jumpingfish

You have to work hard and long to lose Kevin Drum, to get him to sound shrill, but our fearless leader has done it. Caving on deficits, caving on taxes, caving on unemployment, Kevin covers it all with a final exasperated, throw-up-your-hands and hang-your-head-low frustration about the President’s reversal of EPA’s regulations, a reversal that leaves us with regulations that are worse than those proposed years ago by the (Can you believe it?) Bush administration.

Drum: So what’s his next cave-in on the economy? Apparently this. I guess regulatory uncertainty is what’s holding us back after all. So much for the agenda-setting power of the presidency.

And the skies of this envisioned glorious economic future resemble Beijing.

Ok, ok, stop. The work day is over. You just can’t write about this stuff. It’ll ruin the long weekend.

Just let me say this. Trudy just came home, and as she poked her head around the doorway, she held up a bumper sticker that she has (finally) taken off her car, a bumper sticker with a single, bold ‘O’.

Kevin Drum, stand aside. The fair and industrious Trudy has spoken.

And so we went outside, the dog and I. We went outside, he thinking we were going for a walk, I to sit on the bench. The sun had just disappeared behind the trees in the west, and the temperature was down to a cool 99 degrees.

We were sitting there, the dog on my lap, me on the bench, and I spied a Texas Spiny Lizard on the Ash Tree.

Now we’ve had snakes, and we’ve had toads, and we have birds in the morning who flock to the water we set outside. And we have habitats here and there: stacked dead wood and stabby looking sticks that make houses for little somethings that rustle in the underbrush. I like to think the toads live there. And I like to thing there are other things, too, but I’ve never seen lizards here before this day.

So a smile came to my face as I saw that lizard blending so fine with the bark of the tree. Because it meant that the stabby looking sticks and the stacked dead wood are working. A habitat is growing here, even in this dreadful furnace of summer.

And now the lizard saw me. I must have moved, or maybe it was Guinness, but the lizard caught some motion and cocked his head so that his left eye was beaming our way. It opened its mouth and closed it again. It moved a smidgen up the trunk. And we sat still.

After a while, it turned its head back.

And now, a stinkbug flew by about five feet from the Ash tree trunk. It followed a trajectory straight down from the canopy to the dry leaves and crunchy grass on the ground. And the lizard cocked its head in that direction and dashed to the other side of the tree, clinging to the rough gray bark, moving not at all, gazing in the direction of where the stinkbug touched down.

So I’m thinking Circle of Life, and the lizard leapt.

It jumped to the ground and started to dash across the open space when Guinness got restless and jumped off my lap. And at this moment, the lizard noticed us again and froze where he stood in the middle of that open space, halfway to the stinkbug, halfway from the tree.

Then Guinness wagged his tail and looked up at me with hopeful eyes. The lizard scurried back to the tree, climbing up the trunk, watching us again from the very spot where I first saw him.

And the stink bug flies off onto a different path unwinding from the one that lay before it just a few moments ago.

He has a way of talking. He goes on and on and on. We all know this. It’s just the way he is, but still it sometimes catches us off guard, and we get trapped.

When we’re stuck in a room and he gets started, there’s no way to turn it off. No way to interject. No way to politely draw the conversation to a close.

It happened to me this afternoon. I called to ask him a question, and he was happy to oblige. It was about something he had worked on years ago, something he understood well. So he explained and explained, and the words kept coming and coming.

It was Friday afternoon, and I was in a good mood, so although I did hold the phone away from my head a few times to let the words pour onto the floor, I didn’t interrupt. And as he explained, I began to listen in a different way, to pay attention to the structure of his sentences and the specific words he used. And I began to understand the difficulty we have turning him off once he’s been turned on.

You see, when he talks, there really is only one sentence. It never ends. It just keeps flowing with no breaks, no pauses, no full-stops to provide an opening. Clause after independent clause of explanation just flows continuously, each linked together by coordinating conjunctions. As he was talking, I started to write them down.

Of course, there’s and and there’s but, but there’s also so and because and whereas, and there’s if, which shouldn’t qualify but does when enlisted into service by him, and finally there’s um and you know.

With this basic toolbox, his thoughts expand into the space around you, and you can’t get away unless you either speak up and stop him mid-sentence, which usually feels somehow rude, or you let it run its course. On this day, I let him run out of words, and eventually even he began to notice the silence on my end. It only took about 20 minutes.

Yesterday evening, two Mourning Doves sat on the power lines in the shade of a Chinese Tallow tree. They gazed to the east, beaks into the wind, watching a black sky advance. Waiting for some rain.

“I don’t know,” Trudy said to me from the dining room table. “It could still get here.”

The radar showed the storm fizzling. The yellow, orange and red was dissipating, leaving only fickle green dancing on my laptop monitor.

Yet the fair and industrious Trudy and the doves on the line held out hope.

I went outside and sat on the bench gazing west and watched the clouds passing overhead literally evaporate. Although behind me blackness remained, before me the setting sun blazed in golden glory against a blue sky. No rain came. Not even the smell of rain in the air blowing out of the east. Nothing.

Today, it got up to 105 and burnt our toasted yard and former garden further to a crisp. The doves sat in the sun on the power lines with their backs to the east, watching us on the patio. Ben was cooking chicken on the grill. I walked around with a hose, trying to keep the few things still alive from falling to the ground.

But not much remains.

The chard is gone. The tomatoes are gone. The cucumbers are gone. One of the squash plants is gone. Last week, Trudy gave up on them all, announcing with resignation that our efforts to keep them on life support were just a waste of water. There’s a good month and a half of this heat ahead of us, still, so what’s the point?

And the rest of the yard is turning to powder.

The Thyme Juniper is dead. The Wright’s Skullcap is dead. The Blue Flax is dead. The hardy Wild Sunflowers are dead or dying, although at least they leave some seed heads for the Goldfinches. The Golden Eyes are drying to a crisp, leaving half their hardy leaves drooping in the heat. Even the water-hating Wolly Stemodia is barely alive.

This is a place only the committed can love.

The cast of characters…

BenA. Sent his car to the mechanic so that it would be in good shape for his brother to borrow, only to have his brother drive it into a flung pebble, chipping the windshield in the process.

BenE. Taught his cousins how to sail when he didn’t have his nose in Chomsky.

Burt. Grabbed my hand and held it after he skied, a silent way of letting me know that he was proud that his cousin had skied for the first time in many years, so proud that he himself decided to ski for the first time in many years.

Chachi Babs. Decided that now that she has an iPad, she can trash her infernal laptop, a decision likely to make family system administrators weep with joy.

Chachi Bette. Put us all to shame, skiing at 70 and leading power walks for those inclined to keep up with her pace.

Colin. Surprised us all and showed up many days before we expected him.

David. Swam across the lake and got up on skis twice, breaking a many year’s tradition of sluggitude.

Evan. Got up on skis for the first time and successfully lived to tell of his fall in the shallow, weedy section of the lake.

Jack. Was his usual indefatigable self, including when he was standing on his head in the lake with only his legs sticking out of the water.

JennyB. Pitched a tent, took care of three kids, fed us all for a day, and generally didn’t stop the whole time, making us all very tired just thinking about it.

JennyE. Cooked her popcorn one night that fed an army.

Julia. Did a manner of synchronized swimming in the lake with her mom.

Katherine. Built castles in the sand and made best friends with Rayna the dog.

Ken. Gave Babs that iPad for her birthday.

Lexi. Found little private time with Sam.

Liza. Pushed the boundaries water skiing and is certain to give Colin a run for the money next year.

Sam. Found little private time with Lexi.

Trudy. Took many naps and ate many blueberries.

VickiC. Read her Kindle and corralled Rayna the dog.

VJ. Gave us two jars of raspberry jam just before we drove off, a gift of unspeakable value and one that will grace our breakfast table for many months, with any luck.