Blog-azic

 Adella had a clear moment of growth today. I found her and Mom in the bedroom playing on the floor, and I sat down and started to chat with Susan. While talking, Adella crawled on Mom's leg and bit her! Mom exclaimed. I signed "it hurts" and pointed to the spot where Adella bit. She stared blankly at us for a few seconds. Then her lower lip waxed, protruded, and trembled. Tears welled in her eyes. Mom picked her up and held her close and in a few moments, she was laughing again. Today she saw first, that she can hurt people, and second that Mom and Dad expected something of her that she didn't attain. 

 For weeks, we had a dry spell with relatively cool weather and sun and wind. I spent a whole week watering grass seed twice a day. Then, on a dime, the weather turned and we had buckets of rain. The ground is now soggy, and the air is very humid. We caught New Hope Creek at the end of the dry and after the deluge.  After a few weeks exploring the Little Creek Waterfoul Impoundment, we started hiking Duke Forest. That first day, we parked on the roadside behind a long line of cars and hiked in. A large timeline sign reviewed the history of the land: clearcut, managed forest, selected cuts. We went down to the river, cautiously stepping off the trail to avoid our fellow hikers. It was a short loop and then back up a different hollow, baby now switched from Susan to me. The next time, we went across from a Durham park to a lush green bottomland forest, with giant sycamores (a treat in this area) and equally impressive tulip polars and a shurb layer of spice bush and pawpaw and j...

This year is our five year wedding anniversary. I want to check-in with the wedding party and musicians to see how they are. The desire has been rolling in me for a while. It's affecting my dreams, now.  I've been dreaming of people I know, err knew. People I've left behind, unfortunately. People with whom I should reconnect. First, it was Dianne, a violin player I gigged with. I was traveling far away in the dream, and somehow I met her. We may have played a little music. Then, it was Rob, an NC friend who is now in SF, CA. I dreamt my family visted his family in SF. His house was my old co-op though. He and I snuck off, smoked a joint, and he took me for a drive. His car (in fact lots of cars could) drive on water, right over the Bay.

 Adella past the one year mark. To celebrate, we threw her a birthday party. Grandma and Grandpa Lyons were in town. Other friends included: Liz and Eric, Ben and family, Hafed and family, Eric & Alice (and Caroline), Kory and Evan. I cooked a couple chickens and baked a pan of cabbage slaw. I also disgorged our last bottles of champagne before the party. Susan made a no-sugar smash cake for Adella (oats and bananas), and we also bought a half sheet cake from Harris Teeter for everyone else to enjoy. I tried to be a good host, and I did manage to greet all the guests as they arrived, but after that I lost focus on guest and did what I really enjoy: following Adella around. After some time, we got things together enough to sing to Adella. I cut giant pieces of cake for the kiddos while Adella delicately ate her smash cake. Grandma enjoyed the smash cake, too. Then, I played piano and sang tunes while Eric plunked along on banjo. Susan read a story for the group. 

2020 nuff said.

An earth tone drive through Ohio rain. Direction: southeast, into old hills. I thought about the Native Plant Rescue as we sped through the Nelsonville bypass. I peered into high oak hollows. In each or some of those crinkles of earth is maidenhair fern and other plant treasures, things that evoke mystery and speak of age. The maidenhair. It evokes another memory. I remember an old visit to Cantwell Cliffs: the maidenhair in the valley, scrambling over timber and ferns, revelations of a lost sister, really getting to know someone, barbecue for dinner.  We were bound for - I think I am bound to - Athens, sleeping in the wide, alluvial plain of the Hocking, and bustling up above that fertile ground on brick paved, pock marked streets. Up the hills it creeps. Children in rotting houses slummed out over the hills that are close enough to the past that they still remember woods. I am one of those children. This time, I come with my own child. Earlier in the trip, safe an...

I went out back behind work yesterday (building 11), into an area where the scrub woods, pines and young hardwoods, are bisected to open a wide shady space. The space has been un-neatly filled with various plant debris (clippings, dirt, defuncted annuals), probably by Cisco facilities. You can walk over the mounds of detritus to Lake Betz (the northern side). I walked there sloping from pine to grass to soggy ground, cattail muck, recurred bramble thorn, a trampled deer path. I stopped short when a noticed a patch of grey under a beech tree. I went down - yoga squat - close to mud, close to grass sweeps where something goes in and out of the lake, brown water but settled and clear, trying not to disturb the solemnity. After a few minutes, I bowed and humbly picked my way back through the brier as the heron watched. That little natural jaunt sort-of changed me in a way that slowly washed off as I waded through the next day. We left North Carolina on I-77 north, and I felt like I sa...