Everything Seems to Change

Hello again, my friend.

It has been a little minute since last we spoke. Things have been going well for me, I think. I'm falling more into a routine, and it's a new routine. Newness is rough at times.

Having the boys on weekends is a treat. They seems to love it here, and they adore the tiny house. I took them to an arcade in town--because one exists in Tooele--and they had a great time. Perhaps bowling at the same establishment is in our future there. The sad thing about arcades is when you are feeding video game machines for three little boys at the same time, that happy little hour of play costs about as much as a good massage. However, their tender minds were ROCKED when I took them on their very first round of laser tag! Thank goodness for black lights, techno music, and laser pointer guns. I'm sure the experience pretty much changed their lives forever.

There are been some things I've been struggling with, and I think I'm starting to get over these little obstacles as well. And of course it all comes with getting know myself better. But yes, some things:

    1. When I am home, I am HOME! If I walk through my front--and only--door after a full day at work, it's be hard to get me to go out again. Especially for errands. Food can always wait if I don't have enough right now, or if what I do have doesn't really go together to make a meal. That Amazon package I had delivered to a pickup counter in town can wait another day, for I am home. However, now that I'm aware of this, I can work my way around it. Any errands I have to run I can do as I make it into town, before I open my door. We'll see how it goes.

    2. I think my newest exercise endeavor is swimming. Do you remember my stories of being on the swim team for Carbon High? It's been a little minute since I've swum for actual exercise, but I think I found a great spot for that. There is an aquatic center just around the corner from where I live. I took the boys there the other day to play in the water and go down the water slide, and they had a blast. Lap swim is open all the day long, so I figured I'd go for a lap or two whilst I was there. (Don't worry, my sister was also with us, so the kids were still supervised.) What a treat it turned out to be! I don't have goggles right now, and with my long hair I need a swim cap, and the suit I was wearing isn't for lap swim, but it was like riding a bike. I'm sure I'm slow as F right now, but to swim, and to still have good form and relatively okay lung capacity is reassuring to realize. So I think I'll be stopping by the pool three times a week to swim for an hour.

    This brings up another interesting point. A couple years ago I went through a big weight loss phase where I was dieting and running. At the end of it I ran my very first--and only--half marathon. I feel I was in good shape at that time, and then life happened and I put all the weight back on. I've been stuck thinking this whole time in Tooele that running is the way it has to be because it was so successful a couple years ago. I'm open now to trying new things, and I remain hopeful about where this might go. Though I know swimming isn't the greatest way to lose weight, it will do wonders for my low back and won't kill my knees. I think that's a win.

    3. My life is more productive when I live out of a planner. I'm not the guy who requires a detailed to-do list in order to get anything done, but I do better if the big things are written down. I bought a new planner when I moved in to the tiny house as a way to start afresh and such, and then Covid happened and the planner was never opened again because for two weeks there was only one kind of day. I actually was scared to open it again, like something unknown would jump out at me from the pages, or I'd be reminded of something I didn't do. It took courage--yes, friend, COURAGE--to crack open that planner and start writing stuff in it. Important stuff. Stuff I wanna get DONE. So it rests constantly open on my countertop when I'm alone, and it gets put away when the boys are here. I've already found some reassurance in the fact that I have a thing that keeps other things organized, especially when I can't brain well enough to get it all together inside my head right now.

So why the dumpster fire, I hear you ask. Some things, some legal things, are beginning to happen instead of just staying in the future of 2020 as an additional thing to be afraid of. So really, even though the tone of this post is pretty peppy and positive, there is a mess I still haven't dealt with. And the processes to deal with the mess have started. I'll send you word on that in the future.

Warmly,

D.

P.S. Let's play a game, you and I. Sometimes writing blogs can be so one dimensional. As you may know already, I decided to take up playing the recorder back in January because I wanted to learn a new instrument. So how about I record a little something, and we both play Name That Tune.

Some background and thoughts as to why this is hilarious and awesome:

    1. All I have is an iPhone for recording sound.

    2. These songs will be recorded in one take and then left unedited because it's more like performing that way. Also I'm lazy.

    3. These songs will only be the melody.

    4. I am a NOVICE. I have been playing the tenor recorder for six months.

    5. Not all songs are meant to be played on the recorder. But that's not gonna stop me!

This first round is a classic if you had a childhood like mine. Have a listen and a good chuckle. 5 points to anyone who gets it! (If I have shared this song with you before, you may get to sit this round out.) Click the link below and the song file will open in a new window.

Name That Tune, July 19 <--(That is the link!)

Independence Day, and I do mean INDEPENDENT.

Hey friend. I have to say I had the strangest 4th of July weekend I have ever experienced. I'm sure that things were weird all over the country, given Corona and all. But still.

I didn't have to work July 3rd or 4th just because it fit in with my regular schedule. The 3rd was the observed holiday, and I was terrified that businesses would be busting with people trying to do fun things with friends and family, complicated by trying to enforce social distancing. For this reason, the boys and I didn't go exploring Tooele much on Friday. We did discover in a real way that Tooele is still very much on lock-down from the virus. There isn't an outbreak here, but everything has clamped down in a big way as to even being open.

Because it's usually a big weekend for places like ice cream shops, I was hoping some mom-and-pops in town would be open in some way so the public could enjoy their deliciousness. Absolutely not the case. While the mom-and-pop joints were usually open for business at the drive-thru, it seems they all closed Friday and Saturday (some even up until Monday). Even in this weird socially distant setting where dining in still isn't allowed in most food places, I would think that most joints would WANT to open for this weekend because it usually means big business.

Well, I was wrong.

On Saturday we drove up and down Main Street, the main drag of Tooele. American flags decorated everything, lining all the sidewalks and windows. It was a lot to see, but it was still nice to see. The weird part was the obvious absence of people. The street was made to appear accommodating for a crowd, yet no one was outside. No one was on the sidewalks, and we didn't even see many cars driving through town. Everything was empty.

We went to a park during lunch time. The park was nice; it had a good playground set, everything was clean and new-looking, the lawn was green and recently mowed, and everywhere around the playground equipment were picnic tables. I expected those tables to have people in tank tops, coolers filled with soda open, with burgers and hot dogs getting served up. But much like Main Street, everything was empty. My car was the only car in the parking lot, and there was no other soul to speak of at the park.

Maybe the rapture happened the day before, and I missed the memo?

And then the evening came. I expected the day to end on a dud, so when it was nearing bed time, it was with hesitation that I suggested we go watch the fireworks I could hear outside. Honestly, I was surprised there were fireworks at all. But I figured it wouldn't be a good 4th of July without seeing SOMETHING colorful in the sky, even if it was likely going to be lame and disappointing. The boys and I walked to the edge of the trailer park and saw several fireworks light up the sky before the sun was even set yet. One of my neighbors came up to me and told me to find a specific elementary school and watch the fireworks from there because the show was gonna start at 10:00.

I figured, why not? I loaded the kids into the car and drove into town. We didn't park in the right elementary school lot, I'm sure. But it didn't matter. Aerial fireworks exploded all around us starting at 9:45. They flew into the air from easily twenty different locations all over Tooele, and those spots encircled us completely. When some sparks burst in the air, all we had to do was turn around to see more and more of them launch from further down Main street, or behind us in a neighborhood up the mountain, or behind the elementary school, or just over in another neighborhood. Because Tooele is not a big place, all these location couldn't have been more than two miles away from us.

And the fireworks did not relent. For a solid hour they flew and exploded in the sky, filling everything with color and noise. All we had to do was turn around to see yet another show. It was like we were in the parking lot spinning circles for sixty minutes.

And we were ALONE! No one was with us in the parking lot. The boys ran around like feral children because there were no other cars--not even empty cars--to speak of. It was as if everyone spent the entire day in their backyards preparing for their personal light show, and all of them blasted off between 9:45 and 10:45.

I've seen some spectacular firework shows in my day. I’ve done Disneyland. I’ve done the 4th at the Washington Monument. But this by far was the strangest and most surprising of them all. I don't know if my story is typical of Tooele, and from what I've seen on Facebook, fireworks were abundant this year. But how awesome to end such an eerie weekend.

Share with me your news, friend. I'm eager to know how your own Independence Day went.

Warmly,

D