The Marvelous A: April 2006 (She Cleans Up Nice)

The Best Things in Life

Saturday Hike

Rose Rides Shotgun

Rutted Road

Velveteen Rabbit

Morning Glory (Overflow)

Hoof Knife

I have my suspicions that upon his first meeting with the Olympus, Jeff was fairly uncertain. He seemed bewildered by my obsession with images (I can fill up a 275-picture xd card over 20 times even in uneventful months) and a little uncomfortable with my relentless snapping. Gradually he got used to it, though, even borrowing the Olympus for his summer landscaping project at the plant, and lately I notice that he's perfectly compliant when I want to take his picture. He even slows down or stops when he's driving if it looks like I want to snap something I can't take from a moving truck.

This is the knife he uses to shoe horses. It was handmade for him by a guy in Riverton and though the pictures don't show it, he uses honing oil and a whetstone to get one side so razor sharp it will slice cleanly and smoothly through leather like it was paper. He uses a pencil-like file to sharpen that hook at the end. I think of it as the perfect tool for disemboweling.

Eric the Ham

No Wind Today

Fontonelle, Easter Weekend

Bear River, April 26th

Sulphur Creek Reservoir, April 26th

The Movie Star Mind

Another Grey Day

The only thing worse than bad news is waiting for bad news. In this case, the results of a biopsy (not mine) due back Wednesday. You're hoping not to see the word Lymphoma on those papers, not to hear it from a doctor. It's already been a long year for you, already two hospital holidays, and it's only April. I wonder if I can hold my breath for two days? Something makes me want to try.

Your Name Really Makes an Impact

I just received an email from Khong-me Mallett.

Daisy Chain

This afternoon I took a long walk around the lagoons behind the plant, making swift, uncounted laps around the green pools softly rippled by a disheartened west wind. After about three turns the antelope a hundred yards below in the valley got accustomed to me; two males, skulls abutted, tussled for ground on spindly legs. Beyond the animals, down across the highway, the starched brown grass on the grounds of the State Hospital is already mottled with rashes of emerald growth.

Up over the steep slope above the closest pond, in the soft dirt from three-years-past construction, I tried to step in my own shoeprints each time. I did this to inflict the least possible damage to the new green shoots of sego lilies, the papery desert blooms Jeff gathers for his father’s grave every spring. Such hearty perennial wildflowers and garden annuals have enormous value to me over gaudy tropical blooms. I cherish the tulips and pansies, marigolds, lilacs, jonquils, hyacinth, hollyhocks, poppies and peonies whose rare palette and perfume make the brief Wyoming summer all the more exquisite. In the hills, segos and larkspur, lupine, Indian paintbrush, arnica and skyrockets thrive without any gardener’s ministrations.

Morgan and I used to repeat a vague schoolyard chant (does she remember?) about the astounding possibility inherent in the fact that the world is so enormously populated. It went something like this: Someone is having a baby- now, and now, and now. Someone is waking up- now, and now, and now. Someone is… insert universal life experience here- etcetera, etcetera, etcetera (in my best Yul Brynner). You get the point. My favorite line, of course, was the one that made me feel a part of a vast, unseen global assembly, and yet somehow special and loved at the same time: someone is thinking about me- now, and now, and now. Whenever I am doing something rhythmic- walking, sweeping, occasionally while painting- I find myself repeating it under my breath, unconsciously.

After walking, I poured some sugar-free lemon lime powder into an empty half-liter Arrowhead water bottle and filled it at the sample tap in the lab at the back of the old plant. Constantly flowing, the stream from that copper tap is a pristine example of unquestionably perfect drinking water, despite being surface water and somewhat on the ‘hard’ end of the scale- but of course, calcium does a body good. Cold and clear, with a free available chlorine residual of 1.5 parts per million, the freshly treated water has no discernable taste or smell. I put the sour citrus powder in it because I had to get rid of the quarter of a teaspoon in the package before Travis comes back to work tomorrow. He hates it when I leave small containers of “nasty powder” sitting open on the break room counter next to the microwave. I should have left it.

I’ve got “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree” stuck in my head, although I have no idea what the words are. Dang, that’s a catchy tune.

Nebulousness

There's going to be a spectacular sunset tonight.

I opened the break room door and stepped out into the main basin this afternoon only to find myself unable to finish a half-inhaled breath. Lungs seized, throat burning, I thought, "where there's smoke, there's fire." And there is, somewhere over the Utah border, burning soggy sagebrush and grass and scrub cedar, sending a pungent, incongruously summery stink on the artificially heated spring air into the concrete rectangle of space I inhabit six to eight hours a day. Luckily, I won't be babysitting the SCADA while the three underground tanks outside rapidly drain to fight a fire in town. I sped home and slunk into the cool, clean, dark atmosphere of my basement apartment to nurse my stricken lungs, and here I stay.

It is not my Friday anymore, but only temporarily.

Mom on a Mountain

Mom hasn't been snowmobiling in 30 years. That's a 40 mph difference! Glad you're having fun, Mom.

It's Not About Tom Cruise

It's better than that.

10,000 Words

Pipeline Supply

Cattle Guard

Badger Hole

Better

Mike (walking very gingerly, looking tired and pale but determined): "Hey, sunny day. I got those cartridges for the OKI; see if they go."

A (cringing when I think of him coming up the stairs, of the pain and other side effects of chemo for his bladder cancer, although he still has a thick head of wiry, silvery hair): "Great! It's in here. How you doin'?"

Mike: "Oh... okay."

A: "I'd like it if you were better than okay."

He smiles and tugs my ponytail, but the drawn look returns. He remarks as I move around the control room with the ease of long familiarity that I seem to really fit in at the plant, and I think of the day over a year ago- before everything!- when I sat down with Mike and Jim (in Jim's kitschy souvenir-cluttered office) and told them I was leaving. How I cried! Jim feigned exasperation but promised that if it didn't work out there would always be a place for me at City Hall. Mike patted my knee until I stopped sniveling (he said, "I knew you wouldn't stick around long. You've got too much potential"). I think of all the bid openings and hours of shared paperwork and all the mornings his computer didn't recognize his mouse- his despairing cry for me to come and fix it! I look at Mikey now, with the tracklights flashing off the lenses of his glasses as he enthusiastically explores the room despite his weariness and discomfort, and I think I see the sparkle that means he is okay, after all. But I would still like it if he were better than okay.

Spring

Word of the Day: And

Dad's been gone a year today. It doesn't make the day any sadder than yesterday or the day before (although today I'm more reflective), but I can't believe how fast a year moves by.

So, it's spring, and the cats are shedding. And they're seasonally energized, which means that every five minutes there's a tussle. And every time there's a tussle, I find a sprig or two of long, fluffy fur on the carpet or the bed or the couch. I pick them up and throw them in the trash, but once in a while I pause for a moment and try to think what amusing thing I could do with a big ol' furball if I collected them for a while. I could toss together an effigy to take to Burning Man or glue up a nice wall decoration ("your mother likes anything you make"), or perhaps I could stuff a pillow or take it to Linda to weave- then I could crochet a cat scarf and be the bane of everyone with allergies.

Today we cleaned the U.V. with wands that spin and spray citric acid, and by 'we' I mean Travis and Jeff. Bud smoked and picked my brain about how to get rid of his stalker. (Apparently she beat him with her purse one night last week, furious when she saw him leaving Kate's and he hadn't spoken to her the entire evening. Unfortunately I wasn't able to give him any advice; I may be a woman, but I'm not nuts.) And I daydreamed while minding the extension cord (don't let it drop in the water!) and acid tank (don't let it pump dry!) and drain valves (are you sure you closed them both all the way?). This morning I wore a brown and gold knit Sanuk Padres beanie (because I woke up to an inch of snow the consistency of lead-and-bentonite modeling clay and had to rent a backhoe to clean off the car) and when I walked in the break room Bud said, "that's a nice lid." Then he told me to go turn the chlorine down.

I should point out that Travis and Jeff do most of the physical labor at the plant not because a) I am incompetent and lazy, b) they are chauvinist pigs, or c) I am not strong or smart enough, but because most of it requires two people maximum and I am the only one who won't have a seizure if made to stand helpfully by and be patient. This means plenty of daydreaming time for me while I'm holding the ladder or lighting the fuse or cleaning up the mess, and believe me, I have plenty with which to fill it up.

Emancipation

I remember standing on a platform in South Africa, frozen with pride despite the fact that someone I wanted was on the train. A steam locomotive, E class, struggled to drag the southbound express, vomiting steam that obscured my legs. I felt that thick white cloud cement me to the planks; otherwise I would have run after you.

Revamp

Damn, I'm resilient. I scare myself.

I made myself get up and do something despite 110.005% of me really wanting to go back to bed and never get up again. I went to Pilot for gas and cinnamon bun cappuccino, having been relentlessly catechized on the cumulative benefits of java. The cup read "Crazy about coffee! Pilot. Good to go." The cashier stuck a green triangle on the cup marked "Fri." Why?

At 6:00 p.m. I had to turn the air conditioner on in the Cadillac. At the laundromat Susan's parents were washing what looked like wool horse blankets in the heavy duty machines; they didn't recognize me, but Slim smiled when he passed. At the car wash the foaming brush steamed in the golden sunset while I sloshed bubbles across the hood. Tricky Woo looks so funereal when she's clean, despite being a white car. I love it.

So I finally got some evening blue sky, and now it's still a tiny bit light after 8:00 p.m., which makes me glad. I've had curly fries and I'm going for a walk, and I have clean socks and the prospect of good conversation and What Not to Wear. Now all I need is Crayola's Color Explosion and my life will be complete. Thank God for toys.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

I don't want to be awake or asleep. I don't want to breathe or eat or watch T.V. or take my laundry to Modern Cleaners. I don't want to read. I don't want to paint. I don't want to play the violin. I don't want to vacuum or do the dishes. I don't want to see anybody and I don't care about the poster or the test or the story or the box of stuff that needs to go to DI. I don't really want to sit here and watch the low clouds outside the window and I don't really want to write, but I find that's what I'm doing and I don't want to fight. I don't want to cry, but I could easily do that, too, except I wouldn't know what I was crying for and I'd be mad. I'd rather stay apathetic. I'd like to go for a drive, but I don't want to get gas and I don't want to see that there's no sun on the hills, even though it's in the forties and yesterday's snow has melted off. I don't want to leave the house, but I don't want to stay here. I almost wish I had to work today- then I'd have to be somewhere. I don't even want to take pictures or pick flowers or drink rum. I wish it wasn't trying to be spring. I wish it just was.

Post #700

Aqua Orbis

That beautiful sunrise, and then we saw this coming over the Uintas.

Filthy filter #8 after 120 hours in service- beginning the multiwash stage.

Getting better- air purge begins.

Anthracite settling down, water running almost clear...

... and we're all sparkly clean again.

Fill 'er up.

The Bear River breaks loose; this will welcome Travis and Bud home tomorrow.

And from last week's trip up the river, a pair of sandhill cranes for Mom. (They may be lovely and elegant stalking bugs in a meadow, but they sure look dopey when they fly.)