Easter Sunday

I felt very smug and self-satisfied yesterday when I called up my Mexican restaurant, the recently relocated El Pueblo, to see if they were going to be open today. "Ola, esta abierto manana, por favor?" I asked. "Si, senora..." he said, adding something else I didn't understand. Here's the rub: I can construct the sentences and ask the questions, but I have yet to be able to comprehend the answers I get back! So much for attempts at Spanish fluency. But the result is that Dave and I will have a Mexican Easter dinner, and I don't have to cook!

We had another fun day yesterday, working through the list of chores (changing high-up lightbulbs, vacuuming, replacing the UV water-system bulb), and having some outdoor recreation time. We went to the dump, then up to Pressman's Home, the weird ruins of the old facility of the printer's union. I showed him the even-more-rural parts of the countryside, where things are greening up nicely and starting to bloom.

At sunset, we walked up back and down a path I hadn't been on before, remarking on the tiny plants appearing in the dead leaves, the weird fungi, the aggressive lichens on fallen limbs. It's so great to walk in the woods at this time of year--the sun is warm, the breezes are cool and the bugs aren't out in force yet. As soon as the sun dipped behind Devil's Nose though, the wind became cold and unrelenting. Time to go home.

We spent the evening going through old scrapbooks of times spent together when Dave lived with us in Vallejo, and then the years the kids were growing up far away in New York.

Today, our plan is to shoot foam into all the little holes in the house where we can see daylight, spray insecticide in the hornets' nests up under the eaves, and maybe even correct some of the lighting fixture issues in the house. Everything that we can do now means fewer annoying chores for a work-weary Bill when he gets home in 3-4 weeks.

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My friend Rob is now in the middle of his Interleukin-2 treatment trial for Stage IV melanoma at NCI in Bethesda, MD. His travails are profound, but his sense of humor is intact. Grant that his struggles will be rewarded with a successful outcome.