Life of Wry

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?

Way out of sorts this morning.  Feeling uneasy and unsettled, my knickers in a gnarly sorta twist, apparently. Going to try to sort it out here, so bear with me.

The ambivalence of Easter is upon me. It wasn’t until yesterday that I realized…ah yes, Easter Sunday coming up. Tomorrow. My adult self doesn’t really have a pony in this pasture, but my mom self is all confused. At least, I think it’s my mom self.

I’ve never really landed on an Easter tradition that makes sense to me. As a grownup in the world, reasonably secure in my own beliefs and priorities, I’m quite okay with it. It’s just Easter; I don’t celebrate this. Hell, I don’t even know what it’s all about. In my marriage to Jim, who’s completely on a remote end of the spectrum when it comes to holiday traditions (as but one example), I’m even more okay with it. Together, we are good. We pursue our normal Sunday morning activities, even though it’s Easter. All is good.

But, man, as a mom, I feel like I’m dropping some kind of ball.

I don’t feel like we should go to a sunrise service, become Christians for the day, or pretend in any other way that the day holds any sort of spiritual meaning to us. Of course it doesn’t. But I still feel like we’re a family in search of an Easter ritual…an acknowledgment that it’s Easter Sunday and, while we don’t have a religious practice, we do do this, or that, whatever, whenever the day comes around.

Like, in years past.  We have an egg hunt in the backyard (long since discontinued) or join friends for a multiple-families hunt (again, that was long ago discontinued), or we pull out our special recipe for hot cross buns (um, maybe two–unsuccessful–attempts at that, just.. because), or we join family for a brunch (happened a few times) or a lamb dinner (again, maybe a few times), or hide a basket (happened for a few years, post hunt days). Sort of all over the map, here.   And all that was at least fun, right?  I’m pretty sure it was. Easy, fun, uncomplicated.

But family’s not gathering this year. Kid’s too old for Easter egg hunts. Now what?

I don’t even remember last year.

Ah, just looked it up.. we left the house at 5:30am on Easter Sunday for a flight to Boston… we went to New England & New York for spring break last year. Problem solved.   (Nice!)

Not having a ready response to the holiday, a place to go, a tradition to routinely fall back on, I feel like I’m cheating my kid out of something. He’s still just 15… these are the remember years! He’s got to have something.  Mom guilt.

I fight this. I mean, what the f is that? A ritual in search of meaning?! Part of me feels a need to create ritual that leads to childhood memories.. this mom self aches for her son to carry with him cherished memories of holidays, summers, every developmental phase of his life with its attendant milestones. While the other side, the comfortable, wise self, desires simply authenticity. We don’t celebrate Easter; we are not Christians. You’ve outgrown egg hunts, sweetheart. It’s okay. Please, let’s dispense with the hypocrisy. So unattractive.

See? Totally unsettled.

So, a couple hours ago, I assuaged my Easter dis-ease with a hastily assembled basket of stuff for Peter to enjoy when he got back from a sleepover. Yes, between Jim’s and my return from our usual Sunday breakfast at Bernardo’s (now there’s a tradition I gratefully, totally relax into), and Peter’s coming home, I got a panicked notion to fill a basket.  It was short on chocolate bunnies, but otherwise respectably filled with items from the Easter box. I do have one of those, a vestige from the olden days, a collection of random Easter-related, pastel-colored paraphernalia. Many years in the making, many attempts at tradition-building… I do have a very serviceable collection of shredded, pastel filling, dozens of plastic eggs, bunny ears, mini-baskets, paper plates, etc, etc.  So, into his giant, colorful, wicker, egg-shaped basket went a chocolate bar (I found stashed in the freezer from a trip to IKEA a few months ago), a couple plastic eggs that I stuffed with bendy bunnies, another with chocolate chips (which we always have around), and one more with a $20 (desperation money). The box also produced some bunny toys (the kind you press down on and the bunny flies toward some determined target), a wire whisk (with egg-shaped grip) and a ceramic egg cup (the kind you use for soft-boiled eggs). Totally random stuff. I guess you could say I had an egg theme going. And I know… what’s he gonna do with those things?  It’s just…  having a basket.  For some reason, I needed to do this so the day would be marked, if even in an unremarkable way. I couldn’t really bear not doing it.  Because, you know, Easter ambivalence and mom guilt. That’s an eye-rolling cocktail.

But now, we’re kinda good with the universe. Glad Peter got a little something, a token nod to Easter. The holiday did not go un-recognized. And… part of me is unhappy that I succumbed.

Yeah.. my insecure little universe.

And I’m left with the same questions.  Because, you know, this shit inevitably comes up at Christmas, on our wedding anniversary, on Valentines Day..  some of it works, but a lot of it is desperation tradition.  And I have to wonder, what is that?  At my age, I don’t get to blame the usual suspects.  I don’t get to blame the media which of course bombards us with Martha-esque holiday perfection at every turn. That’s old news and too easy. Yawn. Fall for that, it’s your own damn fault.  Or, god, social media, Facebook, on whose pages runs a steady stream of cheery holiday pics. I never feel lost and hopeless in that. (Progress, I think. Yay adult me.)  I also don’t want to blame my childhood, my parents and that whole thing.. like I was somehow deprived of this or that and don’t want my son to experience the same  (uh, really?!, please, that’s just tiresome, largely manufactured, false compensation, at least complicated, and simply doesn’t get to enter into this anymore).

I have to understand: it’s me, my little unrest, my little first world demon, and I just need to deal with it. Hopefully posthaste.

Because, Jesus. It’s only Easter.

We celebrated the anniversary of Jim’s Aunt Annita and Uncle Dean today.  As the title gives away, it was their 60th. They hadn’t had a wedding cake back then, so their daughter Marie brought one for today’s celebration.

Here’s what’s fun about Jim’s aunt and uncle: His aunt is his mother’s sister, and his uncle is his father’s brother.  Two sisters married two brothers.  Jim’s parents married first and Dean and Annita married a few years later in, well, 1954.

Their wedding way back then was a pretty simple affair: Dean, Annita, Sonia (Jim’s mom), Jim (Jim’s dad) and Teresa (Jim’s sister, who was about 2 or 3 maybe) were the only people there. And the priest, who I heard today was defrocked shortly thereafter.  They were married in St. Leo’s church in Oakland, the same church where Jim was an altar boy and which also had a school where all the Frame kids went, at least through 8th grade.

In case I haven’t shared the story here, Sonia and Annita were born and raised in Brazil to parents who’d emigrated from France (I do believe). They were part of the somewhat sophisticated, aristocratic class, and it was on a vacation to California that Sonia met Jim (I think at an officers’ club dinner dance thing) and somewhere along the line Dean met Annita, but my knowledge of this part of the story is sketchy.)  So, in addition to being a weird two-brothers-marry-two-sisters thing, it’s also a very cross-cultural affair, made more pronounced by the fact the brothers came from [the not very cosmopolitan] Kansas.

Even more fun is that Jim’s parents had three kids and the other Frame family had five, all very close in age, and they grew up in the same neighborhood in Piedmont.  AND we enjoy them all. Jim’s sibs are farther away (like Idaho and New York far) and we don’t see them as often, but we get to see most of the other Frame kids (kids… sheesh, everyone’s in their 50s and two are now in their 60s).  So family gatherings are pretty fun. It’s all we get for family, since nobody else–on Jim’s or my side–lives in Davis.

Other fun facts:

• My parents married in 1953, so they’d have celebrated their 61st this year — wow..
• If Jim and I make it to our 60th, we will be 100 and 103.  Heh.. wish us luck. 

I’m also throwing in a cat picture, because this cat, Fat Butt, is just too wonderful. Not the best picture.. with an iPhone in low light (sunbeam notwithstanding) from across the room, cropped to maximize its bigness, but, it’s what I got:

So I guess I can now call myself a real Davisite.  For the first time, made my way up and over the Dave Pelz Bicycle Overcrossing.

Which gives you a great view of Interstate 80, which was looking pretty mellow and peaceful from way up there:

(We do live in flattown.)

Dizzy yet?

Embarrassed to admit, I had no idea where one accessed the overcrossing, and no idea where I’d come out, but both were incredibly convenient to my beginning and ending points (Hoffman’s Automotive on the north side and Davis Swim and Fitness on the south).

I was also amazed by how many runners and bikers I came across making the same trip. Does absolutely everybody in town know about this thing?

And continuing my theme of community-built art in and around town, once done with my South Davis business, I headed home via the newly painted bicycle undercrossing:

It’s also a nice piece of colorful artwork (like its sister project at K and 4th):

This one’s shot inside, and that blur in the bottom-middle is a bike rider whizzing by.

It demonstrates one of the iPhone camera’s many limitations, but I like the effect anyway.

I finally went over to the corner of 4th and K to check out the mandala-like street mural. It’s really pretty:

It was painted a couple of weeks ago in conjunction with the Community Built Association conference.  Here’s what that movement is about:

The Community Built Association’s goal is to further the theory and practice of involving volunteers in the design, organization and creation of community projects that reshape the physical environment. We recognize the human need for connectedness and are committed to the positive value of communities creating and strengthening themselves through cultural action.

They did a number of projects around town.. this one, a mural inside the bike tunnel over by the new shovel sculpture near Whole Foods, and some others.  Derek, the guy who helped with our compost and recent series of backyard projects, was involved in the conference.  It’s a thing. It sounds cool.

This particular community-painted art project was co-designed and lead by Mark Rivera whose work, increasingly, is all over town (murals, ceramic sculptures, ceramic murals).  I got to work with him on the Compassion Bench a year ago (the 1-year anniversary of its dedication is May 31).  He’s a treasure and has added so much to the vibrancy of Davis through his art and vision.

So, the one at 4th and K…

I took all my photos of this street art while riding around and around and through it on my bike. Here’s another shot I took just after I recovered my iPhone, which had sailed out of my hand while I tried to take a picture of the ground while balancing and framing the perfect pic. Not so perfect…you can see my shadow and bike basket.. but the colors are wonderful.