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The Rose That Grew From Concrete by Tupac

Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete?
Proving nature’s laws wrong it learned to walk without having feet.
Funny it seems, but by keeping its dreams, it learned to breathe fresh air.
Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else even cared.

I like this little poem by Tupac Shakur as a teenager, before the swagger, before the attitude, before the dramatic death.  It’s a simple little ditty, but you can hear the voice of the kid who wrote it and he is without pretention, definitely the rose.  And a smart little bugger too.  I used to teach this little gem and say, “Look who was obviously good in English class?”

Oh yes, and I am delighted that of all the sunflowers we planted, this one seems to want to grow in the concrete.  We didn’t put it there, but long live the sunflower!

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No, not YOU kids.  That isn’t how I feel.  It is Agnes.  She is totally done with being a mother and has reverted to queen mean chicken.  I watched her peck Helen (twice!) this morning.  After that, Helen kept her distance and hid out under a hydrangea most of the day.  Frankie was smart enough to stay out of her way from the start, but Frankie seems to be a flighty one.  It has been weeks of watching those three hanging out closely together and now suddenly Agnes is telling them loud and clear to clear out.

I had read about this, but continue to be curious.  Why are chickens done mothering at 4 weeks?  I know their brains are small, but how does this serve their chicken society?  Let me know if you have any thoughts on this.  Meanwhile, I am going to sneak out into henhouse and see where the chicks are sleeping.  I know for a fact that they were tucked under their mother just yesterday.  If she has hopped back up on the roost we’ll know that the new game is on.

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HOLY CRAP!  She is EATING her own eggs.  Seriously.  I  have a problem on my hands.  Or maybe I have a stew chicken ready for the pot.

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I just moved Agnes to a box in the shed (quieter and private quarters that she can stay in when the chicks hatch.

Here is a mystery….

There were only 10 eggs.  I put 12 under her last week.  I am SURE of that.  Where did 2 go?

I cleaned out the whole hen house and even raked around the ground below trying to find any telltale signs of those eggs.  Nothing.  I dug around the edges for holes showing rodent paths.  Nothing.  I shook out the straw.  Nothing.  There is a foul smell in the henhouse which could come from rotten egg innards, but unless the chickens ate whatever parts of the egg remained, I can’t figure how there would be no trace besides the bad smell.

Because I can’t think of any better ideas, I am espousing what I call “The Templeton Theory” which is that a rat came in and rolled the eggs away in the night.  It seems unlikely actually, but it is all I can come up with.  I also liked that scene in the book (and the cartoon!) where he goes rolling the egg off under the pig trough and all the animals are completely disgusted.  Let’s hope this doesn’t end in sorrow-orrow-orrow (anyone get that joke?).

Meanwhile, I need to pick up my Chicken Health Handbook at the library.  Problems are getting more advanced for this novice chicken keeper.  What to do?  What to do?  I might hire this sentry to keep watch over the girls this next week.  She looks trustworthy.

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So my neurologist says that the spot is still a spot (out damn spot!), but doesn’t seem to have any problems with it.  She says that it is a mass of tissue that has malformed or shows trauma of some sort (maybe migraines, maybe oxygen deprivation, maybe, maybe, maybe….as you can see, they don’t really know these things).  I am officially “released” from her care.  Nothing is wrong with my brain, it is just decorated differently.

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I was feeling sort of dull and like I hadn’t experienced anything new lately, so I thought I would convince someone to shove me in an MRI machine.

On Thursday I tripped down to the old “Cancer Center” (note to Providence: this is not a comforting sounding place to go for a doctor’s appointment) at Providence and hopped up on the gurney for an adventure into sound and space.  I think they played Pink Floyd in there, but I am not sure.

Actually, they didn’t.  And I had experienced an MRI before, but not in a year or so, so it was time to take a peek into the old brain to make sure everything was getting along well.

You see, about a year and a half ago, I started having these really alarming episodes.  I would suddenly feel a little sick to my stomach, then the light would look sort of weird and otherworldly, and then I would just get all blind in 1/3rd of each eye.  I could see okay from the outside of my eyes, but somewhere in the center would be a big blob of nothingness.  Blind.  Truly.  This would last for about 30 minutes and then disappear, leaving me confused and sort of tired.

The first time this happened, I was sort of scared.  I needed to drive and get Francis somewhere and yet I knew I could not drive being unable to see.  The second time it happened I sat right down and cried.  I thought, “I knew it!  I’m going to be blind by 40!  Why did I fantasize about being Helen Keller?  It’s just not that great!”.

The third and fourth time it happened I did something that I rarely do:  I got on the phone to my doctor and tried to find out what the hell was happening to me.  My doctor sent me to get an MRI “just to check things out”.  I don’t know about you, but I had no idea what I was getting into.  I knew that they put you in a tube and that the space is sort of tight, but as I don’t have a lot of claustrophobia issues, I thought I would be fine.  I sort of imagined that I might be able to take a nap while I was in there.

Little did I know that being strapped down to a table and plopped in a MRI is about the LOUDEST place you could ever hope to be.  That first MRI was awful.  I laid in that white plastic tunnel and just cried as I was blasted with robotic nonsense cacophony.  I felt like the noise just drilled into my brain.  I hated it.

This is how the MRI works: (from Alberta Health Services informational webpage)

MRI is a non-invasive procedure that uses powerful magnets and radio waves to construct pictures of the body. MRI imaging is based on the magnetic properties of atoms. A powerful magnet generates a magnetic field roughly 10,000 times stronger than the natural background magnetism from the earth. A very small percentage of hydrogen atoms within a human body will align with this field. When focused radio wave pulses are broadcast towards the aligned hydrogen atoms in tissues of interest, they will return a signal. The subtle differences in that signal from various body tissues enables MRI to differentiate organs, and potentially contrast benign and malignant tissue. Any imaging plane (or “slice”) can be projected, stored in a computer, or printed on film. 

I love how peaceful that description is.  It is a “powerful” sound, not a deafening one!  The machine makes the worst sounds I have ever heard.  It makes crazy “we are now melting your brain” noises so even if your eyes are shut up tight, you can’t help but imagine the machine malfunctioning and shooting laser rays into your skull.  And you can not escape.  And you can not move.  And you can not sing along to try to make the noise better, nor pray, nor think as the noise is roaring through your brain even with the earplugs and baffles.  So basically it sucks and makes you feel like you are dying even if you are perfectly healthy.  And you are stuck there for more than an hour.

So a year and a half ago, I did my “just in case” MRI and they found a special extra thing in my brain that they called a “lesion” but I like to think of as a brain spot that gives me special powers.  They injected me with this dye stuff during the MRI to see what would happen with the brain blood barrier and apparently, the dye tells them that the lesion is probably not something bad.  Bad lesions, versus special extra ones, take on blood.  Cancerous tumors and such suck up all sorts of blood, so please, everyone who loves me, do not get dramatic on me…. I’m not dying yet, or rather, I am, but just VERY, VERY SLOWLY.  After the special powers were found, I was sent to a neurologist and she wisely diagnosed me with occular migraines.  The special powers might not have anything to do with the migraines or they might be the markings expected to be found in the brains of those similarly afflicted with the ‘graines.  I was told to come back to have my “brain do-dad” (her real words!) checked out in 6 months.  I was also told that I was not to take birth control as a migrainey person was at a much higher risk for stroke when using hormonal birth control.  I then did what any reasonable person would do after being told to not take birth control pills:  I got pregnant.

When pregnant, you can not be MRI’ed, or should avoid it if possible.  I did.  I continued to avoid it for another 12 months, but then I had to face it.  I faced it last week.

There were some bumpy spots on the road to the big white tube.  I had an appointment scheduled for Monday morning bright and early.  When I got there and was all ready to jump up on the tray, they noticed that I had written down that I was breast feeding currently.  

“Oh, you do know what the contrast does to your breast milk, right?” they asked.  Wha?  Apparently the substance in the contrast dye passes into breast milk and scientists have little idea of what it might do to babies.  They do know that it kills people with kidney problems though.  Hmmmmm…..

The technician then asked me if I had 24 hours worth of breast milk built up because I wouldn’t be able to feed Inez for 24 hours.  WHA?  Nursing women will know that this is unbelievable!  That is a lot of breast milk!  Of course I didn’t have that much!  So I was rescheduled for the end of the week, which in my mind would still not be quite enough time for me to pump that much.  I feed Inez about 8 times a day, maybe 4 to 6 ounces at a time.  When I pump, I get about 8 ounces if I haven’t recently fed her.  When I have fed her, I am lucky to get 2 ounces.

So this was my week:  feed the baby, feed the family, feed myself, pump out milk.  Rinse and repeat.  After about 6 hours of this schedule, I felt exhausted.  I felt like Someone had hit me over the head, or maybe I had the flu, or maybe had run 15 miles but forgotten about it.  

Time for a picture:

This was awful.  If I never have to interact with a breast pump again, I am fine with that.  It is exhausting to have your body feed just one baby.  It is over the top to try to feed and create a future food supply at the same time.  I was baffled thinking that I could drink a whole Nalgene bottle full of water and hope to extract more than that in just a couple days.  How could I possibly put in enough liquid in order to take out that much?  But I did!

Anyway, I did the MRI on Thursday and it wasn’t half bad.  The sounds were horrible, but not as horrible.  Because they only needed to look where my special powers are, it was much, much shorter.  

Inez and I even lived through the 24 hours of no nursing (during which I had to continue to pump out my zombie breast milk and dump it down the drain to infect fishes in the Willamette River).

Science is a wonderful thing, but I am happy to not have to be part of the wonder this week.  I go to have the images read in a week or so.  I’ll let you know if anything is exciting, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

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I like to walk about my city.  When I first moved up here I was a little nervous about cruising around at night.  The city felt large and maybe sort of dangerous.  Somewhere along the line I became more comfortable… not stupid, tuned-out comfortable, but okay with going somewhere I know by myself at night.

I am taking a pilates class (Brad says “PILE-LATES” in a funny way) at a community center a couple miles away and I am having a really great time taking the bus out there and then walk/running back after the class.  It is dark out, but I have enjoyed the quiet of the city.  I do follow the bus line just in case I get freaked out and need to jump on , but so far there has been no cause for freak outs, only interesting stuff to see.

Public transport, and pedestrian transport, are so awesome in that you really feel connected to your community.  Yesterday in particular was a good one for a glimpse into the bizarro workings of humanity.  Here are some snippets that I heard or saw:

• A sign on a telephone poll saying, “Missing family cat.  Black, friendly.  Reward!  No questions asked!”.  To which I wonder, why would there be no questions asked?  What sort of questions would you ask if someone brought your cat back.  Maybe, “Where did you find him?” or does that not count as a real question?  Does someone honestly think that a person might have stolen their stupid cat but then decided to return it to collect a reward?  Who wants a cat?  And if you do want a cat, can’t you find a million of them at a shelter without going to steal someone elses?
• Two guys on the bus talking like characters out of Diablo II in the town.  ”I want a gold encrusted sword with very particular jewels.  Can you make it for me?”.  ”Well, that depends on when you need it.”  ”I need it imminently!”  (I think he meant immediately).  ”I am doing a design drawing right now!”  (He had nothing in his hands that I could see).
• A man and woman on the street in the dark.  Woman is seated on a walker seat, the man has his hands on either side of her seat and is bending over her speaking emphatically.  ”I remember going to visit you down at Welfare!  I remember!  You had…(muffled with her screaming/crying/laughing?)…I remember all that!  And that’s the crazy thing!  I remember it all!  I remember even more of that!  It’s true!  I do!”.  And she just giggles or was it crying?  it was a really intense scene, a confrontation between a mother and son (but I am not sure about that relationship.  I felt like I was intruding in a counseling session, so I walked a little faster.)
• My pilates teacher having a minor emotional outburst.  ”Someone complained about me!  Because I am fucking pregnant!  Well, okay, so I can’t demonstrate everything, but if someone wants to cost me my job, they can fucking PAY my insurance!”.  This obviously makes no sense, as though someone would like to pay her insurance in order to guarantee their right to complain.  My teacher is sort of crazy, but I like the class anyway….

I like being in the city at night.  There is such a wealth of characters, like a play waiting to be figured out.

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All I wanted to do was get a donut.  Three donuts actually.  The kids got these coupons for free donuts from Krispy Kreme and I thought we might cash them in before embarking on our Spring Break Solo Mom Tour 2009.  (I hope there is not a Spring Break Solo Mom Tour 2010, but even so, this one deserves a name.)  You see, Brad was off to this fun week in SF, cleverly disguised as “work”.  He was going to a conference and speaking, but really I heard a lot more about the sushi, tapas, and beer halls he visited.  This sushi/beerhall related “work” landed right during Spring Break, so I was going to be stuck with three kids for a full week!  This could not be, thus I planned a big old trip to the coast.  The theme was “Spoil the kids rotten in the hopes that they will go easy on me”, so naturally we needed to start with donuts.

The donut place was out HWY 26, so I thought I might jump from there into Hillsboro and through Forest Grove to Yamhill, continuing on to my parents’ place in Sheridan.  This seemed reasonable.

I found the donut place without too much problem, but then found myself at that crucial decision-making place that I so often land.  ”Should I go back the way I came, get myself onto a road I know and head west or should I try something new?”.  Unfortunately for me, I will always try something new, even to my detriment.  My husband knows this about me…. I have a hard time ever going back the SAME way that I came.  I must vary the path somehow.  And vary I did.

Normal variations are usually pretty easy to work with, but on this day I had three challenges.  One was Beaverton.  It is a disaster of city planning.  Okay, so technically this was Hillsboro, but the two sort of run together so I am going to lump them as I see them.  The new development out there masquerades as an actual city, without having any of the character of a real city.  I don’t know why anyone would want to live there.  It all looks the same, and has little useful signage.  Challenge number two is my “insatiable curiosity”.  ”Hey, does that sign say “Verbort”?  I think my mom lived in Verbort as a little girl!  We should go see what Verbort looks like!”.  And off we go towards Verbort.  Third challenge was TWO roundabouts.  I like roundabouts, but the trouble with them is that  you need to have an idea of where you are going before you enter the circle.  I didn’t, so I shot off in what I thought was a good direction, mostly because it wasn’t the obviously wrong direction.  Not being obviously wrong does not make something right.

There are places in Oregon where you can not go.  Or, at least, you COULD go there, but you do not want to.  I know the general topography of Oregon well enough to know that most parts of the coastal foothills are fairly impassable.  Unless you are a logging truck, you have no business in “the hills”.  Because I grew up in the coastal foothills, I should know that there is the valley and there is the coast.  If you are between the two, good luck cutting through.  Still, I thought there was a secret way to get from Banks over to Gaston, and as I started panicking upon seeing signs reading “Seaside”, I thought I could find that secret way via Timber.  Here is a shot of Timber, Oregon:

As I climbed in elevation, snow started to appear in the ditches and my stomach started sinking.  We got higher and higher and could only see mountains in the distance.  This clearly was NOT the way to Gaston.

So what did I do?  I chickened out and headed north again, back-tracking somewhat to Forest Grove where we had been an hour ago.  Once there, I grounded myself and realigned my course for Sheridan, only arriving two hours late.

We saved $2 on donuts and only wasted a quarter of a tank of gas.  I don’t even like donuts.

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We’ve told this story a lot lately in person, but I think it bears repeating here.  As you know, our 1 mega pixel camera from 2002 finally broke a month or so ago.  The screen went all dark and squiggly on us and we figured it was time to replace it.  Brad and I easily picked out a new camera for a very decent price.  It is a whopping 8 mp.  Everyone was thrilled.  

Meanwhile, Brad went on-line and learned that the problem with our old camera was well-known and that Canon was offering to repair the camera for free.  We sent off our old camera and were excited thinking that maybe when it came back we might allow Francis to consider it hers.  She loves to take pictures and actually shows some talent with composition (or maybe that is just the imagination of a proud mother).

A few weeks go by and the camera comes back.  We’ve told Francis that the camera will now be hers so she waits breathlessly while I open the box.  But wait.  This isn’t our camera…  it is a NEW camera.  The packing note says (effectively) that our camera was so freaking old that they didn’t have the parts for it.  Instead they are sending us a NEW camera.  The new camera?  10 Mega pixels.  

Now Brad and I are at a loss.  Our old/new camera is a nicer camera than the one we just bought.  We told our daughter she could have it but now it is a totally nice, expensive camera.  We just bought a new camera that we like, so we don’t need to take over this old/new camera and yet we both have trouble stomaching the idea of giving a 5 almost 6 year old a $200 camera.  We both agree that it isn’t so much that the camera is nice, it is more what we think people will THINK of us if they see our kid walking around with a brand new digital camera.  OH, THOSE people!  The whole thing is funny.

I think we are going to suck it up and just try to have her keep the camera at our house.  In celebration of sucking it up, here are some shots from the eye of Francis:

One must wonder if this is the look we always give her...

Or maybe it is this look?

Zephyr is her best model really.

Still life with two burnt out bulbs

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