3 Things

Saturday Skate Day: In summer, Saturdays are set aside for skateboarding all the day. Due to this Saturday being glorious, we revived the tradition. Errands were set aside. Tacos were made a priority. Life is just better when the sun is out.

The Shawshank Redemption: Did y’all know this is streaming on Netflix right now? A classic, written, oddly enough, by Steven King. Hope versus despair. Good versus evil. Plus, Tim Robbins and a young Morgan Freeman. Def worth a second, or third, or fourth watch.

A Spring Vacation: Sure, I just got back from New England, but to be clear, I don't consider that a "spring vacation." It was like flying back in time two months, weather-wise, back into tear-wrenching 30-degree wind and other East-Coast-in-April mysteries. But next year! I do plan to escape somewhere sun drenched and warm—hot even. Maybe catch a swim and a sun burn? I imagine it to be good for the health of my body, brain and soul.

Way Back East

Two things happened last week. I lost my cell phone and got very, very sick. The two are unrelated, but they remain connected in my mind because for both reasons, I didn't really see or talk to anyone for a few days. I was too weak to walk the dog. I bruised a rib from coughing. I procured a new cell phone but didn't have any phone numbers until I could restore the thing on my work computer. It was a strange, solitary time during which I felt oddly free. I recommend it.

ANYWAY, a bottle of antibiotics and a flask of codeine cough syrup later, I found myself in Boston, MASS, trying hard to understand the dialect of the chowdahead whilst toddling down cobblestones streets staring up at the ancient gothic spires. New England is a revelation to us westerners. It's so ... OLD. I hung my head out the car window reading aloud the incomprehensible dates off all the historical plaques hanging on everybody's houses. 1753! 1801! Those lovely little abodes had stood there through birth and death, multiple wars, all the presidents, maybe even a fire or two? I guess part of me feels like I belong in a tidy 300-year-old home—off in the woods somewhere, chopping wood and tending my parsnip crop.

We were back east for a wedding. A baller Cape Cod wedding complete with towering tubs of fresh oysters and a sun-swept backdrop of Atlantic white caps. We all got dressed up, drank shandies, and channeled the Kennedys. Everyone—from the babies to the grandmas—cried at the ceremony and danced at the reception. In my opinion, whether you're up there exchanging rings or just sitting in the crowd, it's good and healthy and important to celebrate love—as often as humanly possible.

THE Plymouth Rock, where 400 years ago some of your ancestors (not mine, I'm a more recent immigrant) stepped off the Mayflower and colonized the shit out of this country.

This here lonely little field in Concord, Mass is where the Revolutionary War started. Old stuff is cool. Revolution is cool.

The new Boston skatepark, right next to where they filmed that one Ben Affleck movie.

Oh hey, Mt. Saint Helens, I sure did miss you.

To Dad

Peter Sherowski—that's my dad—turns 72 today.

The thing to know about dads is that they're just humans. They helped give us life, sure. But they're just guys. Of course, when you're little, they're larger than life—mythical. You're afraid and in awe of them. Then you grow up a little and blame them for stuff—as if they, a single man, were responsible for everything wrong in your life. And sometimes they are. But it feels good to get past that, to get on in years yourself and pull back for the high-level view—some perspective, way out here in a place beyond emotional baggage.

That's when you can relax and shoot the shit with them, find out about their lives, what they were into before they were into you. Be FRIENDS—yes, friends with yer old dad! Of course, they'll prob drive you straight back up the wall tomorrow. Is there anything richer and more fraught than family relationships?

Side note: I think the dads of my generation made it really hard to date the men of my generation. They were too bad ass. My dad can skin a deer and build a house. He can crawl under the hood of your car and fix it. He's a man's man and he hustles and in comparison, some of the guys I've known and loved are, well, just boys. Poor them. : )

Favorites 3.21.16

South Paw: I don't like Jake Gyllenhaal. (As an actor—I don't know him personally.) And yet. And YET! I liked him in this.

Going to the dump: Have you been to the dump lately?! You drive into the entrance with your load of, say, scrap wood, they ask you what you have, and then they direct you to an aircraft-sized hangar—of which there are many, each with a giant pile in the middle. Piles of TVs. Piles of mattresses. Piles of plastic. Piles of building materials. Piles everywhere! Creatures picking through all of them looking for even the tiniest morsel of value. It's fascinating. We should all know what happens to our trash after we toss it out to the curb.

Arugula: In love as in food, the bitter things make everything else sweeter. Aaaanyway, I'm super down for this bitter green right now, especially a pile of it raw and chopped up on a bowl of spaghetti or plate of cheese pizza. If you haven't tried it, do.

Coyote Wall in the spring: On Saturday, also known as the sunny weekend day, we drove way out into the Columbia River Gorge and hiked a big ole loop up through rolling green hills sprinkled with yellow and purple blooms, through piles of dark craggy rocks and your odd haunted glade, out onto a wild, sweeping cliff line to get battered in the wind. Mt. Hood loomed the entire time. It was crazy pretty.

Way Down Low

Winter's rolling out like the tide. But that's when it happens! When you least expect it. Yep, I succumbed to seasonal depression this weekend. Seriously. I sank so deep and lowdown, sitting there on the couch I must report that I cried—only a little, really maybe only one tear. And it only lasted a little while, but it came on out of the blue—like being struck by the opposite of lightening, something so dull, you almost implode. The world, my day, all of it suddenly a senseless pile of mush. Despair was near. And there was no accounting for it! My life is grand. Such a home. Such pals. Such unadulterated love. Such natural beauty all around me, at all times.

Aaaanyway, I'm just being honest. People don't like to talk about this stuff. About feeling feelings and such. But yeah, dark moods are real—a chemical reaction in your brain. As I get on in years, I deal with them almost never, and I'm way better at it. Still, you have to be vigilant. You have to take care when the wave comes in.

Me? I laced up my runners. I walked through the night, fast enough to get out of breath. Then: a cup of green tea, because caffeine lifts yer mood. And lift, it did. An hour later at Mark's house, there was life-affirming homemade pizza, very passable wine, and watching Vinyl. Things were, as they say, cool.