UPDATES

Well, I have been really out of it lately, so I think the best thing to do now is to just post a copy of an email that I sent to Matthew that gives an update of what I've been doing lately.

Basically, I am back in the States. I flew in to San Francisco, then took a train up to Spokane, which is where I am now, staying with my sister.

Here's a letter I sent to Matthew regarding my journey. It's been edited just a bit:

Dear Matthew:

Well, here is the proper update that I promised.

Let’s see…I think I told you about my flight over and all that. I made Michael watch the last England match, and then had to console myself with the matchcast thing for the US game. I’m seriously bummed (or, as you would say, ‘bottomed’) that I missed the Korea game, because it certainly looks like it was exciting, and with all of ‘my’ teams out, I am forced to cheer on South Korea.

Anyway, you were definitely right about me misunderestimating my friends. Laura had sent me an envelope with some cash in it, because she knew I was broke. She sent it to Travin’s house. Andy also slipped some money into one of my possessions, which is weird because I didn’t mention being poor to him. But very, very nice of him.

So anyway, I got up in the morning and Michael and I went to the grocery store and bought milk for tea and that sort of thing. Ate breakfast, and then I was off to visit my friends at 415—this is when Robert asked if I was going to be busy for the next few weeks, because they have some kind of a project.

It was really nice to go to 415, because I was happy to see everyone and everyone seemed happy to see me and they all wanted to hear about what I’d been doing, and I kept telling them ‘nothing exciting,’ which they didn’t believe, so I ended up talking about random things. It was weird, because I guess they all just expect me to have bizarre stories to tell about things, and they figured that it was impossible that nothing happened. So I talked about Paul and the cats and that sort of thing.

A bunch of us went to lunch, which was fun. Andy asked me at some point if the reason I was staying for only 24 hours was that I didn’t want to impose on anyone, and I said, well, basically, yes, and he told me that I had darned well better come back through San Francisco again on my way out of the country.

Incidentally, it feels really weird to be back here. I don’t feel like I belong here. It feels like I should be somewhere else.

At any rate, I went over to Travin’s in the afternoon, and visited him for a while.

Then I left, and went back to 415 because that’s where Michael was going to meet me.

Had a lot of fun playing with my friends at 415 again. I met the new programmer, Michael, who was hired to replace me. He was standing between Andy and me, and Andy and I were having one of our normal conversations, when I looked over and saw Michael just looking lost. I said, "Oh, don’t try to follow a conversation between me and Andy; it’s impossible."

He said, "No, I was just thinking it was weird, because I never understand Andy, and now here I’m thinking, ‘my god, there’s two of them!’"

Anyway.

I love Andy.

As I said, I had a great time in my 24 hours in San Francisco.

So I got to the train station and of course the trains have different weight limits than the airlines, so I ended up taking a bunch of things out of the suitcase and putting them into two bags that I would carry on. Just trying to contribute to my general air of ‘homeless chic’. Michael is going to mail me a few other things, because I was too tired to carry any more. Now I feel badly about asking him to do that, of course. He is pretty much the kindest and best person in the world.

Anyway, the depot in San Francisco is really just a bus terminal that takes you to the proper depot in Emeryville. So I rode a bus over there, bringing my bags in my hands and packing my box of tea under my sweater, so I looked like I had some kind of large, square tumor.

The first leg of the trip went from Emeryville to Portland—at least, it was supposed to take me to Portland. If cost in dollars is directly proportional to quality, then I had the best sandwich I’ve ever eaten on board that train. Once you’re on the train, you can’t get off, so you either have to pack your own food (which I couldn’t do at the time) or you have to pay $4.75 for a rubbish sandwich in the café car.

Outrage!

Anyway, at some point (Klamath Falls, I think) this group of little old ladies got on the train, and surrounded me. It was really funny—I became aware that they have this whole sub-culture, where they have developed a system in which they never have to feel uncomfortable. Everyone knows what topics to talk about, and what the correct responses are, and they have this whole system worked out so that they always feel at ease in social situations with one another, which is kind of sweet. It's like a little orchestrated dance.

I was laughing, not in a condescending way, but just because it was funny, and because they were so very much the way they were.

Sample conversation:

Lady One: Yes, my mother was always a *doer*. After my father died, she took up knitting, and she decided that year that she was going to knit sweaters for all five grandchildren for Christmas.

Lady Two: No!

Lady One: Yes!

Lady Two: Five grandchildren!

Lady One: Yes!

Lady Two: Well, if that isn’t making lemonade out of lemons.

Lady One: Bless her heart.

It was great. They kept this up for hours. Literally. I now know everything there is to know about most of their grandchildren, where they are going to school, who else has visited and/or lived in that area, what part of Oregon it can be compared to, and that it is all, simply, ‘beautiful country’.

Incidentally, they spent some time talking about upcoming trips to London. The general consensus is that absolutely the best thing to do in London is to go to The Lion King. If one misses The Lion King, well, one has missed out and hasn’t experienced London at all.

There was this funny moment when one of the women was talking about this place she went, and she and her husband were spending time with these rockers, and I literally thought she was talking about, you know, Alice Cooper and Ozzy Osbourne, and it took me about five minutes to realize that she was talking about rocking chairs. I think this is the thing that made me realize that her world would never really be mine.

So anyway, the train was running hours and hours late, so it became clear that those of us who had to catch a connecting train in Portland weren’t going to make it. So they had us detrain at Eugene (I have decided that ‘derailleur’ is one of my very favorite words ever, by the way) and they put us on a bus that would speed us on our way to Portland without making any other stops. The connecting train would wait for us there.

So I bundled my bags off to the bus, and away we went.

It’s funny—if you know the area at all, the two train trips were just what you’d expect. The first train had been going from California, up the coast all the way to Vancouver BC. And the passengers reflected that. Most of the people who got on in San Francisco were just the sort of people you would expect to get on a train in San Francisco, and the group of little old ladies were just the sort of people you would expect to be commuting through small towns in Oregon. One of them kept talking about the new building her church (First Baptist, of course) was putting up, and another one spent the majority of the trip reading a recipe book she’d just purchased—the kind that you can tell was put together by a ‘ladies group’ and bound up in a cover with artwork designed by one of said ladies, as opposed to some kind of Julia Childs thing—and every so often she’d remark on how good some casserole or something sounded, perhaps read the recipe aloud, and maybe even go as far as to comment that my goodness how clever she would never have thought of using crunchy onions for that!

The second leg of the trip, Portland to Spokane (Eastern Washington) found me planted in the middle of a (de rigeur) redneck enclave, which is what the stereotypic Portland to Eastern Washington journey would absolutely demand.

The guy to my right was talking to the guy seated behind me. The guy seated behind me was, of course, wearing a cowboy hat. I didn’t check, but I would fully expect a showy belt buckle. Their conversation went like this:

Guy on Right: Well, you know, I just don’t know what to do about my girlfriend. Whenever she drinks, she gets mad, and she gets mean. The other night, she picked up this milk crate, and she was hitting me with it, and she even followed me outside to hit me with it. Then she wants to have sex. But you know, I just don’t know what to do when she’s trying to hit me with stuff. I mean, you can’t beat women or nothin’, but she’s tryin’ to hit me with a milk crate.

Cowboy Hat: Nah, you can’t beat bitches, but you can give them a little pain, you know?

Guy on Right: I know what you mean. I mean, I just usually twist her arm around her back and pin her down to stop her. And the next day she’ll have bruises or whatever, but she doesn’t seem to care, because she got sex and so she’s happy.

!

I briefly considered turning around and telling Cowboy Hat that I would show him a little pain, but then decided against it. I didn’t even do the half-turn or full-turn with eye roll. [editor's note: Seinfeld reference]

You would have been proud.

I did eventually arrive in Spokane, and my sister and Charity picked me up and we drove back to their place, through the city, such as it is. Typical small-town America—there were kids ‘cruising’ in the tiny main drag. We drove down Fast Food Boulevard, where even in the middle of the night I had my choice of hamburgers, tacos, and grilled chicken sandwiches.

Yes, I stopped and got a hamburger. I am not ashamed. I had promised myself something other than the $4.75 café car offerings, and the hamburger at least had tomatoes on it and *everything*.

Natalie’s house is bloody huge. She’s babysitting this cat, Pecos, that I’ve mentioned before, and he is the friendliest little calico you can imagine. He follows me around meowing, constantly, and sleeps on my bed because of course there is the possibility that I might wake up at some point and pet him. I’ve had to push him off of this computer keyboard several times while typing this.

The poor little thing is what one would call ‘accident prone.’ The owners have had him for about a year, and they’ve already spent $2000 on him. Part of this was for a tumor that had to be removed, part was for examining his broken leg (he’s 1/4 shaven and looks very strange) and heaven knows what the rest is for. All I know is that he follows you around and tosses himself in front of your feet to try to get you to trip over him, because if you do that, you’ll feel guilty and pet him. Charity has taken to referring to him as ‘Speed Bump.’

So anyway, after I woke up in the morning, I looked out in the back yard and noticed that the only piece of furniture out there is a broken toilet that was abandoned by parties unknown. Natalie hasn’t lived here for very long, and hasn’t really settled in. So I did what any normal person would do--I dragged Charity off to the store and picked up potting soil, some strawberry plants, and some flower starters, and we planted the strawberries in the back tank and the flowers in the bowl. It’s quite lovely, and Charity and I only attacked one another with the garden hose a couple of times.

Natalie had been feeling a bit down about the fact that she has to go to this awful writers’ conference in Homer (Alaska), but when she saw what we had done with the toilet, she cheered right up and decided that she’s going to have to go to garage sales and pick up an entire bathroom set to use as planters. You know, a sink, a laundry hamper…she’s going to get a toilet paper holder and screw it into the fence next to the toilet. This should look fantastic.

Mind you, this planting business did not pass uneventfully. We had to move the toilet to a better location, (tank up against the fence to preserve that ‘bathroom’ image) and it was broken into many pieces. During the final adjustment process, Charity exclaimed and we realized that she had gotten a small cut on her hand from a sharp piece of porcelain. Neither she nor I had anticipated that it would be sharp at all. But as I was explaining to her that she needed to go in and wash her hands post-haste, I looked down and discovered that my right hand was entirely covered in blood, as was a portion of the toilet and the ground. Evidently I had cut one of my fingers really badly and had severed some kind of blood vessel, but the cut is on a joint and so they can’t give me stitches or anything. It looks fairly impressive, though.

So Natalie got some bandages and Charity and I sat with our hands over our heads for a while, and eventually the bleeding stopped. We still need to clean up the kitchen floor.

Incidentally, as we were planting the flowers and strawberries, we of course ended up completely filthy with mud, and black goo under our fingernails which may never come clean. It’s sort of a reverse French manicure. We have decided to refer to it henceforth as a Polish Manicure.

Anyway, right now I’m up because I need to drive Natalie to the airport in an hour. The people at this writers’ conference hate her, I think, and have arranged the most godawful hours for flight times. I am pretty sure that if Salman Rushdie were going to be participating in this conference, they wouldn’t be asking him to get to an airport at 3 am.

I’m really hoping I don’t get lost on the way back here. Natalie has promised me a map, which should be fine, but honestly, I’ve never been to Spokane, other than when I was passing through on my way to someplace else.

Yes, it’s just that exciting.

So Charity has given me a list of temp agencies, and I’m going to be calling around today once normal people are up and about. (They were closed over the weekend, of course, so I’ve had to wait.) With any luck, I’ll have some work in the very near future. Fortunately, the injuries to my finger are obviously not affecting my ability to type, much to your dismay.

I miss you terribly. Try to miss me a little bit back.

--Simone