Today was quintessential #smalltownlife. In fact, it's so #smalltownlife -- and so far away from my San Francisco life -- that I'm not sure I can adequately capture it. But then, nothing can really be adequately captured, and all of this is always only a glimpse at what I see (and what I later remember when I reread something months or years later and vividly recreate, or can only merely guess at, the memory evoked by the words).
But maybe today will be a day that I can remember vividly someday. I still feel like total hell, so it's possible cold medicine is influencing all of this. But the day progressed as follows: I woke up in time for breakfast for the first time on this trip, which I enjoyed with my parents (bacon and eggs, along with some home fries, and I didn't feel guilty for eating some of the small quantity of potatoes because they failed to feed me yesterday while I was getting pneumonia from my niece, so screw them).
Shortly thereafter, my brother's best friend from high school showed up to look at some stuff my dad was interested in getting rid of; the best friend brought his baby girl, who is eight months old and who was quite content to sleep in her car seat while farm supplies were examined and discussed. She eventually woke up, and while I refrained from holding her because I didn't want to give her pneumonia, I enjoyed making faces at her while hanging out outside.
I also took a brief excursion to examine my dad's peacocks, but they have fallen on hard times; slowly, one by one, they have succumbed to a disease in which their throat swells up and they die. That's sad and depressing, so I'll end this paragraph early and move on.
sssanyway, I took care of some personal business (mostly related to sales prices for my books), and then I took [censored] to my grandma's farm to take care of some stuff down there. I hadn't thought I would see it again, since it's being sold in a few weeks and I hadn't intended to be here this weekend, but I took another trip through the house and also spent some quality time examining the barn (which looked and sounded like it could fall on our heads at any moment). This was the barn in which some of my earliest memories were formed (namely, helping with sheep shearing, which was a grimy task, and also bottle feeding lambs...and also digging for fishing worms under the planks outside the barn), and it's making a quite dramatic descent back into the earth. I got some cool pictures, though, so the iPhone that has replaced my heart is satisfied.
After that, I came home (along with my dad, who was eating pears in the backyard of the house when we arrived) to meet up with Aunt Becky and Uncle Brian (aka the scandalous pirate husband). They were down from Des Moines on a mission to retrieve the 'pecker rock', which was a large rock that had formerly belonged to my grandfather (who collected multitudes of rocks) that was shaped like...well, the name should tell you. Dad was able to use his skid loader + a strap wrapped around the base of the head of the pecker rock to swing it into their trailer, which was a pretty entertaining process to watch.
Then, we trekked over to Aunt B's property to grab some more rocks. I drove Becky and Brian over to the entrance, and they walked back to the pond, but I rode back with my dad in his backhoe - which was a rather surreal experience, since I hadn't ridden with him in the cab of a tractor-like vehicle since I was a little girl, most likely. But I used to ride around with him and my granddad all the time, and I could still stand up in the cab, so it was all pretty lovely. Of course, I was a little worried I'd bash my head on the roof when we'd unexpectedly hit a massive anthill, but I survived. And we retrieved some more rocks (but by no means all of them) with the scent of crushed cedar wafting up around us, since Becky's got a bunch of volunteer cedar trees coming up in the middle of her field that definitely shouldn't be coming up there...but nature tends to take over immediately, as I've seen again and again in every corner of my hometown.
After the rocks were taken care of, I ate a snack, picked up [censored], and eventually went to town with my dad to see my grandmother (who is also returning to nature, slowly). Then we came home, I popped some ibuprofen and some antacid to try to deal with my suddenly crushing headache/stomachache combo, and watched '60 Minutes' with Putin and Trump (I'll say no more). Then we ate supper (hamburgers and the last sweet corn of the year) and watched the 'CSI' finale while keeping an eye on the super blood moon.
As it turns out, I'm glad I was here for the eclipse - the sky was perfectly clear tonight, and so while I sat outside in the dark and hoped I wouldn't get sprayed by a skunk or eaten by a coyote, I was able to see the eclipse along with millions of stars. Even if Karl the Fog had let me see the eclipse in SF, the stars would have been lost to the haze and light of the city of sin. So, the super blood moon and myriad of stars was a perfect cap to a lovely, bizarre day.
And now I must sleep and hope to continue my recovery so I can write tomorrow and prepare to head back to the evil city on Tuesday - goodnight!
But maybe today will be a day that I can remember vividly someday. I still feel like total hell, so it's possible cold medicine is influencing all of this. But the day progressed as follows: I woke up in time for breakfast for the first time on this trip, which I enjoyed with my parents (bacon and eggs, along with some home fries, and I didn't feel guilty for eating some of the small quantity of potatoes because they failed to feed me yesterday while I was getting pneumonia from my niece, so screw them).
Shortly thereafter, my brother's best friend from high school showed up to look at some stuff my dad was interested in getting rid of; the best friend brought his baby girl, who is eight months old and who was quite content to sleep in her car seat while farm supplies were examined and discussed. She eventually woke up, and while I refrained from holding her because I didn't want to give her pneumonia, I enjoyed making faces at her while hanging out outside.
I also took a brief excursion to examine my dad's peacocks, but they have fallen on hard times; slowly, one by one, they have succumbed to a disease in which their throat swells up and they die. That's sad and depressing, so I'll end this paragraph early and move on.
sssanyway, I took care of some personal business (mostly related to sales prices for my books), and then I took [censored] to my grandma's farm to take care of some stuff down there. I hadn't thought I would see it again, since it's being sold in a few weeks and I hadn't intended to be here this weekend, but I took another trip through the house and also spent some quality time examining the barn (which looked and sounded like it could fall on our heads at any moment). This was the barn in which some of my earliest memories were formed (namely, helping with sheep shearing, which was a grimy task, and also bottle feeding lambs...and also digging for fishing worms under the planks outside the barn), and it's making a quite dramatic descent back into the earth. I got some cool pictures, though, so the iPhone that has replaced my heart is satisfied.
After that, I came home (along with my dad, who was eating pears in the backyard of the house when we arrived) to meet up with Aunt Becky and Uncle Brian (aka the scandalous pirate husband). They were down from Des Moines on a mission to retrieve the 'pecker rock', which was a large rock that had formerly belonged to my grandfather (who collected multitudes of rocks) that was shaped like...well, the name should tell you. Dad was able to use his skid loader + a strap wrapped around the base of the head of the pecker rock to swing it into their trailer, which was a pretty entertaining process to watch.
Then, we trekked over to Aunt B's property to grab some more rocks. I drove Becky and Brian over to the entrance, and they walked back to the pond, but I rode back with my dad in his backhoe - which was a rather surreal experience, since I hadn't ridden with him in the cab of a tractor-like vehicle since I was a little girl, most likely. But I used to ride around with him and my granddad all the time, and I could still stand up in the cab, so it was all pretty lovely. Of course, I was a little worried I'd bash my head on the roof when we'd unexpectedly hit a massive anthill, but I survived. And we retrieved some more rocks (but by no means all of them) with the scent of crushed cedar wafting up around us, since Becky's got a bunch of volunteer cedar trees coming up in the middle of her field that definitely shouldn't be coming up there...but nature tends to take over immediately, as I've seen again and again in every corner of my hometown.
After the rocks were taken care of, I ate a snack, picked up [censored], and eventually went to town with my dad to see my grandmother (who is also returning to nature, slowly). Then we came home, I popped some ibuprofen and some antacid to try to deal with my suddenly crushing headache/stomachache combo, and watched '60 Minutes' with Putin and Trump (I'll say no more). Then we ate supper (hamburgers and the last sweet corn of the year) and watched the 'CSI' finale while keeping an eye on the super blood moon.
As it turns out, I'm glad I was here for the eclipse - the sky was perfectly clear tonight, and so while I sat outside in the dark and hoped I wouldn't get sprayed by a skunk or eaten by a coyote, I was able to see the eclipse along with millions of stars. Even if Karl the Fog had let me see the eclipse in SF, the stars would have been lost to the haze and light of the city of sin. So, the super blood moon and myriad of stars was a perfect cap to a lovely, bizarre day.
And now I must sleep and hope to continue my recovery so I can write tomorrow and prepare to head back to the evil city on Tuesday - goodnight!
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