GO FOR WALK?

I start this post sitting on the sofa just before 8am. It’s wet out but no longer dark. A reminder: If we were on DST all year around, it would be dark here until almost 9am. Apparently golf courses would make a bundle from after-work greens fees and candy companies are certain that a longer afternoon helps their sales during Halloween—they are the two biggest lobbyists wanting high noon to happen at 11 in the morning.

Anyway.

Mount Hood was white and brilliant in sunrise as we ate breakfast. I had made a frittata with the last of the eggs, thawed sweet bell peppers that needed to be used today, and the remainder of a wedge of really great Rogue River Creamery blue cheese. I am trying to empty the fridge before we go back to the beach tomorrow. (Tricky because we thought we would have company last weekend and bought fresh veg accordingly. I still have a bit of spinach and a big bag of mixed greens that need to be consumed, immediately.)

The dawn. It was one of the requirements when we looked for a condo: sky. There had to be sky.

Gary is breaking down cardboard boxes to recycle. He has been hoarding those boxes + bubble wrap and reusing sacks for all the months we have been here. I know I am the primary offender when it comes to having “stuff” but Gary admitted yesterday he is a secret hoarder. (Anyone who noticed his enormous stack of cardboard boxes and bubblewrap—seriously, you missed it?—at the beach house already knows this side of his habits.)

The “coat closet” has a portable air conditioner we have not tried using yet, and even though he’s taken most of it away, had Gary’s stash of packaging. He asked me to take this photo.

I am doing the January Cure, which today required me to remove all accessories from the living room. (I get to put whatever I like back later in the month. This is to see what I actually miss.) I feel the most notable accomplishment about the task is not that I completed it at 6am, but that I had places to put everything, including my Chinese goose, sofa quilt and afghans, and beach stones I’d placed on window ledges. I left Gary’s plastic dinosaur and the twinkle-tree because Gary wants it up all year around, but put away the last of the Christmas decor, my three little pink flamingoes made from tree nuts, and my aunt’s pencil/pen holder—everything but the live plants. The room doesn’t look at all empty.

Yesterday I applied for a job in person. I intend to walk back to the bakery this morning and remind the manager of my existence. Is anyone willing to hire someone who is over retirement age? I was heartened by the reception when I talked to them. They are short-handed and seemed interested. I am willing to work part time, any days, any hours. Gary is not happy about this.

My first job in Oregon (the state where I was born) was at the Cannon Beach Bakery on the coast. They are “famous” for Haystack Loaves, fat, rounded airy white bread with a crunchy topping. At the time I worked there, those loaves were baked in one of three brick ovens remaining in the state. (That oven is long gone, though the bakery still exists in a new location, a block further north.) I was hired as counter help, but eventually I also worked in back making a particular labor-intensive pastry no one else would make.

I told the back-manager at St. Honoré’s that I missed working, and that is true. It had also occurred to me that there is a satisfying symmetry if my last job in Oregon, like the first, were at a bakery that has a brick oven.

Besides, their walnut bread is the best.

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LATER MORNING: We got in four morning miles—about one and half miles running hills (me) and the rest walking. At our furthest point, I visited the bakery.

Job offer? No. Discouraged? Not yet.

I did buy my favorite pastry from the new hire, but since he took my money in his gloved hands, handed back bills and coins in change, and then handled my pastry without the paper… still with the same gloved hands. ouch He was nice, especially after I told him as gently as possible that he really should not handle food after touching money. He offered to replace the pastry. No, thank you. But on my way out the door I tossed it instead. The kid was brand new, didn’t know how to fill the coffee machine, didn’t know enough to wait on customers while someone else filled the coffee machine. Even so you can tell he’ll be good at his job in a week.

When I applied for my first job ever, at Taco Bell (now that is a story), I had to go to downtown Seattle for a medical exam, chest Xray, TB test, and multiple choice exam on safe handling of food in order to qualify for a Washington State Food Handlers License. It’s the reason I know I have scarring on my lungs—pneumonia as a child? the Public Health doctor asked. Maybe, or maybe second hand smoke damage. Either way.

When I went to work at the bakery in Cannon Beach, I just walked in off the street and I was hired.

I have never failed to get a job I applied for. That may have changed.

I had a good run.