The start of work

So, this work I started my summer "job" though it feels much less like a job than it does real life. I live where I work and work where I live. I dress people, bathe them and assist them around the house. I brush teeth, give shots (with much trepidation), bake cookies, take walks around the block. I pour cups of coffee and turn down the bed sheets. Normal, everyday things...but for people who need a little bit more help than your average "self-made" individual in America. Here, we rely on community, not ourselves. I am disabled in some areas where the core members are not. My patience is disabled...my body image - disabled. My ability to love and accept strangers, also disabled. But Joni and Adam and Erin and Marilyn are very able in these areas, if not abled in body or in emotional maturity.

We went to the other house tonight and met up with the folks and assistance over there. I bet Robyn, with down syndrome, who can do the splits and sings songs with such fervor, you'd think she was on a Broadway stage. And then Ben who can't move without the help of a wheelchair and can stare into the heart and soul of a person just by looking at them. And then there's my Joni, who communicates using humming sounds and sign language. She loves music and coloring in her coloring books with her crayons. She smells each crayon before she draws withit, as if to discover its secret scent that the rest of us can't seem to notice.

Adam came home from work today and we went out back with a tubberware container to pick raspberries and strawberries. We ate them on the front step of the porch, enjoying the warm weather and watching the clouds. We looked like siblings with are legs stretched out in front of us, ankles crossed. "I wuv you," he says. "Yer sweet." He also loves to respond to a request with "Ok, honey..." much like a husband would do to his wife. "Adam, can you head off to bed?" ...(with some reservation) "Ok, honey."

I am off tomorrow. Ghana is playing the USA tomorrow in the world cup and we are headed to a favorite pub called the Horse Brass to watch the game at 7am, if you can believe it. Early bed tonight. I forget that things come on later here...I guess East Coast time is the favored time zone of networks. I am cheering for Ghana. We have other sports we're good at, why monopolize another? The rest of the world loves soccer (I mean, football), so I think we should let them have it. We're not going to playing Ghana in hockey or baseball or basketball. Let them have soccer. They're probably better at it, anyway.

I have decided to begin running again. It's good for my heart, and after that CPR class, I've decided that I want my heart to beat as long as possible without the help of someone breathing into me. Dear Lord, I hope I never have to perform CPR. That dummy was enough. My watched stopped working last week, and I usually run about 20 minutes or so, according to what my watch says. I ran the other day rather blind and deaf of the time. I could have run 10 minutes or 40. I'm not sure. I just no I'm out-o-shape, and it's time to get back into it.

Oregon is as beautiful as I had imagined. Even the neighborhoods are beautiful, with quaint and qwerky houses and hundreds of rosebushes and beautiful, dramatic skies filled with fast-moving clouds. It rains a lot (during colder months), making this place lush and green - like Uganda. And the mountains are dramatic, not those dinky foothills we call mountains out East. These mountains are new, craggy and sharp, snow-peaked.