there once was a guest room

And then Jane decided it was no guest room, but it was her room.

She loves sleeping on our spare bed - my old bed from my previous, living sans-Steve life. I insisted we save my bed for guests; so far, there have been two different guests, so I think it was worth the save. Jane thinks so too.

The guest room is technically my craft room, but lately it has been the guest room. All of my crafty things are pushed out to the perimeter, which doesn't look very pretty.

Want to see what I sewed in Portland?
Here:

And from above:


Long has the Madge Family packed little gifts in these homemade gift bags. My mom began doing this in the late 1970s, I think. We have vintage mom bags that still get reused for gifts! They're so easy to make and so much fun, too. Slap a double-sided satin ribbon on them and your gift has it made.

The material I used here is called "Candy Dot." Remember those things? I remember them clearly, but I never tried them.

Here's a short list of my favorite American candies, circa 1988:

• Junior Mints
• Bonkers!
• Nerds
• Candy cigarettes!
• Laffy Taffies
• Black licorice ropes
• Does Bazooka Joe bubble gum count here? Hope so. And Double Bubble?
  

Shocking, unrelated-to-this-post truth:

I need to start looking for a job. Why am I not more enthused? This scares me. I am such a self-doubter. It sucks to have chronic self-doubting disease. When it comes to jobs. Of course.

alma matters

This is for the man at my recent graduation ceremony that said, "Never forget where you came from."

These are photographs of all of the schools I ever attended. I am so lucky to have some pictures to share from my recent trip home...because of winter vacations, the schools were vacant; this is how I have manipulated them to fit into the frames of my memory.

K-3, St. Stephen's School
The church.


My first grade classroom. Just down the stairs there, I peed my pants the one and only time in school.


These are the steps where M. Schmidt taught me what stand-alone middle fingers meant one day in the first grade.


The church still has weekly masses, but the parish school no longer operates.

3-5, Woodstock School
Such a short time was spent here, but I have many memories and had impressionable teachers.

The front lobby.

The soccer field.

I walked out of these doors every afternoon and set out for home.


6-8, Kellogg Middle School
I hold this school dearly to my heart. It wasn't a pretty place to be or an easy place to be; it was tough cookies. This is the place you forget to mention when you say where you come from. Word is that it is slated for closure in a couple of years, and this breaks my heart. I have secret blogging plans to keep it alive with some memories. So, look out for them.

The annex!

The first time I walked up these stairs, I felt brand new.

Goodbye.


9-12, Cleveland High School
I didn't spend a lot of time with my camera here, but I loved this school. Out ten years this year! Gulpedly-gulp.


BS, University of Oregon, 2001
I heart the U of O. Here then is the Knight Library on campus.

And the PLC/13th Avenue.


MA, University of South Florida, 2006
And so I've come full circle - here's where I end.


Phew.

first post of the new blog

So, now that I'm doing this beta-thing, I have an overwhelming urge to post every single thing that crosses my mind.

Tonight: the fancy-country-club chicken dinner was yummy. I have been trying to stay out of restaurants; I prepare/cook my meals, just for the sake of taking pleasure in it and also for saving some money. So it was really fun to eat out, as I haven't in awhile. And it was just chicken! Here's the real story: it was an event I attended as an honored guest. Really! I was able to reconnect with a large group of folks I used to work with - folks that changed my life. It was a library event, and I was paraded around the room as the "almost finished grad student". Someone very important in south Florida library-land said of me, "She's the best kind of public servant there is." Wow. I hate to gloat, like I am jinxing myself out of future jobs, but tonight was awesome.

Now, it's time for pictures.

When Steve and I were hurrying to the Ft. Lauderdale airport last month, we caught a glimpse of this teddy bear (totally naked, just how Spinning Girl likes 'em), snuggly tucked into the side of a semi-truck:


















The day after I arrived in Portland, the family went up to Timberline Lodge for a picnic. This is Mt. Hood (elevation 11,000+ ft) hardly covered in snow:


















Inside the Lodge (built by the WPA; you might recognize the facade of the lodge from The Shining), there are so many fireplaces, you just about want to stop, drop and drink hot chocolate:


















As a general rule, I love warm colors and earthy browns:


















I guess he saw them too: butterfly swarm on Mt. Hood!


















Back in the heart of SE Portland, my rose garden (planted August, 2001), gives quite the show. This is a floribunda rose with some recent history: Our Lady of Guadalupe:


















A classic hybrid tea: Mr. Lincoln in full bloom:


















I could talk roses all afternoon. I miss them, and now that I have room to plant some, I should really look into it.

Enough pictures for now!

I still have unpacked boxes from my move. Well, maybe I tackled the last one today. I found my good hair dryer, jewelry, black pants, and a gift I'd bought months ago for one lucky Blogger...

vaca, she wrote

Oops!

I'm on vacation.

In Portland!

Here's a recap of what I've done so far:

Yesterday (my first day), I went to Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood with my family. We had a picnic underneath ski lifts, strolled around the lodge, and saw 42,000 butterflies. Forest fires are burning not too far from the mountain, so it smelled like we were camping - which I secretly loved.

Today, the little sis and I went to the International Rose Test Garden (my favorite place), the Japanese Garden (we overheard a tour guide say, "turn off the noise in your minds and take in everything through your eyes" - it was a great idea, but so crowded I couldn't meditate), and we tried going to Powell's Books...however, the driving was insane and I couldn't find a parking place. Portland is so busy these days! When I worked downtown awhile back, I felt like I owned the place. Today, I was a tourist completely.

Tonight, I'm making dinner for my grandpa and his girlfriend. I like her, but she says Missouri very hickish (Miss-ur-ahh).

So, I will mostly be in and out of Bloggerville. Mostly because my parents have dial-up. No pictures until I get back to Florida: next-next weekend.

Postcards anyone?

Love to you all,
Madge

P.S. Word has come from Florida that my Fritz Knits hats have arrived. WOOT!

sub bullets

• My favorite grocery store chain promotes journaling. Some cute advice: "Baking a batch of cookies while you journal could remind you of making cookies with your mother as a child."
  

• Speaking of candles (this would only make sense if you read The Write Way), I bought three candlestick holders at Goodwill this afternoon. Two of them were brass, one was silver. Though I am not fond of brass at all, I picked them up because they'll be invaluable during hurricane aftermaths. They were in rough shape - completely filthy (on the other hand, they are heavy and remind me of that little pimp Lumiere*). Guess what cleans brass? Vinegar and salt. So now they're like new, my friends. And they were mere chump change, even for my broke ass: 79¢.

• This site is my new obsession, albeit a little on the spendy side. I've started scanning all of my fabrics so I know what's going on with my stash. You will probably see some soon!

• So last night I was playing Get the Ribbon with D. Sergei. But D. Sergei was playing Get the Finger. OUCH, holmes!
  

• This week I will jet off to Portland, OR. I get to see both of my sistas! One is coming down from Seattle, the other is home from Honolulu. Woot! My parents are both on vacation, too! In short, this means I get to walk for coffee every morning, spend some time at the Coast, see my rose garden*, Portland's rose garden, see my best friend, L., go quilt shop hopping, SEW like a maniac as I always do when I'm home...etc. And breath in that fresh Pacific Northwest air. Mmmmmm.

*My mom wrote this in a recent e-mail regarding my rose garden: "Your rose garden is so pretty. I added rocks, marigolds, zinneas & 3 nasturiums. I think we will call our backyard "RoseRock" since Xanadu is taken ;) I think that is befitting! Your dad bought a lounge chair for sunbathing at Bimart today for $28 - half price. White plastic. Looks nice. I am so enjoying the backyard. I hope it won't be too cool for you to hang out there." Do you love my parents? (And to clarify, the neighbors down the block - good friends of my parents - call their backyard oasis Xanadu; they fill their above-ground pool with hose water and soak in it like alligators. They have accessorized with patio lights, torches, full bar, and wicked good food on the barbie. Definitely a sight in SE Portland!)

ok, more cattiness

A few days ago, I mentioned how much I missed Portland. And then I remembered I hail from Tonya Harding country (btw, I totally saw her once at Clackamas Town Center when she was triple-axle famous). So I thought I would hunt her down...for my sake, and yours.

From the *official* Tonya Harding website:

Tonya would like to make enough money boxing then retire to live alone with her Persian cat, Smalls.

"It would be having enough money to go hunting and fishing and go to the big four-wheel-drive mud bogs," she says. "And every once in a while put on a really pretty dress and go to dinner at a place like Applebee's or something."

What? You want more? She has a special message for you.

Bye now.

help!

I hardly ever write about my hometown, a.k.a Portland, OR, a.k.a the best city EVER (okay, the best city on the West Coast. No? The best city in Oregon? Okay, the only city in Oregon? Happy?!). I'm in search of blogs written by seasoned and/or native Portlanders to get a dose of what I've been missing for the past four years. (Four?! Gulp.)

And guess what?

They are really hard to find.

album, short & fast

My quick trip to Portland is behind me, and I all have to share are a few photos I took here and there.
Looking down the sidewalk from my house.














Blue sky? Whudda hudda? Apparently so:

The neighborhood cat, Sugar, gets some tummy L-O-V-E:

And then he gives it (1/1000 head butts of love):














Tree that I look out to from my bedroom window (though pine trees are not uncommon in Portland, this view reminds me of Oregon's high desert):














Flowers in vases, part I:














Part II:














Part III:














Over. A plump little woman demystifying flight schedules in Denver:

KMS: it ain't just hair product.

Aight. (I'm allowed to say that; you'll see in a moment).

It is well into Valentine's Day, my sweet BF is practically in another time zone, and I think I am getting a cold (my glands are getting junky) -- so this wasn't the world's greatest HAPPYVD in Madgeland -- but it's okay -- true love is very comforting and that means, in so many words, that these kvetchings don't matter.

That's why I'm going to tell you about KMS, or, where I went to middle school.

Think brick building; three stories. Kind of inner-city, yes? It was across the street from an adult motel, and that street was busy busy. On the inside - there were lots of children. Children from Eastern Europe, Russia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos. Children that didn't give a shit about school and children that did; children that were popular and children that were not - you know, it was middle school. Children were mean. Aaron D. said to me, "Man. Your two front teeth are so far apart I could drive a Mercedes between them;" Daniel C. said, "Here is your self-portrait, Madge." Oh, there I was, with brick walls for breasts. Flat. I only hoped to have boobs like Kelsey S. someday: "my boobs are like the size of oranges, cut in half." Despite this - I really didn't have it so bad. Once, when I was in the 8th grade, a girl in the sixth grade was abducted by a stranger and taken across the street to the adult motel and was raped and sodomized until she was able to escape out the bathroom window.

Yuck - this is Valentine's Day! But KMS is on my mind. This was where I spent three formative years - being mean to a kid named Robert G. Only, this wasn't how he remembered it. I didn't go to the same high school as most of my fellow KMS classmates; they went right and I went left. So I don't know what happened to most of these kids - but I do know what happened to Robert G. because he e-mailed me when I was at college years later. How he found me, I'll never know. He said, "I think that I loved you in middle school, that I can truly say I was in love with you. You were so nice to me." It did wonders for my guilty, bratty conscience --but you can understand it was a little creepy, too. He's like a meteorologist now or something.

My sixth and eighth grade teacher, Mrs. T., was a spit-and-clean-the-overhead-type. Eww! But she was a grandma, and I knew this and loved her for it; she was the only teacher who came to me when my grandma died and offered comfort. Most of the other kids hated her - but I could understand they were naughty brats, and that she was grandmotherly and deserved more of me. Also, she genuinely liked my alliteration assignment.

I had a teacher all three years named Mrs. J. She had hair down past the backs of her knees. Once Tony C. asked her if she listened to a band called Crazy Horse and she laughed real hard. She also smoked, and when I was in middle school, teachers smoked right in their breakroom, and she smelled just like the breakroom smelled when I walked by it as the doors opened. She taught me a lot about tolerance and like a weirdo, I sought to please her by buying a pair of clogs my eighth grade year. In the sixth grade, it meant so much that she knew I was against Desert Storm. But we all were - we even staged a protest and walked out of school to downtown Portland. "Hell no! We won't go! We won't go for Texaco!" But just as I was about to leave the school - I was teetering on the steps - and go with the others downtown, the principal stopped me and said I wasn't making a good choice. I was free to demonstrate against the war, yes and fine, but I shouldn't leave the school. So I stayed. And a lot of my friends got busted by their parents.

Tina D. was having sex in the sixth grade, but I didn't know a lot about that. She had a boyfriend named Jericho J. and I had a hot crush on him. Tina D. was a New Jersey girl at heart. Jericho J. at least knew my name.

Happy belated VD.

Holiday 2005

One sleepy Madge wants you to know that she's on holiday in Portland; her blogging will be sporadic, but when she has a free moment, she'll post some P-town delights.

[There.
Was.
Snow.
On.
The.
Ground.

Yesterday.
When.
I.
Got.
Here.

WOOT.]

Me So Cute Monday II

Let it Snow, let it snow, let snow...

Though these two photos were scanned together to save time, they are still incredibly difficult to see (click on them to view larger)! However, I'm the one wearing the pink jacket with red pants and lighter pink boots (when I was a kid, everyday was a variation of Valentine's Day). You might think it snows in Oregon a lot and it does, but it rarely snows in Portland. That's why we look like such doofuses: we were very inexperienced with snow gear. Thank goodness our driveway had at least something of a slope - because my uncle refurbished an old sled he found at one of my grandpa's rental houses and gave it to my sisters and me one Christmas. My older sister is to the extreme left: the tall, lanky babe. The two girls in the middle are kind of related, but not blood-related. I make that distinction because they still eat their boogers, however many+ years later. Eww.

Deep thoughts from the Deep South.

Today, I was told that I "really have that Oregon thing going on." But it was kind of a today-only comment. As in, the people I work with probably think that of me all of the time, but today they let me know. When the comment was delivered, I was eating raw snow peas, my hair was parted down the middle, and I was carrying a large cloth grocery bag filled with books.

I'm turning 26 in a matter of weeks. I still don't wear make-up (eyeliner, occasionally). I've had the same haircut since my freshman year of high school (straight hair, middle/sometimes side part, no bangs). And lately, as in this year, I have this insecurity that I'd better conform to the typical Southern woman, or I'm going to be escorted back to Portland by Jeb Bush. In the middle of the night. Torture will probably be involved.

When I say "typical Southern woman," I mean I'm stereotyping of course. Typical to me is a Southern woman by way of New York, or Southern by way of plantation. The Southern woman is high maintenance, looks like a million dollars at Starbucks or the grocery store, and wears amazing clothes (by Southern standards). She also has her nails done, regularly. I can't explain it, other than to say the Sowo invests a lot of time and money in beauty. Is it Oregonian of me to not want to?

Everyday I have a fight with myself. This fight is: Oregon v. Florida. Three years here in the Sunshine State and I'm still walking around like I'm fresh from the NW. And I guess, I am. It will always be foreign to me that I haven't once lived in an apartment builidng or worked somewhere that recycles. Also, when you say "public transportation" people turn up their noses. And I live in a red state now. Excuse me? Did I hear myself correctly? Whatever happened to my values!? To this, the girl who started 12 different "Save the Earth" clubs during her youth (I never took minutes. I am convinced that's why they all failed). And then Florida takes a few punches on Oregon. And then Oregon shoots back. And then my inner-Madge says to the both of them, "Stop. Please. Just stop. You're in Florida right now. Love where you are now."

So does that mean I stick out like I don't belong, or do I finally do something about this haircut?

Regional assimilation. It's tough. Oh.so.very.tough.

Homeward bound. I wish I was...

Well, this was the view from my front porch one night in Portland.

I love you Edna Mae

Dear Madge Community,

Word came from Portland early this morning that my grandma died. Though her death came out of the blue, it was truly for the better; she has long (10+ years) suffered from Alzheimer's Disease. I am flying to Portland on Saturday for some five days. Today was bittersweet - tomorrow might be sad. And the following days could be sadder. But you know something? Today I realized that my grandma would want nothing more than for me to have a glass of wine and to party. Her mind is now free!

The woman that said "I figured out the secret to life when I turned 38"...

Edna Mae. July 3, 1925 - September 21, 2005.

No idling allowed.

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Crystal ball of petals.

The perfect rose -- for so many reasons!

I love the Voodoo that you do...

I don't consider myself a romantic, nor a gardner, really. I'm not down with the dozen+, commercially-grown rose bouquets from Colombia that don't smell worth a damn, either. Oh, I sound so cranky! But it's true: I love rose gardens. I started maintaining one in Portland, OR, shortly before I left for a move to Florida (ok, not that one, but I do love to hang out there). I grew up around roses - and I think what enchanted me about them first is that they are each named for something or someone. Like I posted before, I'm a little nuts about names. I have some traditionals in my Portland garden: Peace, Mister Lincoln, and JFK. The others: Perfume Delight, Oregold, Harmony, Our Lady of Guadalupe, Cherry Parfait, Voluptuous!, and Gemini. The rose in the photo above is Voodoo, which is currently on my wishlist. I'm also a sucker for Hot Cocoa, which is this delicious chocolate and red blend that comes off real smoky. I've ordered a book on growing roses in the deep South, and taken note of two rose gardens in Orlando that are relatively close to my abode. Definitely field trips, though!

Birds in Paradise

I'm not one for birds in captivity, so I set these rare plastic parrots free...and they keep coming back.

Class of Nineteen-Ninety Seven- (teen year old dork gets deep)

While vacationing in the very bedroom that I grew up in, I was (of course) drawn to old diaries, photo albums, and things from my youth and adolescence that I collected and saved in boxes. I was mostly eager to search through old yearbooks that I hadn't flipped through in ages, but for some reason, it just didn't provide me with the cheap entertainment that I thought it would. Blah-blah, I could only imagine what people were really up to...

It was my journal entries that really had me staying up late. For the most part, the writing was goofy, mainly because I started keeping a journal in 1991 (which I think means I was in the sixth grade). Once I got to the high school entries, I read about things that I'd completely forgotten about. Like the boy I liked so much my sophomore year missed three weeks of school, and somewhere in there he had a spinal tap, which concerned me a lot. He had a girlfriend, and I can't even remember who she must have been, but that I thought we flirted so much she couldn't have been that serious. Then, during my junior year, he hadn't even remembered how he knew me, which classes we'd shared our sophomore year, and because of that I swore to my journal that I hated him, but still secretly liked him (and that was completely acceptable). (It was years later that I found out he was always baked, that he dealt drugs, and that he was a complete weasel. Me naive? No way).

Rereading everything was semi-frightening, only because I'd forgotten so much. I have mixed feelings about high school in general...I remember feeling so far ahead of it -so dangerously cynical!- but most of my memories are bittersweet in that teen-angst kind of way. I was definitely not a rebel, but I followed rules knowing that if I did so, I could break them less obviously. I'm wondering if all good girls felt that way? Still do?

Though my journal entries were never tremendously long - a page at best - I remember how empowering it was to write in them, silly as they were. I actually felt like my journal was this secret girl that was way cooler than me, but that she really cared for the dumb things I wrote about and looked forward to reading them. Ah-ha-ha! So I was cheesy and pathetic...so what!!? Visiting all of that again was tremendous; no time-machine necessary.

a case of the blands

The calendar is nearing the mid-July 20's, which means my vacation is spiraling down to the end. It's always a drag to talk about the end of a vacation when there a few days remaining, but because I'm usually a drag, I am thinking about it right now. I will be an emotional topsy-turvy next week, and though I consider myself an expert at goodbyes, I am attached to Oregon right now and will be sad to fly away and leave her behind. At the other side of the country, however, is my "so much more than a boyfriend" boyfriend, Steve. I've been missing him since he dropped me off at the airport in West Palm Beach, Florida. Coming and going from one home to another is so tough -- you'd think leaving love to visit more love would be easy as pie -- but it is hard on me! Why do I have to be such a wanker?