Not much to report today. I had planned on coming to the cabin all week, and the only stumbling block this time was that the power went out this morning, so I had to shower and brush my teeth in the dark, but it came back on after less than an hour (and it's a once-a-year kind of thing nowadays, whereas in the little town where I grew up, the power would go out every other month or so, to the point where we all had flashlights beside our beds and kerosene lamps on the mantle above the fireplace).
I went down to the lake again right before sunset, as has been my tradition every time I've come here by myself this year, and there's less water than last week, but still enough that you could go out on one of those foam raft things people stand up on (you know what I mean), but you wouldn't dare take a metal boat or the paddleboat we used to take onto the water about ten years ago.
I ran up the side of the dam and tried to sing a song before the sun was gone, but for the first time, my new phone claimed that it was full, about two-thirds of the way through, and though I deleted six or seven videos, rapidly fighting the sunset, it kept claiming that it was too full to record more. I restarted the phone, hoping that that would magically fix it, but it wouldn't let me record anything more or take any pictures, despite me deleting another half dozen in puzzlement.
I kept hearing splashing from the water down below, so I left my tripod on the dam and went down below to investigate. It turned out that it was hundreds of fish, jumping and fighting for territory in the almost-drained lake . . . hundreds of fish that will be dead in a month or so, to the very last one. I guess that could be said of all of us, eventually, but it makes me sad and is frustrating because there's no way of saving them, unless you filled the bed of a truck with water and caught some, then took them down to the pond at the top of the canyon, which is tiny, but somehow bigger than the lake is now.
If I had a girlfriend and a pickup truck, I think I'd make that a project for one weekend--see how many trout we could rescue and transplant to the small pond, where some would still get scooped up by fishermen (and some would die during the transfer), but a few might survive.* I guess there's a hundred and one possibilities in the sentence "If I had a girlfriend..."
The day came and went very quickly. It's almost enough to make you depressed, if you think about it. But let's not think about it then.
Sit-ups Today: 300
Sit-ups In August: 4847
Last week, instead of making a fire--there are postings everywhere that due to wildfire threats (and probably due to the fact that almost all the water's gone) no fires are allowed. While I'm sure that refers to campfires rather than a fire in a stove, I did keep thinking about it, along with something my brother said the last time I saw him. He said the insurance on the cabin--which is head-spinningly expensive--isn't in his name, despite him asking over and over that my mom switch it over, but is in her name . . . and she hasn't paid it for the year, so it has lapsed. Lance said, "If something were to happen, it would be a total loss."
So, instead of building a fire last week, I went down in the basement, turned on the gas, and used the gas stove to cook my soup for the first time. Immediately afterward, I went back down and turned the gas off (I'm a responsible sort). And this trip, I used the gas again, cooking two cans of soup in a row (I have gained three or four pounds back over the last month or so) . . . and then I forgot to go down and turn it off.
While this shouldn't really matter--if I'm not using the gas to heat or cook, it's not being wasted, right?--it means the water heater upstairs is working, and I might as well take advantage. Often when I'm up here, I take what Austin Powers called "a whore's bath," and on the rare occasions when I spend two nights (only once this whole year), I end up smelling pretty ripe when I get home, especially with my fruitless sit-up regimen. But with the water heater on, I definitely ought to take a shower, and then go down and turn off the gas immediately after.
I know, I know, my blog is fascinating. Yeah, I live to entertain.
Speaking of which, I brought a stack of DVDs from the library to entertain me, and I tried three different ones last night, and none of them would play.** I assumed the first one was due to this weird protective sticker the library put on it that was halfway peeling off (probably due to being in the car in August), but the second one also had that problem, and I just peeled the sticker off, thinking that would take care of it. It didn't. The third one didn't have one of those stickers, and it wouldn't play either.
Finally, I grabbed a fourth--a pirate movie from 1942 called THE BLACK SWAN--and it loaded up just fine. I watched it, and enjoyed it fairly well,*** though I couldn't tell if the movie was made for adults or for children. But what I really enjoyed was the audio commentary with Rudy Behlmer and star Maureen O'Hara. She was eighty-three when she recorded it, and talked about her career and how movies were made in those days, and how her contract was bought and horse traded by the studios, and how she went out to dinner with one of the stars of the movie and the next day he died. I am fascinated by filmmaking and stuff like that, and though there's no way of knowing up at the cabin, I wonder if O'Hara is still around, and why I don't remember seeing her in anything since the John Hughes production ONLY THE LONELY (which had to have been '91 or '92).****
I ended up falling asleep during the commentary, and never did get around to writing on my Natalie model story (instead, I thought I'd look over a finished 2020 piece and maybe do an episode for it for Halloween, but I spent my time reorganizing the paragraphs and trying to make it flow like I'd written it all at the same time, instead of in jerks and fits like I did. It garnered me a few words, but surely not what I should have had writing here at the cabin.
Words Today: 548
Words In August: 26,169
*Of course, the small pond may freeze all the way through during the winter, so all our effort would still be for naught.
**That's not technically true--ARSENIC AND OLD LACE started up and got halfway through the opening titles before freezing.
***Something that really vexes me in this day and age is when I'm told that everything is racist or everything is sexist, and people constantly point out misogeny in older movies, TV, and literature, because they view it through today's lenses, among third-wave feminism and the #MeToo movement, seeing hate where I'm not sure it was present. However, there were a couple of rapey elements in this pirate movie (which I guess comes with the territory, in the same way a movie about segregation is going to have racism in it or a movie about war is going to have violence in it) that did seem a little uncomfortable today.
****I checked when I got home, and O'Hara died in 2015, at the age of ninety-five.
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