how things are

Things are good. I saw Meg and David last night and enjoyed them. I think it had been six or seven years since the last time I saw David. They look good together. None of the annoying little things I used to find annoying seem to matter these days.

After we said good bye I got on the T at Folsom and when it was about to turn into the Caltrain stop the driver announced that it would be going only to 23 St. I felt weirdly grateful, because I really had to pee. I ran into the nearest restaurant and encountered an employee in the bathroom who had just encountered a full cup worth of coffee and milk on the floor. She was getting ready to mop it up. A few minutes after I returned to the platform, a Sunnyvale-bound train pulled up. Imagine that -- my T ride home was almost convenient. 

I don't know why it was important to write about the coffee-soaked bathroom. Maybe because it's unusual -- pleasant, even -- to smell coffee and milk in a bathroom, especially after you've had a couple of drinks.

My peach tree is doing pretty well. Most of the peaches are still a bit green. Then again, the peaches I got from the CSA this week have green on them, and I thought you weren't supposed to pick them until the flesh was creamy or orange-ish.

D the Russian contractor came over this afternoon, after I got home from the Youngblood Coleman cleanup. I decided not to ask him to assess the foundation -- Greg can do that next week. He told me he could replace the faulty section of fence and the facing on the front of the workshed for about $300. At least, I think that's what he was saying -- communication with contractors can be difficult even when we share a native language. But anyway, a few hundred dollars seems like nothing after the thousands I've shelled out so far.

color

I tried two colors -- a honey yellow and a mid-gray -- and both are too dark, too heavy, for the lower part of the kitchen wall. When I look at swatches I'm drawn to the richer, heavier colors. But they don't work on the wall! I'll have to go back and get some paler, lighter tints.

White fog rolling over San Bruno Mountain, like a wave, from the southwest. Blue sky above and in front of it (still sunny here, in other words). I'm getting ready to make a salad to take across the street -- another sunday dinner at A+B's house.

real beauty

“You can only perceive real beauty in a person as they get older.” --Anouk Aimee

Not exactly the way I would have phrased it but I see what she means.

I planted lavender next to the magnolia tree.


Then I called J to see how things are. Her father died last Thursday and now that she has dealt with the logistics of his death she is getting ready to come back to the west coast and (perhaps) absorb it all in some way. It has been intense -- she was the only family member there with him, his wife having said before she left that she would not come back from Germany until the 16th, even if something happened. As she said on the phone just now, it is impossible to understand your parents' relationship. You are shut out. In the case of her parents this was especially true.