Looking Back

June 25

9:45 a.m.

Oh, yawn, good morning.

I think I'll structure my weekend overview like the film Memento, with discrete segments of time presented in backwards order. I might leave out some chunks, though, for the sake of brevity...

*

This morning, I woke up at 7 and groaned and slapped at my alarm clock. I curled up next to my sleeping Heather and nuzzled my head into her shoulder, wishing for hours more to sleep, wishing our weekend didn't have to end.

The alarm clock beeped again, and I hit snooze again. "Heather, sweet," I said. "Do you want to get up?"

"I should," she said.

This was a good thing, because it meant she was feeling better than she had been last night.

I got up, pulled on some clothes. Heather laughed at me. "Poof! You're ready for work!" I'm a boy. It doesn't take me long to get ready for work. We stumbled around my house for a bit, brushing teeth, brushing hair, getting stuff together. I kissed her goodbye, got in my car, and drove to stupid ol' work. No one's in the office this week except me and the Company Cat. I fed the cat. It should be a pretty nice week.

*

I sipped my Sierra Nevada and read Tourists, by Lisa Goldstein (which I'm liking very much, more than I usually like her books) while Heather contemplated her next move in Scrabble. We were about five moves into the game.

One of the Pergolesi baristas peeked into the room where we were playing and gave us a rather toothy grin, then slipped back out. I noticed that no one else at all seemed to be in the coffee shop.

"I think they're basically closed," Heather said.

So Pergolesi closes early on Sundays. I guess I knew that. I forgot. Heather carefully lifted the Scrabble board, and we left, walking around the corner to my house, where we continued the Scrabble game. Heather was beginning to feel bad, and trying to decide whether to go home soon, or whether to wait until morning and brave the horrors of early-morning-commuter traffic. Her mind wanted to go home. Her sickishness argued that she should remain.

I made her some peppermint tea. We finished the Scrabble game, then went to bed and cuddled and talked, talked, talked. We always get so serious when it's time for one of us to leave the other; it seems to trigger some latent anxiety in us, and we start talking about our futures, our finances, our fears. We're good at soothing one another, though. Love is good for that.

She packed her things. By then it was nearly 1 a.m. I made her some more tea. She decided to stay.

*

We went to Zocolli's Italian Delicatessan at lunchtime on a Sunday, and surprisingly, it wasn't too crowded. We got sandwiches, chips, chocolate, and assorted yummy beverages-- a veritable picnic feast. We drove out on Highway 1 to my favorite beach, Hole in the Wall. There were lots of people there, which was a shame, because on its less crowded days Hole in the Wall is a fun place to run around naked. We spread our blanket and ate-- or tried to eat. The wind was pretty vicious, and sand got into everything. We moved to what we hoped would be a more protected alcove, but it wasn't noticeably better wind-wise, and in addition we found ourselves amid some trash and broken glass. Sigh. Really not a very nice time. The beach is always a better idea than a reality. We headed over toward some rocks, thinking the tide was low enough that we could climb over and get to a neat place with lots of tidepools. I've seen the tidepools once, and they're remarkable, but every other time I've been to the beach the water was too high, making the passage impossible. We went to the rocks and tried to decide if we could make the climb; water was splashing up, and it was very slippery. We decided it was too dangerous.

Then an old man with a parrot perched on his right hand walked past us and climbed right up the rocks. Heather and I exchanged glances. We hated to be outdone by an old man with a parrot, but... it still looked awfully slippery and dangerous, and if you lose your footing on those rocks, you basically fall into a churning cold ocean full of jagged pointy bits. So we just stood for a while, looking at the waves crash on the rocks, enjoying the splendor-- and it was very nice.

A while later a group of eight or ten people came down the slippery rocks from an expedition in tidepool land. We watched as they got doused by wave after wave of water. Most of them got thoroughly soaked. Heather and I were glad we didn't make the attempt, then.

We got our things and trudged back up to the car, and then to Coffeetopia. Mocha Bianca and Italian Soda healed all things.

*

We had a late dinner on Saturday night, grilled cheese and tomato soup, mmm. We cuddled on the couch and watched Bringing Up Baby, one of my favorite movies.

I fell asleep about two-thirds of the way into the film, nuzzled against Heather. Which might have been cute, except that (apparently) I woke up a couple of times and turned down the volume on the television because it was "too loud," and then went back to sleep, leaving Heather with me unconscious against her, and the volume on the television turned down too low for her to hear. She was remarkably tolerant, though, and after she finished the movie, she took me to bed, and to sleep.

*

Saturday evening we did all sorts of things that really cannot be described here; doing so would ruin the movie of my life's chance at getting an "R" rating.

*

Saturday we went to Pergolesi, and began a game of Scrabble (I love me some Scrabble). I read Dennis Etchison's Double Edge between turns. The book... it's not so good. Lots of horror cliches, and the writing just generally feels tired. There's a nice and bitter twist at the end, but it wasn't quite enough payoff for 200 pages. I liked this novel less than all Etchison's other novels... and even then, I've always felt he was a better short story writer.

Heather's friends Carol and Jodi walked by, quite by chance, and so they hung out with us for a while. I like them. Heather thought I was annoyed, at first, because I didn't say much; then she remembered that I'm just quiet around people I don't know. She's already so used to me chattering away non-stop that she's forgotten how I am around strangers...

*

Friday night... more things I won't go into in detail. But, oh, what a lovely time. And we drank vodka tonics; I guess I can mention that much.

*

Friday afternoon we shopped, and went to Javha House, where I finished The Prestige. It's a good book, though I don't think I like it as much as Timprov and Marissa did. It wouldn't make my Top Ten.

*

Friday morning, I got up at 7 with the best possible intentions-- to go to work. But there was Heather next to me, so wonderful and cuddlesome and good... and I called in sick. I couldn't bear the thought of leaving her for even a few hours. I don't usually abuse sick time that way, but I couldn't resist. So I snuggled up to her, and we slept for a few more hours, rising to have a lovely and leisurely breakfast at Zachary's.

*

Thursday afternoon I left work, pleased to discover that I had money in my bank account-- yay, payday! I went to Streetlight Records and bought the new Blake Babies CD, which is soooo good. Yum yum good. I wandered a bit, ran some errands, came home.

A bit later, my love arrived, and I embraced her on my front porch, and days of bliss began.

*

What this retrospective doesn't get at, of course, except by inference, is how wonderful my time with Heather was, how absolutely glorious. I spent the entire weekend high on her, full of her, thrilled by her. She makes my life into a wonder, and a dream.

*

Let's see; other bits of business. Go see Speculon; the site redesign is a good bit further along, with book reviews posted and my fellow Rat Karina Sumner-Smith's first e-book review. So, hurrah!

Otherwise... I have a lot of work to do today, and had best get to it.

Cheers, darlings.