Then...some idiot turned on the lights.
― Ray Bradbury, Long After Midnight
The good thing about good intentions is that they go well with a full-size Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. Boy howdy I did some damage on the overly enthusiastically purchased candy combined with low trick-or-treater traffic up the historic block on Halloween.
But its been a week and I am running out of will power. I know it’s only Wednesday but don’t judge. Eating crap is a spooky story for a runner and mostly vegan. It isn’t a vanity thing. It is me trying to avoid headaches and gastrointestinal distress tale as old as my 30s. Plus we are running out of road on 2023 with a bit of doing remaining.
If early to mid 2023 was a baby then these final months are clearly my postpartum. Or better yet, a fernweh. A perfect German word to describe the opposite of being homesick. The transition from the best kind of busy where you are recognized, feted, and attended—abruptly returns you to a cluttered office (which shelves am I buying?), wallpaper selections neglected, and an oven that you thought was mind numbingly expensive when you absentmindedly glanced at an old invoice and remains exceedingly expensive to repair.
What passes for a night life these days finds my husband and me all gacked up on chocolate and hoping that the last of the trick treaters were making their way up our two runs of steep stairs toward a 100+ year old house that always seems well-suited to Halloween — we watched SNL scenes from last week starring Nate Bargatze.
Not willing to pay for yet another streaming fee (I see you Hulu — the former home of SNL) we were hopping around Youtube and landed on this old favorite.
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Nate confesses to being the ‘dreamer’ and that is my role as well. His wife is the ‘destroyer of fun’ and even if my Steve isn’t totally fitting this role, let’s just say he can get one pant leg covered. I still dream that the world will rewind and our nanny will return. No matter the kids are mostly gone, I simply miss the order and tidiness that apparently I was supposed to reassign or gasp — maintain — oh about 16 years ago.
This light blue period crept up about the time I finished writing and recording videos for the last two talks of this year. Prioritizing my morning 7 mile run I think I was able to reset my sugar-coated brain.
In a few weeks I will celebrate the end of my 6th decade. We are heading to Manhattan and I am chuffed.
My running route held the final talisman for my much needed recalibration—waiting for me nestled inside a neighborhood library box:
So yes I ran the last 3 or 4 miles with a 1950s guide to Rome tucked into the waistband of my shorts.
And all is well…
“Nobody moved.
Everybody sat in the dark cellar, suspended in the suddenly frozen task of this October game; the wind blew outside, banging the house, the smell of pumpkins and apples filled the room with smell of the objects in their fingers while one boy cried, “I'll go upstairs and look!” and he ran upstairs hopefully and out around the house, four times around the house, calling, “Marion, Marion, Marion!” over and over and at last coming slowly down the stairs into the waiting breathing cellar and saying to the darkness, “I can't find her.”
Then... some idiot turned on the lights.
("The October Game")”