Happy Holidays

A Merry Christmas to you all,
I hope you're ready to have a ball,
For it is that time of year,
For family, fun, and good cheer.
Lights, a tree and presents galore,
Giving thanks for those we adore.
I wait all year for this time,
So much so I talk in rhyme!
I hope you all have some fun,
And get out of Oregon to see the sun.
I'm heading off this Saturday,
To California for a nice long stay.
So, if I don't see you anymore,
Happy Holidays to you and yours.

Escapades of a Bearcat

I haven’t spent much time talking about my cat in the past year or so. In fact, the last post I wrote was about my Persian cat, Ernest. Well, Ernest is gone. Gone forever! Don’t panic though, he’s not dead. He’s just living with my parents in California (which some Oregonians might think is the same as being dead – these Oregonians have a real beef to pick with my birth state for some reason that’s never been very clear to me). I really tried with Ernest. I gave it a full year, but no matter what I did Ernest hated me. If I walked into a room, he would walk out. If I came near him, he would cringe away from me. If I tried to pet him, he would start crying. Honestly, I felt like a monster. If anyone was the victim in our relationship, it was me! I’m pretty sure he was working a plan to psychologically torture me to the point that I would break, die and then he would eat me. I would not put it past the beast. But the straw that really broke this camel’s back was what happened when my cousin, Vera, came to visit me.

Vera flew into Portland, navigated the wild ways of Portland’s public transportation system and met me at the Courthouse downtown. From there we took my typical bus route home, arriving at my usual 5:30 pm. I walked in the door and Ernest immediately began to scuttle out of the room as was his custom, but as Vera came in behind me, Ernest paused. He stopped, turned around, and walked back into the room (which I was still standing in!) and sat down in a corner to gaze at Vera. This was odd. But at this point I had become somewhat used to the eccentricities of Ernest’s behavior and the fact that I would never understand him. Later, after Vera’s suitcase was in the guest room and we were all settled, we went downstairs to watch some TV. As soon as Vera sat down on the couch, Ernest walked over to sit at her feet and gaze adoringly up at her. I kid you not. Ernest had a look on his face that said he was looking at an angel. It was revolting. He even let Vera reach down to scratch his head! What was this??? I had owned this miserable rat for over a year and no matter what I did he treated me like scum, but he takes one look at this new person and he’s in love?? It was the last straw. Ernest and I were never going to get along and I was tired of finding excuses to stay away from my own house so that I wouldn’t have to go back to the second Cold War. I immediately called my mother (who had given me Ernest in the first place) and told her that I just couldn’t take it anymore. Something had to be done.

Some of you may remember (actually, I’m not sure if I wrote about this before, so some of you may be hearing about this for the first time), but we originally purchased Ernest in order to breed my mother’s Persian, Julie, and get a kitten for my sister. Well, during this time, Julie had produced three beautiful white and gray kittens (they all looked like little Julie clones). My sister planned to take two of them and my mother suggested that I take the third and Ernest could come to live at my parents’ house instead. This sounded perfect to me (surely I would have more luck getting a kitten to love me than a fully grown cat) and it wasn’t long before my parents were delivering my new kitten, Chloe.

Chloe is now almost two years old and I absolutely adore her. She was worth every miserable year of living with Ernest. Chloe is a 7 pound ball of gray/white Persian cuteness who looks remarkably like the ewoks from Star Wars. I always tell people that she’s a bear dressed up in a cat suit, which has led to her nickname of “bearcat” (although that’s certainly not her only nickname: Bear, Little Duck, Little Rabbit,  Little Monster, Biter, Pip, etc.). Chloe is the ideal cat. She does have a few…unfortunate habits, for instance if allowed to sleep in my bed she will slowly move from sleeping at my feet at the start of night to sleeping literally on my head by morning. But for the most part she is absolutely perfect.

What my family and I have found from now raising/living with 5 Persians over 3 households is that these are very peculiar little animals. Even more so than other cats (and that’s saying something, ‘cause we all know cats are pretty weird). For example, when Julie thinks it’s time for my parents to get up in the morning, she grabs a corner of the sheet and pulls the covers off them. Olive and Isobel (Izzy), my sister’s cats, have equally odd habits – Olive weighs herself on the bathroom scale every morning without fail and Izzy has to sleep with one paw resting on my sister’s hand.

While I like to think that Chloe is the best of the bunch, the truth is that she has her own odd little idiosyncrasies that seem pretty strange. Every morning Chloe and I follow the same routine and any deviation from it results in one majorly unhappy kitty. I wake up, make my bed and then open the bedroom door to let Chloe inside. Chloe saunters in and sits at my feet as I brush my teeth and then waits for me to sit down to floss my teeth and jumps in my lap. None of this may sound strange to you, but we haven’t gotten to the good part yet. As I shower Chloe sits calmly on the rug just outside the shower door. As soon as I exit the shower, Chloe darts in and sits in the shower for the same length of time I was in there. She rolls herself along the floor and rubs up against the walls until her fur is soaking wet and then finally walks out, her own shower complete.

Lately, she’s decided that it would be even better if the two of us would “shower” together. It only took one time jumping in while the water was still on for her to get the message that she should wait until that whooshing water sound was done to come in, but since that time she’s decided that we should at least share the shower space while I’m drying off. Every morning as I reach out to grab my towel I have to hold the door as tightly closed as possible in order to keep her from darting in. She has a very bad habit of rubbing up against my still wet legs and depositing loose fur everywhere. But it’s a constant battle and this morning she took our struggle to a new level. For the first time this week I managed to grab my towel without letting the little scamp in the shower, but in retaliation Chloe put on her crazy eyes and attacked the remaining towel on my towel rod as if it was somehow that towel’s fault. I opened the shower door to a confident, bug-eyed little monster who then calmly strolled into the shower for her morning ablutions. Very strange.

 

And so, cat tales (you have no idea how hard it was for me not to write “cat tails”) from here on out will feature my little bearcat, Chloe. The escapades of a bearcat are varied and quite fun. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. 

Good-bye to Our Founder

Here you will find my weekly lunch poem. A good friend of mine from law school, Sean, has also worked at the Courthouse for the past two years. We've had a great deal of fun working so close, chatting on Sametime (instant messaging Courthouse/1995 style), and just dropping by each other's courtrooms. Unfortunately (for me), Sean is moving on to be a public defender in Hood River, Oregon. He will be missed greatly at the Courthouse by all. Before he went, however, he had one last clerk lunch to attend and I just had to give him a proper send off...

I have a tale to tell you all,
A story some of you may recall.
Of how these lunches came to be,
And it was not because of me.
Another started our lunches every week,
And his praises I now speak.
I would not now share this story,
But he leaves us soon in a blaze of glory,
And so the truth I must tell,
To give him his due and wish him well.
So sit down and read what I now say,
Of why we feast each Thursday...
I don't know how he first started,
But by the time I came he would not be parted,
From eating a taco salad once a week,
Suggesting otherwise would make him freak.
Some proposed a new place to go,
And he would respond that he wouldn't show.
I tried and tried to change his ways,
But nothing worked, his habit stayed.
And so instead we settled down,
Invited more and now the group abounds.
And now you know who to thank,
Our very own, dear Sean Pank.
But as I said a few lines ago,
He is moving, he soon will go!
So come today, to say good-bye,
To our founder, a truly amazing guy.

Banished

Another clerk lunch poem.

Banished

I've been banished far away,
Out to nowhere for another day.
Don't look for me around the place,
You won't find my smiling face.
They sent me to the ECC,
A lonely place it is to be.
I don't know when I'll return,
A point that raises some concern.
So have fun today without me there,
Leave a space or an empty chair.
I will return (I hope) someday,
If things ever go my way.

Don't Forget Thanksgiving

(Let's start with a rant)

*Singing* Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat...

Whoops! That's not a Lauren Moser original poem and it's not even Christmas yet. So why are all the stores and towns decorating for Christmas already? It's just wrong!

1) It's November, people. Not December.
2) Thanksgiving comes first - you're hurting Thanksgiving's feelings by starting to celebrate Christmas already.
3) If you start celebrating Christmas now you will be totally sick of it by December 15 and then you will be a Grinch on the actual day of Christmas.
4) We force non-Christmas celebrators to deal with our overwhelming Christmas spirit for the entire month of December while usually completely overlooking other holiday traditions. Let's not start doing this an entire month early.

(Moving on)

And so, in protest, I've written a Thanksgiving celebratory poem for you all to enjoy.

November is ending,
The month is soon gone,
But before it will leave us,
We must all get along.

For this is the month,
We look to family and friends,
To give thanks for each other,
Consider broken fences we'll mend.

At least that is what,
My dear mother would say,
About this time of year,
And that one special Thursday.

In my humble opinion,
Should you inquire,
The focus is the food,
And sitting warm by the fire.

All that thanks giving stuff,
Is well and good, I suppose,
But aren't we all together,
To eat our fill in repose?

Did I miss then the spirit,
Of this one special day?
Is it about us coming together,
On the Thanksgiving holiday?

I'll have to give this some thought,
Some consideration is due,
With my feet up while I eat,
As I let it all stew.

Say Goodbye to Summer

The weather has turned in Portland, Oregon. We went from clear and sunny skies to bitter cold in no time at all and I'm still having trouble adjusting. It's even influencing my lunchtime poetry...

Goodbye to Summer, Hello to Winter

The summer has gone and we must say goodbye,
To warm sunny days and crystal clear skies.
Let's bid a cool welcome to unrelenting gray,
That is all we shall see these short winter days.
It's back to the raincoats and tall boots for us all,
And don't lose your umbrella at the start of late fall.
I forgot mine this morning and what should occur,
But a sudden downpour as I stepped to the curb.
I ran toward the Courthouse quick as a flash,
But I was soon soaked despite my mad dash.
I should have expected the sudden appearance of rain,
In a city where "Why can't it be dry??" is a constant refrain.
Good luck to us all at the start of winter I say,
And let's hunker down and wait for spring in late May.

Snow in November

What is this white stuff coming down?
It's settling in piles on the ground.
There's a bitter chill in the air,
You can't escape it anywhere.
I understand the rain and gray,
That shadows Portland every day.
But what is this fluff that I now see,
That's falling down in front of me?
Someone told me it is snow,
Do I trust them? I just don't know.
I don't like it, I must say,
Make it leave and stay away.

Taco Salad Thursdays & Lunchtime Poetry

As many of you probably know, I am a clerk at the Multnomah County Circuit Court in downtown Portland, Oregon. My job is an interesting one and no one day is just like another. I've learned so much about being a good lawyer (and a bad lawyer - you cannot believe the number of truly terrible attorneys out there), working with people (I am the person everyone talks to when they come into the courtroom which includes attorneys, defendants, distraught family members and assorted others), and more about drug and alcohol addictions than I ever cared to know. It turns out, working at the Courthouse can be a somewhat distressing and depressing place. You see a lot of people at their absolute worst be they hardened criminals or one person suing another for half a million dollars because he slipped and fell in a parking lot during a snowstorm. It can be very disheartening. Which is why it's so important to keep a bit of levity in your life. The email system at the Courthouse comes with its own instant messaging feature (Sametime) which allows clerks, judges, judicial assistants and other Courthouse staff to instantly communicate for questions, updates on late hearings (odds are even your first hearing of the day will run late), updates on late attorneys (criminal attorneys are always late and civil attorneys are always early) and gossip (the Courthouse is rife with delicious gossip at all times - imagine the scene with the Mayor's wife in The Music Man and you'll come close to how the Courthouse functions). But for all we love gossip, it's almost impossible to find time to gossip together. In fact, its easy to go days without spending time with your fellow clerks beyond quickly passing each other in the hall as you dash off to fax paperwork to the jail or send license suspensions to the DMV. If you want to spend any quality time with your fellow clerks it is up to you to carve that time out. The easiest solution is lunch.

Thursday Clerk Lunch began not long after I started working at the Courthouse. Two friends from law school were working there before I was hired on and every Thursday they would go just one block down from the Courthouse to the Standard building for Taco Salad Thursday. As soon as I began working at the Courthouse they invited me along. It didn't take too long before others were invited and Thursday Clerk Lunch became a popular and widely attended event. The Standard building has a dining hall on the first level complete with a food court where you can buy sandwiches, salads, fruit cups, hamburgers and an item that varies based on the day of the week (taco salads on Thursdays, woks on Fridays - get it? Frydays.). Well, my friend Sean is a sucker for those taco salads and it became the place for clerks to meet and have lunch on Thursdays. The dining hall setup allows those who wish to bring food from other places nearby or from home to do so and soon the group became so big that it took up two tables jammed together and us all smashed together like sardines. Now, I've never had a problem remembering Thursday Clerk Lunch. After all, it happens every Thursday and like the ubiquitous "Taco Tuesday," "Taco Salad Thursday" just seems to roll off the tongue. My fellow clerks, however, had a much harder time and it somehow it fell to me to remind everyone of our Thursday lunch plans. When this enterprise started it was not difficult to email the three or four names of people who came, but as those people began to invite others and still more people joined it became a bit unwieldy. I often had trouble remembering everyone to invite which led to some hurt feelings and questions of "why didn't you email me? do you not want me to come?" Ugh. Honestly, I've never understood that thought process. Why would I purposefully not include you? Maybe I just forgot your name on the list as it has grown to include about 25 people. To forestall this annoyance I created a master list in my email and when someone new expresses an interest in coming to clerk lunch I add them to receive my email blasts. It's a system that works.

At first the emails were simple reminders of when and where the lunches were held, but as this information was always the same (Standard dining hall at noon or whenever you can get there), this soon became too tedious. And so I began to jazz the reminders up a bit. At first I would include funny anecdotes or just random thoughts, but it soon became apparent that only about half the people on the list actually read the emails. This led to a series of emails that would include one nice message inviting those who read it to lunch and one message with a curse upon those who failed to read the email. These emails continued for a couple of months before I became bored with that as well. Then one day inspiration hit and i wrote out a small poem as a lunch time reminder a la Shel Silverstein. Well, I found a way to make people read my emails. Only two minutes after I sent out the email I received a dozen or so responses via Sametime praising my cleverness and in awe of my rhyming prowess. This blew me away. For years I've been writing little poems or rhymes whenever I'm bored or feeling inspired. It's just a way to pass the time and a nice way to stretch my mental muscles. Honestly, I figured everyone did this at some point, but if the responses to my poem were any indication this really isn't the case. It was pretty flattering and, I won't lie, I enjoyed the attention. The next week however saw a return to form to the usual simple reminder of Thursday Clerk Lunch. And if I thought I got a response with my poem it was nothing to the response to the lack of poem. People went crazy! I received about 20 responses from people saying they wouldn't come without a poem and they didn't think it was a real invitation because there was no poem attached. Clerks even stopped me in the hall that day to ask why they didn't receive a poem.

I learned my lesson and the next week I gave the people what they wanted, another poem reminder of Thursday Clerk Lunch. Now, every week I write a poem that is either an explicit reminder of the lunch or just something that inspired me that day. I've kept all those poems in a book and after some prodding from family and friends have decided to share them with all of you (probably those same family and friends and no others if we're being honest about my readership here) via this blog. To start this off right, I'll include both my first lunchtime poem and a seasonally appropriate one that I wrote just two weeks ago. I hope you enjoy them...

Ode to Taco Salad - August 2014

A quick trip just down the street,
Will lead you to something you're dying to eat.
A base of lettuce to begin the thing,
Then some chips to give it zing.
Add some rice for a little flavor,
Then some meat that you can savor.
Toppings abound for you to choose,
Try them all and you cannot lose.
Then come along and find a table,
Friends will join you when they are able.
Does this not sound fun and tasty?
If it doesn't, don't be hasty...
Come for company only if that is your wish,
And bring your own delicious dish.
Hear me now: Come one, come all,
And meet us high noon at the Standard dining hall!

Halloween - October 2014

Hear this warning, one and all,
We have entered middle fall,
That wicked, dangerous time of year,
When blood will curdle from the fear,
Of ghoulies, ghosties, things that crawl,
Things that slither or cast a pall,
Over groups, when you're alone,
There is no safety, even at home.
Shut the door, turn on the lights,
Make sure to stay awake all night.
Tomorrow is All Hallow's Eve,
A night of revelry and evil deeds.
There is no haven in the woods,
Nor in your local neighborhoods.
Some have tried a local church,
But that is where the devils search.
Perhaps you'll go to a cemetery,
But the dead may rise - I wouldn't tarry.
I would share with you my hiding place.
No. It must stay secret, it must stay safe.
I say to you "Good luck on Halloween,"
Whether you survive remains to be seen.

A Healthy Respect for the Birds

I’ve always had a healthy respect for birds. Well, in my more self-delusional moments I call it healthy respect and in my more honest moments I call it fearful disgust. Every time I see a bird my first thought is something along the lines of “Ugh, gross. Go away, bird. No one wants you here.” I’ve often wondered where this attitude comes from. It could have been from Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds,” which terrified me when I was younger (even though I only ever saw clips of it as a kid). It may have been from watching one of our roosters attack my sister’s head (granted it seemed funny at the time, but it could have caused residual emotional scarring). Or, perhaps, it came from being stalked and attacked by our geese (they are dangerous and evil creatures, don’t let anyone tell you different).

In any event, the fact of the matter is, I have a healthy respect fearful disgust of birds. So, when my friend Kate invited me to “watch the swifts” for her birthday event, I was not too excited. “Watching the swifts” spans a one to two month period yearly in Portland, Oregon. Vaux Swifts are a strange breed of bird (though, aren’t they all strange? They don’t have arms. I know you’re thinking that they have wings instead, but that is just not the same. It’s just not.) that has legs in the middle of its chest throwing off its center of gravity when it tries to stand and no back claw such that they cannot grasp branches. The result is that they spend the majority of their lives, in fact nearly their entire lives, in flight. They can even sleep while flying. It’s actually pretty incredible. But at night, when it’s time to rest and stop flying, the birds roost in large communities, usually in tight spaces, such as chimneys.

On Monday night last week I went to an elementary school in NW Portland where a large defunct chimney on top of the school gym acts as a roosting spot for the swifts. This chimney is a dedicated swift roost where swifts have been coming for years and according to an Audubon Society volunteer there that evening it is the largest swift community roosting chimney in North America. A grassy hillside sits beside the gym and offers the perfect spot to set up a blanket and small picnic to await the arrival of the swifts.

I arrived around 5:30 pm and claimed a spot on the lawn as space quickly filled with more and more people arriving to watch the birds. As the sun began to sink in the sky, small black dots appeared on the horizon. Soon dozens of birds flew overhead, circling a four block radius around the school. I remained unimpressed. Watching a few dozen or even a few hundred birds fly into a chimney seemed a little silly and unimpressive. But as time passed and the hands of the clock ticked closer and closer to the hour of sunset, more and more birds joined the group circling the school. By 7:00 pm, just 40 minutes from sunset, at least 10,000 birds wheeled overhead. And it was at this time that I began to get nervous.

If you’ve never raised birds or seen the movie “The Birds,” then you might not be able to appreciate the sheer terror the sight of thousands of birds circling above you can cause. Honestly, it looked almost exactly like a scene from “The Birds” and we all know that didn’t end well. But regardless of my, perhaps, irrational

fearful disgust of birds, everyone readily agreed with my assessment that, at the very least, we were “all in the poop zone” – not a place anyone really wants to find themselves. As more and more swifts filled the sky above the school, large predatory birds came to perch on the lip of the brick chimney. These falcons were clearly waiting for the show to start and we were told by the ever helpful Audubon representative that they would wait for the swifts to begin flying into the chimney and would then snatch one or two for an evening meal.

Soon the sky was turning a pale twilight shade of grey mixed with lingering hints of orange and pink as the sun made its final descent and the sky was filled with a tightly wheeling array of birds. Just as the last of the

fiery color faded away the birds began circling in an ever tightening circle around the opening of the chimney. And then, like a slender cyclone, the birds began funneling into the red brick chimney. The air above turned a pure black, not from the darkening sky, but from the sheer number of birds flying so closely together. Birds that missed the opening on the first pass would swoop back into the cyclone higher up and try again. For about thirty minutes the dark tornado raged above the chimney as approximately 20,000 swifts filled the small space below. The falcons each picked off a few birds to the mixed cheers and gasps of the crowd, but the real showmen of the night were the swifts. By 8:00 pm all the swifts were safely tucked away in the chimney and night had fully fallen. Those small birds were a sight never to be forgotten and one that filled even this most determined bird hater with awe and amazement. By the end of September, approximately 30,000 swifts will be roosting in this chimney every night and I can’t wait to go back and see the show again.