Running. With Potpourri.

~ Live & Learn

I’m off. Running. 6:05 am and it’s 76° F, already. Humidity is thick, legs are heavy, body is huge, mind is resisting, all of it groaning under the pressure of NO.

Scenes of the last 3 days flicker by.

pot·pour·ri (n) a mixture of things

In a small patch of grass, with Holly Pond on its right, a guard rail on the left, and Post Road to the North, is a flock. Not of a like-kind. But 2 adult geese, 3 toddlers, a mallard and a sparrow. All quietly feeding as I approach. Mother Goose, protecting her young-uns, approaches, neck fully extended…tall and fierce with her wings spread wide…hissing. This luncheon is human-free, and I was not welcome. All these creatures, peacefully feeding, and yet we, a higher level of intelligence can’t seem to sit in a room and have a civil conversation.

I’m in the dentist chair. Not flat, but with feet higher than head. Hygienist is wearing a face mask and magnified eye goggles. Poking, scraping, suction, flossing. I’m lolling in and out of nausea and claustrophobia. Overhead lamp beams down. I’m Dustin Hoffman in the scene from Marathon Man. Blood rushes to my head. I swallow, shift my legs and grip the arms of the chair. Hygienist notices the discomfort and withdraws. Breathe DK, breathe. I regain my composure.

Feet and legs have been hurting after my runs. Time for new shoes. I’m third in line, waiting to check out at Dick’s Sporting Goods. It’s late afternoon on July 4th. I’m watching one of three check out clerks. She’s large boned, broad shouldered, and tired. I walk up and hand her the shoes – with an intense desire to see what shoes she is wearing. She’s been standing since 10 am on a statutory holiday. She places the shoe box into a plastic bag, drops in the receipt and offers an obligatory “Thank you.” I’m walking out the door. Should have tipped her. Should have. Should have. Should have.

Driving down Post Road, heading home from Dick’s. There’s no sidewalk between Dick’s and Kohl’s, forcing pedestrians to walk on a narrow shoulder. A young man, white t-shirt, jeans, is waving his hands in the air and feigning picture-taking of the oncoming cars. Something’s not all right there but he had the happiest look on his face. I look in the rear view mirror and there he is, arms still waving, with oncoming traffic swerving to miss him. Young man, you have a striking resemblance to Pharrell Williams in Happy.

We’re at the kitchen counter. Eric (Son, 24) is home for the week. He reaches for a hot dog bun and is slicing it with a serrated knife. “Why are you doing that?” I bought the top-cut buns yesterday. “They are sliced down the middle on top.” He’s mangled the bun, I grab it from him and toss it into the disposal. “Why’d you do that Dad? We could have used it for toast in the morning.” My Son, he had been watching and listening to his Mom and Dad when money was tighter – and now that he digs in his own pocket to cover, he gets it. Warmth surges.

I’m sitting in the backyard. A large ground hog lumbers along a few feet to my right, pauses, looks up at me, and continues ambling down the backyard disappearing behind the fence. Listen Chubby, you wouldn’t be casually tromping around here if Zeke was still here.

I’m reading on the bed, chill music is playing softly in the background. Coincidence?  Edmund White, in his introduction to his new book The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading, believes: “There is no greater pleasure than to lie between clean sheets, listen to music, and read under a strong light.”

Yes Edmund. Yes.

Nap Time.

Notes:

58 thoughts on “Running. With Potpourri.”

  1. An enjoyable stroll with you through your day. Except the dentist part. Oh and the tossing of the bun. The first part was so me if I were to run. The last part would never come from my mouth as we don’t have groundhogs. We have squirrels. And deer. Lots of land locked deer. Suburban sprawl locked them onto our farm. Our version of group hogs I suppose. Have a tomorrow after those clean sheets.

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  2. “All these creatures, peacefully feeding, and yet we, a higher level of intelligence can’t seem to sit in a room and have a civil conversation.”

    The most impressive part for me, so beautifully expressed. Thank you dear David, Love, nia

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  4. I’m with Nia here….. This man David CAN write! 🙂
    Didn’t like the ‘throwing away bun’ story – NEVER throw food away, please. Too many starve. Your son was right and I as a long-time ‘food processor’ could give you 20 other examples of How to use a wrongly cut bun….
    Your groundhog is an animal I always struggle with. Our Murmeltiere in Switzerland only live well hidden away in the mountains, when climbing the rocks, you can hear them and rarely they show themselves. ‘Chez vous’ they seem to be like pets. Are they much bigger then? And yep, before you ask, have seen the film – wasn’t as keen as had hoped for…. maybe didn’t get a hidden message?!
    Always breathe deeply when on a dentist’s chair! 😉 My little sister (she’s taller than me but most people are) told me on the phone her horror story of getting (slowly, so slowly) an implant. Not ‘just’ the cleaning of lovely white biters…. now the gritty stuff with pouring concrete, mixed with her own bone material and unspeakable other things, in her deeply dug ‘future tooth’ cavity, a story of stitching said building site up….. Me, like the big sister-fool I am, told her: You’ve got to breathe deeply!!!! – Say are we brain-joined somewhere? So many of your tales mirror my (or my family’s) life.
    Hope the cool sheets stay cool and keep you cool – I can’t even use the strong reading light I really need because I get eaten up by the little buggers who suck, bite, gnaw away at me….

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    2. Thank you for reinforcing my recent decision to not have an implant…getting a bridge. Kiki do you currently live in Switzerland? My elderly father (has an aide with him) in law is visiting Switzerland after River Cruising in Europe…

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      1. @Christie; Both, Hero Husband and I are Swiss but currently still live in France. HH works (mostly) in CH and once we will have sold our beautiful house, we will eventually move back to our home country. CH is so beautiful that you can never visit everything. We have got it all, lakes, mountains, cities, tiny villages, good food and wines, and about 25 dialects plus 4 main languages. Something for everybody!!! Tell them to enjoy every minute and take picnics with you. Restaurants are horrendously expensive.

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        1. @ Kiki sounds so wonderfully and breathtakingly gorgeous! What is CH? this is my Father in laws third or fourth trip to Switzerland.

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          1. CH – Confoederatio Helvetica in Latin
            It’s our official sign for Switzerland and once we have spoken to each other you will know! 🙂 Every (other) car has that sign (if they ever drive abroad with it)
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland

            Your father will probably know more about CH than we do!!! This happened to us when we lived in Devon, UK (there you go! Another abbrev.) and all the visitors coming to us had the time of their life, visiting, telling, getting themselves informed while we ‘just lived there’ and worked every day…..

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      2. My sister’s tale is so shocking that I probably would think twice too. Luckily, my ‘biters’ are either in much better shape or are already ‘fixed’ with less an intrusion than hers. She is a poor girl, all the pain she had/has to suffer.

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        1. I bite down on something hard and spit the tooth root, then I ended up with a bone infection and bone loss…didn’t want to chance all the complications of an implant under my situation.

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      3. ps: should have said bit…the tooth was already root canal-ed and crowned… I’d had a horrible experience with a different Oral Surgeon and just couldn’t risk having another Surgeon error into my sinus…and it changed my face as well.

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  5. Just a bunch of snapshots, never amounting to a shape, but too tender to be tossed.
    ….. thus rendering our own life so weird, wonderful, bizarre, amusing and amazing…. 🙂

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  8. i like your mention of all the creatures, great and small, that you encountered along the path of your day. my post today offers a glimpse of the parade i attended here, a virtual potpourri of citizens and creatures, both in and watching the parade, all somehow managing to be in one place at one time and calmly coexisting. i wish this could exist in the larger model.

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  12. Oooh! You got yourself into trouble with that bun story! My mother always said it’s a sin to waste food! But, since it was a store-bought bun, I’ll forgive you. Now if Zeke had been there, you could have doctored it up with something tasty and given it to him. You might have to get another dog if you keep throwing food away like that. 😉

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  13. Liked the snapshots in your offering…I have a teeth cleaning appt. later this month…and our high yesterday was 72, and a bit sultry both unusual for July here…I prefer summer temps to be between a perfect 72 and 80…with an occasional breeze gracing maybe once a week…

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      1. Not usual – July, Aug and some of Sept usually lots of above 90 and of course probably 5 days during the summer of over 100. Don’t know why we have been having breezy and sultry weather…and when the center of the USA is hot then both coast seem to be cooler, when the East coast is hot usually the West coast is cooler, when both coasts are Hot at the same time then the central USA is cooler. I will never forget the first time I laid my head to sleep in the mid-west it was about 94 at bedtime, when I woke up I said to my husband man it is hot, what’s up and what is the temp 92! at 6:15 am, ugh…I am so use to cool mornings, in fact it was down right cold a few mornings back 38! at the airport which means it was colder at my house!!!

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  14. “All these creatures, peacefully feeding, and yet we, a higher level of intelligence can’t seem to sit in a room and have a civil conversation”. Run more often DK so I can read your thoughts.

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  15. You were busy! I could add a few other activities to enjoy on clean sheets. Reading would be one, if my eye RX was up to date. I took a long nap, to long really. Slept till 5:00pm, of course I slept about two hours the night before. Zeke would have shown him who’s boss! Have a great day. Emailing shortly. M

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      1. It was a 9 hour shift, standing all day, and mind you, I’m on a 7-day work week stretch for three weeks. My old job did not accept my resignation. They still need help.

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