Rhubarb Pie

Total nature show.

I can't think why I was surprised.  I know the rules as well as anyone.  Messy web, strong silk, near cement forming right angles.  That means black widow and I know that.  Still, she came as a shock last Monday, mostly because she is big enough for me to see as I ride up on my bike.  That seems excessive, don't you think?  I saw her eat a bee yesterday, which makes me mad, because I generally side with bees. 

I should kill her, I know.  If it were just me, I probably wouldn't.  But little boys visit me, so I shouldn't have a half-dollar size black widow on my front steps.  I find myself a little squeamish and squeaky, but she'll be gone before my nephews come here on Sunday.  Before then, hon, I want to take the chance to pander to blogland and guarantee us traffic forever.  My defunct old blog still gets traffic, which I look at every now and then.  Can I tell you?  Easily half the visits are from people looking for pictures of daring jumping spiders.  Yes.  I wrote heart-wrenching posts about feelings and thoughtful posts about policy and the occasional funny post, but what remains, what endures, is pictures of spiders.  So here she is.

Below the fold is nothing but three pictures of a large black widow.  If you click on it, that is what you will see.

Greetings from The Soggy Frontier

Hi Friend.  I'm sorry I've abandoned you for so long.  I've been inside, moping.  I've been petulant and whiny.  It's raining here, been raining all month, and yesterday we had a glorious warm moment of sunshine but now it's grey again and the whole stretch of days on the weather forecast shows rain.  

(I will take this moment to admit that I liked photograph number 3, myself, which just goes to show what an addled state this rain has put me in.) 

Although I've been on vacation and had Big Plans, I haven't done much, and now I'm back to work.  It's not true that I haven't done much.  What I've spent a lot of time doing is the kind of boring but important errandy tasks that I am not good at or interested in.  Researched tree pruning services and stone masons and made appointments for estimates and waited around and talked to guys about what we think we need done.  Did the same thing for financial planners -- after two years of marriage, NBT and I are finally getting around to combining our financial lives and are looking for a steward or a helper.  That's meant a lot of time digging around in filing cabinets finding statements and entering transactions into Quicken.  Rearranged the clothes storage, did laundry, planted something in the front yard.  I am supremely uninterested in this stuff and it shows.  It all takes longer than I imagine it will, and I resent it, and between the nonstop rain and the feeling of pointless errands I've been grouchy.  

I have been reading a little bit, greedily here and there, and that time doesn't feel lost.  The Year of Planned Reading is taking a beating, at least the Planned part.  I just finished a book of short stories by a woman I knew in college, and I think that's part of my grouchiness.  When I'm not writing, I feel lousy.  Maybe it's because when I'm not writing and not working, I imagine that I'm not thinking, and that feels lousy.  

The resolution of a trivial matter.

I hate to dwell on it, feel silly even bringing it up.  I mean, we're so over it.  We're like enlightened Buddhas who don't need worldly validation or practically every single person to agree with us because it is SO OBVIOUS.  When the Truth and nearly universal public opinion are so clearly aligned, who cares what one judge thinks in some dumb contest?  We don't.  We may have for, like, one second yesterday.  But today we think about new things, like our manifestly superior taste and how much happier our lives must be because we prefer striking beauty to poorly framed blandness.

Nevertheless, because some of you have asked and not because we're still obsessing over it or anything, I asked about those pictures yesterday because my sister and I were temporarily surprised before we forgot the whole thing and moved on with our rich and fulfilling lives.  My sister entered pictures 1 and 2 below.  Picture 3 won the division; picture 2 was runner-up.  Picture 1 wasn't ranked by the blind judge.

If that ref had one more eye, he'd be a cyclops.

Hey friends. If you were judging a photo competition on "Navigation and the Environment" and received the following three photos, how you would rank them? If you would, please list first, second and third place?

Picture 1.

Picture 2.

Picture 3.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm just asking because WE WERE ROBBED, is all.

Giving actual numbers is so gauche.

Psst, I think she’s gone! We got the place to ourselves for a while! Just you and me, baby. Let's do what comes natural, do what feels right. There's no one here but us. I know you want what I want. 

The gym has been pure awesome for a while. I'm over a plateau and my numbers keep going up up up. I have to say, it is extremely gratifying. I recommend this stage to everyone. Skip the plateaus, which are boring and try your patience and feel like work. Go straight to "all gains, all the time", which is way more fun.

Flamboyant but straight Rob has instituted cheek kisses at the gym. Yep, now arrival and departure requires a round of cheek kissing; real kisses, not air kisses. I completely love this, since I am nowhere near my capacity to absorb kisses. I wish it would spread to other gyms. I wish it would become the norm for powerlifting. I love thinking about the giant triangular men* stopping by each platform as they gather their stuff, murmuring to each other and leaning in for kisses. "Strong lift tonight, bro. Good fight. Besos." *kiss*

I started something that is catching on, although I didn't mean to. After Sherry mentioned that people have a deep need to be seen, I started working that into cheering for people. I say it a lot these days. As a friend sets up for his lift and we gather to cheer, I say "I'm here and I'm watching your lift." Or "I see you lift and you are so strong." I told my workout partner Mike, 'I watch all your lifts'. It is surprisingly intimate to tell someone directly that you see them, but I didn't realize what it felt like until a couple months later, when Mike said (in the middle of our usual course of figuring out what to lift next and chatting) 'I always watch your lifts.' It took my breath away a little, to hear that said so straight. Oh. That's what the receiving end feels like. The several of us who work out together will always gather to watch someone's important lift, but hearing that aloud was very, very nice.

I'm still bemused by my relationship with Mike. He's a baby, in his early twenties. I don't know much at all about his life and we never talk outside the gym. I think he grew up a lot harder than I did. For all that, and within the very limited roles we play for each other, we know each other extremely well and the trust has become absolute. I really do think I've seen 95% of his lifts over the last year. I can say things like 'you know that when you make a jump like that, you get a hitch on the left and have to push your way through.' He always spots me. These days I give him credit for about 20% of my lift. There's the trust, of course, how I give my safety entirely over to him. He's become so good with cues, perfectly timed and specific to flaws in my technique. But mostly, I trust him to never take my lift away. Sometimes you're lifting and you get stuck. An overeager spotter will help too soon, lift the bar away or nudge it up. Not him, not ever, and I only hit my new bench PR because he waited for seconds as I pushed through. He said he knew I had it all along. I adore him.**

So my gym life is going well. We're having a intra-gym mini-meet next week and I'm hoping for more PRs. My opposite from the morning workouts is still on injured reserve, so there won't be anyone in my weight class to go up against. Booo! The rest of my life is pleasant summertime and friends, the usual.

Where I Am

I am in New Haven, Connecticut, for a conference.  The conference is happening mostly indoors, at Yale Law School.  I got here today and mostly was in the conference sessions.  But in between, I have been sneaking out and walking around the campus and the town in a nostalgic happy touristy haze.  It is lovely here, the thick humidity that we don't get in Maine, and all the creeping green ivy and trees dripping with flowers.  And all the people, a whole city's worth of people, with no apparent fishermen so I know I'm not in my little city.  I am walking around smiling and delighted at the whole thing. 

Where does nostalgia come from?  This place seemed normal to me when I was a college student.  Old buildings, big deal, who cares.  The buildings are magnificent, as it turns out, and I didn't much care about that when I was here.  Except somehow I came to love them, deeply, because being near them makes me happy and tugs me back to memories and a time and a different self.  

A friend who also works at the college I work at was talking with me about nostalgia.  It's easy to imagine that it would be nice to be in college again, but he and I agreed that the students, if you know them and look at them, they are stressed and tired and anxious.  We adults think they are carefree but they don't feel that way.  They don't know who they are or what they will become, they are not sure whether they are okay or not, they haven't slept for days, they are behind on their reading and they are disappointing their parents and they can't focus on their assignment because they have an unreciprocated crush.  Also, they are hung over.  And there's a friend of their roommate's sleeping on their couch.  Anyway, my friend told me that when he was a senior in college, he couldn't wait to get out, and he walked around campus on a sunny day, looking at all the buildings and repeating to himself: "This is a living hell.  This is a living hell.  This is a living hell."  He did that so he wouldn't get falsely nostalgic.  

I'm trying to remember that as I walk around this magical magnificent campus, especially when I see students trudging along.  I don't know if I would have said it was a living hell for me when I was here.  I had a lot of fun.  There are so many good memories.  But I was not happy, I wasn't comfortable, I wasn't at ease.  I was not carefree.  I am unequivocally happier now.  

So why does this campus have such a hold on me?  Why do I long to come back?  

Early summer rolls in.

My sister came up this weekend and helped me clean out my uninspiring backyard.  I neglect it because it is so much nicer on my porch, where I can watch everyone going by.  We worked for a few hours, throwing the yard waste in the street, which is what you do here in Sacramento. 
Then The Claw comes by on garbage day and picks it up, branches and all.  The next day my sister and I scoffed at all the other piles of yardwaste.  Those people are hardly trying.  If you really mean it you have to neglect your yard for a year and a half, getting some good spring growth in there.

(Please do not point out that my pile overlaps the bike lanes.  Chris already told me I am a bad person.)

(UPDATE:  Ran outside when I heard the trucks this morning.  My yardwaste pile took the Claw two full scoops.  I got a smile and thumbs up from the driver.  Sacramento life is nonstop glamour.  You just don't know.)

The city fixed my sidewalk a month ago, which I wasn't that enthusiastic for, because you have to pay for it.  I was even less enthusiastic because they broke my sprinkler system.  I fixed all the easy fixes, cracked and broken-off sprinkler heads.  But the big leak worried me, since it was coming from under the new concrete.  I called to complain and woke today to see a crew out there.  II came home to see this.

Dude!  I knew they'd busted it.  I am so glad they're fixing it and not me.  I would not have had the courage nor the equipment to tear up my expensive new sidewalk.

That's what the outside of my house looks like these days -unfinished projects.  Besides that, I've been pretty boring, mostly enjoying myself.  Ate my first cherry tomatoes.  I'm going to see three musics this week, which is a surprising number of live shows for me.  Swimming at lunch and lifting in evenings.  Playing Pandemic at my friend Dave's house. Hoping my friends will come up to Sacramento for Second Saturday this weekend.   To make up for dull blogging and boring pictures, I have put under the fold the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

Things I have marveled at this week.

Thunderstorms!  Weather!  We had weather!  In JUNE!  Weather came to visit us, in the shape of a several hour thunderstorm last night.  This is so rare for us.  Years go by between thunderstorms out here, which is very sad.  This one was loud, sending boom after boom for a few hours.  There's a radio tower across the street from me; I assume the thunderclaps that sound like the world is splitting are from lightning hitting such a close tower.  Those don't rumble at all.  They sound like car bombs or something.

Confessions.  I got to talking to a guy at a bar and it happened again.  Yet another guy whom I think was trying to impress me spent a good long time telling me about his dramatic faults and unfortunate situation.  Why?  Why? Why do they do this?  Why do they tell me extraordinary and unflattering things about themselves at length?  Why doesn't their sense of self-awareness kick in?   I am listening intently and asking questions, but dudes.  I some point it switches over and really I'm just feeding out rope.

Friendlessness.  I'm watching friends divorce and realizing that one of them had stopped developing friends once they were married.  They're divorcing now and she's finding out how few friends she has left.  I envy couples because they have someone to keep them company in the default, but man alive, relying on only one person like that looks terribly vulnerable to me.  Perhaps I'm unusual in this sense, but I actively think about maintaining my stable of friends.  I consider whether I have kept close enough with old friends or if it is time for a round of phone calls, gauge whether I'm keeping current friendships balanced for invites and acceptances, and decide whether my circle of acquaintances is large enough to provide me with new friends a year from now.  That is probably unusual, but I have been ostracized all the way down to zero friends.  I don't want it to be like that again.  I've seen it before but I get surprised every time someone whom I know to be bright and charming lets her friend situation get so precarious.

My great good luck.  My gym has been an especially fun place to be this week.  I am so very lucky that other people set up this amazing scene and I get to be part of it and work out.  It doesn't always happen that way.