My brother caught his first fish this year.  I say this year, but I think the last time he went fishing he was 12.  We live near a great fishing river, one of the cleanest in the world I’m told, and my brother decided he was going to learn to fish like the pros.  Friday was his birthday and he caught a 12-lb salmon. 

The fishing community is divided into thirds.  The third that does the best are out in boats.   The white guys on shore tried to run the Filipinos off the beach, but they just moved down closer to the bar.  My brother found them to be more helpful that the white guys, so he hangs out by the bar.  I do, too.  Before I got out of the car, I rolled my window down and said in a voice loud enough for his new buddies to hear, “You sure it’s okay for a woman to be down here?”  My brother smiled and said, not loud enough for them to hear, “Yeah, I asked.” 

I watched a father and son get a fish in tonight.  The father wasn’t speaking English, but his tone conveyed what every son should be lucky enough to hear.  The son was in his late 20s, which probably accounted for the father’s restraint.

God, it was beautiful with the sun on the water.  We had a reprieve at the last minute.  It was supposed to cloud up and rain this afternoon but the sun came out.  I laid out on the deck and listened to old songs.  It was one of those amazing coincidences when every song was good.  Normally, I don’t expect much out of the radio.  I was out late last night, dancing with Rudy, so I took a little nap on the chaise.  What could be better I ask you?

It is a major undertaking, which gets worse every year, to get my body ready for Florida.  Fortunately, I started doing situps earlier this year than in years past.  I’ve only lost five pounds, and I’m usually further along by now but I can get my shorts zipped so it’ll be okay.  The swimsuits I tried on today, and only one looks okay.  And when I say “okay,” I am being kind.  But you take any pair of thighs and you get a little sun on them, they look a whole lot better.  I swear my back looks older.  Anybody got a good exercise for old-lady back?  I have less than two weeks left.  Yippeeee!

For Featured Grown-ups…

Food and Paper, when it is TOO MUCH

Today I went to the tulip farm.  It turned out to be a huge event with hundreds of people and long lines for the tractor-driven ride through the fields.  There were rows and rows of each color, with a sign at the foot of the row so you could find it in your book.  The photo didn’t always look exactly like the flower but when I got home the pictures on the computer did. The booklet gave you the date it bloomed and the height of the plant so that at any given time next April I will have several sizes and colors blooming.  I just ordered 130 tulip bulbs.

That’s not all, either.  On their website you can order daffodils, hyacinth, and any other spring bulb.  I got a little of everything which amounted to 100 more bulbs.  Yikes.  I was feeling rich though because I didn’t have to pay federal taxes for some reason.  I also thought that because April can be such a mind-fuck with the weather here, having flowers blooming all month would distract me. 

The sun comes out just long enough to change into something springish for a nice walk but by the time you get outside it’s clouding over.  You go back in and get a sweater and decide to drive instead.  By the time you reach your destination it’s pouring.  So you get back in your car and drive home and just as you pull into the driveway the sun comes out and you start peeling your layers off.  Even though it’s my favorite season it still drives me crazy.

Edited to add:  read his comment and you’ll see the changes I made.

[That drunkpunches has some eye hunh?

Memories Have No Age

It’s Easter, and I’m dying eggs the same pretty pastels I hunted and hid.  I’ll make the first asparagus of the year, and that taste, with a little butter and lemon, will remind me of the fancy brunches I always did.  Spring is my favorite time, the cumulative effect making it more precious each year.  The first seeds sewn, the first shorts to brave bare legs; it’s a time of optimism, which you need in Oregon, as the forecast calls for rain.

The sun made an appearance around ten.  I strolled through the front with my coffee while Bridget zipped back and forth.  The yard needed to be mowed but I wanted to weed.  This was my first yard work of the season, as our weather has been uncooperative.  I started out by the mailbox under the big fir tree.  Friendly neighbors and young mothers with strollers said hello and admired the dog.  Here in Oregon we are so damn grateful for sun by this time of year that there is a general feeling of euphoria on a day like today.  People’s tulips are popping open and the smell of fresh-cut grass signals a shift.  That shift signals memories.  It happens every year, and each year I am older, but memories have no age. 

The long, cold winter is over, and people are back outside. I got on my bike the other day and rode around the neighborhood, admiring people’s yards.  These are old houses with mature gardens where people still take care of their own.  The advantage is diversity; people’s flowers aren’t all the same.  Now, most folks have their yards done by men who bring truckfulls of annuals, every yard alike.  This neighborhood believes in perennials, flowers that come back.  The lots are big and the trees are old, allowing birds to thrive.  Happy chirping triggered my first memory of spring.   I would lie on a blanket in the grass, watching the bird’s nest in our backyard.  I might have been six.  

I washed off the deck furniture and ate outside today, enjoying the privacy now that the trees are back in bloom. After lunch I laid out in my underwear.  Even though it wasn’t a bikini it felt the same when I shut my eyes against the sun’s glare.  It felt like I was 19, listening to Abbey Road on my mother’s patio. 

“Little darling, it’s been a long cold lonely winter.
Little darling, it feels like years since it’s been here.
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,
and I say, it’s all right.”

Copyright 2007 by Pd Brown

He’s boring.  I stayed on the phone an hour, thinking it might pick up but, no.  He has no interests.  His voice never leaves its — I won’t say monotone.  He has a radio announcer’s voice and he maintains a tight range.  He didn’t want to go out Wed night to the jam.  He didn’t want to meet me back at the same place Sat night, when he knew the band was fantastic.  The only thing he’s up for is if I join him for his Monday morning walk around the golf course and then lunch after.  Probably what he does every Mon.  Damn, he was even the right age.

If you had any idea how much time I’ve invested, instead of sleeping, thinking about kissing him, dancing, all the fun stuff there is to do with someone new.  No wonder he’s single. 

I wonder what sex would be like with someone like that.  He does the same thing the same way every day.  When I asked how it was that he drove all the way over there last Sat night he said, well, he was well-rested, not doing much of anything, and a woman friend said she and her girlfriend were going so he drove on over.  I don’t even think he likes the blues.  What a waste, he’s such a good dancer.

He’s a health nut like me, and you can bet he would be safe sex.  Nah, that’s a really bad idea.

I just realized, he only works in the afternoons so the only reason he didn’t want to stay out late was because of his walk at 8:00 every morning.

Praise God, Hallelujah, and Holy Fucking Shit; I might have met my next dance partner.  I even like his name.  I like everything about him.  He’s the right height.  I’m too excited to prioritize.  He’s happy.  He has good rhythm.  He is not self-conscious and doesn’t care how many people are on the dance floor.  He is ELEGANT.  He’s sensual, and he has style.  Please, God, make him available. 

It’s a curse to be such an optimist.  There’s a reason this guy is all the way across town, by himself.  He said he was to meet friends but they never showed up, and that might have been two women.  But he likes to dance, and he’d be hard-pressed to find a better partner.  I couldn’t believe the way I was acting.  I told him he was the perfect height but what I was thinking, too, was that he was the perfect fit.  On the slow dances, at first, just to make it easier to follow someone new, I was getting in pretty close.  A few times I inadvertently rubbed up against something I shouldn’t have. 

I liked the smell of him and all his answers.  He has a unique style of speech, too, so conversation was captivating.  Lots of times if someone can do the swing they don’t freeform.  This guy is comfortable either way and good at both, better than good.  He’s in perfect shape, too, so up for every dance.  Could it get any better?  Oh, and he’s attractive and he doesn’t drink and he doesn’t smoke and he went home at midnight.  In other words he takes good care of himself.

What has me curious, and what made me more aggressive was his passive nature.  He kept going to the bathroom, which involved leaving the barstool and walking past my table.  It was the only path he could have taken, and the first time he checked me out.  The second time he smiled.  The third time he said, “how are you?”   He looked familiar so I panicked and thought he was this guy I went out with a couple times before I figured out how strange he was.  So the last time I said, “Do I know you?  Are you a friend of lsdfjslfj’s?” to which he answered, “No but I wish I were.”  Then at the break he came over and we talked and he invited me to join him at the bar.  But even that I instigated by saying I absolutely HATED coming to these things alone but that my dance partner had fallen in love.  I told him to pull up a chair and that’s when he suggested I join him.  That’s what I mean by being unusually aggressive.  Plus, when I asked if he danced and he said, “yes,” and I said, “swing?” and he said, “yes,” I said, “Then you must dance with me.”  I could hardly believe myself. 

I really like being able to run with it like that; you know, when someone can deal with a strong personality.  Like on the dance floor when we weren’t doing the swing.  It was too fast to slow-dance to and I watched the way he moved.  Damn, he’d be great in bed is what I was thinking.  He kind of purses his lips in a smile and just feels the music, totally unselfconscious.  There’s a real lightness about him; I mean transparency, like he’s not carrying burdens.  On the dance floor when he twirls me and when I was watching him dance alone, it looked like he was close to God.  You know what I mean?  Close to the source.

Okay, there’s only one thing I found to worry about.  You know there had to be something.  A guy who pees that many times is a good candidate for prostate cancer, don’t you think?