End of the Month Already?

Well I felt I just HAD to do a post today. Not just because it's Memorial Day and the end of a holiday weekend. But really because it's the very last day of May, and I realized I haven't written all month. Where does all the time go?

Well I suppose this will end up being a recap of sorts. We're still deep in the Covid bubble, but things have been improving steadily as of late. We're expecting that by June 15, restrictions will be eased up significantly and we may be able to plan for a normal fall semester. Well, closer to normal anyway. At least, not as ridiculous as the last two semesters have been.

But yes, the semester is over at Sac State. We made it through, somehow, and students still did their recitals and graduated and went through Carmencement - the drive through commencement organized by Sac State. I'm not entirely sure how this summer is going to go, as once again we have no summer camps going on. So the workload, which plummeted in March 2020, continues to sit near the bottom of a chasm. 

Today was hot. Quite hot. TOO hot. It was the first 100 degree day of 2021 I believe, and it sure felt like it. We haven't gotten much rain this season, so I fear this summer will be long and dry and full of wildfires. Great. Just what we needed.

 

But I started off this morning bright and early at 7:00 AM with a 4-mile bike ride to Old Town, followed by a 5 mile walk along the River Walk in West Sac and around downtown Sacramento a little bit. I had never actually done the River Walk on that side of the Tower Bridge, so it was a new experience. And although the day promised to be impossibly hot, the morning was still quite nice, at that early hour anyway. But I was actually looking for a little breakfast. Finally found a Subway that was open, after passing by a couple that were closed. And then I finished off my early morning escapade with a 4-mile bike ride back home. I was actually home by 10:00 AM, and even at that early hour, it was hot. Quite hot. TOO hot.

So, I regret to admit that I've spent the rest of the day cooped up at home with the air conditioner conservatively set at 79 and yet struggling to keep up. I did do laundry, so that was something. And I read a bit. Napped a bit. Ate a bit. Typically holiday repertoire. 

And now, as the sun is dropping low on the horizon and the temperature is plummeting to a less balmy 99 degrees, I suppose I should show some initiative and get outside for so (more or less) fresh air and exercise. I'm still admittedly a little sore from the two days in a row of bowling, first on Connor's little playdate and then with just the two of us (he really really really wanted to go again). It's amazing sometimes how your body protests things it used to do with regular gusto. Lack of consistency mixed with getting older, I guess. I am not going to age gracefully, but rather kicking and screaming. 

Well, unless I'm too sore or tired for all that, in which case I'll probably just take a nap.

But that about wraps up May, now onto June! The month I should be moving into my new townhome, which was delayed from the end of March, and is now postponed to the end of October. But that's another story for another time.

Goodbye May!

Donut of the Week

So this week, my little buddy is Donut of the Week at school. It's a playful little thing his teacher devised to give each kid a little showcase during the school year. On Monday they get to share an "All About Me" poster. (I should say "poster", in quotes, because it's really an online Seesaw assignment where they fill in the blanks. Thanks, Covid, for stifling creativity in our children). On Tuesday they get to bring something to school for Show and Tell. Wednesday they get to pick the music used for their brain break in class. 

But on tomorrow - Thursday - that's where the fun happens. Parents get to write a letter to their child, basically dripping with love and tenderness and compliments, and likely providing the child with hours of fun in-class embarrassment. The sappier the better. 

Now, it's been a few years since I had a homework assignment, not to mention a writing one. But I felt up to the challenge. So I cuddled up on the couch next to my boy this evening as he watched Minecraft music videos on YouTube. And clickety-clack, I typed out a banger of a letter in no time flat. And since I have the benefit of this blog at my disposal, and I can copy and paste and Bam! Instant blog post.

So here's my soon-to-be infamous letter:

Dear Connor – 

 

This is just a note to let you know how proud I am of you. It’s been the highlight of my life to watch you grow up from a tiny infant into the bright young boy you are today. You are always kind and thoughtful and empathetic towards other people as well as to animals. Your seemingly boundless energy has kept me on my toes and demanded that I pretend I’m at least 10 years younger just to keep up. Your capacity for intelligence often surprises me, as you frequently seem to absorb new information effortlessly. And you like to learn. Your limitless curiosity about the world around you and your observations of it have led to all manner of daily Quotes – nearly 300 in the past wo years – that I’ve shared with friends and family on Facebook. Your innocent and often profound insights have brought, laughter, joy, tears, and every emotion in between to the people around you.

 

I know it’s been a struggle this year; everything from dealing with this pandemic to the delays in construction of our new home (which still isn’t finished), to the loss of your favorite cat, Buster. I know it hasn’t been fun having to quarantine ourselves and miss out on play dates and stop participating in the sports you love such as basketball and soccer, and on and on.  But we’ve found new things to play, and new adventures to try such as our outings to go hiking in the woods or to try new card and board games or even to make up your own games. Your imagination never stops! We’ve killed many a zombie together and mined so many diamonds and emeralds and ridden so many paths on our two-wheeled “horses”. And you have persevered through everything and always kept a smile on your face and lifted my spirits in the process. I’m incredibly proud with how well you’ve taken everything in stride, and how you never complain and always see the bright side of life. In short, you inspire me. And I can’t wait to see what the next few years have in store for us.

 

Love, 

Your Dad

Writing Again

Well I see more than a month has gone by since I posted on here. Where does all this time go? Minutes turn to hours, hours to to days, days to weeks. What a droll existence! Meanwhile, Scout is still adjusting to the loss of her brother, Buster. As am I. As is Connor. That was the last thing I wrote about on here. Funny how one little animal becomes so entwined in our lives. This is why I don't support the use of "emotional support animals" to try and avoid the rules of society. As if those pets were somehow more special to their owners than anyone else's. News flash: ALL pets are emotional support animals. That's why we have pets.

Today was a pleasant day though. I didn't get a soul-repairing trip to the bay this week. I need to, and soon. It just wasn't in the cards this week, though I certainly contemplated it.. But I started this morning with a 4-mile walk along the river in Old Town, followed by some laundry and vacuuming at home, followed by some margaritas at Chili's courtesy of my last gift card, received pre-Covid. And then, not to be outdone, I did a 5-mile bike trek on the paved bike trails around Natomas. I ended up at Orchard Park, where this shot was taken. There's...so many nice, paved bike trails around here. All interwoven and spreading across the land. The more I explore, the more I find new ones. This one was new to me, and it had several paths in various directions that I had neither the time nor stamina to explore. Not today anyway. But today was an acceptable substitute for the Bay Area. So it was a good day.

I also stopped by the townhome this evening, just to check on things. No progress seemed to have been made in the last several days. I've been trying to get an update on construction progress for over a month now, to no avail. I just want to know when it will be done, when I can move in. It keeps getting delayed due to this ridiculous pandemic. I'm ready to end this apartment existence and have my own place again; to finally pull my things from storage and create a "home". Sigh. Keep waiting I guess.

And now it's getting cold, and the wind which has been with us all day is intensifying. Supposed to rain tomorrow. After being around 90 degrees the past week. Pick a season California! But I do like the gloomy weather, so it will be a nice change come tomorrow, if not entirely conducive to outdoor activities. And Connor and I just got to use the community pool for the first time last week! And now it will be far too cold to use it. 

And that reminds me, I need to write sometime about dreams of the future and potential places to live, after the townhome and after Connor goes off to college. Places more temperate and delightfully appropriate for the retirement which keeps inching closer. It's good to dream about such things, I think. But I don't want this post to go on so long...so I'll save it for tomorrow. Hey, I'm writing again anyway. Perhaps I can keep it up...

And Life Goes On

So yesterday we had the unpleasant and unfortunate experience of coming home from a leisurely walk to the park to find our beloved cat Buster dead. Gone. We're not quite sure what happened; he had exhibited no signs at all of being in any sort of distress. We had seen him just an hour before. Of course we didn't really look at him before we left. Who leaves their house expecting to find their pet dead upon their return? He had no pre-existing conditions that we were aware of. Of course. he must have had something wrong with him. Something caused him to die. A congenital heart condition that led to a sudden heart attack, perhaps. Who knows?

He was only three and a half years old.

I remember going to pick Buster and Scout up, from this family who lived off of a frontage road in the country just outside of Elk Grove. Their cats had a litter. They were selling. They advertised on Craigslist. This was back in the fall of 2017; they had been born on August 23 and now that they were weaned, they were available! And I had been looking for young kittens. I picked the loner black one who did everything in her meek power to avoid her brothers and sisters. And the one orange tabby who kept chasing her around and antagonizing her. He still did that, even on the morning of his death.

But he was Connor's cat, really. Connor's first pet. Scout was always standoffish with Connor; it was only in the last couple of months that she would even let him get close enough to pet her. Before, she would run away hissing and hide. But now she'll actually come out in the open when he's around.

But Buster and Connor has a special bond. Buster was incredibly patient around Connor, allowing the kid to manhandle him and move him around. Which, let's face it, Connor did a lot of. But Buster loved the attention. He thrived on it. Often demanded it. You could barely sit down anywhere without him leaping up to get in your lap, to be all up in your business.

And like his surrogate father (that being me), Buster loved his routines. Every night at bath time, Buster would station himself right next to the tub. And he'd sit there and wait for Connor to get out. He often got splashed, or petted with wet hands. He rarely came away dry. Sometimes he would get up and walk along the edge of the tub, towards the faucet. We half expected him to slip and fall in. Because let's face it, he was a little overweight and a bit of a klutz. 

He'd also be waiting for me, just outside my shower as I tried in vain to get out without stepping on him. Every. Single. Night. Turns out, he really liked to watch the water go down the drain. Well. Everyone should have a hobby.

And then at bed time, he would always jump up on Connor's bed and lay next to him, waiting for me to read them a bedtime story. Sometimes he would sit up there until Connor fell asleep, and then stand guard over him. And he'd purr, and purr. He was a loud purr-er.

He was a good kitty.

It's a shame Buster will not get to see the shiny new condo I have bought, that is now under construction. I'm sure he felt limited in the small apartment we are currently at. There's only so much room to run around, and so few windows to look out of. The new place would be something like a 60% increase in space. Which is a huge difference to a kitty! I'm guesstimating here a bit, as I didn't do the actual math. But now I kind of want to...okay it's just over 70% increase in space. There. Now I can sleep at night.

I've never lost a pet so suddenly and unexpectedly before. I suppose I can take comfort in the fact that I didn't have to watch his health decline over a long period of time. Didn't have to watch him suffer. Been there, done that. Not fun. But it was too soon, too soon. 

I had to let Connor sleep in my bed last night, because as soon as he crawled up there he started crying. He misses his cat. He said having the cat there helped keep the nightmares away. Maybe so. Cats keep Creepers away in Minecraft, so why not? Your first lost pet is perhaps the toughest, and especially so when you were so close.

And now it's just me and Scout at home. For awhile she wandered around the place, sniffing and looking as if she was looking for him. I'm not totally sure she understands what happened either. I'm not even sure she saw him after he was gone, as there couldn't have been too much time before we found him, and it was their normal morning nap times after all. But she lost a bother, and now we'll just have to comfort each other and keep on keeping on. And life goes on. 

You can the video tribute to Buster HERE

Political Activism

So, I'm not a political activist. Or a social activist. Or any kind of activist, really. In general I try and avoid all societal interactions, to the best of my ability. I'm actually pretty good at it. Everyone's good at something. I stopped watching network TV years ago, stopped paying attention to the news. In short: I stopped caring. I do my own thing, live my own life, focus on me. And my son. Well, and my cats. I'm a good citizen though; I follow (most of) the established rules and laws. I don't litter, I recycle as much as I'm able to. I drive a hybrid. When I'm not walking and sparing the air. I work a full time job. I contribute to society.

Sometimes things get to you though. Like this morning, as I was waking up from a night marred with tossing and turning and funky dreams which I can no longer remember. As I was laying in bed, a feverish internal debate in progress about whether I should get up and start my day, I scrolled through Facebook. It's a good way to see some of what's been going on in the world. You can always count on your Facebook Friends to keep you up to date. Sharing, sharing, sharing,

Anyways, I came across a story from ABC News about the homeless encampment under a Highway 50 overpass, that suddenly became newsworthy by virtue of being in the way of Progress. Namely the work of CalTrans. It seems CalTrans can't work when there's people living on the space they want to work on. Imagine that.

And like the silly fool that I am, I read the comments to the article. This is never a good idea. Though these were fairly tame in the grand scheme of the world, save for the top featured one which said to tell them to move on, because they're Homeless and they can "do that anywhere". Most of the comments seemed to suggest that Governor Newsom and Speaker Pelosi and others of affluence had plenty of space around their grand homesteads. The Homeless would certainly have room there, to live in their backyards. I paraphrase a bit, but I'm sure you can imagine the lingo of the Keyboard Warriors at 6am on a Tuesday. 

In general, people just want the Homeless to go somewhere else. Anywhere else. Let them be someone else's problem, is what people say. And it's not like the old days where being homeless meant you were hunkered down under a storefront awning in your grimy old sleeping bag with a couple of damp blankets and some flattened out cardboard boxes to cover you. No, now they have professional camping tents, many nicer than mine that I actually use once every few years and pay $40 a night for the right to pitch it up in a fine wooded area. And they have possessions. Things. Bicycles and coolers and piles of clothes and pieces of what used to be furniture, and on and on. So many piles of stuff, though it's difficult to tell which are treasured times and which are trash. They look the same to me. They look the same to a lot of people. And it seems like there's so many more Homeless now, like it's ballooned in both the numbers of people and the square footage now covered in garbage and sewage. Possibly due to Covid, to the shut down of society which must have forced some people out of their homes for lack of work. 

In any case, few people seem to have tangible ideas for solving this problem, which is now even more seemingly out of control. Most just like to place blame, to pass it around like a football. Or a hot potato, I suppose. So I wrote a comment to the post. (Bad idea! For the sake of your own sanity, never, ever do this!). This is what it said:

"If we want to fix this problem, our society needs to stop accepting that it’s “OK” for people to setup makeshift camps wherever they want. And we’ve been accepting it by letting it happen. And by simply relocating homeless whenever it gets in the way of “progress”, which is what this story is about. We need comprehensive rehabilitation programs to get people off of the streets and back in to mainstream society. This article mentions briefly at the end a 100 bed shelter being built. It’s a start. And I know there’s a lot of people out there that “prefer“ to live on the streets. This can’t be OK. We have allowed it to be OK for a long time, and this problem has gotten exponentially worse in recent years."

Now, I don't see this as particularly profound of a statement. It's rational, and logical, if not overly simplifying the problem. But it seems to have been received well; in just over 12 hours it's received 106 likes. And I think it's true - we have accepted that being Homeless is an 'okay' thing. By virtue of not really doing anything substantial to combat it. 

And here's a picture of the sun setting over the Sacramento River, because we need more beauty in our life. Of course, there's homeless encampments out there. You can't see them in this photo, but if you walk the levee trails around Old Town you can see them. They're there. 

The homeless situation is sad. It really is. It saddens me every time I drive through downtown and see all the rough and grungy encampments and piles of trash spread out all over. Well anyways, I've said my piece and now I'll crawl back under my rock again. But hey, maybe our leaders will get that shelter done, and maybe up to 100 people will get the assistance they so desperately and obviously need and get off the streets. As I said, it's a start. And maybe some of those people, once they've gotten their fresh start, can go back to the camps from whence they came, which I'm sure will still be there. And maybe they can talk to those who are otherwise mentally fit but insisting that they prefer living on the street. Pride! And maybe these new souls can tell the old ones how nice it is to sleep in an actual warm, dry bed each night; to eat real food that wasn't previously discarded by someone else; to take a crap and not have to spend the night smelling it because they can flush it down an ACTUAL TOILET. That alone would convince me. How could anyone prefer that life? I'd take a handout over pooping in an alleyway any day of the week. Which choice hurts your pride more?

And that, my friends, is the extent of my activism. I'm not a rich or powerful or influential person. I don't have all the answers. I'm just another one of these keyboard warriors, sitting behind their computer going "tsk tsk" about the ways of the world that baffle us so. And life goes on.

Recapping February

Sunsets are always nice, and tonight's was no exception, with a picturesque grove of old Valley Oak trees setting the mood. Photography, really, is just about being in the right place and in particular at the right time. This particular grove is right next to Garden Highway and the Sacramento River. It's always good to go for an impromptu walk; you never know what you'll run into. And Nature inspires, once again.

Well it's been an eventful and busy weekend already, and it's only Saturday. Yesterday I left work early and traveled to San Francisco (where else?) for a lively stroll along the waterfront. This time I actually took off the shoes and socks and went about a mile and a half along the sandy Chrissy Beach. The water was so cold! But refreshing. This was after starting the afternoon with a Nob Hill Chill from Ghirardelli. I hadn't been there for a little while, so it was nice to get back to my roots, so to speak. It used to be my go-to place, when I first started these pilgrimages to the Bay Area. And then into the evening I trekked up into the city to Mac'd for a custom Mac and cheese dinner creation. Chicken, mushrooms, bacon, and corn, oh my. It was an order to-go of course, as restaurants have their indoor dining closed. But they did provide some little plastic tables and chairs under a pop up tent along the street side.

Today was sort of a pickup day in anticipation of the Return of Connor. I capitalize that freely, as it's really something of an event. A life event, really. It's like I lead two different lives, like a superhero disguising his identity from the world by leading a mild mannered "normal" life.. Though my situation isn't nearly as exciting as all that, and I lack any true super powers. But I do lead two lives, or so it seems; one as a single father and one as a semi-reclusive bachelor. 

But anyways, I spent the day today doing laundry, vacuuming the apartment, getting a haircut, going shopping for food and Connor's school (he goes back to live instruction Monday! Only two days a week, but still. It's been almost a year). And then in the early evening I treated myself to a margarita and dinner at Chevy's. I...had a coupon. And that's another thing that I haven't done in awhile - not just Chevy's but actually a sit-down restaurant experience. 

And now as the end of February is upon us, I'm reminded that I was originally supposed to be moving right around now. Back in September when I plunked down a deposit on a new-construction condo, they estimated that it would be finished about the end of February, or beginning of March at least. But once again Covid reared its ugly head and disrupted the flow of building materials and probably labor as well. So...it's been delayed. Till the summer. So this weekend is a little less uneventful than it should have been. 

But hey, I wouldn't have been able to do any of this other stuff, most likely, if I was on the verge of a big move. So, there's the silver lining. Making lemonade! And now it's about time to get to bed and rest up. For the Return...