A List of Yays and Nays

I'm just going to list some favorites and not so favorites, varitey to subjects. Why? Do I need a reason?

Favorite Store for used goods building materials: Habitat for Humanity's Re-use store in Corvallis. I love the price of the goods offered there. I love the staff. I just love that store.

Most unfavorite Used Goods Store: Goodwill. Why? Because it's a fricking sweatshop, with the CEO in Portland getting nearly a half million, no disabled people are really being retrained there. They're being used to fatten a bunch of execs lifestyles. I worked there once. I know what goes on.

Favorite Government Department: ODOT. I don't know why. Maybe because you see them out there actually doing something tangible. This favorite could change. I did talk to the rest area crew yesterday, and told them Sophie was found, and about the leak of gravel, dirt and water underneath the north end of the north bound Santiam Bridge. I told them I called it in to the main ODOT line. And they said "That doesn't mean they'll do anything about it." I knew that already, from talking to and knowing other ODOT employees, some of whom are paranoid about driving over many Oregon bridges. Insider paranoia, I call it. They know too much, I suppose.

Least Favorite Government Department: The mental health department, of course. After all I went through, for thirty years, believing them--the abuse, the forced drugging, the indoctrination into a lifestyle of consuming large amounts of expensive psyche drugs, while simultaneously accepting a lifestyle of living in a little room in a converted hotel and staring at the wall most days every day, and accepting this as "your life" and as they write it off as "a good outcome", what a bunch of out of touch, be the least you can be, waste taxpayer money and ruin lives abuse-condoning idiots! Pathetic that with all that money, that is all they can come up with.

Favorite vegetable: broccoli. Have always loved it. Like Kale very much also. Like Brussels sprouts and squash and carrots and peppers. Not big on tomatos. They hurt my stomach.

Favorite other foods: almonds. I LOVE almonds. I also love pumpkin seeds. I also love coffee, but I like it strong and usually black, and I limit myself to one cup per day, in the morning. I can't handle much caffeine. I hate soda pop. If I drink pop it's usually rootbeer.

Favorite fruit: apples. I eat one every morning and don't feel right if I don't. I also LOVE blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, bananas, mangos, papayas, kiwis, pears, cherrys, and raspberries. I'm a berry girl for sure. I love berries of all sorts. I grew up picking blackberries, salmonberries, thimbleberries and huckleberries in the woods.

Favorite memories: sitting around a campfire on a dark starry night, near a lake. I want to get back into camping. I also like floating on my back in a lake at night, watching the stars, with my ears submerged to muffle all noise.

Least favorite memories: I still have "school" nightmares, waking up in a cold sweat, thinking I have exams I haven't studied for, or a lab to go to. I was also made fun of a lot in school, especially, for some reason, at OSU. I didn't like going to school there. I got made fun of also in high school, for my clothes, which were pathetic, body, everything.

I remember one girl was the worst at bullying me. I can't remember much about her, except for her name: Emma Shively and she liked picking on me. I don't know why. I don't really have any good memories about school.

Except, for two years I spent in college in California. It was a good school, a small religious college, and they were darn good at teaching the basics. I met a great guy there, Dave, but he was already married. Dave was into photography and scuba diving. I was into both those things also. I really liked him.

We went on dive trips that were so fun, to the California coast. Dave took me to see Ansel Adams, I think it was. I met Jacques and Phillipe Cousteau during those years, at an Involvement Day they ran. Jacques Cousteau had always been a hero of mine, as a child, and turned me into an avid amateur biologist.

But I transferred to OSU, on advice from the biology professor, who said I was too smart for such a small school, and that I had great potential as a scientist. Unfortunately, he knew nothing of my background with an abusive father, which I kept totally bottled, and all the emotional struggles I was having with that, and even with the religion I was in, that created an isolation around children, especially as they matured into adults. We were never prepared to meet the real outside world.

Other favorites: I love cuddling into a warm blanket, cats all around and atop me, to read a good book or watch a movie as I doze off into sleep.

I love staring into the stars on very black nights, preferrably way out in the middle of nowhere or beside a lake. The stars make me feel so very small and insignificant, which is somehow reassuring to me. My teensy weensy problems, by comparison, vanish. Staring into all those stars make me understand that I don't need to put any pressure on myself to do more or to be somebody, because in the face of those stars and the massive universe, we're all pretty much nothing.

If you think you're something else again, like God's gift to everybody, go stare into the stars. You'll know. You're nothing, like everybody else. Might help you lose the arrogance. Takes all the pressure off.