Up is elusive and hard to catch. Just when you think you’re gaining ground, you have to stop while a frikking freight train goes by at five miles an hour and by the time the path is clear again, you don’t have time to chase UP anymore because you’re late somewhere else. So it was Saturday.
I’d have driven by the Lindsay House after work Saturday, grabbed a few groceries at Shop’N'Save and caught UP with my gardening if I hadn’t forgotten to pack my driver’s license when I left for work. To lessen time in “lawbreaker mode” I came straight home driving the posted speed on the DOT and made it home without being arrested. Other fine people were working outside in their front yards across the street and a few doors down, and I simply did not want to be sociable. It’s times like these — and I don’t have them often, really I don’t — that if you approach me as I’m getting out of my truck, don’t get your hands closer than three feet from my mouth because if you do, you’re liable to lose a few fingers. It was too warm out also.
Instead I hastened to the basement to catch UP. It was waiting for me: several THOUSAND articles about aviation which I’ve culled from aviation magazines donated to my collection since last fall. When I receive an aviation magazine already on hand or not needed whole, I pull all articles of value to the aviation data bank AeroKnow and pitch the rest. Articles pulled are taped (if two pages) or stapled (three or more pages) and then piled in stacks as tall as they can be without threatening to topple over. The stacks are then pre-sorted. Every file cabinet in the collection is numbered. I separate articles knowing where in the 15 they will go. There are sub categories too, Cabinet 10 contains articles about French and Soviet aircraft, another has clippings about aviation people, combat groups, air forces and aviation museums, so those are also separated from each other to make for smoother subsequent filing.Sound like fun? You don’t know the half of it.
I do this because the accumulation won’t sort itself. I tried instructing it, but my words fell on deaf pages. If it’s going to be done, it’s going to be done by old Number One. No one else I know has the knowledge, the time and/or the inclination to help. And that’s okay. . . . I suppose.
After checking email on arrival home Saturday, processing some pictures for Flickr I had processed at work and emailed to me, I went downstairs about 4:00 with a cup of coffee and started to catch . . . . you know what I started to catch, don’t you? I started to catch UP.
I resurfaced about 6:45 to make dinner (even frikking MONKS have to eat, you know) and watched “Cops” and “America’s Most Wanted” until returning to subterranea and sorting until 11 when Spike Fehrenstein came on. It was a repeat but a good one, with Carl Reiner and Bo (forgot his last name, begins with a B, hilarious songwriter/pianist/performer). Then back to the basement for more sorting for half an hour. The “Sex and the City” was a re-run I have seen twice, so I watched only 10 minutes before ingesting a breath of Burgundy from the Carlo Rossi gallon jug — Jugs are for tasting, I always say — and hitting the hay. A “breath of wine” is the amount one can swallow before you have to breathe again. It isn’t science but it’s sensible.
Today, I was up at 6:30 am and with first cup of Mrs. Olsen’s best (Folger’s Instant) sallied to the sorting. When I had completed the “first sort” of the articles that had measured about three feet high yesterday, I came up to grab another cup of coffee and ramble here at H&Q. What I accomplished from the concentrated effort is less than five percent of what it will take to catch UP down there, with just filing articles, and there’s much to do in addition to that, but it’s behind me. I can go from here.
I don’t know that I’m the gardener I thought I was when the year was younger. I need to hang by the phone until a friend — fellow aviation enthusiast calls re a planned visit today — so I’ll be concentrating on the aviation inside until we touch base. I don’t know that I will ever catch UP. There are too many things waiting for me — not including dreams which are another subject entirely.
Dreams aren’t waiting for me. They don’t wait for anybody. You catch them if you can; that simple. And even when you catch a dream, there’s no time to be very satisfied with yourself. After all, you still have to catch UP.
Live long . . . . . and proper.
