Cherry Darling

We lay in the grass in the yard while the sweet smell of hyacinth and other blooming things hover in the air. It’s private and quiet there, a little green oasis and respite from the world – though the world here is pretty quiet and private – it doesn’t require much escaping. Ed finished reading Speaker For The Dead aloud while I occasionally pulled a weed or pruned something. Secret played with her Jolly Ball, moving it about the yard like a soccer champ.

To speed things up, we went to see The Grindhouse. Vroooom, vroooooom.

Holiday...

T minus 81. I’ve taken this week off work again, mostly because Ed lost his job and we haven’t had time off together, in years. When we take vacations, he’ll spend a not insignificant portion of the time working. That’s just not an option this week, so we’re lazing about, taking little day trips and enjoying our time together. It’s actually something of a challenge for us. When it comes right down to it, we prefer one another in relatively small doses.

On Friday night we ventured into The City for Cookie’s first-ever art opening. It was a smallish venue at Magnet, an HIV testing, counseling and case management center in the Castro. It was sweet and appropriate and I know from talking to folks that purchased items that he sold quite a few pieces. He’s produced a collection of mixed media pieces with a relatively high degree of curb appeal. He seemed quite happy with the turn out and the feedback and we had a great time.

Saturday I spent the day in the garden, finally getting the blueberry bushes in their big pots and the Boston Ferns that arrived last week in hanging pots over the hot tub. I still haven’t planted the citrus trees as I stew in indecision. Wiley, who I’d seen at Cookie’s show, came out for a hike. It was a somewhat unplanned and unexpected visit. He’d mentioned that he wanted to come out and without following up or confirming he just showed up. I’ve mixed feelings about that. I really enjoy people just showing up. I like an informal life that is open to people dropping in. I just don’t feel so great about Wiley, in particular, doing that right now (any more?). By the same token, I’m not willing to disinvite him to my life. (Generally, I don’t do that.) So I’ll just have to sit in my contradiction and ponder it for a spell. In the meantime, I had him mow the lawn.

Saturday evening Ed and I had craft night (something I think we want to make into a bit more of a routine..) We colored easter eggs (one of the fifteen exploded, spectacularly, in the pot – the shell hit me in the eye.. fortunately I wear glasses. That was Easter’s way of spitting at me!) His were absolutely fantabulous. He confessed that when he was a kid he imagined he’d be an artist. He’s totally gifted with this untapped talent, though he contends that he reached the pinnacle of his talent in the fourth grade and never progressed beyond that. I think if we develop a discipline together, it could be grand fun.

Sunday morning we gathered our many colored eggs and ventured into The City to the Pacific Rod and Gun club at Lake Merced where there was an Easter egg hunt and breakfast for the little children of gun club patrons. We ate hash browns while the little kids in multicolored pastel outfits scoured the field in a total of eight minutes. There was no shoot’n that day… amidst the bright orange broken clay pigeons and spent shell casings, children scavenged. It was poetic. This is what it’s come to.

It was still on the early side so rather than make the trek to the South Bay to visit Ed’s mother and have dinner, we trundled on over to Larkspur where the windsurfers set out into the Bay. It’s a lovely view of Ring Mountain and San Quentin State Prison where we toss the ball into the murky waters of the bay and let the Honey Bee paddle and play on the rocky beach.

We went home and changed clothes, took care of this and that, then did that South Bay dinner thing with Ed’s mom and ‘em. They ate honey glazed ham and George made me some lovely scampi. We left before it got too late or we got too tired – so it was a perfect little outing and the traffic wasn’t so bad.

This morning we rose early, puttered around the house, did some cleaning and went off to breakfast at the local Koffee Klatch. I stopped by the post office to get the (gulp) property taxes (I hope it makes it to the Civic Center by the deadline) in the mail and then we dropped Ed’s mountain bike off at the Cyclery. The day’s not over and there’s lounging to be done along with some wandering in the hills with the Monster Grrrrrl.

Everybody Lives But Us.

I JUST FINISHED READING Son of a Witch. I highlighted a passage from the book that I felt partial to awhile back. To refresh:

A capacity for interiority in the growing adult is threatened by the temptation to squander that capacity ruthlessly, to revel in hollowness. The syndrome especially plagues anyone who lives behind a mask. An Elephant in her disguise as a human princess, a Scarecrow with painted features, a glittering tiara under which to glow and glide in anonymous glamour. A witch’s hat, a Wizard’s showbiz display, a cleric’s store, a scholar’s gown, a soldier’s dress sartorials. A hundred ways to duck the question: how will I live with myself now that I know what I know?

AND SO NOW at the end of the day, is there illumination. Of course. Of course.

I ADORED THE BOOK, more than Wicked. It’s something of a coming of age story that goes beyond coming of age. The backdrop for the first half is our hero, Liir, in a comatose and decrepit state, being played back to life by the lilting and beautiful music of the lovely Candle. The Sisters left him with her to heal and having no healing power and a soft (near invisible) voice, she picked up her instrument and played with her heart (and the feather of a pfenix) the boy back to life and health. This is the context for our stroll back through Liir’s life to the events which brought him there.

(The Sisters worship the Unnamed God- though while they believe the Unnamed God created humans in its likeness, The Superior Maunt believes that people of the great City of Oz has recreated the Unnamed God in their likeness instead. She’s also attributed with this reflection, Wisdom is not the understanding of mystery, she said to herself, not for the first time. Wisdom is accepting that mystery is beyond understanding. That’s what makes it mystery. And for some reason all that makes me think of Edward Abbey… I digress.)

IN THE BEGINNING, orphaned, lost and alone, his mother (Elphaba, the Wicked Witch) having been killed by the callous and cruel visitor (Dorothy), Liir goes in search of any family or semblance of kin he might have left. He’s uncertain of his parentage – he knows Elphaba raised him and is perhaps the closest thing to a mother that he knows, but given her lack of maternal characteristics, Liir felt more a charge in her care than a son to her. Be that as it may. He sets off to the City of Oz in search of the Tin Man, the Lion and the Scarecrow. The Scarecrow (who will later rule Oz for a spell) relays the following:

”The Tin Woodman has left to cultivate the art of caring. He has his work cut out for him, poor sod. The Lion is suffering severe depression; his cowardice was his sole identifying trait, and now he’s pitiably normal. Neither of them can help you much, I’m afraid. You should get yourself out of here while you can. Start over.”

“Start over? I never started the first time. Besides, it’s not getting out that I need to do. It’s getting in.”

SURELY LIIR goes to the darkest places in Oz in search of the allusive family, the allusive belonging. He explores the country, betrays, amends, fails and redeems. He learns to love and be faithful. He slays the dragons even though the blasted demons stole his broom (the only remnants of his connection to his mother) and nearly stole his life (the reason for is desperate and near death state which Candle plays him so vigorously out of.) It is after he is played back to life, however, that he goes battling his real demons. And yes, he slays the dragons so that the skies might once again be safe for the birds to fly and with this, of course, spring can come again – because so many know springtime by the coming of birds!

It is that one quote that I pulled out earlier, however, that is the heart of the matter, the what of the what, the is of the is. The novel is about unmasking the masked so that they may finally live fulfilled and complete – so that they might know themselves and live with themselves and as who they are.

Early on in the book there’s this foreboding line:

”Everyone dies. It’s a question of where and how, that’s all.”

THIS MIGHT SEEM SIMPLE, but Liir has met an Elephant, disguised as a princess, who only wishes to die as an Elephant and a major part of the drama is Liir making his way back to her, with Candle, to shepherd that transition back to herself, unmask her, so she might die as her true self – unmasked and revealed. Exposed. Where and how is quite important in this instance.

(I loved this part, not relevant.. or maybe completely relevant, I’ve yet to stumble on the connection: In four different hands, applied at four different opportunities, to judge by the aging of the text the wall read ELPHABA LIVES! OZMA LIVES! THE WIZARD LIVES! And then EVERYBODY LIVES BUT US.)

SO HERE IT IS in the culmination, the final moment, in the chapter titled No Place Like It (home, of course):

The colossal might of wickedness, he thought. How we love to locate it massively elsewhere. But so much of it comes down to what each one of us does between breakfast and bedtime.

Remembering Princess Nostoya [the Elephant disguised as a princess] he thought: Sever us from our disguises. Then he flinched, almost in disgust. Was that a prayer?

WHAT A LOVELY ENDING! (That’s not precisely the end, but maybe it should have been.)

Go Ahead, Make A Plan

I missed the first annual town picnic on Sunday for an afternoon flight arriving in DC at about midnight. The hotel didn’t have a kitchen/room service so I set out for food. Everything was closed. I settled for a bag of popcorn from a nearby CVS and a few bottles of water. I woke up at about 10 am, packed up my shit and headed out to the nearest coffee shop for a latte. Spent way too much time battling security to get onto the campus and missed the opportunity to get to the cafeteria before the meeting began at 1 pm, ended at 5 pm and the taxi met me at the entrance to the building at 5:15, which was perfect – it dropped me at the airport a few minutes after 6 and I was through security and to the gate before 6:30, which was awesome because all I’d had to eat for two days was a bag of popcorn and the airport is filled with such fine culinary fare. Next thing I know I’m calling Ed from my cell phone, on the airport shuttle, as we’re crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, begging him to meet me in Larkspur with a chicken sandwich and a sweater. Eureka!

I arrive home to snuzzle with the dog on the sofa a shy bit after midnight on Monday and ready myself for a 7 am on Tuesday – some five or six hours away from it I drift off and wake up drooling on one of the sofa pillows but/and there’s no coffee in the house. I rouse Ed outta bed to fetch me coffee as I dial in. I not only have to be on the call, which is difficult enough, but I also have to chair the call. Coffee come my way, please come my way.

On the one hand it’s busy, there’s a gazillion deadlines I’ve fallen behind on, at any given moment there are at least three urgent things I should have attended to by COB yesterday and part of that is due to the fact that I reduced my schedule but there’s never been an adequate acknowledgment of how that needed to correspond with a decrease in certain kinds of responsibilities. So things fall through the cracks because there are cracks (gaping canyons even.) But part of it really is due to the fact that I have days that are not perfectly efficient.

Yesterday was a great example. I was just exhausted and I slept through another 7 a.m. call and while I had outlined a day to accomplish some of these gazillion tasks, I maybe only got to three or four of them. It wasn’t for lack of trying, per se, but yeah, maybe it was for lack of trying… Maybe that is the difference between now and what I was willing to do then.

The good news is that I got a call from a consultant who sometimes has my back and she’s been garnering support for a severance package for me. At least yesterday it looked promising – that maybe as early as the first of the year I could roll on that transition. Well, it’s not really a transition, is it? That’s just as it says, a severance, cutting it off, get a tourniquet and stop the bleed, etc. I remind myself not to jump on this roller coaster ride of getting my hopes up. Other pieces have to fall into place, there are other factors to account for.

What will I do with myself if or when I wake up and there’s nothing to do but battle through the thoughts of the day, be alone with myself and my ambition, fears, strengths and thoughts? Partly it’s easy to keep the madness up as a way to hold other kinds of madness at bay. Without the excuses of work, how ever will I busy myself in order to flee my destinies? Ah.. something new to figure out (or maybe something old.)

But all that distraction is a ways off yet. Today I have today – a murder of crows savaging the walnut tree in the adjacent yard – dive bombing my roof with their potential fodder, trying to crack something open (the walnut, you know, or my sanity.) When there’s not an onslaught of thumping walnuts above (the sky is falling?) they are screeching into the crisp pale blue cloudless sky of a later summer morning. Secret is curled up in a sunbeam on her blanket - a festive pink ball perches beside her, pregnant with potential. She’s grown immune to the ruckus too.

I have a feeling that things will not go either how I expect, hope or plan (God laughs?)

Accidents Will Happen

My neighbor gets a double mastectomy on the 23rd. She’s got such a great attitude about all this, it’s rock’n. I want to try to do something kind for her before then – or maybe after. I have to think about it. In other fronts, we’ve been having a great time getting to know the couple who bought the house across the street. We took them for dinner week before last and last night they returned the gesture. For some reason, when I’m near them, I start talking like a chatter box when normally I’m rather reserved. It’s strange. As far as I can tell they’re not turned off, so all is good. We’re thoroughly enjoying their company. She works at the college of art and he’s a web designer.

I’m drinking Private Stock Captain Morgan spiced rum right out of the bottle. It’s sooooo nummy with this scharfenberger chocolate I picked up the other day when I was in The City. Fortunately there wasn’t a lot left in the bottle otherwise I fear I’d be hammered by now. Instead, after the hot tub I just took, it just makes me feel a little toasty and jovial on this balmy Thursday evening. The sky is pink.

I accidentally hired a gardener today. Worse accidents have happened. I intended to have a guy come over and fix the irrigation. I’ve been watering with a cheap ass plastic sprinkler that gets stuck in a tilted position and stops doing its vacillation thing – making discrete areas of the lawn perfecting saturated and soggy and leaving the majority of the grass parched and browning. I paid top dollar for an irrigation system to be installed year before last and for whatever reason when I turn the damn things on the pressure shoots the sprinkler thingies high into the air, breaking them into bits on the way. It’s lethal. It’s beyond putting an eye out, those things could rip off a limb when they shoot. This makes watering the lawn perilous at best. So I intended to hire a guy to come flush the system and take a look at the irrigation and see if he could fix it. What I got instead, or rather, in addition to that, is the irrigation fixed and this other guy who stuck around for eight hours weeding, mowing, raking, sweeping. After eight hours and two hundred dollars later the place looked stunning. He had me write the check payable to the local liquor store.

Trash

We’d had lofty social plans this weekend. A visit from a wayward friend and a birthday party at an East Bay park for Wiley. Instead we cleaned the car port and I continued (and completed) my Survivor obsession (actually there’s one season available on DVD that I haven’t watched yet, so not completely completed.) Today, rather than Wiley’s party, I think I’ll weed the garden and maybe take a bike ride. My toes are black and blue – a new evolution in the continuing foot saga (wtf??!?!)

So why aren’t we going to Wiley’s birthday festivities? The real/main reason we’re not going: Ed’s been driving on a suspended license with expired tags on the Rodeo. I’m just not willing to get stuck an hour and a half away from home while Ed gets his ass hauled off to jail and the truck is impounded. It just ain’t gonna happen. I don’t think Wiley will understand. The fact that he won’t or might not understand wearies me a bit.

I can’t express, it probably wouldn’t make a damn bit of sense to you, how thrilled I am that the car port is cleaned and tidied. It’s been over a year that it’s looked a fright and people have commented. It’s been my badge of shame. When we set out minds to it, it only took a few hours to clear it out. Damn, I wish we would have done that some time back. Having it linger in that state for so long made me feel rather trashy.

I haven’t mentioned the rats for awhile and for good reason (YAY.) Even the smell of the dead ones in the walls has ceased to linger. We had a brutal heat wave a while back and no doubt that helped to accelerate the decomposition.

There’s a cat living behind the hot tub. Much to my surprise, when Secret went to chase her out, three kittens came spilling forward! So we have a cat family living behind the hot tub. I hope these vagrant guests will assist in rat abatement efforts. They must earn their keep.

The bathroom is almost finished. I hate things in a state of almost. My life and home have been in a state of almost for months and months. I’m all about hammering some finishing nails in about now.

Home Again

I returned from London last Thursday. I was there during the record breaking heat wave - a tepid ninety-something. Those wimps. Yesterday, the high here was 112.9 - at nearly 6 pm. Friends (who we love, very much, maybe forever despite any wrong doings or offenses they may commit) bought us two air conditioners. We paid, they drove and got them - they drove to Concord and Cupertino - a gazillion miles, in miserable heat - to get these air conditioners. When they pulled into the parking lot of the store in Concord they called to report that the temperature there was 129 degrees Fahrenheit. I'm becoming weather-obsessed. I've been sucked into the vortex of people who watch the weather channel. Okay. I'm not there yet. I still don't have a television - but I have a secret weather blog. There I write things like: It's hot. It's cold. It's raining. I write there more often then I write here. Maybe because the weather changes, noticeably, more often than I do.

One air conditioner is an 8,000 BTU - it cools, supposedly, up to 400 square feet (I think not!) We've put it in the window of my study to cool the 350 square foot back cottage. It barely cools down the one room there, so I keep the door shut. This room was our bedroom for over three years. It felt cozy and familiar to be living our lives out of the back cottage for the weekend. We'd brave the heat and go look at the front cottage from time to time - but mostly we shut the shades and read books, magazines, played suduko, watched DVDs on the computer. We had the three essential heat wave beverages, San Pelligrino Limonata, sparkling Calistoga, Corona. And I'd venture out to water the garden every few hours. Despite heroic efforts I couldn't stop the hydrangeas from drooping.

I had a lovely time in London. It's changed favorably since I went to school there in the '80s. It's more cosmopolitan and despite the global fascination for increased development of open space into concrete structures, I'd still say it's an improvement. I wouldn't live there. It's not my thing. But it was fun to visit - the night bus tour was loads of fun - and the food, hands down, has been the most dramatic and notable improvement over the past few decades. The London aquarium, however, proves to be among the worst of the world's tributes to aquatic life. I'd liken it to little more than a spot of spit in a mud puddle with a few fish tossed in. It's a pathetic little place and they'd do better to simply close it down than to tout, as a town, that they house an aquarium. What an embarrassment! It's a tragic little fish prison.

Traveling made me want to travel more, as opposed to the more traditional outcome where I'm left feeling like all I want to be is home among the Cookie Pie, familiar things, my mountains, summer. That's such a push-pull phenomenon with the Honey Bee. I hate to leave her behind, but it's really not practical for her to come along.

The Wonder

There are now nearly two clean rooms. I spent the day cleaning the study. Yes, the day. The entire day. I mean until 9 p.m. even. And it's not wholly done. There's one wall to wash down, two windows to Windex and a bookcase to shuffle through and dust - but then it will be done enough to call it a perfectly clean room. I hadn't wiped down those walls since I quit smoking and to be honest I feel like the amount of nicotine exposure I had washing the walls might just constitute a relapse in some circles. It was pretty ooogy. A little more tidying up in there tomorrow and I'll call that one a wrap.

I should have done this months ago! I ran over my big toe with the vacuum cleaner, however. That is a lesson in why you should wear shoes when you vacuum. It hurt like a mother-fucker. (Do mother-fuckers hurt? If so, why?)

The guys working on my bathroom are in the home stretch. I can hardly wait until they're done. I love them, don't get me wrong, but we're hitting that stage in our relationship where I think it would be a good idea if we all had some alone-time.

I leave for London on Saturday evening. I already miss Secret Agent Dog, even though she's all cozied up here on the sofa with me. I think I'm becoming something of a curmudgeon. At one time in my life a week in London would have been the cat's meow. Now I simply dread the long flight, the terminal train ride from Heathrow, clamoring for a taxi at the station and all the whoopla of getting to the hotel, being jet lagged, blah, blah, blah. Now I just want to get home before I even start packing. I think I'm losing my sense of adventure and wonder. (Note to self, rediscover the wonder.) If there is someone in London who wants to help me rediscover the wonder, drop a line.

My Two Cents

About once a week I go to the post office. I have several packs of thirty seven cent stamps. I suppose I could walk in there with a whopping fourteen pennies or however many I need and get all those stamps to make the rest of lot legal, but I enjoy going to the post office. It's only a few blocks from my house, it's a nice to see the post ladies, tether the Honey Bee and watch her nervously through the window, maybe run into the random neighbor out doing their errands. But more than all that, there's something very satisfying about giving my two cents, quite literally, and getting that stamp. It's one of those rare times where my two cents are genuinely wanted - they're considered so valuable that I even get something in return!

There is precisely one perfectly clean room in the house - actually, between both cottages - just one. It's the mudroom. I cleaned it today. It was tremendously satisfying. Occasionally I go stand in it and pretend the rest of the house is equally shiny, dusted, windexed and smelling antiseptic - ammonia and laundry soap. Instead, I know in my heart of hearts that beneath the dishwasher lurks more rat poop. Rat poop I haven't been able to get at yet and sop up (SHIVER.) This preys on my neurosis like you can't imagine.

Today was a magnificent day because today LB and I went to Bon Tempe after she finished work and walked the Shady Side Trail with Secret Agent Dog and her best bud. It's been over two weeks and I'm not sure who enjoyed it more - me or her. I'll say me. She'll say her - or rather, she would say her if she could say her but she can't so she won't. Instead she says something like arf (but it comes out sounding squeaky.)

None of the workmen showed up today. What's up with that? They have been fastidious and fabulous and prompt and reliable. Today - not a word. Maybe they had premonitions about the rat poop and stayed away. I love them. I miss them.

I don't think I've taken the opportunity to say WAY TO GO, ITALY!!! That was a stellar World Cup match and no one, clearly, is more deserving. Shame on that brutish thug, Zindane.

Love Is Like War

Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop. - H.L. Mencken

Firstly, *ding, ding, ding* ten points for Cassie! You know, she won the Why I Want Boris/Russian art contest too and has her own book of proletariat art from the Moscow Press (go Boris!) Cassie, you’re a WINNER!

I was so moved by responses to my last entry. They were all so sweet and real. Once, I risked my sense of self, my dignity, my self respect, for what I thought was love. I’m not so sure, in retrospect, that it was love at all that I was risking for. It was perhaps obsession and addiction, but certainly it doesn’t look like love in hindsight. I passed through many years where I risked little – but maybe that’s not entirely true at the core of it. I was thinking last night after pondering responses here that I feel like perhaps I’ve risked nothing, and thus everything.

I don’t think giving things up is the same as risking per se. I have to think about that. I certainly have not felt like I’ve given anything up for love – I haven’t given up my dreams, ambitions, goals, job, potentials – nothing. I feel, maybe, like I wish I would have given up something. I’m not sure why. Not because to me it’s some emblem, some proof – but because in retrospect there were paths I didn’t explore that I think I might have liked too – that required a kind of risk I couldn’t even understand. Once I read a poem called “Turning Thirty” and the author wrote, “Turning thirty is about giving up infinite possibilities.” I didn’t feel that way when I turned thirty. Maybe I’m feeling that way after having turned forty. And that maybe doesn’t have anything to do with love at all.

Zosia wrote that she risked her own independent career for love – being the one to nurture the family. I didn’t. I didn’t risk an independent career. I rose to the top of mine, made my mark, and at the end of the day the accomplishments, however noble, and they have been noble, feel somewhat empty. You know, after all, at the end of the day, what really matters? As I’ve matured (and it’s taken a long time for me to mature,) it seems for me to all come down to the quality of my relationships and not what I can accomplish. All I want to accomplish at my day’s end is a great deal of love – is the cultivation of meaningful relationships and joy and not a list of accomplishments. I don’t know.. this makes me ponder and it makes me wonder.

Anyways… a few updates. It’s likely the bathroom will be nearly done by the week’s end and yes, the week ends tomorrow. The rat infestation continues with a vengeance. I have an exterminator coming out today. I’ve appealed to the folks at the restaurant next store (again) to move their trash from the border of my property – for whatever reason, they don’t seem to want to do this (though they’ve agreed to put out electronic rat traps around the trash.) I’ve come to the realization that the reason they won’t move the trash away from residential borders is because they know it’s a problem and they don’t want to bring the problem any closer to the space that they work and play in. I’ve called vector control and we’ve had a nice long talk. They’re calling the health department and checking into what else might be done. I hate this.

Secret gets her stitches out (hopefully) tomorrow. Hmmm. Back to work with me.

More Later

I’ve been busy. No. That’s not it. Too many plans, people, things. I need my time alone – but not too much. I’m looking for that good in-between. I’m feeling crowded. I get pretty agro when I feel crowded. I like the time I spend weeding the garden, pruning, working the soil. Get down in the dirt with me. There’s plenty of room down here in the dirt.

So today I’ve extracted a quiet day (so far) off the loom of them. Somehow the alarm failed to go off at 7 am, so I rolled off the bed at 7:11, not as pleasantly as I’d have preferred. Pulled on my sweat pants and FBI glow-in-the-dark T-shirt (at the aiport Kiosk store in Washington Dulles, United terminal, near gate C17), brushed my teeth, rolled up my yoga sticky matt and out the door to meet Kaye, the neighbor lady. We do yoga together on Saturday mornings. Actually, it’s her routine, I just encroached myself into it. She’s been welcoming. We ladies stretch together.

After an hour or so of contorting, pushing, pulling my body every which way till Tuesday, I stopped at the coffee roaster enroute home for a nice cup of organic Mexican Jose (aka Joe.) After I’m all slippery and loosed up, the caffeine goes down smoother, surer. While I waited for Ed to more fully awake, I continued fertilizing the lawn – there still more to go, but enough for the morning.

And then we hopped on the mountain bikes and road the ten miles to Larkspur. Ed went out drinking (bad man – I hate it when he drinks, he promised he’d stop, dog house and all that rot) and took a taxi home from The City – leaving the truck at the ferry building. However annoying that is, it’s better than irresponsibly driving drunk I suppose. And admittedly, it was a beautiful morning for a ride – a light breeze, still early enough to escape the heat of the day. We had to stop at the Pet Food Cottage to pick up the Honey Bee’s chow before turning back home.

Swooping into the cottage, we off loaded the dog food and bike, did a quick change of clothes, scooped up Ms. Secret Agent Cookie and road the bikes up to LB’s house to watch the US v. Italy World Cup match. And what a stellar showing by the US. (LB says, “we must believe.” I say, “believe what, that Italy is going to kick their ass?” She says, “no, that they’ll win.” “Hmmmm… The World Cup, or just this match?” I ask. “Let’s just start with the match,” she says.) But really, coming up with a draw when the US is two men down is about the same as Italy losing, really. They should feel shame.

We’d intended to go to the beach today, but we’re bagging on the idea. It’s 2:30 in the afternoon, there’s more gardening to do and yet I feel like I’ve done enough today.

As much as I do, I don’t want sustainability and environmental issues to be the it girl of this era. I’ve been thinking about this quite abit. I’m in a hot spot, again, of a movement. But this time I’m dabbling around on the fringe and not wanting to jump in. Or I do, but not holding hands with a crowd. If I wrote about that, that would be an entry.

Of course, I think Hedgehoggy would want to hear about what’s on my feet to make it real. Right now, there is Rhythm and Blues polish on my toes – just an exciting electric blue making them glow like crazy. And then there are the rather mundane white cotton socks. My shorts are army green and my tank top is mottled black with bleach streaks from when it went in the wrong load. The royal we (that’s me and Ed) are reading the Horse and his Boy or the Boy and his Horse (whatever-the-hell-it’s-called) – the third in the Narnia series (the first being my favorite thus far.) There’s a box of stewed tomatoes in the middle of the living room floor – for the life of me I don’t know why.

Oh yeah, we went to a monster yard sale in between things this morning. I found nothing to buy, yet like a seedy back-alley character the neighbor man showed me his etchings lamps and gave us three, for free. They’re sweet and lovely. I think many of the neighbor’s raise their brow in pity and wonder at our lack of furniture. I took the lamps but they’re table lamps and we have no tables.

The other day it rained, a few scattered sprinkles, during a walk on the mountain. This is nearly unheard of in this part of the world, in June. It made me happy. I loved, loved, loved it. I loved it as much as Fondue and riding my bike along the canal on a breezy Saturday morning. Things that make me happy: In addition to those things… wood ducks, wild native grasses, the twins.

More later.

Poopy

Okay, say something damnit. Hi – another busy weekend. Too busy. Ed and I sat in the hot tub last night – under a canopy of stars and towering redwood trees – and decompressed our weekend. Too busy. So much so that I feel really resentful toward all the going’s on. Not toward any one person or thing – just the whole package – it was too much. And too many foiled ventures. Perhaps if some of them had yielded better fruits.

Despite this, I happened to get some great pictures of a tree frog, above the waterfall at Elliot. The rangers were out in full force, meaning the Honey Bee was leashed the entire time. Used to be one was allowed up to three dogs, off leash, under voice control, in this open space area. Someone has deemed it a sensitive wild life habitat, however. So now the dogs must be leashed. From my understanding the only sensitive wild life area is a roped off area near one of the fire roads. I’m sure dogs run through that area from time to time. But just as often, because the sign explaining what the sensitive wild life habitat is all about is posted in the middle of the sensitive, roped off area, humans have to crawl over the rope, through the sensitive area, to read that it’s a sensitive area and be informed they need to stay off/out of it. Sheer genius. And the dogs are the problem. Jeeeeesh.

I know, I should oblige and follow the rules – but I can’t. I try to make up for it in other ways… rouge broom pulling excursions, frog docenting (though not always gleefully), caring for the planet in my own ways. Hopefully is the cosmic pinball game I’m equalizing my karma points. I’m sure one day I’ll get a ticket, and I’ll just deserve it. She’s a good girl – well behaved, sunny disposition, avoids people, loves kids – it’s really me. I’m the problem.

So I’m about to drop over $1300 on what I’ve learned is called bathroom trim. That’s the faucets for the sink and the shower stuff – handles, spout for the tub, etc. etc. That’s in addition to the 200-and-something I spent online for the showerhead from Mac The Antique Plumber. I figure, however, since I decided not to buy a new bathtub and since no wood rot was discovered in the walls/floors/ceiling, etc, I could splurge a little and get the trim I wanted and liked. Even still, it feels rather overwhelming and extravagant and crazy. Be that as it may – I’m gonna have the nicest trim in town.

It smells poopy around here.

Pronoia

I know, I know, I’ve been terrible about updating here. Things have been going along swimmingly, yet quite busily as well. (Is busily a word?)

I love that when touched by Ithuriel’s spear, the true form of evil is revealed. So occasionally I pick the flower and hold it, waiting for something to change – wondering if the evil that lurks in me will suddenly become revealed in some striking form. As long as I look pretty much the same, at least we can assume I’m not cloaked – you get what you see – fangs and all (wink.)

For those who remember the Hell’s Kitchen saga of last year, what you mightn’t know is that the saga never ended. There remained a built-in dishwasher that never had a cabinet to build itself into. Without said cabinet, the dishwasher, when opened to be loaded or unloaded, would become front-heavy and tip. Hundreds of dollars of broken dishes later leaves me restless. The floor has never been quite finished, trim was never trum. And what’s gone unmentioned is that we haven’t had a bathroom – for the past year it’s been all sub flooring and a teetering toilet. To shower we go use the back cottage and the sink has been shut off for a year given a leakage problem. The little room can hardly be called a bathroom, and more suitably called a rather undignified toilet.

And there’s the problem of contractors/skilled labor in this part of the world being invariably (though not universally, as I’ve recently discovered) unreliable. Well, suddenly and without expectation a guy called me who’d gotten my name from a neighbor and through a rather whirlwind chain of events demolition began on the bathroom last Friday and has been proceeding at break neck speed ever since.

Sure, there was a trip to LA before that that failed to get mentioned here I believe, and last weekend a trip to DC. Blah, blah, blah. Whatever. What’s important is that this bathroom is finally coming together and every discovery has been great news! The walls and floor were ripped up to unveil NO dry rot! This is absolutely amazing (and what one gets for having a house built of precious woods!) An area that has been cause to suspect a roof leakage problem reveals itself to be a sink that drains under the house… as opposed to in a drain (!?!??!) It was easily connected to a drain and suddenly this likely means that there is/was no roof damage!

And all this news leads me to a notion called pronoia. It was first coined by a lyricist for the Grateful Dead. It means nearly the opposite of paranoia. It is a notion that there is a conspiracy by the universe to shower you with blessings. That by 10 am, an hundred things in the universe have conspired to go right, just for you. It really seems to be happening that way, if we pay attention.

There’ll be more later… but for now, if we touch ithuriel’s spear to Hell’s Kitchen it’s looking much better.. and the bathroom, the bathroom, the bathroom… ah.. what more can I say about that bathroom? It commences… love, love, love!

Discontent

Down here in the flats, we do our own gardening. And gardening I have done. Yesterday was spent pulling weeds, turning soil, composting, pruning, primping and planting. Icelandic poppies, marigolds, columbine and things I don’t even remember what to call. Delicate things that probably take too much water but I find irresistible nonetheless. It’s not a draught year, obviously, and I’ll take what I can while there’s plenty I suppose. One day, no doubt, they’ll be back to water rationing and my lawn will turn crisp and brown. Carpe diem!

I only tended to the side yard and the day was done. This morning I rise, make coffee, toss in a load of laundry and all the while my body rebels from bending and lifting and pulling in ways I’m unaccustomed to bend and lift and pull. There was a day that I’d say I hurt in a good way. But mostly I just hurt. Once the gardening gloves are through the washer and dryer this morning, however, we commence once more. Perhaps that is redundant.. and the we is perhaps the royal we. Secret and I maybe, or me and my aching back. I love the hot tub. Good investment. Everyone should invest in a hot tub. Once we’re suffering the worst effects of peak oil, it may make a nice planter or something. But in the meantime.. sizzle, sizzle, sizzle.

Ed technically starts the new job on Monday – but he’s busied himself by working on his computer most of the weekend. How convenient while I slave away at chores. This is the side of him I can do without. This is the part I’d just as soon kick to the curb.

I think I mentioned I haven’t been terribly inspired of late. It shows, doesn’t it, in these mundane entries about nothing? I want to decrease the number of hours I work, to four days a week. It seems at any given time there’s a desire for something that’s not happening – like contentment for what we have even.

Podiatry

The podiatrist gave me little over-the-counter pads with stick’ums on one side. I’m supposed to paste these fuckers to the bottom of my feet while he sees if my insurance will cover some professionally made inserts and we’re supposedly going to talk next week via the phone. I forget what he said he conjured was causing all this. Something rolling in a particular direction, obviously a particularly wrong direction. Pronating? Bones suspected of curving. You could tell, he said, by the wear pattern on my shoes – which were shoes I don’t wear often. These are comfortable shoes, He says, so people like them. They are the least comfortable shoes I have, I tell him. My feet hurt worst while I wear these particular shoes. Wouldn’t it be awesome if just once you went to the doctors and left feeling better than when you went – that they were able to tell you why were you having particular symptoms and outline a course of action that would actually make a meaningful difference?

Off like a prom dress to the optometrist. My prescription hasn’t changed significantly (all the change, I guess, is just in my head.) And I really couldn’t find a pair of cool new glasses. I went to visit Dan because I was too early for the eye doctor and he says, but those are really cute glasses. (Referring to the ones I’ve had for the past however many years.) I have to agree. They are really cute glasses. So I just up-graded an old pair of glasses with my newer old prescription and picked out a cute pair of prescription sunglasses. Five hundred and ninety dollars later and my flexible spending account is clean, zippo, wiped out. The sad part of this purchase is that I totally have a premonition of these expensive new sunglasses laying in the dust, trampled, at the side of a trail after some mountain biking fiasco. I know they’re not long for this world and I don’t even have them yet.

He says he misses me. I miss him too. I wish he lived closer the same way he wishes I lived closer and we won’t. That’s just the way it is right now and maybe for forever.

Cassie’s back from her astral travel adventure (heretofore known as ATA.) She came to visit on Saturday – but now I suspect she was just a mirage, an ATA illusion. She’s not only merely a lump of flesh channeling Cassie, but she’s not even real flesh. (I pinched her and she didn’t even notice – she didn’t even flinch.) We went on a short hike and I made us stop in a peaceful little meadow near the stables. It was too short – both the hike and the visit. Short because Ed and I planned to go the beach – something fun for a change. But that didn’t happen. Time got away with us so instead we began the arduous task of getting the kitchen cupboards up. They’ve been painted (or so I thought) for months and months – laying on the floor of the extra room. I bought hinges a few weeks back and it was time to do something with them.

As we began to affix hinges I realized the bastard who I paid an arm and leg to paint them didn’t even frill’n finish the job. One word - Asshole. But up they go nonetheless and I’ll do touch up later. The kitchen looks so different. Less cluttered. Brighter. Different. It’s a little shocking to have cupboard doors on – it’s been nearly a year since they’ve been off. Now I need to make a decision about knobs and pulls. But really, who needs knobs and pulls when you have no arms or legs?

Did I mention I bought a new lap top? Well, actually, one place I work for agreed to pay $1,000 toward the purchase, the one agreed to pay half the remainder. So I bought a quarter of a lap top but I get to keep the whole thing. It’s an HP 8000 series (8140.) Very sweet. It’s being shipped. I decided to demonstrate patience and choose the free five to seven business day delivery option as opposed to paying extra for next business day or second business day delivery. This proves I’m a saint (read patience of a saint) for anyone who doubted.

Okay.. this ranks up there as one of my most mundane entries. It only gets better from here. Promise.

It's Me

There are hippies who live next door who have impromptu drumming circles on the weekends. (I wouldn’t call them hippies, but they call themselves hippies.) They’ve offered an open invitation to their events, and while I don’t mean to be unneighborly, it’s doubtful I’ll ever take them up on the invitation. The invitation is kind and genuine, I believe. They have been gracious neighbors. The dog barks at them while they do Tai Chi in the yard (I surmise that the slow movements resemble aggression to her, she moves slow like that when she hunts. I think she’s trying to tell them, I know you’re there! I’ll kick your ass.) You see, it’s all how you look at things. Most people who practice Tai Chi likely wouldn’t view it as an act of aggression, despite the fact that it’s a marshal art – but the dog knows. It’s how I feel about them – you’re nice, but there’s something not right.

Despite the fact that I know, at least casually, many people in this town, sometimes I feel lonely. I don’t completely understand this. I’m happy here. I love this town. I felt even lonelier when I lived in the City… nothing worse then feeling lonely when you’re surrounded by millions of people (including those you count as friends) – it just proves that it’s not about access to people, it’s about something inside – some inadequacy, inability to make the connection. And it’s not even about not spending time with people. It’s about the quality of the connection. (It’s not you, it’s me.)

Jump

This ranks as a bad week. Something like food poisoning struck Tuesday night/Wednesday morning of week last. Much pain, an Emergency Room visit, and no small amount of blood later, I’m crawling out of a dark place and readying myself for NaNoWriMo.

A year ago today the Honey Bee had the mishap with the stick, through the leg, and we spent the evening running back and forth from the Emergency Vet while they performed surgery and released the Cookie Pie in quite a state of stupor to our care. This and a night of hundreds (yes hundreds) of trick-o-treaters, left for a surreal evening. A month of tendering, head cones, ripped and re-ripped stitches followed. Last year, November was a cruel month.

Despite my malady, I’m looking forward to a cozy November. The rugs are beginning to arrive, which makes the living room feel so much warmer. The new gas stove/fireplace thing fills the room with a nice ambiance and there’s always hot water heating atop it for tea in the evenings. The evening is brisk now, a biting cold. Sitting in the hot tub under the towering redwood trees, beneath a canopy of stars, while steam rises around my shoulders… sigh. Snuggling into a new soft robe and drinking tea by the fire – the Honey Bee curled in a ball with her head on my leg. Butternut squash with maple syrup. Split Pea soup. Hot apple cider with cinnamon and cloves. All these things, for me, are harbingers of……. spring.

Good Luck and Good Night

A small group of us went to the Sunday matinee of Good Luck and Goodnight. I loved the movie – the texture, the script, the acting… It left me feeling betrayed (again) by America and her infrastructure and ideologies. Listening to Murrow’s speeches – insightful, thoughtful, provoking – and actual text from newsprint media – addressing real issues in meaningful ways and using three-syllable words at that! I felt so disrespected by modern culture – with its sound bite treatment of the most complex of issues and fifth grade reading levels to appease the ignorant masses. I felt dimwitted by a country that expects us to be dimwits and we all stoop to achieve understanding. We need to get out our fucking dictionaries and learn how to communicate.

It’s time to allocute our crimes in a literary court – we’re culpable. We made it wires and flickering light. By our complicity it has really become Fahrenheit 451, though it’s not enforcers burning books of heretics – it’s so much more insidious and unforgivable then that. It’s libraries standing bereft of readers - dust gathering on the tops, glue turning brittle in the spines, pages yellowing and falling apart not from use but from neglect and abandon. Even music has become simple, lifeless and dim. I’ve spent what feels like a lifetime dumbing things down for the average reader when increasingly the average reader doesn’t, in fact, read.

Wiley’s visit was nice – relaxing and comfortable. He arrived in the afternoon on Saturday and left early Sunday evening. We walked for miles and had Ed come retrieve us from far away. We sat in a hot tub, went out for dinner, watched a documentary, chatted, watched a mindless movie, drank hot apple cider, fell asleep early. And on Sunday we strolled about town in the morning, went to the theatre in the afternoon and ended the day with a short hike. I felt empty – uninspired and intellectually listless – only made worse by this realization of how dim witted we all are.

The death of a neighbor’s King Charles Spaniel (Romeo), hit by a car and killed, has both Secret and I in a state of grief. We bought flowers this afternoon and will be delivering them to their doorstep shortly. He is terribly missed and fondly remembered.

The Lies We Stand On

Now you might think I’m overly obsessed with this kitchen, with this floor – but you’d only think that way if you’ve never been in a major earthquake. What we think is solid, isn’t. Concrete, brick and all we stand on as foundation is like sand in the face of nature. To run my toes through the grass and feel rooted in the earth – it’s pretty to think so. I like the illusion and there’s nothing wrong with that. And I want black and white flooring covering up the dust of dead things that form the carpet that we walk on from which springs life only to decay again and again. I want something more permanently dead beneath my feet and my feat in my kitchen – the center of home life. This is the place from which all nurturing springs and here, of all places, we need the lies to stand on. I want my fucking floor.

Friday Night, Almost

We’ve slept in the new house since Tuesday night (and no the kitchen floors are not done.) I wasn’t accustomed to the new place, the new bed, or my head facing a new direction. Secret was fidgety. I was fidgety. No one slept well. I’d pondered the idea of taking Secret back to the smaller cottage to sleep on the day bed. I stuck it out, however, not without regret. Each night the sleeping has been a little better, a little sounder, a little deeper. We adjust to new awkwardly despite the length of time we’ve waited, wished and craved for it.

Ed woke early, bought the boards for the fence and began nailing. (He’d sunk the posts last weekend.) It had to be done today – and it’s almost done. Everything is in a state of almost being something other than what it is. He left and I began faking my way through it. I did okay (just okay) until I no longer felt I was doing okay. That’s when I stopped. At that point there were only four boards left and we probably need at least ten to finish.

Tonight I lay floating in a kaleidoscope of colors, under the towering redwood trees and a canopy of stars. The neighbors were having a drum circle in their backyard. Normally I would find this somewhat annoying – tonight it was just fine. In fact, it was almost pleasant (there’s that almost again.)