Saturday Just Tired

I rose around 7, late for me while traveling, but I was home. Change can be hard, and the mundane wrapped around me like an old blanket, slightly tattered. A quilt of things that need to be done and about being home again. Shopping for groceries, paying bills, watching the squirrels in the backyard, greeting the neighbors, and the gray and rainy of the Pacific Northwest, which has surprisingly hung on at the end of June. I was living alone, no longer playing house with Deborah in a hotel room, and I missed her. Still, it is good to be back in the happy familiarity of Beaverton.

I returned to unpacking and began my laundry while writing the blog. Breakfast was again, as it was while traveling, a nuts-and-sticks cereal from Costco with shelf-stable milk, cooled to make it more palatable. I like milk with my cereal, and yes, it warms quickly when poured over the flakes and crispies, but something seems off about pouring room-temperature milk onto my cereal (of course, the unused milk must go in the fridge). There was no fruit, and even the milk was from the trip. Shopping is moving up on the priority list.

I opened the windows to air out the house, and the sixty-degree temperatures felt pleasant. The blog, while not exciting, covered a day of driving and was still long, taking much of the morning to complete. The coughing and sneezing of Oregon returned as the desert of California had reduced the moss and mold that haunts me here in Beaverton. I mopped another floor and returned to my shower, which was not as dangerous as a tall tube and did not require stepping over. I enjoyed the familiar process and the warm water at predictable temperatures.

Dressed and laundry finishing up (I have not yet folded it and put it away, nor unloaded the dishwasher). I decided on lunch out. The other choice was to find lunch at various grocery stores and then, after returning home, assemble the elements into something to satisfy my hunger. Hmmm. Nope.

I headed to McMenimen’s Cornilus Pass Roadhouse and Imbre Hall for lunch. It was raining now, and I brought one of my new board games, Rebel Tide, with me, kept it dry, and read the rules while I had some local beer and salad. I had a Cobb salad with chicken. This is a new Civil War wargame that uses abstraction, card play, dice rolling for results (with sliding columns representing various factors), and resource management to recreate most stages of the Civil War. I have played other card-including games for Civil War battles, and thought them excellent. The card play allows for those inexplicable moments in the historical battles (“Lost orders” card, for example, preventing an enemy unit from attacking at a critical moment) that are really impossible to recreate in older all-unit and dice games. The Tide system is used in other wargames covering other periods; if I like it, I might have to get more. But at the moment, I am awash in new unplayed Civil War wargames and will stop purchasing more (though it is hard to resist Kickstarter).

I start towards home, but Bruce Catton’s book The Civil War is highly recommended, and I turn to Beaverton’s Powell’s store and see if they have a used copy for a few bucks. It is a pleasure to be back to driving in Beaverton, not LA or the nothingness of Northern/Central California. It is also pouring rain, a welcoming baptism (though only minutes before I had washed the grime off the EV in the car washer — I forgot to turn off the windshield washers, but no harm), and soon, slightly dampened, I returned to Powell’s and discovered that the Civil War section has moved to the American History section (someone must have noticed finally that there are mutiple civil wars — including the English one — and moved the books). On a near-bottom shelf was the cheaper trade paperback, just under $10, and that, along with some postcards, went home with me.

The exhaustion and mental tiredness came on strong. Also, when I return home, I find some sadness as Susie is not here. I find I cannot escape the sadness, but it seems to be fading, I think. Deborah detects it sometimes before I recognize it.

The Agency is my favorite binge at the moment. I like complex spy and space opera stories, and season two works for me. I especially like Jeffrey Wright’s character, and he is always an actor who dispels any disbelief and feels real to me. I just watched this for a while. I then got back in the Air VW the Gray, stopped by the 185th Corner Veggie place, and got a supply of veggies. There, a family was selling tamales, and I got a supply for $20 and had some for dinner. I continued to bingle The Agency and read also. My reading is Radiant Star by Ann Leckie, who returned to the space opera Imperial Radch universe with this standalone book.

I went to bed, which feels wonderful and so snuggly. Deciding my brain was mush, my feelings confused, and my body tired of it all, I slept. I did not wake until after sunrise. I was tired.

Thanks for reading.