My Slice of Life

I enjoy 1369’s chai. It’s a dry and spicy but not sweet. But there is a distinct difference in the style of the two coffee shops–someones I want one over the other.

Central: This is where you go when you want to be seen. It’s not like Diesel in Davis, a huge corporate monstrosity that has zero intamicy.  But it is the “cool” place to hang. If you are serious about getting work done, you probably don’t go here. But, let’s face it if you are going to a coffee shop to work, you aren’t entirely serious about getting work done–you’d go to a cubical at a library or stay at home. The music is loud, the people brisk and busy.

Mass Ave: This local coffee shop incomparison to Central. The music is quieter, the people move at a slower pace. Interactions linger perhaps a fraction of a second longer. I go here if I want to be and don’t care if I’m seen.

Let’s face it, the local for each of these coffee shops influences this. Central Square is a busier place with a T stop carting people in and out.  Inman has no subway stop to speedup life. There are more people *living* in the area.

During an appointment with my physical therapist, Matt, we had the following exchange:

[were were talking about what caused my left foot to develop planar tendonitis]

Craig: “it’s a conundrum, in a mystery, wrapped in shadow.”

Matt: “stuffed in a turducky.”

This just cracked me up.  Taking that phrase and making it so, well, red-neck/stupid is hysterical. How can something be taken seriously if it’s stuffed in a turducky?

I have a list of things that I need to work on. I won’t say “don’t like about myself” because I find it too negative. Just things I need to work on.

A couple of days ago something really annoyed me. Someone said they’d do something for me and they canceled it on short notice. Now, I was annoyed. But a day later I wondered to myself, “am I practicing to be a grumpy old man?”  Let’s admit it we all don’t want to be a grumpy old man, even that female segment of my readership. No, we want to  be happy easy going let the small things go and don’t let the big things get us totally bent out of shape. Frankly I admire the people who let things go as compared to those who let things crawl up their but and get them all pissy.

That state, I think can be achieved through practice. In the future when something upsets me I’ll ask myself, “am I practicing to be a grumpy old man?”

What a fantastic song. What I love about this song is really it captures Ellis Paul to me. I don’t know him, but this song seems to come straight from him–the soul of him. He the way he wants to be remembered is by the songs he loves, not necessarily his own songs but the songs he loves.

Remember that song “Infatuation” by Rod Stewart?

It was, IMHO, the last really good song by him. Hip. Fun. Even the video was good. I was thinking this morning that a good parody of it would be “EnCaffenination”:

Late at night and I can sleep.

I can’t think and I blink.

been drinking all day I can’t concentrate

double espresso was a big mistake.

Behind the scenes of every wedding there are stories. Stories that are funny, sad and perhaps dramatic. This is a funny one, I think.

Two and a half hours before the wedding my friend Astrid, mother of Johanna and Joel, found out when searching her luggage that she forgot the shoes for her children’s formal clothing. You have to realize that they flew from Germany to California for the wedding. Astrid starts to swear, lightly as there are children present, as Michael (the father) and I swing into action. I hit the web and find a payless shoe store not that far away. Michael gets the children into their suites so we can go shoe shopping.  Neither Michael or I are dressed for the wedding.

We race off to the store and start searching for shoes. Now, Astrid couldn’t come with us as she had to get ready. So here’s the situation, two adult males, a seven year old girl and a four year old boy off to shop for shoes

Yes, you guessed it, the seven year old was informing the two adults what was in style and what was not. Ha! We vetoed one pair of sandals because it looked more ‘goth’ than formal wear. Except for Michael who speaks English, the four of us were conversing about the shoes in German perhaps amusing the store clerks. But she picked out a really good pair of shoes and they met our approval. Thank goodness Joel is an extremely laid back child who doesn’t mind quietly following the group around. Johanna, on the other hand is a bundle of excitement and energy–not unlike her mother who is a hoot

I just find it amusing that the seven year old was giving fashion tips to the adults. “No, not that. How about this. No that’s not right for me. Those shoes aren’t good for Joel.” And, more amusing, the adults listened to her. We took her seriously most of the time. So, at what age does the “style switch” turn on?

I’ll always remember this. An emergency resolved just before the wedding. The shoes even met the approval of the staff at the Ritz-Carlton hotel at Laguna beach.  A hostess beamed at her and said, completely unsolicited, “her shoes are fantastic.”

While at the Lodge in I took the time to go sit on one of the Adirondack chairs on the dock at night and enjoying a somewhat unpolluted view of the stars. It’s nothing like the stars when viewing from say, Dover-Foxcroft ME, but it was still nice. While sitting out there I counted 8 satellites in 20 minutes. Wow. I’m dubbing this “star pollution”. While it didn’t take anything away from the experience, heck it was fun to hunt for them, it is a reminder that the space just outside our atmosphere is a busy place.

There’s something about watching something primal. The lodge gives you ample opportunity for this.

Many times while at the porch at the lodge I would turn off all the lights and sit there at night quietly staring out over the lake. To my right I could hear the bullfrogs loudly calling out for anyone who’d listen. In the distance the loons would call, with their haunting variety of calls echoing across the lake. Random ambient sounds would float up from the water–a fish jump, the dock creaking, peepers… Why is this appealing. I told my friends I felt like a god, ok, minor deity. I could observe with my limited senses, the going-ons of nature presumably not knowing I was there. It was primal, the scene. I wanted some swamp creature/god to rise out of the water chant in some ancient tongue and recede into the waters to sleep again.

Other times I would turn on a single light, with the fireplace in the living room slowly burning down casting a faint light on the rustic furniture, and read. I know if I was across the lake and saw that lone light on I would wonder, who was there? What are they doing? What do they see?  I left I was a light house on a lonely coastline of Maine. Also, very primal.

I was at the lodge for a week and for the first weekend I had Andrea, Lisa, Kerrin, Chris, Ryan and Beth up to hang out. Beth left after the first day (she had to be back in Boston for a writing/boat cruise). Kerrin and Lisa left on Sunday so they could be back at work Monday morning. Chris, Ryan and Andrea stayed till Tuesday morning.

Now my friends all know I need my alone time, my “me time”. They respect it and have grown to expect it. So it was very interesting for me to gauge my sociability as the week progressed:

SCALE: 0 = go away, 10= someone talk to me please!

• Tuesday: 2 (I am hermit hear me roar..quietly, to myself)
• Wednesday: 4 (I’m digging this me time..someone could deliver a pizza though)
• Thursday (morning): 6 (hmm I wonder if there’s a coffee shop in town I could visit and just be around people)
• Thursday (evening): 8 (I am not a wacko! Someone please talk to me! Mike & Kerry, please stop by and stay a couple of nights!)

Fortunately Mike & Kerry did stop by late on Thursday night. We drank their home brew beer and stared out over the lake with the lights off. It’s beautiful at night and the light conversation is just what I needed.

It was very interesting to see, in isolation, how long my social battery takes to recharge.

I recently rented a lodge on a lake for a week in NH. Not just any lodge, but *the lodge*. In my family the phase “the lodge” means one thing. The water front house we, as a family, rented in our youth. It has a huge nostalgia factor that raises it up to god-like status, frankly. Nothing can compete with it. Here’s a smattering of memories:

• Fishing from the dock.
• Sitting on the porch, at night, and watching what my parents said were flying squirrels eat the bird seed from the feeders.
• Listening to the loons call at night.
• Cruising the lake in the old motor boat emblazoned with the Lodge’s logo.
• Playing king of the hill on the raft anchored in the water (ok, that was at the waterfront associated with the farm house, another property on the same lake). The goal was to get the partially filled container of water from the middle of the raft. Dean, the oldest of my sibs, seem to rule the roost on that one throwing both Eric and I off the raft. KK, my sister, was more sneaky not challenging him directly but waiting for her brothers to be distracted.
• Blueberries. Yes, lots of blueberries. The entire shoreline was covered with wild blueberries which we would pick, from our canoe, and fill our over sized tubs of teddy bear peanut butter. Then we’d make blueberry muffins, pancakes and many many blue berry pies (lattice tops only!). I fondly recall sticking out my blue tongue, oh-so-proudly, at everyone at breakfast.
• Bonding with my oldest brother by getting up early and getting out on the lake for some 6am fishing.
• Gars/Pickerel. What a nasty fish. They were everywhere and extremely scary for an 11 yo. I hated trying to unhook them.
• The swamp path that was the shortcut between the extremes of the horse-shoe shaped lake. Not to mention the somewhat submerged tree that blocked the path. You had to get a good head of steam up and then shimmy the canoe over the tree. What fun.
• Herons. Beautiful graceful herons brushing the water as they swept past.
• Storms. For some reason I love storms as they pass across the lake. They seem to be more visible and alive when there is a malleable surface for it to change and for you to see the changes upon.
• Exclamation point. Yeah, that island straight ahead form the porch. Alone. Isolated, but oh-so cool.
• The porch. Frankly, I think it is the world’s best porch. Followed, perhaps, by the porch at the farm house. But the lodge porch has the perfect view. It’s screened in, high up, near the water (with a running jump you could probably reach the water but would still break a leg) and has a perfect view of the lake. There’s the island straight ahead, another larger island slightly to the left, a beautiful cove to the left and a stunning view of one of the largest stretches of the lake. To the right one can sense the beginning of one end of the swamp path. Below you can see the old rickety, but safe, dock with two Adirondack chairs inviting repose. Further to the left is the boat house, now empty–the old motor boat retired to drier waters.
• The length of the porch there is a small counter space where all meals were eaten. Sit at the dining room table near the kitchen and the fireplace? No. One has to eat on the porch with the tremendous view

Now that I’m an adult I can rent it. Wow. What a indicator of the passage of time. So I rented it and had a bunch of friends come up for the first weekend I was there. We had a great time swimming, chatting, grilling and poking a lot of fun of each other.

I think I would sell my soul for that place.