty around each turn. and there is, finally, the struggle to recall that it is all - every bit of it - a gift.

last day of mercury retrograde

mm is away this wk at a writing residency (you can follow her exploits here) which means it's great week for me to lay on the couch and watch a lot of movies. i've been going at a noble clip if i do say so (see below for one example). still the absence of one person can upend the daily routine a bit - the wake times, the dog walks, the meals, the cleanliness, you get the idea - and i came to realize this wk just how frequently i'm on the computer or checking the computer or walking near the computer so as to check it for any sort of email update or blog update or social network blog twitter feed electronic whatever update. it alarmed me. so yesterday morning i made myself actually turn the computer off (as opp to 'sleeping' it) and agreed w/ myself to leave off for a 24 hour duration.

i did it. went swimmingly. no issues. came home last night and felt
the faintest tingle of desire to turn it on but i resisted. walked the dog, prepared dinner, watched movie. all fine.

then this AM i go to turn on computer, an imac, and, after startup chime, i hear 3 quick sonic blasts, indicative of something out of wack, repeating. a loop of computing error blasting in triplicate w/ all the urgency of a submarine nuclear launch. computer will not start. looping will not stop unless I turn off.

fortunately i have laptop. was able to naviage to apple service and type in info and receive a phone call. they schedule me to come to apple store
downtown, in the mall, 2 blocks from my work at 115. since the unit in question is a 24 inch imac i have to box up, put in car, park car in parking garage downtown, decide whether to tote unit to work or keep fingers crossed and leave in car until 115. i keep fingers crossed.
as soon as i get to work i take $ from atm in anticipation of parking garage payment which will be close to 15 bucks.

not too long after getting in to my cube i am instant messaged by mm, who has noted my recent atm withdral and who urges me to not use the debit card until friday, when the mortgage clears (note: yes, she tracks my every financial step and movement b/c, she keeps saying, we are in love and tethered together and, especially, b/c i am not good with numbers or equations and therefore it's in our own best interest to not allow me to have serious financial responsibility so i am instead allowed a small sum to walk around with per week. it's a compromise, marriage)

so, for hrs i'm sitting in cube, counting down until i can go back to parking garage on my lunch break. finally lunch comes. and i go out into the world. when i return, over an hr later, i compose and send the following email to mm:

went to garage on my lunch break
retrieved heavy box w/ imac in it.
walked it across the street to apple store, which was swarming.
they had no record of my appt.
finally we determined it was under your name.
i was told to browse for a few minutes until called.
finally called.
it's either ram or logic board
both of which are parts they don't have in stock. 2-3 days at earliest.
had to leave it there.
got parking validated
figured i'd drive up to library to return dvds
and then try to find one of those 5 hour parking spots
couldn't find one but found a 3 hr one.
pulled up and realized that they charge 1.60 an hr
which is ridiculous considering i'd have to run back out
at 5pm to move the car again and i should have
just left it at the garage. plus since you told me that mortgage business
i don't want to use the card. keep in mind i'm starving
and keep in mind i have to be back in the office at 2pm for a conference
call. it's 150pm. i decide to drive across hawth bridge, park and take the 4 which doesn't arrive until 2:05.
i walk up to my building, starving, hoping for a burrito
but the burrito man is packing up
i'm sweaty b/c i didn't shower this AM b/c i was running late
so i'm stinky and tired and kerfluffled.
i get back in office at 215, preparing to apologize profusely
but there is no conference call. cancelled.
!
xo

...we've been selected in this beautiful lottery...

it is of utmost importance to remain grateful, to recall the finite nature of breath intake, the ticking clock that tocks as you're sitting here. It is imperative to recall this when the mechanics of daily life intercede, say, when you go to pick up a pharmacy order that was a week late in arriving - despite info to the contrary - and you're told that the cost has tripled for no reason and is now so pricey that you cannot afford it so you have to tell them to send it back or, say, when moments thereafter you go to pick up your freshly-repaired car at the mechanics b/c they fixed the steering column and shaft after thieves took the car from your driveway last week and you start the car and it doesn't sound right so you look under the hood and there's smoke and radiator fluid 'coming thru the seam' so you have to leave the car there and get back in touch with the insurance company to alert them that the thieves screwed up the engine as well. these are moments when frustration, anger rise familiarly but you have to beat them back. it is a gift to stand here. you are lucky to be breathing.

pursuit

was profoundly moved by "Anvil! The Story of Anvil", a perfect encapsulation of the risks and returns of committing yourself to the artistic life. (Or maybe I can just relate a little too much to the rigors and annoyances of day-jobs while what you want lies elsewhere). There are no guarantees. Getting what you want might not look the way you envisioned. And so on. At it's core is a pursuit, spanning decades, a pact between two friends, endless tests, stumbles, setbacks and every once in awhile, soaring. Highly recommended.

celebration

mm and i have started a new sort of ceremony wherein when either of us receives some sort of creative blunting or rejection (be it for a grant, a publication, a contest)that we will celebrate. this is not merely to be ironic or to keep us from self-pity but also to in fact celebrate the fact that we're still trying to do what we want to do.

yesterday's celebration was a sort of benchmark in a way b/c we were both flummoxed and agitated by the rejection of mm's essay, not just her. Granted the essay involves the first wk of my diagnosis and how we handled it so i am probably over-protective since i'm in it. Also, it's taken from our memoir-in-progress and getting the essay published in a respected literary journal would be a boon so i have a stake in its success. All that aside though, it was the note they put on mm's rejection email, citing how impressed w/ the caliber of the writing, how stunning her 'scalpel-like insight's were to them but that ultimately they had to reject it b/c the essay was 'too familiar'. Familiar? Too freaking familiar?! Argh, my rage is rising as i type this out. Isn't every possible topic for an essay or a story familiar? It feels like a cop out. A dodge.

i mean, it's certainly their prerogative to reject whatever they want to reject. Of course. But to single out mm's insights and talents as particularly compelling and then reject them b/c of subject matter? What is she supposed to do w/ that information?

i am certainly biased in favor of mm's writing (and prone to both hyperbole and mythologizing) but these buffons are the Decca Records of the literary world. They will be sorry. They will rue the freaking day.

okay, i feel better now.
onward.

tickle of depression

sat out in the autumn sun on my lunchbreak today which was a beautiful thing (bonus: mm driveby) except for the fact that i'm reading an incredibly disturbing book about invented illnesses and the egregious medical marketing techniques used to promote cure of said illnesses except that often the word 'cure' is misleading at best, utterly false at worst.

so anyway, that's not enough to ruin someone's day. but that combined with the idea of drinking rocket fuel is. plus that and the idea of the regulatory agency (the FDA of course) set-up to protect us from the dangers of say, BPA, being utterly useless could start to tug at your mood. (particularly since the FDA's lack of regulation in the pharmaceutical industry is featured in the book i'm currently reading).

but then reading about pigs being abused and raped in factory farms. yep, that'll do it. all these things congeal and harden and leave me a little glum. what kind of a freaking place is this?

update: mm just informed me about cannabalistic polar bears. mood not improved.

the wknd in reflection

went to JAW at pcs this wknd to check out (for free) some play bits in progress. only got to see 3 out of the five (1 on sat, 2 on sun) but left feeling satisfied – if by satisfied one means ‘not needing to see any theatre for awhile’. now granted they were in progress, ie you expect some rough patches, some inconsistency. what i didn’t expect was the gut-punch insufferableness of one of the pieces (the 1 on Saturday), which had me groaning by minute five and begging for holy mercy at minute seventy-five. In current incarnation it is an abomination I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. some lobby murmurs afterward confirmed I was not alone.

Sunday saw the storm large musical-in-progress and found it oddly compelling. I could give eff-all about her but the piece manages to kind of showcase her talents. it’s a straightforward narrative, easy to follow, plus the songs are pretty memorable. the piece suffers perhaps from cohering too stridently to biography but whatever. they have some time to work it out apparently….also Sunday afternoon saw “pony” by sally oswald which I completely dug despite not being certain I fully grasped it or not. I understand the spirit of it and that’s good enough for me. Heard people afterward grumbling about a vague ending but I thought the ending was awesome. strong acting too.

Elsewhere, Saturday night we went w/ B & C to Reed for the last night of the annual tin house conference. a celebrated writer was coaxed out of hiding to give the closing reading so it was supposed to be a big deal. Now maybe we were spoiled by last yr when TC Boyle read (he being seemingly engineered to speak hilariously in front of adoring audiences) but said celebrated writer was awkward, un-entertaining, and most depressing of all, read a piece that he announced as a trifle. In short, it was an epic flop. I can only imagine, had I flown across the country and paid $ to attend the wk-long conference like most attendees, that I’d still taste the disappointment.

total failure, total letdown

i ran the vancouver bc marathon on 5/6/07
and i have not run a step since. at least i hadn't until two days ago.
and then someone convinced me to do it. here i was, this close, so close to coming around the bend and making it a full year since running but no, i couldn't do that right could i? i just had to run again, didn't i? pathetic.

the crash(ing)

they all said it would happen. they all said count on it; it will occur and there's no way it couldn't. margaret had hers about a year ago, after we moved into the alder house, shortly after returning from boston, after her role as 'caregiver' had been rescinded due to the good fortune of my health. she was in a daze, a fog of exhaustion, depression, heavy-limbed and unsleeping; a point where i currently find myself residing.

it makes sense in a way: after the giant time and energy-consumers of buying the house, running the marathon, going to paris etc, further paired w/ a sort of
stronger willingness to emerge from the cocoon of living day-to-day and trust
the infallibility of strong numbers there would have to be some type of
external reaction. a depth charge exploded deep under the ocean dark 2.5 yrs ago. Living in that world came equipped with the comforts of an automatic schedule,
a framework of points and margins against which to measure progress, experts to rely upon, to pour faiths into, specific tests and scores and quantifiable goods and bads.

now, finally surfacing, a clenched fist uncurling slowly, back to the real world, the everyday life, the mundane and routine and the peculiar position of trying to be grateful for things, even if they're annoying. the miracles of drawing breath and beating hearts. certain things cannot be reconciled, you just have to live among hazy realizations, you have to accept things, you have to continue - not in spite of them, but because of them.

in any case, this picture was taken in boston in nov 05, after my 34th and penultimate radiation treatment for my brain tumor.

homeowning, joy's of - concluded

so, if you've been following along,
margaret and i capped the sprinkler system. you can see the
video of that below if you're so inclined. we have been
getting our water - since the lawnmower incident - from
a temporary line that was put in by a Water Bureau employee
and when i say temporary line, i mean a hose that runs from
the meter box at the curb over the sidewalk and across our lawn
into an outdoor spigot, which has been closed off to allow
water to enter into our house.

since the entire ordeal was stressful and further since we did the work
ourselves w/ no plumber involved and further yet since the last time
we did the work it necessitated calling the Water Bureau back out b/c the employee
who came to check determined that we had not capped properly (which was in fact the case since when the water was turned on at the street water sprayed into the yard from under the cap) left our water off but took the temporary line (!)
necessitating us calling the after hours Water Bureau crew back and dealing w/ a crusty dispatcher who eventually sent us the guy who put our temporary in in the first place, etc etc --- we were nervous about having the temporary taken away.
But you can't live all your life w/ a hose running across your yard and sometimes you just have to step up and put in the call. Yesterday afternoon, I put in that call
and we returned home that night - margaret went to yoga so she picked me up - somewhat trepidatious about how it would go.

Sure enough, when we pulled up the hose was gone. The temporary was out.
We set our groceries on the table and went to the basement to turn the main water valve on. We ran up to the tub to run the water for a couple minutes, to let all the sediments and whatnots drain out. We turned the knob. Water.

Gushing beautiful flowing water! Lush and potent and gushing and signalling an end to this chapter of homeowning, to this cruel initiation and rite of passage and ha ha we made it through okay and...wait...wait a second, water slowing, water slowing, it's trickling, now it's just dripping. okay, it's almost stopped.

We must be doing something wrong. Take it easy. No big deal.

Back to the basement. The valve closed and reopened. A variety of sinks tried.

Same thing. Only a trickle.

Baffled and befuddled we trundle to the curb, toss up the meter box and - armed w/ screwdriver and crescent wrench - turn the meter. Maybe they left it turned off? Maybe that's the way they do it? We run back in, trying all variety of combination of street meter and main valve in basement and this sink and that sink etc etc etc but nothing is working. Our hearts are sinking into a swell of frustration, aided in part by our cat tearing through plastic to eat the tops of several slices of bread in a recently purchased loaf that didn't get put away b/c of the water drama. What cat eats breads?

Margaret phones the water bureau to see if maybe we're doing something wrong. The same crusty dispatcher answers. He has limited concern and patience for our mini-drama, clearly not interested in sending someone out but after several back and forths and have you tried that's and is your main valve on he reaches his breaking point and submits to send someone. He takes down our address. Wait. Wait a second. Are you near Powell? We are. A truck hit a fire hydrant at powell. There's no water for anyone near there. It'll be hours until the water is restored.

Ha ha ha, we laugh as we walk Maxwell through the neighborhood, down to the park, what are the chances on the day we call to have the temporary taken away that there's some water casualty in the neighborhood and we have water we just can't get to it yet? Ha ha! Just our luck. A continued part of the lesson plan. No big deal. Nothing to fret about. We'll wake up tomorrow morning and I'll go out to the curb and turn the meter on and we'll have our glorious water. Everything will be just fine
and so why don't we go get dinner after we drop maxwell off and...wait...wait a second....

As we're walking up the hill, back home, we see a Water Bureau truck pulling up. Impossibly it's the same guy who has been out twice before to our house. Yep, it's him, getting out of the truck just as we're at the front of our house. Hey man, we say, HA HA we just talked to your dispatcher and he shouldn't have sent you out. But you don't have water, he says. No, no we say, it's okay, there's that accident on Powell so our water's shut down in the neighborhood. That accident has nothing to do with you guys he says. It doesn't? No, you're nowhere near that accident. There's something else the matter. There's something else wrong. Now why don't you tell me exactly what happened when you got home. A vague sense of something bad is flashing through us. Something bad is coming.

We tell him exactly what we did when we got home. This valve, that sink, this meter. Hmm he says as he takes his instrument and turns on the meter forcefully and asks us to run inside and try the water now. We do. Same thing. A trickle.

Back outside. Uh-oh he says. This could be bad.
Bad? Bad how?
There's a plug somewhere in the line. It could be anywhere. He thinks. He thinks. He's reaching the bottom of his bag of magic tricks, the point in the transaction where you have to hand off the problem to another person or agency. Wait. Let me try something.

CUT TO:
moments later, armed with a cache of plumbing instruments and pipings, he has rigged a hose to blow backward through our line - the idea being that whatever sediment/mud/whatever is clogging it will get flushed out. If this doesn't work you'll need to call Risk Managment and see if they'll pay for any/all of your troubles. This triggers an image in my mind, the bloat of City bureacracy and endless forms in triplicate and no end in sight but before i let despair in I think, why not wait and see if this works, this crazy jerry-rigged backwards waterline blow-out thing. It..just..might..work!

My man is ready to go. A valve is turned, some water is ejected. But no plug. No.
No. Nope. It did not work. No, it did not. The ship has left the shore, the door has closed, hope a mere indulgence. Visions of an uprooted yard and endless phone calls come to roost on our shoulders like black crows. A new line will have to be put in. A plumber will have to be called. Money will have to be minted to help us cross this vaccuum, this abyss, this inky black endless swamp that i created w/ my careless mowing, my thoughtless clomping across the yard. Tiny black seeds inside me are sprouting depression as...

He is not ready to go.

He asks to come inside and look at the basement. Seconds later
we are standing down there. He is looking at the main valve. Thinking. He is looking at the main valve where the pipe comes from outside and curves down in an S shape at
the handle. Suddenly, without warning, he knocks on the pipe at the S with a few sturdy clangs of a crescent wrench and we both hear it, he and i: the water flowing though the house.

proof (video)

homeowning, joys of - part 3

sipes is our friend who knows things about houses and we’ve called upon him say 100 times since we’ve moved in for questions about this or that or this or that
so we were hesitant to go straight to him in
this instance but what choice did we have?
he came over.
snipped the sprinkler head off and capped it

problem done.
all we had to do was let it dry for 24 hrs and
have the water bureau come to take away their temporary line

CUT TO:
us at home the next Tues, awaiting the water bureau. they want us
to be home when they come just in case there is any issue and they have to turn the water off. they don’t come.

CUT TO:
WED am. no show. I go to work assuming they’ll come that night.

CUT TO:
WED PM. margaret has bicycled home and is hot and sweaty and in
need of a shower that she cannot take b/c the water
bureau has come when we were not home and turned the
water to the house back on and realized that the sprinkler head
was still leaking so they turned our water off and took
away the temporary line, leaving us with no water on the
night before a holiday that’s supposed to reach 90 degrees. margaret is not that joyous. nor am i. we don’t know what to do.

I call the main water bureau dispatch line. tell him what happened.
he does not appear to care and tells me I’ll need to get a plumber
to fix the problem before the water is turned back on. I tell margaret this. She does not accept it and calls the guy back. “Yeah, I just talked
with your husband” he says, grumbling at her as he eventually
capitulates. They will send someone back out but they have
a VERY busy night and it may be HOURS and HOURS b/c
there are higher priorities ahead of us.

When I get home I got out to the street and turn the water on
and sure enough water starts spraying from under the cap we put on the sprinkler. we didn’t cut down far enough in our haste. there’s nothing we can do about it now b/c it involves taking out a coupling
which is involved and beyond my skill set.

a couple hours later, a guy shows up and it turns out it’s the
first guy who helped us out on Sunday. He says no one can
believe that the other guy took away our temporary water. “Who would do that?” he asks sincerely. We do not know. We are as befuddled as he. but we now have water. we can take showers.
but we don’t. we get dressed and head out to have dinner
w/ sipes and his folks who are in town. we will shower later.

TO BE CONTINUED

homeowning, joys of - part 2

so margaret and i return home, armed w/ all the
possible equipments we'll need
and a vague sense of what it is we're to do.
since we could care less about having a sprinkler system
(sorry dad) and since we
cannot find the shutoff valve,
despite the previous owner telling us that they
installed one. we've elected to
cap the leak. this is as opposed to installing a shutoff
valve ourselves. this is - we understand -
the path of least resistence.
this will make our sprinkler un-usable but it will stem the
rising tide of grass and mud and let us return to our lives
of quiet dissatisfaction and box-unpackings.

all we need to do is dig down a couple feet to find the T
where the sprinkler line meets the main line from the street,
use a hacksaw to cut the pvc off, apply some
adhesive onto a pvc cap, apply the cap and let it dry.
then we'll call the water bureau 24 hrs later, have them
take away the temporary line and hook us back up.
problem, solution. nice. easy.

CUT TO:
2 hrs later. our hands are calloused and sore. our necks
are red and sizzled. our demeanors are approaching joyless.
we've dug up a sizable portion of the yard, following
the pvc piping, looking for the T but nothing, no hint
or sign, only more pvc snaking underground. we've gone past
all the logical points for the pipe to come in.

it is time to call sipes

TO BE CONTINUED

homeowning, joys of

THE SETUP
so we've been adrift, awash in boxes and bookshelves and
things that look good in one corner for a few hours and
then need to get moved and an out of tune piano
and the pets who still are adjusting. in the middle
of all that/this chaos is the grass, uncut for so long
that we now must be the talk over coffee on our street,
the new neighbors whose yard looks like crap
dandelions sprouting.
the catch: even if i wanted to mow the lawn
the mower is locked up in our new shed the keys to which
i wks ago misplaced or set down or tossed haphazardly into
a box or shelf that i cannot find any longer.

CUT TO:
Sunday 10 AM. W/ Margaret away for a couple hrs to do yoga
i figure i can score some husbandly points for taking the initiative to
cut the grass. I call brian and cheryl and borrow their push mower.
i walk it back to the house.
it works real good but it only takes a few minutes for me to realize
that the lawn is too far gone. the push mower can't handle the
dandelion stalks and the sun is beating down already.

CUT TO:
moments later. I am unscrewing the hinges from the door to the shed
to extract the lawnmower. It takes a bit of exertion but
i manage it. the lawnmower is free, sitting on the driveway.
and there's gas in it. but will it start?

CUT TO:
moments later. it started. I am mowing the lawn. i will be done with this
in a few moments. margaret will come home and maybe
we can go for a hike up mt tabor and then go to breakfast? no, maybe
we can ride our bikes to breakfast somewhere and spend the
day in leisurely fashion: some lounging, some reading, some more unpacking, easing into our status as homeowners on this, the 4wk anniversary of us moving in.
one half of the front yd is done and i cross the path that leads
to our front door and begin to mow the other half. I push
the mower alongside the tall grass that shoots along the brick
siding at the front of the house and that's when it happens:

i blindly slam the mower into an unseen sprinkler head.

a moment.
then

water.

not a light spray or mist (as the word sprinkler might suggest)
but a steady rising mass, spreading up from some unknown
depth, spreading across the lawn,
paralysis. i stare. it's running down the walkway into the street.
not drops of water
but an insistent gurgling organism, spreading. moving. growing.
what to do?
who to call and what dollar figure is attached to what phone number?

CUT TO:
mad scrambling ensues, a dash for some type of handle or valve or person
to stem the flow but nothing comes. nothing works

CUT TO:
margaret calling on the phone. not now i say

CUT TO:
margaret coming home

CUT TO:
us trying to turn water off at the street, the meter spinning and spinning
as gallon after gallon goes. we don't have the right tool.
we don't know what we're doing. we are freaking out.

CUT TO:
Water Bureau emergency employee pulls up in his truck. laughs when
i tell him what i did b/c he's done the same thing recently. turns the water off
at the street. gives us some advice for fixing problem. sets up temporary line
so that we can have water until problem is fixed. He is a life-saver. don't let it ruin your sunday he says

CUT TO:
margaret and i later, at genies having breakfast and coffee. it is 3pm.
we will go to hardware store. we will buy 3/4 inch cap for pvc and
a shovel and some adheseive. we already have a hacksaw. we will go home
and dig a trench until we find the T where the line from the street meets w/
the sprinkler line. we know more than we did an hour ago but not as much as two days later

TO BE CONTINUED