Lemon Shoal

Reading happens.

Deep long morning, brief heavy rain. Much reading and a struggle to create a fire. I chose the porch, to enjoy the downpour.

The everyday life of a professional theater artist in Jacobean England. Where did I acquire these old books? The aging paperbacks with prices like "2-95" marked in pencil. It is as though I have squirreled them throughout my young adult years, with a pretension that I required them if I were to fashion myself a true scholar of Shakespeare. Only years, decades later I have found them to be actually useful.

This, How Shakespeare Spent His Day and previously, Shakespeare's Audience, these are thin books, from the mid-century (1963 and 1941, respectively) packed with verifiable information. Recent epics like Will In the World and 1599, heavy, heavy books that anyone would be proud to have seen on their shelf, outlined in fact and inflated with fancy.

Temperature: 66°
Climate: overcast and humid
Distance: .9 mile

In my more wistful moments, I imagine my daughter reflecting upon our relationship, and making note of how kindly encouraging I was to her in all things, even when she was choosing to be difficult and aggressively petulant.

Today, I blame myself. I had encouraged her to come and she was game, but she did ask to run one mile and I neglected to create a route. She was done and unhappy about it by the time we reached Crystal Pond ... which as it turns out is nearly a mile. If I'd know that we could have gotten that far and walked back with a feeling of accomplishment, instead of my trying to make conversation while she stared straight ahead, occasionally remarking that her shoes are wrong and her knee felt stiff.

Distance: 1.3 miles

I have never had great upper body strength. To put it another way, I have never had upper body strength. Occasionally I have worked to remedy this, but it comes and it goes. Wii Fit has helped through the winter, but that's really the only time I use it.

Recently, I have been waking to feel a pain in a particular region of my left tricep. No idea what has been causing that. The stress of the amusement park rides (no, seriously) seemed to have exacerbated this and on Monday I needed to take pain reliever, driving became so unpleasant.

Yesterday the boy asked to go kayaking, and our journey went much farther afield than I had expected - all the way around Pa's Island. It was near high tide, and there were many swells caused by passing lobster boats, and those waves that crash upon Lemon Shoal. We were each in separate kayaks, but the boy kept close as I called out calm and (I hoped) reassuring commands. I was waiting for the moment he might become anxious or begin to panic but he never did and though it was arduous, it was a successful journey.