Gloom Of A Gray Morning And Lake Flies Return

7:09 AM

Dusk: 6:46

Heavy gray rain clouds hang over the lake this morning at 6:45.  Lots of rain last night, though at the moment, 7:48, the sky, the outdoors, has lost its heaviness, perhaps a pleasant day to come.  It's 50º out, steam rising from the hills above Bemus Bay, not a boat on the lake.  

I really like today's poem from The Writer's Almanac...it rings so true.

Grandchildren by Olivia Stiffler They disappear with friends near age 11. We lose them to baseball and tennis, garage bands, slumber parties, stages where they rehearse for the future, ripen in a tangle of love knots. With our artificial knees and hips we move into the back seats of their lives, obscure as dust behind our wrinkles, and sigh as we add the loss of them to our growing list of the missing. Sometimes they come back, carting memories of sugar cookies and sandy beaches, memories of how we sided with them in their wars with parents, sided with them even as they slid out of our laps into the arms of others. Sometimes they come back and hold onto our hands as if they were the thin strings of helium balloons about to drift off.

Yesterday I took my fourteen year old Honda in for a check up, just like an aging retiree and found, after the mechanic's going over the entire car to make sure it was safe, I needed new break lines.  I had dropped it oft at 9:00 and then walked to my yoga class in Lakewood.  We did lots of work on the back, cobras and leg lifts, more rigorous than usual.  I then had a coffee at Ryders,  talked with Dave, one of the local regulars at the coffee shop until Evie picked me up.  We then went to the dentist, where Evie had a brief appointment, and then we did our first really mega shopping trip since the kids left in mid August, stocking up for the winter (15 cans of crushed tomatoes, for example, at $.79 a can). Our bill was close to two hundred dollars, typical for a weekly run for our kids but unusual for us.

For lunch, I picked up a Danny's Favorite sub from Wegmans, had a half along with black bean soup for lunch as I watched the first half of the World Cup final basketball game between the US and Serbia.  It was played on Sunday but I saved it, did not know the score so it was fun.  The US started slow but were up by thirty at half time, having shot an amazing 67% from the shorter three point line. We both relaxed the rest of the afternoon, though Evie put together our dinner of pork ribs, sauerkraut and tomatoes, popped it in the oven, and let it bake for four or five hours.  Around 5:00, the lake was like glass, the sky slate gray, so I had to go out and kayak.  And our neighbors, the Johnsons, were out skiing as well, taken advantage of the calm.  I talked with a fisherman, who seems to park his boat about five house down from us each fall.  This is the third year for him, and he thinks the area has lots of mussel shells, which the fish love.  He has good success, catching mostly perch.  He will be there the next few weeks for four or five hours a day, a patient man.  

Dinner was great with mashed potatoes of course and we are hooked on a BBC series recommended by my sister, Ellen, called Happy Valley.  Though we miss some of the dialogue because of the English accent, we really got into it, as the lead police officer, Catherine Caewood, must deal with personal as well as professional problems, while she tries to thwart a kidnapping.  The series builds each episode, as we see the pressure on her build to a breaking point.  I won't go into all in problems, the somewhat silly coincidences, but the series is well worth watching, the acting superb, the story riveting.