Idle essays

Today I’m supposed to perform as a “juror” for mock trials used to train brand-new county prosecutors. It should be pretty entertaining…

One of my former assistant editors at the Great Desert University, a young woman who at the time of the Great Layoff had  just completed a master of fine arts in writing as well as the graduate certificate in scholarly publishing, used the period of the Recession-That-Was-Not-a-Depression to go through law school. She recently finished, and while waiting for admission to the state bar is working for this grant-funded training program. She e-mailed a couple of days ago frantically seeking volunteers for today’s mock trials.

LOL! Apparently it didn’t occur to them that most folks have jobs, and even those who can spend a day at the courthouse on Friday are inclined to regard jury duty as an onerous task and imposition, not the privilege of a free people.

Have to be at the courthouse door at 8:00 a.m.  So, to race around…

Image: Bulloch County courthouse, Statesboro, Georgia. Richardeleanechambers at the English Language Wikipedia. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

🙂 After all that physical therapy and all that exercise, I made it to the much-anticipated hike up the West Fork of Oak Creek. As you may recall, along about last October, at the annual silent auction fundraiser for the choir, I bought a ticket to an excursion organized by two of the day school‘s teachers. At that time I thought surely the back pain I’d inflicted on myself the previous January would go away in time for me to get in shape by late April, 2013.

Well, of course, it didn’t. By February of this year I still could barely move, much less go hiking…or even walk very far. Two doctors and six weeks of intensive physical therapy later, I’d recovered enough to walk briskly and even climb. This left…well…seven days to get ready for the hike. As of yesterday, I sure wasn’t in top physical shape (and probably never will be again…so we’re told ;-)), but was one heckuva lot better than I have been.

It was great fun! The organizers have been at All Saints so long they actually remembered my son, who’s pushing middle age these days. Several other people associated with the church or the choir showed up, all of them really neat people, a pleasure to be around. Early yesterday morning we boarded the school’s large van for the short ride up the freeway to Sedona, and by mid-morning we’d arrived at the trailhead and were on our way!

Here are some of the sights…

In the 1870s, the Mayhew Lodge stood near what is now the paved road through Oak Creek Canyo0n; before that, there was probably a homestead. A small grove of apple trees survives from that time, as well as a few red-rock ruins. As usual, click on the images for larger, higher-definition views.

View of the creek from the bridge near the trailhead.

This, we’re told, was the lodge’s chicken coop. Up behind it is a cave that was used for storage.

From the outset, sandstone cliffs loom above you.

And loom…

And loom… Yes, that is actually the real color of the sky.

Here’s part of our merrie groupe. Check out the cute little dog: each of our guides owned one of these doughty miniature poodles, acquired at the same time from the same litter.  They make awesome hiking companions and are so delightful I’m thinking maybe a poodle would make a better roommate for The Queen of the Universe than another (difficult-to-find!) corgi.

The trail meanders up the canyon. We crossed the creek maybe a half-dozen times during our five-mile hike.

We paused to rest a few minutes on this sandstone bench.

Strange nest of a type of tent caterpillar. Weird, huh?

A rockfall dropped this truck-size boulder and a bunch of its companions across the path. Our guides could remember a time when this little fellow wasn’t there.

Some more debris from that rockfall.

More scenery…

Our guides are into geocaching. One of them climbed up here to retrieve a stash left by a previous visitor.

We stopped here for lunch or snacks. The little dogs had a grand time swimming in the creek here!

These lichens on the rock look like artwork…

Here’s the whole canvas!

More scenery.

After that stop, we headed back to the car, like so many horses trotting for the barn.

You know you’re there when you see those old, old apple trees again.

After the hike, we stopped in Sedona for lunch and drinks at Indian Gardens, a nifty restaurant and market in a historic building, said once to have housed a roadside gas station. It has a lovely big back patio where we could sit with the little pooches, enjoy some delicious sandwiches, and soak up a little tea…or, in my case, a Black Butte.

I’m ready to go again! One of the women on the hike, also a choir member, suggested she and I should get together for other trips. So it looks like we’ll be hiking companions. This could get to be a great deal of fun.

What was it? All of a week ago that we were exulting over springtime on the desert? Well, spring has done sprung, and now summer has entered, stage left. Despite a skiff of overcast, the back porch thermometer is hovering between 85 and 90 degrees. Tomorrow is supposed to be 90, and so it will go for at least the next week.

Then it will get hot.

The pool is warm enough to swim in — still brisk, but no longer cold enough to freeze off any vital parts. In fact, I’m thinking I may take the plunge in the next few moments of this still and rather stuffy afternoon.

Various bits and pieces of news and idleness…

First up: It develops that commenter marzy doats was right in speculating that my neighbor Sally was not legally bound, by reason of ethnicity, to accept any halfway reasonable offer on her house from the neighborhood slumlord.

This morning at the weekly Scottsdale Business Association breakfast chivaree, it was our Realtor‘s turn to entertain the rest of us with a presentation. During the Q&A, I described what had happened and asked if it was true, as Sally’s agent claimed, that she could not just reject Mr. B***’s lowball offer. He said no, she was not bound to accept or make a counteroffer to any offer that came in the door. If the prospective buyer was not black, unmarried, or conspicuously religious, she could simply reject the offer with no comment.

However, if the offer met the asking price, with no strings attached, that would be a different matter.

So: score one for Funny’s readers!

Next: It appears that I’m now the president of the Scottsdale Business Association. Can you imagine? Me…the English major, president of a bidness group? Wonders never cease.

Our beloved past president, who to our shock had to go in for bypass surgery, took that opportunity to step down, having run the thing for quite a few years.

I called a business meeting for later this month. He suggested we appoint him as treasurer & secretary (since English-major math definitely will not make it in the bookkeeping dept.) and then select a vice-president who can take over if I’m not there and also who will step in as president in a year. He thinks we should have a rotating presidency, and I think that is a great idea.

Yesterday was an exceptionally busy day. Among other things, my self-publishing author, feeling overwhelmed with the technicalities of going to print, asked me to package his magnum opus.

That took me a bit aback, because it wasn’t what I signed on to do: I expected to do the editing. Period. And it really couldn’t come at a worse time, because another pair of clients are now racing to complete the anthology of first-person narratives they’re compiling, and they need to get the last few contributions edited. Now.

So I passed the lion’s share of the guy’s project along to a former client, a designer who owns a small packaging business. She agreed to do the most involved parts of the work, if I would do the hand-holding.

He’d like to see the book ready to go to print by the end of this month. We think it will take four to six weeks to get him registered with Ingram, set him up with CreateSpace, design the pages, adjust the cover design to fit the perfect binding (he commissioned an artist to create a cover and is busy having her lay out the back cover copy, and she apparently wants to do something fancy with the spine), and then produce and read proofs. After that, depending on who he chooses to hire, putting the thing in Kindle and getting it up on Amazon should take a week or so.

Tomorrow is going to be even more crazy.

It’s out the door at 6:45 a.m. to get to an estate sale in the ritzy part of town. See this set of nesting tables? (Click on the image for a better view, but avert your eyes from the hideous lamp.)

Those are solid maple, mid-century modern tables by Conant-Ball. They’re identical to the set my mother purchased in San Francisco in 1958, after we came back from ten years in  Saudi Arabia. M’hijito has coveted those tables for years, but he’s not getting the things until I croak over.

I haven’t seen any of these pieces for sale in quite some time. As develops, they’ve become collector’s items, and they’re stupidly expensive. These have been stripped and refinished, which damages their antique value — but then, mine have had the same treatment. Frankly, a good oil finish looks a helluva lot better on this stuff than the original yellow varnish did. Whatever: original finish or no, the price is still bracing.

So. That is going to be my son’s birthday present.

Two other people, both dealers, are trying to get there ahead of me. Forewarned by the proprietor, La Maya and I are heading for the East Side as dawn cracks, and we intend to camp outside the door until they open up the place at 8.

From there, it’s an about-face and a fast drive to the far West Side, where I have to meet KJG and VickyC at Arrowhead Mall. VickyC wants a new love seat, and in fact, I would like one, too, if one could be found at the right price. VickyC has an almost magical gift for finding really neat-looking interior appointments, from furniture to tschochkies, at ludicrously bargainish prices. So KJG and I want to tag along on her search, in hopes of nailing a bargain ourselves.

I’ll only have until 4:00 p.m. At that witching hour, I’ll have to fly back into town to get here in time to feed the dog, change clothes, and shoot out the door to go to dinner and chamber music with my neighbor and friend.

Naturally, tomorrow the maga-writing students submit their first full-blown articles. By midnight there’ll be a raft of those sitting on the server — a few eager beavers have already sent theirs.

Fortunately, only seven of the original 20 enrolled students survive, and they seem to be the cream of the crop. They’re all doing quite well, and most are articulate and creative. So reading this stuff shouldn’t be torture. I hope.

Charley the Golden Retriever spent a day visiting earlier this week. Cassie the Corgi is looking a bit bored just now, without him to chase around. They spend a great deal of time teasing each other. When they’re not conkered out on the floor, they’re a blur of motion.

We have, for example, the opening feint: a toy-snatch…

Cassie, who has doggle telepathy, knows what he’s up to. That thing he’s trying to kill is one of her beloved stuffed vultures, lately brought home from Costco.

Not so fast, hound!

Now for the showdown. First, though, click here for the sound effects…

Make my day, White Cur!

And it’s a total rout. Even if they weren’t shooting up and down the hall like rockets (and charging the human so it can’t hold the camera steady), Charley’s tail would be wagging so fast it would be a blur, despite (or because of) Cassie’s savage barking frenzy.

Gerardo was over here a couple days ago cleaning up the yard, which was still suffering the aftermath of the freeze. He and his underling picked up a ton of fallen citrus — the Meyer lemon was especially hard-hit by the frost, and the two Arizona sweets also dropped a lot of frozen fruit. And of course there were dead leaves and spent spring blossoms all over the ground, plus thorny dead branches to prune out of five bougainvilleas, plus the dead stuff off the blue plumbago, plus the dead stuff off the yellowbell that froze down to the ground, plus more weeds than Carter has oats.

In the course of pulling out clover and chickweed, Underling broke off an agave plant, an old favorite in the backyard. It was pretty badly frost-damaged, but still…I wasn’t too thrilled to have to haul it out to the garbage.

Whenever Gerardo’s underlings do some sort of damage, they invariably try to hide it. LOL! The guy propped up the beheaded agave so it would look like it was still just sitting there normally. Unfortunately, though, it did look ever so slightly strange. 😀

So now I have to figure out what to do with this spot.

Interestingly, there’s a rather pretty agave growing in the front yard, one that does NOT have fierce man-gouging thorns on it of the sort that (dis)graced the deceased. It tolerates more water than I expected — I thought it would be pretty xeric, but as it develops, to keep it looking good I have to drag a hose out to it now and again. That’s good, because there’s an old tree bubbler in the now vacant spot.

And darned if that plant doesn’t have a good-sized baby growing on it!

So sometime in the next few days, I’ll have to twist that thing off and stick it in the backyard.

Weird things are growing from those bulbs I planted a few weeks ago.

And now instead of editing anthology essays, I have diddled the entire afternoon away at blogging. And so, to work…

 

So here I am in the drink, in more ways than one. I’ve had two b&w’s with a lunch of chicken added to bok choy & garden red chard stir-fried together (the piece of grilled chicken cadged from a week’s supply of Cassie’s stash of cut-rate protein) (b&w: that would be “bourbon & water”). My back hurts. It makes the hips hurt. Though they don’t hurt like they did, they still hurt, and hurt is hurt. Oh, my god, but hurt is hurt.

I’ve learned that sneaking into the icy swimming pool water an inch at a time until the water reaches the sacroiliac helps a great deal to numb the old-bat pain. So….the day is warm, the sun is hot…oh, WTF, why not?

About at knee level, it strikes me that the water is not all that cold. About at hip level, it comes to me that at the age of 12 I would jump into water like this without a second thought.

At 68, I’m smarter than I was at 12.

However, let us suppose that one b&w erases approximately 30 years from the human. Two would erase 60 years. Uh huh. Two and a half would make you…what? Still in the womb? A twinkle in my father’s eye? Nay: a twinkle in my grandfather’s eye…

I declare myself 12 years old and take the plunge.

And you know what? That water is not, after all, cold enough to stop your heart. It feels INCREDIBLY WONDERFUL!

Oh. What a magnificent swim!

And so I am brought back to what I really am: an ecstatic, truth-to-tell pagan whose god is a woman that dwells somewhere Outback of the universe She created. The sky blue goes on and on and on forever and the radiant, no — the radioactive white glare of the star nearest us consumes the west, and yes, yes: people may be crazy, beer may be good, but only God is great.

Thank You, God, for all the life You created. Thank you, God, for all You created that is not life. Thank You for all the magnificence and all the baseness, all the splendor and all the obscenity, all the joy and all the misery, all the grace and all the cruelty, all the knowledge and all the awe, all the mystery of all creation, for all that we who are Your creatures can know or sense.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, God!