I want to say October's been busy, but it hasn't been. I haven't had weeknights packed with social engagements or weekends full of family obligations. I haven't spent half the weekend cycling and running and the other half recovering. The triathlon season's tapering, along with my training regimen and energy for it. I haven't taken up cooking, knitting or any new hobbies to occupy my time. I haven't been playing my flute, studying French or taking tennis lessons (all on my to do list). I haven't been catching up with old friends or responding to those ten or more emails in my inbox that have been sitting around for over a month (okay, two). I did bake an apple pie one Saturday that Mister President got a hold of and ate in its entirety. (I baked another on Sunday.) Other than that, what have I been doing more of? Taking the dog for long walks. Writing. And I guess it's made me tuck my head into my shell a bit. I like that.
Mornings, I've gotten into the habit of walking Mister President to Fort Greene Park. It's a hike. A little over a mile each way, and with Mister "Slow Poke" President, that's almost an hour roundtrip. The walk consists of, in this order: the Gowanus housing projects, a low-key complex with a well-maintained garden and a few occasional morning drunks spouting off; Boerum Hill, a quaint brownstone neighborhood like all the other quaint, ho-hum brownstone neighborhoods in Brooklyn; a three-block dead zone between Boerum Hill and downtown Brooklyn; downtown Brooklyn, my favorite part of the journey, which begins with The Salvation Army where a crowd of talkative people in hooded sweatshirts mill about waiting for something (a job? a meal?) and ends with the Parole Board office, also a magnet for guys in baggy clothes and hooded sweatshirts, but in smaller clusters and often smoking, with a variety of shuttered discount department stores, people hustling their kids to school and themselves to work, fruit and nut vendors and police officers in between; Long Island University; the beginning of Fort Greene, which is sidewalks crowded with high school kids filing to school; Brooklyn hospital where people in blue scrubs line up at a coffee cart; and finally Fort Greene park, hike up two flights of stairs, unclip the leash and let the dog go. The walk is somewhat meditative. The morning light in the park now that it's fall and the leaves are turning is unbeatable. The park is a manageable size, perfect for a morning stroll. And Mister President is happy there, stops in his tracks and gives me an incredulous look when I turn and begin to walk home. More importantly, it conks him out for the rest of the day.
And then there's my writing. I've been writing a lot of new pieces. A new piece every day, every hour. A page of a new story here, two pages of another new story there. They begin with a surge of energy, and five hundred words later, I feel bored and sleepy. I take a nap. I try to continue when I wake up, make some coffee, and still I feel bored and sleepy by what I've written. Is this a matter of discipline? Conditioning? Like my inability to run more than three miles, or feel good running more than three miles, until I've properly trained? Is it a matter of producing material so dry, so trite, so boring that not even I can keep myself awake long enough to see it to the end?
I've also been buying furniture.
And then I've got one more triathlon to do before the season officially comes to a close. It's an Olympic distance (1-mile swim, 26-mile bike, 6-mile run) in Tempe, Arizona. I'm partially crazy for going out there to do this, but my sister and her family are out there, so it's not entirely crazy. It required me to ship my bike. That felt like a hair too much, but it's done. All I have left to do is pack, get on the plane tomorrow, hope my bike gets there and I'm able to reassemble it, then hope they let me into the race. I'm not officially registered. Small detail.
And that concludes my busy spell. It's unfortunate these entries are often lists of things I've been doing since last entry. I'll have to work on that. Did you read the piece about the CR diet in New York Magazine this week? It's a sure way to shed thirty pounds (even if you don't need to), add fifty years onto your life and turn your hands orange. What more could you ask of a diet?
