Life of Wry

No particular rise time, a morning walk with Sabrina and Bella dog, great talk with David at farmer’s market then some leisurely time on a bench in the gardens of Central Park with Jim. A bit of writing, a couple phone calls this early afternoon, followed by a hopefully fierce workout at the gym, and then a walk downtown with Paul and Janet and Jim for dinner.  Jim’s takin’ a nap, Peter’s at a baseball practice.  The sun is shining bright. All is well.  

If there’s a hair out of place, it was the unfortunate fact that the pastry vendor ran out of Elephant Ears and we had to deliver a cherry turnover instead to the boy who would be served. He’s got us well trained.  

These are some kinda posies growing in an urn on our front porch.  

Here is yet another photo of the ditch (really big ditch). It’s really called the Pacific Flyway, or the Yolo Bypass.  But neither works as well with my title.

Just being lazy; it’s quarter to midnight, I’m pooped, I took only one photo today, and this is it.. again from a moving vehicle. Again on our way to a baseball game.

This was the one day this week we expected no rain threat, and yet…   rained liked crazy.  By the time the game started, the rain had stopped, however.  Only a few sprinkles here and there.

Lost a well fought game to a powerhouse team.  It was largely a pitcher’s duel.  No shame in a 3-1 defeat.  Not used to Peter being a DH. But he did a good job: managed to come up with one of only three Davis hits. But it came in an otherwise unproductive inning. Our only score came later in the game when, with bases loaded, our batter got hit by a pitch. Goofy… a HBP RBI.

Anyway.  Storm clouds.

… another baseball game under jaw-dropping skies.

This one’s looking east while waiting for the boys to take the home field; Community Park and the bicycle overcrossing just beyond. 

This one’s looking west and shows the super saturated infield, only barely playable, given the storms earlier in the week. Yesterday, there was standing water everywhere; nobody thought we’d play today, but the boys went to work with pumps, bucket brigades, and rakes.

Coach Creely is exchanging line-ups with the coach from Monterey Trail High School, players in/around dugout.

Today’s game was the second of three games this week (one more tomorrow).  It was also their third mercy-decision game in a row. They are playing well and having a good time.  All you can ask for.

It was this kind of day…

Perfect for this…

That is Peter in his wind-up on the mound for Davis.  The JV team won its game 11-1, second mercy decision in a row.  They are on a roll!

THAT’s what I’m talking about!

Rain. Backyard. Bridge.

As I write this, it’s raining like a sonofagun. Not exactly how I would have planned it, but I spent a fair amount of time today out IN the rain … wet on my walk with Vicki, wet on my walk downtown for lunch with Jim, wet as I ran a couple of errands, wet as I met outside with Ruben to talk about laying a new flagstone path around the backyard…  I’d have far preferred staying inside and listening to the rain while drinking tea..

But I’m just so grateful for the rain, even on April 1st.

Peter picked up Jim’s guitar tonight. First song he played was Stairway to Heaven (recall, he’d recently learned to play it on the piano). He’d played the cello in 4th grade, so knows a little about strings, but this was the first time he’d played the guitar.  Not being a music person, I’m mystified by the whole thing. He said it’s not hard to figure out and just translated what he’d learned on the piano.  He made very quick work of picking out the melody. It was neat. I heard Jim a little while ago showing him how to add chords.

He’s got a growing repertoire on the piano, the majority of which is music from my era, so I’m enjoying it a lot. He’ll poke out a melody, then add chords, then little fancy trills and riffs (like my music speak?). He sounds really good to me, but I’m easily impressed. It’ll be fun to see if the guitar holds the same interest for him.

I know I wrote about this not too long ago… but I just love that he loves it. I don’t think a day goes by that he doesn’t sit at the piano. And/or his sax.  I’m a wee bit sad that he’s not playing in an organized school band, but the whole purpose of his participating in the school program at all was to introduce him to the world of music. Which it so did. It’s a fantastic bonus that he loves it as much as he does and learned enough over the six years to apply his knowledge to new instruments.  I’m thrilled about that.

A grunge filter seemed appropriate.

Having a bit of a wincy time this afternoon looking through a book of poetry from my first year of college. You should never do that. The poems are uniformly horrible. Seriously, embarrassingly horrible. They will never see the light of day, but I don’t have the heart to throw out the collection.

Recurring themes include nature and the environment (a regular John Denver, I was), music (huge for me in the 60s and 70s), family and friends.  At least the themes were okay.

I used my own pictures throughout as illustrations and prompts, and those, for the most part, were okay, too.

(And now that I think about it… that’s pretty much exactly what I’m doing with this blog, what, 40 years later? Good god. I’m consistent, I guess.)

Anyway, I decided to scan some of the friend photos.. and post them here.

Standing on our front porch, here are Penny Lambert, me, Betsy Osborne and Janet Stark. Penny is long gone, no idea where she settled, Janet is a violin maker up in Oregon, but I’m not in touch with her. Betsy, a friend from the crib, is still a good friend.  She had dinner with Mom and me just six days ago. She is the head nurse in the emergency department of Torrance Memorial Hospital and has been a nurse for something like 30 years. She’s amazing and someone I’ll stay close to for the duration.

Buncha imps.

(I was forever doing this with my dresses, by the way.)

Here’s a photo of some of my first grade buddies on the playground of Valmonte School.  I took this with my very own Brownie.

Wendy Cooper, Sarah Beukema, mystery boy with hand on heart, Bruce Jewett,  Missy Neal, Jeanie Larson, Loreta somebody, Donna Bennet, Lori Schrader, Caroll Spike (on tippy toes in back), Patty Keifer and Heather Lewis.

Wendy visited a couple years ago, and is a regular facebook buddy.

A few years later, here’s one of me and my fellow grill sprouts, and funny, some are from the same cast of characters as above:

Me on top of Julie Broen, Sally Alden on top of Patti Harrer, Lisa Sterman on top of Jeanie Larson, Robin Lee on top of Katy Schriener and Donna Bennet on top of Wendy Cooper. I think we are in Lisa’s kitchen, there for a girl scout meeting. Troop 262.  Junior High, probably about 6th grade.  All but Patti and Wendy lived in our neighborhood… it was just packed with kids.

I see Julie a fair amount on facebook, Robin, Lisa and Donna a bit, and Sally and I just did a road trip from Georgia to California last fall.

And finally, here’s one of my two closest neighbors and best friends, Julie Broen (two doors down) and Katy Schriener (next door).  This was taken, I think, circa our first year of college… we’d gone away and come back for some holiday. Standing in front of the giant jeffry pine in Julie’s front yard (a tree we spent a lot of time in).

Julie is married to a minister, does some ministry of her own in the same church, I believe, and lives up in Oregon. Our dear friend Katy has passed away.

The friendships live on, some only in my heart, but they live on.

It rained all day, so we stayed in and lounged around.  Can’t remember the last one of those kind of days.  So luxurious.. enjoyed every second.

If we’d gone to Farmer’s Market this morning, we’d have seen this:

Poor the Farmer’s Market oak tree deck! I think they’ve determined it was arson.

Got weather lucky today. Two things that were weather-dependent, both happened. Happy.

First thing: Had to move a pile of dirt from the street to the back yard.

Brief backstory: This was top soil delivered three days ago that was to be used to fill a trench created by plumbers hired to replace the a busted sewer line. (Recall: when the plumbers went to refill the trench they’d dug, they found that rain had so compacted the soil, they were short of dirt sufficient to fill the trench completely.  Way short.)  The night after the dirt was delivered, it rained like crazy, which soaked the pile (not to mention washed some of the dirt a half a block down the gutter). The trench-filling effort was aborted and rescheduled for today.

So, back to today: The pile wasn’t supposed to be wet and heavy, but because of all the rain, it was both.  So it was a grunt to load, haul, unload and spread.  Here’s the pile (and note those muddy gutters):

Frances is loading mud into a wheelbarrow here. The dirt is so heavy, it’s hard to maneuver the wheelbarrow.  Our other solution was to shovel smaller loads into buckets and then take the buckets in a cart. Marginally easier. This is what the mud looks like after dumping one of the buckets:

That’s solid, goey, wet mud. Looks like a couple of giant turds, no?   Then ya had to spread it out, lest it dry into a solid, hard lump. I mean really.

This was some back breaking work.  But we hired this guy to help:

He had no trouble filling and moving a wheelbarrow full of mud. That’s 20 (years old) for you.

When he finished moving all the dirt (he arrived about 45 minutes into the task and made pretty quick work of what remained), he started dismantling our three compost storage containers and spreading the contents in a strategic manner in “the pit,” the area of our yard that is to become a large raised bed for vegetables.  More on that project later.

Anyway, we accomplished all of this without the hassle of rain.  Very grateful for that!

Second thing: Managed to get the second of two baseball games in this week, both without rain.

The JV team won both games pretty decisively, which was great.  They were the first two conference games, so they’re off to a confident start.

Even nicer today was the dugout visit by the DHS principal, Will Brown.  Pretty classy move to attend an away game (Grant High in Sac) and spend time with the JV team.  He also made an appearance at the varsity game, being played on the next field over.  Turns out, he went to Grant as a kid, and worked as an administrator in that district for a long time. Still, to make the effort was greatly appreciated, and very cool.  Here he is, flanked by Daniel and Peter.  Photo courtesy of Dianna Henrickson.

He moved around a little, talking to all the players.

So, in the end, it was a lucky day.  May the rain now fall!