Author: Paul

Jealousy, guilt, ambition and way over-the-top family dysfunction made it hard to get through season one of “Bloodline,” the Netflix series. And when Danny, the most colorful and only sympathetic character, got knocked off near the end of the season I was ready to give up on it. I felt like we had been dragged through the mud. But our friends, Matthew and Louise, raved about Season 2 so we dove back in. We’re only halfway through and without giving anything away, they found a way to get Danny back in there and the other characters have really taken shape. Its a beautiful, dysfunctional mess.

“Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high.” The cottonwood trees have been dropping their goods for a few weeks now and the cotton is starting to gather in clusters in the woods. I brought his cluster home and I’m trying to figure out what to do with it.

The Flash are tied for second with the Chicago Red Stars and the two teams meet tonight at 7 downtown. Jazz Fest can wait.

It was very hard to watch Spain lose their EuroCup match this afternoon. The only thing that made it palatable was the amazing energy the young Croatian team played with. Spain’s skillful, studied, possession game was no match for youthful enthusiasm and it felt good to be reminded of the wondrousness of this most magical resource. Back on our side of the pond we are bracing ourselves for the US/Argentina Copa América semi-final.

First day of summer here was hot. We spent most of the afternoon down at the pool and I jumped in again in the evening for good measure. Our road is being repaved so no mail and we’re hoofing it over to the next street where we parked our car. The woods was hot too. We came across a few deer who couldn’t be bothered to get up. And there was some sort of crow scuffle going on above us. We stopped to listen because the screaming was so intense. There were at least three crows harassing another bird, one with a wholly different call for help. Not sure what that was all about.

The trees are all dropping seeds and buds and cotton-like stuff. The small lakes and ponds in the park are covered with pea soup. We watched a snapping turtle, maybe a foot and half in diameter, slowly swim by in front of us. He stuck his head out to check us out. We scared a baby raccoon up a tree and spooked a groundhog on the way back. We did our duty.

Thankfully, the pace of football matches has slowed. The Euro Cup today has only two games and they are scheduled at the same time, something that theoretically prevents teams from playing for a result that would give them an easier go in the elimination round. We are scheduling our day around the France vs. Switzerland game at 3pm.

Back in the Copa America we felt like we had to watch the Argentina vs Venezuela match last night to see what the US will be up against when they meet Messi’s team in the quarterfinals on Tuesday. And it is always a thrill to watch Messi, a natural wonder. It would be a miracle or a fluke if the US could advance with Argentina and Chile ahead but we will be screaming for them.

We took a break from the telly to watch a live soccer math between the first place Portland Thorns and WNY Flash. Despite the fact that Meghan Klingenberg went down in warm-ups, Christine Sinclair and Tobin Heath proved to be too much for the Flash. The Flash were not moving the ball from the back to the front as they had been. Even Hinkle was booting it out of our end in hopes of a happy landing. With Zerboni back in the center I would think they could feed her and Mewis and poke it through. It was a disappointing result that I hope they learned something from.

Wreckless Eric played here on Thursday. Before his set we sat with him at a table in Abilene’s courtyard and I deliberately did not talk football even though England had beaten Wales in a dramatic comeback in stoppage time earlier in the day, while Eric was driving from his gig in Detroit. Amy Rigby came up by train for the gig and the hope was she would join him on stage. But no, she was just a fan snapping cell phone photos during the gig. Eric has some tremendous new songs, a slow menacing, blues song about murder and a sweet ballad that he threw in his encore after his wall of feedback. He told us he liked the Detroit crowd because they yelled stuff at him while he was playing. And he particularly liked how two guys up front had an argument between themselves while he was playing.

Sam was playing music for the members of the Friendly Home when we stopped by. He was playing guitar in the sun room and about half of my mom’s group was asleep in their chairs. Sam threw a ball to the ones that were awake and had them roll it on the floor. The ball had numbers on it and whatever number came up Sam would play a song from that decade. He had the sheet music for hundreds of songs in his iPad. His version of “Leaving on a Jet Plane” was so sleepy I almost fell asleep. But then he’d pull out an old chestnut like Irving Berlin’s “If You Don’t Want My Peaches, You’d Better Stop Shaking My Tree” and I’d be singing along.

I took my first walk in the woods today in over a month. Just how did that Wales player in this morning’s Euro Cup match get back on the pitch in six weeks after a broken leg? I went down the hill I tore my calf muscle on and couldn’t get over how much lusher everything was. The Jack in the Pulpits were still standing erect. An old rotted oak had fallen right across the path. We spooked a couple of Pileated woodpeckers that may have been mating and we walked by a deer that was so comfortable it couldn’t be bothered to get up. And then we came across this friendly toad and watched him for a bit.

The tail end of our vacation in Spain was spent in the mountains of Mallorca in the Balearic Islands. We rented a house there from a friend of our nephew’s girlfriend. The place came with a pool and if that wasn’t enough, Mediterranean beaches were thirty minutes away in every direction. I did a lot a swimming, even got a dip in while I was waiting for the water to boil for coffee. For the last few days I had water trapped in my left ear, trapped behind wax.

I tried everything. Q-tips, rubbing alcohol, vinegar, hydrogen peroxide, a hair dryer. I tried creating a vacuum with my finger to plunge it out but no luck. Back home I made an appointment to see my doctor. He had me hold an ear gutter under my ear and he squirted warm water from a big stainless steel tube into the ear. He explained that he was trying to get the water behind the wax to force it out. After four liters he gave up and referred me to an ear, nose and throat specialist. They scheduled an appointment for the 28th. I couldn’t believe it. I had not been able to hear out my ear for a week and now I had to wait another two.

I said I was desperate and they got me in with a cancelation. The specialist used no water at all. He had some sort of vacuum that sucked out the wax. He started with my good ear and showed me the clump. The left ear was problematic. All the products I had used made the wax gooey and it was completely sealed. He kept warning me, “This is going to be loud.” And it was. Louder than a rock concert but it worked. It was the most satisfying doctor visit I have ever experienced.

We are going to have see if we can get the “Vicious” radio station that our rental car was tuned to when we picked it up at the Majorca airport. We never changed the channel the whole week and although I think of it as club music, it suited the windy mountain roads with hairpin turns, the autopistas and dead end, dirt beach roads perfectly. Thump, thump, thump. One song meshes with the next.

In sync with the thump we tracked down one of Mallorca’s top ten beaches, a place that was described as quiet and beautiful with a restaurant. We parked in the town of Deiea and walked about an hour on a footpath that included all sorts of scenic vistas and diversions. Donkeys, persimmon trees, olive groves, religious shrines and eventually a cove of turquoise water. We headed straight to the outdoor patio and ordered Pimientos Del Padrón, Tortilla Española, Pulpo a la Gallega, Escalivada (eggplant) con Pimientos y cuatro cervezas.

Another day, another beach. This one with a fish shack/bar that was cranking “Vicious” nonstop the whole time we were there. We sat in the shade and watched people dance in the sun. And I must say, I am enjoying the secondhand smoke everywhere we go. They still sell Ducados in the cigarette machines but we haven’t smelled the black tabac anywhere. Those folks may have all left us.

We met our friends, Jeff and Mary Kaye, in Mallorca. They flew from Toronto, through Frankfort, and arrived with a bottle of Duty Free champagne. We quickly stopped following Donald Trump stories and and even checking email. The last email of any import was from our neighbors back in Rochester. They informed us that our spinach had grown huge and was already bolting so they ate it for us.

Here we hiked and explored swimming spots for the last few days and watched an endless stream of ciclistas working their way up the mountain where we had rented a house. Jeff got the bug and we found a Ride Mallorca shop where we dropped him off so he could rent a bike. Mary Kaye, Peggi and I walked to this small cove where we swam and studied the multicolored rocks.