Settling in

Thu. Jan 6

Everybody loves Friday because we all grow up with Friday as the last school, or work day of the week. Friday night is for staying up late, staying out late to party a little more, because tomorrow is Saturday. It seems like having Christmas Eve, and New Year's Eve fall on  Friday should add just a little more festivity to the holidays.

But it doesn't work like that. The timelessness of Christmas Eve canceled the "Friday-ness" of Friday. Christmas day felt like Sunday on Saturday. Sunday felt like a Monday, but it was Sunday, and that was excuse enough to sit on my butt, and do nothing. Time just got all discombobulated. Add rain, and cold.

 

I got a little work done on the stone, but very little. It wasn't until Monday, the third, that time came back into focus. The house was a mess, the Christmas decorations needed to be taken down, and a zillion and six little domestic chores were waiting impatiently for me to attend to them. I was half way through the morning before I realized that I hadn't even written a post for the week. And we had ants in the laundry area. Damn things were all over the dryer, of all things. Luckily, we had the exterminators out a few weeks back, so we got a call back on the ants at no charge. But when I pulled the dryer out from the wall, I found the duct for the dryer vent was in tatters. That explained the foggy windows in the kitchen. One more little task to attend to. All in all those little tasks ate up Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. It's Thursday morning as I sit here. Welcome to the new year. (sic) The house is neat again, and most of the tasks have been tasked. Today I'll settle back in to the pleasant routines of daily life. Today I'll get back to the stone.

 

Friday, January 7.

 

Today was about as dismal and cold as So Cal gets. We had drizzle and fog all day long, so I got no work done. But the fog kept the stone moist, so I did get some photos that show up the colors in the rock. I got a good four hours or more of work time on the sculpture, yesterday. One of the rewarding things about doing stone carving is that the farther along you get in the project, the faster the progress goes. At this point, every session brings about a noticeable change. But the days are still short, and afternoon gets uncomfortably cool after about 2:00. I cleaned up early yesterday, and spent some time on-line. The news of Jan 6th was horribly depressing.

 

  I clicked on Facebarf, and learned that Larry, a friend from one of the Simi Valley bike clubs, had just died suddenly. (not from the virus) And  Max, one of the fellows who rode with us when we were founding the club, died suddenly a few weeks back.  Chris, who was the framer at the shop where Mary and I met, also died suddenly on Christmas Eve. (also not the virus) 

 

And Mary walked in as I sit here to tell me that her brother,  Randy, just died. 

 

(also not the virus)

 

Sunday, Jan 9

Randy had been ill. A little over two years ago he was diagnosed with some sort of pre-leukemia condition, and the doctors did a bone marrow transplant. The guy was in non-stop misery ever afterwords. It was just one thing after another. He was taken to the hospital over a week ago. His wife can't drive, so Mary, God Bless her, has been running herself ragged between home, Randy's house, and Kaiser. It's a miserable, shitty drive from any point of that triangle.

The very strange thing is that the signs were all there, but everyone was still totally blindsided. The doctors had shifted from being optimistic to saying "We're gonna' try to figure out what's wrong...". Yet somehow, everyone just seemed to assume he'd be OK...  and then he just didn't make it. He was a year younger than I am.

 

Mary was with her sister-in-law  when I got back from the bike ride, Saturday. I turned in early, and didn't hear her get home, sometime around midnight. Today it is all beginning to catch up to her. I recommended that she sit on her butt, let me do the cooking, and indulge in coffee, sweets, and wine all day.  She took the  recommendation. I spent a quiet, but productive day on the stone, put up, and fixed dinner for us. We had greasy oven fried chicken. One of my specialties.

So it's Monday morning, and still dark out as I sit here typing. I'll get back to work, but it's going to be slow. I got cracked fingertips, and a painful abrasion between thumb and forefinger. Stone work is hard on the hands. Mary will resume her routines, and life will continue. Despite everything, we have so very much to be grateful for. God willing, today will be sweet, and uneventful.