August 16, 2010. Monday.
Situation: This morning Moi tells me I shouldn’t have hung my clothes over her clothes in the laundry room. She says that, since it’s tick season, I should put them in the dryer after my walk. Duly noted. I work for a few hours around noon time, and I’ve been waiting till late afternoon to take Mwayla for her walk. She’s been waiting patiently herself in the music room (Moi is out working), but now she’s starting to stir and pace about. 4:49 pm. I’d hoped I might be able to mow the lawn, but it rained a little bit this afternoon, and I think the grass is too wet. I don’t think the temperature’s in the 90’s, but it’s hellish humid.
State of the Path: As I’m trying to feed the chickens, Mway barks at them and tries to corral them together, and I have to yell at her to stop it. I check the lawn grass; it’s perhaps not too wet to mow after all. Out on the path, I feel vegetation heat surrounding me, or perhaps it’s just the sun beating down on me. The moth mullein, though flopped over onto the ground, has a couple new flowers on it. Jewelweed in bug land and along the creek seems newly refreshed. I spot two ripe blackberries on a lone briar – haven’t seen any blackberries lately; these might be the last – and scarf them up. Here and there, still some fleabane, though the plants are also flopped over. More moonish berries on the “chokeberries.” I keep an eye out for, and avoid, tripping over the root or vine I tripped over the other day. Heal-all still flowering, as well as boneset and ironweed. Lots of little butterflies, white, orange, one lavender one. A bumblebee zooms at me as I’m ducking under the honeysuckle while going through the break in the ridge. Near the strawberry patch, I see a grasshopper hop onto a leaf of a “chokeberry” bush and just sit there while I look at it. This is the only grasshopper I see, though. More goldenrod has yellow flowers, and it seems all the rest of them have at least green flowers.
State of the Creek: Mway wades, as she used to do, into the pool below the tree stand, then heads up the creek bed past the multiflora bush. I hear water splashing and rocks clacking; when I peer through the jewelweed I see there’s a little water among the rocks. Further downstream, though, the rock beds are still dry between the pools. A few frogs leaping. Vinyl siding no closer to the water.
The Fetch: I toss the stick, and with each toss, hope that Mway will decide that it’s her last, but she keeps going. Several times between tosses, I have to remove my glove to wipe sweat off my face. We play “Put it down,” and finally Mway makes a move for the path, and I stop saying “Put it down.” Walking through the back yard, I notice some tiny bugs clinging to my shirt. I don’t think they’re ticks, but still I take off my clothes and put them in the drier, even though I want to go right out and try to mow at least some of the lawn (I’m writing this in my underwear). While still in the yard, Mway checks out an abandoned pool float under the maple tree. I believe she mistakes this for her wading pool, for that’s where she heads to next, leaps in, dropping the “pro-quality” stick on the rim.
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It looks like I won’t have anyone following along with me anymore, no one with me to watch the days of last year unfold one day at a time in all their beautiful irrelevance and unreality – no one to keep me focused on that, and so who knows what pertinent things I might say? Yesterday both kids were here at the house. The Boy is here on his summer vacation, using his two weeks to work at another job to help him pay his students loans. On Sunday against Moi’s advice he took off the cast around his fractured thumb because it was starting to itch and stink. That night I advised him to put it back on so his thumb would heal right. I asked him what the doctors had been telling him about the cast. He said that because in the heat of the moment of the accident he failed to get the names of either the person who “doored” him or of the cabdriver the doctors are refusing to give him any follow-up treatment since it’s a “no-fault situation” – bless all those fine people working so hard in the medical establishment. Jazz came up because the Boy wanted to see her. We all went to see a movie (the first twenty minutes of which were taken up with local advertisements), and then we came home and had a cookout in the rain, setting up the grill just off the back porch. Jazz has qualified for “unemployment,” and I asked her if she had any idea what kind of work she wanted to look for now, and she said she hasn’t been able to think that far yet. I guess even with her “unemployment” she’ll have a bigger weekly income than her husband Matt has right now, or me, since my work has slackened this year – she and the Boy did a “mall crawl” yesterday and Jazz picked up a lot of books -- but of course “unemployment” won’t last forever. Toward the end of the evening, as Moi sat smoking and drinking one glass of wine after another, Jazz, who doesn’t drink, said that Moi’s drinking was “bothering her a little.” Then she and Moi began talking about why, Caitlin, Barb and Dennis’s daughter, doesn’t tell her parents a lot about what she does. Jazz started saying “You guys don’t embarrass me at all – even though you’re pretty weird. I don’t say anything bad about you for the most part.” Things were getting a little tense between Moi and Jazz, but neither of them pushed it. All in all it was a nice day yesterday, and I’m glad we were all able to get together.
One of the things about writing about the present is that it’s so hard to keep up with it. Last year I managed to take an aspect of it, just a small aspect of it, and put it under glass like plant specimens in a display case. It’s become a nice little hobby, and I’ve been enjoying devoting the first few minutes of my day to it. Come to think of it, maybe if I don’t have someone looking over my shoulder, pestering me about how to arrange the plants in the case, maybe I will be able to enjoy it more. A few minutes a day, and I can sit quietly over my little hobby, without some one yapping why don’t I place the flowers this way or that way or asking why didn’t I get a specimen of such and such a plant and so on. Maybe it will be nicer this way.
(Music used to be like this for me – a tension reliever – but because, since 1996, when I lost a regular job I had, it has became an essential part of my livelihood, it doesn’t completely serve this function anymore.)
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