Back From Dixie

Oh, the glorious South: cheap gas ($3.19), cheap cigarettes (Marlboro lights, $2.98 a pack), cheap sales tax (in relation to Cleveland), cheap seafood ($16 for nine scallops and the most beautiful grouper you've ever seen). It's hard to be back here in the cold, cruel North, where no one wants to bring me a pulled pork sandwich or call me sweetie as they get me another beer.

I spent a week falling asleep to the sound of the ocean and waking up at 7 in a sun-soaked bedroom. (The first morning at the condo I even got up to watch the sunrise, because how the hell could you not want to see the sunrise from your private balcony overlooking the beach?) At home I get up at 9, already irritated because I am so late, and I go to bed at 1 a.m. knowing I won't get enough sleep. On vacation we woke up at 7 and were dog tired by 11 p.m. because we spent all day playing in the water or walking the beach or climbing lighthouse stairs. We ate the freshest seafood and drank locally brewed beer and breathed salt air all day, and slept like babies all night. And then the next day we did it again.

Last night I got home around midnight and everything was the way I left it, which is what usually happens on vacation: life goes on without you, and most of it hardly notices you are gone. The thing about coming back this time is that I think I found something important while I was away. I checked my e-mail maybe twice, and only for work; I did not read a blog post or watch a single depressing news story or write for my own website because I was too busy finding that thing. I don't know that I can explain it except to say that there are some experiences you can only have by removing yourself from daily life and being in the presence of one particular person. And when you get to the end of the week and you still want to be with that person, your head kind of explodes but in a nice way.

Also, I miss crab cakes.