A Sunny Walk

If a walker is indeed an individualist there is nowhere he can't go at dawn and not many places he can't go at noon. But just as it demeans life to live alongside a great river you can no longer swim in or drink from, to be crowded into safer areas and hours takes much of the gloss off walking -- one sport you shouldn't have to reserve a time and a court for.
-- Edward Hoagland

Sunday, January 3, 1999

Don't miss my arrival back in town last Friday, and movie and a party last night.

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One of the many nice things about visiting Jack: he fixes food for me! Oatmeal, biscuits, soup, burritos... It's just great having a meal made for one! I was very amused when he rapped the tube of refrigerator biscuits against the counter edge a little too forcefully -- several biscuits made a break for freedom, leaping through the air in an Annie Hall type of moment. We brushed them off and baked them anyway.

We took a walk through Jack's suburban neighborhood, since it was a nice sunny afternoon. Jack talked about stuff from his childhood, and theories about how the world might be better organized. I found the stones along a power line accessway easier going than the river stones near his parents' place.

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When we returned to the house, Jack went back to fighting with his computer and I took a nap on the couch. Jack teased me later about snoring. Surely a more appropriate comment would have been something about how cute I looked while sleeping? I think most people do snore sometimes when sleeping.

We drove to Olympia to pick up Jack's older daughter A----. She'd already eaten, but Jack and I hadn't so we stopped at Taco Time for some food. I'm afraid I actually got a bit irked with A---; Jack asked her to take the tray and throw out the trash on our way out. She started whining about how that wasn't fair, she hadn't eaten (but she had been drinking a shake we bought her at Dairy Queen), blah, blah. So I grabbed the tray out of her hands and threw the trash away myself on the way to the bathroom. I wasn't trying to interfere in Jack's discipline efforts; I just wanted to short-circuit the scene.

Jack wasn't pleased when, as we were pulling out of the parking lot, A---- discovered that she'd left her new portable CD player (a Christmas gift from her dad) at her mom's trailer. We did need to go back and get it, even though it added a half-hour to our trip time, which Jack was angered by. It's really sad that A---- realizes that her mother isn't to be trusted with valuable items.

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