Relative Something

By now we should have survived a second night of camping with my siblings and their families, if we haven’t been asked to pack up early by the rest of the campers here. I have probably eaten too much and laughed to tears so many times my muscles are sore. Or maybe that soreness is from trying to play sports with little kids for a couple of days. Regardless, it is precious family time with siblings and their spouses and kids. It is a treat to see cousins developing connections that come from sharing the extended time of multiple overnights and many shared meals.

Here are my siblings posing with Mom a bunch of years ago now…

If all goes according to plan, I will be waking this morning in a tent at the campground where my siblings and their families are gathering for the weekend. It has been almost a year since the passing of our mother and this is the date we picked in advance last year, for a family reunion, to assure extended family will still connect even though our matriarch is gone.

We have plenty of food and games on the plan, and maybe even some music making. However, I am expecting a possibility that there will be a bit of horseplay and verbal jousting, as well. So, in advance, I will put them all in their place, by posting pictures of them. Because I can. And I’ll probably need it as a counter measure, since, well…  they out-number me.

We’re having something of a pajama party this weekend. Here’s what that looked like when we did it a few years ago…

I’m curious. If we were to plan a Hays family reunion weekend of camping, and pick the date a year in advance, what are the odds that it would turn out to be forecast for cloudy and good chance of rain showers? Just askin’.

And another thing, …what is it about the tendency to come up with a word for a sentence that I am composing that–surprise!–I just used about two sentences before, yet I don’t have a clue I have done it until I read it back later? I guess it should be no surprise that a particular word would occur to me again shortly after it already did moments ago. The part that gets me is when I don’t notice at the time it happens.

I don’t know why I would wonder about it. It fits right in there with the times when I think of something I intend to tell Cyndie, get her attention, with an introductory statement, and then stare helplessly when I find I have no idea what I was going to say. Let’s not even count the number of times I walk into a room and discover that I have no memory of what I was headed in there to do.

I love how issues like this are so often related to aging, even though it has happened to me my entire life. In the end, it probably falls back on being related to the level of hydration or something. What!? The brain is sensitive!

And this just in… I know how to tune a guitar and focus an image, but I have no clue how to know when to harvest something from a garden. I can tell you when it is finally too late. I’m pretty uninformed about growing food, but now I know what broccoli looks like when you let it go to flower. When you tune or focus, you go past the perfect spot and then come back again to the place that is optimal. With growing vegetables, you don’t get to go past perfect and then come back. I’m not really all that curious about this one, except maybe how a perfectionist manages growing food. The garden needs your supervision, Elysa!

And as long as I’m being curious, I don’t know how to decide whether to replace old appliances that have outperformed their life expectancy, before they finally give up and die at an inopportune time, especially when it is the furnace/AC and the clothes washer & dryer that both fall into that category? I usually fit it into the category of, “the money will need to be spent one way or another,” but that one always fails me because it gets stuck on the, “I’m a procrastinator” problem.

I tell you, it is amazing that I get anything accomplished in this world. You could even say it is “curious.”

I have survived another return trip from the lake. Just about the time I am expecting to readjust to life in the suburbs again, I ended up taking an unexpected trip to long past school days. We were giving Cyndie’s dad a ride home and when we got to her parent’s house, were expecting to have dinner with family. What we didn’t expect was the inclusion of a long-time-gone childhood friend that was in town for a high school reunion. In the middle of the exchange of funny stories, someone pointed out that we had 5 consecutive years of graduates from the same school, sitting around the table. We had a lot of common experiences that served as fodder for a wealth of tales that spawned much laughter.

When I finally reached my own home, I was behind my timeline to accomplish my comfortable Sunday routine, but my mind was still cluttered with the fragments of 40 years ago. I glanced through the mail pile and saw the new edition of the National Geographic magazine. Scanning just bits of features I see an idea about how to shade the earth from the sun to mitigate the over-warming of the planet and read accounts of the dwindling numbers of salmon.

It all just seemed to strike me in a way that boggled my mind. On any given day, I might contemplate whether I need to trim my finger nails or not. At the same time, someone is trying to imagine a way we can intervene on a grand scale to reduce the impact of global warming, while tribes of people who have fished salmon for generations are witnessing the decimation of that resource.

I remember when I was in high school in the ’70s, being taught that it was quite possible that we would not be buying single family homes when we grew up and started families because of concerns about the limits of energy resources. The thinking was, that people would all be living in multi-family dwellings that are more energy efficient. That didn’t end up becoming true, in my experience, but it could be that they were just off in the timing. I know the available real estate for new development in my suburb has almost been exhausted. For generations, people have assumed they will have more than those who have come before them, but logic dictates that this pattern can’t continue forever.

It’s like this state of mind where children misunderstand when parents and educators tell them that someday they could grow up to be President, by thinking they could actually all be the President, not that they all have the opportunity to accomplish the feat. I don’t know if it compares with challenges faced by legions of people in centuries past, but I can only assume they face mind boggling moments of their own. And we continue to have children, raise families, schedule our days, put one step in front of the other, and forge on, regardless the challenges faced.

It’s Monday. I guess I will go to work and see what needs to be done today.

It’s the weekend, and a relatively calm and quiet one. We are at the lake and sleeping in our usual basement room that currently is anything but usual. Carpets have been pulled up and doors removed from closets and rooms, as a result of our little flood mishap a couple of weeks ago. I am able to report that I brought up a replacement drain cap for the wet vac, so that fiasco is behind me.

We watched the big finale of le Tour yesterday; the climb up Mont Ventoux. It was sort of exciting, yet, also not. No real impact resulted from the monumental climb. Now I am faced with withdrawal from watching 3-weeks of racing. I have never really appreciated the final day’s stage of riding into Paris, but I’ll probably watch it today, anyway. How could I not?

Yesterday, it seemed like I had special powers. The weather was a random mix of sun and rain. A large gang of kids and their parents were out playing soccer and invited me to join in. We played right through the rain. It was great. Afterward, I joined some of the kids in a swim and then came up to satisfy my hunger and a longing to lounge in a hammock.

The hammocks in a brief moment of sunshine

The regular rope hammock was wet from the rain, so I rigged up my favorite portable one to hang from the beams holding up the deck, just outside our bedroom door. It worked perfect! So perfect in fact, that when I climbed in for an initial test, I found I could reach the table nearby, so I could have my water and a snack within reach while I read. I went back inside to get something for a pillow behind my head and upstairs to find a snack, fill my water glass and get my book. Everything was in order to completely fulfill what I was craving and I performed the precise gymnastics to climb aboard and get settled.

It started to rain.

I pondered just a brief moment, considering the possibility of holding my ground, but luckily chose to bail out. It turned out to be one of the intense pours that last just a few minutes and then are followed by brilliant sunshine. I was so inspired to take advantage of my new setup that I got a broom and swept the water off the deck above to hasten the end of the dripping below. Once settled in the hammock again, I could see above me that I should have also swept the bottom of the deck because there were a lot of drips clinging to the bottom of the boards. I decided to tough those out.

I did get enough reading in to become sleepy and put down my book, but hardly slept enough to qualify calling it a nap when I heard voices that brought me back to reality. It’s a good thing. It started to rain again. I bailed out. This time, I knew enough not to waste time sweeping the deck. I devised a plan to remove the rope hammock from its frame and put my portable one out there. It took some trial and error, but I got the other one hung where it can dry and mine supported just the right height off the ground. I went back in to get my book and that pillow and then swung myself onto the hammock. It started to rain.

There was something about the timing I had for getting settled in the hammock and the movement overhead of clouds filled with more water than they can hold, that made me believe I must have something special going on. I wonder if I could market this ability to some farmers who have been unable to coax rain from the sky when they need it. Special powers, indeed.

I believe everyone has probably experienced this type of thing happening to them at one time or another. I suppose there is a possibility that the universe has a bit of a practical joker’s sense of humor to it. That could explain a lot of the situations in life we end up dealing with, don’t you think?

I recently pulled a box from storage that holds much of my collection of family history, to revisit the documents related to Intervale Ranch. The box also holds a lot of stuff related to my sporadic forays into the genealogy of my family. That reignited my urge to again look into some of the dead-ends on my family tree. With no memory of where I left off the last time I was working on this project, I just tried starting fresh and simple. I did a Google search on a name. Sometimes, simple is good.

The second link on the list of results turned out to be a post on a message board requesting information about my great-grandparents. Wa-laa! The query that I discovered had been posted originally in 2005, so I suspected my results would be limited. However, in composing her query, the person provided so much detail that I had more answers than I could imagine. I didn’t really need to pursue her any further. However, I did have the information that she was seeking, so it was the least I could do to respond, even if it was four and a half years after the fact.

To my surprise, I got a reply within the hour. Today, I met one of our 4th cousins, once removed, online, and learned that one of our ancestors was a sharp-shooter in the civil war. I haven’t verified anything she told me, but it is fun to add these threads to our story. She mentioned, “…Hannah descends from the founder of Hampton, Rev. Stephen Bachiler quite famous and he has many famous descendants from actor James Dean to Pres. Richard Nixon and us.” My newly discovered distant cousin reported that she is in touch with other descendants, but I am the first one to contact her from this branch of the family.

It gives me the feeling that if we looked thoroughly enough, we would come to find many of us are more connected than we ever imagined. It’s the kind of thing that can lead from one thing to the next… from farm to family ancestors.

A work in progress

Remember that post a few days back where I was envisioning how things would be if I ran the world? Well, I would see to it that there would be no need to brush and floss teeth. Nuisance. The whole hygiene thing is dreary annoyance. Talk about repetition over and over again.

And another thing: Why do we allow ourselves to view reality programming without constantly wondering about the elephant in their room with the camera pointed at them? Why is Bear Grylls’ “Man vs. Wild” show so compelling even though it is obvious there is a camera crew with him the whole time? How would your behavior be altered if someone were constantly recording your every move? I think I would suck in my gut more and try to sit up a little straighter. Don’t ever forget that what you are watching was recorded, most of the time by people with cameras, standing next to the subjects trying to pretend they are not part of what is going on.

Do you know anyone who says they have to watch the television news? It is not true. They don’t have to. You don’t have to. I grew up in a household that seemed like it always had WCCO radio on. I have memories of seeing the 6 and 10 o’clock news on WCCO channel 4 on television pretty regularly. I do know that if it was on, it was tuned to 830 AM or channel 4. I’m sure the orientation toward ‘CCO was a result of Mom and Dad personally knowing Dean Montgomery who was on the air. I first discovered there was an alternative viewpoint when I was across the road at the Fullerton’s house when they put the news on the television and it was KSTP. It seemed totally foreign to me, but somehow fitting for them. I was associating tv news programs with the people who chose to watch which one. I bet they preferred Pepsi to Coke, as well.

I remember the early days after moving out of my parent’s house and into my own and that we didn’t have a television right away and it felt very disconcerting to not be able to check the news. I felt lost. However, whenever I go on a vacation and am away from the daily news, it is not strange at all. I actually like it. More than once, I have returned home and made a conscious decision to continue to avoid the news even though I was back to my home routine.

Currently I’m on a pretty long run. Being free from the daily blah, blah, blah of their broadcasts is something that I find to be very refreshing. It’s a bit like still being on vacation, even though I’m home. I tend to peek at the newspaper at work and read news online now. When I really want to get away from it all, I don’t read any of it. It works wonderfully. I successfully get away from it all. And I survive! I recommend it. Better that than skipping your daily hygiene routine.

Imagine if something wasn’t actually as important as we thought it was. How could that be?

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Have you noticed how two different things can be true at the same time? It can already be the middle of July, and at the same time, it is hardly past the middle of the year 2009. Why is it such a universal feeling, being shocked at how quickly the days pass? It seems as if everyone shares that exclamation. “It’s already July 15th!? Where does the time go?”

Well, it’s all relative. You knew that.

It’s relative something.

Extra credit goes to the person who knows which comedian does a pretty good rant about how we revere nature and ooh and aah over seeing deer and bunny rabbits and cute little raccoons and put feeders out to attract birds and how we like to feel as if we live in the woods, yet we then go to the hardware store where there are aisles of chemical weapons and devices to exterminate or eradicate the same problem critters that pester our gardens and lawns and shrubs and we spend a lot of money to fight against that which we want to live near.

Last night, as I walked by the front door and noticed movement just outside, I found a doe standing right on our sidewalk, looking like it was ready to step in the front door. I called to Cyndie, hoping she would be able to see, but that startled the deer and off it went. Cyndie reported that the hibiscus bush with over 20 blossoms that her mother gave her and was left out in the yard to catch some rain around the beginning of June, and then subsequently chomped to stubs by deer overnight when it got left out, has miraculously recovered to sprout one new blossom and was by the front sidewalk right now. She went out to see if that is what brought the deer so close to the front door, and finding that it was only a close call and no new chomping was apparent, pulled it inside for the night.

We want the animals and we don’t want the animals, it all depends on how you frame it.

Yesterday was a fine transition from the crazy world of post-flood recovery, niece & nephews mania, lost drain caps, and glorious lake and woods, to the calm normalcy of house, yard & garden, Kitty, mail pile and phone messages. It is an off-day for the riders of the Tour and I think I am ready for the break. A little morning soccer and then a day of work will put me back into a routine that allows me to be prepared for the next adventure life throws my way.

For some reason, I feel very ready for a Monday day. Maybe it’s that great dose of playing guitar on the beach I was able to do yesterday. Priceless. I know we need the rain, but the beautiful sunny weather was really a treat. The moon was awesome over the lake the last few nights and the clouds in the sky on the ride home were somethin’ else. That’ll get me through a few days stuck inside a work environment, I hope.

Tuesday I get to return to the wonderful distractions of the Tour de France.

Bring on a Monday!

(…Monday the 13th isn’t a bad thing, is it?)