Our grown children are having all the fun

(Would you rather go birding at DrTom's, or go dancing with Paris Hilton?)

I thought I was enjoying my life in retirement until earlier today when I talked to my son who lives in Las Vegas.  I mean, I have my gardening, and my forest, a great wife, a good dog (about which Mark Twain said each man deserves one of in his life), some aging friends, and the internet.  But my son was describing to me how he went to what is probably the most beautiful swimming pool in the world this week, how he goes to after-parties that are even after the usual after-parties, and that he is so busy chumming with celebs that he barely has time to sleep.  For example, last night he walked into a Japanese restaurant, saw one of his bosses across the room, and went up to the guy to say hello.  Only then did he realize that the man was having dinner with Paris Hilton, who he is dating.  (Of course, the two of them are not having such a good week now, given their arrest due to that "stuff" Paris had in her purse.)  In contrast, this morning I met with some students who were graduating from Cornell.  We met at the annual breakfast under a tent on the lawn in front of a decaying 100-year old building, where I ate half a bagel slathered with cream cheese.  Something is wrong with this picture.

Until today, I thought that hearing a Tufted Titmouse singing in my woods was pretty exciting.  I thought that anticipating the first bloom of a day lily behind the house was stupendous.  I thought that going to Punk's Place in Candor, NY on a Saturday night to get a reuben sandwich was rewarding.  I thought that eating a radish I grew in my garden was miraculous.   But when I think about my party-going, snowboarding, cave-exploring, topless-pool spectating, Texas Hold-em playing sons living under the clear Western sky I'm not so sure.  What the heck was I doing when I was young?  I was married with children, in debt, in the Army or in school trying to educate myself for the good life that was to come.  And what do I have now?  A pithy radish and bird poop all over the place.

So just now, this very minute, I made a commitment to myself.  DrTom will do something at least once a week that can stand up against the social reports of his kids.  For example, this fall we can attend the Candor Senior High School football games.  That marching band of theirs is supposed to put on a pretty entertaining half-time show.  Instead of just listening for birds on my place, I will start turning rocks over for salamanders.  There must be a whole world I am missing by always looking up.  I'm not going to just grow radishes in my vegetable garden; I'm going to try some pak choi.  And that Kama Sutra book that has been sitting in the drawer next to our bed needs to be dusted off.  We use it to press flowers between the pages.  But there are actually some interesting pictures in there.  Management and I need to study those.

So kids, just wait until you call us next time.  Ryan, I won't just be killing tent caterpillars on my fruit trees by squishing them between my fingers like I was when you called today.  I'll be doing stuff.  Lots of neat stuff.  Stuff so neat that you'll want to spend every vacation here at home instead of hiking the high peaks of Colorado or dancing at fancy clubs with those girls who star in Cirque du Soleil or going to comedy clubs with Jarvis Green (the Broncos' new defensive linesman) or going to Cancun for tequila tastings. You might even start bringing people like Paris Hilton, or Alex Rodriguez, or Leonardo diCaprio with you because they have all heard that Danby is now the place to be seen, not Vegas.  And Danbyites are discreet about what celebs do here.  Cause you know what everyone is saying these days: "What happens in Danby, stays in Danby."

"Don't date a stripper from Vegas!"

(Punk's Place in Candor, NY will not have the same appeal after my son works in this Las Vegas nightclub.)

"Don't carry your wallet in your back pocket", is a useful piece of advice when walking around the streets of Las Vegas.  I have known that one for a long time, although I am a bit black and blue having my wallet bouncing around in my underwear.  Besides, I went to use the bathroom in the Venetian casino last night and the darn thing flipped into the urinal.  Thank goodness I wasn't at a Sahara urinal.  There must be a better place to store my money and credit cards.

My son and I have been in Vegas for five days and we have been given tons of advice on how to gamble here, where to find an apartment, what parts of the city not to live in, where to eat, and which shows to see.  It seems that everyone is an expert and we are novices here, so we are all ears.  Yesterday, a real estate broker told my son that whatever you do, don't date a Vegas stripper.  This advice was amended last night when a friend of my son's added cocktail waitress to the forbidden list.  (I actually dated a majorette from the marching band back in the day, but that is just between us.) The fact that we even have to have this conversation will put my wife on edge as we observe our "baby" sidle into Vegas life.  I guess that is why she sent me to help with this transition and she stayed at home.  So, I interviewed six strippers and three cocktail waitresses last night and I agreed with his real estate broker that Ryan should not date women who work in those categories.  I want to be thorough.

On the other hand, there may be some hidden (I use this term very loosely) advantages to taking up with women of this sort.  I would guess that they are somewhat used to being chilly, given their normal working attire.  Therefore, you could probably turn down the heat in the winter and save on the fuel bill.  I doubt they are ever pick-pocketed on the street, cause they have so many interesting places to hide paper money.  No thief would ever think to look there.  Financially speaking, it might not be so bad.  A good stripper or cocktail waitress at one of the high-end places in Vegas makes more money per year than a university professor.  Maybe my son wouldn't have to work at all. 

Thinking creatively, maybe I should stay out here and become a male stripper so I could return home with some loot.  Is there a market for a 63-year old, white-haired male stripper wearing only binoculars?  There are certainly plenty of elderly women wearing blue jogging suits who might want a break from those slot machines of an evening.  I'll check the classifieds today. 

P.S.  Don't worry Robin.  Either I will be home soon, broke as usual, or I will arrive home a few weeks late, with money hiding in places where thieves never go.

In Denver, and I’m homesick

(I'm confused.  I flew to Vegas, but I might be in Paris.)

For the past week, I have been in Denver, Colorado visiting our sons. Denver is large and growing rapidly, as is the entire Front Range of Colorado from north to south. Driving on the highways is reminiscent of driving in southern California. The area is full of young people who immigrated here from Ohio, Illinois, New York, and other places where life has ceased to be exciting enough. They come here for skiing, snowboarding, mountain biking, hiking, and camping in the Rocky Mountains nearby, and when in Denver there is plenty to do. The city boasts professional teams in baseball, basketball, football, and ice hockey, plenty of parks, bike and jogging paths, restaurants and bars of every stripe, interesting museums of art and history, and a good zoo. But I’m bored stiff. What the heck is my problem?

I’m bored because my primary activity in life, aside from blogging and trading stocks, is learning about, and living in, the woodland around my house. In short, I miss my forest in upstate New York and the “backyard ecology” that I practice there. Normally, an ecologist loves to travel to new places, because there are new habitats to explore, new birds to observe, new trees to appreciate. But in the city of Denver, that is not very satisfying. Oh, there are trees everywhere, but almost none of them should be here. Denver was built on the short-grass prairie of central Colorado—the native vegetation was only a few inches tall. Trees would have been limited to the banks of streams and rivers, and they would be cottonwoods and willows. The trees in the city now are mostly native to some other region of the U.S. or to another country: ash, Russian olive, Chinese elm, and Tree of Heaven, that native of China that I absolutely detest outside of its homeland. An irony is that we drove around a neighborhood yesterday with street names like Ash, Birch, and Cherry. Rub it in my face!

My issue here is that there is vegetation everywhere, but it does not constitute a “habitat”. Most homes have attractive green lawns, scattered trees planted in the yard and along the sides of the house, and a variety of flowering plants in gardens. All of this takes nearly daily watering, of course. But that is another complaint I have, for another blog. Nothing I criticize about Denver is any different than what I would say about almost any city in the world. We reconstruct a poor facsimile of the natural world that we took away when we built the city in the first place. For most, this is apparently just fine. In my case, I can’t wait until I go to the airport. But first, I have to spend time in Las Vegas, the Mecca of Facsimiles---Vegas even has the Eiffel Tower, which I always thought was in Paris.