The Daily Brief

I am a cat person by default. That said, I like dogs and, and have had a dog, they take to me, and a couple of the neighbors’ dogs are openly adoring, but the fact remains that dogs are more high-maintenance than cats, more emotionally needy. They are like something that comes out of the box in parts, with a collection of tools and a twenty-page manual for assembly and programming, whereas cats arrive completely assembled, ready for instant use. They do not mind that you are away for most of the day, they do not need to be taken for walks, and they see life steadily and see it whole from a perch on the windowsill, or across the back of an armchair. They have their own secret lives and amusements, and while they are glad to see you come home at the end of the day, they are not neurotically overjoyed, like a dog is— for the dog, this is the high point of the day, and they have been waiting all day for the sound of your car, and the garage door rumbling open, and now the dog is trembling with excitement, their someone is home, homehomehome, and they begin to bark, ecstatically. It takes very little to please a dog, but still— their day must have been terribly dull, that this is the high point of it— and it is enough to feel guilty about not having come home sooner. I do not need guilt— I prefer my relationships to be with well-adjusted grownups. Cats fulfill that niche very nicely.

But I have had the use of a dog, without the upkeep, which is a satisfying compromise; these days, the dog is Polly, who lives next door with her people. She is a miniature dachshund, or as I call her “a cocktail wiener-dog”, a sleek and low-slung little doggie exactly the color of a fresh-picked chestnut hull, given to bark with soprano enthusiasm at anyone who walks by on the sidewalk out front, or comes either of our two houses. My driveway, and front walk are clearly part of “her” territory, and noisy attention must be paid to any trespasser. This is a good thing; it is one of the traditional uses of a dog— to alert us of company and passing strangers. As a puppy, I may have cuddled her just enough to form a bond, and now she demands affection as her right. She recognizes the sound of the VEV, and her owner insists that Polly is watching for me at 6 PM daily, bouncing up to the gate so I can lean down and rub that chestnut-brown little head, while her tail whips back and forth so energetically it shakes her whole hinder end. So I have the use of a dog, without any of the responsibility for maintenance, and all it costs me is a few minutes of time. When we lived in Spain we also had the use of a dog, a dog that spent more of the first few years of her life with Blondie, and more time in our yard than her own.

A young Spanish couple, engaged to be married, had bought the duplex unit opposite ours to be their permanent home. Their yard was separated from ours by only a thin and raggedy hedge, although there was a tall chain link fence at the back, and an ornate brick and metal fence at the front of the units. During their engagement, and then while their duplex was being renovated, they used it as a weekend or summer cabin, and one of the first things Antonio and Susannah did was to get a dog to guard the yard and the usually empty duplex. Drufy was a purebred German shepherd, of the Prussian persuasion of German shepherd— that is, lean, intense and very driven. (As opposed to the Bavarian persuasion, who tend to be fat, happy canine slobs). She had a little doghouse under the stairs, and the portero, or maybe one of the urbanizations’ watchmen came around every day with food and water. Of course, my daughter discovered the presence of a dog in the adjoining yard very early on, and since the hedge was permeable, and we were actually there, much more frequently than Antonio and Susannah were… well, it was only logical outcome. Drufy bonded to us; my daughter and I were Her People, and our yard was Her Yard. She was our fiercely dedicated guardian, and everyone considered that a good thing, certainly Juan Vigilante, the retired Guadia Civil who was the senior watchman in San Lamberto— keeping a strict and observant eye upon all the comings and goings— thought it an excellent idea that a single woman with a small daughter should have the use of a such a tireless guardian.

My daughter took it into her head, at the age of 10, that she wanted to be a latch-key child, and the presence of Drufy, Juan Vigilante, a telephone in our duplex unit, and the near-by residences of several friends were the things that tilted my decision to allow it. My daughter took the school bus home every schoolday, with strict orders to call me as soon as she got in the door: I was on air at EBS-Zaragoza, in the radio studio doing the drive-time afternoon show then— I took her call in the studio, every afternoon between 3:30 and 3:35, otherwise I would have been calling out everyone short of the American Counsel. It was reassuring to know, that Drufy-dog was there, alert and vigilant. Indeed, my daughter described with relish, how the propane-gas-bottle deliveryman had barely beat Drufy to our gate, with the empty bottle and the payment for the new one, and Drufy’s teeth bare inches from his ass.

When Antonio and Susannah married, and the renovations were complete, they moved into the apartment opposite, but Drufy’s situation did not improve materially; she was still the outdoor guardian dog. Susannah had a vile-tempered Jack Russell terrier, which had indoor privileges and all the shelter and affection that that implied. Drufy remained in her doghouse outside. My daughter thought this was cruelly unfair; Drufy was loving and affectionate, a better and more satisfactory dog all around than that nasty little terrier. Even when the terrier was bred, and had a litter of puppies— Drufy baby-sat the puppies, and continued to guard our house, and was unmercifully bullied by the terrier. At least, she was, until the summer that we returned from one of our long road trips to notice that the terrier had a long bandage around her middle, and was behaving more respectfully to Drufy and everyone else. It seemed that she had snapped once too often, and Drufy had about bitten her in half. My daughter and I were totally partisan; we felt Drufy’s response was completely justified and long overdue.

But as always with a military tour— and I had done a double tour at Zaragoza, six years, long enough to see my daughter all the way through elementary school— the orders and pack-out date loomed. I made arrangements for the VEV, for the cats, for the hold baggage… and my daughter asked if we could take Drufy, too.
“She thinks she is ours, much more than Antonio and Susannahs’,” she insisted, quite correctly, and even took it up with Antonio, who pointed out that she was a pedigreed dog, and very valuable. He did offer to send her one of her puppies, when he had her bred, which was quite fair, but where would we be, when that came around, and how much would it cost to send a puppy halfway around the world? It would be hard enough to rent a place that permitted the eminently portable and well-behaved cats. We bid Drufy an affectionate farewell— I took a picture of her with my daughter, and gave Antonio and Susannah a couple of bottles of good California wine. We should have given Drufy some nice treats, but how could that have ever made up for half of her People suddenly, and inexplicably vanishing from her limited world?

I just hope she did not grieve for us too much… and that she did not have a nervous breakdown entirely when our duplex was rented to someone else.

It will have been a year this month since their house burned in last Octobers’ devastating fires around San Diego; the new house is coming along, rather more slowly than we had estimated, but faster than the original did. They had estimated three years to build it themselves, but it took five, mostly because they insisted on doing even the boring stuff like shingling the roof, the interior drywall, and tiling the floors themselves. This time, they are farming out the boring, and labor-intensive stuff to professionals, and since a lot of other houses are being replaced, the construction crews are very, very busy.

The work goes quite rapidly, once it is started, but there are long waits between various jobs being accomplished To date, the exterior walls are complete, and the verandah is nearly so, with the posts, rafters and plywood ceiling in place. The joists are being delivered this week, and Dad is collecting a crew and a forklift to get them all set into place. Once that is done, then the roof over the house itself can be completed and tiled, and the interior space divided up into rooms, and dry walled…

I had hoped to see the whole thing completed in time for Christmas, but Dad advises me not to hold my breath on this. I think they are actually rather having fun improving the house. They were insured to the exact level needed to rebuild and replace, so they are not having the worries with the insurance company that some of the other affected families are reported to have.

Oh, and they have acquired another cat, in place of the Siamese, and the two kittens who went to stay with my sister after the fire, and adjusted so well they were given to Pippy’s family permanently. The new cat seems to have been a pet, dumped out in the country, which had the good sense to hang around near Mom and Dad’s closest neighbors. He is sort of long-haired and colored Grey, so he is named Davie, after the former governor.

The affinity of cats for bloggers, and bloggers for cats is axiomatic; I am myself– in the opinion of William and my daughter– only one more cat away from verging on “crazy neighborhood cat ladyM status, with the current herd of four, all of them Cats of the 1st Order, those which are kept indoors, spoilt and adored, allowed to sleep wherever they like, and fed by hand on chicken and salmon – well, maybe not that last. But Cats of the 1st Order are those which accompany you when you move halfway around the world, whose lives are extended with extensive veterinary courses of care, and whose inevitable death is deeply mourned. Cats of the 2nd Order are those who rate a degree of care, and affection, and for whom you feel a certain amount of responsibility; these cats do not share your life, and are usually just there temporarily, until you pass them on to someone suitable. (Or they may be someone elses’ cat, who just prefers your yard, and to freeload at your back door, like Bubba From Down the Road). Cats of the 3rd Order are all others; strays and ferals, other people’s cats; who ask for nothing from you and usually prefer it that way. Except sometimes, when the planets and stars align, and the mysterious cat god decrees that one of them shall suddenly walk up to you and declare him/herself to be yours.

We do not pick them, you see; they pick us, and it is unwise to go against this great power of the universe. I did, once. We walked away from a charming small cat who had very clearly selected us as his own Very Special Humans, in the clearest imaginable terms. I have felt guilty about it ever since: the place and the circumstances were all wrong, and we had a houseful of cats anyway, and all the excuses in the world. But none of them are any good. I should have packed up the small cat, and taken him away with us. By way of expiating my guilt, I have taken in Henry VIII and his sister Morgie, and Little Arthur and Percival have been gracious enough to select me as their Chosen Human, so perhaps the great and mysterious God of the Cats has forgiven me for spurning the affections of the least of his little ones, late in the summer of the last year we lived in Spain.

It happened during the last week of our summer camping trip, a long loop through Southern Spain; Cordova, Seville and Granada, concluding with a drive along the coastal road between Gibraltar and Malaga. This was the Costa del Sol, the fabled south coast, sometimes built over with expensive new urbanizations, gorgeous modern condos, filling up the spaces between the ancient towns, which were guarded by medieval watchtowers against the threat of corsairs, raiders and pillagers from the African coast, just a short sail over the horizon of the blue Mediterranean.

We had set up our tent on the beach itself, at Marbella. A steep driveway zigzagged down the face of a steep hillside, fallen away to make a cliff in places. The buildings of the campground nestled in a cove at the bottom amongst palm and olive trees; the managers’ quarters, and the bar, the lavatories and shower house, half empty at the end of the season. My daughter and I took a place right along the driveway at the edge of the beach, where we could look back at the lights of the city I had driven through, and fell asleep that night to the soft shurr and wash of the surf, just thirty feet away.

In the middle of the night, I was awakened by something, a small weight on my chest, something nudging my face, something that meowed interrogatively. One-quarter awake, I caught the cat by the scruff of the neck, and dumped it on Blondie’s sleeping bag.
“Here – take Patchie!” I mumbled, and my daughter said sleepily.
“That’s not Patchie, she’s at home.”
In the dark tent, the cat mewed again. Half-awake, I rolled over and found the flashlight. It wasn’t Patchie; it was a little half-grown cat, white with irregular splotches of caramel and brown, which had slipped under the outside screened part of the tent, and wriggled through the little space where the three zippers met to close the inner part. It mewed, looking expectantly at me. Obviously, if I wanted to get any more sleep, I would have to do something about this. I rummaged in the plastic tub of supplies for the emergency pop-top can of tuna, pulled off the top and put it down. Small sounds, rapturous tiny meows mixed with the urgent slurping of tuna overlaid the constant music of the surf as I went back to sleep. During the rest of the night, I floated occasionally up to the surface of wakefulness, aware of a tiny weight curled up next to me, contentedly purring tuna-scented breath into my face.

“We’ll call it Marbella,” announced my daughter the next morning over our breakfast of hot tea and croissants from the campground store, “Because that’s where we found her.”
“Him. It’s a him, sweetie, and we can’t take him with us. We’re on our way to Granada, and 600 miles from home, at least. And you know how Patchie is. She hates other cats, if they aren’t her kittens.”
Every reason, every rationale— the kitten might belong to someone else, we had four cats already, the vet bill for this one, where would we keep it while we went sight-seeing, there was no place in the VEV for a litter box— I deployed them all.
“But he wants to stay with us,” my daughter insisted. “He picked out our tent in the middle of the night. We have to take him home.”
And the little cat had curled up on my sleeping bag, perfectly at home, radiating assurance that this was where he belonged, that the crowning achievement— status as a Cat of the 1st Order was in his grasp, and glory and everlasting tuna was his, now and ever after.
“We can’t,” I said, finally “We just can’t.”

And we emptied out the tent and packed the car, to the little cat’s evident distress, and finally struck the tent, with him still in it. We emptied him out of it, and rolled it all up, and he tried to get into the car. I put him out, and we drove away, leaving him sitting disconsolately where the tent had been, no doubt wondering what had happened— he had done all those cute kitten things, selected us out to be his Chosen Humans— and here we were heartlessly abandoning him.

“It’s a campground,” I said, “There are lots of people there. Someone will feed him.” But in my heart, I knew that we should have taken him with us. I could have worked out a way. I could have back-tracked into the town, found a grocery store. But I already was challenged almost to the max, just with driving the VEV across strange roads, setting up camp, the strain of coping with the demands of travel in a foreign country, distanced from every support system, and the constant drain of existing responsibilities. The VEV had twice needed repairs on this trip already; they were small and inexpensive repairs, but nerve-wracking.

But we should have brought him with us. He was meant to be ours, and we drove away and left him, and I have felt guilty about it ever since. And that is why I have four cats, all of who did the honor of picking me, and this time I could open the door and say
“Come in. Stay. Let me open a can of tuna for you.”

Being compulsively organized, I carry around a set of paint chips and fabric samples, usually buried in the side pocket of my Korean-bought Coach knock-off shoulder-bag— the one with a side pocket large enough to accommodate a couple of magazines, I know it’s a standard comedy riff, the huge handbag with everything in it…. But how else should I carry around all the necessaries? Not just the keys, checkbook and pen… but the clasp-knife, the powder compact, extra lipstick, address book, second bank account checkbook, backup set of keys, the floppy-disks with whatever I are working on when peripatetically between computers, card case with three sets of cards—personal, business and artistic—the postal forms for registered and return receipt mail, the letters I simply have to answer, a book of stamps, a pad of lined stationary, the steno notebook with notes on everything, a clutch of envelopes, a book of stamps, shot record and passport, a mini-flashlight, two extra pens and a pencil (one of the pens entirely dried up) and a miscellaneous rabble of paper clips, bulldog clips, odd change, wadded-up receipts and a little tin crucifix that is supposed to remind you that Jesus is always with us, knocking around in the bottom depths. Really. I have all this in my purse— I just did an inventory. (When I travel, there are my tickets and passes, a water bottle and a paperback book. When I traveled as a teenager, my bag had all this, my lunch and dirty laundry, in the event we encountered an errant Laundromat, or a picnic area, and the bag weighted twenty pounds.)

I have been prepared for most interesting eventualities over the past thirty-four years, so don’t laugh. I am even prepared for painting over the ghastly wood-grained Formica countertops with heavy, cream-colored paint, especially formulated for garage floors. It seems the trick is to clean them of every speck of dirt and grease, and lightly sand. I have the palm sander, I have the caulk, the masking tape and the paint pan from my last project. Everything, the toaster and blender, the microwave, and the ranks of glass jars with herbs and dry staples are cleared away and stacked on the wood-topped cart that serves as an island in my kitchen, while I scour and clean and sand. The cats watch, curiously from the back of the sofa as I roll out the first coat over the Formica….The paint is thick, and creamy, but it looks like heck. The first thin coat barely covers the Formica pattern, and in other places it looks rather pebbled, as if I had not cleaned off all the grease. The cats stay out of the kitchen area, I don’t think they like the smell of the paint. The second coat goes on when the first is dry; and marvelously, covers the pebbled areas, and the thin places where the wood pattern showed through. I strip away the masking tape, around the edges, and lean against the back of the sofa, enjoying the view. Much better; a vision of cream and blue, against the pale apricot walls. Only the sink itself remains as a patch of blight, but it is now four PM on a Sunday afternoon. I will purchase the new sink after work the next Friday afternoon, and install it before I have to be at work in the vineyards of public radio— I have, after all, been bashing around under the sink before, and vividly recall what must be disconnected.

My plan is derailed, when the Home Depot closest to my workplace is not only out of the specific model I had planned to buy, but takes half an hour to work this out. The nearest outlet with one in stock is a little off my drive to the radio station, so purchase is deferred to Saturday morning, and venturing under the sink to disconnect the disposal, the outfall, the faucets to Sunday. This does not bode well— my last two adventures in plumbing were epics, but at least they developed when I got home, not when I set foot in the store.

The fall-back Home Depot has it in stock, and the box with it, and a small box with the drain kit fits easily into the cavernous trunk of the VEV. At home that evening, I take out the instructions and warranty: it all looks pretty straightforward on paper; an attractive double-sink unit, the same top dimensions and configuration as the crappy metal one. I have the required tools and supplies— a short length of plastic pipe for the drain outfall (left over from installing the new disposal last year), two tubes of calk, a container of plumbers’ putty and the trusty crescent wrench. Sunday morning, I take it in hand, along with a stout screwdriver and dive fearlessly under the sink. It is familiar territory, having ventured into it last year in the cause of installing a new sink faucet. Off comes the garbage disposal, giving me room to reach the underside of the faucet. I notice a small patch of rust already on the disposal unit. Damn. Detaching the faucet from the water supply also goes fairly easily. The newer plastic rings securing the faucet to the underside of the old metal sink are not corroded into place as the originals were, but the metal clips holding the sink in place in the space cut out for it in the Formica countertop are. The cats learn some interesting new words, as the eight clips are loosened and pried free, and the drainpipe from the other sink detached from the “S” bend.

I can indeed lift the sink with two fingers, and yes, it is a piece of cheap crap. I put it down in the living room, and clean the rim of the opening where it was. The new sink should fit exactly into the hole— it is, after all, a standard size, resting on a thick bead of caulk run all the way around. The sink fits neatly; with a little bit of shifting the high-curving rim exactly covered the place taken by the old one. The weight of it and attachment to the drains and faucet is supposed to be sufficient to anchor it in place, but I need to let the caulk solidify first.

Oh, take a break, and go out for a walk, the walk I do every day, and which on Saturdays and Sundays takes ever so longer because of all the neighbors pottering around their yards and garages. Rachel, two streets up and a half-block over, is working on her garden, attended by her nervous Schipperke dog and the three-legged cat. She has a stained-glass fan-light over the main front window, which she did herself, and an amiable boyfriend who does construction and is tinkering with his motorcycle. They are about my age, and are facing the expense and hassle of replacing the wall to wall carpeting… but with what?
“I painted and stenciled the concrete underneath, “ I say, “You want to have a look?” Intrigued, they follow me back to my house, where Rachel takes one look and says
“Oh…it’s like a doll-house, tiny and perfect,” while the boyfriend zeroes in on the bookshelf and quotes the opening lines of “Out of Africa” from memory. They both admire the effect of several layers of paint and sealer over concrete and keep interrupting with their own ideas as I try to explain exactly how I did it.
“I’d show you my house, but it’s a mess,” Rachel says, “I’d hate to have you see it the way it is.” I wonder how much worse than mine it can be, with the living room area rug felted with a fine layer of cat fur, and the old kitchen sink laying in the middle of it.

After they have gone, agreeing excitedly that painting the concrete will be just the thing, I go back to the job at hand, connecting the taps and the drains.
And that is when I realize that the new sink is deeper than the old. The drain running from the disposal sits nearly two inches lower… and the length of pipe from the other sink does not fit…. And I will have to take out the “T”shaped connection that empties both sinks into the u-bend and shorten part of it, but I can’t budge the connector. I need a pipe wrench and a short length of new pipe.
“Only one trip, for a project?” says the cashier at the hardware store consolingly, as she rings them up for me. “That’s pretty good, actually. “
“I have everything from the last couple of projects,” I tell her. “Even a saw to trim the pipe. Everything and the kitchen sink.”

I put the old sink and the connectors in the box the new one came in, and put it all out by the trash. It is gone before the trash collectors come around the next morning. Someone else wants to upgrade their sink, I guess.

My house was built by a fairly reputable builder, about 20 years ago….but even the reputable builders and developers depend on 18-wheeler truckload quantities of standard light fixtures, faucets, appliances, cabinets, doors, windows and doorknobs to meet a budget and make a profit on the resulting houses. This may lend a depressing air of uniformity to those houses… all the neighbors whose houses were built at the same time as mine have the same louver doors in the closets, and the same doorknobs, even if the layout of the house vary considerably, they will have the same Formica kitchen countertops, and the same cheap-ass metal sink.

I, for one, do not fall into the trap set by the various glamorous magazines and TV shows, singing the praises of people who renovate some 70, or 100 or 170 year old domicile, and discover thereby all the joys of historic craftsmanship, and wonderful history, and solid woodwork worth preserving. I had friends (OK, they were the parents of Blondie’s good friend) in Ogden, Utah, who through sentimentality found themselves trapped into rehabbing an 1895 Italianate 3-story townhouse on 5th Street in Ogden, which turned into “The House From Hell”. Not only had it been built by the lowest bidder (no fine original woodwork there!) but any existing historical bits had been trashed by previous owners, to the point where the only interesting relics they uncovered consisted of copies of the local newspaper, circa 1942, which had been used to insulate a clumsily added 2nd storey kitchen addition. They wound up hating the whole place with a passion, admitting that if they only knew at the beginning what they knew at the end, they would have gutted the entire place, top to bottom inside the 2ft. thick brick shell, and rebuilt it from scratch. Indeed, they only were happy, once they unloaded the brick albatross in favor of a nice 1920ies bungalow in the 15th Street area, which hardly needed any work at all. Historic houses… pheh!

There is an up side in my settling for dull suburban conformity— all those various house fittings are standard, and easily swapped for something off the shelf at Lowe’s or Home Depot, or the shelves of the local hardware store, which alters not nor fails me ever. And it also has the side-benefit of being— even though it is usually the most inexpensive (read “cheapest!”) always an aesthetic step up; the new fixtures, faucets and knobs always look a thousand times better than what they replaced, which makes me wonder if the fittings installed by the really low-rent builders are made out of soda straws and heavy-gage tinfoil.

Even what the builders installed around here has a limited life, and I have been able to track the trajectory of replacement among my neighbors by the rubbish put out for the semi-annual bulk trash pickup. After about twenty years, most everyone has had to replace the privacy fences, the stove and dishwasher, the hot-water heater. The wall-to-wall carpets have been ripped out and replaced with new carpet, tile, parquet. Sunrooms, porches, entryways, terraces and decks have been replaced or added. Sinks and toilets and cabinets have been replaced here and there, and one of my neighbors remarked, as I was admiring the ambitious pile of fence staves and 2 x 4s that was scheduled to be transformed into a new fence over the Labor Day holiday
“Wait until you replace the kitchen sink…it is such a lightweight piece of shit, you can pick up the whole thing and hold it with two fingers.”
“Really….” I said, thoughtfully. Come to think on it, the kitchen sink and countertop were the last things in my kitchen that I had not already re-done, and they were the one jarring note remaining, in a house that was boringly white and beige when I first moved in. Now the concrete floor was stenciled like Tuscan tile, the cabinets were the color of cream, and the cabinet door and drawer fronts navy-blue, to match the collection of Spanish and Greek blue and white pottery. I sewed curtains out of blue and white striped fabric, and replaced the beige stove, dishwasher and oven hood with a better grade of plain white appliances. I would have liked to replace the countertops and sink… something in hand-painted Italian tile or maybe corian with an integral sink. I would also like a gas-fired Aga range, a small villa in the California wine country, and a two door sportster Jag, in racing green with nickel trim, but I know damn well I will not get any of them until the book sells a great many more copies… so on the next trip to Home Depot I check out the kitchen sinks.
“That one,” says one of the unexpectedly present and helpful sales staff, “An excellent sink. Enamel over steel, but it weighs 300 hundred pounds… now this one… same size, good quality— cast fiberglass with a porcelain finish. Thirty pounds, and about half the price.”
Even assuming I could round up enough assistance to get a 300 pound sink out of the back of the VEV, I can’t see replacing the el cheapo tin sink with something that much heavier. I imagine the poor old unreinforced kitchen cabinets that have supported it lo these many years collapsing utterly under the strain of this burden. I take note of the make and model of the white, cast fiberglass sink, and wander off to the paint department, to order a gallon of paint specially formulated for garage floors. This paint can be used for other areas…. And they can mix it up for you in any color you like.
(To be continued)

Creek Way runs along the crest of the low ridge at the top end of the development, the first half an easy level— I have hit my stride now. Some houses— they are larger than the garden cottages, most of them two story houses, now show faint yellow squares of light, leaking through blinds and curtains in the upstairs windows. Many of these houses have pools, and elaborate decks and play equipment in the back. Many of those with the most elaborate gardens and decks back on a narrow watercourse that runs all the way down through the heart of the neighborhood, ducking under the roads by way of a concrete culvert. There is nearly always a trickle of water in it, and the banks are supposed to be mown by the city. I think it would make a lovely shoe-string park, winding down the shallow slope, with a jogging and bicycle path along side, and places where you could sit and watch the jewel-winged dragonflies flit in and out. Heavy rains have brought down seedlings from gardens, which have planted themselves in places along the watercourse— reeds and ruellias and gladioli, mostly. Some of the householders have even extended their gardens and tree plantings beyond their fences, or just keep the grass mown of their own volition, but otherwise it grows as tall as it would have grown in the tall-grass prairie, or to the level of the privacy fences.

I think on what a lovely little park it would make, like the Lichtenthaler Allee, in Baden-Baden, a narrow little park on the bank of a river, where you would walk all though the city, and look across the river at the splendid gardens in the back of all the houses on the other side. William thinks I should get myself elected to the Neighborhood Association and campaign for exactly that, but at this point the Neighborhood Association is mostly interested in cell-phone patrolling in the wee hours and getting speed-bumps installed along my street and Creek Way. No one is particularly interested in the labor of building a park along city drainage. To be fair, they are not interested in pissing contests over paint colors, parking cars on the street, or exhuberantly over-ornamenting their gardens with pink flamingos, seasonal banners and statues of saints with lighted halos. Many of my neighbors are military, or retirees, and their toleration is large, even enduring my next-door neighbor who had her house painted pepto-bismol pink. We just shaded our dazzled eyes until it faded; she was nearly blind and shortly afterwards moved to be with her daughter in Chicago, and the next owners mercifully painted it beige. The only offense against the standards of suburbia is letting weeds grow as large as rose-bushes, and not fixing broken windows.

On the other side of the culvert, the hill begins to rise steeply, in a long looping curve, and keeping the same pace as I did on the flat is an effort. The sky is a little paler in the east, but it is still night among the trees along Creek Way, and a long way between streetlights. It would be darker still, but for so many houses leaving the porch and front lights on, a string of human-scale lights all along the even setbacks of the house fronts. A number of them are left on to illuminate the flags… American flags, mostly, some Texas state flags, the lone white star on a blue field above a red and white stripe. A couple of houses have a little blue starred banner, denoting military service hanging in a window, and many cars sport the small magnetic banners, yellow or tricolor; “We Support Our Troops”.

I pass the president of the Neighborhood Association’s house, just a little short of the top of the hill; his house, and the house across Creek Way seem to be in serious, toe-to-toe, mano-a-mano competition for garden decoration. Banners and windcatchers, colorful hanging pots and planters, ornaments, plaques, and statuary, topped off with seasonal lights and ornaments. Black cats and scarecrows and skeletons for Halloween, deer and Santas and sleighs for Christmas, and so on throughout the year. Even Labor Day gets some ornament; surely Martha Stewart has a lot to answer for, and to more than the criminal justice system.

Here at the top of the hill is another intersection. There is a limestone entrance gate, right by the Latter-Day Saints complex of classrooms and meeting halls. I turn right again, running downhill for the first time in 20 minutes, heading back down towards the oldest part of the neighborhood, where the houses were more “L” shaped, and set on wider lots. After four blocks, I turn right again, and run a zig-zagging course that takes me across the creek again, and brings me out on my own street and past my house, while the sky turns a clear pale turquoise. A few shreds and scraps of pink to pink and gold cloud contrast vividly, brighter the closer to the horizon they are. This is my second lap, another zig-zag course, another zig-zagging course, half in streets of tiny garden cottages, half in the larger, and older houses, which have been much improved and added onto, with ornamental gates, and sunrooms. This is where I often see the Little Friend of all the Cats, the white and grey rabbit, and the school-teacher who walks Goliath the giant Papillion, who is about the size of a border collie— enormous for the breed.

The sky is entirely light by the time I finish the second lap, and go uphill again on my street for the final lap. I pass children walking towards the school by now. Cars are pulling out of driveways, and my neighbor the roofer, and the pool landscaper two roads up are already rolling; they have work to do before it gets too hot. But I have been jogging for nearly an hour now, and my tee-shirt is nearly soaked— it’s hot enough for me, even before the sun is entirely up. Past my house, while next-door’s little dachshund barks at me with soprano enthusiasm. Birds yammer in chorus in the tallest trees, and out in the green belt, the great marble cross put up by the congregation of St. Helena catches the first sunlight. We are fenced around with churches, in this neighborhood— not just the Catholics at St. Helena, but the LDS, and the Episcopal church at the opposite corner, and the Lutherans a bare block away.

It seems sometimes there is something for everyone to dislike, in a suburb like this. Somewhere on the cultured coasts, scholars and the artistic set are painting it in sterile and stultifying shades. Somewhere in Europe, we are put down for vulgarity and religiosity, lack of real culture and 75 different cheeses, and having the temerity to own our own homes, and work for our own businesses. Mullahs everywhere in the Middle East must be gibbering incoherently about the women who own their own homes, and dare to go jogging alone of a morning, not to mention spoiling our little dogs and allowing great marble crosses to dominate the green belt. And the thing that chaps them the most, that galls them right down to what passes for a soul?

We don’t care. We don’t give a rats’ ass. IDGRA rules, and we have the nerve to be content.

And I’ll run again tomorrow.

My first place, aside from rooms in various barracks, was a tiny studio apartment in the R housing area, close to the POL gate at Misawa AB, Japan: a long, narrow room with three largish windows in each segment: bedroom, living room, and kitchen. The bedroom segment was screened off from the rest by a 3/4th wall, and a narrow counter with cupboards underneath divided the remainder. A tiny, windowless bathroom— tub, sink and toilet all together in a tiled cubicle was behind a narrow door off the kitchen. In the summer mushroom-like fungus grew in the corners, and in the winter, the bathtub tap sprouted a stalactite of ice.

The windows gave onto a view of three tiny houses on the other side of the driveway where I parked my little green Honda mini, and the fields and treeline along the road towards the POL gate, a view entirely snow-covered for the first months that I lived there, a vista of white snow and blue shadows, and the cold crept in through the single-pane windows, especially around the area closest to the kitchen sink, in which I was supposed to bath my baby daughter.
“It’s just too chilly, I’m afraid she would catch pneumonia.” I said to the visiting nurse practitioner, who said thoughtfully,
“What about the bathroom tub?”
“It’s warm enough, especially if I fill the tub with hot water… but it’s a Japanese tub. Square, but deep…would it be safe? It would be pretty awkward, I’d have to kneel on the floor and it’s an awful reach. I’d be afraid of dropping her. ”
“When in Rome,” said the nurse, “Take your baths together. Get into the water, and then hold her, safe.”

The more I thought about it, the more it looked safer than bathing her in a shallow sink, in front of a drafty window. The metal bathtub was a deep square thing, a comfortable fit for an adult to sit cross-legged, filled to chest level with steaming hot water, which even on cold winter days raised the temperature of the little bathroom to a comfortable level. I would line the baby carrier with towels, another wrapped around my daughter, then undress and step into the tub first. Kneeling in the water, I could lean over and pick her up, then sink back into shoulder-deep hot water, cradling her head above water level with one hand, and the rest of her propped on my knees. It felt much more secure, and much warmer, bathing together Japanese-fashion, close together in the square bathtub, my daughter gurgling and looking up at me with trusting adoration, eyes so dark blue they looked like purple pansies. Sometimes I would just hold her face above water, my hands cupping the back of her head, and let the pink and froglike little body float freely. She splashed and kicked, utterly secure in the confidence that I would not let anything happen to her, that she would be born up by the water and my hands.

At the end of her first year we went back to the States, and bathtime reverted to something a little more American Standard, and at the end of that second year, I had to leave her with Mom and Dad and go to Greenland. Being a hardship tour, a remote sentence to very nearly the end of the earth, Air Force personnel were permitted a month of leave halfway through the year. It was the Air Forces’ way of keeping us from going rock-happy, and of helping us maintain some sort family life, but it was Mom’s idea that my daughter should be taught to swim. Having read all too many sad accounts of toddlers and small children falling into unguarded and unfenced water, she and Dad had practically to padlock the gate to the pool enclosure at Hilltop House.

“There’s a mother and child swim class at the Y, on the same days that I am teaching stained-glass” She told me, almost the first moment that I was home, while Blondie clung to me like a limpet, crowing “MommyMommyMommy!”
“But she’s only two and a half,” I said, “Isn’t that too young?”
“No, it’s a special class for babies and toddlers; the instructor teaches the mothers, and the mothers teach the children. Apparently, the younger they start, easier it is for them.”
I would have to take that on faith, I decided on the first day of the class; ten or twelve mothers standing chest-deep in the shallow end, each with a baby or small child— the oldest a girl of three or so, as fair as Blondie, although her mother was older than I, and as dark as Mom. She was the most assured about leaping off the side of the pool, landing in her mothers’arms with an air of trustful affection— obviously, she had been to swim lessons before— but all the rest clung to their mothers with a desperate grip.
“When you are only two feet tall,” allowed the kindly instructor, “The whole pool is the deep end.”

The first and most essential lesson was to teach them how to hold their breath, and hold it on cue. We stood in a circle, holding our children upright in the water, our hands holding them under the arms, a little away from us, also chest-deep in the water
“Ready?” said the instructor, “One-two-three—blow, and duck!”
Counting one—dip the child a little, and bring up—two—dip again—three—dip a third time, blow a breath on their faces, and quickly duck them all the way under the water for a couple of seconds. The natural reaction of the babies with the air blown on their faces the first time was to close their eyes. Hopefully repetition of the dip-dip-dip-blow-duck! sequence would have them holding their breath, although at least half of the junior members of the class that first day came up from their first time, howling with astonishment and shock. The instructor coached us to calm the children and then do it again, and again, until that first lesson was learned. That would be the start of each lesson, reinforcing the cue to hold breath. The instructor pointed out how they very youngest of the babies caught on to it the fastest, having perhaps some atavistic memory of amniotic fluid. And the fair-haired little girl hardly needed that coaching at all, but paddled confidently from the side of the pool to her mother, standing four or five feet away—practically an Olympic champion, in comparison.

At the end of the second or third lesson, the instructor brought out a pair of floatee-cuffs for each child or baby.
“It will give them an idea of what it is like to float freely.” Even with the floatee-cuffs on their upper-arms, most of the babies and toddlers still clung to their mothers with desperate fervor— only the older girl and Blondie took it in stride. Blondie, full of confidence once she realized that the floatee-cuffs did indeed hold her as well above water, determinedly wriggled free and away from me, heading toward the deeper end. There was a class of older children there, going off the diving board, a great deal of excited shrieks and splashing, much more fun than a group of babies clinging to their mothers. This was my first realization that my daughter was almost entirely fearless, in the water and practically everywhere else— it would not be a surprise that she swam like a fish by the age of seven, and nonchalantly dove off the high-board by eight. But this was early days, yet, and the other little girl still swam better.
“Your daughter swims very well,” I said enviously to her mother, as we were all getting dressed again in the locker room, that day.
“I’m the housekeeper,” She replied, “Her mother works.”
I hadn’t contemplated that— after all Mom looked nothing like Pippy, Alex or I, with blond to light-brown sugar colored hair and blue eyes. But still. I thought of the little girl, leaping off the side of the pool, trusting and affectionate. Not her mother. The housekeeper.
Oh dear. I worked too…. But at least I could teach my daughter to swim.

The exterior walls are completed; the masons took a couple of weeks to built them all the way up. The house basically a square, with a deep verandah all the way around. The posts which will support the outer edge of the veranda are all in place, and Dad is drilling holes in the header beams which will top the masonry wall. The window and door frames are all in place. The rafters are due to be installed this month, and the roofers will come in September. Once the roof is underway, they can start with the interior walls and the drywalling— Dad is not going to do it all again himself again, it was boring enough the first time around. He is going to do a roof over part of the verandah himself, so he can set up a workshop there to do the fine woodwork for the interior. And Mom has picked out the kitchen cabinets, thanks to her friend who is going to design the kitchen for her.
We’re on schedule to celebrate Christmas this year, in the new house!