Getting Your Man-Space Skookum

Not so long ago I slagged old guys who polished the floors of their garage. Now I get it. You're retired; you've got time on your hands. Getting your Man-Space in skookum shape is at least as good as many other ways you could spend your day.

I've been thinking a lot about Time with-a-capital-T lately, now that I have so much of it to spend, waste, pass, or God forbid, even kill. But wait, these aren't the words I need. In this post-Economic bliss of retirement, where it seems I have all the Time in the world, I can use it at my leisure.

I. This past Sunday I sat on some rocks at the shore and noticed the tide slowly rising as I tried to divine a pattern to the swells. You've probably done this yourself: you find a distant trough moving darkly below the brim of the biggest wave you can see. You follow its billowing disappearing act until it breaks at the shore.

Don't they say that every seventh wave is a big one? I find that it's actually more like every third or fourth...but maybe that's because this Sound is a hell of a lot smaller basin than the ocean. You can ponder conundrums like this until you lose track of all reason. Then there's only the simple meditative repetition of the act......

Hey! How about I let the tide table dictate the timing of a daily migration to where my favorite configuration of barnacled rocks mimics the ergonomics of an Adirondack chair, there to sit and look out at the water doing its eternal thing?...

"Put that on the calendar, Jeeves! Greater harmony with nature!"

The planes and colors of the bridge really knock me out.

II. I took a ferry ride on Monday, its terminal just down the beach from where my helpful wife was volunteering at our nearby senior center. Those of us over 60 only pay $3.85 round trip--what a great deal for a half hour's scenic voyage each way to an even smaller port than the one in which we live.

I was reconnoitering for a conjugal visit in the coming weeks: a half-day jaunt on the cheap around a tasty lunch at the village brew-pub.

It may be a little too quaint; we'll see. But on the way back we can always lose ourselves in the patterns of the sun sparkling like a happy posse of ducks on the water, the clouds--the way they hug Mount Rainier, the penile towers of Seattle rising above the distant shoreline's bluff.

"Put that on the calendar, Marge--Quality Time!"

Click on one of these last two pictures and...

III. On Tuesday my thoughtful wife and I visited a local Indian cultural center and nearby casino. You can see the takeaway from this jaunt in the accompanying two pictures. Separated by about 150 years they juxtapose the predominant livelihood the Tulalip people have gained from this place--then and now. Salmon to slots. What a difference Time makes, heh?!

A lot's been said and written about Indian casinos but to me they seem mostly like a boon, not only to the welfare of the red people, but also to numerous entertainers who would otherwise be hard up for good paying gigs.

...toggle between them. The same people. Astounding!

IV. I had lunch with my dear older daughter yesterday--another activity in which it's been ages since I engaged. Next week, we will volunteer to kayak around the large urban lake that reflects the city's towers and hills. Equipped with garbage bags and litter-grabbers we will cruise the shoreline, picking up beer cans, the odd bit of styrofoam, and things you'd rather not know.

V. Today my delightful, task-oriented wife and I are talking about how we might become more involved in our community's service and cultural life. This brief discussion is only the precursor though, to our day's main goal: counting the number of trains we hear passing by, on their way up and down the coast. We will count twenty-seven trains between 8AM and 10PM--fourteen hours, so an average of about two trains an hour--nearly fifty a day. We mark their passage by the the whistles we hear blown by the breeze coming up from the shore.

We must hear as many patterns in their warning whistles as there are engineers, but a common one is: two long and pause, until right before the crossing, then two short. After the crossing, there's usually another long...But I'd check that, to be sure.

All these very different ways of occupying our time--barely beginning to even scratch the surface.