Reading: The Book of Three

Moving: nothing yet but it's only 10:00 am.

Learning: how many shelves I can hang in my study

Watching: Blake take a shower

12 August 2000: Hot and Dry versus Cold and Wet

PLT didn't remember the trip to Walden and, trying to place it in a timeframe, he wondered if he then was going out with so-and-so. As conversations with me do, this topic meandered, in this case refreshingly away from the events of 1991 (when in mid May PLT was dating [or whatever] me) toward German. He spoke of how German syntax allows many embedded clauses. He wrote,

German has this weird stack feature where, in ordinary speech, large numbers of clauses get pushed down and then popped off at the end.

Imagine a sentence
..containing a digression
....that leads to a side observation
..that eventually returns to the original point.

And I told him, in that case, German must sound like talking to me, except that I seldom return to the original point. So he said,

Imagine a sentence
..about SEM
....and Maurice Sendak
......and children's books
........and the height of the shelves at Phoebe

Which is why I'm so fond of him, whether he has a mental calendar or not.

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I walked to work three mornings this week, which is a good thing. Last week I borrowed Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil from the 'brary. Charenton had recommended it highly (as an audio) and the book itself made the rounds through my department when we had a meeting in Savannah a few years ago. I think listening to anything makes me walk faster, which is a fine thing; and listening to a book just means more reading time, also a fine thing; plus one side of an audiobook is exactly the length of my walk to work (at my present speed). Friday morning I listened to maybe one sentence from side one and flipped it and heard all of side two, which makes me hope maybe I walked that much faster than I did Thursday.

On Thursday morning I noticed a plant. More accurately, on Thursday morning I fell in love with a plant. No one at work could identify it from the stalk I tore off it, though people had good guesses. Beth guessed penstemon, some variety of, and until yesterday afternoon I thought that's what it was. But as we gathered armloads of Verm's stuff to bring to his car, UrBoss came to Verm's office to say "agastache." And he is right.

---

My father left voicemail saying hi, how was your vacation, and I wondered how he knew we'd gone on vacation and whether he'd be upset that I didn't visit his sister while in Old Lyme. I called this morning and he asked what knick-knacks we need as a house-warming present. A new vent for the dryer? some landscaping work? wanna help us tuck-point new mortar? but I couldn't think of anything. Stupid me: I should have asked for photograph frames. Except that I would rather Sheryl not know I didn't try to hang her gift until now. Anyway, we'd hung up and I was sitting there finishing The Book of Three when it occurred to me that it's AEW's first birthday today, making me wonder what other birthdays I've been forgetting. Then it came to me: my father's birthday fell during our trip to Cape Cod. I remembered I hadn't bought him a card. Eeesh. I called him back, didn't say who I was, just, "I missed your birthday!" No, I hadn't, he assured me. I called him on his birthday from Provincetown. Oh. So that's how he knew we were on vacation. He's clever like that.

---

If today is AEW's birthday, then yesterday was Blake's hatchday. For the first time, I think, we were home for it. In 1996, I was in Connecticut; in 1997, we were in Montana; in 1998 we were somewhere or other; and in 1999 we were on Orcas Island. So yesterday, in the middle of lunch at a coworker's house, I remembered. Lou had made lunch for our department in honor of Verm's leaving in her fantastic Highlands (not Highlands Ranch) condo.

Verm and his wife showed pictures of their new house in Vermont and people, even those who didn't grow up in the city, were surprised at the expanse of lawn. It looked normal, if water-intensive, to me. Verm said his first project will be to bury an invisible fence, since dogs are not allowed to roam free there. Egg had never heard of invisible fencing and I don't think she liked the idea much. Later we were talking about how hard it is to pin CoolBoss down between phone calls and conferences and meetings, and she spoke of how productive she is during her bus commutes because she's never interrupted, and I suggested that we string the fencing around her door and all wear collars.

---

As hot as it was yesterday, I was so full from lunch that I didn't swim. Later, we went to Bloodbath and Beyond to scope a lamp I saw there when I bought Blake's stand. A small bulb under a blue hood elevatored on two brushed steel posts. I think I mostly liked the cobalt blue of the hood. We found a better lamp, more adjustable, with a white hood that goes with the room better. We also looked at bedding and disagreed. After a pleasant hour in the Tattered Cover, we had supper at the Fourth Story.

RDC had pheasant on "wilted spinch." RDC theorized that as it wilts, letters fall out of it. I had braised yellowtail over a risotto with walnuts and currants. I eyed his pheasant suspiciously. It's just big enough that I can tolerate it. One night at Le Central a few winters ago, I contemplated the leg of a Cornish game hen and found it too close to cockatiel-sized to eat. No more small fowl for me. Now I like my birds ostrich-sized.

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We went out to dinner partly to celebrate our having lived in Denver for five years to the day. On Friday, 11 August 1995, we pulled up to Cypress Point and RDC nearly killed me by knocking off, with the truck, part of a car port that I narrowly, and I mean narrowly, avoided as it crashed beside me as I tried to guide him, at the wheel, somewhere or other in the parking lot. Elsewhere in the metropolitan area that day, a reptilian fetus with an eggtooth valiantly broke out of his egg.

I thought, last night, that the synchronicity of these events warranted a parody, especially since I'd just heard the song on the radio at Lou's. But I'm stymied at the first lines: "Another suburban family morning / Grandmother screaming at the wall." We might have had all our belongings packed into shiny metal box(es), but really the song doesn't work. "Many miles away, there's a pecking within an egg/ in a nest in a foothill of bright Denver suburb...." Nope.

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Did I mention that when we brought DMB, JJT, and RDC2 to Keystone and Breckenridge last week, we went over Loveland Pass? Well we did. And for a few years now, I have declared that one day I would swim in the little pond a few hundred feet below the Continental Divide (which is 11,990 feet). Somehow I have never been there in August since I discovered the pond, until last week. When we arrived at the top of the pass and opened the door, this was the first honest cold RDC2 had ever felt in his life. First he said he wanted to wait in the car, but he got out. And it is cold up there, even in August, but mostly because of the wind chill. A few hundred feet down, where the pond is, a ridge cuts off the wind. And the pond's only a few feet deep, and the sun's strong, and the snow's almost all melted except smidges like that one across the valley, and as long as the wind isn't strong and clouds stay away from the sun, that pond's a fine place to swim.

I didn't go in all the way though. Hair keeps you wet, and cold, like a bathing suit. I shucked that off pretty quick after my swim too.

Today's title is from my Chinese History class. The professor referred to various hordes of invaders as "the cool dry gang" and "the hot wet boys" depending on whether they came from north or south. I'm taking leeway with his terms to suit my shrub and my swim.