A Week of Days

Published on by Lauren Dean Spencer
Sunday morning situated

Hello, my lovelies. I’m shaking it up. Blog-land wants a new approach (OK, I want a new approach). So I’m going to do some daily musings, then on the Saturday I’m a’gonna pop the whole caboodle up on the site. Here we are at Sunday. Folx, the week ahead is gonna be hella hot. Triple digit funtime. The small pool out back will no doubt see me floating. But here’s the thing about California: Somewhere around twilight, the weather fairies begin adjusting the temperature even as the Cali sun insists on dominating an “I’m still here” with a Bettie Davis/staircase attitude. The place settles down into some breeze&gentleness throughout until morning. My friend Mary was visiting last weekend and totally called the shift. “Did you feel that?” she asked. And, yes, I did.

So today before the blazing began, I read the NYTimes, tried to not get too worked up about stuff, read the usual Book Review&Style section, then headed over to my dad’s. On the way, I listened to a RadioLab podcast about breath. The first segment had to do with the deeply amazing and weird fact that babies are submerged in water throughout their whole gestation and only receive air through a little trap door in their heart, which is connected to the mother’s breath. When one of the hosts said, “It’s funny because it is a little story of the necessity of trauma” I cried a little. Not just because it’s unbelievable how an actual human is formed inside a woman, but that trauma is an act that has to happen in order for any of us to live. Our first memory/experience is literally the trauma of having our air supply cut (which is why babies are blue at first) until we’re shocked into learning how to operate our own lungs. So, there I was, driving my dad’s car (we’re doing an auto-share thing while Dennis is away), and having to do some deep breathing of my own to concentrate on the road. Anyhoo. I made it safely, walked in his place, where he offered me an egg salad sandwhich (I decined. Just ate.), and asked if I would drive his neighbor down to the Rite Aid. So I turned around, headed next door to her place to complete my mission. She told me she’d had a couple of beers so did not feel comfortable on the road. Responsible. Once there, she grabbed wine in a box, a pack of smokes, and then looked at me in disbelief when, after asking what the tonic water I was buying was being mixed with, I said lime and she fled to the cashier shouting “I have to get away from this boring person.” She had a mask on, so it was muffled. I had a mask on, so both my laugh and frown were equally camouflaged. Heading back to my dad’s place, we passed a corner where a couple of trucks had set up some tables selling some stuff. They had flags–also for sale–mounted on those trucks. They read Trump 2024 and Fuck Biden. Apparently when the revolution comes, we will be squaring off with the mentality of surly teenagers.Raise your hands if you didn’t know that already. Right. No hands. Which isn’t to minimize it. Surly teenagers are effin’ scary as Sh%%t (that frontal lobe not-closed-yet thing. aaahhh.).

My dad and I spent the rest of the afternoon on his porch discussing the section in the LATimes that was devoted to the Big One–meaning the mammoth earthquake that is scheduled to be here any day now. And we need to be ready. And, yes, I am suitably freaked out enough to prepare some go-bags (one for the fire emergency. One for the earth shaking moments. Both may have generally similar things given a tiny foldable shovel can be used in a variety of ways. My next challenge will be how to figure out what’s needed for the zombie apocalypse, because that’s coming too, I hear. And then what to do when the guys with the flags on the corner come for us…it’s all making me need to turn on Ru Paul’s Drag Race and remember when I wore makeup…although not quite like that). Then my dad drove me home and I extolled the virtues of the bus and he agreed that if there was a shuttle anywhere near to make his life convenient, he’d love to give up the car. I gave him a good-bye kiss and wandered around the apartment doing stuff for awhile. Till tomorrow…

  • Seen on this AM’s walk

MONDAY: Hello. Today I planned ahead. Knowing it would be a million degrees (100 degrees F), I decided to take a long walk before 10AM after which it would become full oven sensation. No surprise that there were many people out doing the same thing. Some with canine furries, some just hoofin’ it along like me. A surprising amount with masked faces. I had mine handy in case there was some sort of tight-quarter pedestrian incident. But there wasn’t. A crowded sidewalk in Redlands is basically defined as two people, each walking a dog, approaching each other within a half-block radius. An absolute pedestrian nightmare is two couples walking at least one dog each approaching within feet of each other. I see that and I’m crossing the street, where chances are very good there won’t be anyone at all. One delightful meet-up I had today was about halfway down Grant street (short street, charming houses), a plump gray cat popped out from behind a hedge and sat down in the middle of the sidewalk as I approached, looked at me and meowed. There were jangly name tags and a collar around her neck, so I knew she wasn’t feral, plus, as mentioned, she was a chubster. I crouched right down there and gave her some petting. Since Gladimus hasn’t showed up in ages, I’ll take it where I can get it. That and the pretty flowers, dewy leaves, and quaint, social commentary lemon-giveaway notes (see above) were about the height of it. Getting home, I caught up with my friend Judy in Canada, got a tour of her new awesome house, then worked on the edits the editor from the LA Times had on my essay. Which is in the newspaper. This. SATURDAY. (So basically today, as you read this.) Of course I’m nervous after hitting send, and hoped I did what she was asking for. We’ll see.

  • View from the bus.
TUESDAY: Today was the day Cali said, “hey, everyone, drop your mask and come on in. Disneyland’s running at full capacity, so everything must be back to normal, right?” The way I was starting the day was by getting the #19 bus and riding from Redlands to Yucaipa to meet my dad for our aerobics class. Of course I brought my mask. As it turned out, you still need to wear them on public transport. And I appreciate that. It also turns out that most everyone is just keeping them on, which I also pretty much appreciate. The coffee place where I met him: masks on. The gym: still wearing masks, except for us move/shakers in the Silver Sneakers class. No one wore them except the teacher, who had to. So it was weird to march around, lift my arms, and stuff with my whole face out. I had some anxiety. Such a deep-seated anxiety that’s been planted from the last fifteen months of the mask being an extension of me (not counting for the first month—March 2020—where we couldn’t actually find masks, but I did have that homemade bra I wore over my nose and mouth). After class, my dad and I went out to eat. Again, mask on to enter, place pretty crowded, mask off to eat. I can see everyone is adjusting. It’s also insanely hot here, so no matter how lightweight the mask, it’s still a bit of a sweaty affair. It’s a heat that stuns you when you walk out into it, as 107 naturally would at high noon. The kind where air conditioning is weird to walk into, like entering some liquid chill and you just kind of stop and float. I had work to do when I got home and had to fight off the heat lethargy, but the bedroom is the place with the AC, and it’s gonna be nice to go in there later….
  • Scenes from Wednesday

WEDNESDAY: A quiet day started happily with the return of Gladimus community cat. The cast is off her leg (as you can see in the first photo, that back leg has been shaved and looks like a little peg-pirate leg, yet as witnessed in the second photo, she’s on the move as always). She trotted in, let me give he a good pettin’, then headed out to find some shade. I, also in mind of relief, took a brief but vigorous walk around the nabe, listened to a couple of Aria Codes, then came back and settled in, typing in the notations on my novel draft (um, in the pool…where I made a de-facto desk. photo on far right above). Also looked at some final edits on the LA TIMES, LA Affairs piece. I’m lucky to be working with a very cool editor who, even though she had to trim by A LOT, it still reads really well and she didn’t sacrifice all of my darlings. It’s funny to know (pretty) absolutely that it’s happening, since of course I’d gone through all the regular creative doubts in my head: They decided it’s not good enough to publish. It’s not going to run. And on like that. Amazing how I can entertain huge doubts, then tell myself it doesn’t matter if it’s rejected (when of course it does matter), then I hold my emotional breath. Having talked to and read interviews with so many other writers, I know this mindset of doubt is what many many many others have also. Hell, it’s the way of most humans–most especially, it seems, when it comes to ideas and creating.

THURSDAY: This was the day I really remembered what it meant to be edited. There were more cuts to be done (I very much remember this from magazine days when space expanded and contracted). There are basically two versions: Online is longer. Newspaper slightly shorter. The piece goes online on Friday, then is in the print edition Saturday. As I went over both for the final time, I read them out loud. Under my mask on the bus on my way to see my dad. I ferreted out any typos or misrepresentations or dropped words. All the things editors and writers do when something is about to go out the door. It’s a rush and I enjoyed it. Also felt lucky that she is an editor who communicates. By the time I stepped into parking lot to meet my dad, it felt like everything was ready to roll. The big challenge was keeping it a secret from him. I’d toyed with telling, but have decided to wait until I can hand him the actual paper.

FRIDAY: This morning I woke up to a message from a total stranger saying this: “Hello
I just read your story this morning in the LA Times. It made me laugh, and almost cry, at the same time. Having young children of my own, I only pray that my daughters come visit me when I’m your Father’s age. And having a living Mother who is now 84 and aging fast, it makes me realize the importance of longer visits. And spending quality time as life gives us only a precious amount of time with them. Your story made my day. And I pray that you have many more memories with your father. Thank you!”

Wow. I cried a little at that too. The surreal part of knowing people you’ve never met are responding to your words… That is all. I am verklempt. I also scoped out the local gas station where they say they sell the LA Times, even though they were sold out at noon. So I’ll have to get there early and grab some. A different world than when a newsstand lived on a lot of corners and you could buy a newspaper. But no worries. I’ll track one down. Here’s a link to the online version.

The actual smudgy version of the LA Times

SATURDAY: Hello. A discovery: It’s damn hard to find a brick&mortar that sells actual newspapers. Primarily the LA Times. At the risk of getting sentimental on your a#*, I miss that about NYC. But, to be honest, the newspaper stands in NYC have dwindled quite a bit as well. I did prevail though and found one at a store I had vowed not to go to again because they were pretty lax in their mask mandating during the pandemic. Yet, I walked in and bought two copies of the LA Times anyway. Made me think about how the rules get bent depending on the desire. I’m not proud of it, but at the same time was not relishing a drive into Pasadena (or to a nearby airport) in the Rocket 88 (what we call my dad’s car) in order to secure what I needed. So now…the fun will be to give this to my dad on Father’s Day.

Thank you for hanging out all week, and I’ll see you back here next Saturday! XX

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