Thanks to Hypatia I discovered the Deep Thought: When I heard that trees grow a new “ring” for each year they live, I thought, we humans are kind of like that: we grow a new layer of skin each year, and after many years we are thick and unwieldy from all our skin layers.

Chapter 5 (cont.)

In the middle of the year, my fiance made a decision to transfer to the University of Washington in Seattle because they had the best Far Eastern Languages and History Department on the west coast. But before he left, in December, an event happened that deeply traumatized us both. His younger brother, who was exactly my age to the month and who had been a very charismatic and popular athlete in high school, was suddenly killed in an auto accident. He was thrown from his car into a field, where he lay in the dark until he was brought to the local hospital where he died. It was my first experience with the death of someone I knew so well who was also a young person. The winter months became much darker and more depressing than they might have been, and I was further swayed toward the decision to marry at the end of that year. I also read a romantic novel at around that time, which told the story of a young couple who were not glamorous, who were just plain and ordinary, but who found a deep fulfilling love with each other. Since I saw myself as plain, I made myself believe that this marriage could work. It turned out as the years passed, that while I may have been plain, I was anything but ordinary.  (to be continued Monday) Deep Thought:  I think that Superman and Santa are actually the same guy, and I’ll tell you why: Both fly, both wear red, and both have a beard. Today I am grateful for:  Curves Gym

Xmas Shopping Adventure #3

So last time out I brought home a scanner, looked it up on Epinions and found out it was a dog. So today I headed over to return it. No problems, gave me the cash right back. Then I went back to Best Buy, now knowing ahead of time what good scanner would be there, found it in a flash, and out the door within 5 minutes. Well, the checkout clerk tried to sell me some kind of warranty thing, but I was ready with a big No. Then I stopped at Office Max and found a computer chair for my son. The last chair he had wasn’t sturdy enough and basically collapsed. He’s a big guy at 6’7″. So I made sure this one was really sturdy, has a high back to lean back on, and is nice enough to roll out in the living room and use for an extra chair when needed. Of course, it comes in a box and has to be assembled, but I figure he’s up to that. And of course they can’t just sell it at a certain price – it has to be an instant rebate. I hate rebates. But it was also a quick transaction and the clerk carried it out to my tiny car and we fitted it in. Now for the last stop – ToysRUs. Here’s the thing – you really need to know exactly what you’re looking for when you go there and the last thing you’d want to do is take a kid with you. They morph into beasts. And even if you know exactly what you’re looking for, which in my case was a specific Lego set for my grandson and a Jumbo Nala for my granddaughter, you may have trouble finding them. Unfortunately, the Lego set which had been on sale was now not, and they were out of Jumbo Nala (which in case you didn’t know is a female lion from the Lion King). So I thought I’d come home and see if I could find both things online. But when I looked I found I won’t be able to get the Lego set cheaper anywhere, so Saturday I’ll probably have to head back to ToysRUs for the Legos and then over to the Big Mall for the Jumbo Nala at the Disney store. I’m getting close to having the big purchases done though now. Whew.

Chapter 5 (cont.)

That year 1956-57 a New Women’s Dorm had just been built and this was where I lived with three other young women – two freshmen and a junior. There was a common room in the middle of each unit and a bedroom with bunkbeds on either side. It was on an upper floor and windows looked out toward the edge of campus. All three of my roommates were from out of state. Though my parents were well educated, I began to understand how limited my own experiences were coming from a small rural Oregon community when I learned how many Reedies had been to plays, foreign films, and even opera. Besides being a year older than I, my classmates were culturally ahead of me. My classes included Humanities, Biology, Art History, and Russian language. Humanities was the heart and soul of the Reed liberal arts structure. There were huge reading lists and great leaps through world history. When we couldn’t keep up, we read Classics comic books of the great novels, like Les Miserables. In Biology, I had to actually dissect a frog, though not cats (which were in a bin with formaldehyde outside the classroom), in the first year. Art History was taught by a man who was famous for his calligraphy and left notes on my papers in his beautiful handwriting. My favorite class was Russian, because the teacher was very sweet and I found I had a knack for and love of languages that has lasted all these years.  (to be continued)

Deep Thought:  I read that when the archaeologists dug down into the ancient cemetary, they found fragments of human bones! What kind of barbarians were these people, anyway?

Today I am grateful for:  Direct eye contact big smile salt of the earth people who pass you in the hallways of life.

Chapter 5 (cont.)

I do remember that despite my grades and accomplishments I was not voted into Honor Society, a shock and shame to me and, of course, my father. I was, however, the only one of my class who applied to and was accepted at Reed College, famous for its high academic requirements and excellent liberal arts education. Largely because of the influence of my family, all ex-Reedies, my husband-to-be arrived at Reed the year before I did and even chose his major, Russian History, as part of this spell. We became engaged the summer before I began my freshman year and he his sophomore.

Receipts show that my parents paid about $150/month for my freshman year at Reed (though I’m not sure if this was just for lodging and books). There was no student loan or scholarship to my recollection, and I don’t remember that I had a student job. Considering the thousands of dollars a year it costs to attend Reed now, it seems a small amount, but at the time it must have been a serious financial burden.

(to be continued)

Deep Thought:I’ll be the first to admit that my idea of God is pretty different. I believe in a God with a long white beard, a gold crown, and a long robe with lots of shiny jewels on it. He sits on a big throne in the clouds, and He’s about five hundred feet tall. He talks in a real deep voice like “I…AM…GOD!” He can blow up stuff just by looking at it. This is my own, personal idea of God.

Today I am grateful for:  Word processing.

Xmas Shopping Adventure #2

Picked this up at Fred’s on shopping effort #1.  Meant for my favorite non-blood-family child in the world, a 12-year-old in Colorado who used to live across the street from me years ago with his family.  They moved many times but always stayed in the same neighborhood, and he became my grandson’s Saturday friend from the time they were about 3 until he moved last year.  Took this over to the handy post office at my work and they mailed it off for $11.06 postage (sigh).  But it will get there in time.  (This is a great family game, by the way, in case you haven’t tried it.

Well, it’s been since October 21 that I’ve been working on Chapter 5 of my bio.  It’s quite a process.  I have to dig out everything in the drawers and closets that pertains to the five-year period of the chapter, and then sift through it all, and then make up a scrapbook of the stuff I think it pertinent and meaningful.  Then I write the chapter based on the scrapbook’s contents.  So here is finally the beginning of Chapter 5.
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Xmas Shopping Adventure #1

So yesterday about mid afternoon I headed out with one particular purchase in mind – a scanner for my daughter (and yes it was a request so she knows about it).  I had researched this on Epinions and selected 3 choices.  Arriving first at Best Buy, I circled the parking lot several times before finding a spot.  There was clearly a lot of shopping going on here.  Inside, I discovered that none of my 3 choices were on the shelves and since no salesperson cornered me in time I headed back out to Circuit City further down the street.  Here it was not so crowded, but once again my choices were not there and no salesperson was fast enough.  Proud that I had not yet spent a cent, I remembered the Dell booth at the Big Mall even further down the street.  My daughter’s computer is a Dell and I figured they’d either have a scanner for it or be able to suggest which ones would work best.  Parking at the Big Mall was much more challenging.  Finally finding a spot fairly near a door (god knows who will get mugged for Xmas presents this year), I headed inside, only to be overwhelmed immediately at the size of the crowd and the attack on my sensibilities of all the noise, colors, and price tags.  I hiked at a quick pace about a quarter mile down the mall to the Dell booth where I found 3 salesmen serving 3 individual groups who were clearly making Big Purchases.  After standing there for a full half hour waiting for a break, I finally gave up in disgust and marched off the quarter mile back to my car.  Heading home, I stopped at my familiar Fred Meyers store and there on the shelves was one choice of scanner which at this point looked really good.  It was not one of the 3 choices, but hey, how bad could a scanner be?  Now I found several other Xmas items on my list there at Fred’s, a few groceries, and after annoying the checkout clerk by separating out what I had cash for in my Xmas envelope from what I was charging to my debit card, I proceeded to drop off some of the crap from my summer garage sale at the Goodwill truck in the parking lot and headed home determined to be even more organized before I head out again.  And now there’s only 17 days left.  (And don’t get me wrong – it’s all worth it in the end.)

Deep Thought:  Instead of raising your hand to ask a question in class, how about individual pushbuttons on each desk? That way, when you want to ask a question, you just push the button and it lights up a corresponding number on a tote board at the front of the class. Then all the professor has to do is check the lighted number against a master sheet of names to see who is asking the question.

Today I am grateful for:  One stop shopping.

An Admirable Life

Yesterday I took my grandchildren (12 and 7) to see the Wild Champanzees film at the local Omnimax (and by the way, if you’ve never been to a Imax film, you gotta try it – it’s like being inside a three-dimensional movie). My 7-year-old granddaughter has been talking for some time now about growing up to work with animals, particularly saving them from abuse. The film was old footage of a young graceful Jane Goodall tramping around alone in the jungle, reaching out to touch the finger of a baby chimp (FiFi), discovering that these particular chimps could use a tool to get food, and having to leave this paradise to fundraise in order to preserve it, and then current film of a woman in her upper 60′s making a return visit, seeing that same baby chimp now 42 years later the eldest inhabitant of the tiny preserve, talking with the present staff who are still studying, walking alone again in the jungle. What struck me most, as I watched my granddaughter’s eyes widen and her smile react, was how seldom one sees such a single-minded life journey – from the young woman sent to study a species she had never even seen before to a world-famous researcher, looking just like the young girl except for some very fine wrinkles all over the same sweet face. Most of us blunder around, banging into roadblocks, surmounting others, changing course, crashing, recovering, sometimes seemingly ending up behind where we started. It’s nice to know there are a few who find their purpose early on and stick it out straight through to the end. What gifts they give us.
Deep Thought:Too bad you can’t just grab a tree by the very tiptop and bend it clear over the ground and then let her fly, because I bet you’d be amazed at all the stuff that comes flying out.

Today I am grateful for: Libraries

Moving Right Along

Now that Thanksgiving, the flu, and my recovery anniversary are past, it’s 19 days till Christmas with a short stop for winter solstice on the 22nd after which the hours of light will get longer again thank god. Now I need to drag out the decorations for my house, think about some Xmas cards, and plan gifts within pretty tight budgetary constraints, plus come up with entertainment options for when Xmas company comes at the last minute. It all makes me tired just to think about it, so at 6:00 am I feel like going back to bed again. But I won’t. I’ll try to take it one step at a time, try to just enjoy the lights, the smells, and the music of the holiday, try to keep trips to the mall to a minimum, and try to do what I would do any other day of the year, be grateful for what I already have in my life – which is a lot.
Deep Thought:When the age of the Vikings came to a close, they must have sensed it. Probably, they gathered together one evening, slapped each other on the back and said, “Hey, good job.”

Today I am grateful for: Red, green and yellow