{"id":32377,"date":"2017-08-18T01:02:07","date_gmt":"2017-08-18T08:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/?p=32377"},"modified":"2017-08-18T06:00:34","modified_gmt":"2017-08-18T13:00:34","slug":"the-evening-cool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2017\/08\/18\/the-evening-cool\/","title":{"rendered":"The evening cool"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last night after an hour of work on the north wall and a hour of Downton Abbey<\/em>, I realized I should blog something. I began news surfing to add to the trove of linkable pages always waiting in the wings of the browser.<\/p>\n

I’d barely started into the sort of article that’s normally a grabber (another scurrilous accusation against Assange<\/a> and Wikileaks<\/a>) when I realized I wasn’t the teeny tiniest bit interested.<\/p>\n

Not that I’m finally cured of news junkiedom, mind you. Merely that tonight I didn’t care.<\/p>\n

It’s summer. It’s waltzing by and I’m either working or thinking about work. Of course some of the work gets me out there in the summerness. That hour yesterday, priming the next stage of wall, was done in glorious cool sunset after a pleasant day. And before that I had walked Ava by the estuary twice. But one was work and the other a duty. Time to get out again. This time just because.<\/p>\n

I put down the laptop and clapped for Ava to come with. In her little fenced yard we played fetch with a tennis ball (one of about 100 provided over the years by a charming friend-of-the-blog).<\/p>\n

Just shy of 12, Ava doesn’t play as long as she used to. She’s still wild for the game and expert at catching, but after six or 10 throws she’s done. Not like in the olden days when fetch was Life Itself. But tonight she was on fire. Again and again and again she jumped and ran for it or simply caught it from a gentle sit. She didn’t want to stop. Even when she did finally say “enough,” she announced her wish to go into the house by jumping in the air like a puppy — once, twice, five times, 12. Although I didn’t think at her age she should be doing it, I loved the energy. That dog is so happy<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Or was. Until I said, “Okay, you can go in” then closed the door behind her and stayed outside. Poor Ava. She is so abused.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

The evening was on the cool side, but still shirtsleeve weather. A tiny bit buggy but not mosquitoey. The alders’ white trunks had a sunset gleam to them and their leaves rustled faintly. I have multiple wind chimes, deep-toned or woodenly clacky, all relegated to hanging together on the fence for the duration of construction. Once in a while they’d manage a momentary clatter or deep-chested bong<\/em>. Couldn’t ask for a pleasanter evening.<\/p>\n

I walked around the north and west of the house, enjoying the new walls and thinking about the challenges of putting up the trim and about colors here and there.<\/p>\n

Someday there’s going to be a pleasant gravel-and-block patio behind the entire north wall. By early fall the porch should be completely enclosed with window screens and a door. But will I just sit and enjoy? No. Too much to do, too much to do.<\/p>\n

I enjoy the doing. The satisfaction is boundless. I’m still glowing from my previous post and your responses to it. The sheer aesthetic pleasure of looking at the place makes me happy — for 30 seconds until my eye alights on some problem to be solved, something that’s less than optimal, something still to be done. And though I sigh, I go ahead and bite down on the problem and am thrilled when I finally solve it. The screen porch itself was my most inspired solution to a “situation” and now it’s fun to approach its little problems.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

Life eventually begins seeming shorter than the summers of our childhood. We look back and say, “I wish I had …” and the wish is always something like “spent more time with family” or “stopped and smelled the roses” or “spent more time with the kids” or “made that trip to Europe we always talked about.” For me one wish would be to have loved my dogs as much as they loved me and to have let them know it. But the truth is that if we — most of us people — had life to do over again, we’d still mostly get caught in our own little loops again. Unless something really woke us up and gave us a reality-check. Because the loops serve us. And because neither looking at a pleasant sight nor tossing a tennis ball to a dog nor playing games with small children nor hanging around doing domestic things is enough to keep the bright-minded human problem-solving, perpetually insecure human being mentally occupied for long.<\/p>\n

But last evening was good, even if I did spend much of it thinking about whether Maple Red or Whistling Dixie (pea green) is the right color for the trim on the north wall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night after an hour of work on the north wall and a hour of Downton Abbey, I realized I should blog something. I began news surfing to add to the trove of linkable pages always waiting in the wings of the browser. I’d barely started into the sort of article that’s normally a grabber (another scurrilous accusation against Assange and Wikileaks) when I realized I wasn’t the teeny tiniest bit interested. Not that I’m finally cured of news junkiedom, mind you. Merely that tonight I didn’t care. It’s summer. It’s waltzing by and I’m either working or thinking about…<\/p>\n

Continue readingThe evening cool<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,14,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dogs-and-cats","category-home-improvement","category-mind-and-spirit","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32377"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32391,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32377\/revisions\/32391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}