Things on My Mind

I can't seem to write one decent cohesive post these days, so here's a smattering of my thoughts...

1. My mother would have been 81 today. Next week, when we go back for the second annual family trip to Howard Prairie Lake, I'll bring her ashes home with me. (Dad and Lou bought a new house and... well, I offered to take Mom's ashes. Dad accepted.) In what might be the "schnapsidee" ("schnappsidee?!") of the century, I had the idea of tackling my fear of heights while scattering Mom's ashes over her heimat, near Traunstein, Bavaria. There's a hang gliding launching pad at the top of the Raushberg in Ruhpolding, where she used to hike and sky in her youth. If I were really brave -- in so many different ways -- I'd strap into a hang glider up there (with assistance, of course), take a running leap of faith off that mountain, and release Mom's ashes over the land that she loved so much.
   
2. My kids and their friends occasionally smoke hooka. On the one hand, this really upsets me because shisha (the stuff they actually smoke) is made from tobacco. On the other hand, they don't do it often, it's purely a social thing, and at least it's not full of nicotine. Still, I can't help but cringe when they all sit around blowing those smoke rings. We've been known to hang out as a family, sipping beer -- so it's not like I'm clueless. But I have this thing about drugs (pretty much any drugs)... I just don't like them. It comes from growing up in Berkeley in the 60's and reacting to that, I think. Our kids are incredibly open about what they do and don't indulge in (they do a few very limited things and don't do most things), so there's no mystery whatsoever and they have no qualms about sharing with us. But I don't understand the allure of any of it -- hooka, alcohol, weed, whatever. I mean, why? I'll just never get it -- and they know exactly how I feel.
3. I'm writing this from a picnic bench at Marymoor Park where, thanks to Mr Gates, there's free internet access. It's about 80 degrees, "the Mountain" (Rainier) is "out," and the work week is over! Directly in front of me is the park's huge climbing structure, to my right is Rainier, looking like you could just reach out and touch it, to my left is the Velodrome with the region's dedicated cyclists practicing for some big race, and all around are dogs with their humans, heading to the off-leash area -- or "bark park," as Shasta knows it. What a glorious Seattle day! It almost makes all those cloudy days worth it. Almost, but not quite.
4. I'm gonna head from here to my favorite craft store to try to get creative enough to think of something to make my dad for his 80th birthday. It might take a while, being Friday. My previous jobs have all been highly creative and on Friday, I'd try to turn off that part of my brain and just cruise kinda numbly through the weekend. But this job has pretty much ZERO creativity to it, so by Friday afternoon, I'm both craving and feeling estranged from creativity. After Ben Franklin (the craft store), I think I'll call Tom to meet me in town for a date. I have never loved Fridays quite this much! It's not that I don't like my job; I actually DO. It's that, by Friday, my brain feels fried and completely depleted... even as my in-box continues to fill with fires and floods and lightning and thunder from every which way. As it is now, as I write this. Yup, there's a work e-mail coming in. And, oh look (no don't!) another. And lookie there -- yet another...