You look, like a dog in a suit, at once old and young for your age

I feel as distracted as I did that day I was listening to the Brett Kavanaugh hearings while trying to get work done (remember way back in 2018? Don't be impressed that I remembered it was 2018, I had to google it. Also, was that the Before Times? Or did the Before Times Era end pre-2016? Hmm, food for thought). Anyway, that was either the height of my distraction or the start of it. And today I'm probably just over-caffeinated.

The pipes are unfrozen, of course. In fact, after my hero's journey to buy a heat gun at Lowe's (I narrowly avoided getting trapped on the way home by a train derailment, expertly steering Virginia Woolf onto the highway and around to approach my house from the other side of town), Mark ended up returning it an hour later (sad trombone sound here). By the time I made it back, he had opened the bathroom floor and exposed the pipes, and they had thawed right out. Later, he shoved insulation in the floor.*

Spoiler: THEY CAN

Me, 2023

Work-related, believe it or not.

Time traveling.

*This may solve the problem, although it's an issue of the pipe being near an exterior wall that's basically not insulated so we shall see.

Which will bloom most constantly?

As Lizzie As Possible.

I also forgot to mention the pockets and tufts of fog I drove through on my way to Holly's. The world disappeared on the bridge across the Piscataqua — I didn't realize I was even on a bridge until the Google map lady welcomed me to New Hampshire.

I realize I'm dwelling on this journey quite a lot here, considering I was away from home for about 36 hours. That may be a reflection of the number of times I've left Maine in the past two years (TWO).

Still Life With Blueberry Oatmeal

Holly not only made me coffee when I shuffled downstairs in my pajamas Sunday morning, but she gave me this beautiful handmade ceramic mug too. 

Whirlwind

Home, after a really lovely quick visit. I forgot to mention ice cream in the blustery cold, watching Passing, and cat cuddles on the couch. 

It's easy to get distracted in Holly's kitchen by the river rushing past, just down the hill from her back yard. Also, the pleasure and ease of talking to someone who's known me for forty years is one of my favorite feelings. The drive home was brilliant, all of those softer, deeper miraculous November colors. I saw other autumnal sights along the highway, including:

• wild turkeys 
• a whole bunch of pumpkins someone had apparently tossed out of a car?

22

I drove to Chicago (all things know, all things know) and back. Mom and Dad and I are great road trip companions, and we had only as many adventures as we wanted to have.

Saddest little rest area shop display in Ohio.

Zoë doesn't officially start classes til next Monday, so we got to do a lot of fun activities with her, including the architectural boat tour on the Chicago River.

They would be cool even if they weren't iconic.

Mom, Zoë, and I also got to spend an afternoon at a giant, wonderful, strange Korean spa. There were two sections, one with "baths" and lots of naked ladies (including us), and another with dry saunas, nap rooms, a movie room, a restaurant, an "oxygen room," a freezing cold "ice room," game rooms, and more. Also there were people of every gender clothed in what I thought of as prison jammies.

Illicit locker room photo, featuring me looking slightly hysterical. Later, I was disconcerted enough at the being naked part that I kept leaving my locker open with all my worldly goods inside.

If you ever get to go to a Korean spa, I recommend it. There's one in Dallas that has a waterpark attached to it.

27

Reporting live from Chicago, where I'm visiting Zoë with Mom and Dad, my trusty road trip companions. We have eaten and coffeed well, and seen some Chicago sites, finally met Z's sweet petit ami, and I've gotten to spend time watching BoJack Horseman with my girl, which I've been meaning to watch ever since I saw this great talk by Lisa Hanawalt. It is so good to be here with her.

Because it is such nice landscaping.

Oregon Trail

Did I mention that this guy got his driver's license this summer? (Not Theo, the other guy.) He's a good driver, careful and smart, although he has the stylish habit of keeping only one hand on the steering wheel. One night this summer, he drove the car in the dark with his cousin Oona riding shotgun and Mark and me in the back seat. Many nights this fall, he went out late with his pal Christian, driving around. I think it's wise to wait until you're 20 to get your license, because your brain is more fully formed then (I may be biased, since that's about how old I was, too. I was so much stupider at 16).

One day I was riding in the car while Isaac drove, taking corners just a little bit abruptly, and every time, we could hear the dog water bowl we keep in the trunk clang loudly. Isaac said it sounded just like the Oregon Trail computer game he and Zoë used to play, the clang of the wagon train. It made him laugh.

These driving adventures happened during Isaac's visits home over the last several months. In New York, he is of course carless, although his license helped get him a temporary PA job on the set of a well-known TV show. He texted us from the driver's seat of a black SUV that was waiting outside a store near Rockefeller Center for the costume buyer to return. So he soon will have far more experience driving in Manhattan than I, for one, have.

twenty-two

i would like to report in an extra-calm voice that when i returned from a nineteen hour trip to the grocery store with my seventy-five bags of food, this is what my (previously) clean dining room looked like:

that table there is the one on which i plan to serve thanksgiving dinner. yep.

also, when i was driving i saw this!*




















*calm down, i was at a stop light.

the press of my foot to the earth

you're going to think i'm totally crazy, since i just returned from my uitwaaien less than a week ago, but zoë had yesterday off and she needed one. so the two of us jumped in the car before the sun came up and i drove us back to acadia. i guess it's my new favorite place.

some things we saw: fog rising off rivers as we drove; pink granite and silver sky; chickadees and red squirrels; a beaver couple working hard on a dam at one end of jordan pond; germans on the summit of cadillac mountain.

i had to show her blue hill too, so we got coffee from the co-op and walked around the village and down to the water.

and finally we drove down to stonington, where we ditched the car and walked all over the town, running in to only three other humans (though we could see plenty of people in boats).

and we met one enormous, battle-scarred, extremely friendly cat.

some things that bother me

it drives me crazy when cars stop in the crosswalk. am i the only driver who understands what that first white line signifies?

# WHITE STOP LINE: A white stop line is painted across a lane at an intersection. The line is usually 4 ft. before the crosswalk in an urban area. It shows where you must stop for a STOP sign or red light. You must stop your vehicle before any part of it crosses the line.
# WHITE CROSSWALK LINES: White crosswalk lines are painted across the entire width of the pavement. Sometimes the inside area is marked with white diagonal lines for added visibility. Pedestrians in crosswalks have the right-of-way over motor vehicles. Crosswalks are sometimes in the middle of the block in residential areas and, in this case, a pedestrian crossing sign is located at the white lines.

see that? "you must stop your vehicle before any part of it crosses the line."

also, when there are two lanes, and they are about to merge into one, and there's a sign that says "left lane ends," and then another sign says "merge right," and all the other cars (except me) get into the left lane?!

also, i don't like the phrase pet peeves. it gives me the heebie-jeebies.

sorry, i seem to be channeling andy rooney.