Who are the people in your neighborhood?

One of the restaurant owners in my neighborhood was killed Tuesday in a senseless act of violence.

There is a little sushi place in my neighborhood, Aburiya. It is owned by a young Korean couple who live south of the city. During the pandemic, I would order my salmon bento box to go. It is delicious. In addition to the sushi, it came with miso soup, salad, shrimp shumai, tofu, and the little green seaweed salad. As covid restrictions eased, I continued to order my salmon bento box. The woman who owned the place met people at the door and worked a a waitress. I never knew her name, but she knew mine. She knew me as "Lauren with the salmon bento box."

Wednesday, I called there to order my usual salmon bento box, and no one answered the phone. I was too cheap to pay the $4 up charge from the Uber Eats and the like, so I decided that I would eat at the restaurant for a change. When I walked by, a sign in the window said, "Closed until further notice." I had thought they had gone out of business, which was sad enough.

This is the thing about living in a big city -- you get to know many of the people within a one block radius of where you live. I know Bryce the guy who owns Cedar and Spoke coffee. I know Jae vegetable guy at the market. I got to the know shopkeeper at the craft store, Ugly Baby, in the market when I was recovering from my surgery. I know a handful of the dog owners who trot out their pets at the same time I walk Fox. I recognize a handful of others from other places, even if I don't know their names.

The sushi woman died this week. She was 34 years old and 34 weeks pregnant. The shooter had an automatic weapon, and I am going to take a wild guess that the dude was strung out on drugs. He was immediately apprehended. I am assuming this was random as this woman was sweet and kind and beautiful, always smiling. Her husband's arm was shot up, and he is out of the hospital.

Who are the people in your neighborhood? Downtown is such a mixed bag. We have residents and workers, tourists and tramps. What is an urban core? It is where people live densely, and you need a certain mindset to embrace that. We know people and we don't know people. Because we are dense, the human flotsam can blend in a little more than they would in a less dense area. I love the word flotsam -- it means the wrecakge of a broken ship. These broken people turn to drugs and violence to cope with god-only-knows-what horrors they might have seen in their lives.

As much as I pray for Eina Kwon and her devastated family, I also pray for her shooter and those who live on the street. May they find peace in their hearts instead of resorting to violence.

Blocking v Joy

I am taking an improv class, and my therapist thinks this is great. He studied improv and recommends his trainee therapists study it, as well. 

In improv, you are present. You can't be in the past or the future. There is just now. You connect with your team, listen to them, and respond. You respect the pause, the quiet. You give space for laughter.

One thing you don't want to do is block and shoot someone down. It kills the energy between two people, and dead energy is bad.

Let's say one person pretends to open an umbrella and says, "It is raining." The other person could says a million things, like, "That is strange because we are inside," or "I've never seen it rain gumdrops before" or "The is the first time I've seen rain in Hell." The scene can move forward.

Now let's say the second person blocks and says, "No, it isn't." 

The scene is dead. The first person is stuck. They have nothing to respond to.

I've been thinking about blocking in the real world, and how often people do it without even realizing it. Adults do it continuously to children. I am not talking about "Don't put your finger in the socket" kind of blocking, but "That's a dumb idea" or "That's not the right way to draw an apple" or teachers who make the students guess what they are thinking and they get prize if they guess correctly. That is blocking the creativity of the child, and it builds distrust in the relationship. Who made that teacher or parent god?

Most of this blocking probably comes from a place of fear, but it is so damaging to relationships with others. Who wants to be in a relationship with someone who always is stomping on your ideas, your dreams, your efforts? When our ideas and dreams are stomped on, that kills relationships. I know some parents who think it is their job to stomp on their kids' ideas. Oy.

The person I block the most is myself. I was listening to David Sedaris recently talk about writing. He said a good writer will say yes to new experiences. (He added the caveat using common sense, like about not going home with a stranger when you are drunk in a bar.) Sometimes I need to get out of my own way.

Tourists and Me

I live north of Pike Place Market in downtown Seattle. As such, there are many, many tourists coming and going. Last night, my friend Alice came over for dinner before we went to the ballet. She brought vegetables and I went to the Market to get salmon. Whenever she comes over, I wince at going to the Market on a Saturday afternoon. Yesterday, I went around 2:00, peak tourist time. If I go around 4:30, the market is slowing down but some vendors are starting to close up for the day and then I have to rush.

I talked about the crowds at the Market with Alice and she said the place was "people-y," a new word to me which means a place has too many people. When I went the fishmonger, tourists were "clumping" in front of the displays, blocking the path for me to get Copper River sockeye.

There is another side to tourism in my neighborhood whichI encountered this morning. I went to church a few blocks from my condo, and there I met a woman from Galway, Ireland at the coffee after mass. She told of some good places to hit next time I'm in Dublin, and I told her to visit the Olympic Sculpture Park and the Amazon Spheres.

A few weeks ago, I was at a restaurant/bar called the Nest with sweeping views of Seattle. There I sat next to two women from Australia. At Le Pichet, I met a couple from New York. The woman was of Irish nationality and her boyfriend was Indian. At the Pink Door, I met a woman from Palo Alto.

Alice was talking about how much she likes to absorb the culture when she travels, and how she likes to meet the locals. 

In Seattle, I am the local. I am the person tourists meet. 

Steve Martin's Dad

I was listening to Steve Martin's Born Standing Up, his memoir about his career in stand-up comedy before he turned to acting.

There is a passage at the end that made me cry. Steve's father was an unhappy, disgruntled and self-centered man. By self-centered, I mean his father was focused only on himself, uncaring and unaware of how his behavior impacted others, especially his son. I don't know if his father was an addict or alcoholic, but he had many of the traits.

Steve told the story of his sitting by his father's deathbed, when his father finally gained some self-awareness. His father was crying, and Steve asked him him the reason for his tears.

"I wish I could have returned some of the love I was given."

I cried when I read this. It was one of the saddest things I've heard. I felt bad this man didn't learn this before he died.

Legal Weed begets Fentanyl Addiction Epidemic, or Dealers Gotta Deal

I was talking to a friend today who told me something that blew my mind. He didn't spell it out, but I connected the dots myself.

As you may know, Seattle has a REALLY big problem on our streets with heavy drugs like fentanyl and meth. Really big. Like we have people in the street -- whom I affectionately call the Zombies Crackheads -- who are wasted out of their minds. Literally, out of their minds. They have no minds. They are catatonic or passed out but in a bizarre barely standing pose. These people are not drunk on Boone's Farm or stoned on weed. These people are not jacked on cocaine. These people are almost anesthetized. These people are drugging themselves to death.

So how did we get here, with this drug addiction ruining the lives of the addicted and making live unpleasant for those nearby?

Legal weed.

Follow the logic here. 

The idea behind legal weed was to decriminalize it, which isn't a bad thing. The goal was to keep people out of jail for something that was not causing a great deal of harm.

When marijuana became legal, it became legal to sell it. So who started selling legal weed? Did the corner drug dealer open a store on the corner?

Nope. 

MBA-venture capital types saw loads of money in making fancy little shops with cute names and lots of products. Average drug dealers probably didn't have the time or skills to make fancy edibles consumed by PTA moms before pick-up. 

So what happened to those pot dealers? The guys who sold weed as a quick and easy way to make a few bucks? Did they get other jobs? Did they get job training to become Tech or Finance Bros or anything else?

No.

They kept dealing and started selling harder stuff to their existing client base because there was much, much less of a  market for weed on the street.

I am guessing here, but not entirely sure, that the client base of a modern pot shop is not the Skid Row type of clientele. My guess that the people to go to pot shops have credit cards and Venmo accounts and day jobs with health insurance. 

So the Skid Row guy who was ten years ago sitting at the U District post office stinking of weed, what happened to him? 

His pot dealer didn't stop dealing. His dealer got a new drug, and these new drugs are very, very bad shit.

So what should we do next? Legalize fentanyl, which is like 50 times worse that heroin and 100 times worse than morphine? Hell no. 

We need to stop making fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. Medical establishments still need anesthesia and pain meds, put do we need them so potent and deadly? 

No.

Too many people are dying. They are dying on the streets, in plain view, making out cities scary and unpleasant for those not addicted.

So the people living in tents all over town are there indirectly due to legal marijuana? Yes. 

Sure, some them grew their addictions during the pandemic, and with most of the downtown shut down due to remote working, they filled the vacuum. Legalizing weed didn't get rid of drug dealers. Dealers gotta deal.

The Isolation Hangover & the Lobster

I was texting a friend the other day about a meeting we both attended. The meetings used to be reasonably well run, but this was one was disorganized. He said things like this are happening more often as we recover from our "isolation hangover."

Yes.

In Seattle especially, we have been loathe to get back to normal after the pandemic, I don't know why. I think many people here still believe the pandemic is still happening. Nevertheless, we are coming back together and the results are kind of ugly, at least in my world of remote workers. People who never fully worked remote (grocery store workers, nurses, doctors, etc.) might not have this problem like the rest of us.

Today I went to work in the office -- and there were people there! I thought I'd be overjoyed, excited to have co-workers, but it was odd, it was different. Now I am coming back to work in a place where I never knew the people before the pandemic, so I am getting to know them now. I am not talking about my immediate team, but the teams that are adjacent to mine. My sense was there was a lot of negativity, and then a decent amount of fear. It was like being in a cage with a bunch of grumpy bears that did not want to be in the cage. I just tried to hide and blend in so they wouldn't notice me.

I also joined an Improv class which is fun and hard and interesting and takes a lot of courage to go on stage and act things out by the seat of your pants. It requires thinking and not thinking and feeling and flow.

Afterwards, the class went out for a beer. It was fun, but I think it was one of the first times many of the people there had been out in public with a new group of people since the pandemic. 

I feel like I have been on a boat for the past three years, and I am finally getting back on shore. Everyone else has been on their own boat, and we are coming back to shore together, and we don't know how to act or behave.

Or another analogy -- I feel like a lobster that has shed her shell, waiting for the new one to grow back. In the meantime, I feel a little raw, unprotected in social interactions.

Ireland

Yes, Guinness is better in Ireland. 

Way better. 

Man that beer is so smooth and easy to drink. It is the easiest beer I’ve ever drank. No wonder there are so many alcoholics here. As I’ve been waking around, I’ve been trying to find good restaurants. The drinking culture here is so prevalent. From what I’ve seen, there isn’t really a great separate food culture. Sure, I’ve had some nice meals, but in mostly empty restaurants with people drinking their dinner and smoking cigarettes on the sidewalk patios. 

I know so many “Irish” people in the “U.S.,” people who strongly identify with being Irish whose grandparents or great-grandparents who were Irish, even if they themselves have never been to the motherland. I don’t think any other nationality is quite that in touch with a place they have never been to or have no living relatives there. 

And yet, I saw so many people here who look like people I know in the US. The Irish woman I sat next to on the plane looked like the sister of two of my friends. I’ve seen at least three people who looked like my high school boyfriend. This morning, I thought I saw one of Jack’s cousins in a coffee shop in Kilkenny.

The Irish are still a little sore after being colonized by the English for a thousand years and finally got “Home Rule” about one hundred years ago. (Ireland was the only colony within Europe, which has got to sting.) I’ve been reading about the Great Potato Famine in the 1860’s which drove half of the country to move to the US  so they wouldn’t starve. And the reason for the famine? There was a natural cause of bad weather, but then the British really screwed the pooch by exporting food instead of letting people in Ireland have it. Like they could make more money exporting the gain than they could get from the Irish. Or something like that. Disclaimer: Hey kids, don’t use this info for your school paper. Look it up yourself and don’t trust everything you read on the internet.

Anyway, when India was colonized by the British, Gandhi lead them out of it through being peaceful and “offering wicked no resistance.” The Irish took more of a “Fuck You” violent approach, which gave the British the rationale to respond back with more violence. Oy. It was a shit show. Everyone acted poorly, though the British were more wrong because they started it.

I love traveling because I learn so much history. Instead of reading it in a book—which is useful, don’t get me wrong—I absorb the history through my skin when I’m in a place. Last night, I went to a comedy show and two of the people brought up the IRA. One guy thought his dad might have been a terrorist  How do you sort that out? My dad blew up cars so we could vote on our leaders. Yay?!

I am still suffering from jet lag and I need to go to bed. Today I took a bus tour of the countryside. I was so looking forward to looking out the window and seeing the countryside. Instead, the gentle bouncing of the bus was like Rock-a-Bye-Baby and I zonked out. That and too much Guinness the night before.

We saw a sheep herding demonstration. It was cool. 

The biggest mountain on this side of Ireland. Sigh. This place isn’t Idaho, Montana or Washington. It is still beautiful, but it’s not Glacier.

The Cross of Ireland. The Irish Crown Jewels were stolen in 1907. 

We got to hold lambs. Sooo cute. Holding a lamb is exactly like holding a toddler. You have to relax and let the lamb know it is safe and then it stops squirming. 

Celtic cross. Made with a circle to appeal to pagans who liked the moon and the orbit of Jupiter and whatnot. #marketing 

Ted Lasso Session Three Predictions

I love Ted Lasso.

I think it is the best things that has ever been on television, with the possible exceptions of Roots, which I was too young to see, and Breaking Bad, which I've never had the stomach to watch. Where the character Ted Lasso is a straight up hero, Walter White is an anti-hero, which can be just as compelling.

You haven't seen Ted Lasso because you don't have Apple TV+. Right. It is free if you have T-Mobile, otherwise it is $8 a month or something. The tricky thing is that you can't share the password with your family because it is linked to your Apple ID, which means whoever you give the password to can also download apps on their phone to your account. Or something weird like that. Anyway, cough up the $8, binge it for a month, then cancel.

My Predictions (not to be confused with spoilers) as of Episode 6

• Season 3--and series--ends with Ted going home to Kansas City to be with his son, Henry. The season opened with Ted and Henry at Heathrow. We watch Henry go down the escalator to get on his flight. I predict the last shot of the series will be of Ted going down the same escalator to fly back to KCMO. Initially, Ted moved to London to give his failing marriage some space. Now that his ex-wife has a new boyfriend who is acting as a father figure to Henry, Ted will follow his heart and want to teach his son to play darts and watch basketball together. In recent episodes, Ted has been thinking about all of the good times he had with his dad, who committed suicide when Ted was a teenager. 

• With Ted leaving, Nate Shelley will be the new head coach of Richmond. Nate will realize that Rupert is a dick and he can't work for an amoral asshole. Nate will humbly make amends to Rebecca, the coaching staff and the team for being a jerk. Rebecca knows her ex-husband Rupert is an asshole, so she takes the apologetic Nate back.

• Sam and Rebecca will get together. I have reason for this other than Jason Sudeikis uncle was George Wendt, the actor who played Norm on Cheers. The show is full of other television and film references, and I think Sam and Rebecca of Ted Lasso will get together like Sam and Rebecca in Cheers. The character of Ted Lasso even compared Sam and Rebecca to the couple in Cheers when they started dating in Season 2.

• Jamie Tart becomes the breakout star, and is a nice guy in the process instead of a smarmy, pompous asshole.

• Richmond wins it all.

Sweat & $1,000 Legos

I worked out Sunday night for the first time since my surgery. It was an easy-peasy 20 minutes on the recumbent bike at the gym. It was the first time I've sweat since my surgery. Tonight, I did thirty minutes on the elliptical to prove that Sunday was not a fluke. I survived! I was sweaty and I survived! My can feel the muscles in my quads starting to reform. I'll probably need to hit the weight room soon. I've been frustrated with my slow recovery, but it is better than overdoing it and regretting it later.

I am looking for a gift for Pedro for his birthday. He still loves Legos, and Lego continues to expands its marketing to wealthy adults. I am beginning to think Legos might be out of my price range. There was a $630 Lego set of the Eiffel Tower, and a $679 set of the Titanic. I texted Pedro a link and said "WTF?!?!" 

His reply: I wonder when there'll be a $1000 Lego set.

I bet soon enough. But what would it be? What would be the Holy Grail, the most coveted set ever that people would drop $1K. It could be weird and obscure, that super fans of something would any amount to get it, like women in their twenties are dropping whole paychecks (more or less) to see Taylor Swift in concert. Or would it be something practical, like a side table for your living room? A planter? A bird bath? Would it be something iconic, like the Eiffel Tower, but I can't think of anything more iconic. They've already done the Taj Mahal. A mountain, like Mt. Fuji, or Mt. Rainier? 

Mt. Everest?

I went to BrickCon one year and a woman made the Tiger's Nest Monastery in Bhutan out of Lego. It was super cool.

I bet the geniuses as Lego are working on ideas for the $1000 Lego set as I type.

The M Word

I have a friend from high school who hates her teenage kids and husband.

Okay, she really doesn't hate them. Rather, she has a high level of frustration and resentment towards their lack organization, initiative, and willingness to take care of themselves.

My dear friend is my age, and has been been visited by the M word, where the baby factory has shut down, closed for business. Estrogen is flowing at a slower rate, thereby reducing her sense of nurturing and maternal instincts. The lacks of hormones makes her see more clearly: she hates her family because they suck.

Of course, she loves them, but she would hate them less if they could literally and metaphorically pack their own lunch.

I have experienced such things, but I am fortunate to have been a young enough mother that my kids were almost out of the house by time I hit the change. Poor Pedro was in his last years of high school when I turned to Medusa, using my superpowers to call bullshit on bullshit.

Here is an example of me before and after menopause. Let's say I get in my car thinking there is a half a tank of gas, but realize when I get in that my then husband drove the car for the last week and left it empty. I go to his car, and discover that car doesn't have any gas, either. Like the lights are flashing and the GPS automatically tells you the closest gas station kind of low gas. The estimated range of miles left is zero. Let's say this behavior repeats itself on a regular basis, even when the said husband has been gently asked before to put gas in the car. To be fair, my ex is an adrenaline junkie, so he knows when the low gas lights flash you, you can still drive like 32 miles, but at some point, you will run out of gas unless the magic gas fairy comes and puts gas in the car, which doesn't happen.

My pre-menopausal response to the empty gas tank: I guess Jack must be really busy these past few weeks, so busy that he doesn't have time to fill the car with gas and he's too busy to tell me before I need to drive the soccer carpool. No worries, I can take care of it before I cook dinner.

My post-menopausal response to the empty gas tank: How can the same guy who runs half a hospital not figure out how to put can in the car? I can operate fancy life-saving hospital equipment but doesn't know how to use a gas pump? Does he expect me to take care of all of this shit? What do I look like, his servant? Does he not respect my time? Now that I think about it, he only puts gas in the car before he goes skiing and that's it. How come he can figure out how to use the gas pump when he has something important to do but ignores it when it isn't about him? WTF? How did he get to be such a self-centered asshole?

The gentle and docile behavior serves women well when they are raising young children. I wouldn't want to tell a toddler to change their own fucking diaper. That would be bad, and probably invite a visit from CPS. Things start to shift when kids get older, and little bit of that attitude can serve grown children well. Like, "If you want to drive, pay for your own fucking car insurance." See? That doesn't sound bad. That sounds like you are encouraging responsibility in your kids.

While this transformation wasn't pretty, it was necessary. I don't regret what I did, but I regret how I expressed my anger. I have a friend who says he wants his next relationship to have "no bullshit, no drama," which is fine. The hard part of that is it needs to start within ourselves first before we can expect our partner to change. I joined a twelve step program to understand and dilute my rage towards humanity, and to find a way to be true to myself and not be a full on bitch to the rest of the world. I am fully capable of being docile and gentle, but my tolerance for bullshit is very, very low.

So here is how I imagine the "no bullshit, no drama," playing out in the gas station.

Put gas in the car like a responsible adult (no bullshit), and I won't turn into a lunatic when I have to deal with the consequences of your actions (no drama).

Perhaps this explains why some late middle-age men like younger women. Maybe it isn't because these women are fertile, but because they are deluded and docile from excessive amount of estrogen. These older men should just hope they die before their new younger wives hit menopause, because unless the guys change, the same shitty relationships are going to repeat themselves.

Belly of the Whale

If I had a bar

I'd call it "Belly of the Whale"

Where people could reach their nadir

The Bottom

The Pits

Despair.

Where people could come back to life

Rejoin the human race

with peace and dignity and serenity.

I have been in the belly of the whale

for much too long

Afraid

Angry

Annoyed

and now I am coming out 

Awakened

Alive

and 

Grateful.

"Dinners with Ruth" and Moses

I am listening to a wonderful audiobook: Dinners with Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships by Nina Totenberg, the NPR correspondent about her decades long friendship with the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I am listening on my phone while I needlepoint in my craft studio.

I love this book with the themes of friendship between women, the power of women in the workforce and the beauty of marriage. I envy these women. "Dinner parties" were common in Washington, D.C. before the pandemic. A dinner party often wasn't massive, two or maybe three couples. People regularly hosted dinner for friends in their homes. I live in the other Washington, land of the Seattle Freeze, where dinner with friends isn't quite so common. I don't think the Seattle Freeze is a snobbiness. Rather, I think Seattle is city of introverts who aren't used to keeping the company of others.

As most Americans know, RBG was a tireless advocate for women's rights. Her main concern was that women be treated equal under the law. Nina's book delivers a fascinating look at the recent history of women's rights. Under the heading of "What the fuck?" was an Air Force policy back in the 1970s that said pregnant women officers were required to get abortions while they served or else they had to resign. I had no idea that such a rule ever existed. The female officer Susan Struck got pregnant, sued the U.S. government, and had her child. Ruth was on the team supporting the mother. The case was about to make it to the Supreme Court but then the U.S. military scrapped the rule, perhaps suspecting they were going to lose. 

Ruth I wonder what Ruth would have said to Moses about the Ten Commandments, specifically "Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's wife." Since this is directed at people who have wives, it is okay then for women to covet someone's husband? I would love to hear her take on it. I wonder if she would have told Moses, "I dissent."