The New, the Old and the Wild Man in Everyday Ramblings

This is an interesting shot to me. It is through a fence looking back up into the block next to mine. The pile of concrete in the foreground is the lot that has been a toxic cleanup site for years. It was a gas station for a time and there were underground leaks. It is finally clean enough to build on so a low cost transitional housing building is going there sponsored by a city agency. It is not zoned historic when everything else, everything you see in the shot is historic. From the late 1800’s.

The slight glimpse of beige in the middle of the back row of houses is the cottage that Anna Belle Crocker lived in for a time. I wrote about her earlier. She designed with her sister the original simple beautiful and quite large Tree of Life tapestry in our chapel at church and was the first director of the Portland Art Museum.

That house has been abandoned for about six months. Who ever lived there just locked up and left. The gutters are falling off. It is in pretty bad shape. It is going up for auction by the city in four weeks. At least that parcel of land is zoned historic. The young renters next door to the mess of a cottage moved out recently and it looks like they might be doing some foundation work on that place too. There is much digging going on. Some of the fruit trees back there are at least 100 years old.

So many changes going on.

The cats have quiet days and they have crazy man days. Today is a crazy man day.

Yesterday the top to my hot water bottle (her name is Clara, long story there) went missing and I was cold and I went looking for it. Oh, the cats just thought that was a hoot… Mom is on the floor looking under everything! This must mean we are going to P-L-A-Y. I got some shiny ball toys out of their box for them to bap around and that gave them an idea.

So today Carlo picked out a ball made of little strips of green foil that Kes brought up months ago. They do like shiny things, both of them. Today when I came home for lunch there were little shiny green strips everywhere! They had actively disassembled the toy.

Normally this would not have bothered me but this morning my toilet was clogged up and I didn’t have time to try to address it before I went into the office and I was hoping what little I had managed to do would clear the clog…

Ha.

So I have been on edge. Luckily I didn’t have anything I had to do after work today and have I mentioned it is raining? It feels like it will rain forever now. I know that is not true but it feels like it.

I looked up how to clear clogged toilets when I got home. It turns out I have a girly plunger. Good to know! What finally convinced me to keep working at the clog was this one site that said you might need to work the plunger for 15 to 20 minutes! Oh my gosh. Upper body aerobics! So I kept at it.

There is no way the missing top to my hot water bottle could have anything to do with this I hope. I don’t think so, but it is a concern based on the synchronicity…

Whew… I just found Clara’s top…It was jammed in between a bunch of computer cables under my workstation. I wonder how it got there??? Thanks Mr. Flashlight!

And now my plumbing is working splendidly and it is all cleaned up and everything is good and Carlo is napping but Diego… he is still a wild cat man. But I found a lot of toys in the process…

In 1885, just about the time the houses is the picture above were built, the year after the big flood, workmen completed a conduit from the Bull Run watershed up near Mt Hood to Portland and we had running water for the very first time.

I was reading about the Perkins Hotel this morning. Opened in 1891, it eventually had steam heat and running (cold) water. For 25 cents you could get a chicken dinner at the restaurant on Sunday and it was a popular place. I walk by where it was all the time.

It was the place all the ranchers from Eastern Oregon stayed when they came to town. I wish the armed men that have taken over our precious wildlife refuge would lay down their weapons and come to Portland for Sunday dinner and let us get back in the business of protecting and encouraging this amazing natural habitat in conjunction with the native folks who were here long before any of the rest of us…

The interlopers made their point, now it is time for them to go… Not that I have an opinion or anything…

We’ll all be heading to bed shortly, including Clara. I know somebody, (short crooked tail, one handsome green eye) who will be sleeping deeply tonight. Personally I am grateful for so much, including my flush toilet, my flashlight and efficient wind power generated heat.

Last updated January 15, 2016