Though I’m proud of myself this week and of what I’ve done, it was also an exquisitely stressful,...

Though I’m proud of myself this week and of what I’ve done, it was also an exquisitely stressful, sleepless one.  I was in a daze the whole time, and I felt like I was constantly relying on my body’s last stores of energy, or if you prefer: running out of gas, burning the candle at both ends.  You know the feeling, when you’re lifting weights, of the rep right before the very last one your body is physically capable of completing?  That feeling, but about my psychic energy, the whole week long.  At night, I was only able to recover enough energy to fill up the emergency tanks again, never able to really replenish.  Like my state California, so suffering from drought that even a thunderstorm can’t save it.  

So today, my only mission was to recharge my batteries.  I drove to the San Gabriel Valley and ate a dim sum breakfast with two absurdly fantastic women.  Then we walked around in a nearby Chinese (Cantonese?) grocery store for more than an hour, slowly filling our cart.  They had fat, fresh cherries for under $2 per pound (at Whole Foods it’s $7.99 a pound I think), gallon bottles of my favorite cheap sake, giant bunches of chinese scallions, fresh tofu made right in the store (fresh soy milk too, some bottles in the fridge still hot because it had just been cooked, but I didn’t buy any), cans of cooked quail eggs in water (I had to try them), and fresh, squishy rice paper.  

I thought about how wonderful it is to have found a friend who likes to grocery shop as much as I do, who likes to buy bags of fruit and little trinkets, and stare for half a minute at the live crawfish writhing in their box.

Sara and I had a can of beer in a suburban park we felt like trespassers in, then we drove back to the city, she went to work.  Now, I’m in my big red arm chair, eating the cherries and reading The Argonauts.  Outside my window, someone is playing the Wiz Khalifa Furious 7 song “See You Again” and it’s just the right volume level for me to hear but not be bothered by.