Saturday Was Earth Day

Here's a peace bumper sticker. Saturday was Earth Day. It was also "Clean and Green Day" in London. It rained during the night and the morning was overcast - perfect for working outdoors.

I met up with people from the River Forks neighborhood association, got bags and gloves and spent the first two hours of the morning picking up litter on our street between our house and the pedestrian bridge.

After two hours my back was hurting from bending over and picking up garbage. I could not believe I am so out of shape. I went home, took two extra strength aspirin and went out again. So much for paying attention to the body.

I picked up more cigarette butts than anything. The result however is that piles of unsightly garbage - the wet overflow from dumped garbage cans - is gone. The street just looked beautiful in the afternoon. It was warm and glorious with the flowers all starting to bloom, the grass fresh and green after the night of rain and the trees in various stages of budding.

During the last hour I went down to the Thames itself, on the other side of the pedestrian bridge and down in the park to the dock where we feed the ducks bread.

To my delight, the great mound of trash had been cleaned out from a hollowed part of the retaining wall by the dock. But there was all sorts of old garbage still in the water, washed up in the shallows.

I went beneath the dock, since the water was low, and dredged up all sorts of awful muck. Amazing the number of old rotting garments I pulled out of the mud, including the stray sock. It was heavy, smelly, muddy stuff. Also pulled out a bunch of old plastic bags half buried in the rocks, yards of goopy tangled fishing line, a fish hook and lots of broken glass from bottles. There was the occasional smashed aluminum can, weird things like "plastic burlap" bags that had filled with mud and - the thing that was heaviest and most atrocious - an old rusted out chair that had been sticking out by the dock for the last year.

I had to wade in and get my sneakers completely wet and smelly to get that little piece of hideousness, but I did it.

By then I was tired and it was really hard carrying all this heavy sodden crap - that I had put in various plastic bags except for the chair - up the stairs. My last energy was spent hauling the bags to the closest of the 55 gallon garbage cans in the park. It was not close, but I did not feel right about just dumping those dripping bags - and the chair - on the sidewalk and assuming they would eventually be picked up.

I fairly limped back up and over the bridge and down to Sylvia & Kevin's place for our pizza lunch break. One piece of onion and feta pizza and a glass of water and a sit and then it was time to head down to the park for tree and shrub planting as part of "Reforest London."

I had to go home and change into shorts. The sun had come out - it was a spectacularly beautiful afternoon like early summer - and I was miserable in long jeans and my sweatshirt.

Came back and worked with a whole group of people planting until 3:30, then I just had to go home. I was so achey and tired. I kept thinking it was hard to believe that, at one time, I worked a 12-hour day doing physical labor. I couldn't make 6 hours of it on Saturday and during half of that I was less than energetic. I have really allowed my physical strength and stamina to deteriorate. It's staggering how old and out of shape I've become without realizing it. What this tells me is I need to change. I need to get a bicycle, start bicycling and also start working in the yard. If I don't get some of my strength back now, I will be a creaking shell in another fifteen years when I'm seventy.

Now that thought gives me pause. Only fifteen years until I'm seventy.
Let's move to another topic.

I took out three books of Alice Munro's short stories. I have one more to finish reading in Runaway. I want to find out why her stories are so loved.

Started a short story of my own this afternoon. Began writing around twelve-thirty and didn't stop until six-thirty. Five words short - so far - of 2700 and the story isn't finished. It's taken on a life of its own and what I thought the characters were going to do, they haven't done. I may well have to start another, different story to tell what I originally meant to write.

I realized again today that I have so many stories I have meant to write. Most of them have something or other to do with my parents. It hit me that, because I was their only child and because I had no children to pass their stories to orally, if I don't write them down in some fashion their lives will be lost.

So today I decided that I will not die without committing my parents and their lives - or at least what I have always found striking about their lives - to paper.

It's no longer going to be writing about me or my perspective about them. It's going to be about them.

Tomorrow is drawing class and I haven't drawn anything today, but I want to. I want to put a couple of photos up here before I log off. First is Hobbes asleep.

Hobbes, by the way, is throwing up. I think he ate the dead bumble bee that I saw on the floor in the basement because it's gone. I know he ate some of my flowers because there were telltale petals on the table and chewed up fern on the floor.

As a result he can't keep any food down. He's been throwing up all day. I'm hoping he'll get over it. If he doesn't, he'll get dehydrated, weak and die. If he's still throwing up tomorrow, I will have to get him in to be seen by the vet and ask Nicole if she can take us since Angus is in Florida and left the car parked at Ray's en route. I've lost too many animals, including poor little Marlowe who never was going to live. I cannot lose Hobbes also.


Beautiful, round and roly-poly Hobbes asleep in a chair.