Blog of Days

Every day is the day I’m sure I’m going to finish the latest blog post I’ve started, and every day that just doesn’t happen. It is the second half of June, so I’m trying to cut myself some slack, but I find these days (these years) that I reflect back to the time in my life where I could manage to get more done with my days than I do now.

The month of days from mid-June to mid-July is traditionally the high season for Pat’s Screen Printing, and we are there once again this year. Not that this is reason to complain — it’s making hay while the sun shines, for those months when the sun doesn’t shine even if there’s a yellow orb in the sky, but we’re busy, and this year we seem to have an enormity of staff with busy lives outside of work.

Gilly’s planned medical leave, starting in late April, subsequently slid into ongoing unplanned medical leave (nothing life threatening, fortunately). Ben brought his friend Henry, a fellow just-past-high-school-sophomore, in to help fill in, but even with Henry’s useful assistance there have been all kinds of actions taking people out of the shop during work hours.

For instance, as we’ve learned twice now, while we have a small Department of Motor Vehicles office open two days a week, you can’t take the actual driving exam in town, requiring three hours of travel time just to take the test. But both out-of-town ventures were successful, so two new drivers have been added to the rolls just in time to learn about the skyrocketing costs of car ownership.

At home I have been filling in my mornings with things other than blogging. You’re perhaps aware of the not-blogging part.

I don’t really know how Lynn or I ever found time in the evenings to water; I am getting home at 7 or 7:30, and showers and dinner get me to 9 without any investment in relieving parched flora. Thus I have taken to watering in the mornings, and while I like to think I am letting sprinklers do the work, moving and keeping an eye on them really interferes not only with blogging time but blogging train of thought.

I’ve been given a couple of reprieves recently — not nearly as many as the prognosticators keep promising, but at least it’s something — with a couple long afternoons of rain. But every time I start believing the predictions and don’t set out sprinklers, it doesn’t rain, and so my task seems endless this summer.

Then there’s our new family member with whom we are working on figuring out new routines.

In many ways, Bear’s arrival has been quite seamless. One of the many advantages of adopting an older dog (contrasted to the obvious disadvantage of a proscribed limited time together) is that they have figured out how much of life works. He also arrived without Oz’s overwhelming separation anxiety, and this has made him a mellow fellow from the outset.

He doesn’t care about the cats and they generally don’t care about him, although Marrakesh, who in his previous outdoor life probably had every reason in the world to be wary of dogs, likes to test the waters now and then, but Bear passes every test.

He knows where he lives now; he knows he’s supposed to stay inside at work (although he did take himself for an unauthorized walk down to Carmen’s frame shop on Friday to hang out with her, her husband and their Aussie); he knows to stay in the car.

We’re trying to figure out what he likes to eat, and while he very much seems to enjoy going out for the first setting o’ the sprinklers each morning, he becomes that much less enthused about every subsequent move until it’s just preferable to stay inside.

Unlike our last two dogs, he doesn’t mind getting his feet wet in the ditches and ponds, and while he doesn’t seem to mind rain he appears terrified of thunder. He’s not a fan of toys, but he hasn’t had any issue making Oz’s beds his own.

Lynn and I both tend to call him Oz, or in fumbling for a name I secondarily reach for “Marrakesh” — Bear is just not a name I would bestow upon a dog, and then it turns out his official pre-rescue-shelter name was “Baby Bear.” Some days, around here, he’s just “Not Oz,” but he seems amenable to most things (Mellow Bear) and he’s making it quite easy to get things figured out.

Which, while we’re figuring things out: I believe the birds in the giant exposed, nearly electrified nest are seagulls. Yes, I said seagulls, here in landlocked Colorado, 7,700 feet above their species’ preferred elevation.

I’ve seen them out at Blue Mesa Reservoir over the years, but this is the first I’ve seen them set up shop even farther inland. Then again, I’m not much of a birder, so what do I know. And still no sighting of baby birds, no matter what kind they may be.

This, then, is my life in a nutshell these days: work, water, wending into a new iteration of family, none of which seems to leave me time to find words. But I’m still here, and hopefully you are too, and we’ll just keep on keepin’ on the best that we can.