Missing shoes sail by needle-less trees on wind-less day
“What are you doing!” Nazy exclaimed.
“I am simply going to my study.” I replied.
“There is a pine needle stuck to your sock.”
“Oh my!” I exclaimed. “If you had swept up all of them, that wouldn’t have happened,” I muttered — insufficiently under my breath.
“What did you say?” Nazy asked. (She has excellent ears.)
“There were a few inadvertent stragglers, Nazy. I’m simply widely distributing those outliers so that they’re not so obvious.”
“That’s an obvious rationalization, Dan.”
“I thought it was subtle.”
When the baby woke up, he immediately noticed that the Christmas Tree was gone. I took him outside and showed him its dignified resting place: atop a pile of eucalyptus tree branches that had fallen during a recent wind storm. When we got back to the house, I asked him what had happened to the Christmas Tree.
“Out! All Done.” He replied, clearly overcome with emotion.
That evening, Darius returned with visions of integral signs and probability matrices dancing in his head. He noticed that the tree was gone as soon as I pointed it out.
This is not the first time that we’ve had a belated Christmas Tree disposal.
Flashback
Switzerland,January 2011
“It’s a disaster, Nazy!” I claimed. “We missed the Christmas Tree pick up date.”
“I’m sure they’ll take it next week. Just put it in the green recycle bin.”
“They sent us a garbage pick-up schedule, Nazy. Remember? I had to upgrade laptop memory to read the vast Excel spreadsheet. The ‘Christmas Tree’ tab (bold and underlined text) said that we should not miss the last pick-up date. Now we are living on borrowed time.”
For the next several weeks, the garbage collection division ignored our giant tree. (There was a 4 meter ceiling at the Carmenstrasse apartment and Nazy had a habit of picking a 5 meter tree.)
In the end, I had to move the tree to the garage. Every week, I’d chop off a few limbs and hide them in the green bin amongst ‘approved’ vegetation. It took most of 2011 to get rid of the tree.
End Flashback
There was another dramatic change this week. Young Tiger, the Grand(est)son began Montessori School. Generally, his Dad, Tom, takes him to school in the morning and I pick him when he’s done. But, this week a phased introduction was planned. The first day, for example, he spent only 30 minutes at the school. Things began inauspiciously. The city decided to fix a pothole on the 101 turning a 15 drive into a 50 minute nightmare. Tom arrived late. I also arrived late. We both compensated the next day by arriving early. (Very early.)
By the end of the week, Tiger was on a normal schedule. He enjoys the school and he looks really cool with his backpack.
The teacher says that Tiger is “very independent”. He’s happy when he gets there and bubbly when I pick him up. Although he has a few a few multiword sentences (e.g. “Tiger do it.”, “Dan pick me up.&rdquo
,it must be frustrating for him to be unable to articulate what exactly happened. On the other hand, he can sing almost all of the A-B-C song. (He’s not good at “Z” and “S”.)
On Tuesday, Nazy and I joined our friends Joel and Christine on a sailing excursion. The wind, non-existent at 10:30AM, picked up nicely and we sailed directly (and quickly) out of narrow harbour. We maintained good speed on a beautiful day. A sailboat in the wind is great fun — especially if you’re not trying to go in any specific direction. It’s a bit more tricky when you have a destination in mind and the wind direction is programmed from above to change every time you change direction by tacking or jibbing.
We discovered that it’s even more tricky when you’re sailing into a narrow harbour with the wind speed measured at 0.01millimeters/second directly in your face. We made fun of the boat in front of us until we ended up right beside them. A helpful passerby in a motor launch offered to pull us aground. We demurred.
Also this week we took Darius to see Star Wars - a multiple hour paean that combines major themes and scenes from all three of the original Star Wars movies (from the 70’s) into one film. As a science fiction aficionado, I had a very important observation:
“How is it possible that a civilization that has mastered faster than light travel is unable to paint a repaired robot’s arm?”
On Saturday, we took Darius to Los Angeles where we visited with Mitra and Stefan. Dar is spending the weekend. On the way, we stopped at the premier factory outlets. The trip was not just some amorphous “I wonder what’s on sale” visit. No! It was a focused, planned and necessary expedition. We had to exchange Darius’ Converse shoes for a pair that was the right size. In short, we were goal-directed. Goal directed but departure delayed.
“Mom takes a long time to get ready,” Darius complained.
“Just be ready when she comes down,” I replied sagely. “Sometimes after I complain, I can’t find my car keys when she’s ready.” I thought.
“What’s to get ready?” Darius replied.
“Did you pack your overnight bag,” Nazy called from the stairs.
Darius jumped and ran upstairs.
We got to the car and Darius realized that he had left his iPad in the house. After a frantic search of the house, he remembered that he had packed his iPad in the overnight bag. Nazy watched the frenzy with calm detached amusement.
The drive to the Converse outlet was smooth and uneventful. We opened the trunk and..
“You forgot the shoes we’re here to exchange?” Nazy asked.
“Eh…” Darius replied articulately.
In the store, Nazy handled the negotiations:
“So you want to exchange the shoes that you forgot to bring?” The clerk asked.
“I’ll mail them to you when we get home.” Nazy replied.
“That’s not our normal procedure.”
Nazy smiled. And we left with a pair of shoes that fit Darius.
While Nazy was negotiating, I found a pair of shoes that resonated with my colorblind eyes.
For last week's letter, click here.
The Martin Family
Offspring and GrandSpring