If I’d known two months ago that I would still be in patio-renovation-mode I wouldn’t have made an optometrist appointment in San Francisco for nine Saturday morning on this labor day weekend. I had to get up at my regular work-rising-time (about 6:15) to catch BART and make it there on time. Ah well. Might as well continue the grind. I got there at 8:45.
Haight Street Eyecare hasn’t been on Haight Street for about 20 years now. But that’s where they were when I first went to get a screw replaced on my glasses in 1991. I’d first discovered my eye doctor sitting on Haight Street trying to sell a breaker bar that was one of the few tools left after the rest were all stolen from my VW van which I had driven to SF on the path to hippie enlightenment. The breaker bar sat between me and my companion Shigeru with a sign that said $10. Shigeru was a Japanese tourist who had helped me rebuild the engine on the ’69 pop top camper I’d bought from Tiny, a farmer in Ithaca, NY who liked to put beat juice on his cheeks to give him a rosy appearance.
Doctor Chan was maybe a few years older than me then (strangely enough he still is) and I remember thinking how he’d already made something of himself while I was busy being a bohemian. That thought just shows how I’ve never really gotten over my indoctrination in—to use an old hippie phrase—the establishment.
Some beautiful young woman roughly my age, who I would never dare to ask on a date, put a new screw in my glasses for free. That bought my loyalty for these last thirty years. I’ve spent many thousands of dollars with them since then.
Dr. Chan is very thorough and I appreciate his looking at my eyeballs with all their blown out veins on his big computer screen. I’ve seen pictures of his children appear in his office and watched them grow through these greatly spaced stills. The oldest is now in college. It’s like watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade every year.
I had time Saturday morning to go find a cup of Joe. I’d forgotten how deliciously empty San Francisco feels on an early weekend morning. The office at the bottom of Fillmore near the Kabuki movie theater didn’t open until 9 so I went uphill until I found a cafe. They were playing some Violent Femmes and somehow it worked well with the floral wallpaper in their bathroom. It took me back to my youth so I was happy to add a dollar tip on the $3.50 cup of coffee. I sat and sipped it for ten minutes and then carefully coasted back downhill with my to-go cup. I spent $350 on a new pair of prescription sunglasses (that’s after insurance) and another $160 bucks on some contacts. Nothing like purchasing prescription sunglasses to make one feel vain and self-indulgent.
How much are the contacts I asked the young woman helping me. “$75 for a box of ninety days.”
“Oh, good,” I said elated at the reasonableness. “I’ll take a box.”
“Okay, that’s for one eye. Do you want a box for the other eye?”
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My beard got caught in my windbreaker as I was zipping it up a few mornings ago while riding my bike with no hands. I often do that sort of thing when I’m starting out. Sort of the same thing I do when driving. I almost never put my seat belt on until I’ve started moving in a forward direction. Then I take my hands off the wheel and buckle up. Sort of stupid. I’m much more likely to get into an accident at the worst possible moment, but it has something to do with my desire to save time and the influence of reading the book Cheaper by the Dozen when I was a teenager and the father always doing two things at once for the sake of efficiency like shaving and reading the paper—basically to save time, as if any of it can be saved. Which it can’t. It just flows out through the hour glass and when it’s gone it’s gone and it doesn’t matter if you were safely zipping up your jacket before you got on your bike or zipping it up while riding. It’s all a crapshoot. Over the years I may have saved a full hour zipping up my jacket this way, but I might be killed by a catastrophic head injury and loose all that time and an additional fifteen or twenty years.
I’m currently on a mission to not have a mission, which means I will likely be zipping up my jacket and putting my seatbelt on before I start moving. I’d like to watch the water flow by rather than be in the stream, if that makes any sense. I’m tired of fighting the current.
I saw a video a few years ago of a man floating quickly by some tourists who happened to be filming the millions of gallons of water going over Niagara Falls. I believe this footage was verified as the last seconds of a known suicide. The guy wasn’t fighting the pull of the water at all. It would have been futile anyway. He wouldn’t have even been able to stay in one place even if he was Mark Spitz. He had a sad, reflective look on his face. With 20 or 30 seconds before he hit the falls he had time for a full newsreel of his life. Anyway, this is sort of a non sequitur but it came up when I thought about not fighting the current. To be clear, in this case, I would rather be on shore not fighting it than in the water.
I have another non sequitur and really, I assure you, I’m not working on a stand-up routine. Why does the rather elegant woman’s prerecorded BART voice say “Arriving out” and “Now boarding out.” It doesn’t even make sense. How can you board out? Don’t you board in? And, why is there a long pause before the stop is named like the computer has to do the calculation at that moment to decide where the train is. “Now boarding out…………Concord”.
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The following pictures will explain why I haven’t yet written about my trip to Tennessee this summer or about the cabin I’m still pondering building in the woods. The pictures show the process I’m calling my “back patio renovation”.
The project started before I went to Tennessee in July and picked back up when I returned over a month ago. I’ve basically been going at it non-stop—full days on the weekends. On weekdays, after work, I take a nap, work on the patio for a few hours, eat and watch a little tv, then fall asleep. I’m very lucky to have friends who are helping me on a work trade basis, especially since they are master carpenters and I’ve been perfecting cutting a straight line these past few years.
Left to do: apply tar paper and rolled asphalt roofing, install new electrical for lights and plugs, tie the patio roof into the main house by going through to the attic and linking the structure with the joists there. Oh, and I want to paint the whole underside structure to make it look spiffy.
Each step of this project has come with dozens of small tasks to prepare for the next part. What I think will take a day takes a week. I’ve shifted from being bothered by all these details to embracing them for what will mean having a job done well-done that will last and be safe.
Below, Jillian’s new puppy, Sasha Moon Piperaceae, aka Shasha Moonbeam Pepper, has also been taking up some of my time though contractually I’m obliged to do nothing but enjoy the fruits of her sweetness. Yes, we have it in writing, but who can resist this face!
p.s.–Jillian told me I used the word sistered in here a bunch of times and that people might not know what it means. I guess it shows my excitement. It’s a new word for me too. To sister a rafter, a beam, or joist (joists refer to floors, rafters to roofs) means to add another one next to it running parallel. It strengthens the board. A 2×4 becomes a 4×4, a 2×6 a 4×6, etc. Incidentally, those measurements aren’t accurate in lumber. 2x4s once were two inches by four inches but now they are 1.5 x 3.5.
Spotty West Goes East 