Author: docthink

no one of consequence

From the Ashes

A covert view of my work area. It's not pretty.

It happened. It hadn’t yet, so I, like Bill Clinton during the raging bull market of the nineties, thought that cycles of boom and bust were nevermore. Simple hubris. I am a fool. The rules of the world do apply to me.

The thoughts that became words that fed my keyboard that populated the screen that had formed Thinkings with little effort became thoughts that rushed then halted in disconnected sentences and fragments of sentences.

I look at the three shapeless sets of paragraphs and partial graphs in my notebook, and three stubs that I typed into this platform, and that total gimmick that I posted to fulfill my promise of publishing. Every. Stinking. Day. Even as that “achievement” was a technicality dressed up as cleverness. (The Big Guy said it wasn’t even clever. He’s right.)

I rejected a haiku. I’ve posted haiku in desperation before. So please know that the reject was of a truly unacceptable combination of syllables. An affront to 5-7-5. Even as a cheat it wasn’t publishable.

I may not have rejected it, or at least worked harder to make it acceptable, except that nothing was working. Publishing that sad haiku amid a rash of other weak Thinkings? The good can’t compensate for the bad if there is no good. You can’t average up. My craft, in its current disheveled state, might be devolving to a bad Tumblr of “funny” gifs where you substitute gifs with cheap writing tricks. After riding high, my writing wave was on a downward trajectory. The boom met the bust.

I had been planning a self-congratulatory post tomorrow, on the occasion of what was to be my one-hundredth post this year. As if, somehow reaching a fake milestone was the goal. And, in order to make that happen, given that I failed and did not write yesterday [this is not entirely true since I committed 213 words to screen among two limp threads–but I again digress in my digression], I would need to create TWO posts today. And back date one so I don’t miss a day. And I could crow about my achievement.

As if you care at all about that, Loyal Reader. As if you have a calendar in front of you placing X’s on the days that I publish. As if you are even reading this now!?!

I confronted myself with this chicanery. I realized that calling it chicanery was another parlor trick to avoid identifying bullshit backdating as what it is. Dishonest. Oww. That hurts. Yet, I believe that if I am writing, if I am exploring this form, that I need to be honest.

So, I failed in publishing. Every. Stinking. Day. I’m okay with that. I lost track of the point of this exercise. I’m not trying to sweat through every step of a marathon to prove that I can do it. Because, really, who the hell cares? See above.

What I am trying to do is to take those thoughts in my head that have been begging me to flesh them out–seriously, they beg me. I’m trying to punch them and knead them until they achieve coherence and can be expressed and delivered. The point is to spend some of my time creating and not just consuming. The point is to practice so that I can create better.

To  build my practice, I sometimes have to force myself to grasp at vapors of ideas and try to make something. Ideas that were not begging to come out and are just vehicles for the work. And sometimes, I won’t succeed in achieving coherence. But that makes me better. Unless I cheat.

My 100th-day reflection arrives a day early and a post short. It’s not the self-congratulations that I envisioned on day 83 when I spied Day 100 in my sights. Instead it’s a tale that recognizes a wretched fail just two days before that marker. Except that that marker is meaningless and that fail therefore is, too. [Thank you 4th grade math and the Transitive Property of Equality.]

As I reflect, I’m thinking that if I’m going to lie, it better be for a really really good reason. I’m thinking I should never ever lie to myself. I’m thinking that I don’t need to get bollixed up in bollocks. I’m thinking that if I’m always winning, then I’m not trying hard enough. I’m thinking–and remembering–that I’m setting my agenda.

I’m thinking about you, Loyal Reader, too. Thanks for playing along.

Posted on by docthink 1

Gimmick

A building with the sky behind it. There are clouds, too.

If a picture is worth one thousand words, I have completed today’s post successfully. Including these words, it’s one thousand and twenty three.

Posted on by docthink 0

Quiet Please

Carnegie Library at Mt. Vernon Square. Look on the far right. That's the point.

The main library is an old building. You can tell especially because the words carved in the facade that use the letter “U” are inscribed  as “V.” I don’t know why. It seems kinda Latin. Frankly, among the things I need to know, this level of arcane is even beyond DocThink. I can’t even.

The building is still amazing. It’s one of the libraries erected by ancient philanthropists. Ancient in this country, anyway. It was opened in 1902. While Washington, D.C. environs include much older–the Georgetown port goes back to the mid 1750’s–this is an old building in our city. Where old is after the Civil War.

The building is not a library anymore. It hasn’t been since it became overcrowded in the mid-1970s. It’s still impressive.

In addition to being “historic,” it sits on a square. Mt. Vernon Square to be exact. This square would have been a park, except it’s a big building instead. It’s a spot of land squared by roads. Some roads shoot from the square in angles reaching toward the edges of the city and beyond.

Walking past the building, I spied a blob. It was a purple blob. Getting closer the blob took on new details. There were two purple blobs. One blob was a backpack. The purple blob backpack sat on top of an indigo jacket blob. To the left of the backpack was the other purple blob. The second purple blob was bookended by black boots on one end and a sliver-gray puffy jacket on the other.

As the blob moved, it organized itself in my mind. I saw a mass of shiny black strands that went from a puddle of black to a curtain as the blob straightened itself. It’s a woman. I think she is a young woman.

Was she sleeping in the warm sun? Had she stepped away from the hostel a block away? Maybe she was a student.

Why was she sitting alone–and, to me, lonely–at this former library? My brain recalls that this library was a haven for rats.  I’ve seen scores of them scurrying across the plaza and up the steps at many dusks and evenings. Fingers crossed that any remaining rats leave her alone. I start to worry about her.

She was slumped on her backpack. She righted herself. That’s when her yard of hair moved and defined her. I couldn’t see her face. She was her hair. I wonder, is she is sad? Hungover? Drunk? Lost? I can impose anything on her.

She is a small figure on the far right of my lens. Almost invisible. but caught. She doesn’t belong, but she doesn’t belong anywhere else.

Posted on by docthink 0

Post #95

The top of a male lion's head with a really weak mane. Such bad hair day!

My hair kept sticking up in the back. It’s so not fair. I did more than smooth it this morning. Yet unruly it became.

There are many mornings when I wake up and am bed-head free. This occurs most mornings, as a matter of fact. On a rare morning that it folds funny on itself or presents as a fluff ball at the back of my head, it’s usually simply a brush or a dab of product away from being tamed.

When did we start calling hair stuff product, by the way? When did hairspray, hair cream, hair mousse, hair gel, hair oil or hair wax–for starters–become product? It’s one of those words that do not really add to the understanding of the thing.

Product. It used to be Dippity-do or Blue Magic or Brylcreem or Aquanet or Vitalis. It was sometime after those products morphed into Vidal Sassoon shampoos and styling products on the way to Paul Mitchell and now dozens and dozens of “salon” products. You know the ones, with the bottles printed with labels that say:

Guaranteed only when sold by a professional hairdresser, otherwise it may be counterfeit, black market, old or tampered with.

But you can buy the product at Target. Target seems pretty legit. I get that you might be worried at Marshall’s, but if the product is available at WalMart, just what do those warnings mean? I say, nothing.

Back to this morning.

I don’t wash my hair every day. It’s not that time consuming, but you are talking to a Doc who has argued with The Spouse over coffee beans. Spouse brings home whole beans, and I complain bitterly about having to grind them in the electronic grinder for fifteen seconds. Seriously, just get me to the Joe fast. I’ll scoop but not grind. The Spouse still tries to sneak beans in the house with the idea that I will grind. I see beans and go out to buy a bag of pre-ground at lunch.

Back to the hair.

I didn’t notice the hairs sticking out at the back of my head until I had already spread some Moroccan Oil through to the ends. You’d think that would have subdued any recalcitrant locks. But, when I moved my head to the left to check the time on the wall clock, I spied that wayward curl in the mirror.

I’m not an overly-groomed person, but the one portion of hair was sticking out from my head in a ninety-degree angle, AKA straight out. If it were just a few hairs, I could brush my teeth and move on. But it was ringlet sized plus pointing away from my head perpendicularly. Unavoidable to the eye. Unacceptable for the office.

I tried some product. The damn hairs bounced back up like a reflex.

I tried holding my hand over the product covered cowlick for a few minutes. BOING! Back up. Next up was some water. Since the hair was primed with various forms of product, the water must have activated some latent management properties. Sadly this reactivation only worked around my right ear. The sticking up part behind my head remained in that position.

Not to be defeated, I applied heat to the productized and wetted hair. Voila! Tame achieved.

In the office, I looked in the mirror in the restroom. I looked to the left and saw the hair sticking out, again! It was the damn wind. The damn wind that thinks it’s still winter and drives the windchill into the twenties. The damn wind that should be a welcome breeze but instead presents as a precursor to the nannies flying in on umbrellas from London. The damn wind that re-agitated my controlled hair and let that one piece go wild.

Wild.

I took my hand and placed it on the back of my head, over the sticking out part of my hair, and put my other hand on my hip and sashayed out of the toilet.

If you can’t beat ’em, act like you don’t care. “Fiddle-dee-dee!“

Posted on by docthink 0

Handle with Care

Holding hands. It's very nice.

She looked at her hands. They were holding each other, restless in her lap. Her long fingers on her right hand tried to comfort the fingers on her left. Her signature well-groomed nails were now some long and some short. Her cuticles were encroaching. She needed a cotton ball and some remover to clean up the chipped polish. She hadn’t for a while, so there was fairly little left to remove.

Her right hand and her left hand rolled around themselves in her lap. She was unsettled–to look at the ring or to look away? She turned her left hand so she could see the stone. The diamond was much bigger than she should have. It was long and tapered at the ends–a fancy marquise cut diamond. It was slightly yellow but with so many surfaces it could always catch and reflect light. She wanted light to reflect on her. The reflections in her head were not light.

She was tired, she thought, but that wasn’t it. Yes, she was tired, but it was like she was a little stupider than she was before. Maybe not stupider, but certainly very much less sharp. She couldn’t hold onto thoughts that could become a plan. She needed a way forward. The only thoughts she could hold were the thoughts that she wanted to lose. She held the thoughts about the press of debt from medical bills and the services–and the income void. But she didn’t think of the void as nothing. She thought about her youngest. How to make prom happen? She needed a plan. She needed her partner.

Yes, her crazy enterprising partner of decades. The one for whom everything was possible. The one who led their roller coaster adventure. The one who would figure out how to take care of things–sometimes three or four things at a time–while she used her smarts and her heart to home school the babies. The one who had infinite energy and who made the most outrageous asks and would not hear “No.” The one who shared her strong faith. The one without life insurance.

* * * *

She looked at her hands. She held them under the faucet. The warm water rinsed off the soil and the soap. She looked at her cuticles and saw that there was still some dirt. There was dirt under the nails on the last three fingers of her left hand. She picked up the vegetable brush to dislodge the lurking loam.

He wouldn’t like her washing off the gardening in the kitchen sink. Even though strawberries and rhubarb and bibb lettuce and even carrots pulled from that ground would be washed in that same sink. He had a lot of rules for her to follow. He stopped her from painting the dining room because he didn’t have time to select the right shade of blue-gray. He didn’t like the one with too much green undertone and the other seemed too purple. He didn’t make time. He just stopped her.

She scrubbed the fingers on her left hand and stopped at her empty ring finger. She left the ring in a box in her dresser upstairs. Looking at the ring made her sad. Looking at where the ring was made her sad.

She was worried about her baby-girl’s choices for school. He was supposed to pay, but based on his rules. He wouldn’t say what his rules were. They seemed to shift, at least to her and the baby-girl. He said he was being clear. He didn’t have time to explain. He knew he was supposed to pay. It was part of the agreement. He wouldn’t actually agree to the agreement, though. It was all like the paint.

* * * *

She looked at her hands. There was a burn on the back of her hand where she brushed the top rack in the oven when she was shaking the roasted cauliflower. If she was smarter, she would have removed the top rack before she started. If she was smarter, she would have pulled the bottom rack out before tending the cruciferous veg. Maybe it wasn’t smart she needed. Maybe she should be less lazy.

Her hands were full of scars from sloppy cooking and scars from lazy cooking. The nail on her left index finger had a nick from a misplaced knife blade. Two knuckles on that hand had burns on the way to being healed.

She sat down at the table. She adjusted her ring that was always sliding around her finger. She righted the stone and put her hand on the table.  He put his hand on hers. They said grace.

Posted on by docthink 0

The Last Top 12 Habits of Successful People Post You’ll Read

The number 1 and the number 2 painted on two boards, but put next to each other so it looks like 12.

Are you like me? Wait. Maybe don’t answer that. Let’s try a different tack. 

Let me ask you if you, too,  are exasperated and exhausted by  reading laundry list after laundry list of what “successful” people do to become that way? Are you tired, too, of hearing about their certain and specific traits or techniques that, if applied, would make the rest of us bums successful, too? Lather, rinse and repeat?

Frankly, I don’t know who I want to punch in the neck more–the authors of these self-esteem busting screeds, or me, for reading this crap and thereby encouraging them via my stupid clicks.

So, in honor of reading the absolute last one of these trash posts that I will ever read (believe me on this, I already excised any list that says, “Number 4 will surprise you!” so this is easy), I’m  sharing my version. And, yes, I’m prepared for you to try and punch me in the throat, since that only seems fair.

Fast Company published a list of Twelve Habits of the Most Productive People. It’s the one that sent me over the edge. I’m re-writing the how-to-accomplish in the realest way I know. This is for those of us who are NOT the most productive, no matter how many listicles we read. Oh, and by the way, for you smarty pants productivity freaks, I have a set of choice words for you–unless you were just born that way and don’t really try. In those cases, no flies on you.

My take on the last list of productivity “hacks” we’ll never need.

So what do productive people do?

  1. Fast Company says: They [in which there is an equations where they = productive people] focus on what matters. Productive people focus on what matters.
    DocThink Says: For example, don’t read bullshit posts with lists about productivity. They don’t matter.
  2. FC list says: They [productive people] know the difference between urgent and important.
    Doc says: Urgent is someone else’s emergency that is bogarting on your important binge watch of Master of None. The important thing is will Dev’s mom ever learn her marks.
  3. FC: They plan their days.
    Doc: Like wake up, drink coffee, do stuff throughout the day, eat, brush your teeth, go to bed. This pretty much works for me everyday. I don’t even need to check the list anymore.
  4. FC: They know where to find what they need when they need it.
    Doc: Actually, I’d argue that you’re more productive if you just learn to do without. Except coffee. But I know where that is. Always.
  5. FC: They have set routines.
    Doc: Now really. This list is getting redundant. See #3 above.
  6. FC: They salvage wasted time.
    Doc: Ten minutes before your next meeting? Don’t waste time. Instead start something that makes you late to the next meeting. Waste the other folks’ in the meeting time instead.
  7. FC: They only attend meetings with a purpose.
    Doc: That would be happy hour. Can we start at 4 p.m.?
  8. FC: They do the things they don’t want to do.
    Doc: This one is about procrastinating. I’ll get back to it later
  9. FC: They aren’t perfectionists.
    Doc: That’s easy for me. I don’t believe in perfection.
  10. FC: They leave gaps in their schedule.
    Doc: I call my gap Day Drinking. Now that the weather is good, we can do it outside. Reference to #7 above.
  11. FC: They multi-task wisely.
    Doc: Like resetting the Netflix password while popping corn and having your SO get you a drink. Seriously, 3 things at once. Is there a Season 2 coming for Master of None?
  12. FC: They quit strategically.
    Doc: Like now. Done. #dropsmic
Posted on by docthink 2

ESCAPE!!

So for today, all I can do at this point is say, my dog ran away twice.

The second time was in a sleeting squall. I chased him up and down the side of the train. The nice man who called found me at the metro police where we aren’t allowed and gave me back the collar that he found in his hand when The Beast wrested away. Very nice man, by the way. He had nothing to be sorry about. He is my hero.

I took the collar with a pathetically perfunctory thanks–he deserved gushes of praise–and pulled my hood over my rain splattered glasses so I could walk into the wind to the train and maybe spy him.

I was screaming The Beast’s name in as cheery a way as I could. I bet it was bad. But I sprinkled the word “cookie” every second or third word in case a familiar sound would make it through the gale.

I found him on the bridge over the train–where I expected him. He was in the street, though. Not my expectation. I chased him from one side of the overpass to the other, cooing treats. I really had none, but he wasn’t listening anyway. Per expectations.

Cars were stopping and cautiously going around. He came toward me and I was able to grab the generous folds of his hound dog neck. He’s so lean, I’m grateful for his necklace.

He was tired from his chase with the train. I think that he ran one up, one down and another up. Could have been more. Actually, likely was more.

I’m standing in the middle of the road trying to get his collar on. I have only one hand to do it, since the other is full of neck. I spy a chicken bone on the street, next to the jersey wall that protects pedestrians but is currently serving the role of blocking us from the sidewalk and forcing us into oncoming traffic.

I pick up the chicken bone with my free-ish hand, the one with the collar I can’t quite get over his nose. I pause for less than a blink and offer the bone. He takes it and I collar him. I pray he doesn’t choke on a splinter, but it was all I had.

Miraculously, as in a gift from heaven, nobody is honking. Everybody stops or drives slowly as we stagger our way back across the lanes of traffic. I have my right  wrist inside of the loop of his martingale collar and my left hand outside the loop holding for dear life. Or maybe fear life. I realize the rain is still pelting us, and we go back to our illegal parking spot.

The Beast doesn’t hesitate when I lift the hatch. He jumps in. We drive along the hateful tracks. I don’t know why he hates the train but I know I hate that he hates it. I call the Nice Man and tell him we’re safe. I babble my gratitude. I hope he forgives us.

I park in front of the house and leave The Beast in the car. Taking no chances, I grab his training collar and his leash. I get in the backseat to clip it on. Wasn’t opening the hatch until I knew he was under lock.

He didn’t bolt. He looked toward the train tracks and shook his head. Maybe he was trying to get out of the collar. Maybe he was just shaking off the sleet. He doesn’t like the wet cold. We went in the house, and I gave him a cookie.

We’re drying off now. I’m beyond even wanting a whiskey.

So that’s my excuse for not writing a real post today. I’m just being contemporaneous. And done.

Posted on by docthink 1

Throw Me Something, Mister!

Cleaning up a bunch of beads after a Mardi Gras parade. Please note the public works trucks and personnel.

Say what you will about New Orleans, but our cousins in Louisiana can sure throw a parade. They are known to take over a street for the special occasion of it being a Sunday.

More importantly, not only can they take a street over, they know how to give it back. Amazing is the sight of the very end of the parade–the Krewe of Cleanup. It doesn’t take hours for a street to reopen, but minutes after the last float throws its last beads, cars are released and traffic goes back to it’s typical snarl.

It doesn’t work that way in D.C.

Foot and coach traffic have been diverted in anticipation of upcoming motorcades. A labyrinth of jersey walls, cones, snow fences and police vehicles have corralled pedestrians and vehicles for days and days. Scores of corners are overseen by uniformed police with weapons. Some sit in their cars. Others stand. Reflector-vested and gloved officers are standing in the middle of intersections overriding the red-yellow-green of the temporarily redundant traffic lights. Tanks and humvees line commuting corridors.

For fifty people here for two days.

Since those fifty people are the leaders of 50 different countries–countries like Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, France, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mongolia, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Austria, Pakistan, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Saudi-Arabia, Singapore, Thailand, Czech Republic, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States of America, Vietnam, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden and Switzerland–that’s a lot of security. That means a lot of motorcycles and a lot of squad cars leading a lot of limos with a lot of little flags from a lot of different countries.

Still, these diplomatic parades are short. They pass by in a matter of seconds. There is no detritus of coins, cups, strands or flasks. There are no hundreds or thousands of revelers to move along. Heck, there are no revelers, just the anticipation of bad guys.

Streets are closed. Traffic is gridlocked. And there isn’t even a chance of getting a long string of beads for those inconvenienced. I hope they do something about those nukes.

Posted on by docthink 0

Eau de Toilette

Mint tea. And a sprig of mint.

So before, when I was having chemo, some days–some days at a time, to be honest–I would feel like I had to throw up. They call it a “side-effect.”

Now, let me be super clear. Feeling like you are going to puke, even for hours, even for days, is much better than being dead. So, my statement above is just conveying a fact. I am NOT complaining. [Please note if there are any cancer gods reading this, I am super grateful. This is not a post about tweaking you all. You did great by me!]

So that clarified, feeling like the contents of your stomach will soon be leaving via an overpass from your mouth is not great. It stops you from eating. It stops you from talking. It encourages you to roll up in as little a ball as you can, and to sit very, very quietly because you believe that if you move it would cause the volcano inside you to erupt.

There’s a difference between feeling like you have to barf when you’re hungover, for example, and feeling like you have to barf because of chemo. If you’re hungover and you let it go, you almost always feel better. Nausea gone. Eat a hotdog and drink a fountain coke and be on with your day. With chemo-induced queasiness, there is no such relief. You just feel like crap. Always. Seriously, so much better to have had too much whiskey last night. And for those of you keeping score at home, I can’t tell you how this compares to pregnancy-induced nausea. I feel quite blessed by that ignorance, thank you very much.

So here I am, curled up like my own little Poké Ball, giving a whole new meaning to Squirtle. Someone gifted me a handfull of a fluffy white bear. Let me tell you, new fluffy stuffed animals are amazing and surprisingly comforting. Anyway, holding that bear close, next to my chest,  under my chin and not moving a single muscle seemed to help keep the upchuck at bay.

I couldn’t drink it, but the smell of peppermint tea improved my stomach roils by orders of magnitude. I soon recognized that making tea that I couldn’t drink was less effective than just holding the peppermint tea bag directly in my nostrils. That was crazy effective. Summing up, if I didn’t move a muscle, held the fluffy stuffed bear under my chin and breathed in the tea bag, I was fine. I could fall asleep, which despite the chemo-exhaustion was blocked by feeling wretched or that I might just retch.

I could reuse that teabag for a few pre-snoozing sessions, but I manhandled my way through the box of Twinings Peppermint Tea. Gah!

“Doc,” said the boys, “you need anything?” Normally, there wasn’t much that they could do, but today, but today! I had a mission.

Almost before I could say, “Can you go up to the drugstore and get me some peppermint tea bags?” they were off.

I sat waiting with my legs tucked underneath me, perched on the arm of the couch. The dog-beast assumed his nurse’s position just on top of my feet. I was vewy vewy still, keeping the bear pressed to my breastbone awaiting their return.

They had gone to the drugstore to find no peppermint tea. Undaunted, they braved the late December cold five more blocks to the organic market. Surely there would be peppermint tea in the hippie-haven. They found many organic options including loose tea by the scoop. Pushing on, they rifled through boxes and boxes of rosehips, camomile, zingers–red and yellow, sleepytime, berry, ginger latte, revive, pomegranate pizazz, I<3Lemon, grateful heart, peach tranquility and citrus lavender sage herbal tea. There might have been more. There were more.

The voila! moment came when they ferreted the Candy Cane. It wasn’t pure mint, but, it seemed to them close to mission fulfilling.

They brought the tea home in a bag and with the story of their explore. When they took the plastic wrap off the box and handed me a fresh bag, I can tell you honestly that nothing ever before was that effective in quelling my quease. I propped the bag under my nose, squeezed the bear and sniffed deeply.

What nice boys. What a fluffy bear. What a scent. What a relief.

I had been told to not eat my favorite foods during chemotherapy. The association of those foods with nausea ruins a good relationship. I skipped some of my comfort foods so that they could comfort me into the future. Fortunately dark chocolate with hazelnuts was not spoiled. And, fortunately, I can still enjoy peppermint tea. Like I did tonight when it delivered this memory via it’s perfumed aroma.

 

Posted on by docthink 0

What Rhymes With Bucket?

Stonehenge at vernal equinox.

People come out in droves for must see annual events. The running of the Bulls in Paloma. Carnival in Rio. Octoberfest in Munich.

There are lists and lists of things that people want to do before they die. Yes. I said it. This is someone sitting down with pen or keyboard saying that before they die they’d like to accomplish Thing X, Thing Y and Thing Z. That’s what a bucket list is, a marker of mortality.

And, I mean, what happens if you do it all? Do you die right then? Or do you just add more? If you run out of Things, are you unhappy for the rest of your dull days? And if you don’t complete your list, do you die unhappy? Is a bucket list just an organizing tool for planning weekend activities (skydiving-ugh!) or vacations (Machu Picchu-yay!)? Maybe it’s just something for the list-obsessed to do. I couldn’t tell you, since I don’t have a list.

Actually, I do have a list. Things that make it to my list just stall. It’s more like a list of guilt rather than a list of to-dos. But that’s just me.

To get items checked off your bucket list you need to figure out the when–a calendar works here. Then you have to try and figure out the how. How to get there, where to stay, and, I would recommend, a quick primer on local laws and the location of the American Consulate.

Just to be safe.

Anyway, some things on a bucket list are harder to navigate. They are more ephemeral. Like seeing a whale breach. Timing and good luck are everything. Or catching the winter monster waves off Maui’s Pe’hai North Shore. Unless you live there, you could miss them.  The vernal equinox at Stonehenge–you can calculate it, but can you get there? Then there’s seeing the cherry trees in D.C.

Wait. How’d the cherry blossoms make this list?

I am clueless for that one. They are both hard to predict (they were 16 days earlier in 2016 than in 2015) and a mess. They are in peak bloom for a few days, then “poof!” Literally. (Okay, not really literally, but work with me.) Literally the trees look like poofs of barely pink cotton candy floating in a robin eggs’ blue sky.

Anyway, I don’t have a bucket list. I can see the cherry trees every year since I live here. Also, I could walk across the overcrowded boulevard filled with people who are wearing shorts and printed t-shirts in the cold all the while brandishing their selfie sticks and end up getting run over by an open-topped tour bus with a student group from Omaha, Nebraska.

But without a disappointingly incomplete list, I’d go happy.

Cherry blossoms, in my hood, on my way to work, by my house. Boo YA!
I took this pic on my way to work. Near my house. Boo YAH!

 

Posted on by docthink 0