Day Seven

On the seventh day, we rested. And then when we got bored of resting we rested some more. Mmmmmm.....smores. Anyhow, we didn't rest entirely that well because lil s decided that it was time to wake up for the day at 5:30 A.M. And, uh, I wasn't too excited about waking up at 5:30. That's in the vacation itinerary for the elderly not for young cappucino drinking folks like myself. Lil s didn't seem to mind crawling between me and her prone mother, pulling herself up and then doing some dancing. Needless to say the dancing was way less cute at 5:30 than it would have been at 8.

I took her downstairs for a bit, so she could share her love of making noise with the rest of the house. It was hard to tell from all the pillows being pulled over heads and slight groans, but I'm pretty certain that they liked it. Then I started eating cookies. This is one my great vacation weaknesses, I always take a vacation from eating healthy. I tend to get hungry before our late breakfasts, and so I'll eat five cookies to tide myself over until I have some egg heavy dish. I don't know if cookies and eggs will ever catch on, but they are pretty damn good when eaten as first and second breakfast, which is to say, to continue the Tolkein references, I become a hobbit, concerned with the meal between breakfast and brunch.

The moms and I took a brief walk up behind the house on a well worn dirt path. There was only one time where I was certain that a tree stump was a bear. We talked about the past on the dusty road, and watched the shade from trees slice shapes of light. In the end we talked again about things that had already happened because they are so much more likely to remain truer than the things that haven't. This may be the difference between a scientist and a man of words.

All afternoon we received calles from my in-laws offering updates on their travel back from Reno, which was supposed to have brought them back by ten. I told S that we should just hunker down, that if we traveled out to see them on the hike we'd only get fifteen minutes or so of it in. When we finally received the final call lil s was taking a nap, and, over my objections, we waited until she woke up to hit the road. By the time we reached them they'd finished the hike and were waiting in the parking lot. S congratulated me on not saying I told you so. "I don't have to say it because it's just so evident."

We hiked for a few minutes along a gravelly path cut through by rocks until we reached a view of of the Tahoe basin. It's at this point that you'd have to ask yourself whether the drive was worth it, the mountain range in the distance and the steely blue lake offered up their own take on it.

Back at the cabin we wound down quickly because we have babies. And babies are great at winding things down early. Ten o'clock never seemed like such a reasonable time to call it quits and accept that tomorrow would be a different if not necessarily better day.

Aside: it is strange to consider that you can now go an entire day without really having an original thought, that almost every moment of your day can be mediated by worry, radio, work, the internet, such that you wind up having no real time to process any of the information you are receiving, rather, you just become a paltry computer yourself, unable to draw distinctions, merely able to regurgitate the things you heard or the people who annoy you. That's why it's a good thing to write, to think, to spend a few moments reflecting on the veracity of things. Of course, I'm not really a doer either, so perhaps my problem is too much thinking.

Picture time

We took like ten of these suckers. Lil s apparently thought we were taking her mug shot and pretty much refused to smile despite the fact that her great grandmother was pretty pumped to see her. We put her in a timeout don't you worry, I've read about parenting on television.

These people are happy because they live in a recession proof housing market and work, at least one of them, at one of those nasty government jobs that are taking away all of our social security. They won't be smiling so much when we get back to the gold standard.

Tahoe may have impressed the Donner party and Chevrolet pick up trucks, but I smirk at that beauty.

Lil s is lucky we even let her in this picture the way she just jumped in at the last second. Oh what baby like you weren't going to be the center of attention for a minute. Come on! Like the guy in a six dollar hat is going to care! Come on!

We took five hundred more pictures of lil s with her gg because she was so terrible earlier. Naturally, just like her generation, note: it's important to always disparage the generations that come behind you and note how much better your generation was, even though it tends to be patently untrue, and often the reverse just looking at war stats and crime stats et al. Anyhow, kids from her generation just show not respect for their elders. It's depressing. In my day....

Music will save the world....just not this one.