Re: A MooTH! A THing!

--- On Wed, 5/9/12, Malachi Kenney <kfringe@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Deb has been posting about that particular snag in the deal
> since January. She posted about it before she signed the
> contract. It's been a part of most of her entries on the
> facebook event page she set up to get an accurate headcount
> for this. It's been hard to miss. I have no real interest in
> attending, and I was aware of it. I don't see how anyone
> with a practical interest in the gathering could have failed
> to notice it.

Well, that explains why I knew nothing about it -- I don't use Facebook very much and I think I saw that page once and said 'maybe' -- way back when. I haven't seen it since then. I haven't changed the 'maybe' to a 'no' for that reason. (I just looked at the page for the first time in ages.)
>
> I think that someone who had committed to this in February
> and tried to claim ignorance now could only be a liar or a
> putz.

We're safe then. I've been saying for a while that we can't attend.

When the vote first happened, things weren't great financially. But I was hopeful that it would improve -- that Ian would get more consistent contracts etc. And as I hadn't been to the US since my mother's death almost exactly six years ago, I did want to return. However, Portland was always problematic. It's a more expensive destination from London than, say, New York. And I have two prior commitments in two entirely different parts of the US that take precedence.

1) Since my mother's death, her ashes have been stored in a friend's spare closet in Boulder. It's my job to take them where I took my dad's ashes. Foolishly, I chose a beautiful -- but accessible only in the summer only if you want to break through an eight-foot wall of snow most years -- site. It's up in the mountains and in the back country. If you can't drive there, you can cross country ski in from the nearest town -- about five miles away.  Oops.

My friend is very patient, but I'd love to deal with those ashes. So, that's a trip to Colorado.

2) My sister's soon has two young daughters. One is even named after me. Ella turns four this autumn, and her sister, Lily, is two in September. They're in West Virginia, having moved there from Philly for his wife's job.

So, I have two big family commitments miles away from Oregon. From the start, after the Portland vote, I said we'd try, but it was very uncertain. And we've definitely said no more recently here, if not on Facebook.

But, as both Ian and I said last year and this winter, we can't afford to go anywhere in the US. We can barely afford to go anywhere in England. This past winter, I bought cheap tickets for some plays in London this summer -- and now I'm unsure that we can afford to travel to London, a mere 90 miles away. Right now, we're trying to keep our house; we almost lost it to the bank last year. As Wayne discovered, it's so stressful that I can't joke about it. Please, all, think good thoughts for Ian getting a job.

Ellen