Bay Breeze

Can't sleep again. Actually, that's not true; I've slept well, only I've slept enough, and now am awake; I don't want to over-sleep. Haruki Murakami, who runs every day, also gets up at five every day, and writes every day, and in so doing managed at 33 to morph his life from that of a semi-successful bar owner to that of a professional novelist. He writes and runs in Japan, in the Eastern United States, in Greece, in Hawaii. He ran the original marathon, from Athens to Marathon, alone. Funny how though I enjoy his novels for the magic in their domestic details - boiling spaghetti, answering the phone - I find his running memoir superficial and bland.

A walking memoir might be similarly bland, if not careful: today I walked from Stow-on-the-Wold to Burton-on-the-Water. There were sheep. Fences and trees and sheep. My knee hurt. My ankle hurt, my boots pinched, then I strained my knee. There were golfers. We crossed a road. Etc.

I'd like to walk The Pilgrim's Way and write about it, though - that would surely be more interesting, especially if I were at a crossroads in my life, and arriving at the cathedral in whatever town that is again that is the destination I also arrived at a decision, THE decision that would alter everything. I'm sure it's been done before, a hundred times, but then everyone must get something a little bit different from it - we're not all the same.

We're all the same and not the same.

Yesterday evening I finished the crisp blush wine that Joanne brought over, licked potato salad from the fork in the sink, made a stir fry with leftover steak ("I look forward to our stir fry nights; you make the best stir fry, Mom," said Caleb - what a sweetheart). Then played Super Mario Bros. with Jule, sorted through the rest of my old letters - from Erin, Reinhardt, Nadine, Alison, Grandma and Grandpa, etc. - and took Jule to bed with me, oh lovely boy. Oh, wait - somewhere in there I also made a cocktail, a Bay Breeze, which is why I'm writing this, in fact. Oh, yeah - the point of this blog. I figured out a better way to make pineapple juice, by squeezing fresh pineapple chunks in a garlic press - it worked perfectly. Clear, sweet juice. I realized that I really don't like pineapple in drinks, though, unless combined with coconut cream. Once and for all, I have decided.

I took two sips and dumped it, moved on.