Day Four/Conversations about lines

M: (Gets out of shower and into towel) Do you like what you see?

S: (Doesn't really bother to look up) You bet.

M: Well, you'll have to get in line then.

S: Who else is in line?

M: Well. No one. But it still seems like a line would be best.

I read an article recently that talked about the ability of those bygone great American writers to write about America best from foreign shores. I suppose that is true of just about anyone. When I left my hometown of Chico, CA, I wouldn't say I thought that I was leaving much behind me beyond a small group of friends and my mother. I found most of the people in my age bracket to be, not idiots, just foreign, interested in different things. I found myself at college etc. etc. Anyhow, the point is that it takes a rare breed of person to be able to appreciate a place's beauty while they are inside it. It is only absent the unceasing pleasant days of Santa Barbara that I can appreciate how wonderful it was. The same seems to ring true of the places that we are from.

This all brings me to day four. When I awoke and walked out to pick up the paper the air was brisk. Not those damnably hot garbage sack mornings I'd left behind. This cool morning air inspired me to take a walk to the doughnut nook, a favorite little place from summers long ago, back before we were able to drink when my friends and I would stay up late playing video games and then head over to the nook around 1 A.M. to eat doughnuts and bullsh- about things for an hour or so.

I took mom and babe with me because S has grown to love the doughnut nook's amazing creation as much as I do: a chocolate chip square. A chocolate chip square is a giant rectangular doughnut, think bear claw sized but rectangular in shape, topped with chocolate glaze. Okay, nothing special here, you've just got yourself a big ass doughnut, but then they stuff the thing full of warm chocolate chips. I tend to eat them quickly so as to avoid letting my body realize that my arteries are being actively clogged. I can recommend the peanut butter one as well because it's a little richer, and when you're talking about a giant chocolate glazed doughnut filled with chocolate chips you're definitely thinking, "how can I make this richer?" Back in the day of high school metabolisms we used to drink it with whole milk as well. This particular morning we walked the mile or so there and back to try and alleviate some of the impact of the crater of chocolate and fried dough had left in our stomachs.

After that, strangely enough, we sat around the house and waited for a lot of those same high school friends that I'd left behind to swing by the house with wives in tow to say hi to little s. It's almost laughable to watch all of us men interacting with wives, or at least the presence of wives, the jokes lack a certain sting, a certain element of retrogradity, that's a word now. I'm reminded of how we'll all get together in a few weeks in Nashville and act like nothing has changed. We'll exchanged booze for doughnuts and sit around and bullshi- about the old days and hope that someone does something so colossally stupid that we'll all be able to recount it for years to come.

Anyhow, we watched baby s stumble around the room, smile, eat magazines, cry, et al. and bitched about politics or houses or our lot in life. You know the same sort of shi- that people have been doing since language was invented.

Before my friends arrived I remember being annoyed at S and my mom for some reason and claiming that I was on vacation and putting on my Lake Tahoe hat and sitting in the back yard. I watched small nameless birds flit between shrubs and onto the branches of white nameless trees. It is good to know things I am always reminding myself.

After that a set of S's friends came over who randomly happened to be in the area. And we bs'd about different sorts of things because the new folks all work in the field of Christian missions in one way or another. In the end we wound up talking a bit about kids, the men about writing or not writing until the afternoon whittled itself away.

At that point we went for a walk in Bidwell Park, which is the --- largest municipal park in the country. I think top ten. Anyhow, it's huge. And I don't think I ever appreciated how awesome it was until I left. Chico has only 80,000 people or so, but the park runs the length of the city giving easy access to kids who want to bike, skip rocks, jump dangerously from ropes, I never did, obviously, or take a country stroll and botanize the shi- out of things. I never did that either.

We wound up going to a place where the babies could swing, and I pushed lil s for the first time in one of those baby swings, and she sort of liked it, but even though I acted calm and happy I was continually worried that she was going to pitch forward to her death. Don't tell anyone I thought that. I love caution.

In the evening we went to Burger Hut, this pretty damn good burger place that has probably gotten a little pricey for its britches, but that I still love as I remember going there when I was younger and attempting to eat a whole order of their seemingly unending french fries. I have dreams about the heaps of potatoes slain to make my dinner. There we chatted a bit about the things people chat about when two babies are present, babies, the past, old memories and the things we don't yet know about each other because we've been absent so long.

In the evening we tried to watch Toy Story 3, a movie I've managed to watch twice without S even though she loves herself some car toon movies. Mainly because they are happy. And she puts a great deal of stock in movies that have hope. I don't put a great deal of stock in hope, so I suppose that's where we differ. "Yes, there is hope -- endless hope. But not for us" Thank you my good friend Mr. Kakfa. Anyhow, the picture kept coming in and out and freezing and S has a tendency to act as if she's being punched repeatedly in the face when the screen freezes, so she left the room in a huff. I've never seen her as upset about anything as she gets about our screen freezing. I suppose that's a good thing. My mother and I stayed awake for a while talking about lil s and jobs and CA. Then we both headed off to sleep.

Picture Time!

Cute story. So I asked the moms to pull out pictures of me from my long lost babyhood and the first picture she pulls out is one of me as a wee babe playing with the same toy that lil s was playing with. I guess it just doesn't just get any better than a round ball made for rolling/smashing stuff.

We've taught her that eating rocks makes you stronger like that guy in the Neverending Story. Did he eat rocks?

Mainly when the moms tried to hold lil s she attempted to scramble away to go eat some rocks. She's crafty like that. She paused a couple of times to pose for a picture.

It's hard to tell from this picture, but I'm on vacation wearing my Lake Tahoe hat. Beer me. I kid. I'll take a chardonnay.

Externally: This ain't no thing.

Internally: Is she going to fall? What percentage of your brain can you lose in a swing accident and still get a full ride to a UC? IS anyone noticing how nervous I am? Why isn't she nervous?

Toddlers pushing babies in strollers is why calendars were invented. You can buy one for 9.95 on this website.