I'm at the Courtyard Marriott in Springfield, Oregon, typing at the Room 115 desk next to the giant flat screen tv on a swiveling base. I could point that thing right at me if I so chose. I'll be long gone before you could get here. Since I'm right next to the exit door, people are slamming out at and shaking the lampshade on a regular basis. I've traveled alone a bit, and find it interesting that I have more often than not been placed in a room right next to an exit. I'm a woman alone and the desk clerk, usually a young woman, chooses a room next to an exit. I don't get it, but then maybe she doesn't get that there's anything more vulnerable about a room that gets more traffic past it than any other in the whole fracking hotel. But I digress.

Today I see Chiloquin for the first time. I don't get to move into my cabin today, but I do get to meet with the teacher I'll be working with at school.

My car is full. I cannot find my swim bag with my suit, goggles, cap, and Ultraswim shampoo. Jim packed the car, so I have no idea where he put it, or if he put it in at all. He would have packed anything that arrived on the entry rug, but would he have noticed if I hung the bag by its strap on the stair rail? I don't know. I was in no condition to pay attention by the time we left for our late lunch date, after which he went for acupuncture and I headed south on I-5. I stopped at Zupan's on Burnside in Northwest Portland at about 7:30 pm. Comfort of the known. And the outre. A shrine to precious food. I bought devilled eggs, toothpaste and unbleached coffee filters for insulated melitta style coffee pot I brought from Chelan. Out of body, out of place, not yet in process, en route to the unknown I've sought, discomfort and opportunity for change I'm driving toward. I've found a biodiesel source online in Eugene. I've written out directions on the "Accomplished List" notepad here on my desk. I could play video games if I had any idea how to do that with the three fingered hockey glove looking dealie behind the giant tv.

Check out time is noon, but I see no reason to hang out as I cannot locate - it is cold outside and the ground damp - my swim stuff. I love to split sentences awkwardly. Maybe one of the reasons I can work with kids in schools. Though slogging through the 8th grade stories this week made me somewhat sad. Most of the girls wrote variations on what the teacher told me are "gossip girls" plots. Is this a tv show? The protagonist moved from LA to NYC or NYC to LA (or somewhere in the "perfect state of California".) The girl is tall, blonde or auburn haired and hothothot with a perfect body and boyfriend she has left behind/has dumped her for her best friend. Or he doesn't know she exists. Since these are pre-dating girls, the boyfriends are like the "immaculate beemers" they drive, the huge designer purses they sling over their "perfect shoulders" - accessories! The people they love are their friends who 1. they left behind in LA/NYC 2. they meet in NYC/LA 3. betray them 4. forgive them or 5. die after having been betrayed by protagonist. (or all 5.) The protagonist may not realize how hothothot she is until the climax (unfortunate choice of nomenclature.) The protagonist may realize this is not all there is to life, and these girls got better grades. Uh, yes, I did this. The stories were so trite, banal, insubstantial, and frighteningly similar that I wound up evaluating them based on the choices the protagonist made - was there any thought put into the story at all? If the protagonist spent time sorting through what was going on in her fendi/prada or whoever world and I could feel the writer thinking and feeling her unique way into the story, up went the points. People who got the most points were those who wrote about entirely different subjects. This is a Catholic school and it runs on points.