Listening to the news. I have just heard NBC say that the odds of something happening are 50-50. I would say the odds are 1 in 2 or the chances are 50-50.

Reading: Iris Murdoch, Under the Net and Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

Moving: Yes! Lots and lots! Biked ten miles and swam one--no, more: 1.75k. Hear me roar. Ogle at my pre-Euro-trip fitness, oh yes.

22 July 2001: Hard Work Day

After perversely waking at 1:30 convinced that I had Heard something outside and realizing I didn't have the phone by the bed, I lay awake for half an hour--it didn't cool down much last night--and woke at the unnecessarily early hour of 6:00.

Blake and I had breakfast outside and I painted the other side of the living room screens and read for a bit until sun and heat drove us inside. While outside, I took him out of his cage for a spell to have his head pet. When he'd had enough of that, he climbed down to lean over the side of the chair and pluck grass. Hmm. I took the barred walls and ceiling of his cage off the base and set it, floorless, on the grass, and I popped him in. He looked down, curious, unsure, wanting the grass. I used to do this with Percy outside our tenement, but when I tried it with Blake, once upon a time years ago, he didn't like the feeling of grass between his toes, and besides, our Denver apartment complex used pesticides. So we didn't do that anymore. Now, on our own untreated grass or what's left of it in this heat, we tried again. He leaned from here and there, reaching for the grass, before bravely stepping down his ladder onto the ground. And he still doesn't like grass between his toes tickling his belly. He skedaddled to the closest wall and climbed up. So much for that. If he remembers he doesn't like grass, perhaps I can have him on my knee for extended periods without fearing he'll take it upon himself to go on an expotition. We'll see.

Then I broke my buddy's heart by zipping off on my bike to go for a swim. On weekends from now on I am going to ride down to Cook Park and swim there. I get the ten-mile bike ride, plus that pool is cleaner and emptier, even if it's only 25m instead of 50.

When I came up for air after the 32nd lap, I asked another swimmer if he had any idea of the time. He said it was six of, and I could do eight laps in that time. Was he mad?
"Actually I don't think I can."
"Well, eight lengths anyway."
I did another three laps, six lengths. The last length was butterfly--which stroke I cannot do in the Congress Park pool, partly because the pool is too crowded for a wide stroke like that and partly because I can barely do 25 meters of fly, let alone 50--and the whistle blew halfway through. I am not a fast swimmer. My fellow swimmer and I chatted. He told me that Congress has a lot of triathletes training there. Ah. This would explain why the fast people are so particularly fast that other fast people not quite as fast swim in the medium lanes with me. And I refuse to move from the slower of the mediums into the slow lanes, which have amputees and seniors with kickboards in them. So I'll swim at Cook when I can.

Going, I used the medium (speaking of medium) front gear. I haven't been on a long ride, if ten miles is long, all summer, and going up Cherry Creek was up enough for me to stay in the mama bear gear. Returning, I spun the papa bear gear. I miss long rides. In fact I was enjoying myself possibly past the point of sanity, because I was considering overshooting the northward turn for home and continuing on to Confluence Park or maybe even beyond. So I veered left instead of turning right. But then I saw several rollerbladers so came round again. The trail is narrow for quite a stretch, as narrow as a regular sidewalk where it bypasses the country club and parallels Speer Boulevard, and rollerbladers, even when they're not as inept as I was, scare me. Besides, I sour-grapesed, homeward is uphill enough from that point without downstreaming to Confluence and upstreaming again.

So I wimped out.

On a surface street that is allegedly a bike path grows a garden I particularly like, a house with all plants and no grass in the front at all, all xeric. Today I met its owner, who was tending it. She told me how long it had taken pussytoes and lambsear (and nailwort?) and woolly thyme to fill in. She has had the house for seven years, and she had planted the easements with all these low groundcovers three years ago. I wonder for me how much time I would devote to all the sections of a full garden. I could devote lots of time, but would I be disciplined? Based on my vegetable garden, I'd say I could do lots. But I wonder if that garden will thrive as well next year. This year I've had no chomping insects, no tomato slugs, not even a lot of weeds yet. There are some, of course; they sprout particularly along the lines of the drip hose. The weedlessness is a benefit of buying all that soil instead of using the weed-riddled dirt already there, and it's a benefit the rest of the property doesn't have and that the vegetable garden won't have next year.

RDC reports that our garden is far ahead of Connecticut gardens, that the Vs in Ashford don't have any tomatoes yet at all. Besides fewer bugs, we also have lots more and stronger sunshine. Also that the V kids continue charming and rambunctious, which pleases me. If you're going to have as many kids as you can, you might as well be good parents.

RDC was in Boston all last week and spent the weekend in Connecticut seeing friends and family. He hadn't seen his grandfather since October. On the way down, he stopped at UConn and looked up his old boss at Homer, and it's a good thing he did because she's retiring and moving back to India. It is so strange to me how people move in and out of your life, how correspondents fade in and out, how without even thinking "Well that's enough of that" and deliberating stopping a relationship, they end anyway. Even if you still like each other but just forget to write for a while.

It's an element of escribitionism that I've weighed. Are these relationships real, among people who have never met? Of course. Relationships that start in person have that to sustain them when geographical distance grows or correspondence ebbs. On-line relationships are no less real but are more fragile.

Anyway. On his way back to Boston today, RDC stopped at the Vs. Since we left six years ago, we exchange Christmas cards and I send birthday and Christmas gifts to the chilluns. That's about it. Perhaps I'm just living proof of the Connecticut state motto: Qui Transtulit Sustinet.

Going in circles, stopping.

When I turned about on the trail to head tamely for home, a blader paused alongside me, asking, "Have they fixed that AC up ahead?"
I didn't immediately get this for three reasons: I thought he was asking about the bit of the Cherry Creek Trail that's being reworked south of Cook Park, it didn't seem that hot to me, and I'm just not that quick on the uptake sometimes. However, he, like me, will start a conversation even with a total stranger by saying something completely off the wall, so I cottoned to him. No, that bit of the trail wasn't air-conditioned yet, I told him. Maybe it didn't seem so hot to me because I had my evaporative cooler going: two feet of wet hair under my vented helmet or cool against my back.

Once home, Blake and I had a shower and went outside. He had begged for a shower, danced and pranced under his spray bottle, and become thoroughly drenched. I hoped he could stand the heat at least until he dried off. And indeed, that's about as long as we lasted, him preening, me reading High Fidelity. The thermometer showed only 93, but we chucked outside for cool basement before four. So here we are.