November 26, 2010. Friday.
Situation: For a number of rather complicated reasons Moi has postponed the turkey dinner she was going to make yesterday until today. She’s already dressed when I wake up. I ask her if she’s taken Mway for a walk. She says she’s only taken her out in the back yard to fetch stick, so I guess I could take her for a full walk now. The Boy spent the night with Jennifer in B______, and he’s supposed to be coming back here today. I believe Jazz is bringing Atlas with her today and is going to take him to Lenny beforehand to have his diarrhea checked out. Ezra some time ago gave Moi a big cage that now sits at the foot of our driveway, between the lilac bushes and a broken down shed, my understanding being that this is suppose to be a place where we can keep Atlas whenever he comes to visit. I don’t know if he’ll actually end up in there or what -- it’s still early in the morning so it’s difficult to tell exactly what will ensue today. All I know is I don’t have to work today or tonight, and I might as well take Mway for a walk now.
State of the Path: Moi says she’s tired and goes back to bed. She tells me Mway’s already outside. I wear the orange wool cap, find the thick birch branch on the porch. I don’t see Mway anywhere, just Squeak by the wood pallets and the chickens in the lilac bushes. I have to call several times before Mway comes running from the side of the house. The trash is beginning to pile up in the walled garden. The goldenrod fuzz is damp and dark colored, the leaves look especially shriveled, draped down close to the stalks. Some of the goldenrod looks darker brown than the others – almost looks like a different species, and maybe it is. There’s a metallic grinding noise coming from McNeighborland. Only a few yellowish leaves remain on the honeysuckles around the old orchard. The gill-of-the ground looks strikingly green beneath the goldenrod. Before the maples, I see two bird’s nests in a shrub along the path – at first, looking at the bare branches, I don’t recognize the shrub; it takes me a while to remember that this is a honeysuckle. Walk along the creek; at the locust trees, Mway wanders off to sniff in the water-logged brown grass of bug land. Water’s trickling down the swale, sitting in the feed channel, flowing out the exit channel. I see a bird’s nest in a honeysuckle along the skating pond. Crossing back over the feed channel, I realize that the water here must come from the pond itself; it doesn’t flow in from the creek because of the dirt bar and leaf debris – another reason why the skating pond was an engineering disaster.
State of the Creek: The creek is a steadily flowing green stream today, bubbles being carried along, foam piling up at the two big logs and at other places. I poke at the vinyl siding with my walking stick: it’s lodged in tight beneath the creek bank.
The Fetch: Coming up to the clearing, I trample down stalks of goldenrod still sticking up between the path and where Mway has trampled them down in fetching the stick. I hope she only fetches a few times, but she goes on and on. I alternate my tosses again. A couple times the limbs on the birch branch catch on my gloves, and my toss goes off kilter, landing at far-off spots in the goldenrod. Mway has no trouble finding the stick. I hear her paws pattering on the soggy ground. As soon as she starts chomping on the stick without dropping it, I tell her “that’s enough.”
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I haven’t been in the music room since late yesterday morning, when I gave in to MM’s request for a full ream of paper. Throughout the afternoon, the door of the music room remained partially closed, and I would catch MM constantly going in and out, distracted, I’m sure, by the smell of turkey cooking in the oven, until at supper time she finally gave up all pretense of being hard at work and came out to sit with everyone else. I doubt she accomplished much on her “M” chapter. In her post yesterday, MM again used one of Moi’s pet phrases – the word “niggardly,” which Moi thinks is a funny word to apply to what I would prefer to call my frugality (a trait I think everyone in the world should adopt). And in the post prior to that, MM used another pet word of Moi’s – the word “lazy,” which Moi applies affectionately to MM when she’s being less than her usually energetic self. MM could have picked this word up from my journal because I think I quote Moi using it somewhere, but I still think that MM has been picking up some of Moi’s speech – what does this matter though? I doubt MM will ever be able to talk to us, although Moi did succeed a few years ago in drawing out from Blue what sounded like the words “I love you.” Anyway, MM should have a lot of time to work on her novel today. Moi and I have a full day’s work ahead of us: our usual gig at the tavern (now reopened after the flood) plus a wedding at the same place beforehand (bringing in some much needed good money). Since I’ve described some of my gigs, I’ve been wanting to describe a little of this gig that I’ve had with Moi for 18 years (give or take a couple years between owners of the tavern). But 18 years is a lot of time to cover. I’ll say this much for now – we were originally hired during the Ken Burns Civil War craze. As such it’s been principally Moi’s gig. Except for the few tunes I play when Moi takes a short break (and the couple weeks a year when I play the gig by myself), I pretty much am an accompanist to her fiddle playing (although this makes more sense than being an accompanist to a drummer). Perhaps I can say more in the weeks to come.
Why are you referring to me in the third person? Yes, I was somewhat distracted yesterday – through no fault of mine. But if you’re going to be out much of the day today, yes, I should be able to work hard on my “M” chapter and make up for the lost time – though it will be slow going, mighty “M” not being a letter you can just scribble down quickly. MM.
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