Beach Retreat

No, I didn’t go to the beach.

But the family did.

I, as usual, stayed behind in the bungalow. And I got a lot done, also as usual, when I’m left alone.

We left Saturday morning after I balanced the checkbook, paid the bills, and ran a few errands. Arriving at the Jersey shore (not that one, the one we go to has a lot more self-respect) by 1, the girls and my father-in-law piled into the car and hit the dunes.

The weather was so, so beautiful – sunny, crisp, zero humidity, a nice breeze – that I just couldn’t spend the afternoon indoors. I laid out a towel beneath an old oak tree in the backyard, brought out a pillow, and spent the next six hours, basically, finishing The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, the loose autobiography-of-sorts of Lawrence of Arabia.

Ah, pleasure!

As the chapters passed I chased the sun’s shadows on the cool lawn. At one point I nearly fell asleep, which would have marked the first time I fell asleep in nature’s arms since … well, since those crazy nights in Wildwood in the late 80s, but that sleep was artificially assisted.

Anyway, the troops returned at 7 for regimented showering, changing, and motoring over to a mom-and-pop I-talian restaurant. We shared antipasto salads and lasagna. Afterwards, we treated the little ones (and ourselves) to ice cream from a neighboring shop. Got ’em all home at 9:45, way past their bedtimes, and got ’em all down by 10.

Next morning, this morning, though it seems a week ago, we got up early, showered, dressed, and met my father-in-law and his lady friend for breakfast at a diner. Then we all drove to his church for noon mass.

Then a repeat of yesterday afternoon, though curtailed somewhat. This time Patch was nearing a meltdown – having no nap Saturday as well as a late night – so I kept her back at the bungalow with me. The others left, and, lo and behold, Patches wouldn’t sleep, though she held it together.

She allowed me to skim through a biography of Lawrence. One of those biographies where the biographer simply despises his subject. Everything Lawrence said or did was a lie or evil or wrong or stupid. Whatever.* But it did clear up a bunch of mainly logistical concerns about Seven Pillars.

Feeling spiritual, I also read a whole bunch of the ending chapters of Genesis.

The others got back with sandwiches, which we all devoured, and we hit the road by 6. Since fifty-percent of the population of New Jersey likes to drive the Garden State Parkway on Sunday evenings, we didn’t get home until 8.

Somewhat restless after helping put the girls down, I went for a restless walk. Got all sweaty and worked up into a foul mood, strolling past the darkened houses in my town, every other one lit up with the flickering hypnotic light of the flatscreen demigod, commanding loyalty and subservience. I noted the constellations, Cassiopeia and Ursa Major, and some of the stars, such as Arcturus. Made a mental note to bone back up on my astronomy.

Anyway, busy week I’m not looking forward to. Tomorrow we visit Yiayia’s in the morning. She’s the Greek sitter who sat Little One for the first four years of her life. I’ll be plied with all sorts of Greek food and uncomfortable questions about my crappy health and my ineffectual job search. Then it’s off to some boy’s birthday party, where Little One will run around ingesting pizza and sugar and I’ll be left holding Patch, napless for the third day in a row.

Tuesday and Wednesday we have to have a training-wheel-less bike ride at the park and a last go at the town swimming pool. Sarcastic yay on both counts. We need to get Little One’s summer projects all dotted and crossed and ready for the start of school on Thursday. Thursday and Friday will be half-days. Oh, and I still have to fit grocery shopping and laundry in somewhere, as well as working on my website, my short stories, my next novel, that and this and those and these.

But I do have some humorous posts in my head; they just need to be written. And a review of Seven Pillars is already mentally half-completed.

I need another body. Or thirty more hours a week alone time.


* I once made the mistake of reading a biography of composer Jean Sibelius by an author who viscerally hated the man. How can you hate a composer, fer cryin’ out loud? Well, this writer did. Ascribed every petty, low-down, unscrupulous and evil motive to Sibelius that Sibs almost became a moustache-twisting cardboard caricature. So, to paraphrase the words of Peter Kreeft, I only read books by authors who love their subject.