The silence in between the notes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had a day today. It was a day plucked right out of my known universe and taken free and clear,  if there is any such thing.

The memo came late on Monday afternoon. Vince declared a national holiday for C_Corp the day before the forth just because. I've never seen him do that but its not particularly relevant. I don't think. Anyway, I could have used a vacation day, a personal day or just told my boss I wouldn't be in on Thursday and he'd have smiled, asked if anything was on fire and then said have a nice weekend. The point is it doesn't occur to me. It almost never occurs to me. I'm fairly regimented. I have choices and I exercise them with some level of consciousness but to be honest, I'm not spontaneous. Way too much control freakiness going on for that.

So here's what I did with my day, which is only half over but the second half is significantly less spontaneous. I sent the nanny away, kept my kid home from camp and did stuff. You know, stuff. Like the kind of stuff you just kind of feel like doing (or the kid feels like doing) with very little if any clock attached and maybe interspersed with some stuff that ought to be done like picking up the vacuum cleaner. I tell you, I kind of felt like Huck Finn on the river for awhile there.

Little Girl and I had breakfast around nine. We ate together at the kitchen table, side by side talking about nothing in particular and no hurry at all. I don't know that's ever happened. There's always something has to happen right now hurry up and finish your meal we're halfway out the door already without you. We had cranberry walnut toast which I had to buy since my oven door is still welded shut (please, do not get me started) and eggs which I still have to buy because my chickens aren't here yet and even if they were they wouldn't be laying yet. By the way, the Internet provided coop is here and it is in parts and I kind of win, hee hee hee.... And breakfast was nice and then eventually complete.

We went to the garden and I couldn't tell you why except there was more grazing to be done by both of us, maybe to help digest the protein. Also we had to empty the compost into the compost bin and I discovered two very funny things and maybe I'll take a picture. There are potatoes and some kind of squash growing most prodigiously in my compost bin. Seriously. I don't know what all got dumped in there but they're taking off faster than that one rogue sugar pumpkin and quite honestly I hope they eat the next raccoon climbs the fence (and spit him out for the dog to chew). By the way, the raccoons, which have more stomach then sense, made off with a two gallon container (plastic) of organic weed killer and ate it. I am not making this up. The fuckers ate it. I can't even imagine the repercussions. Maybe they will stop dismantling my compost bin (which they could climb over more easily than dismantle) but I kind of doubt it.

Eventually we got out of the house and headed into town. First stop was the local bank where we opened up a savings account for Little Girl. I've been meaning to do this forever but that would require me home with her before 4 PM on a weekday and that's just about never going to happen. Until today. It happened, she has a passbook and that junior capitalist is happy as a pig rolling in it. I have a whole other blog entry devoted to the fact that we opened an account for money she played with in her bedroom as if it was meaningless.... I'll stop there.

We picked up the cat food and the lighter fluid and the vacuum cleaner and a prescription and stopped by the nursery to talk about my soil and buy some geraniums and marigolds and potting soil for the window box we just discovered outside Little Girl's window after cutting down that would be over sized decorative tree that never should have been planted that close to the foundation in the first place and we came home and ate like wolves and then packed the car and headed out to Bisceglie Scribner Pond which is pictured above in a very imaginary pristine state.

Bisceglie Scribner Pond is at the back of Bisceglie Scribner Park which is where Somebody's Mother burned herself up like a Tibetan Monk awhile back. I didn't want to go there but last weekend we did and it was OK. We did go there long enough to discover that the pond was not a terrible place at all (I had visions of a small watering hole gone to hell with too many people and too much sunblock and other things clogging the waterways and I didn't want any part of it). As it turns out it's a ceeeeement swimming pool. OK, ceeeeement pond fed by springs and pumped up and out into the Saugatuck River. Not sure what this is costing us environmentally or otherwise but there it is. Beach sand and all. And this is where Little Girl wanted to spend the day.

In the beginning there were only two other children she didn't know and she was sad but we stayed and spent some time examining this strange cement swimming hole. It had tadpoles. Tadpoles in multiple stages of development and we stood, she and I, side by side, and stared down in a pure state of wonder. She was afraid of them. I suppose I ought to march her into that swamp a bit more often because apparently she doesn't go there on her own (because really, when is she ever out there on her own?).

After awhile she made friends and more friends came and she lost her inhibitions and her fears and I sat on the shore and watched her. I just watched her and I thought about everything I had and was at that age and everything she does not have and most likely will not have and instead of being sad I saw this brief moment where it didn't matter so much anyway because, well, there she was out there in the water with other kids, sometimes over her head and sometimes not and despite the life guards and all the parents, having to keep her own head above water anyway.

We stayed all afternoon until it was truly time to come home and then went to the garden to collect soil samples, eat blue berries and plant some more corn.

Now we are cleaned and dressed and waiting for Nomans to come home on the train and we will all go to dinner at the restaurant down the street with the maybe OK food and the terrible service but it's the place where they know us and we know them and I'm thinking that might be what this is really all about.

Happy Independence Day