Life of Wry

Oh man. Not going to post a picture today. Didn’t take any, but also I’m way too fried. My patience… it ran out a few hours ago and it wasn’t pretty.

I will say that it wasn’t an episode… one of those very horrible exchanges with my mom that–after I’ve blown my cool and reduced my mom to a withering mess on the verge of a coronary–makes me feel like an evil shrew who should never be allowed around old people. THAT hasn’t happened in maybe a couple years; it is truly, truly awful when it does.

Most of my impatience today remained inside me, and I promise it was justified…like, when she was so angry about having to take all her evening pills–she definitely does not see herself as a pill person–she emptied the allotment from her [ridiculously large] pill tray into her hand and simply threw the whole bunch into the garbage disposal. Yes, the garbage disposal. That whole lovely thing came on the heels of another frustrating conversation about her caregiver (who’s perfect, by the way) who can’t seem to do anything right (according to my mom) and I fear she’s going to quit because my mom is so mean to her.

Anyway, I didn’t explode (though I may have said, “fine, I don’t give a shit,” when she pulverized all her pills), but everything that did come out of my mouth for about an hour was bossy and curt… and frankly, she doesn’t need that either. I can really be insufferable when I’m bossing my mom around.

I can do better.

Matty told me to bring my A-game just prior to my last visit (just three weeks ago) and I was totally on my best behavior. She had just gotten out of the hospital and was recovering from a bout of pneumonia and I certainly wasn’t going to lose my patience with her when she was down. And I didn’t. It was a great visit. But I think I let my guard down today…. and she’s been feeling pretty good the past few days and has a lot of her feistiness back. Both lead to my impatience. It would seem.

Well. Tomorrow is another day.

We did see a great movie… Boyhood. I saw it last week with Jim and liked it well enough. Today–the second time around–I liked it even more. Here’s a collection of shots of the boy you watch grow up. Darling kid.

Yup, flew into LA again today. Today’s flight cost something like $11.00 because, for the first time in Frame-Peterson history, we figured out how to use frequent flyer miles. (True story.)

I was also a champ in the airport, having mastered airport protocol like nobody’s business.

So it was all extra beautiful.  Some shots from on high….

This one we’ll just call, “Wheeee..”

This one’s flying over Malibu…

And this is coming into the LA Basin on the 405, San Fernando Valley in the distance.  You can see UCLA, Westwood, and the high rises lining Wilshire Blvd. And if you know where to look, you can also see the Getty Museum…

It’s not like I have a lot of room in my office for the addition of a weight bench… but I’ve determined that this is the next stop on the find-the-perfect-exercise-routine tour.

A weight bench in my office. So I can conduct a full body weight workout in the comfort (and convenience) of my own house.

Having worked with Igor a few weeks ago on an ideal weight routine, I have a much better sense of how to use weights to get a full and effective workout. He crafted a great program–three different routines to be done on three different days of the week– that would pretty much address all the body parts. (I’m sure I talked about this already. Ad nauseam. As I do. )

A good number of the exercises included Peter’s giant home gym thing that takes up about half our outside porch. While these were well-conceived,  effective workouts, I found the set up of each exercise involving the monster home gym to be extremely cumbersome… which means it’s a deal breaker, because…. given the choice to go outside (where it’s dusty and probably too hot or too cold or too windy) and wrestle with numerous settings on the various mechanical arms and legs of this thing, mess with the weights and the weight holders, finagle inserts into awkward slots, and maneuver myself into the various tricky positions to use the damn thing properly? I’m probably going to go do something–anything–else.

Simple, doable and convenient are the tickets to sustainability. Sustainability is the key to lasting fitness. You can quote me on this.

So.

Not completely there yet, but getting closer.. like, I need space to move my arms around, for example.  Perfection takes time but not too much time or I’ll get all flabby.  So, you know…working on it.

Once again, no, I am not posting a picture of our dinner. But if I did, it would only be to wax further on about the heavenliness of summertime food. And to tell you that if you haven’t discovered Rudy’s hamburger buns, you’re missing out on hamburger bun perfection. Not kidding; these buns are like no other.

So… hamburgers (tomatoes, onions, lettuce), sauteed chard, cantaloupe.

And besides, if I didn’t post a picture of tonight’s dinner, I’d have to post a picture of the giant praying mantis on the window.

You see my dilemma…

I can get used to summer. (I know, we all can.)

It’s a lot of walking around in bare feet.

It’s having a lot of fresh fruit around and a scatter of vegetables on the butcher block that cames from our garden (yes). Mostly, I’m thinking of bending over the sink eating a ripe peach or plum or nectarine. Or a great melon. Or a bowl of strawberries.

It’s windows wide open in the evening to let in all the cool delta breezes. It’s fans blowing, and air softly moving.

It’s a relaxed pace, where get up times and go to bed times are whatever.

There is just hardly any schedule at all, hardly any stress.

And of course the hammock, which I’ve written about plenty. I’m having a thing about that hammock.

It’s a lot more, but these things stand out.

Tonight, we needed to use up some of our Rivercats tickets–we are required to purchase ten vouchers in return for the privilege of Peter getting to play with the DHS team at Raley Field… and then we get to redeem them for tickets to be used whenever we want. So we had a bunch of those and decided to use two tonight.

Warm summer night, baby! Baseball, peanuts, beer, (and cotton candy). And these things:

They call it a chicken fajita bowl.  Not bad… some rice, chicket, cheese, onions, salsa, tortilla strips and a roasted pepper. Beyond my lap, is my beer.  We are satisfied.

Sun setting on downtown Sac makes for an urbany backddrop, sure I’ve written about that before:

And my seat mates:

It was a lightly-attended game and super light traffic. Easy in, easy out. Super pleasant all around. Rivercats lost. No worries…. there was music, good energy, warm breezes and the aforementioned ballpark food.

Really stalling out here, as I’m between trips and mostly just catching up on what’s gone on while we were in Yosemite, only to prepare to leave for Palos Verdes again in a few days. In other words, no space for thoughtful blogging.

So, with that, here is just a nice picture I pulled up from the archives (taken by the mom of one of the kids on Peter’s AA Phillies team, 2005, seven years old.. I think it may have been the first and last time he wore batting gloves.):

I know.

This is what happens….

…when you are old and try to do two things at once!

Thing one: play catch with your son… who throws HARD; and

Thing two: try to clock the speed of that blazingly fast hardball holding a radar gun in the other, non-gloved hand.

Peter was dying to know how the thinner air at 8900′ would affect the speed of his fastball. Because… he’s like that.

Being a nice dad (note, I didn’t say dumb dad), Jim agreed to catch him. And operate the radar gun. At the same time. (I quickly had other things to do.)

Apparently, Jim was able to get a bit of his glove on the ball, but most of it bounced off the glove and hit him square on the…

Here are another couple shots to give you a better perspective:

Nice color, huh?

The above shots were taken five days after the initial trauma.

I know I have definitely aged out of playing catch with Peter; I don’t have a glove thick enough, nor reflexes quick enough!

I’m busy backfilling blog posts from our nine days up in the Yosemite high country… so today’s will be just a couple vintage Peter, ‘k?

First one: Guitar training wheels…

I am so happy to report that the guitar stuck; today’s song challenge was Time of Your Life (Green Day). I can live with that.

Second one: shoulder rides… (this one at Legoland)

Choosing this one because he doesn’t travel this way anymore, and, in fact, has utterly eclipsed us in the hiking and climbing realm. I don’t think I could ever have imagined that during the shoulder ride days.

(sniff)

Jim, Peter and I learned yesterday, as we were driving back from nine days in Yosemite, that Robin Williams killed himself a few days ago.  It’s a painful story–but not uncommon–about a gifted, beloved guy tormented by depression and despair who just couldn’t get right with his world.

I appreciated, as I often do, the way Mark Morford, a columnist for the SF Chronicle, wrote about it–the difficulties we have in trying to wrap our hearts and minds around suicide; he said:

“…Because most of what I’ve seen so far in the wake of Williams’ death is lots of powerful, informative outpourings about the illness of depression itself, its anguish and its savage mystery. Personal stories, anecdotes, shocking glimpses into the pain.

It’s all in turns hugely illuminating, frightening and sad, even as it remains impossible to locate exactly. Hell, even the late, hyper-articulate David Foster Wallace, prior to his own depression-induced suicide, couldn’t explain his illness’ source or its significance, only the staggering agony it induced…”

It’s fascinating and crazy and unbearably sad to see how relentlessly mental illness grips people and how, for some, there just seems to be no escape.

For this post, I just wanted to remember Katy, who killed herself 10 years ago in the most violent of ways.

Katy was my next door neighbor and one of my best friends for most of our growing up. We stayed friends through college, our various career and life paths, her marriages, my wedding, our kids. She was incredibly well-liked and high achieving. Everybody would have said she was a bright and charming person living a bright and charmed life.

I knew, though, that she was dissatisfied–she called from time to time to ask for advice or ideas or support, and I never understood that because she was always the star and the leader. But as the years went on, she was quick to say that I had it all together and she was flailing, which I could hardly process because it always seemed so wildly off the mark.  I knew she was unhappy, because she said so, but I didn’t understand why. She seemed always to be searching for something better for herself and her kids but I could never, never have fathomed she was that anguished. Her despair didn’t make sense to me at all, because she was so beautiful and smart, but mostly because she had always been so optimistic and hopeful and eager, curious and energetic. She was quick to laugh, but also very thoughtful and intentional in her approach to life.

I actually never knew, until I read her mom’s Facebook post yesterday, that Katy had a diagnosable mental illness. Never, ever knew that. But it helps to explain the disconnect between who I knew her to be and what was going on inside her head.

In the aftermath of Robin Williams’ death, this is what her mom posted, including a photo that must have been taken at some kind of performance in high school:

As we contemplate the tragic death of Robin Williams by suicide with our sadness and for some, our anger, we must realize that mental illness, along with the effects of the drugs given to the mentally ill in therapy, are usually the triggers to the final decision to act. Those who have experienced a suicide by family members or friends know this to be the case. Not all of my FB friends know that ten years ago, my beautiful and talented daughter, Katy, who like Williams seemed to have everything to live for, took her life. She had been diagnosed as bipolar, or manic depressive, and was given a number of different drugs, which she hated.

I wrote this poem at the time and read it at her memorial service celebrating her life.

SHE’S FREE

Somewhere beyond the sands of time.
beyond the words of rhythm and rhyme,
beyond the barriers of limited space,
in some magnificent, glorious place,
She’s free!

Her spirit soars among the stars
and dives beneath the sea!
It blooms in pink and purple flowers
and climbs the highest tree.
She’s free!

Love came and said, in some strange way,
“This is the minute, the hour, the day.
It’s best you leave this earthly plane.
There’s little here for you to gain.”
She froze!

And, in that moment of following her heart
and losing her mind,
of believing her doubts
and acting as blind,
She chose!

Now, she asks of you and me
to hold her close, yet set her free.
Let love step in and hold her place,
so in our hearts and our embrace–
She knows.

Breeze Bryson
2/23/04

I just realized this moment, as I was posting this, that today would have been her 58th birthday.

Hate leaving. All I’m gonna say.

Before heading out, we took a final walk up the Dana Fork… lovely as always:

Parting shots:

Peter walking up stream…

and scrambling up a boulder…

The beautiful falls…

Peter and Jim:

Me and Peter, not sure what’s going on here:

Jim and me:

And, a final shot across Tuolumne Meadows as we are driving out… that is Pothole Dome in the distance.

Already looking forward to next year.