Feeling Ill Instead of Relieved...

So layoffs began yet again at work.  This one was a stunner with many creative, hardworking, amenable people getting the axe.  I don't yet feel relieved for being one of those to remain employed; I should as I am but I don't. I feel sickened by this apparently random act of violence.  No explanation, no justification, no information on who met this fate or why.  And none of us can figure out how we'll continue to get the job done.

Does cleaner mean happy?

Saying goodbye to the old washing machine. I remember shopping and paying cash for it and the matching dryer that died earlier this year. Boy that felt great; the buying, not the dying machine part.

I started to thinking about all the clothes that've been swished around in that old machine. Residue from everywhere and everything my son and I had come into contact with in the last decade.  Sounds kind of icky but DNA-wise it's true.
 
Looking forward to the new front loader. I read that they use less water, less electricity, and that the spin cycle takes nearly all the water out.  I'll be able to wash quilts and comforters. Ooo... ah.  

Now that my son's moved out I probably don't need such a big washer but last weekend he came home to do laundry so I want to be prepared for the next visit.

I Only Have Eyes for Uke

So back in the spring I'd decided to learn another instrument and I bought a $10 Uke on ebay. What I'd actually wanted was this $600+ Kamaka. Good thing I didn't drop that much as the washer broke down and some trees need attention before the winter. But the cheapo uke falls out of tune so easily that it makes learning difficult. I'll keep trying though because one day I will make lovely resonating sounds on a Kamaka...now off to practice.

Long Ago All Over Again

This summer a cooled start to the season and fewer tourists. My mind's been conjuring a spacious, calm quality that has felt like memory but not of other people or specific incidents.


I've always enjoyed solitary walks and often wind up at the water's edge. When I find a spot near the sea, where there are no people sounds, I sometimes make a little telescope with my hand, a peep hole like what they say to use when looking at a solar eclipse. I look through it thinking if I'd stood here 10,000 years ago it would've looked just the same.


I've been surprised all this summer by an accompanying sensation of recollection.

The Unintentionally Puzzling Giant Worm

So in Moscow, Idaho people are searching for a giant worm. They swear it exists and they want to find it. It is supposedly an ancient indigenous type, a real western hemisphere worm not like the common earthworm which apparently was an unintended import from Europe perhaps first arriving in a rotten apple on the Mayflower or maybe surviving the Atlantic crossing stuck to a Viking's shoe.


This summer a professor from the university of Idaho is leading a team of graduate students to get a look at a real live giant Palouse worm. The group will spend the summer searching in fields of a university research farm, hoping for a glimpse of the possibly 3 foot long phylum.


The worm's apparent desire for seclusion and peace, evident from the only 4 substantiated sightings since the 1890s and the fact that it lives fifteen feet below the surface of the planet, is not dampening the Idahoian university team's desire or efforts to force it above ground. Three methods are being employed in the hopes of glimpsing, capturing (-which comes first?- ) killing, and disecting the creature - digging, digging and pouring noxious doses of mustard and vinegar down the holes, and shoving 3 foot long metal rods inducting 320 volts into the ground.