Jaci Dawn

Our locally owned and operated market is closing this weekend.

Danielson’s Fresh Food Marketplace has been in business for 100 years, 35 of those years in this location. It was a Thriftway for a number of those years, but pulled out of that franchise some time back and went completely independent. Danielson’s has always been an interesting place to shop: there was a full post office in the back where you could pay your utility bills, mail packages, and purchase money orders. The hardware aisle actually had real hardware. The seasonal aisle was always a full aisle, unlike the chain grocery stores.

And the local color shopped at Danielson’s, making it a fun place to go people watch. And you never felt like you had to put on your makeup to go shopping there because of that. (Probably made me one of the local color, too – haha!)

The news that Danielson’s was closing has hit the community pretty hard. Most of us were blind-sided by the announcement. It’s an icon.

It isn’t just the loss of the Danielson’s (we also have a Fred Meyer, an Albertson’s and a Haggen Grocery, and Safeway is moving in to replace Danielson’s): it is the loss of the little post office, the immediate jobs lost for the employees of Danielson’s, the loss of the other stores in the Hilltop Mall and where will our library go?

The folks at Penny’s Hallmark right next door took the opportunity to retire and close their doors completely. Hollywood Video is hanging on, but they will have to close their doors soon, too.

And the library. The library is in temporary housing in the same mall, just a different corner of the building. And it will have to move out ASAP.

I have never been happy with the library in this location. It seems (I could be wrong) that since the library moved here in 1995, that it has been plagued by lack of funding. For years, it was only open four days a week. Every library levy that came up was voted down. Talk of a permanent home for the library has been impeded by voter’s apathy and city hall’s lack of direction. We finally changed how we fund the library and they recently upped their hours to five days a week.

But we’ve been no closer to a permanent home than before.

And now Danielson’s is pulling the rug from under the library.

I wouldn’t be so het up about it except my favorite librarian told me something: city hall and Danielson’s have known about this impending change for some time and they just sat on it until a few weeks ago.

Darn and double darn. So I did what I could for the library and joined the Friends of Oregon City Public Library finally. I should have done that years ago, but I kept forgetting to. Good intentions gone bad.

All these changes. Good, bad or indifferent: it is still the end of an era for Danielson’s, for the look of our dumpy little Hilltop Mall, and it spells a lot of changes for our library. And that is the news from Oregon City.

When you are a young mother, life goes by you in such a daze of weariness, diapers, feedings, and laundry. You don’t have the time to observe and cherish the little changes. They just are.

Grandmothers get a little more slack: life is still speeding by, but you do not have the diapers, feedings, laundry and over-all pregnant/nursing mother weariness.

The boys are changing so rapidly now. Javan (when he hasn’t got a pacifier in his mouth) “talks” constantly. He rarely has a pacifier, so he talks a lot. He wants to stand and walk, but he hasn’t perfected crawling out. Who needs to crawl when you are the King of the Breast stroke on Hardwood floors? He never scooted backwards: Javan has always had a good forward thrust to the flailing of his arms and legs and he can scoot across the floor on his belly almost as fast as Michael Phelps can swim the length of an Olympic-sized pool doing the same sort of breast stroke.

It’s amazing.

When I bring my camera out, Zephan is convinced that I have “babies” in side of it. He wants me to turn on the viewer and show him slide shows of himself or his brother. “Babies!” He doesn’t understand that I want to take photos, not look at them on the camera.

Zephan loves stories now. If Baba sits down for a minute, he begins to regale her with this refrain: “‘Tory? Rawrs? Monsers? ‘Tory?”

One night this week, we sat on the stairs and read so many “Little Critter” books (by mercer Mayer) that Baba began to lose her voice.

Javan has no fear. He will dive off the sofa or the bed or a safe lap. He crawls between the legs of an 85# dog that is clueless to the precious human scooting across the floor. He does it all while smiling.

He dives into Zephan’s “choo-choos” (the Duplo blocks) and dismantles them.

He looks around with wide-eyed wonder and amazement.

His Baba is pretty amazed by the substance that is Javan: the wriggling, reaching, laughing, cuddly little boy child.

“I know you have babies in there, Baba!”

Fortunately, the battery died and I had to put the camera away. Because there was no getting a candid photo out of this single-minded little boy.

He pushes my little step-stool around the house and climbs up to look onto the counter tops. Trash is picked up and hauled to the kitchen sink, “Tash. Tash.” Open the cupboard and let me throw it away.

He picks up baby bottles off of the counters and climbs back down, “‘Cycles?” Recycles. His father says we have brain-washed his child. If we have, it’s a good brain-washing. Zephan knows what is recycles and what is trash.

Don’t say the word “help” around here. That gets the broom out. “Help?”

And for goodness’ sake, never end the game unless you are prepared to deal with a two-year old size temper tantrum. Zephan is never as tired of the game as everyone else and he is that focused.

Ah, little ones.

I am so glad they belong to their mother.

Oh. One more thing. In about 25 weeks, there will be one more.

Now that she is used to the idea and past the disappointment of having three under three, Arwen is secretly hoping it will be a girl.

A pair of galvanized nails peer out from under a layer of lichen on the fence.

Trivia: did you know that moss does not necessarily grow only on the north side of the tree? If you were to get lost in the rain forests of the Pacific Northwest and used the moss growing on the sides of the trees as a directional, you’d walk in circles.

Just saying.

Good fences make good neighbors.

I don’t know if that is necessarily true, but I can tell you about the fence around our yard. To the north we have an elderly neighbor widow who is not terribly social. She’ll speak if she must, but for the most part I get the impression she just doesn’t want to talk to us. I chalk it up to age and paranoia. She was friends with the people who lived here before us: the ones who remodeled this house but nearly lost the peony gardens in the process. We’ve brought back the peonies, but haven’t done much for the remodeling. We also don’t attend the same church, which is probably most of it. Still, we are on congenial terms and have had no problems sharing a fence.

Directly to the west of us, we share a fence line with two different neighbors. The north end is a 12′ fence that belongs to them but is leaning dangerously into our yard and is constantly overgrown with ivy and some noxious creeper that we tear down off of our side of the fence every year. They do nothing with their corner of noxious weed except to let it grow. All we really know about them is that they love yellow labs and have at least one in their yard all year. Their dog barks more than ours and howls, but it isn’t obnoxious. It did try to dig under the fence last year, but we put up boards and haven’t had any issues since. Murphy doesn’t seem to know it exists, but he’d likely welcome the company.

The chain link fence neighbors hold the fifty feet of western fence on the south end. They are renters and keep pretty much to themselves as well. We were not sure how we were going to like them as one is a “collector” of junk, but the sister moved in last summer, cleaned up the yard and landscaped a beautiful vegetable garden. The brother owns a pit bull that plays along the fence line with Murphy. They used to have a German Shepherd that did the same, but we haven’t seen the shepherd for months.

I have a theory, however: they had company one fine summer day and this company brought a pet bunny over. The bunny and the shepherd were left alone in the backyard together. It did not end happily for the rabbit (but at least the rabbit did not escape to our yard and end unhappily in our yard). We never saw the German Shepherd again after the infamous deceased bunny episode.The pit bull seems friendly enough and Murphy likes it as well as he did the shepherd.

The fence to the east doesn’t border anyone else’s yard: it merely faces the front yard with an imposing height and two latched gates.

And the south fence is co-owned between our neighbors Bob & Virginia and us. Bob & Virginia will stop and gab awhile if we all happen to be out at the same time. Bob & Virginia are long since retired: he was a professor of art at the community college for many years, specializing in welding sculptures.

To the north, the neighbor’s yard is a manicured garden with roses, rhodies, boxed-in beds, small flowering trees, and a neat lawn. She pays landscapers to keep it mowed & weeded now, but for a time did it herself. Before she did it, her husband did all of the yard work. The yard was what her husband left her when he died.

Bob & Virginia’s yard is bare ground under tall fir trees, no rare plantings or pretty flowers or weeds to worry about.

Strange sculptures sprout from the ground. I feel weird taking photos of their yard to post on the internet, so you will just have to believe me about that. I love Bob’s artsy yard. Low maintenance, high iron, interesting to look at. Virginia’s cat perches on the roof of their house and teases Murphy.

Good neighbors. Or at least not bad ones. And certainly not weird ones.

Good fences.

Today’s photo of the day was an accident.

There are four squirrels in the photo. At one point in time, three were in the feeder at one time and that was why I grabbed my camera: to try and capture that. Sadly, I missed that photo op. I still thought I only had three squirrels out there when I snapped this one.

Then the squirrel in the tree (upper left) jumped from the tree to the rhodoendron and onto the house before it ran off.

Where’d he come from!

The squirrel on the ground followed shortly afterward.

The two still in the feeder are veterans.

Looks like old Rooster Cogburn & his mate.

He ducks for one last jawful of sunflower seeds.

He must have some vision in that eye because he was looking at me as I approached.

And there he goes. The mate was too busy stuffing her greedy face to be bothered with escaping.

Just in case you did not locate all four the first time. Two in the feeder, one on the ground and one peeking around the trunk of the tree.

Now there’s no seed left for the birds, but our squirrels are happy.

I have been drinking plenty of fluids and sleeping a lot so I do not have much to post. I did get a photo for the day and that is about it. And, no, it is not another photo-shop job of my poor nose.

It’s the ceiling fan.

The strange perspective of waking up and looking at the grey-upon-grey-upon grey layers of the ceiling fan has always intrigued me. The symmetry is relaxing to me. Comforting.

Five blades, flour lights, and a grey that is almost pale blue.

Just a snap-shot of my life.

I am feeling better (the node is not ad plugged, if you know what I mean).

TTFN

Jaci

So the photo ob the day is ob my node:

I am going to drink plenty ob wadder and get plenty ob sleeb.

See you tomorrow.

It just takes a couple comments to remind me how everything will be all right and how we’re all in the same boat.

It is all right to get melancholy but it is better to remember that we are surrounded by people who appear to have it all together who are actually sinking.

I am thankful I have a lifeboat of good and wise friends to keep me afloat.

Now that I have said that, I want to segue into my photo of the day (which has to do with high seas and clipper ships). My analogies were accidental to begin with, then I couldn’t help myself. I just started drowning in them.

Stop it, I mean it!

Anyone want a peanut?

Photo of the day:

It is a 6x4x2″ wooden box made to hang on the wall of an office. The little door opens to hide items. My flash kept bouncing off of the little match-box size “book-ends”.

I think there are actually some gummed patches inside the little box labeled such, and they are probably as old as this little desk organizer is. I have no idea how old it is or what it might be worth, but I think it is pretty cool. And I love the clipper ship.

Thank you to my friends for being the “wind in my sails.”

Have a great evening.