rehearsal

 

There's the day, Tuesday, looks promising, doesn't it, 75° 99% humidity, and my weather app promises 70% chance of rain this afternoon, pop up thundershowers. 

There are always fishing boats headed out toward the Pass this Time of morning, usually a red-hulled small craft either headed out, or returning from apparent overnight. Some of these boats are owned and operated by local restaurant owners. Catch of the Day: Mkt Price.

Coffee early, 3:45, why? IDK, it's the way life works. Coffee strong and first cup with an ounce of heavy whipping cream for once, warmed in the mug while the coffee brewed, and a couple ice-tea-spoons of beautiful brown Demerara sugar tasting like the stalks of cane sugar we used to chew as kids. Second cuppa now is black, still quite strong. 

Why am I telling you this? I'm not. This is me journaling for myself, a diary entry of sorts, sometimes it helps to write life down. If I post it public you may find it as boring as I, not my problem, what are you doing here anyway? 

Early, one ear, I pick up one ear from the overnight charger and put it in, just my right ear so I can hear the deafening birdsongs out the Beck way, sounds I cannot hear at all without an ear in. If there's to be only one for the moment, the right is the ear of choice for the electronic prosthesis because it's the most deaf one: if I want a night's sleep in absolute silence, I lie on my left side and hear nothing. If I go in and Dr Phil is on television, I turn them both off and same effect: silence with just some incoherent muttering in the background.

Beginning with bifocal eyeglasses at age forty, prosthetics are more and more a blessing as we age, though right now I'm thinking of Hulga's wooden leg in the Flannery O'Connor short story "Good Country People". Poor girl. Although it isn't unusual for O'Connor's protagonists to somehow get what's coming to them. 

Imagine naming a beautiful innocent little girl Hulga. Origin might be Swedish, to threaten, to menace? Jeepers.

Turning the Sunday School class over to Dr Dan has marvelously freed up my weekdays, with newfound freedom I'm reading, and blogging without pressing Publish, often later pressing Delete. Blogging all manner of current events topics as I wake up to the national reality that not everyone cherishes the same dream of America. My naiveté astounds me. Each person wants America the way they want it, and the direction is changing. I don't care to go there.

Reading? at the moment "Olga Dies Dreaming" by Xochitl Gonzalez. A bit raw, or maybe that's the way ordinary people are anymore? Do I recommend it? Not to the parish Ladies Book Club. I got into it from reading the author's blog "Brooklyn, Everywhere" that's free to The Atlantic subscribers. I like weird stuff.

Next book in line: "The Tin Drum" by Günter Grass. 

Wedding rehearsal. Sixty-five years ago today I was contemplating that this is a serious thing I'm getting into. I was already sworn in to the Navy and after honeymoon week, heading to Newport, Rhode Island for Officer Candidate School and what I thought would be three years as a young naval officer. It turned into twenty years, in retrospect, largely because I had decided not to go to theological seminary, and didn't know what else to do, and my BS and MBA in business administration bored me to alphabet screaming tears. 

All the people at the wedding rehearsal are dead except those in my generation, and Time has started on us as well.

At one point in those Navy years, it was 1971 to 1974, we enjoyed Julia Childs "The French Chef" on television, and I learned from her how to make an omelet. So on Sunday evenings I'd mix up a cheese omelet for each of the four of us. Per her, they were one-egg omelets, very thin, never whipped up fluffy, and rolled up beautifully. Now I think I'll whip up one for breakfast, but three eggs, cheese, Heinz chili sauce poured the length of, and a dash of Cholula hot sauce.

And finally, with our disposal of every nonessential article on leaving The Old Place and moving into 7H, Linda's wedding gifts sterling flatware and Wedgwood Blue Florentine china with serpents' tongues interlacing cattle skulls has been promoted to Everyday. We are no longer Saving It for Good. This IS good.