- draining -

On Thursday we went south to my parents' house for another go at the Semi-Annual Dysfunction Festival and, with all the predictability and precision of a fine Swiss watch, it delivered on its bright bright promise.  

Some things are so difficult to write about, to write about well and meaningfully, that they are best set aside to cure for a while.  And while there is always a benefit to getting out what churns inside a man, the act of expression itself can require some convalescence, so I'm not opening the vein today, not spilling the angst onto the carpet, not waxing systolic on how deep a lot of parental stuff goes.

You're welcome.

*****

Upon our return on Friday, we drained the pool.  For all you amateur psychoanalysts and/or screenwriters out there, yes, it is a lovely use of the water metaphor so popular in cinema - the tension builds, emotions run high, and release must come.  If our lives here in suburbia were more exciting, or literate, a storm would have blown in to drop torrents of rain to cleanse our souls, a long lens looking down a dark street would catch all the glistening torment let loose in slow motion, we'd dolly in for a close up on the face and we would all wonder; is it rain or tears or blood that flows from those weary eyes?  Cue the thunder.

Here we just drain the pool.  It ain't the angst so much as the algae.  Amy took her last swim of the year about a month ago and the sun is too low to do any substantial heating.  The Santa Ana winds throw in the red and purple bougainvillea leaves and all the other effluvia of fall so we've taken it down.  Tomorrow, after it dries, it goes back into its box and into the garage.  Ah, the garage.  Don't get me started on the garage.  It's Rubik's Garage.  It's a Chinese Puzzle Garage.  It's a Garage Loaded With Tons of Unnecessary Crap is what it is.

And now we have this 20'x15' chunk of yard to do something else with.  A garden?  A deck?  A pond?  Such mystery. 

The pool draining displaced the toilet project by about 24 hours.  If I'm lucky, at this time tomorrow yet another domestic repair will have been completed successfully and I will be a man basking in the glow of achievement, a man greater than the sum of his enormous parts.

"Together Wherever We Go" -- The Kirby Stone Four -- THINGS ARE SWINGIN'

today's wisdom:

"Character is destiny."

- Heraclitus