a week in portland, oregon

it has been exactly a week since i left los angeles. i have cried morning. will it stop? i miss my bathtub in los angeles. i miss pulling into my garage and feeling like i'm back home from wherever.

i have a problem. my 12 year old daughter is starting her new school next week and she doesn't want to talk about it. she has a mini panic attack and tells me to stop talking. i think she is so scared of being around strangers that she can't even put her toe in the in the water to talk about. she feels she will deal with it on sept 2nd her first day of school. i'm afraid she will freak out and loose it the night before or 5 minutes before school starts. how can i help her? she won't even let me drive by her new school to practice familiarity. she has deep wounds from her last school and believes that people can be very mean.

she is over weight due to a thyroid condition called hashimotos. her thyroid goes up and down and we have been trying to deal with it for a year now, trial and error. the girls in her class picked on her, told her things like "you can't shop at the stores we shop at." this feels like a whip on my back and i can't image what is going on inside her littl soul. i hope some boy or girl will see what a great friend she could be. her wish by moving to portland, is that she will find a neighborhood best friend. come to think of it i really didn't find a best friend till 7th grade and then she dumped me in high school for dorothy and diane dana (the twins). that is a whole other door i'm not looking forward to. hey but it could be fabulous. like my husband experienced, the best school years of his life. most men that i know know felt that way especially if you were in sports like my husband was, you had a team of friends automatically. except my gay friends, they hated high school for the obvious reasons. growing up in the 70's in high school gay was still a secret for most.

8 more days till school for severin. i have to buck up and take this portland ride on. how can i be a good teacher for severin if i can't even put my big toe in either. the people here seem friendly enough.

marika van adelsberg

it has been 7 days since i left home in california. 52 years of planting my roots, friends, family and clients. not to mention all my comfort zones, my small neighborhood market, pinkberry, the beach, my writing class in venice, my hair cutter, my theropist, my walk with my neighbor and our dogs, the fedex guy who waited when i wasn't ready, a phone call from a friend knowing they were 10 minutes away, knowing i could have dinner with my 85 year old dad when i needed to (and he always paid), doctors who knew me or pretended to, getting a hug from a friend at least twice a week, a cosmo on the sour side with my best friends on san veciente for a quickey.

in one week i've been striped of everything that i know. i wake up now every morning to stacks of brown boxes. i need a map to get around even to buy gas. god forbid i make a wrong turn in portland oregon, my new home (it's easy to get lost when you are a foreigner). it is beautiful here, when i dare get out the people are very friendly. i have decided with my husband to try a new life, raising a 12 year old daughter on the west side is tough. so we packed up rented our house for 2 years and here we go. i am a mother, wife, i have my ouwn graphic design business (one man show), i'm trying to get my organic hemp t-shirt line called TATTLE off the ground, i am partners in a company called THKSKINS (decorative skins for phone devices). not sure how all this will work in portland, something pulled me here.