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February 26, 2000
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sleet Was going to go on a dog walk at 7:30 or so. "Did it rain?" I ask. "Yeah, I heard it," himself says. A few minutes later. "I better get the papers in before they get soaked." "Is it raining now?" "I think so." "Get the paper and check for me. If it's raining, I'm going to sleep a few more minutes." It was. No dog walk. I wanted a bright sunny day and a dog walk. But I still felt that giddy visceral feeling of getting out of something. I struggled out of bed at 7:30. I was sitting in my office when Forrest said "I can't believe it!" and I heard very loud rain. Hard rain, actually. Marble-sized sleet. Small marbles, but still. See? No Capresso this morning. Filter coffee I used to love is disappointing. I needed to get my act together and go get a haircut. But I'm seduced into watching "The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone" with Vivian Leigh and Warren Beatty. I try to take care of some things I need or want to do. Straigtening up this ever increasing spiral of chaos, scanning stuff. A call to Jane the Barber says be there at 10:15. Whoa...must shower quickly. I'm at A Barber Shoppe right on time. A comb over is just getting finished. I'm next. After comb over is gone, Jane says he was a new customer. She thinks him a bid odd. She has nothing but odd customers, I think. Me included. I'm trimmed, clipped, shaved and get a hot towel on the neck and a little goop in the hair and a blow dry. Forrest had the precious (but non-functioning) Capresso boxed up at a Pack and Mail on Burnet. I go to get it, but it's double-boxed and packed to achieve a size my Honda Civic won't swallow. I call SuRu. She leaves her work arranging her house which is amidst a remodel and comes to get the box. Capresso will send UPS to pick it up at the house. I feel like my child has been kidnapped. Addiction is a terrible thing. I head back out to check out a new pair of hiking boots. I'm addicted to wearing my New Balance Hiking Boots everywhere. I have a really old beat-up pair and a newer pair. But I'm compelled to make sure I don't end up without a good pair. I sign in at Karavel which is, as usual on Saturdays, stacked with customers. I listen to women talk about AA and ADD and housecleaning. I hear more than I care to about foot problems from those clutching prescriptions. Once my name comes up, I try on a new model boot, pay and I'm gone. Yea. Thundercloud for lunch. The parking lot is stacked with urban assault vehicles and inside people try to control small children eating. I'm out quickly, though, with a Vegie Delight Sandwich, a chef salad, some pepperoncini and a couple of bags of baked chips. Forrest and I thus dispense with lunch. The day is now bright and nice. Hard to resist helping out in the yard, pulling weeds barehanded so that I have to get out the nail brush when I go inside and scrub them. Forrest slaved away longer than me in the yard. He finally came in and showered and then rushed off to find a shoe repair place to take his favorite Cole Hahns. Unfortunately they don't make that style anymore. He takes a couple of pairs of mine for some refurbishing, too. We love good shoes and it seems worhwhile to fix them up when they get worn. Forrest has no choice, though. He has to get these fixed unless Cole Hahn relents and brings the style back. (Yes, I sometimes don't wear hiking boots.) Forrest has a surprise when he returns from the shoe repair shop: giant cups of Starbucks. Yum. An addiction is a terrible thing. Then he sees a butterfly on the back porch and exclaims. I go out with my 35MM camera and finish shooting a roll of film. I go back and get the digital camera. He's still posing. Hope the page doesn't take too long to load today. Too many timely visuals. And to think I have to reach so far so many days. Dinner in the dining room at the Driskill. The appetizers sound good (brie and lobster tartlet or something and a forest mushroom salad with fried green tomatoes). No real snap to the flavor, though. We have selected a 1997 Rosemount Shiraz. We receive a 1998. I don't know about the '98, but if you paid $10 retail for the '97, then you paid too much. It is $30. They probably paid $7. And I thought the Four Seasons had a huge wine markup. The entreιs were boring. The tuna (with spinach) was less boring than the sea bass with mashed potatoes. We were in a reviewing mode so we had dessert. Two actually. Creme brulι and a banana bread pudding. OK, but I'm not a huge dessert fan. Did I mention that we were seated at a tiny two top? When the restaurant had only one or two other tables occupied? When we left, there were still comfortable four tops. The manager of the hotel did come over and say 'Hi.' I told him that my parents lived next door to the woman who was his secretary at The Mansion in Dallas. He'd heard about my parents, actually, and said he'd heard my dad was a saint who helped people out. He'll be glad to hear he got his sainthood. The evening's entertainment is "The American Play" at Zachary Scott. A ramble through American history and Black American experience, this is a most interesting experience. We were in the small arena theater at Zach and, further, on the front row. The stage was dirt and digging and stomping in the dirt was key to the play's 'plot.' In the second act my dust allergy was on alert and my eyes started to burn. I kept thinking I was fighting off sleep, but would suddenly notice things unearthed that I'd missed. Oops. Anyway, it's really something different and the three main actors were riveting. I suppose it's weird to doze and then say that, but it's true. We saw people we know. Yeah, we always do. Alex from the opera and one of the Jeffs from my office.
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"Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." Unknown, perhaps Mark Twain or one of his buddies |
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sleet on the path...
...butterfly appears...
...and poses. |
