rat patrol

Jackie found a rat in one of his traps this morning, after five weeks. I hadn't heard any scritching down
below for several nights but there have been other quiet spells during this process. I hate the fact that I hate those rodents so much -- they're just trying to survive, after all. But I do hate hearing them. So I'm hoping I won't get another visitor anytime soon -- I had four quiet years after the last invasion, which was up in the attic. 

I'm hunkered down this morning; I'll have to walk over to Paige's to pick up my CSA delivery at some point. Yesterday I walked through Silver Terrace and up over the hill to the Visitacion Valley Greenway. And back. Maybe six miles? Monday I hiked with KW and friends up to Sweeney Ridge. It was chilly but the sun came out now and then. 

I probably need a shower. Easy to lose track of the days. I had a brief phone chat with mom yesterday -- we were interrupted by a helper. She has her new hearing aids and isn't all that happy with them. I'm sympathetic to her point of view, of course. As usual, N and D were not interested in what I had to say -- mainly that we should be careful about putting Mom through a process -- and spending m+d's money (not our own!) -- to get these things that she might not end up liking or using, even if she *should* . . . but who knows, maybe she really will benefit. I hope so. 

The Solstice

They say the sun will come back
at midnight
after all
my one love

but we know how the minutes
fly out into
the dark trees
and vanish

like the great ‘ohias and the honey creepers
and we know how the weeks
walk into the
shadows at midday

-WS Merwin

 

year-end drift

Another chilly, hazy day. The little dogs across the street are yapping and their human companions are admonishing them, as usual. I am low on energy. I got a bit of lotion in my eye this morning. I am officially still working but all I've done today is a second pass at a blogpost. I'm drifting. 

I spent hours making lasagna and a couple of side dishes yesterday, even though my little dinner party had to be canceled because n was exposed to someone who has COVID. I wasn't thrilled by the way anything turned out, so . . . maybe the cancellation was for the best? I'll have to make room in the freezer for most of the lasagna.

I had lunch with SN on Friday and did the upper Market St. stairway walk with Meg and her family on Saturday. SN is having some difficulties with V -- or rather, V having difficulties, aka feelings he doesn't know how to talk about. The usual, I guess. Meg and family don't seem to be having any difficulties at all. 

 

white Sunday

 

Chilly but sunny days have given way to white mist and rain. I haven't done much today -- zoomed with both parents, is all. I had Friday off and went to Concord with mag to look at dining chairs, then to Carquinez Strait for an all-too-short walk (it was about 4pm when we finally got there). We ambled around the Franklin Ridge loop, and then drove back to Berkeley in time for me to get to games night at C+G's. 

Yesterday I walked to Alemany farmers market -- the usual. On the way home I passed a man lying in a doorway with a coat covering his head and neck and his hand wrapped around his dick. I just kept walking, feeling grateful that he couldn't see me seeing him. Also feeling like maybe I should do something . . . but what, exactly? I have committed many sins of inaction in my time -- if I believed in Heaven, I would have to say that a failure to take action is the thing that will keep me out. 

Anyway, it will probably be raining, or rainy, for most of the week. If we're lucky, it'll add to our scanty water supplies. 

table talk

At long last, I have a new table, but it was an aggravating delivery. T abruptly told me that he was only going to bring it to my garage level and instructed me to hire piano movers to get it up to my house. I was annoyed that (a) he was bailing on a full delivery and (b) he was T-splaining about how I should deal with the part of the delivery he had just bailed on. I told him to leave it to me, and then did nothing for a couple of days. Marlon offered his garage as a way station, so that I wouldn't have to arrange for the movers to be there when T arrived. 

Anyway, T showed up with the table and the base on Sunday morning (after adding to my irritation by giving me one ETA and then, a couple hours after I'd relayed the info to Marlon, switching to another time). Once Marlon saw the table, he decided that he and his brother Philip could get it up to my house. It took a while for Philip to arrive, and T did not stick around -- so Marlon and Philip were able to move the table without any coaching. The top and the base need to be attached at some point. And the beautiful pendant light is even more off-center now. I guess I could rehang it. 

time marching on

Lalala, it's late November. I got my booster shot yesterday. No side effects, as far as I can tell. Hiked at Las Trampas today -- beautiful, sunny -- with SN and KW. I hiked there 20+ years ago, with JSJ. (Talk about time marching on . . . ) 

Tomorrow T will bring my table and put it in Marlon's garage, and then I will have to find some people to get it up my steps and into my house. The whole process has been overly complicated and taken way too long. This is certainly my last T project. 

I had to spend more than $7K on my sewer pipes last week. Not fun. But the sewage that came up onto my garage floor could not be ignored. I feel pretty good about the crew that did the work -- I mean, what do I know about sewer lines and drains and such. But the inspector signed off. 

ornamentation

 Adolf Loos, Ornament and Crime, 1908 

I have discovered the following truth and present it to the world: cultural evolution is equivalent to tbe removal of Ornament from articles in daily use. I thought I was giving the world a new source of pleasure with this; it did not thank me for it. People were sad and despondent. What oppressed them was the realization that no new ornament could be created. What every Negro can do, what all nations and ages have been able to do, why should that be denied to us, men of the nineteenth century? What humanity had achieved in earlier millennia without decoration has been carelessly tossed aside and consigned to destruction. We no longer possess carpenters' benches from the Carolingian period, but any trash that exhibited the merest trace of decoration was collected and cleaned up, and splendid palaces built to house it. People walked sadly around the showcases, ashamed of their own impotence. Shall every age have a style of its own and our age alone be denied one? By style they meant decoration. But I said: Don't weep! Don't you see that the greatness of our age lies in its inability to produce a new form of decoration? We have conquered ornament, we have won through to lack of ornamentation. 

Pre-WWI modernism -- heady stuff. 

loss of freedom

It's been a while, and now I'm logging in with a quote from . . . Billie Eilish? In today's Guardian:

“Since I was a kid,” she says, “my dad and I have always talked about a certain type of person who’s so insecure, or hyperaware and self-conscious, that they never move in a weird way, or make a weird face, because they always want to look good. I’ve noticed that, and it makes me so sad. If you’re always standing a certain way, walking in a certain way, and always have your hair just so… It’s such a loss to always try to always look good. It’s such a loss of joy and freedom in your body.”

Amen, Billie. If I heard one of your songs, I don't think I'd know it was you. But I hear you right now. 

what to do

The sun has returned but it's still windy and not usually much above 60 in the middle of the day. I walked up Bayview Hill on Thursday afternoon. I really like the neighborhood -- something about the mix of houses and the treelined streets. Ingalls, in particular. It feels very different from my part of the Bayview. And then you hit the sunbaked industrial blocks, nothing but warehouses and auto repair shops and camper vans and the occasional broken-down car, and trash.

SN and I were planning to go to Fremont Older yesterday but the small lot was full, so he came up with Castle Rock as our Plan B, and that hike turned out to be pretty great. A fair amount of clambering over boulders, a segment that had us walking along a ridge with a vista of stumpy redwoods, oaks,  and probably also some other trees. And, of course, Castle Rock -- a hunk of sandstone with otherworldly tafoni. It was sunny and cool, good hiking weather. It felt good to be outside. 

May camping

Great trip with nb up to Humboldt County. We camped at the beach and hiked amid redwoods, ferns, trilliums, mushrooms, rhododendrons (not blooming yet), and other lushness. We were lucky that we had three sunny days -- otherwise we might have wimped out on the camping.

It was novel to be going somewhere, and to go mostly maskless. The togetherness started to get to me on the fourth day -- I suddenly realized that I wanted to experience something, anything, on my own. Years and years of living single have made their mark. 

Now I am getting ready to leave for a visit with Meg. Feeling some dread about crossing the bridge because it looks like there was a crash.

spring

The jasmine is blooming and the past week has been full of lovely, sunny, slightly warmer days. I took off Thursday afternoon and all of Friday. On Thursday I got some groceries at one of the Latino markets on San Bruno Ave after wandering around the Portola for a bit. I don't know why I never did that until I got bored with my usual walks. 

Speaking of which, SN and I did a neighborhood walk yesterday, mainly because his back was hurting and we needed to walk on flat, even surfaces. We bought lunch from Cafe Alma and sat outside to eat it. Later in the day, I did a zoom happy hour with Niu and Joe. 

Today I did my usual farmers market/Good Life walk, and then I finally got around to baking the cake with beets and orange zest that I've been meaning to try. It's cooling now, and I need to make the glaze. 

I have mixed feelings about the end stages of the pandemic. I'm ambivalent about a lot of things -- being alone, being lazy, being employed full time, being a long-distance caretaker for my parents. That reminds me that I forgot to set up a zoom call with Dad this weekend. 

roses

I inherited several rose bushes and I've done almost nothing to cultivate them, other than giving them some water and pruning them occasionally. And yet, they survive. If and when my entryway gets torn down, three of my rose bushes will have to be removed. I'm not sure if I should try to replant them. 

Yesterday I met nb at Coyote Hills and we walked aimlessly for a couple of hours. It feels a bit decadent to drive 30+ miles in order to take a walk. Then again, even though I had to wait a long time at a couple of red lights on the SF side of the Dumbarton Bridge, it took me less time to get there than it usually takes to get to nb's house in Berkeley. 

Mom put her foot down about going to more doctors and dentists, which makes sense to me. She said something about Paul yesterday when we were talking, which makes me think she might want to talk to him. I wonder if I should try to make contact. 

getting old

Oof, I keep coming back to the fact that I don't have a lot of time left. It has to do with Mom and Dad, of course. But also it's just a matter of doing the math. And registering the aches and pains as I try to go to sleep. 

I am particularly tired today because once again I fell asleep listening to a podcast, woke up maybe half an hour later, lay there thinking and listening for raccoons, thought about listening to another podcast, wondered if I should get up for a bit, turned on the light and read for a while, got up to pee and, finally, brought the laptop back to bed in the hope that boring TV would put me to sleep.

Speaking of boring . . . this post is quite dull. 

getting out

I've been trying to get out more and meet up with others. Last Sunday, KW and I met up at the botanical garden to look at the magnolias. The weekend before that I walked with LP in the hills and then sat in NB's back yard for an hour or two. 

I took Friday off, mostly because I'm getting too close to my PTO cap. SN and I went to to Marin and the weather cooperated nicely as we hiked around the three lakes. We ended up doing some climbing because the way around Alpine Lake was blocked off by construction. The guys were just breaking for lunch, and they walked past us with their enormous coolers. SN said they were good-looking but they didn't look at him, so he assumed they must be straight. I didn't really look at them, myself. I feel too old for that sort of thing. Then again, I was never good at flirting with strangers. 

Anyway, we ended up walking up a fire road that I'd never noticed before, and we got to some great views and a good lunch spot. We chatted about this and that. SN reminded me of the names of some of the birds we were seeing. I've probably already forgotten. 

Yesterday I drove to Coyote Hills to meet up with VH and NG for a stroll along the shoreline. Another beautiful day! And a very popular destination -- we were lucky to find parking spots. Some of the bikeriders were annoyingly officious, but I guess I can live with that. I'd like to go back during the week sometime.

This afternoon I'm meeting KR and maybe also LMA at the Magic Gate. 

Still a lot of inertia in my days. Maybe that's OK? I don't really know. 

I can hear singing coming from the church across the street. I hope that is safe. 

getting started

 I am getting the entryway project going, again. Bracing for the expense. I think I have a designer -- she came by about ten days ago and told me she would get a bid/estimate together within a week. I haven't heard from her . . . but I think she'll come through, eventually. I got in touch with Ariel and he seems game, at least via email. 

I have more freelance work on the horizon, and I am refinancing to get a lower interest rate, which will save me some money. The downside is that it feels like I'm back to the beginning yet again, after eight years. 

Money, money.