Tequila the Wonder Drug

My neighborhood looked like this yesterday morning.

I've been dragging myself through life the past couple of weeks. Gray sky inside my head. Mail piling up. Tasks accumulating. The layer of dust over everything in my house growing thicker. A dead plant on top of the armoire in the front hallway. Tired. So fucking tired. 

It occurred to me that I'm drinking too much wine. There was a time when I was making a point of not drinking. After my mom's fall on Thanksgiving and the post-fall rules which dictated she could have a mere 2 ounces of martini every evening, I decided I'd top that by foregoing alcohol all together Monday through Thursday. Things were pretty wobbly in Pillville back then. I needed every bit of focus I could muster. Then things changed. And I needed every ounce of wine I could justify. I'm never sure how these transitions get made here in Pillville. I'm just the boss of everything here in Pillville, and I guess, being the boss of wine, I declared that I should have more.

Yeah, so, yesterday I cooked my weekly dinner for my L.A. friends. (Chicken and cauliflower curry, roasted carrots and cucumber salad.) 

                                                            This is the chicken and cauliflower curry.

We had tequila afterwards. And chess pie. And more tequila. And more pie. And cookies. And more tequila. Honest to god, I thought I'd killed myself. And then this morning I woke up feeling fabulous and felt fabulous all day. I actually did stuff. Rectified all of the above-mentioned problems, plus called doctor's offices for my mom and sat on hold and then explained that no, she doesn't owe them money, that they have to bill her supplementary insurance (I'd had a complete mental block against doing this until today.) I ran errands like a champ, filed all the papers that had been teetering on every surface in my room, did laundry, made up the beds for guests, caulked the crack around my fireplace molding,  texted the Someone (which I'd been dreading) and asked about a check I thought I had coming, and THEN a neighbor brought a mis-delivered piece of mail to my door which turned out to be a check from the Someone. 

I mean. Really. It's got to be the tequila. Right?

Wednesday Beach Report

I can't tell the difference sometimes between procrastination and dread. Is one the other's shadow? Are they conjoined twins?

It might just be the dullness of the  house after the departure of friends. The Santa Ana winds that blew in and then shifted. What is this sense that I'm forgetting something when I did finally manage to put my tax payments in the mail this morning? What is this dread?  I find myself in a procession of days when I cannot open my mailbox. Then when I do, I cannot deal with the mail. It sits unopened, scaring me, a troupe of ghouls behind the curtains.

I walked miles on the beach this morning. No dead sea lions, but I found these:

These creatures are by-the-wind sailors or Velella Velella--except they're not blue. I saw about a dozen of the clear ones like the photo above, and maybe a half dozen of the iridescent greenish black one as in the photo below. Wikipedia says they're usually blue. Remember THIS from last summer?

Now more dead ones. Just a few. But why aren't they blue? Why am I blue?

And I keep thinking of the ring-necked dove that I saw outside the window the night of the miraculous dinner. They are not native to California. I've never seen one here. I keep thinking I should have welcomed it. Put food out for it on the ground so it wouldn't have to battle the hoard of finches at the bird feeder. I haven't seen it again.

Maybe they're greenish black because of beach tar---but I don't think so.