Saturday, May 05, 2012

Rain

with thunder and lightening broke the stuffy heat this evening, but blocked the moon mostly and any chance of seeing meteors.  KK and Matt and  Bob I went to the Austin Smyphony  which performed with a choir tonight- heard Pslams in Latin and in Hebrew.  Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Pslams in H
ebrew was really beautiful to me.  There is a single boy's voice, representing the voice of the boy David who became king,  singing the Twenty third Pslam with just harp accompanyment against fierce men's voices singing about nation rising up against nation - very powerful with the yearning for oneness in the end.  I grew up on Bernstein - a cool coloring book about the intstruments of the orchestra with a record with him conducting in a pocket in the back cover.  I'm glad my parents exposed me to many of types of music early, even though I am  not musically talented.

Friday, May 04, 2012

Stilts and the Moon

I remember seeing stilts for the fiorst time in a book when I was pforbably four - red wooden painted stilts a boy was walking on - so tall!   I was impressed.  There was a pogo stick on the same page.  Anyway, there is a wonderful, calm, polite crew working on our office now -so different from last week.  They are taping and floating the ceilings and they work on STILTS.  I've never seen this substitute for ladders before and it thoroughly impresses me.  Their stilts are silvery metal, not painted red, and all seem to use them quite efficiently.

The moon was huge tonight - supposed to be even bigger tomorrow night.  I'm in a happy mood after a busy week, happy to have arranged reclaimed bookshelves to allow more book space in my office, happy to have so many of the ones I love safe and together in one home, happy KK is finishing up a great Freshman year in high school, happy that tomorrow Bob and I celebrate our anniversary.  We'll have to take advantage of that big moon.

Thursday, May 03, 2012

May baskets

Did any of the rest of you put them on your neighbors porches full of garden flowers when you were little?  I remember making the conical baskets out of construction paper, decorating them carefully, filling them and leaving them so happily.  I did it with my girls too, but the custom seems to have fallen by the wayside.  maybe next year with Liam.  There are several families withyoung kids on our street now, a regeneration of the neighborhood,  I thinkit's time for that kind of old sweet custom.

Wednesday, May 02, 2012

Crepe myrtles

are barely beginning to bloom.  I saw the first hint of color yesterday, brighter today.  They come on fast here as spring turns to summer and last at least into July.  The first summer I spent in Austin the courtyard below my window was brilliant with crepe myrtles, burgandy and pink.  They are summer's flower for me still.

Calm at the office today - still torn apart of course, but no problems, no new chaos, good conversations with friends.

I heard someone call my grandchildren's generation "natives" regarding electronic technology, and it's true.  It amazes me to see KK sitting on her bed whipping out Power Point slides for a presentation on jazz dance, so much access to pictures and information so fast on the web, and though she is not particularly tech savy for her age, she gets it done and with a naturalness that eludes me still.

Tuesday, May 01, 2012

Remarkably Calm in Chaos

describes my mood all day. The ceiling removers left a terrible mess. We had to put our offices back together from a really scrambled state. At least they didn't break anything. There is tons of work left to do to make the offices look finished and we were without power for a good bit of the day because the building's power supply was being moved from one wire to another. I fretted about what I would find in the office (and usually I don't fret these days) but I was so glad nothing was broken that I stayed calm and did my work, did my best to comfort friends who were more stressed out by the craziness. Even at home I'm staying calm and so is KK as she wades through the large mass of end of school year homework and show and test preparation. We're getting there. The thing that upsets me the most about the ceiling removal is the lack of honesty on the part of the company that did the work - giving us completely erroneous instructions about how much we needed to do to move our stuff and protect our offices, and about things like whether they would put the lights back in. The particular mistakes they made will be fixed, but I feel a little less positive about and safe in the world seeing such dishonesty and poor workmanship being practiced. On the bright side, Liam, who speaks estraordinarily well for three, does still have some cute combined words. My current favorite is "perjellium" for "petrolium jelly". I'm increasingly respectful of the way Bob spends his retirement. Today he worked on setting up a library at the refugee education center where he volunteers and tomorrow he'll be at the parents' dance guild meeting for KK's school. In between he's entering data for the Obama campaign, working out steadily at the gym, caring for Liam parts of three days each week, and reading lots of high quality books. I still love my work, especially now as our office transition is clearly past the midpoint, but Bob does make retirement look good.