.Sherowski Daily.

So the cats are panting like black labs and the Sandy river looks like a public pool in Detroit. Only one thing to do: go in the shade and don’t move.

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It’s 101 degrees outside, or so they say, but I’m in here in the shade thinking about stepping into a cold lake. Anyhow, in celebration of July I took a week off and went home to Colorado to see my family. Family is, well, it’s family. If you have one, you know. We ate our meals on the deck and I saw 20 different kinds of wildflowers on my evening walks, surrounded by sagebrush and giddy from the altitude. I think Colorado in the summer is better than Colorado in the winter, which is an interesting conclusion because I always thought Colorado winters were great. Anyway, I’m done here. Bye. 

Mom and dad on a stroll through sagebrush and mariposa lilies.

My view as a little tyke, more or less. You see i grew up right in the notch of this valley.

My mommy’s flower garden.

A place to go for a walk after dinner and be deliciously alone.

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Me and Tricia  and Lisa meet in a parking lot in Hood River  and pile into Lisa’s 1984 Benz wagon. It’s black and hearse-like and fucking cool in its oldness and classiness. We wind our way up a road to a ridgeline, park, pull on our hiking shoes, and cast out on a trail through the undergrowth.  It’s almost dusk and the golden light is leaking through the bramble of trees and bushes from the west. Suddenly we emerge on a grassy ridgeline and a wall of warm wind blasts the hair off our damp foreheads and almost knocks us over. There’s something unsettling about the wind up here; it’s wild, relentless. Lisa, who lives down there below us on the valley floor, she says there’re a lot of crazy people in Hood River, and maybe they didn’t start out crazy,  but the wind is always blowing around here and maybe, you know, it just unwinds the screws after a while.

The drive back down through the orchards is heart-achingly beautiful with the salmon-pink sunset, but then some horrid clanging noise starts up beneath our feet, which, we discover, is the Benz’s muffler dragging along the pavement. There’s no way to tie it back up and the only option is to forge ahead. With our ears covered, this is what we do. Back at Lisa’s lovely red farm house with the car parked safely in the driveway, Tricia makes mint juleps by crushing ice in the blender and pouring in a little bourbon, a little lime juice, some mint from the garden, and some club soda mixed with agave syrup.  It tastes nothing like the sticky, electric green julep I had six years ago on Kentucky Derby day. It tastes like heaven.  

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The dead of summer, if there is such a thing. I’m about to report about a tense situation at my house involving the Captain (as seen above): 3.5 months old, 3 pounds, black and white, enjoys peaches, mangos, and corn. And Cougar (as seen below): age 11, 13 pounds, angry and wistful, a cat who was once looking forward to an old age of napping combined with intermittent cleaning sessions and belly rubs, but  who is now forced to contend with an alien being who stalks her from around corners and under tables, attacking in a playful furry of claws and tiny white teeth (her teeth being old and yellow—but still sharp, mind you) and never giving her any peace.

(she’s so mad she won’t even look at the camera for photos anymore)

You see, I adopted Captain as good company for Cougs, thinking she was lonely and could use some snuggling (who couldn’t?!). But as it turns out she hates his bewhiskered guts and refuses to be in the same room with him. She only comes inside to eat now, the rest of the time perching herself out front in the bark mulch under a bush—thinking often, I imagine, of the warmth and comfort she used to know on the other side of the front door. Of the years she spent secretly knowing that she, alone, was the sovereign of my household. She thinks of the apartment on 12^th Street back in Colorado where she spent her kittenhood, the time she escaped through the window screen and first felt her whiskers touch an icy white blanket that was, she later found out, snow. She thinks of that house on Jasper Street in Encinitas where she’d follow me over to the parking lot at Beacons to watch the sun set and the surfers bob up and down on the water that’d become, with the dusk, a rolling glassy mirror. I’m sure she thinks of all the quiet nights at this house when the rain rattled the gutter and she’d lay there in the crook of my legs, not understanding why I’d toss and turn, not realizing she was pinning me down uncomfortably with my own sheets and making me feel claustrophobic.

(look at that little fucking beggar!)

Yeah Cougs thinks of all this stuff, I imagine, and wonders why I’d do such a thing to her, invite the uninvited, feed and nurture this little creature of evil—even seem fond of him at times. Sure, anyone else looking at her would only see a cat sitting in the garden, but I see it all in the hard squint of those little green eyes, and all I can say is Cougs, girl I’m sorry, I never meant to hurt you, but one day I know I’ll come home and you and the Captain will be spooning on a couch cushion and then, I won’t say it, but I’ll be thinking it: “I told you so.”

…………….

Oh, and in other news, I almost lost this man to the wild Alaskan sea for four months but at the very last minute he came back to me and now every day from here on out is a gift. That’s all. 

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Independence Day … bah! I don’t buy into the “America’s Birthday” thing but I admit there’s something to the fourth of July, because I always look forward to it a little bit. I think because it’s a sort of celebration of summer. For one weekend everyone’s just unabashedly sun burnt and half drunk, with watermelon juice dripping down the fronts of their shirts, and it’s a beautiful thing. With that said, here are my ten favorite things about summer, in no particular order:

Thunderstorms

June peaches

Clear water swimming holes

Fresh guacamole

Backyard mini-ramps

Gardens, both the vegetable and flower variety

Steamy nights refreshed by cool golden mornings

Meals eaten outside on the deck

Tecate, with lime

Lying very still in front of the fan because it’s too hot to do anything else

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