68. Likely the last post of 2011

As ever (lately), I'm totally uninterested in recording anything of note. Which is not to say that I'm totally uninterested in myself (of course) or in writing or in anything - I am. Let's just say I'm on a bit of a hiatus. This hiatus extends to all my other journals (of which there are very many).

It's not that I feel stymied - I just feel like I'm waiting for a bit.

In sum: back to my desk job full time starting today, not teaching anymore, not doing my radio show - all of which means I get an hour for lunch for the first time ever. An entire hour. I believe this is yet another step on the road to adulthood, but what in the world do you do for an hour? Read a book? Take a nap?

My running has gone way down this month but my ankle still hurts. Nothing to do about it, though, because I start running again this week - this is the start of the new running season, an x-ray-free running season I hope (but we'll see about that).

I would like to do another large bicycle ride next year, and I'm interested in running an ultra (but am still uninterested in the marathon). I'd like to retire but realize that is likely unfeasible at this time. I think I might need to travel again, and I do have plane tickets to California in February but that will probably only make it worse.

I got an accordion, I have houseplants again, I'm thinking about buying decaf coffee beans so I can drink coffee in the evenings.

I haven't gotten a cat but I did get trapped under one last week so I don't owe any of you any money at all.

Other than that, I'm not in the mood for reflecting. All predictions about this year have turned out to be true (except getting a cat).

С праздником!

67. Wild Missoula Animal Outbreak

My wild animal encounters have been happening too fast to allow me to provide any sort of overarching narrative (as soon as I have one thing written up, I experience another wild animal encounter) – there is no indication that they will stop – and so we turn to bullet points.

• I have yet to actually see one of my rodent housemates (see previous entry). I thought I'd found their little gateway, a mouse-shaped hole (it was a hole in the shape of a mouse, it even had a tail) in my cupboard – I tacked up cardboard over it and thought I'd won, but those motherfucking mice, pooping in my motherfucking house – I found mouse poo under the suitcase in my bedroom. The sanctity of my room of repose has been violated. Mice: this means war.

• That race I ran last Sunday, we were supposed to turn around at the water station, but no one knew that, including the volunteers, so everyone just kept on running. Eventually, a kilometer or two later, we figured it out and turned around, and as we're approaching the water station again there's this bald eagle sitting in a tree looking at us with disdain. You could tell that, if he could talk, he would have been saying, "Yeah, you guys were supposed to turn around up there. You are stupid." Many of us stopped to look at him because the race didn't really matter anymore.

• This week, Monday morning, I dropped my car off at the shop and walked to campus, and as soon as I set foot on campus suddenly there is this cacophony of crowing and all these crows are freaking out, swooping around and shouting, and then a fox runs around Jesse Hall! A motherfucking fox! Running around the corner! And it stops and turns around and runs away again, and all the crows swoop and shout after it. A fox being hounded by a murder of crows! I've never really seen a fox up close before and definitely never seen one in town. It looked just like a fox does in cartoons. It was beautiful, really, and I loved it. I don't know where it went or where it came from. I don't know why the crows cared so much.

• That evening, I was walking back to the car shop through the university neighborhood. It was pretty dark. I walked by some house and then this line of five raccoons walks by me! Five! All in a line! They were all adults. They stopped and looked at me and they weren't scary or freakish like the raccoons in California were, these are nice wild healthy critters going about their business, and perhaps they were up to no good but they were not rapscallions.

• Yesterday morning I walked across the California Street footbridge and saw some tracks in the snow on the bank – feline – quite large. Quite large feline tracks! I thought at first that they were probably bobcat, but those are only a couple inches square, and these were larger. Cougar! Cougar tracks! And there were two sets of them – do cougars travel in pairs? This is two blocks from my house. (I have been informed that 'mountain lion' is the preferred term in Montana. Sorry, I'm from Idaho.)

• Last night while walking home along the river trail I heard all this flapping and splashing in the water. It was getting pretty dark but I could see that there were ducks about, so I thought it was just a duck flapping around. But it kept on going, on and on, and I saw that the duck was spinning in a circle, so I thought maybe it had whirling disease or was being attacked by an underwater alligator, but it turned out to be two ducks. Two ducks having a duck fight! They were fighting each other with their duck wings and their duck beaks! They were spinning around and around and fighting and floating down the river for like ten minutes. They'd stop every couple minutes to take a break but then they'd start again. No, they were not mating. It was very weird and mean. Then they swam upstream to the middle of the river and I lost them. Probably, today, there is a dead duck body floating around downstream on its way to the ocean.

tl;dr I SAW COUGAR TRACKS TWO BLOCKS FROM MY HOUSE.

Do cougars hunt mice?

66. Apartment of horror

I moved to this apartment in June and things were super. In the summer, when it was quite hot outside and even hotter inside, I had the luxury of cable television, and in the evenings I would sweat in my chair by the window through which the sunset shone and watch Jersey Shore or Keeping Up With The Kardashians or movies about abduction on Lifetime. Halcyon days, really, which I will always think of with affection and longing.

Then in August the people downstairs moved out and no one moved in (except [SPOILER ALERT] mice!!! [see below]) and, while I no longer had free internet or television, I had the yard to myself and no downstairs neighbors to be mindful of. And so I started hosting barbecues and disco parties and staying up until the wee morning hours, playing loud music, stomping around and shouting, getting into fights etc. Also I was entrusted with a lawnmower and got to mow the lawn, which I quite enjoy.

Everything was fine! And then...!

First I found out that my toilet pipe is leaking downstairs. This is gross. Even if it's not leaking on me (which would be grosser).

Some guy named Nate is going to come over and rip up my bathroom later this week. It will take two days. He will balance my toilet on plywood in between days, so I can still use the bathroom. I look forward to this new life adventure.

But also! A few days ago I found mouse poo! On my large chair! I bought some mouse traps. (I haven't forgotten the trauma of last summer so I got the kind of trap where you don't have to see their dead spindly little mouse tails or the fur of their dead little mouse heads. These traps keep you quite removed from the gore of mammalian death.)

I innocently but fervently believed that I had been visited by only one mouse - a scout mouse who'd been sent by his mouse clan to find a warm place for them to live for the winter. His mission and his life were halted while I was out running a race on Sunday. But then unfortunately I found two more mouse turds. On my TABLE. So I bought more traps and now have three set for those bastards. I sleep very well at night.

I said to my landlords that I might borrow a cat but they laughed off the suggestion. I would press the issue further and insist on getting myself a cat but I'm not sure what I'd do with my cat when I go to Hawaii (or Austin, I could go to Austin).

Because a fine lady can never have too many blogs, I've started another. This one is on Wordpress and is very attractive. It has a purpose. I'll tell you about it later.

Sorry about all the adverbs?

65. News of the day

Big news, Missoula!

Before that, though, let me explain some things to you.

First, I am excited to announce that I have gotten a subscription to the newspaper, just like a real adult. Just like a real adult, I've commissioned some poor little boy to bring a newspaper to my house in the very early morning hours, every day. Just like a real adult, I quickly flip through the pages of each newspaper a day or two late. Mostly I'm excited about the cryptogram - I conquer that thing every day except Sundays, when it doesn't run. But my reason for telling you about my newspaper subscription is to establish the fact that I've got my finger on the pulse, okay? I know all about what's happening around town now.

Second, because I got me one of them fancy smart phones and do all my business upon it, I got me a blogger app so that I can type entries on my fancy phone wherever the sam hell I am and have the words change to random other lexical items that share two letters in common with the words I meant. It will make for fun, fast, informative reading and may stave off dementia.

Third, while not rescinding my threat to leave this town for good at any g.d. time I feel like, I have decided to go home for the weekend to rest. This is neither here nor there and does not pertain to the news of the day.

So, the big news: wintertime hath cometh! WHHHHYYYYYY. I've lost my winter coats and/or forgotten what they look like. I was going to walk to work today but didn't, thankfully - I wouldn't have made it alive. Instead I drove my auto and had to scrape the windows.

I live very near to an officially sanctioned graffiti park (which means I am privy to all that's going on with the kids these days) and some hooligans found a load of snow somewhere and scattered it around on the ground the other day. The snow melted a bit but froze overnight. I walked by yesterday morning, paying attention only to my fancy phone, and nearly slipped on the frozen melted snow. I did not report the hazard to the authorities but could have if I had a 911 app for my phone.

Take care while walking and driving.

64.

I've been going through my old journals. On August 19, 2004, I wrote: Do they play golf in the snow? If not, I'm going to invent it and call it snolf.

I used to be really smart.

63. Weather

I guess my favorite insult-du-jour (that's French for 'insult of the day') is 'jerk'. For a while it was 'jackalope', and then it was 'jerkalope' - you can see the evolution. I also use it as a generic noun of description. If I call something a jerk, you can't be quite sure if I'm using it as an insult or as a generic noun. If such a situation arises - e.g. if I call you a jerk - please ask for clarification.

Days in Missoula lately have proceeded thusly: fog, sun, nighttime. It's been pretty interesting. I rode my bike to campus yesterday morning just for fun, just for old times' sake, and got covered in mist. Some of the mist was from my breath, but most was from the fog.

My last radio show, after almost five years, was in August. I went to the station and saw a couple shifts that I could fill this weekend, but I realized I have absolutely no inclination to play music over the air right now. What in the world would I even play? I thought maybe drinking some yerba mate would help me, but I've done that a few days in a row now and ain't nothing changed at all.

Missoula, I moved back to you five years ago. We've been good to each other - I've been good to you, or tried to be (I pick up garbage when I see it, occasionally), and you've been good to me (although you can be very difficult at times). (I can be difficult too - I'm not laying all the blame on you - I do acknowledge my own culpability.) But... I wonder if this situation has outlived its usefulness. Don't flip out - I'm just thinking about it. (I've been thinking about it for five years, though.) But do know that I am thinking about it.

Periodically I get this overwhelming feeling of wanderlust, difficult to ignore. Right now I'm feeling the urge to go to Hawaii for a few weeks - find a room to rent for a month, take a suitcase and a few books, and then move back home and open a bakery (which will fail miserably after a few days because I have neither business acumen nor common sense). Probably I will do neither, but I might do something.

Regardless of our future, Missoula, I will say that this summer was quite lovely despite its late start and my slow half marathon, and I will look back on it with fondness, as I will all the summers I've spent here (even though I have a very hard time living without a lake).

Maybe I wouldn't like Hawaii, because now that I think about it I don't really like the ocean, and mountainless horizons freak me out... Maybe New Mexico? I don't know.

Please send job prospects to me regarding the following: garbage picker-upper, editor, mower of vast lawns, philanthropist, tastetester (I don't like: spicy foods, brownies), person who works with paper (I enjoy cutting paper into shapes, writing onto paper, etc.), doughnut shop, furniture maker. Also I am a retired housekeeper and would consider re-entering the field (for an offer lucrative enough to support my habits).

62. Urban fowl, adulthood

Due to recent insurmountable technological and temporal persecution, I have been unable to update this blog for months and months - a dire hardship, I know, for fans addicted to the hot Missoula gossip I normally impart on a regular basis. Please, however, remain calm for a while longer, because I am totally thinking about doing two things: 1. getting the internet (my downstairs neighbors took the internet with them when they moved, leaving me high and dry), and 2. getting me one of them fancy smart phones. Then I will always be online! Even while I'm in bed!

You've been wondering about how I'm liking my new neighborhood and I can tell you this: I do. Except one of my neighbors is a rooster, even though roosters aren't allowed to live in the city. Maybe he thinks he won't get found out because he doesn't say "cockadoodledoo" - instead he says, every morning when it's just starting to get light, "I'm an asshole!" over and over and over. At least he's an honest rooster, I guess, but despite his nonstandard dialect he's still an illegal. I am not normally murderous but one of these mornings I might become so.

I hope you are having a good year. The journey I started in 2003 is, like, you know...

61. Weather, running

Missoula MT — Normally an arid wasteland of roasted dust and tumbleweeds and fiery wind, Missoula has been unusually wet this year. A winter full of snow and ice, a spring full of rain, now a summer full of runoff and rains and just the right amount of humidity. It smells good in the mornings, the air feels good, my hair is all frizzy. You'd almost think there was a lake somewhere around here, but don't be fooled. There isn't. Despite all the rain, Missoula remains as lakeless as it's been these past 12,000 years, and living here in the summer leading a dry and barren life remains the abomination it always has been.

Well. Perhaps I neglected to tell you that I was going to be doing the race last weekend (the half, not the full). Perhaps I've neglected to tell you other things as well. We will get to that later. First, the race.

This year I was in the portaloo when the race started and there wasn't much I could do about it. Thus went this entire running season for me.

The race went fine. I got all teary-eyed numerous times, because of someone's shirt, because of the guy playing the piano, because of this and that. It was an emotional day.

A white rabbit ran across the road in front of me as I rode my bike past the Silver Dollar Bar at 5 a.m. A good sign? No, turned out to be a neutral sign.

I ran/walked and had my slowest half marathon since that race last fall when I got lost three times in the woods. My ankle made its presence known but was fine. Can't wait for next year!

Other things I have neglected to tell you: I have moved to the Westside (I'm not hip enough for the Hip Strip), I've been housesitting again on the Northside (site of Mouse Havoc 2010), I've been stricken with yet another professional opportunity in the field I actually went to school for (goodbye, leisure time), I didn't get sick all spring!

Now I'm all into biking and I've even bought those little shorts with the padding in the butt. This blog will likely become exclusively a biking blog.

Nota bene: I was in the portaloo when the race started not because I was spending a long time in there (please! I am a fine lady!) but because I had neglected to arrive at a fashionable time and had then spent 10 minutes waiting tragically in the wrong stupid line for the porta-potty before I abandoned that for a better line, by which time there was only a minute to go. Next year I will get up when my stupid alarm goes off.

60. Running, internet/the future

Tomorrow will be 3 seconds shorter than today. I'd tell you more about what's going on here in Missoula but I have to go to bed right now, as soon as I turn off the TV. Lately I've been busy watching TV and eating hot dogs, and I'm also super into running these days, even though I can't really run. But running's all I want to do, and watch TV. So right now the Mariners are up 5 to 1 and ... oh god! The game I'm watching isn't live! What?!? The Nationals will score 5 runs in the 9th and the Mariners will lose? Why in the world am I watching this then? This is stupid.

59. Weather, walking

Last night I was out on Reserve, arguably the worst place in the state - a terrible concrete sprawl of strip, nothing but cars rushing by and parking lots and terrible generic stores in buildings they don't deserve. Rain had been predicted all day - 90% chance, all day long, every hour - but the rain didn't come until the early evening, first a few splatters and then heavier and heavier.  And out on Reserve, that waste of concrete and pollution, it was heavenly. It smelled like tulips. You've never smelled fresher air.

It rained all night and into the morning. This morning I walked to work in a raincoat with an umbrella. I walked through the tree-covered University neighborhood to campus, the state's official arboretum, where it smelled like worm meat.  Worms, worms, nothing but worms.

58. Running, weather, math

The other night while I was out run/walking in the hot summer sun I was doing math problems, as is my wont, trying to figure out my running pace - a challenge when you're run/walking (or should it be run-walking?) - and I'm embarrassed to tell you how long it took me to figure this out - the answer is so obvious now. My excuse is that, although I'm constantly doing math problems while I'm running, I'm not constantly solving math problems - meaning, I'm not very good at math while I'm running, even though I'm always thinking about it. So, if I do 29 run/walk intervals of 1:15 and :30 over 4.75 miles, what's my running pace? Like I said, the answer seems so obvious now, but I just figured it out.  Wait... what?

57. structural update etc.

Got out of the boot today!  Walking around in a complete pair of shoes!  My achilles tendon is moving for the first time in a month and a half!  Tendons are weird.

But more importantly, I found $20 in a parking lot today.  It's not mine - what should I do with it?  I'd send it to Home Alive with a note saying "Keep on kicking ass," but they closed last year, so I'm taking suggestions.  Maybe this is something I should use facebook for - thank you for your patience.

56. Weather, music, reading

I'd like to provide you with an update of recent goings-on in Missoula but I don't know anything about it, except that there are some potholes on the roads and everyone is angry. I haven't been up to much lately - I've been sidelined with a broken ankle, and you can't do much of anything when you're on crutches and it's snowy and icy outside.

For almost six weeks I have been the proprietor of a spiral fracture of the fibula. I was pretty lucky - no surgery, supposed to heal okay, on crutches for less than five weeks. I'm hobbling around in a walking boot now. Being able to carry things in your hands while you walk is terribly convenient. Bipedalism is the height of evolution.

When you're on crutches everyone's pretty nice to you. Last week I made a large batch of mint oatmeal chocolate chip cookies to give to people who were particularly nice and went out of their way to help me. It's depressing when your body fails you, and doubly depressing when the weather turns against you and makes going outside scary and nearly impossible, but when someone remembers to pick you up where the bus drops you off every morning to drive you a quarter mile to the building you work in... I mean, you know... it's pretty nice. Cookies don't come close to expressing it.

(For reference, it takes about 20 minutes to go about a quarter mile on crutches on ice.  After exertion such as that, the crutch operator is sweaty and tired out, a state you don't want to be in at 7:55 in the morning.)

(If you want to improve upper-body and core strength, a few weeks on crutches will certainly help you out, although I'd recommend pursuing other workout options first.)

Luckily over time I've become more mobile, and luckily the snow and ice have started to wane, and luckily I live about a block away from some record stores, and so I've acquired a few inches of new records, and so I'm thinking about making a new mixtape.

I haven't made a mixtape in years, but I used to, every once in a while. A few years before a few years ago I made a mix of songs about rain and water and I sent those tapes to various people in various places around the world. A few years after that I gave all the students in one of my ESL classes a CD of songs about traveling - they clapped with enthusiasm and joy at first, but when I mentioned that there were many genres of songs on the CDs, including country, they made bad faces and barfing noises.  A few months after that I tried to make a mix of moon songs, but I didn't follow through with the project and a rough draft is all that remains. (It is incredible and despite its rough state will likely be bootlegged by my heirs for generations.)

I haven't made a mixtape in years now but the topic has come up a couple times in the last couple months and I think maybe I will make a new one. I'll make one for you if you want, but you should know these things: it will be on cassette tape, and the music I'm interested in these days is easy listening and hip hop. If I make you one and you throw it out the window you cannot tell me.

I have another couple weeks of restricted activity, so this will be a good project, as I've had my fill of books and movies.

Wenn man eine Reise macht, hat man viel zu erzählen.

55. Reading, eeyore

Due to unforeseen circumstances my winter reading project has been extended for the next 6-8 weeks. I recently renewed Tough Trip Through Paradise from the library because I like it well enough - right now the guy's off camping with a woman (her skin is copper!) but he won't touch her because he thinks he'll go to hell (he's Catholic). The alcoholic Arschloch he started out with is off with some Indians or something, telling lies and burying stuff, tickling women and drinking way too much whiskey, as far as I can tell. Kind of boring right now but I think it'll get better.

But I'm tempted to start a movie watching project and abandon the reading project. I'd be happy to read books if they read themselves for you, but they don't. Books schmooks!

I guess I'm going to be riding the bus to work for a while now - my first experience was this morning and it was terrible. I should have just spent the night at work tonight.

The weather forecast makes everything seem impossible.

54. Running, reading

Last night I, along with the rest of the Missoula running community, which means the entire rest of Missoula, was at a running talk at the Wilma Theater. We, the running community of Missoula, filled up the entire place. I imagine our coach and the other honchos who head the running community, as they looked out into the assembled masses, must have been thinking, "My god, we've created a monster" - and they have, the Missoula running community has become a monster. Everyone and his mother runs. You cannot look in any direction in this town without seeing people running. People run all over the place in every kind of weather at all times of the day and night, everywhere, always. I realized at the talk last night that I've become quite disconnected from running. I'm all about the boozing and the socializing but not about the vitality and the actual running anymore. The reason is that running hurts, and the reason for that is my stinking ribs. I hope it stops hurting soon because I'd like to be bouncing and bounding happily around with everybody else instead of trudging around with a grimmace, blarg. You know? If it doesn't start getting better soon I'll retire from running forever.

I cannot, though, retire from the big race of the year because I've done it every single year (4) and I am now one of only like 106 perennials. Every year, as more of us perennials give up running or die off, that number will get smaller and smaller. I plan to run the 50th Missoula Half Marathon in the year 2056 and win my age group. Or maybe I'll do the full that year.  I hope they do something special for us perennials, like maybe let us ride on a float in a parade, or maybe give us special shirts, or maybe give us a ride in the race for a few miles and drop us off two blocks from the finish line, or maybe give us 10 free beers after the race, or maybe give us free massages, or maybe do a documentary on us.

It's a dang shame that I am not a documentary filmmaker. If I were I'd be filming all these documentaries right now, they'd be very interesting. I'd interview myself in every one of my documentaries - I'd sit in a large chair, maybe by a fireplace, and I'd call myself an expert. I don't know why when I went to college I had to go major in something boring. If I could give advice to high school students I'd tell them to go to college only if they want to sit on their butts in front of some stupid computer for the rest of their lives.

Anyway, my break from running is over and so my winter reading project is officially over.  I didn't end up reading nearly as many books as I imagined I would.  I ran out of steam pretty quickly, actually - probably because of all those Montana books I read at the beginning.  Who wants to read that much about Montana?  Not me, anymore.

I'm reading the worst book right now - I won't even tell you what the title is. It took the author 34 years to write and you can tell. In 34 years you have a lot of opportunities to sit there and say, "Hmm, what other ridiculous crap can I cram into this crapfest?" I can only imagine his thought process: "I know! I'll put in a paternity twist! And then I'll do it again! And then I'll have the grandson have an affair with his grandmother! And then I'll put in cameos by Mark Twain and Freud and Kaiserin Sissi for no reason and... who else? Oh, how about Hitler as a child! And let's give Sissi a wooden frisbee! Awesome, this book is so full of tidbits! Woowee! How about some baseball, and Buddy Holly, and psychology."  The author's (or the narrator's) obsession with whipped cream is distracting and there is a whose/who's error in the book, which I'm normally willing to overlook (and perhaps it wasn't an error - perhaps the editor was making a subtle but effective argument in favor of updating orthographic standards to reflect the possessive use of the apostrophe) but in this case I am not.

The book is about time travel and unfortunately it seems that the whole thing is made up.  The narrator tells us things she can't possibly know, which means she's making up a bunch of shit, which means the book can't possibly be true. I demand believability in the books I read, even if they're about time travel. You'd think that at some point over those 34 heinous years the author could have thought about using a third-person omniscient narrator instead of making the narrator a character in the story, right? Come on! This book is the reason I hate things.

Tomorrow will be two minutes and thirteen seconds longer than today.  It has been foretold that the journey I started in 2003 will end in 2011, which is exciting, I hope.