Not yet jonesing

I pick up a chair, legs confusingly large, and get it to the deck. Outside. I sit. Close the door and sit and Watch the sun cross through the horizon drinking a very tall glass of very good water. I try to sit still. Seconds, entire seconds pass, just being still. Other, now unfamiliar, parts of my brain get to be the one thought I can think at a time.

I visit my sister, that is leave the house. And visit my sister.

We do not only talk of Mafia Wars. Sometimes Farm. Sometimes other things. We talk for hours of the TV shows we're missing, and movies coming out. We've bonded this week figuring out how to build our Mafia. We've bonded and for some reason that bridges to this sitting on a couch talking to each other world. Huh.

I prepare and eat a very good egg-salad sandwich. A sandwich with taste, and smell, and texture. I make another very good sandwich.

I listen to skilled piano players play familiar pieces. I do not yet know that I really need this.

I make stew from scratch, my hands remembering more complicated things. Chopping. My attention starting to span more than a click. Staying here and not burning the onions. 

I check my blog. On a whim. Clicking on that other button in my menu. I gaze at beautiful pictures on beautiful websites that I didn't realize I bookmarked for just this occasion. They're confusing. No words. No symbols. I don't know what they're saying while I drink it up with the relief of the parched.

I remember email.  I do not notice the three day coup as shocking as when there was only Russia. I do not notice the superior regime comfortably replace and improve. In practiced rote I open, delete, delete, delete, delete, read, delete, close.

I hold my forehead and inhale. Let my world expand. My peripheral awareness awaring wider, wrapping out and out and around until I reinhabit the third dimension of my world. Until I have two sides to my brain. Until I have arms and legs and color and smell.

Facebook really grabs you when you first sign up, doesn't it? 

Jeff's Mountain Bike, My Mini

In February I picked up Jeff from his shuttle to Salt Lake for his housesitting stint. He brought his bike for exercise and to reduce the amount he would use my car. I had memories of putting bikes in the back of my car, and before Jeff arrived reassured him the bike would be fine. I think I was remembering my old car, or perhaps a different bike.

We first removed the front tire before trying anything else, because obviously a mini is not a pickup truck. Though after turning the bike over we couldn't see how to release (open further) his front brakes. So ,as the panic boiled, we deflated the tire enough to squeeze through the brakes. Just loosening the quick-release axle didn't release the tire, so Jeff squatted onto the sidewalk and pounded at the bottom of the tread while I tried to hold the front wheel steady. Front wheels are designed to turn very easily, even upsidedown. It didn't inch out, it centimetered out. I folded the mini's back seats down and pulled the front seats up, and we fed the bike into the hatch. The wide mountain-bike handles presented a minor problem, and fortunately neither the seals on my hatch nor the carpet on my ceiling bear any scars. Handle bars now vertical to the horizon and bike (happy was I that front wheels turn), we pushed the bike in. It didn't fit by the debth of his mountain-bike tread. Wiggling, adjusting, pushing saw the bike tire move into the back, then realized the handlebars had jumped the front seat. I moved to the front seat to wiggle and pulled while Jeff stayed at the hatch to wiggled and pushed. "It will fit" I kept saying, because we were so close. Finally I called it officially within the car, and Jeff experimentally closed the back hatch. It closed. After loading everything else around the bike (plenty of space, seriously, that part was no problem) imagine Jeff's surprise when we climbed into the front seat and saw how I made it fit. I had decided to hook his handlebar over the middle of my headrest. It was pressed firmly against the headrest. I figured, plenty of room. However, climbing into the car I realized that not only was the seat all the way up, but the mini's headrests are specially designed to only give the headspace needed, no extra. He held the bike back, jammed into his front seat pulled completely forward. While I, legs completely embracing the steering wheel column, sitting forwarn, turned on the car. "I feel like we're young and stupid again. Isn't it fun?" "It is something we used to do." Though all the way home I could imagine all the ways we'd get in a wreck and decided I wasn't stupid enough to do it again. Jeff borrowed a pump from Dianne. Used the bike a handful of time. And we borrowed Kathy and Vern's minivan to return to the airport the next month. Ah, though, to revisit the thrill of tiny cars and trading safety for success.

Orchestra Ringtone

I attended the Orchestra at Temple Square's "Classical Music Bouquet" concert. Near the end of the last movement of the last piece (Symphony no. 5, Dmitry Shostakovich), as the violin-dominated orchestra held a long note, a cell phone started to ring. But I almost couldn't tell because the ring tone was in exactly the same key as the Symphony. It started on the same note. As the orchestra finished its long note and started to move, it blended nicely with the finishing phone. When will that ever happen again?

Amy and Blain are coming soon, Hoorah! Hoorah!...

Amy and Blain are coming soon, Hoorah. Hoorah!

Amy and Blain are coming soon, Hoorah, Hoorah

  Amy and Blain are coming soon

  And when they get here they'll move right in

And we'll all go marching down, the stairs, to watch Super Why

Boom, boom

Amy and Blain are coming soon, With sons. With sons.

Amy and Blain are coming soon, With sons. With sons.

  Amy and Blain are coming soon

  How long will they stay? Perhaps past June

And we'll all sit together there, on the deck, with a sunset or two.

Boom, Boom.

Mathew man is coming soon, Horray, Its Great!

Danielsan ia coming soon, Cheroo! Cheray!

  Amy and Blain are coming soon

  To tear up walls and install a Ufoon*

And we hope to add paint and tile, for the visitors, from Japan that will come

Boom, Boom

Amy and Blain are coming soon, Hoorah, Hooray!

Amy and Blain are coming soon, Hooray, Yipee!

   Amy and Blain are coming soon

   To show their clean house, and not add ruin

And we'll pray together nightly that it sells, for a very good price.

   And that Blain gets the job he Waaants.....

Yeah.

Stay tuned, the Amy. Blain, and Donna show premiers this Thursday, at a Salt Lake ranch house near you.

* Actually, "ufuro" a Japanese Soaking Bath. 

And now the news:

Aunt Diane and Cousin Karen are expected to join Donna in massive house cleanup today. Says Donna, "Its so great they could fit this into the schedule. There's not a lot left to do and every bit helps." Cleanup will continue through early next week.

Housesitter and friend Jeff will depart for Idaho today.  After a month of feeding the cat, bringing in the mail, and looking for jobs, Jeff will airport shuttle back to south east Idaho. "Jeff watched the house well, and did not go crazy dispite his parent's predictions. I can't thank him enough. He'll be sorely missed." Bike transport logistics remain unclear today, complicated by the Mini Cooper rear storage incident at Jeff's February arrival. Jeff expressed regrets that he could not stay long enough to see Amy and her sons.

Snow remains on lawns today, though the dead, gray flower remains are starting to show. Residents report mixed feelings.

The power (lessness) of Hulu

Rachel: Thank you for renewing my faith in the web's brilliance. Even if you may have been thinking you should have been doing something else.

***

Reviewing my visit with first-cousin Sarah L, (not to be confused with my other first cousin Sarah, or Sarah, the wife of my first cousin once removed, who all live beyond the grasp of Deseret, may I be allowed to join them one day)....I realized that I think of Sarah L as she was about five years ago, and even ten. At our previous meaningful conversations. And though the difference between 23 and 28 may seem small, not noticable in appearance like three years and eight, or 13 and 25, or "four children now", she is now the age I think I am. Which is to say grownup, with experiences, baggage and accomplishes under the belt. Many, many people are younger than a 28 year old -- the college students, under and grad. The recently graduated now adrift. All the returned missionaries, ages ago. The age everyone was when they married (or nearly all). 28 year olds have known so many people in so many wards, in singles wards multiply by fifty or more. I remember sighing recently (say 2006), when an undergrad student helper at work asked why I understood something (don't remember what). I clearly remember thinking: when you've lived three decades you've seen a lot, *sigh*. 

On review I did not honor the weight of history she carries. I remember in my mid 20s, younger than Sarah today, finding it difficult to blend with my singles ward for I had to pretend I didn't carry that weight. Trying to be younger, brighter. To forget, for example, the waves of fashion I'd already known, embracing the current as not only delightful but not new and simply absolute. This post has become my appology to Sarah. To all the things I don't know has happened, and wasn't open to find out. 

What drew me to write this arose out of deciding to review her blog, sensing at that point only vaguely that I had missed something important in my visit. A glance at a picture of she and a friend and for some reason it hit me in a shocking wave. The mass and volume of Sarah's history.  I checked and saw that her blog goes back years, how did that much time pass? I remember when she let us know she'd started it. Why didn't I read it then, what was I doing? That is the chunk of time that blurs together under "Job at SCI." How long did that last, about a year? The measure of time that once covered  life chunks: 5th grade then 6th. Maybe it was two years, because I changed offices in the middle. Add this unfinished chunk called, perhaps, "At home," unfinished so not a full year. Its been 2 1/2 years, certainly not 5.

I stopped at the picture, and moved to the end, which is the beginning, I Blog. Intending to read in a great binge, like a glance at Hulu growing to a lost month or three. But Sarah's words slowly woke me. Perhaps simply because its real life, my real blood. Her words directly connect my real experience. By the dozen mark, back in '04, Sarah's post accidentally urged me to goodness. I realized I wanted to stop, needed to stop. To go back to my life. Hulu does not do this. Hulu does not do this. Writing this post does not do this. I do not understand the ramafications of this. What does this mean?

At Tracy's Farewell

What is the color of BrookLyn's giggle, of the feel of little Jonathan hands holding my thumbs as we climbed down to the great hole of holding Jonathan on my lap as we played nintendo of pushing Paul in the baby swing and watching his faces, of getting Peter to stop and making him laugh. 

What is that color? In the moment. Joy. Play. 

That is the color of tonight, at Tracy's farewell dinner.

Goodbye Sunday.

journalled in 2006, posted in 2009