Steppin’ on the Donuts

How about a one donut poem to kick off a day of interesting developments?

Rushin' Roulette

Alexei in your cassock
under censer swung
perform for me the Unction -
my foolery is done!

Reports out of Yakima/Tri-Cities show a significant spike in cases. We’re talking Eastern Washington here, the counties that are laughed at and sneered at by the elites here in the Enlightened Sound. It’s rural, in other words. Assumptions are that Memorial Day celebrations had something to do with it. People here in King County are gracefully, carefully, fearfully avoiding forecasts of an uptick as a result of all the protesting. Most of the reporting paints a utopian picture of thousands of people marching in perfect six-foot intervals while wearing masks. But then you see the photos.

A comment from the article where those pictures were posted:

We are remarkably forgiving of things that we like.

I’ve been as wrong as can be from the beginning anyway, so I have little to say. King County’s been doing well, and we’ve applied for Phase 2. I believe that means up to 50% capacity in stores and restaurants. I might be able to go for that. It still interrupts the ritual, though. Besides, I figure that if I’ve been able to be a good little sheep for this long, I might as well wait it out a little longer. No sense pretending to be brave now.

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It’s the last day of school. We’re all getting a late start. The Boy isn’t up yet (rare for 8:00, which means he’s probably found something else to do instead of coming downstairs), so he doesn’t know that I’m not going to make him do any schoolwork. All of the other kids on our not-so-dead-end street have been out of school since last Wednesday or Thursday, and he’s been diligently working away in here at his cursive, grammar, reading, and math, complaining no more than usual. Good man.

He gets bloody noses. The last few days have been gruesome. Better than a couple of years ago, though, when I woke in the night to hear him crying in his room. I walked in to absolute carnage. His nose started bleeding in his sleep, he obviously rolled around in it for a while, and he and his sheets and pajamas were a Pollockian nightmare. I am not afraid of blood in any conscious way, but prolonged exposure always makes me queasy eventually. Two nights ago it was when his third large clot fell in the sink that I had to step outside for a few minutes. He handles it all so beautifully, so stoically. But on Sunday night it was late, he was very tired, and he started to be worried about all the blood. He’s 9 years old now, and tall and powerful and capable and real, but it still absolutely crushes me to see him scared.

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My brother has a bar in Massachusetts. Well, he built a bar. Ok, he built a sort of countertop that he puts out on the beach near the firepit. Everyone on that stretch of sand – permanent residents and return vacationers – knows it well. It’s name is Sharky’s, and it’s on a remote strip of land across the bay from Plymouth, called Saquish. Anyway, it’s a minor legend out there, at least among family and friends. There are hats and t-shirts, and it has its own facebook page.

We here in Seattle have decided to name the patio I just built “Sharky’s West.” We have the blessing of the original proprieter, so all that remains is for me to carve up and hang a wooden sign that looks something like this:

The home and humble grounds themselves we are going to call “Twin Cedars,” for the two, uh, cedar trees that stand prominently behind our new patio. So we will have Sharky’s West at Twin Cedars. All are welcome, but were not putting up any stupid signs to say that. There’s the namesake trees now:

That’s a lot, but still not much, and – wait, I almost forgot. I emptied my yahoo mailbox clear back to April of 2010. The first email on the pile is now part of an exchange between myself and the man behind Sippican Cottage. If you don’t know him, he is a writer and furniture maker out in the Maine hinterlands. At least he was in 2010. He used to blog rather famously, and published a book of flash fiction called “The Devil’s in the Cows.” It’s been years since he posted last. But seeing his email made me go check his website, and lo there are few new posts, albeit reprints of earlier writings. No new content as of yet. It’ll be good for all of us if he gets going again. Visit this post for a look at my kids 9 years ago, in a different house, sitting on a piece of his furniture. We still have that stepper, plus a second one just like it, and use them both almost daily. There isn’t the slightest wobble or weakness in either of them after significant abuse.

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Off to the day now, with, hopefully, a slightly better outlook than I’ve had lately. But it’s hard. It’s mid-June and yesterday I had to go inside to get a toque to wear while reading on the porch. It shouldn’t be like this.