since it's about to not be august anymore, I feel compelled to write something.
Since it's past 11pm, it won't be long.

Possible titles, from recent wordplay...

Eaten Alive by Ants

Inkblots by Moonlight.

Trading Clothes (or, The Dress that Made Enid Dizzy)

Baby Talk

I want to write Inkblots this time.

Grandma asked me again, after a few weeks off the topic -- "What do you call those inkblots, where you put ink on the paper and fold it in half?" She and her little friends used to make inkblots and paper dolls for each other back in Stanley, Wisconsin.

I said, The kind I know about are used for something called the Rorshach test. Is that the ones you mean? Or something more like drawing a silhouette?

(Ernie, after being told about this question that she'd been repeating, wondered if she might be remembering a trick he'd seen some folks do when he was growing up in Illinois, where you'd fold a paper and cut two mirror-image silhouettes at once.)

Then she said,

We went out skunk-hunting with my dad one time, and I remember his two black hounds running after the scent, looking like two black inkblots against the moonlit stubble in the fields.

I asked her more about it, but she said she was about ready to go to sleep.

A few days later I asked her about it again.

What do you call those inkblots, she said. "Rorshach inkblots?" "That might be it."
We might have gone hunting with him twice - once for skunk, once for raccoon.

They were such skinny dogs, she said, their shadows seemed fatter than they were.

They would get so excited about smelling the trail, and bury their noses in the stubble so deep they couldn't breath, that they would pick their heads up to sneeze from time to time and then go right back to snuffling in the dirt.

Lenore and I and her boyfriend followed Dad. I asked if you carried guns -- did the boyfriend carry a gun? No, only dad.

Dad liked to hunt more than he liked farming, or almost any kind of work. He knew how to keep the skins nice, and tan them, so a couple of times a year a buyer would come through and ask if he had any "furs," he called them, and he would sell them. So he made a little money that way.

Skunk makes a pretty good stew, she said. So does raccoon.
Or roast, said Ernie.
I've never tasted either, said Erica. I wouldn't mind trying.

A few weeks later, "What do they call those inkblots?"
Do you mean a silhouette, like a drawing with two sides?
"You put ink on the paper, and fold it so it's the same only reversed."
Like a butterfly?
"Kinda."
The kind they use to see how you're feeling, and you say it looks like a butterfly, or a monster, or a sad face? That's the Rorshach test.
"Roshack? How do you say it Rorshack? That might be it, if I remember I can look it up in the morning."

... images condense out of old memory like shadows on a foggy mirror...

_______________

Erica update: I'm still trying to decide how much longer I want to stay here with Grandma, or if it's time to move on.
I'm frustrated with detail-management at both jobs (here and at City Repair) and want to be doing more creative flow-type things.
One option is to quit work and focus on home life and volunteering, freelance writing, etc. Or I might be able to pass off some of my hours at City Repair, and focus on a smaller amount of time doing what I find most rewarding there.
At the same time, I'm spending about as much on counselling and medical repairs as I earn from both jobs put together -- so maybe I need to earn more money. While I'm comfortable considering myself my #1 investment, and preventative dental work sure beats tooth-pulling, I still envy others with the financial and personal freedom to choose full-time work, switch jobs based on salary alone, or have health coverage as a given.
While the family has agreed to support some of these medical expenses, we haven't agreed on specific figures yet. It seems to be up to me to submit receipts.
It feels a little weird to be asking Dad and his siblings if it's OK to use Grandma's money this way, and then be in a position of trying to explain "who's paying for all this" to her -- when we didn't necessarily ask her. Yet she doesn't handle her own bills anymore, and her sense of "expensive" and "worthwhile" sort of flickers in and out. It's hard to know when/whether she
--understands and doesn't agree,
--doesn't understand and agrees to let others handle it, or --doesn't undertand and doesn't agree.
She doesn't usually keep enough facts in her head at once to follow the discussion.

I also want to be spending more time in the garden, and investing in some place that I can expect to last longer than my attention to it. It's kinda heartbreaking knowing the story of each tree, and seeing the bowls everybody has from the old apple tree "that Grandpa planted," yet know that when the property is sold nobody will care or remember who planted the trees. Like the small boys and the trash, things that "were there before we got here" don't get noticed.
Yet even if this place wasn't going to be sold, I also feel constrained not to plant my own trees here, because they'd block the view to Grandma's memories.

I want a "center" to my life, a place where all my stuff is, and where I can relax or work on projects, where people can visit without me needing to drive anywhere when we're done. Where I can have friends gather, or live with a partner, or read in solitary bliss.

I'm also grieving something, struggling with my own choices put off or denied, and not knowing what I want most -- and daily confronting the uncertainty of Grandma's time left.
E.g. If she lives another decade, I suppose I could feel I'd made a difference, but I'm working too hard in these "early" years. Plus I'm going to be too old to have kids by the time she passes. Yet if I move on in six months, and then she's gone next year, I'd regret not spending more time when I had the chance. Something beloved to lose, in each case.
E.g. if she's gone tomorrow, I'm back to square one and no savings to live on. But while she's here, and willing to offer room and board, I could do without a job or [much] money. This could be a chance to focus on writing and creative freelancing and gardening. But way up here in NE Portland, I don't get a whole lot of visitors, and being a stay-at-home nanny isn't getting me closer to having my own family or home. I'd likely go stir-crazy.

E.g. The family has approved my getting a little detached studio built, that can be my private space where I can have visitors for tea, work on writing or drawing, or just sleep in, undisturbed, when I need to.
The budget doesn't imply a bathroom or any multiple-room space, but a small, stout building that might be called a pretty shed.
Grandma doesn't consistently remember whether she thinks this is OK or not; has she given permission? Can she remember the previous conversations? When I explain it, in gentle terms, she nods -- but then I explain it again the next time...
I have personal moments of doubt about the task of finding a contractor; Paul and Dee know who _not_ to recommend. I know enough about building that I could do most of it myself, with enough help and time. Need help on details like foundation / skids / supports, though. Will I have enough emotional stamina to finish it, while I continue caring for Grandma and keeping up with other responsibilities?

The family hopes I might stay another six months or more -- I suspect that negotiation, planning, building, and finishing will take at least several months (the contractors I've talked to so far are booked out about 2 1/2 months at this point). So realistically, I could leave as soon as the place was finished, and I'd still have been here four to six months just by doing that.
The idea that this studio/shed could be permanently mine, and that I could haul it away to somewhere else if Grandma's place gets sold, makes the amount of effort I'd need to invest seem worthwhile.

Final decisions have been tabled until the end of September, when Grandma's next MRI will [probably] be scheduled.
She's feeling tired often lately -- not enough to eat, cover-up for fuzzy-mindedness, or signs of deteriorarion?
She's also concerned about a long scab-ish thing on her scalp; Mom (Eleanor) thinks it could be an irritation from her former barrettes, but it's been some time since she pointed it out and it's not healing terribly fast. We may call her doctor about it tomorrow morning.

We had orange cauliflower with white cheddar cheese today. And _real_ strawberries from the farmer's market. Grandma is watering the dickens out of the wildife and marigolds, keeping her little garden going through August's heat. She leaves the new blueberries and rhubarb at the foot of the garden to me. (Consequentially, they got a little scorched at one point, but there's still a healthy amount of green coming in.) Tomatoes are reddening, tiny ones like little berries, and our two little cornstalks each has an ear of corn. Pumpkins are oranging up, too, both the jack-o-lantern and the sweet ones, and there are acorn squash darkening among the thronging leaves in my weed-supressing jink-pit garden. I've started saving seeds from anything delicious that I buy locally, like the sweet yellow watermelon we had for dessert.

Kristi and I and some of our friends may make it out to Sauvie's island tomorrow for a fruit-harvest and nature-preserve indulgence.