Thursday, November 23, 2017

Gracias a la vida

Thanksgiving 2017
Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto - Violeta Parra, Chilean folk singer

Today’s newspaper included 3.4 pounds of advertisements for Black Friday. What a waste. I feel for the delivery person. Now I will have to dispose of it.

I’ve been thinking of cancelling my subscription. The weight of today’s paper may have tipped the scale for me.

But I’m addicted to puzzles and comics. Can I go cold turkey? Probably not.

I’ll need to build a new routine, a way to get my exercise and satisfy my addictions. At least three stores within a mile of my house sell the local paper. Alternate routes. Variety. And I could do my trash lady routine, too. When I walk, I often take old plastic bags and pick up litter along the way. My community service job.

My current subscription expires on December 15.

I know. The dead of winter may not be the best time to start this. But I’m an Oregonian – waterproof, weathered and wrinkled. And I’m ready for a change. A challenge. A way to give thanks for being alive.


Sunday, November 12, 2017

STICKERS

Years ago, it was the craze to have I stop for . . . (fill in the blank) stickers on your bumper. I found one that said, I stop for no reason. One day I was in the right lane of a two lane road when the car to my left turned to the right in front of me. I hit the brake with both feet and everything on the seat crashed to the floor.

Before I could start up again, the light turned red. I was bent to retrieve my purse when someone knocked on my window. A motorcycle rider smiled at me. I rolled the window down. “That was a really good reason,” he said with a laugh. My panic and anger disappeared.

Now, the craze is to tell everyone about your family in symbols or words.

Recently, I pulled up behind a black SUV. The back window had four stickers:
TEXAS in orange, the word MOM underneath
Oregon State University, MOM underneath
• a bucking bronco and rider in brown on cream, MOM underneath (I looked it up: Wyoming)
• a yellow O, MOM underneath (didn't have to look it up: University of Oregon)

I wanted to run up to her window and say, Wow, MOM – that’s a lot of colleges . . . and kids.

But of course that would be rude. And her stickers are much better than the sticker I saw on a pickup canopy: a row of guns in decreasing sizes – rifles down to handguns – with THIS IS MY FAMILY next to it.

I have stickers on the back of my current vehicle. These help me find my white SUV in parking lots full of white SUVs. One is the shape of Oregon with a yellow O in the middle. Two others are symbols meaningful to me, but understanding those is unlikely to cause a confrontation. I don’t plan to add any others.