Jimmy: The First Friend

From preschool to 2nd grade I played with a boy down the street named Jimmy. We built a rocket launching station next to the Bernard and Marie's cow pond, where out space probes could splash down, solemnly pondering the advantages of solid vs. liquid fuel in the rocket we would build and the adequacy of a pot lid as a radar dish.
He had cooler toys and I was embarrassed when as a teenager his mother brought home a lamp from the lingerie section of the store at which she worked. It was a section of a female body wearing leopard-print briefs and lit from within, and image that convinced me this was a family of wealth although in retrospect the fact that they were a four member family in a two bedroom house would suggest otherwise.
We gradually parted ways when I went off to school. We briefly reconnected over the internet, but he was a rabid Reaganite and soon unfriended me.

Katy Bourne and Microstories

Katy Bourne and Paul the Bassist

It turns out that one of the people I've rumba'd with for a couple of years is a jazz singer and writer who just released a book. I don't talk much at the Y so I know very little of these people I've hung around with for years, but last Thursday it was announced that she was doing a reading - with a bass player - at the Treehouse Lounge in West Seattle. I stopped by, had a cider and a good time.
Her format is the microshortstory - a paragraph or two, that's it - published story by story on the web, and now collected as Weirdo Simpatico: Little Stories for Short Attention Spans. I enjoyed it, and it may inspire me to try the same.

---

Pergola Raising!

Saturday was the Pergola Raising Party at Marsha and Wendy's. This was a whole lotta fun, basically a day of jointly solving a puzzle and at the end, a nice enhancement for parties! There were about half-a-dozen neighborhood families at work, and it was a fun chance to hang out with something to work on other than just parting. I got thinking about that when Sunday I met someone at the Olympic Sculpture Garden. I had been feeling that I should put myself out there and date or something, it's a normal thing to do and Tinder makes is absurdly easy to meet someone. And the person was nice enough. But I felt zero connection because her interests, beyond work, were amusement and relaxation - she proposed kayaking or something at Alki, which is a nice normal thing to do, and for which I have zero interest. I want to spend my weekends accomplishing something in addition to amusing myself - thus I be amused. Kris was like that, quite a lot, and I never really talked it over with her. I appreciate that there are some, maybe most, people for home the use of their free time is chiefly to amuse and to divert, but I am bored by that, and would much rather be creative in some way. And at this point I can be honest about it, and not waste anyone's time trying to learn to enjoy being on the water or whatever. That's just the way it is. I like my Sunday work with books at the VA and then going to Pegasus bookstore and chatting, and that's both fine and my choice. This I learned from the pleasure of pergola raising!