Restoration

I spent the holiday weekend in West Virginia, celebrating my grandmother’s 90th birthday. She’s my mom’s mother, and she surprises everyone. She walks her dog and goes boating and bakes pies and sends e-mail and all sorts of other things you wouldn’t expect from someone who’s 90. The party was great fun, but it was all the in-between times I loved most. Eating toasted sourdough my aunt brought with her from San Francisco. Everyone sitting on the front porch of my parents’ place, singing “Take Me Home, Country Roads” while Jesse and his dad played guitar. Eating chili-slaw dogs and ice cream cones from Fat Eddie’s down the road. West Virginia always has a restorative effect on me, and so does being surrounded by family. I’m in better spirits this week.

Jesse’s parents went with us, and they stayed here Monday before heading back to Florida on Tuesday. Monday we took it easy–went out for breakfast, picked up the cats from the boarder. Vicki and I spent the afternoon pulling weeds from the garden and replanting a few things. How wonderful of her to spend her vacation helping with the garden. That evening, Jesse’s parents took us to dinner to celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary. It was a nice ending to a lovely little break.

Tuesday I spent the first half of the day working outside, cleaning up the back “porch” (really just a concrete slab stuck to the back of our house) and fertilizing the garden and fussing over the roses and turning the compost pile. I don’t have a pitchfork, so turning the pile can be a little difficult, but it had rained a lot Monday night so things were nice and soggy and easy to flip over with the shovel. Much to my delight, I saw quite a few earthworms in there. I also saw what I believe was another black widow. Which I immediately started hacking at with the shovel. Not sure if I killed it or not, but I felt rather impressive swinging that shovel like an axe. If you had seen me, you would have been impressed and possibly even surprised, I’m fairly certain. I didn’t even scream when I saw it–just kind of gasped and made this gurgly “A BLACK WIDOW!” sound in the back of my throat. That part was less impressive. I know Caitlin will be disappointed in me for killing it, but I had to. It clearly had murderous intent. It wanted me dead. And note to self: The next time you want to go playing in the compost pile, how about some gloves and closed-toe shoes? Hmm?

Right now the cats are on the futon in “my” office and Oliver is giving Gracie a bath and there are a stack of literature anthologies on the floor, as I was looking for anything by Tim O’Brien to read and study yesterday, and it’s cloudy but pleasant outside. And I baked bread the other day and spent nearly ten minutes kneading it, and that felt wonderful, the soft dough under my palms, the rhythm of the kneading.