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Charlotte and I drive to Woodstock
Monday, May 26 2025
Our Australian guests would be leaving this morning, continuing their American vacation elsewhere. First though, there was the now-familiar breakfast granola bar setup on the dining room table and the usual clinking sounds associated with that, coffee mugs, and a series of french presses full of coffee. At some point our neighbor A walked over through the forest with her daughter W and her dog Henry. The plan was for everyone to stroll up the Farm Road, but W said she just wanted to go back home and Fern's parents were anxious about getting to the Rondout for some sort of hike (though I'm not sure where someone would hike there). So we ended up just standing around in the yard chatting for fifteen or twenty minutes. It was a gorgeous morning, with the first clear blue skies in many days.
I had Memorial Day off, though Gretchen didn't. Since today was a rare one where she was going to work while I was still home at our house in Hurley, she decided she could take Neville to work, something she hadn't been able to do, since we don't want to leave Charlotte alone by herself. Charlotte wasn't too happy about being left alone with just me and the cats, but the thought was that I might be able to take her for a walk at some point. Unfortunately, though, when I tried to take her, she didn't want to go. So I ended up just walking down from the Farm Road to the west extension of the Chamomile Wall and doing some more work on that.
I'd taken a recreational 150 mg dose of pseudoephedrine in hopes of powering through some procrastinated gardening tasks, and sure enough I managed to finally do them. I needed to get some cannabis seeds started in a pot and I also needed to plant some sunflower seeds along the north edge of our garden (which has consisted, for several years now, of six raised beds). Gretchen had already done most of the work of planting the actual plants a week or so ago after I'd tilled them on the preceding Friday. We didn't have great options for potting soil, so I made my own by combining two different kinds of compost with some clay-and-organic-matter-rich soil I dug out of a tip-up mound from a fallen tree on the edge of the forest.
This evening, the plan was for me to drive to Woodstock to have dinner at the Garden Café with Gretchen and our friends Lynn and Gregg. Since I didn't want to leave Charlotte behind with just the cats, I needed to get her to climb into the Forester. She used to be terrible at getting in a car when I wanted her to, yet for well over a year she's been good at getting in cars so long as Neville was getting in the car too, though I'd never had her get into a car without Neville present. (Gretchen and I together once successfully did this, but she trusts Gretchen more than she trusts me.) So with great fanfare, I told Charlotte we were going for a ride in a car and that soon we'd be seeing Neville! She excitedly charged out to the driveway with me but then seemed to hesitate when I opened the front door and told her to hop in. So I stepped away and she climbed in. But when I approached the car, she jumped out again. Thinking quickly, I opened a rear door, the door she'd normally use. And sure enough she jumped in again! I closed the doors and off we went, with me telling Charlotte the whole way that we would soon be seeing her brother Neville.
In Woodstock, I parked at the end of Old Forge Road, put a leash on Charlotte, and walked her out to the village square. At that point I saw our Bolt coming eastbound on Tinker Street, so I got us into position so we could intercept them in front of The Garden. This allowed a suddenly-delighted Charlotte to join Neville. Promises: kept.
Gretchen and Neville had actually just been over at Lynn & Gregg's house checking out a re-engineering of their outdoor covered patio, and there were adorable pictures of Neville teetering on top of a tuffet (as is his wont).
At the Garden, there were some people sitting at tables outdoors despite the threatening (and occasionally realized) rain. We sat indoors at our favorite round table in the corner and had our usual Garden meal, with me yet again ordering the TLT with avocado and a big bowl of the red bean soup (a special that I will always order if it is available).
The most poignant moment of our dinner conversation came when Gretchen mentioned an old friend in the poetry world named Joyce. She'd seen Joyce about three months ago and thought she saw indications of dementia. Today Joyce came in with mutual friend Alice and, with some help from Alice, broke the news to Gretchen that she had been diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia, a disorder similar to Parkinson's disease. By this point the disease had progressed so much that Joyce's gait had changed, becoming more of a shuffle. She still seemed to know who Gretchen was, but that might've required Alice's prompting. Gretchen found it all extremely sad, saying that Joyce is a great human being and that it's a cosmic injustice that she is now being robbed of her mind and personality even as assholes like everyone in the Trump administration remain seemingly healthy. (Although Trump has manifested signs of some sort of dementia for years.)
After our meal, I went down to the Old Forge parking lot and let the dogs out so they could run around for a bit before our drive back home. (There was a bunny in the nearby field who suddenly darted off to the bushes completely unseen by anyone but me.) As the dogs did their thing, Lynn and Gregg joined us and chatted with us in a way that I could tell was causing Gretchen to not pay attention to the locations of the dogs. So I went off to find them. Neville was nearby, sniffing around a building. But Charlotte had disappeared, and calling for her did no good. Eventually all the calling I was doing snapped Gretchen out of chit chat mode and she joined the search. When Charlotte materialized, she was in the back churchyard of Woodstock Reformed Church, atop a bluestone retaining wall above that little creek coming down from the north. Gretchen thought the only way to get Charlotte back was to go around the church, but while she was doing that I showed Charlotte (who was actually whimpering) a way down to the creek via a partially-collapsed section of wall. This allowed her to rejoin Neville and the others in the parking lot.
As I was driving home, I was drinking the rest of a road beer I'd started on the drive to Woodstock. As I turned onto Route 375, a cop car turned on his lights behind me, so I immediately pulled over, not having any idea what I might've been doing wrong. I also hid my road beer in the central console. The cop came over and told me that I'd been driving without my lights on, something that is very easy to do these days, since the Chevy Bolt has lights for which there are no controls; they turn on or off automatically. Furthermore, the Forester has running lights that can fool you into thinking its headlights are on. I apologized and fumbled through my wallet for my ID. "Where you coming from tonight?" The cop asked. "The Garden Café" I answered immediately. "Nice!" the cop replied. "How much have you had to drink?" he pried. I was pretty sure he could smell the warm road beer I'd just been drinking, so I said, "I had a beer." I know you're never supposed to tell the cops you've been drinking, but in this case honesty seemed like a better strategy. I've watched a lot of DUI pull-over videos on YouTube, and obvious lies are just going to piss a cop off and make him suspicious. It turned out I'd done the right thing, because after checking my ID and registration (but not my insurance), he let me go with a "Drive safe!" I was free to finish my road beer in peace. This was the first time I'd been pulled over in almost exactly eight years, which must be a record since I started driving.
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