Oregon Dreaming

Drinking a second bloody mary at the Seaside golf course bar (not pictured). It is a Sunday, God's day of rest and it occurs to me that the first one had been a bit spicier. This one here though contains a pepperoncini that made me cough and upon breach of the green casing, a squirt arced across my lap. I'm with Mitch and Dad, who are over there playing video poker. They've been winning and shouting me drinks. The barman wears a straw hat and a Hawaiian shirt. We have a similar dress code. He reminds me of Bill Murray's under-appreciated brother Brian-Doyle, except more jaundiced. He's got his laptop on the bar next to me and I can see the ebay page he's got up. He's bidding on linen shirts. Looking out the window at the first tee, it's all fogged in. The plan, as ever, is to finish the novel and if it is not successful, write it from the perspective of Peabody's sister Dolores, whose presence in the story is diaphanous at best (Journal, 5 August 2012)

Been awful lucky to see Mitch as much as I have this summer (pictured to the right of me). His joie de vivre was in full effect in Seaside where he bought my Dad a bicycle as a gesture to my parents for all the good they've done, like be his friend and his surrogate parents. A lot of us clapped and there was a pretend ceremony where we all drank tequila and cried and Mitch got adopted for realsies. He said a lot of things were blogworthy, of which a mere fraction have been documented here. Mitch took me to Lake Havasu in May where we stayed at his uncle's house and I saw my first roadrunner. 

We'd sit at the pool and have arguments over music. Mitch had some noisy country on and I said I liked this better than the Johnny Cash he was playing.

"This is Johnny Cash though."

"So I guess this underscores my utter indifference to his music."

He put on some John Prine and i said, "John Prine is not good sitting by the pool music. Seems like what'd you'd listen to hungover as you pile into a pick-up to go hunt squirrels."

"Your cleansing is my infestation," he explained to me at one point,  neatly highlighting our general differences.

A few days at the pool and a few nights on the town and then we headed back to Flagstaff. If I remember correctly it was a three hour drive. 

Portland was busy, but good. Had some sweet excursions with my nieces, hit some good bars and met my sister's boyfriend, who dreamt that he went hunting with my brother. Pictured above is the fogged in coastline caught on camera on a hike with my nieces visiting from Maryland.

Midway to Indian Beach, we encountered what I assumed was an old WWII ruin inside the rainforest.  

I wore my Mother's clothes most of the weekend, which is kinda weird. Dad was upset because I drank his cinnamon whisky and was wearing his wife's clothes. The shirt that I decided to wear to the airport, one of the buttons came off as I was putting on deodorant. I didn't think that it was a bad omen necessarily, just that I had to get it sewn back on to make it complete again. Also that I need to learn how to sew. I didn't have any problems with the buttons coming off my Mom's clothes because they weren't blouses. They were pastel-colored sweatshirts. I only wore one of them out and that was to a rowdy dinner our last night in Seaside. Clam chowder, crab sandwich and two oyster shooters — I could easily go for that on my last day on Earth. Jupiter here we come!