Dear Readers,
A recent fun Sunday consisted of a series of
pleasurable activities. We, the
residents of the Oakland Morehouse, often use having out-of-town guests
as an excuse to throw a Sunday brunch. On
this particular day, a lovely woman named April was the reason to party. Sierra did most of the cooking, along with
her friend Ramadin (whose sister is the aforementioned April), and the rest of
us helped by setting the table, putting out the platters of food, etc. After many pancakes, waffles, eggs and
potatoes were consumed, we were still gathered around the table, as the
conversation had clearly been the most satisfying aspect of the meal, and no
one wanted it to end.
Lynne and I finally tore ourselves away, however,
as we had plans. We walked down to the lake,
then through the park to the Lake Merritt Boating Center, and rented ourselves
a rowboat. It was a beautiful day,
perfect for being on the water. Lynne,
who had spent every summer of her childhood on the family lake, is an
accomplished rower. The best that can be
said about my skills is that I can row.
So Lynne got us out to the middle of the lake, and then we traded turns
twice more before returning the boat an hour later. It was glorious. Once we were away from the dock, we entered
an altered reality. No longer were we
bound to an urban landscape that was the backdrop to our everyday lives (as fun
as those lives are), but were instead vacationing in the middle of a lakeside
resort. We floated past pelicans and
kayakers, and breathed in the slightly salty air. True, it was only an hour, but it was
surprisingly restorative.
Then, back home for a groovy. Chris had been hell-bent to organize the
laundry room/paint room/tool room. He
and David were already hard at it when I got there, taking years of useful and
not-so-useful items off the shelves and dividing them into piles of where they
would go next. When it was done, all the
paint was on one set of shelves, all the tools on another, and everything else
was outta there! It was so gratifying to
unsnarl this mess and restore order and beauty to such an important room.
The plan for the evening was an 8pm screening
of O Brother Where Art Thou at Cinema
Shawn in the living room. But before
that was Taco Night. The indomitable
Chris likes to set up do-it-yourself tacos for the whole family. He puts out individual platters of chopped onions,
tomatoes, lettuce, shredded cheese, sour cream, chopped beef, diced chicken and
fish, and beans, and we do our best to stuff all the ingredients in toasted
taco shells. Neatness doesn’t
count. This was a lovely precursor to
the movie, which many of us who’d seen it before said we liked much better this
time around. Maybe it was the
after-dinner haze.
Anyway, it was just one of those Sunday’s
where the day was scheduled with serially fun activities, and I wanted to share
it with all of you.
Thanks for reading.
Best,
Gerry
Perfection includes the potential for
change.
-- Vic
Baranco
