Did I call it or did I call it? Praying that Brazil would be soundly beaten in the next round… for the sake of the game. Dream come true, beyond my hopes. The score was 5-0 to Germany when we arrived at the Catskill Mountain Pizza parlour to meet friends and watch the end of the game – surprisingly few people gathered there, just a handful of diehard aficionados. Clearly, professional soccer isn’t a part of rural American life yet. I know city bars were full of shocked soccer fans, watching the brutal de-throning of the inventors of the modern game. (In truth, Brazil fielded a poor team from the beginning of the tournament – even the vaunted Neymar proved overrated.) No less shocking then their fall from grace was the collapse of the Spanish armada, after winning successive international tourneys. But the Germans… always in the game, decade after decade – ever since 1952, my first World Cup. Now I’m hoping the Dutch will beat Argentina, and then beat Germany in the final… for the sake of the game. They’ve been playing its most beautiful version for generations now. Sunshine again today, o joy. Off to water plants and leap in the pool.
Just checking…. yes, I’m home
Still trying to adjust to being home – it was only 7 weeks, but so focused and intense the bike tour created habits and a head it’s proving hard to dispel. Ah yes, I’m home: country pains-in-the-ass no. 1 – our backyard pool (also a country joy), a cement pool getting on in years, tiles crumbling by the dozen from the perimeter, used by friends and neighbors in return for help with its upkeep, is a maintenance money pit thanks to costly mistakes – costly to us! – by pool maintenance professionals, so-called, and thanks also to the iron in our well (another country p-i-t-a/joy), both of which have enabled a flora no quantities or combinations of chemicals seem capable of entirely clearing from the water. Claire dreams of cementing the damn thing over, or moving to a pool-less, less troublesome house. Country pain no. 2: the house. No, let’s leave that malfunctioning country item for another day. Country pain 3: rabbits. The dog just watches them. They get into the pool area and eat our (pain/joy) homegrown vegetables. Somewhere I have an over-and-under Spanish .310 – and as a teenager sometimes rode shotgun to keep farmers’ fields rabbit-free – but I just don’t have the heart to kill anything any more. Enough – enough country pains for one day. Now to prepare breakfast from fresh country eggs – country joy! to know the very hens that laid the eggs you eat.
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