Dear Diary,
Wonderful news!
It turns out the new whatever-it-is that Blogspot installed at the beginning of this month did not actually eliminate most of the site's useful features, it only hid them, and it only cost me $7 to find this out with the help of a rental computer. So without paying any more, I can tell you all about the maniacal squirrel at far too long last.
July 29
At Laurelhurst Community Center, restroom opening happened from 7:02 to 7:04 A.M. This is the day I observed the southernmost water fountain in Laurelhurst Playfield get turned on.
Eventually I dragged myself out of there, figuring I just had to observe closing at lower Ravenna Park, but visiting Cowen Park and University Playground first just in case their restrooms had been opened.
So at Cowen Park that evening restroom closing took from 7:05 to 7:07 P.M.
I picked that night my spot at Cowen Park, a bench from which I could sort of see the women's room door, but not at all that of the men's room. This bench is in shade most of each summer day, a real rarity in Seattle parks and much of what made the ensuing days tolerable. Since Cowen Park is hard for me to move my cart through, I tried to limit my trips away to daytime ones, and ideally times it seemed safe to leave the cart behind. Unfortunately for this plan, Cowen Park's water fountain would not be turned on until sometime after the morning of August 3.
July 30
When I woke, it turned out I wasn't the only person who'd slept there. A couple had slept on the spinner I've previously proffered as potential neat stuff. That morning, the woman entertained herself using chalk on a sort of chalk permission floor in front of the restroom building. When the sun came out, she took off most of her outer clothing, and from this, the complexity of the underwear thus revealed, and the things she chalked, of which I remember "Bad [Female Dogs] Only", I concluded that she probably belonged to some category that Palaeoliths like me would understand as "transgendered". I didn't see this couple there again, but her chalk remained, right next to a playground.
At Cowen Park there seems not to be a single usual parking spot for those who lock and unlock the restrooms; not all of my observations featured new parking spots, but most did. So I routinely missed arrival times. On this day the women's room was unlocked at 7:34 and the unlocker drove away at 7:39 A.M. Closing was 7:00 to 7:04 P.M. I only needed one more day at Cowen Park - and one more closing at lower Ravenna - and I'd be done. Piece of cake, right?
July 31
Not if I had to stay in the park all day verifying that the restrooms wouldn't be opened. Running out of water, running low on food... I actually went and bought a newspaper, because I figured not even you, dear Diary, would believe this little project of mine had stumbled onto a closed-restroom day without serious proof. So:
Meanwhile, I wasn't the only hungry mammal around. The squirrel in whose territory that bench is, understands the world thus: all food within its territory belongs to it, regardless of other circumstances. It was so fearless I worried it might be rabid. While taking these photos, I found out that, unfortunately for squirrels, the sound they make when irritated sounds rather like a cat's purr.
But all bad things come to an end, and a parks employee did eventually notice the situation. Opening from 4:21 to 4:36 P.M., leaving only the women's room unlocked; much of the extra time went to hosing down both rooms, and a first stab at removing the expressions of the elegantly dressed woman from two days ago. Later a parks employee came by who recognised me - he's the one who'd given me food while closing the Laurelhurst rooms. I asked him to open the men's room, which he did at 5:10 P.M. As a result, I now understand the remark Erica Barnett made in early April, mentioning deep water on a floor; that can, it turns out, happen after hosedowns. This gentleman came back to close at 8:04, leaving at 8:40 because of a long conversation with me. He only locked the men's room, to accommodate a woman camping in the other.
I decided this day wouldn't count. It would've been a pain to handle the men's and women's rooms separately, and I'd affected too many of the times directly.
August 1
At 10 A.M. I decided this day wouldn't count either; I wasn't prepared for another day of privation and combat with squirrels. From Cowen Park I took the ravine path to lower Ravenna Park, only to find that the restrooms there were also locked - this time both of them. I couldn't conveniently buy a Sunday paper for proof, but anyway here are some door shots:
So I went to University Village and Safeway, but then figured Ravenna's restrooms were likelier than Cowen's to open, so maybe I could get that long-postponed closing time that day.
By 4 P.M. I was ready to give up, but as I was leaving my friend arrived, and unlocked the restrooms about 4:15. We both noticed jazz coming from the bowl downstairs, so I went that way, and he decided to take a lunch break and went separately. This turned out to be the same group I'd seen before, minus the guy who'd been most of the reason I didn't approve of their social distancing, and so didn't identify them, before. If I understand correctly, this was the Parkswangers' last show of the summer before the bandleader returned to New York.
I wasn't sure how to observe closings now that I'd started making friends with the guy who did most of them, so didn't try that evening, but I did want to see what would happen with Cowen Park's women's room. At around 7:30 P.M. I found Ravenna Park's upper restrooms open; at around 8:00 Cowen Park's were both locked.
August 2
Back to Cowen Park: triumph at last! I slept until 7:47 A.M., by which time two park employees had arrived separately, one of them unlocking both restrooms. The other left at 7:48, the unlocker at 7:56, after hosing down everything; this is what mostly removed the contributions by the woman from July 30.
Long before closing time, the squirrel returned. I'm not sure it had learned fear, but it had recalculated the cost of my food, and spent considerably less of its time not getting as close. I considered giving it a cookie as a reward for making this page more entertaining, but forgot.
Closing that night featured locking taking one minute or less, finishing at 8:35 P.M., and departure at 8:38. By this time it was close to sunset, and I had zero interest in trying to steer my cart out of the park in the dark, so I decided to take one more observation at Cowen Park, which would anyway result in equal numbers of openings and closings.
August 3
Cowen Park's restrooms were opened from 7:23 to 7:36 A.M. This took so long because the opener also collected trash; the women's room was unlocked at 7:35.
At lower Ravenna Park, the man who'd introduced himself as an Eskimo found me. He said his partner had left him, planning to return to heretofore unmentioned wife and children. Also, his phone had disappeared, possibly with the partner. Nobody answered the phone; eventually I left a message at a number the Eskimo said was his aunt's. The closer arrived while we were still talking, 7:47 to 7:56 P.M. close. (Some of this time went to my telling him about issues in the lower Ravenna and Cowen Parks' men's rooms.)
Days later, I found that while I'd been photographing the squirrel on July 31, it had gotten further than I'd thought, chewing through the plastic bag holding my bread, and getting several bites. It had taken care of its own reward.
Whew. All done, dear Diary. I'll probably write a page of analysis (sorry, no squirrel photos) tomorrow.