I'm tired tonight but it's a feeling that allows me to break down the fence between the day and the night, and bring reflections forward.

The need to write has been growing thoughout the last week...as I long to record the beautiful moments of the last seven days.

Treor (8) and Chloe (6) flew up from Studio City to stay with me, and spend time with their cousins, Anders (7) and Auggie (5).  Auggie and Anders and their parents, my son, Gunther and daughter-in-law Eliza live across the street, so we have a little family compound going.

Eliza and I moved in sync each day to set up fun local acitivities--and to give each other needed breaks.  (I'm not used to full-time mothering!)

Bright moments:

• In Memorial Park, a pick-up baseball game with another 8-year old, who had brought a ball and bat, but who lacked any friends (he said he was visiting his divorced father.)  Trevor--who plays on a little team at home, was thrilled.  We all walked home together-a new friend

• Auggie's 5th birthday on Sunday July 12th, again at Stinson beach--friends, lounging, body boards, a rare sunny day, a Pinata, hamburgers, hot dogs, and getting buried in the sand.
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• Robert, Trevor, Chloe, and me watching the original (is there even a new one?) Attack of the 50-foot Woman.  An alcoholic woman gets irradiated by an alien and grows so large she walks the streets moaning, "Harry, where are you?" in search of her philandering husband.  She squeezes him to death.  "I liked it, actually," said Chloe when I remarked to my friend that it was pretty hokey.
  

•  Buying enormous quantities of food, every day
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• Going to Adventure Land at the Berkeley Marina, where they all went on a zip line (landing in a hill of sand) and got to do stuff like hammering and sawing
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• We made a "movie" where aliens landed and hunted down the earthlings at my house.  Anders and Trevor, wearing last-year's Halloween's knights costumes arrive in a cardboard box from outer space.  Chloe and Auggie (wearing his "handsome shirt") arrive home in my car after shopping, enter the house and go to bed.  Hearing noises, they go downstairs to encounter the aliens.  "The humans have to win," I direct. I teach them how to slip a sword between their arm to look like a stab.  The aliens, fight, but unfortunately are killed and fall down dead.  Everyone stays in character.  I wish I knew how to put my digital vignettes into one continuous narrative.  "We want to have 100 hits on YouTube," they all tell me.
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• Last Satuday, the parents (Gunthe and Eliza and Jim and Sigrid) go off to San Francisco.  The kids and I eat dinner on the new deck that Gunther just built onto his house.
  
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• "I want to make a speech," begins Anders, and offes a long thank-you speech to me ("Nana")  Wow, it broke my heart.  Trevor followed suit, and actually thanked me for having their parents. I returned the favor by pointing out the special qualities of each of them.
• After Jim and Sigrid and Trevor and Chloe left to drive down to Southern California, Gunther put up three swings in my front yard.  Now we can have a mini-park in front of my house.
  
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• Last week (especially Saturday) might turn out to be the best days of my life.
  

I visited my friend Denis last night.  We went for a walk in the neighborhood and admired the gigantic palm trees, the bougainvilla, and some of the renovations of homes.  It was a quiet late afternoon.

Denis made a light meal in his tiny, cozy cottage.  His bookshelf, while pared to the essentials holds many books on spirituality, symbols, theology, and art.  In talking with him, I realized that all his "people," his parents and grandparents were, in some way, involved in the arts.  His grandmother was an architect, his father a graphic artist and designer of fonts.  His grandfather was the director of an important crafts studio.  It made me believe that there must be a gene ruling esthetics.

Denis is a paragon of simplicity (he's my friend who attends Quaker meetings and does English country dancing.)  He only shops at thrift stores and yet has an extremely strong esthetic sense (like his ancestors.)  He related his concern about the green plaid shirt he was wearing "It only cost me $3.00," he confided, "but it's a bit too big in the shoulder, and the patch pocket should really be moved over an inch to be the right proportion." 

I knew exactly how he felt about this minor detail.  Only that morning, I had ironed a white linen shirt I've had for probbly fifteen years.  It's a large size, and I can't think why I would have bought a large, unless I really needed it for a beach cover up or something and that's all that was available.  I was thinking that it was too long, and wondering if I should take the trouble to hem it up.  Then I thought, "Who cares?"  Why do I obsess about something this trivial???  Who cares if I wear a shirt that is two inches too long? A shirt I haven't worn in fifteen years, for God's sake.

Denis had come to the same conclusion about his patch pocket, although he was only concerned that he might ruin the shirt if he tried; he wasn't existentially appalled at the level of triviality uncovered within his oul.

What I wonder is, what is it in us that is able to make the shift to let go of being preoccupied about whether something is "right" and come to the conclusion that it really doens't matter in the larger scheme of things?  Letting go seems to be a healthy step, and it does make life a little easer, if we don't have to go around altering every little detail of our clothing, for heaven's sake!  Why do I care about such frivolous details?

I think Denis and I both, perhaps, labor under what I'd like to call the curse of esthetics. 

I wonder how many other people obsess about such insignificant details (okay, I saw the wonderful film on Valentino, the great Italian clothes designer.  He certainly made a living off the details!)  But for Denis and me it's probably just as well to note the fine points of how things "should be," and move on!

Last Monday, Robert and I spent the afternoon in the back garden.  He puttered around with the rocks in the fountain, adjusting the protective grid he made to cover the tiny fish pond and rearranging some of the water plants.  He's taken quite a fancy to keeping the four little goldfish alive, and reading up on their care.

I planted a few new plants, and also spray-painted black some old frames in order to put up some of the photos and drawings I want to display in my office and front bedroom.  It's a project I've been wanting to do for awhile.

At twilight, I hand-wantered with the hose my new Santa Baraba daisies and fuschia-colored iceplants.  As I stood watering, the hummingbird who often comes into the yard, came right up close into my spray from the hose. She was only 12 inches away from me!  Thrilling.

It was a lovely day. 

My stone fountain and little pond in my back garden have become my new focus in the past couple of weeks.

Robert and I have been trying to get the ecosystem friendly to the little goldfish we put in the pond.  True to his mathematical mind's propensity to seek answers, Robert has read a lot about raising gold fish lately.

We've been sad to lose several fish since last year when we started putting them in the pond.  I so enjoy sitting on the rock next to the pond and gazing at them as they dart around.

The night after I returned from Lisbon,  a racoon raided the pond, and ate all but one black fish.  We were very upset.  Robert set about constructing something to put over the pond to protect it at night from predators.

After some experimentation, he built a removable lath and chicken wire "lid" to place over the main part of the pond.  It really works great.

We now have the black fish and three gold fish, more aquatic plants, an ammonia 'trap" and the protective lid.  In the late afternoon, the little fish swim out from their rock hiding place.  It's so fun to watch them. We stand and whisper to each other, noting each fish's position.

Robert read that fish can talk (!)  We think the black fish has been indoctrinating the new ones with tales of the racoon's murderous raid, and noting our clumsy splashing around adding gravel, plants, and the protection device. 

This is our anthropomorphic explanation of why they seem reluctant to come out from under the rocks.

Some of you have asked to see the photos from my son, Gunther's recent ride for Tour de Cure, the fundraiser for the American Diabetes Association.  You can click here to see him and Anders (who has Type 1) and his brother, August.

http://picasaweb.google.com/rohrer.gunther/TourDeCure2009

Tomorrow I leave for Milan for the two-day numerology seminar, and Lisbon for the conference in Portugal.