I Followed Your Advice

I was tired last night, readjusting to the altitude. 

I remembered the comments telling me to take care of myself,  so I took today off to watch the Olympic athletes sail down the Seine and to regroup. 

Happy last weekend in July. 

It's nice to be able to breathe again, isn't it?

Joe

I remember when I noticed that Daddooooo was an old man.  It was sudden.  It was startling.  It was very sad. 

I had that same feeling tonight watching our President on television. COVID takes it out of you,  as I know from personal experience.  He looked like he was still feeling the effects. 

The worst part was missing the sparkle in his eyes.  He's always seemed to relish the moment.  Whatever the circumstances, he looked like he was enjoying himself. 

Not so much tonight.  

He was dim. He was quiet. He was reading from the teleprompter,  not looking at me through the camera. 

His talk was short.  He took on the Lying Liar with some of his old verve,  but it was Joe Light, heavy on the pauses, not so much on the punch lines. 

For the first time since the debate,  I agreed with those who encouraged him to step down.  I spent my tv time watching Kamala's recent greatest hits; she's come a long way as a candidate on the last four years. 

It's a new era in American politics,  if we can get past the Lying Liar.  I have nothing but admiration and respect for a man who's following in the footsteps of the great men who preceded him,  who he mentioned in his speech.  Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt..... I want to add Biden to that list. 

Hiking in Marin

Miss Nancy and I were hiking 20-25 miles a week together before I ditched her to move to Tucson.  

Luckily, she doesn't hold a grudge. 

Today she and I braved the heat and took what was supposed to be a 3.1 mile hike in Novato.  It was hot driving up there, hot when we started out, and hot every time we took a water break. 

It was mostly shady,  but that didn't make a difference.  I would have taken pictures,  but the effort of turning the fanny pack around to get to the phone was more than I could bear. 

I was thinking that the activity was more torture than delight when Miss Nancy stopped ahead of me and announced that she was very hot. I said that I wouldn't mind if we turned around and the next thing I knew she changed directions and passed me going downhill. 

You know you're good hiking buddies when the discomfort is shared.  

We zoomed downhill and drove to eat tacos with the air conditioning on full blast and the windows open for more breeze. 

Neither of us could remember another hike that was this uncomfortable.  

We'd hiked for years,  every Saturday and Sunday and most Thursdays, too, before I left 18 years ago. We hiked in the rain (so much fun, once we upgraded our rain gear) and when there was frost on the ground.  We took windy hikes and lengthy hikes.  But in all that time,  we never turned around because of the heat.

Climate change, anyone?

Could It Be?

I spent today with a big smile on my face. 

A black woman will choose a vice presidential nominee.  Her choices include another woman, Gretchen Whitman, a gay man, Secretary Pete, a Jew, Josh Shapiro, and a person I know and who knows me, Mark Kelly. 

I never imagined this.  It gives me hope for America. I'm sleeping better now. 

Marin Farmers Market

While Little Cuter was growing up, she and I had a standing date on Sunday mornings.  Before breakfast, we'd drive through the underpass in the middle of Frank Lloyd Wright's Main Civic Center,  find a parking space, and enter our happy place. 

The fresh lemonade lady was always glad to see us.  The little man selling very sweet oranges, navel, offering one for you, two for me made us giggle. We ate Aidells chicken apple sausages with fresh salsa. We bought lettuce mix from a plastic baby pool filled with what G'ma referred to as garden clippings.  

Those are some of my finest memories of our time in Marin. 

Today,  I started making some more. 

We ended up with bagel sandwiches.  The lemonade lady was gone, and I couldn't find the orange salesman.  It didn't matter. 

HunnyBunny did lots of people watching.  Queen T and I bought veggies and fruits, admired the flowers,  and did a fair amount of people watching ourselves. Big Cuter pushed the stroller and waited in the lines for coffee and lunch.  

What goes around comes around, and I'm very glad to be on the ride. 

More Books

I read After Annie today.  A review I read once said that you don't just read about Anna Quindlan's characters, you inhabit them.  Or maybe it was that they inhabit you.  It doesn't matter; they're both true.

I could smell their dinners and hear their sobs.  I was as bewildered, as lost, as uncertain as they were.  After all, Annie dies on the first page.  Where is this book possibly going to go that won't rip my heart out and leave it on the sidewalk to fry? 

The reason Anna Quindlan won a Pulitzer is that she is able to find that space between the unbearable and the alarm clock.  Her gift is presenting the life that must go on, the quotidian details like laundry and hamster food, side by side with the inescapable reality.  

She's covered every possible relationship.  Immediate family, in-laws' families, replacement people for estranged families all bump up against one another as life goes on.  Nothing very unusual happens yet everyone is different at the end, but only around the edges.  

I feel like I've known them my entire life.

I've really been on a roll; the library has been fulfilling all my wishes.  Yesterday, I read S. A. Cosby's All the Sinners Bleed.  It's a police procedural and a family drama and a meditation on race and power.  It's beautifully written.  

I think I've read it before.  Pieces of the story felt familiar, but only like an old friend reminding me of a story and telling it again, filling in the parts that are really important.  I remembered who dunnit, but that was much less important than what was happening around the edges of the investigation.

Cosby gives you enough room to make up your own mind about his characters.  There are surprises and there are sorrows in a place that feels familiar and extremely strange at the same time.  It feels that way to the residents, too, which makes it just that much more relatable and believable.  

Which is weird to say because there is nothing about their lives which looks anything like mine.

An older and wiser James Lee Burke's latest collection of stories, Harbor Lights, has left me breathless.  The stories still have the wit of the young Dave Robicheaux, who was an old man even then, but it's tinged with wisdom and the knowledge that there's more behind him than in front of him.  

It was hard to read more than one at a time.  There was a lot to digest, much of it melancholy.  I tried to remember to read it when the sun was shining.

That's not to say that it should be avoided.  On the contrary, every bit of it was wonderful.  The landscape is still as much of a character as the humans.  He reveals truths and then lets them sit with the characters, so they can sit with you.  It is not to be taken lightly.

Crocheting

I learned from my mother.  Her mother sewed, Daddooooo's mother crocheted.  I don't think there's a story behind that, but I wanted to share the data anyway.

Knitting was G'ma's go-to craft, and we had the handmade ski sweaters to prove it.  Unfortunately, she used scratchy wools that no one who's been alive since acrylics hit the scene would ever put. on their bodies again.  I gave them all away, heartbreaking though it was.  I like to think of a cold un-housed human being comforted by her stitches.

I have a closet full of yarns that I really did think would become a project when I bought them.  Somehow, shopping was more fun than creating and now the skeins sit, taking up closet space, waiting to be put to use.

Taos Bubbe texted me today, wondering if I would teach her granddaughter to crochet.  We have a date on Friday.  Green is her color, and I certainly have enough of it to get her started.  

I've always had a problem finding the last stitch on the row.  My scarves end up with diagonal edges.  I've become the master at putting edging round the errors, like putting lipstick on a pig.  If I'm the only one who knows it's there, what's the harm?  That's the lesson I'm going to share.

Crocheting is better than biting your nails.  It's better than sitting in front of a screen, hands idle, brain absorbing but not participating.  It gives you small gifts for friends and big gifts for special occasions.  It calms the soul.  

As I type this I am reminded that I have a wedding present afghan that's almost but not quite finished.  The wedding was two years ago.  

 My last crocheting craze started when Little Cuter was first pregnant.  Baby hats, round blankets, stroller sized wraps, swaddles, tiny mittens - they were produced at an alarming rate.  The fascination lasted through her second pregnancy, went on hiatus for a few years, then sprung into action once HoneyBunny was preparing to arrive. 

There's a giant pink blanket waiting to be completed.  Her little brother will be delivered in January, and thus far nothing has been created to welcome him.  I think Taos Bubbe's request is just what I need to get going.

Her granddaughter will learn on green.  I'll get started on a blue baby blanket for my next grandson.  Gender specific colors can be useful when the baby is teeny tiny and not obviously male or female.  As Big Cuter told people looking at his bald baby sister in the stroller - It's wearing PINK!! It's a GIRL!!!

And then we went home and scotch taped a bow to her head.

My New Chair

Weighted inflatable ball with hand pump and foot rest.
American flag quilt by Not-Kathy.

It seemed simpler than it's turned out to be.

Balancing while typing requires two sets of brain functions, both of which are used to being the only one in charge in any given moment.  It's a challenge to stay balanced and think deep thoughts.

Initially, it was too soft.  I was too low to the keyboard and didn't feel enough support from below.  My feeble attempts at inflating it did nothing to improve the situation.  TBG didn't think he accomplished anything after he tried, but he was wrong.

At this moment,  I am precariously balanced atop a rather unforgiving and ever changing surface.  Weighted to exist in a state of almost-stationary-but-not-quite, staying in one place requires constant motion by the sitter.  

Yes, it's counterintuitive.  But it's true.  One deep breath and the whole thing reacts.... usually just as one of those deep thoughts is emerging.  Hanging onto both at the same time is giving my brain new challenges, and that's a good thing.  Losing my train of thought, not so much.

Then there's question of stature.  My feet don't reach the floor if I sit at the very top.  I have a foot rest, but my feet don't reach it if my knees are at a ninety degree angle.  I can lean forward and sway side to side.  I can put the foot rest under one foot. while the other is on its toes.  Finding a stack of something to put under the other foot is a new priority.  

No matter what position I choose for my feet, my back and gluteal musculature must be engaged so I don't fall forward or back.  This makes typing to you a form of exercise, one which will speak to me later this evening.   

While it is very difficult to stay focused when the chair is an active participant in the activity, when I know what I'm going to write it's fun to bounce up and down.

This is an enjoyable conundrum.

It Was Quite a Storm

The chyron below the Copa America last night gave a running commentary on the storm we were watching from our windows.  A tornado warning right in our neighborhood.  Flash flood warnings for all the creeks and washes surrounding our house.  The winds were rearranging our outdoor furniture with reckless abandon.  The power flickered and I collected the flashlights and TBG worried but our domicile was good shelter and the only damage we had to clean up was the layer of leaves on the patio.

In the morning, I drove to Pilates and surveyed the damage.  Some streets were untouched.  My route was ravaged.

This sad saguaro

was on the ground across of this tilted giant.

The root balls don't send enough deep tendrils to hold the tall trees in place.  This makes sense since our limited water supply rarely seeps down into the soil, but it's not much help when the winds start whirling.

Limbs the size of my thigh broke off and tilted the trees along with them.

Not all of them left the trunk completely,

although many did, leaving raw wounds behind.

There was property damage to roofs and by roofs.

Our house emerged unscathed.  The small professional mall at our corner was not so lucky.

That's evidence of real power, I think,  I can feel the wall saying NO NO NO.

Our next door neighbors lost two olive trees and a desert willow.

The lovely path between our houses was literally uprooted.

Some of their ornamental cacti suffered as well.

The UV was a victim as well.  This is what I found wedged underneath when I parked at Pilates after driving past the devastation.

It was really quite a storm.

 

Untitled

I tried several titles on for size.  None of them fit recent events... or else they were not fit to print.  

There's a lot I might say aloud, but I'm reluctant to write most of it down.  I'm following Daddooooo's advice:  Don't do anything you don't want published on the front page of the New York Times. 

I've spent this afternoon curating my remarks.  These are the few that passed muster.

Where are the pundits calling out the crisis actors who created this scene?  Those pundits were noisy about the bullets flying around me, and that was certainly a blatant (if insane) political act.

I smile when I read gun safety advocates' posts holding the victims in their hearts and sending prayers.  I really hope that is all those poor souls need right now.  

And finally, rail all you want at immigrants and people of color, but it was a young white American man with a legally purchased firearm who tried to take your head off, Donald.  

I'm just sayin'