August’s poem

Robert Louis Stevenson, “Bed in Summer,” from A Child’s Garden of Verses.

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In winter I get up at night

And dress by yellow candle-light.

In summer, quite the other way,

I have to go to bed by day.

I have to go to bed and see

The birds still hopping on the tree,

Or hear the grown-up people’s feet

Still going past me in the street.

And does it not seem hard to you,

When all the sky is clear and blue,

And I should like so much to play,

To have to go to bed by day?

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A few remarks.

(1) No wonder it was hard for little R.L.S. to go to bed in summertime. The Scottish sun doesn’t set until who knows when.

(2) Many children’s stories end with the characters peacefully and easily going to sleep; this poem knows better.

A few other classics with a good measure of “sleep ambivalence”:

Charlotte’s Web
Goodnight Moon
Madeline

House hunting, chapter the last

Since Monday night, I’ve been limping due to a painful blister upon one of my toes. (The cleats are to blame.) I haven’t been able to run or even mow the lawn.

How is such a small injury so debilitating? This feels less like a flesh wound, more like a broken toe.

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It’s just as well that I’ve been confined to the house. Lightning has been striking nearby, and violent winds have been blowing; yesterday they blew the screen off Samuel’s window and carried it as far as the neighbor’s fence. Karin brought the screen inside and propped it against a kitchen wall next to the onions, potatoes, and Gerber meals.

I limped around the yard and picked up fallen branches as a prelude to the mowing that I was unable to do.

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Soon, I’ll have to mow the lawns of two houses: the one we live in now, into which my parents plan to move; and the one across town that Karin & I just bought.

Yes, we now own that house; although, due a technicality, we haven’t finished buying it, because it’s still possible for us to add to the down payment – which, indeed, we plan to do.

For now, I’m glad to have a place in which to live, and that it was providentially priced. Of the houses we bid on, this was the cheapest by $30,000; we obtained it for what most houses like this one would’ve cost before prices skyrocketed.

Also, among the houses we tried to buy, this one had the most bedrooms.

What is more, this is the only house where we were greeted by a neighbor. He offered to mow our lawn, for a fee. We might employ him until we move in.

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While we waited for the sellers to finish signing their documents, our realtor showed us this grim YouTube video of what the housing market has been like these last months. I guess he felt comfortable sharing it because we came away with a decent deal instead of an overpriced heap of rubble. This wasn’t due to any virtue on our part, however. All we did was lose the expensive bids and win the cheap one. Providentially.

In praise of Venus shoes

Well, the goal drought has ended; but, in a way, it continues. I still haven’t scored with the new cleats that I bought this summer. But I did make a rather complicated golazo almost as soon as I took off the cleats and put on Venus shoes, some ten or fifteen minutes before the game’s conclusion. So, my record this summer is: four goals with Venus shoes, in less than one hour; zero goals with cleats worn for hours and hours. I could tell immediately that with Venus shoes I was three times better as a footballer.

Of course, it made all the difference that we were on artificial grass and not on the slippery mud-grass of previous weeks.

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I finished reading the shortest item on my book list: Leonardo Sciascia’s The Day of the Owl. Friends, this author oozes intelligence. This book is on a par with, if not better than, García Márquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold. A man is killed by the mafia; the subsequent investigation is narrated not only with logical exactitude – this is a police procedural, after all – but also, occasionally, by means of wry dialog between shadowy, unnamed men of power. Sicily is a morass of subservience and paranoia, with inhabitants (one hardly can call them citizens) who nonetheless make their meanings clear through innuendo. Hilariously, they adorn this innuendo with affirmations of Catholic piety. This book is what I wish I were clever enough to write.

A storm at suppertime

That incredible lad, Samuel, again seized the fancy remote control and subscribed our household to My Outdoor TV.

This time, he turned on a show about hunting in the Yukon. I had never heard such strong Canadian accents.

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Spectacular rain and thunder tonight. Karin & I tried to take Samuel over to Karin’s dad’s apartment, but the car wouldn’t start, so Karin’s dad and his girlfriend, Carol, came to our place instead. We ate on the (covered) back porch while the storm raged around us. Samuel threw his chicken and pasta onto the floor, so I took him down from his highchair and he ran laps around the supper table.

Even now, close to midnight, the storm is quite loud.

Karin has lain in bed, sick, the last couple of days.

More medals for Ecuador

Suddenly, after many fruitless decades, we have our first two woman medalists – both of them weightlifters:

• Neisi Dajomes of Pastaza Province – gold medalist in the 76 kg class
• Tamara Salazar of Carchi Province – silver medalist in the 87 kg class

Like Richard Carapaz, these medalists didn’t appear out of nowhere. Dajomes twice was junior world champion and holds several junior world records. Salazar has won continental and hemispheric contests.

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These are Samuel’s new favorite things to do outside: draw with chalk on everything, including the porch, the porch door, the porch furniture, himself, and his father; and run to the corner of the yard where the pebbles are, and put as many as possible into his mouth.

It used to be much easier to take him outside.

Yesterday I hurt my back lifting a series of objects (including Samuel). The debilitating twinge came when I bent over to pour cat litter from its container.

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Some books I am reading (I may discuss them later):

• Michael C. Bender, “Frankly, We Did Win this Election”: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost
• Tana French, In the Woods
• Leonardo Sciascia, The Day of the Owl
• George Sher, A Wild West of the Mind

Soon I’ll have to pack up my books to move them into the new house (assuming the purchase goes as planned).