Playing in the sand

I spent a decent portion of today playing in the sand. That is, I spent some time raking a sand bed and setting in place the recycled bricks that will form the platform for our grill.

We cook out fairly frequently. Poor man’s dinner out without heating up the kitchen, doncha know. And we don’t have a place to park the grill that doesn’t detract from our use of the main patio. So for years, I’ve been intending to put in this little auxiliary patio.

We salvaged the bricks from various tear outs around the yard and they’ve been sitting neatly stacked by the side of the garage since One was in middle school. Always intended to repurpose them but never got around to it.

Until today.

So, I’m about two-thirds through the process and this evening Mary and I made a run to the home improvement big box to purchase what I need to complete the job, since the recycled materials came up short of the requirement.

By this time tomorrow, we will have the grill installed in its new home, having reclaimed our main patio for purposes of sitting and staring. But that’s not the point of this missive.

The point is simple and it is this:

I REALLY had fun playing in the sand today.

Don’t tell Mary. She’s still giving me credit for you know, working hard.

Tee hee!

Rainy days

It’s likely to rain tomorrow and I can’t wait!

Now, I know this will not going to come as a surprise to those of you who think of Seattle as the Rain Capital that rain approacheth. Of course, you’d be wrong, since Seattle and its environs ranks somewhere between 30^th and 40^th in annual rainfall among major American cities (the range is due to disagreements as to what constitutes a major American city). So while it does tend to start getting moist long about this time of year, it’s not because we live in place for which the best possible adaptation is  webbed feet. It’s because it’s Fall.

It will come as a surprise to some of you that I look forward to the advent of the rainy season. Some of you think of rain as a bad thing. After all, from kindergarten on we have been proselytized by a string of well meaning but misguided teachers to make the “rain, rain go away!”

Rain is a good thing. It makes our little corner of the world quite green, thank you very much! It feeds the rivers which feed the lakes upon which I love to paddle. It freshens, quenches, cools and conditions. Okay, it does make dogs smell bad but they’re pretty good at that on sunny days, so I don’t count it as a strike against precipitation.

There is nothing better than the smell and the quality of light after a nice gully washer. Of course, being caught out in said gully washer isn’t necessarily a peak experience. I recall one evening when I was about twelve and had stayed late at school and as I began my mile-or-so walk home the heavens opened, as they say. By the time I passed the blueberry farm, there was not part of me that wasn’t soaked through. It took me an hour to get warm after that little hike.

And I loved it. I recall it as one of my most enjoyable experiences. Don’t know why. I just really like rain.

I also like that until the back yard dries out again, Mary won’t make me lay the brick for the grill pad.

So there’s that.

Slowing down

I watched a TED talk the other day in which Carl Honore extolled the virtue of slowing down a bit. Slow down our lives, from conversation to sex and everything in between. It was a cool, thoughtful presentation. And it led me to begin my search for a copy of his book, In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed.

Bet I can find a copy at Half Price Books. Or Goodwill, mebbe.

Meanwhile, the whole topic has sort of assumed squatters’ rights in the ole noggin, and seeing as how I can usually get stuff off my mind by writing about it… Come on, you know what's next...

IT'S LIST TIME!!!

My list of things I like to do slo-o-o-owly:

·         Eat

·         Edit writing (except these little missives that get posted pretty much as they come out of the tips of my fingers)

·         Shower, but I’m usually fairly quick; dunno why

·         Read - in bed, in a lawn chair, in the recliner, in hotel rooms and restaurants on the road, whatever

·         Sight see

·         Walk, except when on a machine

·         Arise in the morning

·         Woodworking – I prefer using hand tools

·         Research for road trips

·         Paddle my kayak

·         Stroll through Pike Place Market during my lunch hour

·         Chat with friends

·         Pet a certain Great Dane of my acquaintance

·         Oh, and, hm-m-m

·         Um…er…yes, that (Don’t tell anyone!).

Sometimes, slow is a good thing.

A conversation with my daughter

I just completed a thoroughly satisfying argument with Daughter One, on a subject concerning which we were each fervent in trying to win over the other. Naturally, I prevailed because my position was correct and supported by the facts. Of course, One remains unconvinced of this, owing to the insufficiency of passed time to have allowed her the distance to realize the errors in her reasoning and the elegance of mine own.

It is not the primacy of my logic of which I take up pen to crow this evening. Nor is it the unassailable nature of my formation of my points, although they were things of rhetorical beauty, I assure you.

What floats my boat is that this young woman whose diapers I once cleaned has become a person with whom I can enjoy such intelligent discourse. I dearly love respectful argumentation and tonight she provided it in spades. She had points and counterpoints in depth and she matched me, thrust and parry. Didn’t get angry or hurt, resort to invective or logical fallacy, kept up her end and challenged mine.

She held her own.

‘Course, she was wrong. ‘Cause I was right.

Gifts

Mary and I spent a very confusing hour shopping last evening. Perplexing, I should say.

We’ve just celebrated Daughter One’s birthday and Daughter’s Two’s is just around the corner. We were intent on putting together a birthday-themed care package and so we went to a local wide line store to troll for ideas.

Ideas that failed to reveal themselves. Hmmmm…

When Daughters One and also Two were little, and even when they were older but still living at home, the choosing of gifts for them was a fairly straightforward matter. First of all, we had the advantage of peer pressure helping to shape their desires.  So we could watch ads and listen to comments at school events and sort of suss out for what they might be yearning. And of course, since there were living at home, we could glean ideas from the odd comment or the surreptitious, covetous glance while shopping.

Not so these days. For Daughter One, we got lucky. Mary happened to know of a couple things she wanted; I was able to choose a book and a couple videos she might like. It was not our best birthday effort ever but not for lack of caring and it worked out okay.

Two presents more of a conundrum. She’s studying engineering which we sort of understand in broad strokes and general terms but certainly not in sufficient depth to yield the perfect gift idea. We understand – or think we do – Two the young woman, and even Two the daughter. We watch her on social media and converse with her often. But as to her daily life we’re fairly clueless and our ability to predict what she might need next is rather constrained.

So there we were, wandering around a huge store where the offerings were clear but the choices not so much.

Two, if you read this, please know we tried.

Back to school

Tuesday was the first day of school in our district. My bus stop was suddenly downright populated with teenagers heading off to do battle with Algebra, English and such.

The girl who sat next to me was so obviously a first day freshman, it just made my heart ache. From the SPOTLESS tennis shoes to the equally spotless and stiff, new gym bag, she was the picture of a youngster trying to fit in. To be cool but not ostentatiously so.

She looked about furtively, hopefully as more and more kids got on the bus at succeeding stops. And was clearly unsure whether to get off first or middle of the pack or after everyone else. She walked head down with the rest of the high schoolers from the stop to the signal at the corner of Factoria Blvd and Newport Way, across the street from the Newport High. My last glimpse as we rounded the corner was of her trying to maintain the appearance of nonchalance while surreptitiously glancing around at her fellow travelers through high school. My bus buddy Andrea saw her as well and we shared a grin.

Hope she had a good first day.

A cool kid

It had been raining all day Saturday when Mary went to answer a knock at the door. The young man identified himself as a student at the local middle school and asked Mary if she had any odd jobs available. It seems that school starts this week and he had come up a bit shy in the back-to-school- clothing department.

We didn’t have anything for him just at that moment but we hoped he’d come back when we did. We were disappointed we couldn’t offer him employment that day.

Turns out that Susan across the street does have some chores she needs done this week and she gave him an advance so he could do some shopping before school starts on Tuesday. After going home to tell his mom he’d made a connection, she sent him back to Susan to nail down the work appointment.

I think we’re going to have him do some yard work for us. He’ll work hard. And we’ll pay him well. And we’ll both feel good about the deal.

It’s been years since a local kid came to the door and asked for paid work. It made me feel good that time, too.