I named this "View from the trailer park" but I haven't really said anything about MY trailer park.

I had driven by the park a lot before I started going there to see the woman who became my wife.

It is next to a new museum in our region, one I was working at when it first opened.  I was like most people about trailer parks, in that I didn't think much about them unless I was going to one to visit someone, which I rarely did.

Actually, I was more interested in one, particular trailer, because my beloved lived there.  My beloved and her cats!

Did you know that trailer parks seem to call cat ladies?  I did not know that, but now I do.

Most trailer parks are outside the city limits, so any rules about number of animals often do not apply.  Certainly, in our case, trying to find a place to live that would accept 4, 6 or 7 cats [depending on how you count the little darlings] would be prohibitive.  Suffice it to say, we will be staying put until the count decreases somewhat.  A number of our cats are pretty old, and we've already had to have previous cats [and our darling dog Scooter] put down due to illness.

There is another cat lady living across the lane, but most of her cats are inside.  She spends most of her time, says my darling wife, cleaning and taking care of her menagerie.

Once I started living in the park, I noticed new things.  I love living out of town - it's only a short walk to the riverfront trail, which pretty quickly goes through a wildlife area.  When the weather's warmer and dryer, I love to go for hour-long walks.  Sometimes my wife and I even get to go together.

The ebb and flow of life in the trailer park is great.  There are many Hispanic families [our area is noted for fruit orchards, particularly cherries] who have traveled through following crops and have settled in our town.  We actually have children who have grown up here whose parents settled here after working the orchards.  At the library where I work, we often have children translating for their parents or grandparents.

We have a great family living across the lane next to the other cat lady.  They have little ones and an extended family and group of friends, so there's often lots of activity on the weekends and during the summer.  When it's properly taken care of, there's even a little pool that can be open during the summer.  It's great to walk down to the pool, cool off, and watch the kids at play.  I almost even remember what it feels like to play like that.

We seem mom or grandma walk the little ones down the lane to the bus stop on the highway into town.  If I'm home in the afternoon, I can see the reverse as well.  Then there's the tiny one who goes from his parents' place to grandma's for daycare.  He is quite the cutie, and it's been fun watching him go from tottering along to walking almost faster that grandma wants to go.

At night, lying in bed with my wife, reading before going to sleep, we can hear, and feel, the trains as they move along the river.  Most of the time its comforting, but sometimes it's a little distracting.

Well, that's a little bit of what it's like for me to live at my trailer park.

Have a great rest of the day, and keep reading!

I  want to keep adding to this blog daily, but the posts will probably short most days, depending on my work schedule.

I work at the public library in my home town.  I am one of the luckiest people in the world, in that I get paid to things I love to do.  Chief among them is talking to patrons about books and movies.  Sometimes the talking gets in the way of the work, usually because I'm talking and not looking at the computer screen to make sure there aren't any problems with whatever patron task I'm doing.  It's the worst when I'm talking to a mom who has a stack of picture books: something often goes wrong with an early scan, I don't see the error message, and just keep blithely scanning away.  I usually blame on lack of coffee and we all laugh.

I've started really trying to read what the patrons recommend to me: we have some sharp cookies in my home town and they have great recommendations.  Sometimes the books pile up and I might not get to them, but at least I've given it a go.

One patron writes an occassional science column for the paper.  The first one I really noticed included a great plug for the library.  I mentioned it the next time he was in and we started talking about the books we were both reading.  I told him about one of my favorite authors, Jasper Fforde, and he ended up getting the first title in Fforde's Thursday Next series for his daughter for Christmas.  Score!

Just the other day, I was talking to a volunteer about watching "Across the Universe."

"Were you a Beatles' fan?" I opened.

She started a bit and then said, rather proudly, now that I think back on it, "The called me Ringa!"

"Wow!" said I, "Have I got a movie for you!"

We went to the video collection and pulled the movie.  When she brought it back in, we gushed over it some more, I asked "Have you ever seen 'This Is Spinal Tap'?"  Our library copy was lost [not unusual for movies I like - and it wasn't me (I have my own copy!)], so we put a hold on a copy from another library in our consortium.  She'll be coming in tomorrow for her volunteer shift, so we'll have another great conversation.

And they pay me to do this!

I'm also the main cataloger (although not a MLS librarian - as with almost all smaller libraries these days, most of us staff are paraprofessionals), so I get to fondle most of the books and movies that are added to the collection.  My wife and I catch lots of news shows: Democracy Now, NPR, The Majority Report, The Young Turks, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.  These generate lots of purchase requests.  I sometimes have some of the patrons "request" them, as those requests usually get filled sooner than mine or my wife's.  All of these patrons know about my ruse, and are more than happy to get a surprise book.

Get to know you local library staff, if you're any kind of a reader.  Once they know your tastes, they might steer you to something you didn't know existed.

Back in the interval when I wasn't working at the library, I got a call about a book waiting for me to pick up. When I went in, I didn't recognize the title.  "Oh," said Maggie.  "I remember now.  I put that on hold for you because I thought you'd enjoy it."  It was "Shadow of the Wind" by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, and it turned out to be one of the best books I'd read up to that point.  Now, I try to pay that kind act forward, a lot.

I could go on and on.  Later I'll share some stories about helping people on the Internet, but now I have to get my fanny in gear to get to that dream job.

Have a great day and keep readin'!

MY STARTING PLACE

I never really thought I ever blog, but look at me... blogging!

I guess I really need an outlet to the world, in the hopes that someone else might get some comfort and support from my search for internal comfort and support.

To be honest, so much is going on in my life right now, I think of this is a way of helping sort things out and making sense of it to me, and maybe to others.

Here's what's going on: 1) My wife of 3 years has persistent mental illness and we're trying to find therapy/meds/social interaction combinations that will help her have a life worthy of her talents and abilities; 2) Finances are extremely tight, as we only have my income to live on; 3) We were trying to help a homeless woman through our work at the local warming shelter and it blew up in our faces; 4) The finacial situation has directly impacted on our relationship to our pastor, who had to finally let us know she can't help us out anymore with $$.

Oh, and in case you might have missed it, I am a lesbian.  Just a few other important facts - politically liberal, person of faith, avid reader, and extremely curious.

When I lived in Portland OR and used public transportation, I thought about writing a column [shows you how long ago that was!] called "Life in the Bus Lane."  But now that I live in a trailer park, the title came as kind of a sequel.  

I'm still living pay-check to pay-check, there's still more month than money, but now I have my wife and all our cats (4 or 6 or 7, depending on how you count them) to support.  I wouldn't have it any other way - my wife is the love of my life [you'll undoubtedly be hearing all about her in future posts].  And because she is, there are so many things I want for both of us.

Another important fact is I'm 63 and she's 47.  Lotta years inbetween us, and not much time left, either.  When we first got together, my sister kept telling my wife, "You know, she's almost 60!"  All the more reason to seize the day.

Enough intro.

Currently I'm reading "Scarcity: why having too little means so much" by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir.  I shouldn't be surprised that even the first 50 or so pages has already given me lots to think about and directly relates to our current financial situation. [I definitely suscribe to the theory that books often find us, not the other way around.]  Experiments have shown that just the thought of scarcity can directly impact cognitive responses.  "Tickling" the scarcity part of the brain can impact a person the same as going without sleep for a night.  Unreal.

This, for me, ties into another book I read some time ago, but which I think everyone should read: "Don't Think of an Elephant" by George Lakoff.  In it , Lakoff shows us that people will vote against their own best interests if the concept is framed a certain way.  Words and their meanings, both conscious and unconscious, greatly affects our actions.  

I want to use the framing concept to help us look at our situation in a way that helps us and makes us feel more secure.  It's a lofty goal, but changing how we look at things doesn't cost us money out of pocket.

I don't know if this is any way to start blogging, but since I'm using the blog as a type of journal, this is how I started blogging.

I hope anyone who reads this has a good day.  I know I'm going to do my best to do so.

Keep reading!