When I was younger I thought I’d be living the life of the Jetson family by now.  I pictured living in my high (high high high) rise condo with flying cars and a robot maid to do my dishes, laundry and clean the floors.  Yeah, even then I knew I’d hate cleaning floors.  As a child growing up in a time when books, movies and even cartoons had a heavy sci-fi leaning I thought I was prepared for the future culture, but that wasn’t so.

My contemporaries and I were prepared for flying cars, teleportation, instant meals, robots, replicants, virtual reality and snazzy jumpsuits.  And while Star Trek may have touched on the moral gray area of the holodeck I don’t seem to recall my sci-fi upbringing touching on the etiquette and moral implications of instant mass communication.  There was no “How to behave on social networks” manual being passed around.  It seemed to sneak into our culture and then explode. Like any community, sites have laws, rules or codes of conduct.  But those are legal issues.  Technical issues.  There are trolls and hostile users and spammers.  But those are not the etiquette issues of which I’m writing.

I’m thinking of people finding out a loved one is dead because someone posted it on facebook.  Mothers learning they’ll become grandmothers because someone blogged about it.  Kids finding out their parent is in the hospital because a family member tweeted it in passing.  In this age of instant communication do we need a manners lesson?  How would I feel if I learned something life altering about my daughter, father, mother, sibling or loved one because of a status update?

Like shit.

Yet I see it over and over again.  My family is just as guilty as any other and I’ve seen hurt feelings running rampant.  And with good reason, people behave thoughtlessly and someone is bound to be wounded.

Is this an issue of navigating the future world we live in or just a matter of common decency?  While having a thick skin isn’t such a bad idea, I think it’s important that we find a way to navigate the world keeping others in mind and find a way to teach future generations to do the same.

Or we can all become part machine.   You know, whichever.

Born and raised in California and then Texas you’d think I’d be used to a little heat and a dash of humidity…  Well no.  I’m not.  I’m a spoiled Oregonian.  I listen year round as other Oregonians (natives and transplants alike) whine and complain about the rain, the clouds and the cool air, and then the first day the thermometer hits 80 I hear complaints about the heat.  It seems people just can’t be pleased.

Right now?  I’m so one of those people who can’t be pleased, but it isn’t my beloved Portland letting me down.

I don’t understand how people survive the Midwest.  With its heat.  Floods.  Humidity.  Giant bugs.  Weather warning alarms going off at all hours of the day.  And the heat, did I mention that part?

That’s just a summer list… I don’t know how y’all do it.  How you survive year after year.

Though I do totally understand the church’s more dominant place in Midwestern culture because this weather? This environment?  It’s biblical in proportion.  The heat could bake you alive if you stayed out in it.  The humidity seems just right for roasting flesh from bone.  The storms (which are my favorite part of life here, I love a good storm) shake houses, flood streets and scare the hell out of animals and people alike.  It would make sense to turn to a higher power and a sense of strong community here.

So what is it that has me in this seemingly god-forsaken place?  Family.  I do so love my family but every time I come here I think they’re crazier than on my last visit.  Why?  Because they’ve lived here for years and after less than a week I’m already losing my mind.  Good company, fun things to do, amazing meals and drinks all aside this place has me curled up into a puddle of over-heated, bloated, dehydrated, whiny goo.

So Portland, in case I haven’t said it often enough, I <3 you to bits and pieces.

Twenty or so years ago my parents went on a trip to New Orleans.  I think my dad was working.  He traveled a lot back then so we all learned to make the best of it.  Every once in a while the “best of it” meant a little vacation tacked onto his business travels.

It was on this trip that my mom went to a cooking school and learned to prepare gumbo.  My family has been enjoying it ever since, it’s even become our traditional Christmas dinner.  And it’s all I wanted to eat for Mothers’ Day, so my dad packed up some andouille ordered from a little shop in New Orleans and sent it overnight so I could have the dinner I wanted.

(thanks daddy)

As I write this post at my dining table I can glance in the kitchen and see the silver pot on the stove.  Under the lid dinner bubbles away.  It will cook most of the day and the smell will drive me nuts.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve hovered as mom stood over the stove stirring the roux.  Cut up the sausage.  Chopped the trinity.  Stirred in the broth.  I never watched the whole “chicken process” because that’s just fucking gross.  As we all got more comfortable with the meal I started helping.  Mostly chopping up all the vegetables.

Over the last 20 years I’ve helped make gumbo many times.  I’ve made batches myself, but always with help (see fucking gross “chicken process”).  This is the first batch I’ve made all on my own.  Entirely by myself.  I didn’t even make someone come over at an indecent hour to skin the chicken for me.  Yes, I even dealt with the chicken with a little help from some vodka.

Every other time I’ve worked on it I’ve carefully checked the recipe.  Once. Twice.  Twenty times.  Unsure.  Unwilling to make a mistake.  But I’m not a recipe checker.  I read and get the gist of it and then go on my way making the dish my own.  It’s how I cook.  Except with gumbo.

That changed today.  I got up.  Headed into the kitchen and started cooking.  With everything chopped and in the pot I started the roux.  That’s where I made the change.  I never feel like there’s quite enough roux flavor so I made more.  I wanted to do it my way.  I needed to make it my own.

I may be changing the recipe my mom taught me from, but making a change… that’s something I learned from her too.

I love you, mom.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”  Yep.  It’s true.  True of every moment that this world goes round.  For someone it’s the very best day, the very best moment of their life.  For someone else it’s the worst, the beginning or the end.  It’s a package deal the ups and downs.  This world keeps going round and round.  So even though the last year or more has been a crazy time with me I can see there are many things to be happy about.  Many things to be thankful for.

One of those things is a sister.  A sister I never had.  Not until last summer when she and my brother were wed.

Today is her birthday and this is the first time I’ve ever been able to say:  Happy birthday my wonderful Sister!  I’m so happy to have you in my family.  I’m so happy to have you in my life.  Thank you.  Love you.  And lucky lucky us!

There’s a routine.  A way I do things.  Every night before I close my eyes and sleep I turn the ringer off on my phone.  Plug it in to charge and curl up on my side to close my eyes and sleep.

Except last night.

Last night I turned the ringer up.  Set my phone in the nook of my headboard and only fell asleep after hours.  Hours of thoughts and words.

I knew in the morning my phone would ring.  I knew it would wake me up.  I knew I wouldn’t like what I had to hear, but I would have no choice but to hear it.

At 8:26 Sunday morning my phone did ring.  I reached up with my eyes closed and answered without looking to see who it was.  I was only going through the motions.  I knew my mother was on the other end.  I knew she was going to tell my that her mother, a woman I have never been able to respect or agree with, was gone.  She died Sunday morning in the ICU.  Heart failure.  Kidney Failure.  Pneumonia.

She was old.  She’d been ill for a long time.

I hadn’t seen her in 17 years.

Still I grieve.  But I can grieve with my ringer off.

It’s strange to me sometimes as the parent of an only child, to watch K’s interactions with me, her father, her friends, my friends, the world.  I was never an only child.  On the day I was born my brother was nearly three and quite happy being an only child.  I could regale you with tales of our animosity  towards one another.  Tell you about all the cruel little things we did to each other growing up.  Tell you about all the kind things we did to take care of each other.

The funny thing was that all the cruelty?  Was overt.  It was the kindness that we tried to keep hidden from each other.  Any sign of love or goodwill was a weakness the other could have easily exploited.  It never stopped us from caring for one another… it just kept us from liking each other at all until we were well into our 20s.  But the sibling relationship that we shared did a lot to form who we both are today.

12 years ago when Matt and I were just learning to put up with each other, just figuring out that we no longer had to hate the bratty kid sister that was always sticking her nose where it didn’t belong or the bullying older brother that tormented her at every move, I wrote a poem for him.

I can’t recall if I ever gave it to him.  It seems like something I may have kept to myself.  Mostly because I’ve always hated the first stanza.  It was only the last 5 lines that ever resonated with me.  So today, on his birthday, I decided that those last 5 lines are the poem and I wanted to share it with him.  And with you.

through the years
little girl grew up
and you brother
pulled my pigtails
until I cut them off

Thank you Matt.  Thank you for being the best most horrible brother a little girl could hope for.  And for growing up to be a great friend.  Happy birthday.  I know this year will bring you more happiness than you can imagine.

Two days before I left on my trip to Austin my mother flew in from the Midwest.  She came for two reasons, both greatly appreciated.  My trip was very close to my daughters birthday, for which my mom comes into town each year anyway.  But the timing, the early arrival was due to the fact that Mike and I were both heading to SXSW leaving no one here to care for the almost birthday girl.

Here enters Nana.

Of all the grandparents, and K has a complete set of 4, her bond seems strongest with my mom.  Now I’m not K or my mom so I can’t say for certain what’s behind the closeness of their relationship, but the two of them are a sight to see.  My mother’s complete adoration and affection for her only grandchild is not the only thing that drives her closeness to K.  I think it’s also that neither my brother nor I ever had a close relationship with our grandparents.  There were many reasons, all of them valid but none of them needing to be discussed here.  I know that she doesn’t want that to be the case with K.  And K, well she and my mom seem to have a lot in common.  Aside from their love of arts and crafts and Brendan Fraser there’s also slightly twisted evil sense of humor that they share and K revels in it.

That’s why when I left town without her for the first since she was born, we asked my mom to come and stay with her.

All I expected, all I asked from her, was to take care of K.  Oh, and to hem my new jeans and make all the final preparations for her birthday party.  And to clean my kitchen.  Oh and bake a birthday cake.  But that’s it.  Oh… wait no.  Laundry.  I had her do laundry too.  Oh and to take care of Morgan while I was gone.  And…. well never mind.

My point is that mainly I just asked her to take care of K for me.

But the day after she arrived, as I was doing the final pack on my suitcase my mom handed me a small baggy of safety pins.  She’d used them when she hemmed my jeans because she couldn’t find my straight pins anywhere and when she was done she packaged them up and gave them to me.  She told me to pack them just in case.  “You never know when you might need them” she said.

And so I put them in the bag with my leatherman, my extra gum and my rose scented bodywash.  All things I couldn’t leave behind.  There they were promptly forgotten until a few moments ago.

When I unpacked it was in a heap.  I just needed to get it done and get back to normal as soon as possible and so when I emptied the bathroom bag the safety pins made their way into, I didn’t give them a second look as I put them into the train case that holds my makeup and odds and ends.  But as s I opened it after my shower today to put away my glasses I saw them there, wedged between a compact and my powder brush and couldn’t help but smile.

I may have asked her to come all that way to take care of my child… but in truth she made the trip to take care of her own.

Eight years ago my life changed in the most amazing way.  I met the most remarkable person.  Someone who will be tied to my heart, my life, my existence for all time.  It was eight years ago today that my beautiful daughter K was born.

When I held her in my arms I didn’t imagine what she would be like 8 years later… I just gazed at her lovingly in a stupor brought on by 3 days of induced labor and painkillers.  As exhausted as I was though the last thing I wanted was to sleep.  I just wanted to hold that tiny little person in my arms and examine her face.  Listen to her little baby noises.  Watch as she scrunched up and released her tiny body.

Eight years ago she woke me up with labor pains.  This morning she woke me up with a giant hug and an excited reminder that “TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY”

She’s right.  It is.  And it’s a day to celebrate.  A day to smile and laugh.  A day to spoil her just a little more than usual.  And a day to remind me that she’s a person to be celebrated always.

Eight years old.

After a week on the road, and I use the term “on the road” very loosely, I’m reminded of a few things that make being home truly special.  Though I had a fantastic trip to Austin, the joy of it was more about experiences, opportunities and fun than it was about attending the actual SXSWI conference.

But wait… a big part of what made my trip to SXSW great was home.  There’s no place like it, right?  Everyone loves to go home.  To sleep in their own bed.  Cook in their own kitchen.  See their family.  To be able to plug their phone charger into the power strip in the bedside table.  You know, stuff like that.

And while those things are home, pieces of home, slices of life, they aren’t the only thing.  There are so many other things that scream HOME and I got a pleasant reminder of that while I was on my trip.

When I sat down to write this I really was going to write about how much I had been looking forward to my creature comforts.  My big comfy bed and soft cool sheets.  My heavy velvet comforter.  The water from my tap.  A full sized bottle of shampoo.  My dresser with all my clothes and as I mentioned earlier my favorite place to charge my phone…

Somewhere in the processing, in the sculpting of this post though, that changed.  Something sounded off in my head and made me look back at the past seven days and all I’d done.  It reminded me that home has many meanings and I was pleased and honored to find a little bit of home was with me the entire time.  The ties that bind the Portland tech community are strong and it was so good to see so many of the people I respect and appreciate here at home smiling, laughing and loving life down in Austin.

It was a rare chance to see the carefree hearts of some people I’m privileged to know.  A a chance to see smiles and hear laughter from everyone around.  It also provided me an opportunity to remember how much I love to laugh and smile.  To sit in a room surrounded by others and learn something new.  To discover things about myself as a podcaster from what others are doing.  To sit on an open air patio and stare at the sky.  To not let a little rain ruin a beautiful night.  Or a sprained ankle ruin an entire trip.

I’m not going to do a recap of panels I attended.  I only attended a few each day and the ones that impressed me most wouldn’t surprise anyone.  I skipped many, rolled my eyes through a couple and walked out of one after 10 minutes.  The value of my week away was grounded in something completely different.  It started the first night I was there, the impact of it was shocking and stays with me even now.

So while I was roughly 2,141 miles from the city I live in.  From my kid and my cats and my bedroom where I can close the door and hold the world at bay… I was still home in a way.  And maybe that’s what made the trip worth it.  Maybe, even with the highs and lows I experienced, that’s why I’ll look back on my trip to SXSW and feel great.

8 years ago today it rained.  Not a huge downpour, but one of those consistently overcast days where the rain comes in waves.  Where the air smells fresh and clean and the sky is that lovely pale dove gray with patches of white clouds.

We were living out in Banks then and the 45 minute drive into Portland seemed to take forever.  I looked over at Mike, holding his right hand as he kept his left on the steering wheel and concentrated on the road.  We smiled.  We laughed.  I worried (just a little) that we were running late.

“Cami, stop worrying… the boat can’t leave without us”

I breathed a deep sigh of relief.  He was right of course, this was one time that the party couldn’t start without our say so.  The entire event was waiting on us.  We made it to the eastside and parked the car as close to the dock as we could and then we hurried down to the waiting riverboat.

The photographer was there waiting, so were our families but most of our friends had yet to arrive.  As I lifted the hem of my long white dress off the ground to keep it from getting wet and dirty on the dock I smiled to myself.  I needed to keep my white dress clean but the giant black boots I wore underneath were perfectly suited to stomping in giant puddles and walking in the rain.  Mike and I got to the boat and from then on most of the day was a blur.  We were pushed and prodded by family into photos, we answered questions, met the ship’s captain and tried to steal a moment to ourselves but then it was time.

Mike disappeared and I fixed my lipstick and adjusted my veil before my father took me by the hand.  We walked up the narrow stairs single file before I bent my arm around his and he walked me down the aisle.

8 years ago today Mike and I said simple vows in front of a riverboat captain and a gathering of our family and friends.

I was never nervous.  I was never scared.  I was in love and overwhelmed by the joy I felt.  Not for the moment, which passed quickly, but for the life that we were sharing.