August 01, 2005

6:26 p.m.

Vee-Ay-Cee-Ay-Tee-I-Oh-En!

The weekend was like a honeymoon, only without the sex. Calvin and Jonnie came to visit from Texas on Thursday, and stayed until this afternoon when I took them back to the airport. We shared them, since C&C live about 50 minutes away from me. The first few nights we all camped at the band's house, where Chris and Carol have just had a screened porch installed outside the kitchen. Now their little kitchen door to the little cement porch is a big slider to another whole room. The weather cooperated and we ate all our meals out there. In between huge bouts of gluttony we went to a triple A baseball game (the home team won!) and spent a day at the Connecticut Agricultural Fair. The goils also went up to Northampton for an afternoon, looking into shops and browsing bookstores, while the guys went hiking up to a tower.

After the Fair on Saturday I headed home, and readied my little place for the guests on Sunday. A simple sandwich-and-salad lunch overtook my entire refrigerator, freezer and counter. Everybody came over Sunday, and after lunch we played Spanish Lexicon Junk Bingo. What? You've never played? Oh, it's fun! Here's how it works:

Start with Junk Bingo. This is a bingo game where everyone brings one or two "junk" prizes wrapped up in plain brown paper. "Junk" might be: some old coasters you don't want that are still perfectly usable; last year's calendar, as long as the pictures are really good; a plastic lady's fan; mardi gras beads; a candle; a comb; a bauble; you get the idea. Anything of little monetary value that was lying around your house that you could pass on to someone else. So all the mysterious prizes are piled on a table, and the bingo commences; each time someone wins, she gets to pick a prize from the heap. I have a very serviceable little ship's thermometer (weighted on the bottom, hanging loop on the top) that I got in a junk bingo game in New York, circa 1985.

Now. Last year or so, on one of our Austin trips, my friend Alex took me to a sort of Mexican flea market, and bought me a Spanish bingo game. Instead of numbers, the cards have spanish words with corresponding pictures on them, such as: LA PERA (pear); LA LUNA (moon); EL ALACRAN (scorpion); LA CHALUPA (this is a woman in a canoe with various plates of food and fruits on her lap; we couldn't figure out exactly what they were getting at here); LA SIRENA (mermaid), and so on. Then there is a deck of cards with each of these many items depicted. A designated player turns over the cards and announces the item in Spanish, and everyone has to say it out loud and try to learn the word. (This part isn't compulsory, but we thought it would be useful anyway. Especially in my neighborhood. I couldn't find a card with "funky swimming pool" or "demon doggy from Deliverance" on it, though.) Then, of course, anyone having that picture on their card gets to cover it with a glass bead. Four in a row wins.

I'd never played this game, all the time I'd had it, because bingo just isn't the same played alone. But this seemed the perfect time. We sat in a circle on the rug and chose our cards and a handful of glass beads, the kind you put in the bottom of a vase to help the flowers stand up.

I must say, without trying to perpetuate negative karma here, that in this lifetime I seem to be very good at losing organized games like this. It didn't bother me so much, as most of the junk prizes were things I'd plucked out of the deep recesses of my apartment, and I'd be stuck with them again anyway. And it's good for me to play a game and lose sometimes, just so I know I can still do it. It mystifies me that I am so lucky in other ways, so fortunate, but give me a game of Backgammon or Sorry and I'll be in tears within fifteen minutes. However, in spite of feeling no thrill of victory, it was surprisingly good fun playing El Bingo Espanol. I'm sure it's a healthy and useful tool for teaching children Spanish as well, with words like EL BORRACHO (the drunk); LA MUERTE (death); LA CALAVERA (cadaver, I suppose; depicted by a skull and crossbones); EL CORAZON (heart, but drawn with arteries sticking out and a bloody arrow through it); and EL SOLDADO (soldier, complete with rifle and bayonet).

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The band went home after lunch, and I had C&J all to myself. We went for a wonderful hike at my favorite hiking place. Part of it is a huge hill at the University near where the horses graze, and you can hear sheep bleating through the hazy summer air. We stepped through a clover field and saw many butterflies, and shimmering green and golden beetles humping each other all over the milkweed. Then we drove back behind the sheep barns and, on our way to the woods trail, found a few young horses to feed from the long grass and clover growing just outside their reach through the fence. Jonnie grew up with horses, and they responded to her whistles and chucks. Then we meandered down a long woods path to the Natchaug river which, to my surprise, was very low. I didn't realize we'd had so little rain, but many stones were showing and we sat on some of them and turned over the smaller rocks to find wiggly things.

After soaking in the gentle woods sounds and watching dragonflies and digging in the soft humus to detect its composition and whether it would be suitable for a sleeping platform, we hiked back up to the car.

Between the walk and a little car exploration afterwards, the wildlife tally for the day was:

Several head of worms and wiggly things in the stream;
Approx. 26 head of horse;
Three head of deer, grazing;
Three head of bunny rabbit;
One head of squashed frog in the street;
Two head of black fuzzy caterpillar (one dead);
and, ONE head of what we later determined must be a coyote, crossing the road in front of us.

An awesome day!

Last night we watched the second half of The Five Thousand Fingers of Dr. T, which, if you never saw it, you must rent immediately. It's from the mid 50s and stars the original kid from Lassie, who was an amazingly talented youngster. Calvin & Jonnie had brought it with them and we'd seen the first half at C&C's on Friday. Then we watched Monsters, Inc., which they'd never seen, and it was every bit as good as every other time I've seen it.

And this morning after a huge oatmeal breakfast I did a Reiki session on each of them, with very cool results I must say, and then it was, unbelievably, time to go to the airport. Wahhh.

How did the time go so quickly??

I suppose everyone says that after their honeymoon.

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One observation Jonnie made was that the pool next door is now very slimy. I've noticed that, after the first week or so, pool usage began to wane significantly. I can see it out my bathroom window pretty clearly. One look and it's understandable why they're avoiding it. Apparently the father, in his eagerness to please his kids and get them a pool, never took the time to get a filter and a pump for it. So everything that's gone in has settled down and begun to grow. Here's what it looks like from my window:

Scary, eh? But such a pretty shade of lime green. And my, hasn't it been quiet around here?

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That's the news, friends. Oh there's more; there's how I feel about everything, but I'm too sleepy and full of rice pudding to write more. (Oh. Had to make rice pudding after crying over the phone bill. Literally, weeping. Major rise in phone bill unrelated to amount of calling. Let's just leave it at that.) Day after tomorrow I go to Maine, to join the band, who went up today for the beginning of our writing retreat. I'm on vacation. How do you spell that? V-a-c-a-c-i-o-n-e-s!