Otherwise, tons of work for me, six hours of outpatient care for Nu; both of us came home feeling depleted. Nu had a good cry, I held it together...but couldn't wait for the parenting day to be over. Then I got lost in a book. And so to bed, hoping for a kinder tomorrow.
Pic: Scout and Huck could hear Dada's voice but they don't "see" things on screens, so Nu tried to show them up close. 💗
Nu helped me with the bigger limbs while Big A did our annual mow. After they got tired, it was just me listening to bird calls and dragging stuff out and taking it to the piles by the firepit and being plied with lemon water by Nu and visits from Big A.
We have kindling for the rest of the year. At least.
The rest of the day was a nice soak, then Impossible burgers I had prepped at breakfast, smores by the firepit, and so to bed (with a detour to finish Elif Batuman's Either/Or, which I loved).
While I was gone all afternoon, Big A took Nu to the cat café where Nu played with all the cats he wanted to and had a great time. Big A and I are both allergic (and I'm mildly ailurophobic) so poor Nu has to make do with visiting. I've been informed that when Nu is grownup, he will live with cats and rats and that we can take allergy meds when we want to visit. I think that's very fair.
Pic: Nu making a cat friend (and Big A's reflection).
It reminded me a bit of the anklet in Silapadikaram The Story of an Anklet and I was gratified that Nu remembered the plot-point about how there were rubies inside the heroine's anklet and only pearls in the queen's.
We picked up Big A from the train station yesterday--horrifyingly for me and Nu who tend to be very diligent about masking--he hadn't worn a mask on the Amtrak, so we made him test at home. Also, WTH. I mean he seemed suitably chastened, but I thought we were on the same page about this.
And I got my Bluey car back! A couple I met on a shuttle in an airport parking lot a while ago told me about "Save A Deer" whistles, so I'm putting some on this weekend. Please stay away from me on the highway, deer!
We managed to fit a lot into the 24 hours we were in YS, though. Peaches yesterday for reunion drinks, Glen Garden for flowers for Big A's mom with whom we were staying, Toy Company and Dark Star to keep Nu occupied, planned hangouts like the one pictured, and of course all the random running into old friends and neighbors.
It's difficult not to feel a bit of nostalgia for the YS years and wonder...Will we ever move back there again? What might our lives have been like if we'd stayed?
Surely no one deserves this much adoration... but it feels like Scout is giving me credit for being such a grown up today: getting Nu to multiple doc appts., taking multiple meetings, being supportive to Big A as he moves into his new office in WI, and rescuing all the plants in my office.
Or maybe Scout's commiserating because I almost got my Bluey back. Bluey got busted when I hit that poor deer back in February, and has been in the bodyshop for a month (parts shortage, delay, etc.). They called to say Bluey was ready, but when Nu and I drove off down the street, all sorts of warning lights began to flicker--so we went back for a recheck.
In any case, I needed an extra dose of love today, and Scout was right there for me.
We'd had a gnarly start to the day where I suspected I'd have to take Nu to the E.R.; so I was particularly glad with how fun and normal the rest of the day actually turned out--first a long visit from JG and then winding down with the new season of Umbrella Academy after dinner.
Plus I updated details of vacation week as #LaterPosts!
A sunny moment in a day filled with other less fun duties.
We had an early guided tour booked for La Sagrada Familia. Nu and I left early and walked around while we waited for the tour to start and Big A to show up after getting our train tickets. The tour started. Big A was in a taxi, but not there yet. When I asked the tour facilitator if we could wait a few minutes for Big A, I was told "He has lost his chance." I suspect we'll be quoting this for ages. 😂 I made up my mind to ask the tour guide a bunch of questions to delay our entry into the cathedral so Big A could join us. And then I screamed because someone ran up to me and whispered "Boo" in my ear. Big A!
La Sagrada Familia was more than I had even imagined. Even Nu was impressed. My sister remembered right away that I used to pore over a coffee-table book on Gaudi twenty years ago.... that's how long I've been waiting to see this. But nothing could prepare me for this ongoing, gaudy, excessive, earnest eruption of construction. And they have plans and reliefs all over the place, but the entire thing is a bonkers celebration of whimsy and religious fervor.
It was a hot day, and we'd spent much of the morning outside, so after a tapas break we piled into a taxi back to the hotel for a siesta. While we were chatting with the driver he said that his favorite place in Barcelona was Park Guell, which was on our list for that afternoon--that made everyone in the taxi super happy. Post-siesta, however we found that tickets for the Park were sold out--so we peeked at what we could from the outside and headed to the beach.
Beaches are my happy place, and the Mediterranean was particularly blue and mysterious. We left pink Big A in the shade of the promenade and Nu and I spent a long, long time walking on the pier and sitting in meditative silence by the waves. We had gotten news of the overturning of Roe and the possible domino effect on other personal protections at the start of the afternoon and that was weighing on me. Then began a string of texts from friends urging me to show up at the state capitol to protest.
It made me feel out-of-touch and selfish, but we had reservations for dinner, so we went. It was a small, earnest place that served us course after course of delicious, farm-fresh food for over three hours. And while we were wishing At had come too, he sent us a sweet picture of him at lunch with Grandma S who's visiting Lansing for a Banjo workshop.
#LaterPost
I haven't seen L in a while so I headed down the street after dinner for a hug and to update her on all the stuff going on. And omigosh--there were just so many fireflies out and about. L said they'd been out for a week now... I guess I've been such a shut-in, this was my first time seeing them this year.
So although my picture looks like unrelieved night, there are a few some sparks and sparkles here and there.
I may have taken that as a sign.
Not sure if that was foolhardy or plain foolish, but in the midst of all the ongoing drama I decided to go ahead and host the "Evening in India" fundraiser anyway.
Honestly, I didn't have the energy to cancel it and communicate with the eight people who bid $80 to sign up, and then have to find another date that worked for everyone, and then I'd have that date looming on the horizon. It seemed easier to just go ahead and make the four-course meal I'd promised for today.
So I did.
I was on my feet all day and didn't have time to think about anything but taste and temperature and coordinating time. (And unwrapping and arranging the desserts, which I got readymade at Swagath.)
And then I had a blast writing a menu and talking to a room full of people I don't know very well.
I'm so weird.
Along with the roof ruckus, came the quick death of my garden--perennials like lilac, phlox, hydrangeas, hostas have all been squashed flat. All the annuals--coleus, begonias, geraniums--ditto. If they'd asked me to move my precious plants ahead of time, I would have found a way to do that. Somehow the peony bush seems to have survived. Yay? Friends think the perennials will come back next year... Yay, I guess.
I keep thinking the garden looks like devastation and that I'm devastated. And then of all things, I worry I'm exaggerating my feelings. Things are worse in the world and could be worse here too. There's nothing to do but get through.
Pic: My flattened garden. Just a few weeks ago, I was so hopeful about starting.
So when KB invited me to go see them in concert, I said yes. It was wonderful! I got to sing along to all my favorites, and Garbage whose song "Stupid Girl" I was near addicted to, once upon a time, opened.
What I couldn't shake was the surreal sense of time and age--all around me I could see people like myself and I could see us all as kids when the songs first came out. We still loved the same songs, but were different people with different lives all these decades later. Curt Smith looks like an older version of the boy in the video, but Roland Orzabal (whose name I had to look up because he was the one I didn't have a crush on) looks like a completely different person.
I came home to the roofers hard at work with Tyvek wrap around the front of the house too. Older pictures I've posted show we've had that bright blue tarp up on the back roof for a long ass time.
And while we've looked forward to this day for over three years, nothing could have prepared us for the all-day hammering, trampled garden, and glass from the skylights everywhere. (Thankfully broken skylight glass is clumpy and cubed like car windshield glass--not slivers.)
And now we hear the roof beams are rotted and need replacing ($$$). Plus they need to be ordered and that will take time. I know there's a crying jag coming my way any time now.
I mean Nu is literally picking cherries here 🤗. Between the squirrels and the rain, we didn't get any cherries last year, so Nu decided he'd get in there even as our cherries are just beginning to turn pinkish.
And... Nu got offered the job he interviewed for at the mall yesterday! He says he was interviewed by two "older ladies" (this was defined for me as "20s or 30s" LOLOLOL) with "great energy." He'll start in July. He's so chuffed that he landed his first job interview ever.
In other child-related news, in an unexpected development, I'm experiencing a sense of calm post At's car accident now that he's taking the bus everywhere. I didn't realize before how much his driving and his driving while brown status weighed on me.
I'm about 70% packed for my trip to LA tomorrow. I'm gone for just two nights and Big A is fully capable (and better equipped by training) to take care of convalescing Nu, give Scout his meds, etc. but it still feels weird to leave. I'm ostensibly headed to my cousin's wedding--earlier than planned since the date has been changed due to a cancer diagnosis in the family. That sadness--and the superficial stress of making sure I remember the zillion things I need for my saris--are on my mind. I suspect my cousins and I will revert to being our silly childhood selves when we actually see each other.
We started the day with a sunrise hike in Papago Park and then I delivered Big A to his conference and took off for The Heard Museum of Amer...
