Got a bit of writing in this afternoon after storming the remains of the farmers’ market. I can’t live without my fresh fruit from the breadbasket or heartland or some such compound word that equals West Coast agriculture. We arrived as tents were being torn down and boxes thrown into the backs of pickups, but I got me some strawberries and we some apricots.

Writing on the balcony is a lovely writerly room. I keep my camera by my side.

One of the visuals of Cali that occasionally causes me pause is the diversity. Ethnically, racially, creed-ily, whatever flavor or color, globalization hits the old doorstop.

Even the goddamn squirrels ain’t just one kind of gray, fuzzy rat. Nope, they got ’em in the trees, in the ground, burrowing through grasses. And, they are colored, they are. Gray, red, brown and black and some ghostly albinos somewhere in some genetic anomaly somewhere, I’m sure. A squirrel Benetton commercial, a rainbow.

This guy would have stood out in my lily-white suburban hometown that featured just common gray.

M. and I went separate ways on separate bikes today. He was off to change his seat to some teenie sliver of aerodynamic leather and get in a decent distant bike ride. My ambitions were far less athletic.

The City of Palo Alto sponsored a bunch of its locals to simultaneously have yard sales. I figured weaving in and out of residential neighborhoods examining the fine citizens’ junk was a fabulous use of my afternoon.

Sadly, I bought nothing. I was tempted by an old-school, beige rotary phone for a buck. I should have snatched it. But, the Radio Shack, cord-splicing project required to rewire it to a modern day phone port seemed like just the thing I would have done when I was single and fancy free. Not leaving junk around for future crafty projects at some indefinite time, though, is exactly the kind of sacrifice one makes in the civil society of coupledom. Sigh.

Other than that, folks have sorted out that old dishes are “collectible.” For me, that means the blue willow single saucer that should have been 50 cents was $4. Fuck you market forces.

The sad part of my yard saling ambitions was not seeing the dude with the giant, monster paparazzi lenses and press pass until after I slammed the brakes for a sale. It is now entirely possible that I, in my bike-helmeted, dorky glory, will be part of a garage-sale photo essay in the Palo Alto Daily News.

The price of a fucking free press.

Less than a week until we see the Sox play in Oakland. We’ll be catcing them on Monday, fresh off their likely weekend of fucking with this year’s losing Yankees.

Other than that future excitement, I spent the evening irrigating my ears and thus removing a veritable heap of wax. An embarrassing amount, actually. Like in a crafty mood I’d have new earwax tapers.

Oh, right and I’m on a self-imposed suicide watch. Someone put a brand-new, shiny, digital scale in the gym at work. My beau and I differ by about 2 pounds. Since he’s fit and wants to do a triathlon this year, I think we can safely assess the chubbier and denser of the two. If I exit the planet now, I’ll start with the weight loss.

I’m feeling a bit bad for poor, naive Cindy Sheehan. She’s feeling all used and shit and is saying sayonara to the peace thing. I can’t blame her for feeling that way, as she clearly became a pawn in a shitty, shitty game.

But, Cindy, my peace mom, my sister, Bismarck called politics the “art of the possible” for a reason, you dig? It ain’t “art of right-thnking actions for the betterment of society.” Sucks and all, but there it is.

I’m also feeling a bit bad for Lindsay.

I can pretty much guarantee that on Memorial Day Weekend when I was 20, there was some underage drinking and somebody with pale skin and cute freckles probably found herself on her knees puking. Might have been this chick Stacy from back in the day, who was known for being perky and cute and a wee bit slutty. Only downside was she would ocassionally wet her pants after too much liquid refreshment and giggling fits.

The only difference between a good chunk of the 20-year-olds on the planet and Lindsay are financial means. I wasn’t drunk every day, because every now and again I’d have to work some shit job for beer money. And, I didn’t have my license.

Sadly, she might implode and go the way of all sorts of tragic young people, both poor and rich and a smattering of child stars. Or, she’ll grow up, problem solved.

Finally, I’m feeling a bit bad for the wild boar hunting boy of Confederate-land. I’m not pro-hunting, and I definitely am not down with arming your kids and bringing them into the woods. Yeah, definitely not pro the rights of arm bearing for 11-year-old boys.

But, still and all, the hate mail on his site is pretty fucked up. So’s the positive mail. Not sure what’s worse the celebrating bloodfest rhetoric with Jesus overtones, or the kinder, gentler anti-hunters strifing him with dirty words, accusations of chubbiness and death hopes.

As a formerly fat pre-teenager, or plump maybe, I thank my lucky fucking stars that there weren’t no internets for strangers to be calling me fat publcly. Shit, my self-esteem suffers now, can’t imagine with the internets.

And, in older news, I still don’t feel anything but smiles for the still dead Jerry Falwell.

I did manage to upload a couple of chunks of pictures from the weekend here and there.

I also wrote a bit for myself. But, other than laundry, happily I did rather little.

There were a probable cormorant and some kind of turtles on the same log in the same wet spot near an actual lake.

In honor of fallen heroes and assorted other deceased, I did what every other American, possibly literally every other, or maybe every third, did. I ate charred meat with friends. Enjoyable. Out-doorable.

And, the least suspected showed up sporting a wedding ring. Last time we saw this particular friend, he showed up with a girlfriend that no one had predicted. Where we expected traditional and Chinese, actually Taiwanese, the girlfriend, now wife, was decidedly neither. They took it to the next level.

I love it when folks you think you know surprise the pants off you.

M. and I hopped on our bikes after a bit of a leisurely Saturday bicker. I gave up when the uphill against the wind was getting to me, but I still put a good 15 miles or so on my cheap odometer.

When I doublebacked on my own, I could change the pace a bit to the bike path through a bit more greenery. This guy was hanging from a tree just inches above the helmut. It may or may not be an orb weaver.

I also dug some of the looking like the old, wild west.

Sometimes, you gotta love California, just for the Cali-wonderfulness of the place. Especially Northern Cali. It’s not a coincidence that a whole bunch of your good, nutty cults come from this state and these parts. Who wouldn’t want to drink the KoolAid?

You can’t swing a cat, a cat risen from the spirit of Nephritides or some such bullshit mythology, you can’t swing a feline without hitting some kind of crystal-rubbing, yoga-mat, Feng Shui, incense-smoke-swilling bookstore of hope. Everybody’s looking for something.

We wondered into one of my faves in Mountain View last night. A town pretty much famous now for a being the home of the Googleplex. It’s all kinds of mishmash of Buddhist-y, Hindu-y, Ram Dass-y, New-Age-y, goddess-y, occulty,Taoist-y, Chinese-y, East meets west fun. There ain’t nothing spiritual or pseudo-spiritual that store won’t hawk.

What I didn’t realize is there is a whole back room to the place. There are toilets and “therapy rooms” for some kind of “counseling” and a big old room with folding shares and some kind of stage.

Last night, sitting on the stage was a rather grumpy looking, middle-aged British (I think) man. He was giving a little talk on his own plan for enlightenment.

From what we could gather listening into the guru, crankiness is the key.

More later…

Walking, biking, all that kind of movement shit. I’m getting off my ass for better or for worse. Mostly, I’ve staved off morbid obesity. Other than that, you can’t tell I exercise at all.

Still and all, I constantly get winded on the stairs in my two story office complex. Yup, two stories kick my ass repeatedly.

I’m not actually sure if it’s the fact that my oxygen is bearing lethal levels of pollen this time of year. Or, if I’m just a fat, fucking slob.

Still loving the bike, riding every day. But, jebus h. christos, I need my ass to get used to the seat pronto.

It’s positively undignified for a woman of a certain age to be wanting to rub the soreness out of her rump all day and night.

Be that as it may, the best part about riding the bike to work is feeling like I’m 12 again. At 12 the bike was transportation. It was freedom. It was the means to go further and farther and hang out with kids outside my strict neighborhood.

My pink Huffy never tore up the road, but mileage rolled under it. It went to the convenient store for a Coke. It circled the mall, which was open air when I was a kid, endlessly. I looped and slalomed zig zags around parking islands.

By bike I was able to circle the historic, Revolutionary War era graveyard to scout whether other kids were hanging among the stones. In that cemetery, lunch money could get you a joint or two. In that hallowed space, I learned about all sorts of shit that was new and dangerous feeling.

My bike was the chariot to almost the earliest of an illicit rendezvous. It consisted of my nerdly inner self (surrounded by a rather mature looking outer self) being talked into giving a backrub to one of those guys who invariably hung out wherever teenagers congregated. The guy that was just a little too old to be hanging with a few 12- to 15-year-old folks but not so old it was criminal.

Now, waking up in a morning, jumping on and rolling out the driveway, a little bit of that fun is still afoot. The bones at 43 ache as they didn’t then, though. And the recovery of shaking off a fall is an eon or two longer.

Worst of all, I don’t ever remember sitting on that seat ruining me for sitting on any other. Maybe I’ll be looking at one of these soon: