We’ve just returned from Uwajimaya, the Asian grocery store in Beaverton. Along with the rice and the curry and the shrimp paste and the blueberry flavored bubble gum, we bought a bag of coconut flavored candies.

“These are good,” Kris says. “Try one.”

They’re White Rabbit brand. Each wrapper shows a happy little white rabbit. I pop a candy — which is shaped like an English toffee — into my mouth. I suck on it for a moment, but that’s unsatisfying. The flavor isn’t coconuty, it’s plasticy.

I push the candy to the side of my mouth and chew. Or try to. The candy is stuck to my bottom teeth. I chew again, and the candy comes free, but so does something else. My rearmost molar feels naked. I can feel the thin metal shell that is my crown, floating in my mouth, still attached to the candy.

     

The dentist makes room for me late the next day (today, if you’re keeping score). In the six months since my last appointment, they’ve modernized the office. All of the patient charts and records are computerized and digitized. In each room, attached to the chair, is a flat-panel monitor from which the hygenist can access all of the patient information. It’s pretty amazing.

I’ve left my crown stuck to the candy, which the staff finds amusing. Dr. Martin wants to know how the candy tasted, but I really can’t say. It was only in my mouth for a few seconds.

As she cleans the crown — chatting about Uwijamaya and how she and her son once tried to find the most expensive thing (per pound) in the store (my first instinct? saffron!) — Dr. Martin discovers a hole in it. It’ll have to be replaced. She reseats it with temporary cement for now, but asks me to come back to have it replaced in a few weeks. “And bring one of those candies with you,” she says. “Removing crowns can be difficult. Let’s see if we can’t get it off with the candy.”

I really do love my cats. I’m typing this on my iBook while seated at the library table. Toto is sitting a foot away, staring at me from the top of the scanner. Behind me, Simon is scrunching the back cushion of the love seat (it sinks beneath his fat ass). He’s propped up, looking out the window. Nemo sits below him, on the actual cushion seat, watching me and Toto. And, just now, Toto has left the scanner and insinuated herself into my lap, where she is purring loudly. They’re waiting for two things: for Kris to come home from work, and for me to feed them.

I wonder if they’d like some coconut flavored candy?

The “on this day” feature is distracting lately. I want to say to my year-ago self: “Don’t do it! Don’t try to play soccer! You’re only going to hurt yourself and it will cost you thousands of dollars to get things fixed and then you’ll get even fatter because you’ll sit around more, etc.”

If only.

We were sprawled on the back lawn, in the shade of the neighbor’s towering pine tree, the only tree they’d left standing after they moved in. Their yard had been filled with five or six other pine trees, but for one reason or other, they’d all been felled. For a time we feared the neighbors would take down our pine tree, as well.

(I say our pine tree simply because the tree stands just feet from the fence, and it casts its shade completely in our yard, cooling it on summer afternoons. We know the tree belongs to Valbino and Maria, but the only use they derive from the tree is as an end to their clothesline; there are many other things that could serve this purpose.)

Ultimately our pine stayed. I’ve been curious why its life was spared. I suspect it may be because Valbino recognizes the pleasure we derive from the tree, but I’ve never brought myself to ask him. My Spanish is rudimentary (donde esta el bano), and coarse (pendejo, cabron). Valbino’s English suffers from similar limitations. When we collaborated to repair the back fence, the result was a meandering mess.

As I say, we were sprawled on the back lawn, in the shade of the neighbor’s towering pine tree. The thermometer on the shed read ninety-five degrees, and I had no reason to doubt its accuracy. Fortunately, the shade was much cooler.

Kris sat with the cats, scritching Toto’s ears, watching Simon loll in the grass.

I lay on my back, leg braces off — hallelujah! — performing my physical therapy exercises: leg lifts from the left side, leg lifts from the right side, leg lifts from my back.

Between sets of exercises, I spread my arms and let myself sink into my surroundings. I felt the grass on my arms and legs, an ant crawling across my foot, felt the warm sun where it peeked through the screen of the pine. I smelled the freshly mowed lawn (thanks, Mac!), listened to the birds, the sirens, the passing cars.

I soaked it all up. After two weeks spent inside the house, it was something of a sensory overload. I loved it.

This was a moment to relish.

Toto stretched and yawned and squeaked a little meow. Simon pounced on a moth and devoured it.

“This is a pretty meaningless existence,” I said to Kris, meaning life as an invalid, recovering from knee surgery. “I cannot imagine living like this for an extended period of time.”

Kris smiled, touched my hand.

I continued. “There’s nothing in the life I’m currently living to give it any meaning. There’s only the bed and the television and the computer. I may have derived my meaning from these things once, but now I obtain meaning from photography class, from soccer practice (“Not anymore,” Kris said), from, believe it or not, work, from spending time with friends, from going out with you.”

We sat in the shade a while longer.

“Come with me,” Kris said, and she gave me a garden tour, showed me the green strawberries, the vaulting foxglove. She showed me her first cucumber and our bumper crop of peas. She pointed out her new clematis vine.

Typically I’d wilt on a ninety-five degree day. Not today. Today ninety-five degrees was perfect.

I can’t sleep.

Earlier this evening, it was all that I could do to stay awake. We took dinner to Kim and Sabino and Diego, and I was drowsy the entire time. When we came home I took a hot bath; I fell asleep while soaking.

Now it’s midnight, the time when I should actually be sleeping, and I’m wide awake.

The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible: While I don’t disagree with most of the annotations, I feel that people who do this sort of thing:

1. Are at least as annoying as those they’re criticizing.
2. Are preaching to the converted.
3. Have too much time on their hands.

There was a time when I would have been all over this, though, because I needed affirmation for my beliefs.

Frodo has failed.

Mac and I are taking a photography class on Thursday nights. Mac has photography training and skill; I have none. He commented last night that I seem to lack confidence at this endeavor. He’s right. I look at his photography, and that of the other people in the class, and I feel like a rank amateur.

I am a rank amateur.

Still, this is an opportunity for me to develop a skill. Though I’m anxious, I’m also excited.

Our first assignment is to take a roll of photographs of trees: the branches, the bark, the buds, the lines and form, etc. We’re to right down stats on every frame we shoot.

When Kris and I drove to Portland this afternoon, I wasn’t paying attention to the road. I was looking out the window at all of the trees. Mostly they’re boring, but there were a couple of times that I lost my lane because I saw something interesting in a tree’s branches.

I managed to take four photographs this afternoon, though they’re not going to turn out well. Four photographs. Out of thirty-six on the roll. Yikes. I’d better shoot some more tomorrow…

A long, hot bath on a Saturday morning is my favorite way to fight a lingering cold. If Kris decides to put U2 in the CD player, so much the better.

Ah. My inner core is warmed.

I’ve spent several hours this week editing fifty minutes of footage from last Sunday�’s soccer game. My goal was to create a single four- or five-minute montage set to music, but my editing skills aren’�t keen enough yet. The montage is ten minutes long and set to three songs (“Tubthumping” by Chumbawumba, “Crash” by the Pixies, and “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want” by The Smiths). A lot of rough footage remains in the movie, but it’s more fun to have it there than to take it out.

After working with iMovie for eight to ten hours, I retract my earlier casual dismissal of the software. Perhaps there are better applications for video editing, but certainly none can match the price. And iMovie is full-featured enough for me to create films with which I am quite happy.

Spending so long with footage of FC Saints reinforces how much I enjoy playing soccer with this team. We may not be skilled — in fact we all have glaring weaknesses — but we play with enthusiasm and “heart”. We have a good chance to earn a win or two during the final four weeks of the season.

In the fall and winter, Kris and I occasionally buy hams and sausages from Voget Meats in Hubbard. Voget’s is an example of the type of business I try to support: it’s small, family owned, and has been in the community for seventy years. Their meats are outstanding. When I was a child, it was a treat when Dad would bring home sausage from Voget’�s and fry it for dinner.

When I bought the ham for tonight’s book group, the woman told me, “This is a great ham.” I don’t know what she meant by that. How can she tell it’s great? What makes this ham better than any other ham from Voget’s?

Kris and I just put the ham in the oven. It smells delicious: smoky and salty and, well, porky. This afternoon is going to be fantastic as the aroma of the ham fills the house.

Fall is here.

This autumn is a little unusual for Oregon: it is clear and warm during the day, cool and crisp at night. It’s typical fall weather for many parts of the country, but not so much for Oregon. By this time in October, we’ve usually had nearly an inch-and-a-half of rain, and the days have turned cool, with highs in the low sixties. This October we’ve only had about half and inch of rain, nearly all of which fell on the third. In five out of the past six days the high temperature has exceeded seventy degrees; it was eighty degrees on Wednesday, a record high!

I’m sure that rain is just around the corner.

This afternoon I walked over to the high school and practiced punting the soccer ball. When I was satisfied with my progress, I sprawled on the grass and basked in the dull October sun. It was quiet. Birds chirped in the woods. A fly buzzed. Somewhere in one of the housing developments somebody revved a chainsaw. I was alone. On the field. In the sun.

It was quiet.

I felt fine.

Two boys interrupted my reverie by jogging out of the woods and onto the field, passing an orange soccer ball between them. Their talk was filled with plans for the future. I sat up, smiled at them, picked up my gear, and walked home.

Last night at Powell’s I was transfixed by the Atlas of Oregon for twenty minutes, yet barely read ten pages. The book is fantastic, filled with facts and figures, charts and graphs, every piece of information about Oregon one could possibly desire. I must have this book.