After a mostly escapist weekend, this feels like a good time to stay away from politics and just muse over the events in our own lives over the last couple days.
Saturday I woke up in a funk. The day marked six full weeks of what has mostly been an extended lockdown in the apartment, watching the seasons change outside the solarium and trying to hold together a law practice centered 1,100 miles to the south. We can't leave New York in light of the latest pandemic wave, and even wandering into town for supper seems foolhardy these days. Going to the grocery store is my biggest adventure, but even that must wait for the weekend because I have no car. Eventually one slips into a sort of dissociative state, watching people walk by outside and feeling like one is watching a movie. It's not healthy, not at all.
"Where do you want to go today?" Peg asks, sitting down across from me and leaning in as if she thinks I've got the weekend planned. I do not have the weekend planned.
"No clue."
P senses the pallor and suggests something that doesn't involve being around lots of people, like a nature hike. The weather on Saturday was picture perfect for autumn in New York, clear and crisp, with cobalt blue skies.
After a little fumbling around with Google maps on the tablet we settled upon Stony Brook State Park, about forty miles up the road toward Rochester. The park must be bustling in the summer--there was a forest of camping grills in meadows that ran along a narrow gorge with a stream flowing through the middle. Today there were only a few hardy souls bundled up for a walk in the woods. We decided to step off on the "easy" hike of only 2.5 miles along the rim.
Whoever categorized this walk as "easy" was clearly not a flatlander like us. We huffed and panted up ribbons of steps cut into the hillside, ever higher. The wine we brought along probably didn't help our mounting cardiovascular distress. It certainly was not our ally when the realization sunk in that they had closed all the bathrooms in the park for no apparent reason. It wasn't a crisis for me, being a guy and all. Thank God P is a farmgirl, and not a priss.
The waterfall near the head of the gorge was pretty spectacular. Of course, it was around this time that P was grilling me on whether I knew how to do CPR, because she sensed death's cold hand wrapping around her lovely chest. My responses inspired little confidence.
We finally stumbled back down the hill to the car, past an annoying preponderance of day hikers without masks. Spirits raised by our brief encounter with nature, we drove two lane highways home, through little villages like Addison that seemed a crumbling remnant of some long forgotten prosperity.
No one felt like cooking when we finally arrived home, so we tramped down the hill to the Indian restaurant on Market Street for carry-out, and feasted while watching movies and trying to keep the cats out of our plates. Boundaries are still a foreign concept to them.
Speaking of Dean and Slane, the next morning was a big one in their lives--a trip back to the Chemung SPCA to get neutered. They seemed to realize something rather unpleasant was coming, and my hands and wrists bear the scars of our battle to force them into the cat carrier.
After dropping them off, with nothing to do all day, we wore the numbers off our credit cards at Wegman's buying the fixings for Chile Verde, and once we had a huge crock pot of wonderful Mexican pork stew simmering, we wandered off in the rain toward Cohocton, where Peg had found online some dining room chairs to replace the broken, wobbly director's chairs we've been using since we arrived here. From there it was north through Atlanta, then Naples, enroute to Canandaiguia Lake.
Years ago during deer season, I recall hunting at a friend's place where they had their deer feeder set up on a timer. Every afternoon at 4:30, a little electric motor would spring to life and throw corn in a circular pattern around the big black drum. Eventually the deer figured out when the feeder was due to disburse, and would come out of the woods to stand there for their supper.
I thought of those critters as we pulled into Naples, and decided we needed a bottle of Cabernet as sustenance for our rainy lakefront journey. We found a package store in Naples, and took a quick pic before going inside. Yes, it was that cold, and yes we were that underdressed.
Now, the liquor stores in New York all open at noon on Sundays. We knew that, but didn't need to check our watch to see when it was time--around 11:58 a line of mostly men, mostly my age and older and looking pretty broken down, began to emerge from cars and side streets and started trying the door. Once the clerk unlocked, they went about their business inside without saying a word, buying their medicine and returning from whence they came.
Canandaigua Lake is nothing short of spectacular. It was misty and cold on our drive, but every bit as lovely as this shot taken on a more temperate day.
P saw maybe a hundred lakefront houses that she decided we really needed to buy, until I scrolled through realtor.com as we drove, and found that this appeared to be the most expensive of the Finger Lakes real estate markets. Maybe one day.
As evening fell, we made our way in a rainstorm back to the animal shelter. "They're going to hate us. They'll never trust us again." P repeated this, over and over, as we wound our way through Big Flats and up the hill to the little complex of metal buildings where Dean and Slane were beginning their new lives as eunuchs. Sure enough, they wailed and carried on during the ride home like someone had lopped off their testicles.
"Oh God. They're in pain. I'm in anesthesia. I know that sound. I can't bear to hear them in pain like this."
More cat wailing.
Eventually we stopped at Rite Aid so P could put together a concoction of Tylenol and Benadryl we planned to perhaps mix with a little rye whiskey and water when we got home. For the cats, I mean. Once they were upstairs, however, they leaped out of their cat carriers as soon as the door was opened, and bounded all over the apartment. Not pain apparently, but annoyance at their confinement was the reason for the plaintive cries on the road home. I get that, truly.
P held them down and drugged them anyway, which led to a very quiet night before their impromptu decision to take a quick bath and wash the surgical site this morning.
And so it goes.
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