In Like a Lion

It has been a long, long winter.  I know it wasn't just my winter, but I do take the cold personally.

I am at home at the beach.  I am happy at the beach.  I am better at the beach.  My hair is not only bigger, which feels right to this Oklahoma girl, but wavier, and somehow more golden even before the sun has touched it.

Sitting in the sun may be my last conscious vice, having long ago given up late nights, too many cocktails and scoundrels.  Something in me craves it, soul, psyche, some sort of cosmic battery, and I can feel each muscle begin to relax one by one as it absorbs the heat.

My friend, Nick Olsen, would shrug and think, "Duh.  Leo," at this gush and perhaps he's right.  You can all but hear my tail gently slapping the sand as I raise my face to the sun.

More lion than lioness as I have no drive to hunt, content to consume what others bring back.  (Perhaps lions would be the bloggers of the animal kingdom if they could type.)

At the beginning of the week I wondered if I needed the ocean; perhaps sun was sufficient.  But I found myself facing the surf.  Nick knows, Aquarius rising.

Each day I walked to town and knew that I prefer a village.  Here for coffee, there for bread, somewhere else for the paper.  In and back, hello and how are you.

If you were nearby, either towel or table, you would have heard me express my recently discovered distress at the thought of having a gluten allergy.  In the past week I became acutely aware that I could live on bread and butter.  And pasta.  And cookies.  "I," I declared, "am going to eat better bread.  From here on out I am going to eat wonderful bread for breakfast every day."  Mr. Blandings looked up over his bracket, "I asked Scott yesterday how he got into such good shape.  He gave up carbs."

"Really good bread and a square of dark chocolate."  His blue eyes held mine for a moment before he returned to his basketball picks, "That sounds like a good idea."

Who is he to argue with the king of beasts?

With a bit of editing, this was basically my walk to town for the past week.  The churches, particularly charming, had really great lighting.