Egret

When OilMan and I were newlyweds, He had just gotten his Master's degree from Cal Tech and I had just graduated from Cal. We were the first of all our friends to get married and often hosted weekend visits from several of his classmates. Over the course of a weekend, many occasions would arise when decisions needed to be made...decisions ranging from what movie to see to what to have for lunch or whether to take the scenic route or the expedited route to our destination.

After many hours wasted spent trying to reach consensus, we finally agreed that each day a different person would be the decision maker, and the rest of us would abide by whatever that person said. It worked brilliantly, especially since the majority of the decisions were so trivial it was a relief to avoid a "what do you want to do?"..."I don't know...what do YOU want to do?" sort of conversation.

What OilMan and I need is someone to do that for us now. We and everybody we know is distracted and disorganized... OilMan and I just spent half an hour trying to decide where to put the egret with the fish in its mouth that we bought yesterday for Dana's rock river. I would stand in the driveway and OilMan would stand at the top of the wall and move the egret around. Then he would descend to the driveway and decide he didn't like it there, so I would go up and move it at his direction. We finally sent a picture to Dana and SHE decided that he should be closer to the 'water'.

It's amazing how many decisions, large and small, there are to be made in the course of a day....usually we don't even give it a thought, but when the process gets stalled the simplest things become almost impossible....

Moises the window washer is here cleaning the soot and ash off the windows and washing the screens. It was a relief to see him at the appointed hour today and find out that he still has a house, although he has lost a lot of customers. I suppose that is the reason a lot of decisions seem so difficult, because we are still finding out, one by one, how all the people we encounter during the course of a day are doing. And perhaps that is enough for now....