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More Disclosure – Jaci and the Great Jean Revolution

April 25, 2016 by Jaci Dawn

The year was 1972. I’d given up my bra, much to my father’s dismay and discomfort. (My mother supported me, bad pun not intended.) I’m flat-chested, so it wasn’t like I gave up much. Still, girls were sent home from school for going braless. Sadly, no one noticed I was braless. Not even the boys I had crushes on. (Oh well, life goes on!)

I’d arrive at school and meet up with my best friend, Janet. We’d then trade shoes – hers were always more comfortable than mine and she swore mine were better than hers! I wore her shoes to school for almost 4 years.

When the winter winds plummeted to minus some bizarre degree, like -32 Farenheit, we were allowed to wear “slacks” to school. Slacks being defined as “something polyester and in horridly bad taste, but which match the top you are wearing, and with tasteful shoes, preferably ‘feminine’ shoes with high heels”. Walking home, facing a North wind that feels like -32 Farenheit, in polyester “slacks” was as bad as walking home in a short skirt and nylons. You might as well be naked. Most women of my generation are fortunate to have survived winter without freezing to death in the 5280-foot long hike home, uphill both ways. With drifting snow.

Pioneer women at least had long skirts, petticoats, and leaky boots.

We waited with great excitement for those winter days when we could wear pants – er-“slacks” to school. No voyeurs waiting at the bottom of the stairs when we tried to walk up them in our mini-skirts! No frozen knee caps because our “Little Prunes” hose wasn’t wind proof.

My Sophomore year in high school was rife with rebellion. We hated the Viet Nam war. Our generation was defined by the events of 1970: the court-martial trial of William Calley for the My Lai Massacre (exonerating higher-ups), the Kent State Massacre, Woodstock. You were either a fan of Merle Haggard or you were burning your draft card. There was no middle ground: For US or Against US. In short, it was pretty much what we have going on right now in the political atmosphere of 2016. You can’t be a moderate. You’re either for Trump or for Hillary.

Hillary still wears those horrid pant suits of the 1970’s. I’m just pointing that out, not making a political statement… but if you want to know what we looked like in 1970’s pant suits… Hillary didn’t get the memo.

(You can still vote for her and I won’t judge. I won’t ask, either, because I still believe in the secret ballot.)

Anyway, flash forward to the last day of our Sophomore year at White Pine High School, Ely, Nevada. Seriously, we were not on any political map. News stories had been carried by every major news channel of high schools in major cities exercising their right to disagree with dress codes. Some won, some lost. Nearly all have returned to dress codes, but that’s beside the point. We had the opportunity to be leaders in a revolution that changed how schools looked at boys (long hair) and girls (denim jeans).

Now, by definition, “jeans” = Levi’s or Wranglers or Lees to me. At least it did then. I bought my jeans and poured bleach on them and cut holes into them (you pay big money for that style nowadays, but I achieved it with a minimum of expense and not too much complaint from my mother about the waste of bleach and money). Bleach is cheap, even today. My sister and I honed our sewing skills by adding handkerchiefs to the outer seam of our jeans in order to create bigger bell-bottoms. Hip huggers were our favorites (couldn’t pay me money to wear them now!).

There was a “walk in” protest by the boys, protesting school dress codes regarding the length of their hair. The boys lost that year, but by 1973, long hair was allowed. Native American and fellow artist, Jamie, wore his hair waist length when I was a senior, That would never have been allowed prior to the rebellion of 1972.

The girls decided to stage a walk in protest regarding jeans, scheduled for the last day of school in 1972. I selected a pair of my favorite jeans: fashion bell-bottoms with triple red stitching on all the seams.

During our homeroom period, Mr. Neanderthal Himself (PM me classmates if you want his name. He taught Sociology and History and he and I hated each other), announced that “any girls wearing jeans should excuse themselves from class now and rejoin us when we actually check out.” I decided, on a whim and in an instant, that my denim bell bottoms with triple red stitching on all the seams did not “actually” meet the definition of jeans. I decided – on a whim – to challenge Mr. Bigot.

All the other girls in jeans left the class. A scattering of girls who did not favor the revolution or who were (like me) too timid to confront the Establishment, stayed. We had to rise up and walk to the front of the class to check in our books. I swallowed and stood up, walked to the front, checked in my book. I maintained a straight face and made no move to attract attention to the clothes I wore (no bra, by the way). Mr. S. never even looked at me!

By the time we all met up in the hall to finish out checking out, I felt like I had wings. Other girls crowded close and whispered, “Why didn’t he kick you out?” I have no answer to this day. I made a stand and I refused to back down. Little introverted me. I was scared. I didn’t want my perfect record of being a little-miss-perfect ruined, I also did not want men to tell me how I should dress. I ached for the freedom to choose.

In the end, the Great Blue Jean Walk In was probably considered a loss. Girls were expelled on the last day of school. But it was no loss: in 1973, at the beginning of the year, it was announced that the school dress code had been dropped. We could wear jeans whenever we wanted to.

However, the length of miniskirts would continue to be monitored. And for once, I support that policy. Most of ours were crotch-length. Yeah. Pretty much a BAD idea.

Rock On.

 

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Full Disclosure

April 24, 2016 by Jaci Dawn

Dear Children (and probably half of my friends),

I want to explain to you why I am not as excited about or as upset over transgender bathroom use. No, I don’t want to convince you that I am right. I just want to explain that a different perspective sometimes happens out of personal experience. I am not trying to assuage your concerns or even trying to make you think like I do. I’m merely explaining why the issue doesn’t freak me out like it does so many people. Please understand that this is not a “I am right and you are wrong” sort of post. It’s merely a post about my history, and an insight into my experience that has led to my way of thinking.

I may be wrong. But you may be wrong, also. We may both be wrong. And, for the record, I don’t need scripture thrown at me to prove a point. I’m well versed in scripture. Thank you. I’m just telling you a story.

The year was 1974. I was heading to college. I wanted an art college that stood out, I chose Ithaca College in New York, but added Grinnell College in Iowa as a Liberal Arts back up. Ithaca rejected me. Grinnell accepted me with a small scholarship. It was all about demographics: I was probably the only student from the State of Nevada to apply to Grinnell and they had a policy of accepting students “from all 50 states”. SAT and ACT scores  aside, sometimes what matters is what minority you are from, and my minority was Nevada.

The big issues facing college campuses in the fall of 1974 were “how coed should we go” and “desegregating Black students”. The gay rights movement was just beginning to get a toe hold in the world. Most colleges were answering the desegregation question with broad sweeps of policy changes that put a band-aid on an oozing sore. Coed questions were conservatively answered by inserting womens’ dorms and mens’ dorms onto colleges previously reserved for one gender. Those colleges that were already coed took a breather, or took a bolder step by segregating men and women by floor in a single dormitory. Gasps could be heard across the nation at the brazenness of this action.

I was 18. WASP. Small town America. Token Black and token Queer by community. Innocent. Daughter of Republicans who voted for Barry Goldwater. The first generation of 18 year old’s to get to register to vote. I registered as a Democrat (I’ve gone back and forth with that in the past 41 years).

Grinnell College was a miasma of the political climate. There were dorms which were strictly men or strictly women. Some dorms were segregated by floor: men on one, women on the next. And at least one dorm was segregated by room: men in one, women in the next.

My first semester roommate did not work out and I transferred to a new floor and roomie. We were on one of the experimental floors, where rooms were segregated by sex. There was a Neo-Nazi guy across the hall, a bluegrass musician (and his girlfriend when the RA’s weren’t looking) next to him. My roomie and I, and some gal next to us on the other side who knew the real Captain Kangaroo. On the other side of us was a radio DJ. There was one bathroom and one set of showers.

Someone posted a paper plate on the doors of the restrooms and showers. There was a little arrow you could use if you needed privacy. FEMALE. MALE. TRANSGENDER.

I kid you not. The radio DJ was transgender (and he was one of my best friends in college). I didn’t know that at the time (that he was transgender) but I did know his friendship would help me survive college.

I always thought there should have been a fourth choice: Bluegrass Band. The bluegrass musician across the hall used the shower stalls for practice – with his entire band. Great acoustics. If they weren’t practicing in the showers, they were in the stairwells. They did a stirring rendition of “I’ll Fly Away” that I will never forget.

My point is this: I never blinked. I assumed that I could share a restroom with men because I’d shared a bathroom with my brother and my father throughout my childhood. I wasn’t keen on sharing a shower with any sex, so I appreciated the option of selecting FEMALE when I took a shower (always choosing a time when no other woman was in there – I’m just weird that way).

I figured out who the transgender was soon enough. It never changed how I viewed our relationship. I wish I could remember his name. He was funny and he was sincerely one of my friends.

So if I don’t get excited by the whole transgender bathroom issue, you now know why. I’ve been there and done that. I’m surprised we’re having to have this conversation 42 years later. I don’t think transgender people want anything more than a place to pee. I doubt sex offenders will jump on this (but I’ve always been naive). If you are sending your child under the age of 13 into a public bathroom alone, then… Um, don’t. Please. My kids, by the time they were 13, were pretty worldly (and they were homeschooled).

I get that there’s a fear of perverts using bathrooms to troll for victims. I don’t know how to address that fear. I’m just telling you my story.

On an aisde: I’ve been to a number of women-only events where there has been a huge line at the ladies’ room during the break. I am one of the women who has no qualms about branching off to use the men’s room. There’s not men at the event, right? So why not? Yet, I have known many women who would not.

My point is this: if you presently share a bathroom with a man: brother, father, son… Shrug.

Now you have my story. I don’t ask you to judge. Just to understand that I have a different opinion engendered by my own past. I am still open to your point of view, without judgment. I honor your concerns. I only hope we can move forward in such a way that everyone – no matter how they identify or what their heritage is – can eventually find Christ (which will offend my heathen friends – can’t win. 🙂 )

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It’s Three in the Morning. You’re Fast Asleep.

April 23, 2016 by Jaci Dawn

Keep this recipe: 1 quart hydrogen peroxide + 1/4 cup baking soda + 1 tsp Dawn dish detergent.

I post that just in case the reason you are reading this blog post is because it is 3AM and you’ve been suddenly awakened by the night’s crisis. You won’t have to read through the entire blog to find the recipe. There it is.

“Jaci, Murphy’s been sprayed by a skunk.”

I sat up in bed and said, “Huh?” But I’d heard him. He didn’t have to repeat it. I needed to pee, so I stumbled to the bathroom. UGH. That’s where he was keeping the dog. OMG. He brought the dog in the house. Somehow I managed to do what I needed to do and escape the bathroom without letting the dog loose or losing my sense of smell forever.

I charged upstairs to my computer and typed in a few key words, scanned the first three results, made mental notes, and bounced back down while listening to my husband explain the situation. We only had a pint of hydrogen peroxide.

Back up the stairs after I shoved my husband into the bathroom with his dog and a mixture that was more of a pint+ quarter + dollop than it was exact measurements. Read that you can substitute watered down vinegar. So, back down the stairs, and mixed a pint of vinegar with a pint of water, then dumped in a quarter cup of baking soda. One pint boiled out and over the counters and down onto the floor. The remaining pint got passed into the bathroom before I cleaned up the mess.

It was three in the morning.

No tomato sauce. I made my own last autumn and froze it; we’re fresh out. I passed a can of tomatoes with green chiles through the door (“don’t get it in his eyes”).

One more weary trip up the stairs (after having mopped the kitchen floor with an old towel). “Then give the dog a bath in pet shampoo.”

I opened the bathroom door in time to see the dog shake tomato mixture and water all over the walls. “He has to have a regular shampoo now.”

“But the drain is plugged with tomato pieces…”

UGH. Three in the morning. One roll of paper towels and a full wastebasket later, I let them resume their shower routine.

In the end, the dog smelled fresh. He had taken a glancing blow, and the bonsai trees in their pots had absorbed the greater part of the spray. The dog wanted back out. NO.

I spent a restless night. Tried to sleep in the loft, but the smell drifted up and through the closed window. The bedroom window was open: the smell drifted around the house and wafted in through the window. I closed the window. I dreamed of skunks. I got up at 7:30 – on a Saturday! – and made coffee. Husband was still snoring. This time, I let the dog out. And smelled the reek all along the bonsai trees by the back door.

We won’t talk about the smell in the bathroom.

At least, I’d washed all the towels and out clothes. I poured more soap in and ran them through the washer, again.

Later, I washed all the walls in the bathroom with soap and water, then with a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and baking soda. Don burned incense. The oil permeated the room, but it smells better. Either that, or my nose is inured to the aroma now.

What happened was less miserable than “what could have happened” (just in case you are now chuckling at my misery, which I know you are). The dog – Murphy – cornered a black and white cat in the yard. One of my little garden fences separated them. Donald had to haul Murphy off of the cat. The cat escaped, alive (and, hopefully, unscathed). Half an hour later, Murphy spied what he thought was the cat back in the yard.

That smell. I don’t know when it will wash off of the bonsai trees or the fence or whatever the skunk got before the blast hit Murphy in the face. The house still has a slight musky odor to it.

Here’s the recipe, again: 1 quart hydrogen peroxide + 1/4 cup baking soda + a teaspoon of Dawn liquid dish detergent. Don’t try to purchase it all at one store. Spread it out. Also, it doesn’t work well if your dog gets a direct hit (Murphy was lucky and scored a glancing hit). Don’t let the dog into the house. Personally, the dog deserves a cold bath at that point. Also – wear clothes you don’t care about when you bathe the dog. I’ve heard you may never get the smell out of the clothes.

It doesn’t hurt to toss in some tomato sauce.

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Wasp and Bee Proofing the Bird Bath

April 19, 2016 by Jaci Dawn

Alternatively: Some people have too much time on their hands.

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I have this bird bath. Well, I have three bird baths, but two are of rough concrete and seem to pose no hazards to the bees, wasps, flies, and other insects that drop in for a drink of water. This one gives the insects trouble, possibly because that’s a ceramic bowl I purchased at Goodwill to repurpose the wrought iron plant stand into a seasonal bird bath.

Last week, I rescued one wasp from the water, twice. Poor creature was so panicked that I thought I could see the whites of its eyes. Maybe that’s an exaggeration, but I could definitely sense its fear. It was drowning.

I have tried placing a heavy wire or long twig across the surface, but inevitably, some bird lands on the outer-most part of it, thinking it’s a solid perch, and – whoops! There goes the branch (and the startled bird).

My husband made some suggestions last night, and we laughed at the ideas. Today, after dinner, I sat down with a few tools.

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Thin copper wire, a set of small loppers, and matches. I then started lighting the matches. I lit 15 matches, all told, and let them cool. Once cool, I snipped the heads off of all of them and picked up the wire.

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Huck Finn would be proud.

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Huck Finn would be freaking out if he could see this. It’s a one-of-a-kind life raft for bees, wasps, flies, and other insects that cannot swim.

Oh, but I was not finished.

I cut up some foam board and soaked the paper off of the sides. Added a little red thread.

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Now, birds can hop in and take a bath without worrying about the bar across the bowl, or about the unstable false perch. And bees, wasps, and other insects? They can never say we didn’t throw them a line.

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Drying Clothes on a Clothesline

April 17, 2016 by Jaci Dawn

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There’s an art to this. Drying clothes on the clothesline is never as simple as it looks. You have to know *how*. Hang it wrong and you will never get the wrinkles out except by ironing. Certain fabrics of the modern world require extra steps.

Let’s start with towels because this is the one I hear most people complain about: they don’t like line-dried towels because the towels feel “abrasive”. I love line dried towels, but that’s an aside: don’t like them? Still want to help the environment by line drying them? Toss them into the dryer with a dryer sheet for fifteen minutes after they are dry on line.

Don’t like stiff blue jeans after they’ve dried on the line. Read the line above.

Cotton and other shirts or blouses that wrinkle easily? Toss them into the dry for 15 minutes before you pull them out and put them on hangers to hang on the clothesline. No ironing needed.

Hang t-shirts and other shirts from the bottom, never the top. Don’t stretch the fabric. If you’re hanging a man’s tuck-in shirt, you need four clothespins: two for the very ends of the shirt and two for the seams – you stretch the shirt out (but I really recommend the 15 minute toss in the dryer & a hanger to avoid wrinkles).

Jeans? If it’s really hot, you don’t need to pull the pockets out. Otherwise: pull the pockets out.

Don’t like your bedding so crisp? You’re a wimp. Okay, I get that. Toss the dried sheets into the dryer with a dryer sheet for 15 minutes. (Really, get over it, please!)

Pants: four clothespins needed. Hang the pants from the legs, never the tops. Two clothespins per leg. Depending on the fabric, you may have to roll the pants through the dryer before hanging them. What’s the impact? 15 minutes in the dryer vs. 45 minutes? You do the math.

I prefer ALL of my clothes dried on the line. I’m older. I remember crank telephones. Get over it.

I’m an expert on line drying clothes.

 

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torn

April 10, 2016 by Jaci Dawn

We have had some perfect weather here, and I am torn between finishing my decluttering/deep cleaning project (I only have three rooms left, and the stair well) and working in the yard. You know the yard is often my priority. I love my yard. 100×100′ of potential for native plants, insects, and bird habitat. But I also want to get my home decluttered and deep cleaned.

What a dilemma.

I gave in and worked in the yard for two or three days, edging flower beds and trying to get ahead of the persistent grass. I also took a few hours out of my Saturday to level rain barrel #1.

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I just want to pause here, because I see it on Facebook all the time: it is *not* illegal to collect rain water in the State of Oregon. It is encouraged. I purchased this rain barrel through the county I live in. (The other rain barrel was a freebie when we got new rain gutters installed.)

I noted that the milkweed I planted last year that never grew tall enough to flower *has come up again* this year. I will have two milkweed plants this year (not counting what I will plant this year and hope to grow). This is very good! In a few years, I should be good to host Monarch butterflies and relive my youth.

I also worked a little inside the house. I still need to deep clean the hall way and I need to hang the photos of all my kids/grandkids there. I laid them out on the floor of the kitchen a month ago.

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I do want to state here and now that photos from Instagram do not enlarge well. My children need to invest in a real camera. But I will take what I get. ;-P

016Easter got put away and the corner of the landing has been rearranged. I’m probably very needy, posting photos of my home staging. (It’s really that I am just very visual.)

010The glass mushroom was created by a fellow artisan and friend, Marjorie. I love it. Pewter unicorn – Goodwill for $1.99. Dill in his Treasure Trove – created by me.

007Dragons hiding in the shrubbery – also created by me. This is Mom and her hatchlings.

024This is: “I really don’t know how to display all this stuff/junk/collectibles”… I do want to hang the deer skull on the wall sometime, but what do I do with all the cast iron/mechanical/whatever trivial items?? Can’t part with.

026I don’t know why I took this pic, except to highlight what I DO do with my available wall space. Everything I can. For the record, the saw is a painting of Old #40 on the Old Ely Ghost Train before it was wrecked. The hawk is by Frewin – and if I can ever google what it is worth…

Anyway, that’s just a visual of my life. I’m sore in a hundred places and tired in several more. It doesn’t seem like I’ve done that much, but I surely have.

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I Have A Question

April 7, 2016 by Jaci Dawn

Do you tell your kids about your life in the 1970’s? I mean: the drugs, free sex, the gay rights movement, the communes, and drinking under the age of 21? Kent State? Anti-war protests and still loving Merle Haggard? Do you go back further, and tell them of watching the Watts riots on TV (or live, if you happened to be there)? (I grew up WASP: White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant)

WHAT do you tell your kids? Or blog about, to your present audience, who may be rather settled and conservative? A lot has happened since those days. You’ve changed.

But you changing doesn’t change that you lived through that stuff. My Lai and the subsequent government cover-up (think “Ben Ghazi”).

McGovern vs. Nixon.

Where you stood in the anti-war stance.

Marijuana, Oregon, NORML, and the beginning of a movement to decriminalize a drug that should never have been criminalized?

Your father cursing your sister for the pot seeds she planted over the fence that never grew?

What do you tell your kids about the Seventies? Michael Jackson? Sit ins? Nuclear power protests?

Earth Day?

I grew up in a Leave-it-to-Beaver home, but we were surrounded with child abductions. I had my own close call. Or two. I remember a movie and a “lost” couple asking for directions. Hell, I remember a pimp in Nashville.

Gay rights.

LSD dreams (not mine, sorry, but I know peeps from my gen who had those).

How much do you share?

For me, it is full disclosure. It happened. This is where my head was at during that time period. And, yes, I sang “Give Peace A Chance” on the college FM station at midnight (before FM was commercialized). I just wonder what other peeps share.

And, of course, what my kids would like me to share. My life is public. Full disclosure. Just let me know if you want to know why the following song has great meaning to me (other than the death of Jimmy Van Zant).

 

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An Easter Tale

March 27, 2016 by Jaci Dawn

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Many, many years ago, we were upstanding members of an up-and-coming megachurch in the Portland metro area. Pillars, I believe the word was. Mostly, we were the lackeys who did the work while others got the glory, but that’s OK. If we hadn’t been the lackeys, I would not have this story to tell.

Pastor came to me and asked if I could find a lamb for Easter Service. A living, breathing lamb. I guess he thought I could create a miracle and find someone who would loan me some poor lamb, separated from it’s mama for 48 hours, just so he could create a visual explanation of Jesus as the Lamb of God.

I knew – because I grew up in sheep country – that lambs were already a few months old. We’d be lucky to find a small one. I also had a source, and I called him up. He made arrangements with his aunt, and I was soon in custody of a pure white, very frightened, and un-weaned lamb. I had a bottle, formula, and nowhere to keep the critter.

We lived in a singlewide trailer and we stuck said lamb into the bathroom to keep it away from the dog, cat, and to contain all the little pellets in one space. The lamb cried all night. It got diarrhea. It wouldn’t take the bottle.

We got the lamb to church, but it was hardly pristine. I hid it in the dressing room for the baptisms, and I gave it a much-needed shower. It still had diarrhea and it was still refusing the bottle.

Pastor wore a white shirt. His wife came to me and told me to make sure the lamb was clean because we didn’t want any thing to soil Pastor’s shirt. I thought… “Seriously?”

Somehow, that lamb managed to make it’s debut in front of a crowd of 5,000 without shitting. It stayed calm in the pastor’s arms and only bleated a couple of times. It’s five minutes of glory were over and it pooped all over the shower. I scoured, cleaned, and loaded the poor thing up in my car, and beat it back to where it came from post-haste.

No happier lamb has ever been known than that one when it saw it’s mama and real food.

In retrospect, I think I should have told the pastor that I couldn’t find a lamb, and just accept the blame. Oh, but NOOOOO – we had to be good little servants. I consider having to clean the church shower and my own bathroom as penance.

I don’t attend that church anymore. Actually, it doesn’t exist anymore as the pastor packed up and moved on to a bigger and better location. God bless him.

Lessons learned? I’m not a good substitute for a ewe, but I can calm a frightened lamb. Lambs can shit a lot. Lambs are sweet.

And never, ever, confess to a lamb that you love chorizos and gyros. My lamb went home ignorant of my Other Side.

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Grocery Stores, the HSP, and the Introvert

March 21, 2016 by Jaci Dawn

I haven’t blogged about being an HSP (Highly Sensitive Person – take the test here) in a long time. I’ve been in a good place with no triggers for over a year, and that’s the way I like life to move. I like my job, I love the slow pace of small town living, I enjoy the lack of commute and stress. My routine is simple.

My routine is about to change. And I am not happy.

The grocery store where I do the bulk of my shopping is being closed. I like this store for a number of reasons: local beef, local milk in a glass jar, wide aisles, friendly staff who know me by my name, a pharmacist who really watched my back, wide (and clean) aisles, and a significant lack of fighting to get to food items on shelves. When this store goes out of business, I will be reduced to three local options (not including Grocery Outlet which sells things past their pull date & where you can never be certain of what is going to be on the shelves. Great prices, just no consistency): two big name grocers owned by the same corporation who purchase their beef from Iowa (which is OK, if you live in the Midwest and like grain-fattened beef – I don’t, on either count), and one big name grocer/retailer/warehouse style store.

Beef – we live in the heart of ranching country, for Heaven’s sake! Why would I buy something not grown within the State of Oregon and grass fed? I grew up on grass fed beef and have no desire to change. I used to shop at Albertson’s, but I never bought my meat there – I purchased it from a local grocer who bought 4-H beef from the kids in the county. In the years since, Albertson’s has changed management and ownership, and the local grocer went out of business. Safeway moved in, and Safeway is owned by Albertson’s.

I don’t like our local Safeway parking lot. This can be huge. I get that developers have to follow certain “rules” for “green spaces”, but the design for parking in this lot is all about concrete dividers and awkward angles. I even quit buying gas there because the last guy who pumped gas for me (hey, I live in Oregon, OK?) told me I had to get out of the car to pay.  I’m sorry – if I am not getting out of the car to pump my own gas (which I am not, in Oregon), why would I get out of my car to pay for the gas? Defeats the purpose of having someone pump my gas for me. Petty, but that’s how it is.

The third option – a Kroger/Fred Meyer – has followed the “warehouse” style of building and just going through the doors is a sensory overload. They do have local produce and beef, their prices are a little high (but so are the other options, locally), but they have great “loss leaders” (ads that draw you in and they lose money on). It’s just getting me through the doors that has my stomach in knots. It’s crowded. Narrow aisles. You have to jockey to get to things. Lines are long. I don’t mind shopping the other departments at Fred’s, but the grocery area is a nightmare of sensory overload for me.

There are options further out, and my extrovert friends are probably wondering why I don’t utilize them: WinCo, which is just over 5 miles from home and offers the following: narrow aisles, too many people, self-serve bagging. The pluses are: lower prices. In my book, the negatives just won. Oh, and I’d have to negotiate up Old Highway 99 with all the stoplights and traffic. And bag my own groceries. Did I mention I find that to be a pain in the behind? Bagging my own groceries. I consider that worse than having to pump my own gas! (Note: I live in Oregon. One of two states in the Union where we can actually pay someone else to stand out in the rain to pump our gas for us. I really hate it when I have to drive to Nevada and have to pump my own gas through California and Nevada. Can’t we just pay some poor schmuck to do that? I used to do that. it was a great entry level job.)

Costco. Warehouse. Thousands of people. Big carts. Warehouse. Great bulk prices. Warehouse. Sensory overload. No.

Super Walmart. Just.No.

Trader Joe’s. Darn – too far away to be feasible. Closest one is 13 miles away.

We have a Market of Choice within my preferred driving distance, but – and I mean a huge BUT – their prices are extremely high. Local meats, organic, great selection. Terrible parking (see Safeway). HIGH prices. Close to the Backyard Bird Shop where I purchase birding supplies. High prices nil all the benefits.

I’ll probably suck it up and go to Fred Meyer, but that presents another problem: Fred’s isn’t just a grocery store. They sell everything you need, like Walmart, only better quality. Or Target, only better quality. Clothes, furniture, paint, gardening, arts, toys, home, electronics. You see the problem? $$$$$ Because I can stand to be in those departments. It’s the grocery area where I get overwhelmed by the people, the carts, the lights, and the narrow aisles.

I think – and I may be wrong – for the non HSP, that none of this would be overwhelming. Just make a change. For me, it’s almost a life or death question. My routine is disrupted (Haggen, BiMart, home). I can change to buying a lot more at BiMart, but they are not a super store – they’re just a “general store” with a few items of everything that are nearly always cheaper than competitors: dry goods, electronics, paint, hardware, beer/wine, dog food, rifles & ammo, toys, home goods.

There are some products that our local Haggen sells that no one else carries: there are two local dairies who sell milk in glass bottles, pasteurized, but not homogenized (i.e. there’s still a layer of cream at the top of the bottle). It’s really good milk. I don’t drink much milk, but when I do, taste is everything. I grew up in a community with a local dairy and that mega-store produced milk tastes “off” to me. My husband loves the bottled milk. And they make the BEST chocolate milk, ever (must be chocolate cows).

I’ve been commiserating with co-workers. We all agree this is a tragedy. We’re scrambling to move our prescriptions. Some of us are agreeing that the only reason we shopped at this Haggen is that it’s never very crowded. We also agree that Fred Meyer is “sensory overload”. We’ll pay the couple pennies extra for groceries for the peace of shopping in a store that rarely has long lines, always has wide aisles, and where we know the employees by first name (and they know us).

We all wonder what will come in to replace the store: surely not WalMart? Our city council has a history of rejecting WalMart, but they also have a history of rejecting anything progressive. Maybe Trader Joe’s? Store is too big, but – Trader Joe’s has a location in Beaverton that is large & urban. TJ’s is kind of a specialty store and not always cheap. They’re the top choice. Whole Foods? Expensive, but I could price compare with Market of Choice…

Just not WalMart. Their practices of pushing out local businesses (like my beloved BiMart) are epic.

I get that this is not a crisis to the “normal” or “average” person. But to me: introvert, HSP… This is a crisis. Forgive me for curling up into a fetal position and asking God to “let it pass over”. I may even daub my door posts with lamb’s blood (oh, get over it. Sacrilegious jokes are a part of my childhood. My bff was Catholic & I was Protestant. Guess what our fathers told us to say at the other’s dinner table? Yeah. Some church joke). (And don’t ask about the whiskey jokes…)

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The Love of Books

March 13, 2016 by Jaci Dawn

013I am on a “de-clutter, deep-clean, get control of my life” kick. So far, I’ve powered through the laundry room, the bathroom, the kitchen and dining rooms. I purchased a shelf for our antique bottles, but I have not yet installed it. I got side-tracked with the upstairs.

I need to get the upstairs whipped into shape before warm weather comes, because we don’t have air conditioning and it can get a mite bit stuffy up there, despite the window fans.

My first attack was the area where the majority of our books are stored – some of which have not been touched in the 12 years that we have lived here, except for a cursory dusting. The books were on the shelves in the same order they were placed when we moved in, which may or may not have been entirely logical.

I decided that I needed to consult the Dewey Decimal System and get some sort of organization done, as well as moving the shelves out a bit and lining both sides of the area with book shelves (vintage crates, for the most part). That way, I could also get the antique pump out of the way of the shelving and on display as it rightly should be.

024The pump weighs a couple hundred pounds or so. It used to sit in the alley behind one of our first rentals, an old dredge pump that someone once offered us money for, but we decided we wanted to use it as a (very heavy) coffee table. Don added the stand and the table top. It no longer matched our living room area (which is tiny, like the rest of this house), so it was relegated to a corner in the loft, in front of the books.

This project has taken me just over a week. I pulled out books and book shelves, dusted, swept, mopped. I found no silverfish, which surprised me because I know we have them, and I thought if they would hide anywhere, it would be in the books. I found some spider evidence, but not really much of that, either. But to be safe, I dusted the edge of the walls where they meet the softwoods with a light powdering of diatomaceous earth.

Then I printed off an abbreviated Dewey Decimal System, because the majority of our books are not fiction, but are within .099 and 970.0 in the library catalog.

016

017

I piled the books in loose piles according to their category. I didn’t move the fiction or the vintage books (although I confess some of Don’s vintage books got filed in with their modern counterparts. My vintage collection stayed together). Yes, we have a his and hers vintage book collection. The fiction is entirely mine.

Then I began shelving, pausing often to retrace my steps and add books where I missed them (where does taxidermy fit in? Oh, after dinosaurs. How odd that we have only one book on dinosaurs). The majority of our books fall into:

598 – birds

635 – gardening, indoor & outdoor

900 – history

019

I’m not entirely happy with it as I had to move my vintage books around a bit to fit. (see the pump in the corner back there?)

023

The vintage and a mix of fiction complete these crates. History, biographies, and Native American culture round it out.

020

The majority of my fiction is here, in the narrow space by the studio door. I really don’t know what to do with the vintage Pepsi crates (at this point in time).

My hands hurt (arthritis). Surprisingly, I didn’t tweak my back. Surprisingly, I’m done. Well, mostly. There’s a whole other side of the loft to do & a question of where to put the file cabinet blocking the shelves at one end of the loft. But I didn’t take a photo of that.

I won’t label the shelves with the Dewey Decimal System, either. I still need to go back and file alphabetically by last name of the author, but – hey, we’ve lived without it being that organized for more than a couple decades. As long as we know the general area to find a book, we’re good.

Right?

 

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