Breakfast Pictures

Today I read on a food blog that I’ve come to enjoy reading (despite my lack of interested in cooking) that if you are into making pancakes, to keep a constant supply of butter milk in your refrigerator. It was the middle of the day before lunch and I had two minutes to spare before going to some important place to complete some important task that I can’t remember at moment. So I looked at a picture of pancakes, and from the shot you could see the steam coming off of them. There was a large heap of blueberry syrup, and some thoughts on the meal organized in bullet points.
So now, the year is starting to come to an endpoint, which was made clearer to me when I answered “next Friday,” after someone asked me “when’s your last day.” Next. Friday. No need to refer to the date. No need for further labeling of, “two months,” or “a while.” No need to think: “how the hell am I going to do this for another______?” It’s almost here. I will fly away and our staff will still drive around the wheelchair van picking up patients, people will still line up at the Starbucks next to my work in the morning, and there will still be a gang of tenants and ex-tenants circled around the bridal shop on the other side.
Also, I decided to go to the doctors this week. It was a last minute appointment, one that I successfully squeezed to soak up the last of my health insurance. I’d gone a few months before, in January, in the later morning after completing the rounds to have one patient, practically sitting in his own poop, scream at me that he didn’t want a granola bar and he didn’t want to go to his appointment and he didn’t want me to open his door and say hello. But this time, I was in a better space. It felt nice after all of the visits I’d made to hospitals this year, to be able to go seek some care for myself—have my own dull patterned robe, my own bench to sit on, to sit in the silence of that room with the white tiled floor. To know my height, my weight, my blood pressure, and to have someone else record the numbers on a form to be referred to later. What a treat.
Also, the house has been a bit quieter with people tending to their new commitments, which allows for more spontaneous trips and less lengthy decision making. On Monday we went to Dairy Queen in Southeast Portland. It was warm, and we’d eaten dinner, and the whole thing felt right. Red picnic benches, blizzard specials, the beeping of the cash register. Afterwards we took a walk in Clinton Park, across the street, overlooking one of the area high schools. It was getting dark. So we walked and we looked at the field and the stadium surrounding it. We thought of the desks that must be in there, all of the bodies that have occupied those desks over the years, and the desks that our own bodies have occupied. That came to an ending once too. We moved on, remembered what was important, and have since turned out okay.