The Heart Has a Mind of It's Own in Everyday Ramblings

Sorry, this isn’t my usual pretty picture but there is a kind of local hope and sadness built into it. I took it Wednesday midday when I was waiting for the bus so I could come home with my groceries.

I don’t know if you remember the very bad day I had last month when the chest pain first occurred as I was on the way to the grocery? I was waiting for the bus on the way home here, with my left arm beginning to tingle and go numb and there was a paper bag of syringes thrown on the ground, some of them with the caps off and I reported it to the bus driver and he called it in? I didn’t post the picture I took of that.

Anyway, this overgrown area next to the freeway has been a very popular spot for urban camping and drug use for a few years. There is often the most disgusting trash strewn around the bus stop even though there is a city maintained trash bin right there. Seriously, there was a used tampon under the bench last week…

It has apparently also been a spot to drop and pick up drugs as well.

This is not a “bad” neighborhood. It is more like a transition point. My large busy grocery store is right across the street. The street itself is busy and the main interstate freeway through Oregon is right behind it.

About a month ago they brought trucks in and dumped a bunch of boulder like concrete blocks in to line the inside of the fence by the freeway to discourage camping, and Wednesday they brought in an inmate work crew to cut down all the vegetation and pick up the trash.

At least 10 years of both.

My tax dollars at work. Don’t get me wrong, I am intensely grateful they are doing this but it doesn’t do a thing for the drug addicts, mentally ill and homeless populations that used this area.

It pushes them into my neighborhood. Yesterday on the 6 or 7 minute walk back from lunch to the office I work in I found myself walking around the next block to avoid the piles of trash and occasional person sleeping on the landing of the public stairway and then closer to the office walking into a parking lot and around the front of the building to avoid the gentleman having a fine old time singing and stopping periodically to emphasize the beat in his head as he made his way up the street in front of the building.

One of my beloved students who knows about my work situation asked me after class Wednesday how I was doing and how the big “meeting” went and I told her a little bit and then said, but I am fine, I have support I am dealing with it.

But my aching tight jaw and weird arterial left shoulder pain yesterday morning and my intense night sweat last night after just tumbling into bed absurdly early are telling a very different story.

One of my other beloved students told me after class on Monday that his 60-year-old coworker who is retiring in two months after almost 20 years at Nike was just diagnosed with liver cancer. My student is 56 and they started there at the same time.

Is it worth it? That is what he asked? Is it worth it?

I have an appointment to see my GP at the clinic next week. This is a very hard question I am beginning to ask. Like Elizabeth Warren I have a plan. At this point though I am beginning to wonder if the plan to stay another 50 weeks is viable.

Carlo says I like having you home as I can pester you for food all day long! The cats are both curled up grooming each other on the cat bed covered by an old towel on top of the waist high cat tower that I moved in here where I work when they were sick.

Watching Diego clean Carlo’s ears, I know for a fact, is good for my heart.

Last updated July 12, 2019