Life lately has been a lot like when they lock you in the rubber room at the insane asylum except the walls are made of beautiful naked ladies not rubber, and when you go to climb the walls they are all covered with oil so you keep slipping back down to the floor, and the floor is made of ugly naked ladies.
A lot, I say "a lot," in fact that's exactly what it's been like.
Three dreams have come true for me this summer: I rode my bike from Dürnstein to my house, about a zillion miles down the Danube, very beautiful, with my daughter and my cousin's kid. I went on that pilgrimage with Alpha, another zillion, great fun, and last Saturday I rowed about 20 or 30 miles down the Danube, more great fun. My back held up (I took a pain pill beforehand, just in case) although I was pretty pooped and not rowing especially hard the last 3 or 4 miles. Man was that beautiful too.
I should be a travel writer. "Went to Paris. Boy is it pretty."
From the river, you see very few signs of human life, except for humans along the banks, like a young dad fishing with his little boy and a dog (actually, the dad was fishing with a pole and worms, the little boy and dog were watching) and that made my eyes tear up, seeing the dad thing going on and thinking of dads all over the world fishing with their little kids, and all the little kids growing up and remembering it fondly.
All you see from the water are trees and green, green, green. By Greifenstein we had to carry the rowboat around the dam. There was a sort of reservoir there with a load of nudists sunning in the woods and reeds along the shore. They all stared at us like we were the show.
In all, it was a fun day, although most of the other rowers were these competitive rower-types and I hadn't done anything athletic all summer etc. so there was that aspect of mild humiliation/deprecation, but the water and the peace and the landscape was totally worth it.
Today is the first day of school here. Gamma couldn't sleep at night and neither could I. I gave her a foot massage and told her how excited I used to get as a kid on the first day of school, what suffering and anxiety it was, although I mostly enjoyed the academic part of school.
Today I walked her to school, it's just down the street from our house. I took a picture of her alongside the school. She wouldn't let me take her picture right in front, because other people were already there.
Fourth grade she's in this year. Little Gamma. And Beta's a high school senior, her last year of public school man. Little Beta.
I took a walk in the woods with Alpha yesterday morning. We had a good talk. I am fond of Alpha, and of our walks. We saw a frog and some other stuff. I took pictures, and finally got around to uploading stuff to flickr.
Posted at September 4, 2006 08:21 AM