Day 203: Rainy Day & Red Apples
As I write this, I'm sitting on the couch after playing a vigorous game of Chupie's version of fetch in the living room. She always gets the zoomies after having to go out in the rain, and so when we came upstairs just now, quite soaked from a potty trip, she had to run off some of that excess energy. It lifted my mood, I have to say, on this grey and gloomy day. I also just got off the phone with T-Mobile tech support, for the fifth time in the past three days. Mani's phone -- her brand new phone, I might add -- crashed with some kind of weird security error message, and it took multiple calls to finally arrange getting a replacement, but then we couldn't get her photos transferred from the old phone, etc.
It really is an "etc." kind of scenario, the type of thing in our technology-driven lives that sucks up hours of time and forces you (me) to continuously practice remembering that the actual individual person on the other end is doing some shit job they need and whatever the headache is isn't their fault. In any case, something like divine intervention may have occurred, as I was just able to retrieve all of her images and move them onto the new phone , though surely the divine has other things to tend to.
Seriously, I never fully motivated today. I played multiple rounds of Candy Crush earlier when I could have been doing work, just surrendering to the low energy. We have returned to weather that calls for wearing yoga pants and no bra after a long, hot summer. I am taking an extended break from running, to nurse a baby knee injury and make sure I don't end up unable to run at all, which would be really sad after my six-month streak. We've been blowing through the alarm and getting up later and later. Mid-October peaks with color and then begins its slide into shorter days, and sure enough, our animal bodies respond in kind seeking more food and sleep.
Earlier, Pearl sent me a 14-minute video of an adorable gay chef making mini pumpkin cakes. I sat and watched the whole thing, lulled by the pingy background music and soothed by the step-by-step instructions resulting in something cute and no doubt delicious. "Want to make those together this weekend?" I texted him back. He said yes, pointing out that we already have mini bundt cake pans so we may as well use them.
The backdrop to everything is the election three weeks from today, voter lines 10-12 hours deep already in some states, the Coney-Barrett hearings which I am decidedly NOT watching, the 215,000 Americans who have died from Covid-19, and a president who literally considered wearing a Superman outfit beneath his suit. Every client meeting touches on feelings of outrage, disgust, grief, overwhelm, hope, and incredulity.
Mani and I signed up to take a writing workshop with our dear friend, Doug Anderson, a masterful writer and poet. I admit I hemmed and hawed a bit about making the commitment, but the chance to study with him as well as to have a creative date night with my wife was too good to pass up. I wrote a poem yesterday for our first week's workshop, which is Thursday:
Red delicious just on this side of rotting
in red ceramic,
less farm to table, more orchard to bowl,
asking me to do something useful for once --
roll up my sleeves to reveal ink
and scar alike, scrape the skins into sink
and swat away the guilt that I don't compost
despite living behind the tofu curtain,
slice with the dull knives
we really should sharpen,
cover lovingly with salted butter,
raw oats, cinnamon that will make the house
smell like it's for sale.
Here, spoon this goodness
into a bowl, or skip the bowl
and eat from the pan --
life is too short
for so much ceremony.
The apples in the poem were a gift from Aviva's girlfriend, who is staying with us for two weeks before V goes to spend two weeks at her house, an arragement arrived at and agreed upon by three households that allows the two of them to spend some non-socially-distanced time together beginning on Aviva's birthday and including their first anniversary. Having them together here is a delight; last night after dinner, we sat and talked about crypto-Jews in Italy and ancestry and other cool stuff, and I feel really grateful for this chance to spend time with the person my daughter loves.
Speaking of which, this Oreo ad totally made me tear up, capitalism notwithstanding.
In case you're considering it, there is just one spot left in the upcoming 2-week group, (Re)Writing the Sacred. If you want to grab it, here's the registration link. And if you want to have a place to land (and write) after November 3, be sure to sign up for the next Sound of Real Life Happening group (where we write 11 things every day for 11 days).
I have an eye doctor appointment in half hour to see what is happening with these late-40-something eyes, so I will sign off for now. Hope you're doing whatever taking care of yourself looks like today. What's one thing you can take off your proverbial plate?