Weekend, Bleah!

[An intriguing Friday followed by a crappy weekend. My parents are installing a Jacuzzi in their back yard, and I was drafted to help lay the pad on which the thing will sit. As an urban rat, I am without a car, and most of the time, this a happy state of affairs: no payment, no insurance, no fuel, no parking tickets, no angst navigating this dense city built for pedestrians. But when I am summoned to the Town With No Transit (a.k.a. Sonoma), I have the choice of renting a car or taking an elaborate system of buses and trains to get within a half hour of my parents, and then having them pick me up. Well, I couldn't get a decent rate from Dollar, so I went for the second option.]

[So my visit HAD TO HAPPEN Saturday, THIS Saturday: the rains are about to hit northern California, and my parents are desperate to get the Cooz (my new private name for the Jacuzzi) in before the back yard is a muddy mass. And of course my Dad always has been the DIY type; no hiring labor to do this job, no sirree, not when you've got a strong-backed wife, son, and son-in-law to do it. (My equally strong-backed sister got out of it by saying she had to work. Ha!) After the intriguing party the night before, I awoke at 7, got it together and to the Golden Gate Transit stop at City Hall by 7:45. An 90 minute bus ride brought me to Petaluma, where Mom picked me up and drove the final 25 minutes to the parents' homestead.]

[It was just as back-breaking as I thought it would be. My parents' property is old creekbed, which means it's mostly rock with a little dirt sprinkled in for laughs. We hacked at it, we picked at it, we got down on our knees and hauled rock out of the ground with our bare (well, work-gloved) hands. We shoveled, we wheelbarrowed, we sweated. And at the end of the day, we had a 5' square depression about 5" deep, inlaid with a layer of gravel tamped down by this sadistic machine that mashes all the air out of everything, including my spirit.]

[My brother-in-law, the ever-patient Mike, was good enough to drive me all the way down to the El Cerrito del Norte BART station (about 30 minutes out of his way), and I made it back home by about 5:30. John had done a lot of cleaning around the house, and I tried to reward him, but I'm not used to physical labor, and my fatigue made my usual good efforts less than good. We went to sleep EARLY after getting thru half of Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte.]

[Yesterday, Sunday, started out relaxing enough, with us finishing Hush. (What a creepy movie. Olivia de Havilland is fantastic.) It went downhill after that. John and I just couldn't decide what to do with the day, and got cranky with each other for being undecisive. We managed to get lunch with Sean out in the Sunset, but couldn't get much more done after that. He wanted to see Charlie's Angels, I didn't, but had no alternative, not really. We're terrible when we don't have an agenda. Eventually, we got into a nasty fight about mmoney, and spent the late afternoon and early evening not speaking much. We thawed out in prime time, and managed to enjoy the "Malcolm In The Middle" and "The X-Files" season premieres. I dunno, it was an unsettled, cranky weekend full of obligations. I'm almost relieved to be back at work.]

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