Life of Wry

That’s a stretch, but how often does a non-physicist get to say that?

The birthday in question was Jim’s, his 61st. It was a Wednesday, so we had to keep it pretty low key, which, actually, is the way he prefers it, so it all worked out.  Basically, good birthdays are about having some nice family time, and in Jim’s case, family time and pecan pie. Those are the essentials; anything else is a bonus.

Got lucky this year. It’s hard to come up with a better weeknight family activity than seeing a movie at the Varsity… but not just any movie–a documentary about particle physics.

Hard to be more perfect. A physics documentary is totally up Jim’s alley, but this stuff has long been Peter’s obsession, so for an activity that everyone likes, it was an easy choice. I even got watery eyed–moved and fascinated by the beauty of science. They told a very compelling story.

Then, it was warm and pleasant enough to eat outside, which we did at El Toro Bravo and had such a good dinner while we talked about the movie (and Peter impressed us with his curiosity, questions and grasp of so much of it).

Returned home and ate some of this and opened a couple presents:

Thing to note: the letterJ spelled out in pecans.

And for presents: game one in the Giant’s home stand against the Cardinals (not until July) and Elizabeth Warren’s new book, A Fighting Chance.

Peter has about two months left on a six-month course of Acutane, a medication that treats acne.  It has three side effects that have affected Peter. One is bloody noses. Lots of them. And this is what the teenage boy who lives in our house does with that.

Gross or inspired?  You decide.

The second side effect is very, very, very dry skin and lips. The treatment is designed to dry up all your oil-producing glands and thus eliminate the oil buildup that causes acne.  I guess you could say that it is working great. His face is stiff as a board and his lips look like someone took a cheese grater to them. Quite a sight, but he doesn’t complain. He’s always had a very high tolerance for discomfort.

The final side effect (there are others, but these are the three bothering Peter the most) is painful joints. This has the most unfortunate effect of slowing Peter way down. He didn’t inherit his mama’s speed anyway, so this really compounds the problem. He is noticeably slow, almost comically so, around the bases.  Poor guy.

Anyway, we are not begrudging him his blood art.

(It’s not that we use that sink for food or anything…)

(Photo taken last week when I was making some carrot juice and wanted to remember how many carrots it took to produce a quart of juice…about two dozen.)

Walked up A street…

(These, while rather spectacular, are not my cup of tea. I find them sort of obscene, not because of their shape, but because of their size, which is just so out of scale.)

Then down Miller..

(These, on the other hand, are flower perfection.)

Then came upon this in South Davis, Cowell Blvd, near that park where the Dave Pelz Bicycle Overpass comes down (or goes up, depending on your direction).

(As are these…flower perfection)

You will see prettier specimens, but here are our first blooms.  Planted in the fall, this plant is now about 5′ tall and a bit rangy, but hey, Matilijas!

Says a site devoted to these things:

Matilija poppy is a glabrous, shrubby perennial, heavy branched and woody at the base, growing to 8′ tall. The showy white flowers are the largest of any plant native to California, and look like fried eggs. There are 5-8 per stem and the six petals are usually crinkled with many yellow stamens and a single large pistil. The three sepals are glabrous, which differentiates it from the other Romneyaspecies, trichocalyx, which has bristly or appressed-hairy sepals.  The leaves are alternate and have 3-5 main segments which are somewhat dentate or cleft.  Matilija poppy inhabits dry washes and canyons below 4000′ in coastal sage scrub and chaparral away from the immediate coast.  It is an occasional resident in the Peninsular Ranges, but is more common in the Santa Ana Mts to San Diego Co., being found also in the Santa Monica Mts where it was probably begun by transplanting.  It blooms from May to July.  The name Matilija (pronounced ma-TIL-i-ha or ma-til-EE-ha) appears to be of Chumash origin, and I have seen one source that relates the name to a Chief Matilija who lived in Ventura County. The name is used also for Matilija Canyon above the community of Ojai and Matilija Creek in the Los Padres National Forest.

 

I didn’t know what glabrous meant, and since the author uses the word twice, I figured it was important.

Definition of GLABROUS

:  smooth; especially :  having a surface without hairs or projections <glabrous skin> <glabrous leaves>

I know, this is lame, but anything that is so large a part of my life on nearly a daily basis has to find its way into the blog.

Don’t ask me why, but something about this Mishka’s poppyseed muffin just really does it for me. For years (truly, years), it has been a morning staple accompanied by a frothy, hot cafe au lait.  Even on Farmer’s Market Saturdays, I’ll hike the extra distance to Mishka’s and bring my muffin and coffee back to Central Park. (See above Central Park bench shot.) Not sure why I’m not totally sick of this thing, but I’m not. 

Anyway, that’s it. Just a muffin shot. 

So, yesterday.

Fellow JV mom, Korlyn, got a burr in her saddle about the weeds propagating and growing to insane heights under the fan bleachers.  A burr I shared.  So yesterday, we texted back and forth a plan (a word I use loosely) that went from “those weeds are driving me nuts,” to “me too, we oughta do something about it, I’m tempted to just go down and pull the suckers out myself,” to “I’ll join ya, sista!,” (or, you know, words to that effect) to “I have some tools we could use,” to “I do too, shall we just do it?,” to “the game’s rained out and it’s clearing up, let’s do it while the boys practice, they’ll probably be in the gym,” to “okay, see you there in a few.”

Looks like we’re weedin’.

It was dark, grey and started to rain just as we showed up. We sat in the car checking our iPhone weather and were certain it would stop any sec. It did. We unloaded and headed to the bleachers.

The field was empty: no boys, no coaches. No rain.

In our enthusiasm to get started, we neglected to take a before picture.

Pretty soon, Mason showed up with a hula hoe, and without prompting starting hoeing around the bleachers. Really, he did that.  (I was quite impressed.) We took advantage of his youthful catcher bulk and the three of us raised one set of bleachers and rested it on its backside so we could access the under part.

And damn, pretty soon, Coach Rich was out there quietly working beside us, then, one-by-one, players, then another coach or two.  Then Gabe’s dad, Alex. And before you knew it, we were a crowd of nearly 20.  I was a bit chagrined when Coach Creely showed up and we’d effectively co-opted the practice.. but he seemed happy enough.

I was also feeling a bit of the Tom Sawyer.  But kept working, because that would have been weird… to let the boys do all the work.. tempting though it was.

Two hours later, the job was done.  And more besides (like, the unplanned area around the bullpen).  Oh, and it rained. And rained and rained and rained.  It was increasingly muddy and gooey and oh.. so.. messy… but, once there, we just worked through it…and we got a lot of the weeds.

Here are a few shots, with some photos courtesy of Korlyn.

This bleacher covered a less egregious area, but it gives you a sense of the “before.” Here is a shot of the boys lifting the bleacher to rest on its back. They’re pretty heavy.

An hour or so later, here’s a shot of the bleacher going back down.

Here they are in full worker mode. I just can’t tell you how charming it was to see them work together like this with nary a grumble. Coach Creely said he has the boys do a lot of field and bleacher maintenance, which is both an upside and a downside to district and city budget cuts.

They even got creative in trimming branches in the bullpen. Honest to god, pitchers have had to deal with low hanging branches for the last month or so, seriously compromising the arc of their practice pitches. Not to mention, it’s been a bit embarrassing when visiting teams see that one-and-only bullpen… so getting this cleaned up was an added bonus.

Biggest guy on team hoists littlest guy on team.  Good job boys!

And here, more or less, is the finished product.  We filled about 8-10 large, black garbage bags, and left for the maintenance crew a huge pile of branches from offending trees and shrubs.

Not bad, huh?

Next up: sand and paint those bleachers!

You know, you see a lot of the world when you walk. But you see even more when you walk slowly. Today, we walked really slowly (because my hip’s been bothering me and I recently bought into the idea that all the walking I do is actually keeping my flexors in a constant state of irritation… so, either stop walking altogether or walk really slowly).

Slow it was.

And, that being the case, the walk through the redwood grove seemed particularly verdant, peaceful and photo-worthy.

Here are a few shots:

And finally, this critter.

When you don’t have a picture of the day, and it’s 10 minutes to midnight and your personal rule about loggin’ a daily blog is knocking at your stress door… well, you go for an archival shot of your favorite guy (I gotta million of these). Especially if the day started with same, driving to Sac for an early morning dermatologist appointment, followed by an orthodontist appointment, and ended after conversations about sherpas, particle physics and Led Zeppelin. More or less.  

And you sorta wonder, how did we get here so quickly?  

Meet Ruben. He’s the guy helping us lay a flagstone path around our yard. As of today, this is the path’s status… though this picture was actually taken a week ago.

It would seem that the transporting and laying of 2 1/4 tons of flagstone, and the cutting of said flagstone (concrete saws are a little unwieldy)… has resulted in Ruben having a very sore back. Or it could have been the four tree stumps he muscled out of the ground (a podocarpus, a cherry, a fig and a no-name shrub), or the relocation of several huge boulders (and the repurposing of one into a bench… THAT is very cool). Whatever it was, the project’s been on hold for a week… I think it resumes tomorrow.  

If you’re in need of a very strong, hardworking crew, Ruben and his team are pretty great. 

I had two bags of beets that I set aside to make some juice (carrot, beet, orange–which is fantastic).. both had come from our CSA box, a couple of weeks apart. I noticed a few beets had softened up, but I read that was okay and proceeded to scrub and cut the beets into juice-able chunks.

This is what I got…what is wrong with this picture?