Dog Days

Yesterday

The old television in the garage, now mounted on the wall (thanks, Matt) is a great addition to the home gym. My Bowflex treadmill would have me pay 20 bucks a month to get access to trainers, youtube, and to stream the pay services for which I already pay. The purpose of building the home gym was to avoid the $20 a month gym cost. With the TV up and wifi capable, this morning I ran with a video of a rather nondescript tropical beach in front of me. Afterward, I used a youtube trainer to help me through my weight routine. This is really delicious having this space. I got rid of Jenny's bike yesterday, which had been on a trainer, as I am replacing it with a stationary bike. By the fall, I expect my garage will be fully whipped into shape. It's so much better, thanks to Matt, my handyman, and the negentropy he has introduced into my otherwise rather disordered life. 

Sunday 6:12 a.m.

It is almost quiet here, a rare occasion given my proximity to the airport and

the highway. Birdsong and crow calls punctuate, rather than break the  morning revery. The aroma of coffee and the lingering taste of Powerseed bread and peanut butter mark that I have been up for almost an hour with my sweetest of dogs. 

I am hoping to get out this morning and down to Lowes to get a bunch of bark to continue the work in my yard. The existing landscaping is under relentless assault from the bastard children of Luther Burbank--Himalayan blackberry. I will have to break down and take radical action on that front soon enough. Meanwhile, my handyman Matt has done me the tremendous favor of laying weedblock and bark down along the fence line  where last week he planted my blueberry and huckleberry plants. It's a ten foot stretch, smack dab in the middle of a 19 foot length of fence. I need to fix that other 19 feet, frozen shoulder or not. His work is amazing, meticulous. Perfection. So, let's finish it off. My gardener, who I paid lots of money to last year to lay down bark, didn't bother with weed lol k, I discovered relatively soon after the work was done. I won't use him again for that work.

My sister, who lives on a hill two blocks from Seward Park, invited me to come over to her neighbors today to watch the Blue Angels. He sets up bleachers on his roof and throws a Seafair party every year. I haven't been to my sisters on Seafair since 1992 or so, a year after she bought the house for 197k, which we all thought was an insane price to pay for a 5 bedroom full basement craftsman in Seward Park. I will never be a financial advisor. Anyway, I hate Seafair--the boat races, the traffic and the crowds to be specific. I don't hate the Blue Angels, I have very fond memories of going with my mom to watch then up in Madrona, where she knew of the perfect spot to see them. They made her so happy. When I was a kid, they used to use the Renton Boeing airport as their bade of operations, so we would see them a lot and very low to the ground. The said, I would trade not having them around for no drunken crowd of revelers and the traffic. So, hard pass on watching the Blue Angels in Seward Park.

There is a smell to the middle of summer that takes me back to apple, plum and pear picking, along with the harvesting of blackberries. My neighborhood in Bryn Mawr had been full of orchards at one time, my mother told me--she grew up there during the depression. Before they had a home in Skyway, they were for a time living in their car out near Panther Lake, and she remembered driving into Bryn Mawr so her parents could pick blueberries for a little money. I wonder where they were coming from, before Panther Lake? I know my mom was born in San Francisco, but, like Jesus, she apparently had some missing years. 

The smell of ripening summer also reminds me of the old Renton mall with its Sears, the QFC, the diner, the Command Center, and the early summer carnival held in the south end of that giant parking lot. We would ride our bikes down to the fair on the streets, no helmets, compwting with cars for road space. The itinerant carnies always scared me, but we couldnt resist--we went every year--the allure of the terrible rides and the carnival games. I have never been as sick or as scared on a ride as I was after riding the Zipper for the first and last time.  

The lazy days also hold memories of losing Corey and the feeling of being adrift in a world bereft of logic or understanding. I did more drugs in 1984 than anyone 17 years of age should be able to do. I thought my life was over when he died, and did all I could to help that misconception become a reality. I remember going up to Robert Hugfman's (may he rest in peace) dad's house after I scored an eight-ball of coke and sitting in that empty house on a lot of land on the top of 84th, and doing line after line. It was the last time I spent any time with Robert, who had been a friend since grade school, until I saw him at our 20th high school reunion (also in the dpeths of summer), me grown up, drug free and married with children, he a meth addict, divorced, absent patent of one, back home living with his mom on 118th Street. 

All of these memories wending their way through my morning musings like a pumpkin vine snaking about a flower bed. 

We had a glorious backyard garden in Renton, when the kids were wee. One year the neighbor found out that Jenny wouldn't believe me when I told her that a sunflower wasn't a zucchini plant. On the day of a little get together bbq, the neighbor came over and attached zucchini to a sunflower the plant was about 8 feet tall. We were all outside talking and Jenny looks over at the sunflower and sees the zucchini and a triumphant look in the form o a self-satisfied smile spreads across her face and she loudly proclaims to me and all within earshot, "See, Geoff, I told you that was a zucchini plant." The assembled adults look at the sunflower and the laughter began. Jenny was an amazingly good sport about the whole thing, and I am smiling now just thinking about it.