Okay. I’m going to give up the fiction I’ve been trying to perpetrate. I’m really in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Just kidding.
I suppose like most people, I find writing to be hard work, and being out of practice, on most days I don’t feel like doing a full blog post. What I’ve been doing instead is jotting down notes every day or two and then going back and fleshing the posts out later in the week, all the time pretending that I’m writing about a day on that day. The deception makes the process even more exhausting, so instead, I’m just going to come clean and say that from now own, most of what you’ll read is written as much as a week after the actual events. I’ll try to keep my verb tenses logical, though.
Last Friday was Mark’s first full day here. It was a cool day, but the sun was out, so we ventured a walk downtown. I showed him some of the sites I’ve already discovered, including Central Avenue Coffee where Matt and I had breakfast on our first full day in the city. We wandered down to the bay so I could show him the Dalí Museum, and since we were there, we decided to go through the museum. It was my second time in two weeks but his first. I hadn’t brought my camera along, but Mark took these photos on his iPhone.
It’s a truly beautiful building. Even if you’re not really in to Dalí’s surrealism (I’m not), it’s worth going through the collection. The interior is well done and very manageable in an hour or so, and—unbeknownst to me—Dalí did do Impressionist works early in his career, some of which are beautiful and included here.
On our way home (Mark is playfully aggravated that I’m calling my apartment “home”), we stopped at King’s Street Food Counter, the hot-dog and grilled-cheese joint where Matt and I ate two weeks before. A bit of work, a nap, and then we ended our day’s jaunts with a trip to St. Pete Beach for a nice walk along the Gulf of Mexico to watch the sun set.
We popped over to Dean and Diane’s to collect him for dinner at The Queen’s Head. (Diane had to work, but we hope she can join us when Mark returns in a couple weeks.) We couldn’t pass up a visit their three dogs and two cats before dinner, though. One of the cats is not in the picture below, but that’s Giada (Italian greyhound) to Mark’s right, Roxy (miniature dachshund) under his hand, a black cat whose name I forget on his lap, and Max (Australian shepherd) at his knee.
Dean has a friend in town who rescues Boston Terriers. Who knows; maybe I’ll be driving home with a new dog.
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Saturday was a little warmer than Friday, but unfortunately, it rained almost all day. We had a really nice lunch with Wally and Yoshi at Sweet Sage Cafe. The food was excellent, the service was friendly and fun and competent, and the company was exceptional. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised about the service and food. We met the owner and learned that he also owns Hyde Park in Columbus. He also gave Cameron Mitchell his first job (as a dishwasher), so I now see why service is such a significant feature of Mitchell’s restaurants.
Wally and I have very similar senses of humor, so we always have a great time together. I’m still figuring Yoshi out, but the more time I spend with him, the more I like him. Partly I’m curious about his Japanese culture and heritage, but I also think he’s funny and sweet. He still has some language issues with English (I hope that if you’re reading this, Yoshi, that saying so is not offensive) and will turn to Wally to feed him a word. Those moments and his accent make it a bit more of a challenge to get to know him. It was such a treat that they were down at the same time that Mark was here.
Yes, I am smiling in that picture.
Other than lunch, the weather kept us in all day, and though it could have been a bummer, we discovered the Netflix show, Grace and Frankie and had a great time cuddling up and watching TV. What a fun show (though admittedly, it’s not to everyone’s taste). We dines with Dan (Alex was called in to work and had to bail on us), James, and Tom at Fresco’s Waterfront Bistro later in the evening. I thought Mark and James had met during one of our previous visits to St. Petersburg, but they both felt that wasn’t true. They did both think, however, that they’d seen each other before—probably when James lived in Columbus. Zionks! It’s a mystery that will probably never be solved.
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Sunday was a more bittersweet day. The weather improved, but Mark flew back to Columbus in the morning. I did my laundry still enjoying the glow of his visit. Dan had asked at dinner the previous night if I wanted to go to the mall in Tampa with him because he needed to buy a new pair of pants (no such luck), so I went along. He’d lent me an Apple TV, and the trip would give me a chance to pick up an HDMI cable that I needed to make it work. Other than the excursion to Tampa, I read for a bit and napped and did one of the Dispatch crossword puzzles that Mark had saved for me.
I have been thinking a lot about being without Mark here in Florida. His absence is painful sometimes, but I think that a bit of absence is also good for me—and I hope it’s good for him, too. Don’t misunderstand; I don’t regret at all falling in love with Mark nearly 21 years ago or marrying him 2 years ago, and if I had it to do over again, I would. It’s just that relationships—like anything in life—require a certain amount of give and take, of good and bad, of gain and loss.
When I was in my early twenties, I pretty fully expected to be single all my life. I figured I’d have relationships here and there along the way but that none of them would be permanent, “capital-r” relationships. I can be pretty difficult to live with and sometimes and—in winter especially—even hard just to be around. I had come to terms with the idea of being a “confirmed bachelor.” Then I found myself declaring, “Someday I’m going to marry him.”
I continue to be surprised and grateful that I actually did marry Mark—or rather, that he married me. But among the things that I think our capital-r relationship has cost me is a sense of the new and an eagerness to explore. Mark and I have settled into a routine in Columbus. During the week, work until 5 or 6; get dinner; retreat to the basement to watch TV until 10 or 11; go to bed; repeat. On weekends, Cap City Diner for Friday dinner; Saturday lunch at Paul’s; run errands for a bit; find some way to kill the rest of the day; Sunday lunch at Arby’s or Panera; find some way to kill the rest of the day.
There are some parts of our routine that I love and that I wouldn’t give up, but there are others that I find constricting and that I want to shake up. What I’m finding in this trip is that I can shake some things up—that I still want to shake some things up. I can still explore and learn and have adventures. I realized back in 2011—though not in so coherent a manner—that my trip to Cambodia and Bhutan served much the same purpose. That trip was so physically grueling, however, that the wonderment was swamped by the effort just to move forward. I suppose I’m experiencing the same ennui that many—maybe most—couples who have been together for a long time experience, and it’s good to remind myself with trips like this one that Mark’s and my intellectual and spiritual lives don’t need to roll to a complete stop just because we’re older. We’ve talked many times, for example, about taking day trips on Saturdays to explore Ohio, but we’ve never gotten around to doing it. Maybe it’s time to get serious about that.
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With Mark back in Columbus, I jumped back into my Java class on Tuesday. The actual programming is not difficult, but I am still struggling with some of the logic. The exercises often give us tasks to complete but limit the kind of code we can use to accomplish them. More than once, I’ve said to myself, “I can do this, but I wouldn’t do it the way they’re forcing me to,” and a lot of that is because my logic is not as strong as it needs to be. I’m sure that once I get better at the logic my code will become less linear and, therefore, more efficient.
I finally met Jonathan—the man from whom I rented the apartment and his girlfriend, Natasha on Tuesday, too. They knocked on my door while I was finishing up my frozen-pizza dinner. We had a nice, brief chat (he delivered more toilet paper; what a way to meet someone for the first time!), and, after deciding I wasn’t a freak, invited me to join them, his mother, and his aunt at Cage Brewing for some foosball and a drink. I had a nice time talking with Natasha, Janey (Jonathan’s mother and, I think, the owner of my apartment), and Nan (Janey’s sister). After an hour or so, I walked the two blocks back home and started watching Farscape on Netflix. It’s not very good, but I’m not so put off by it that I’ll stop watching. Yet.
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Having some downtime this week allowed me to take a Wednesday-afternoon trip to Northshore Park, which is immediately north of downtown St. Petersburg in the Old Northeast area. The park looks out on the bay, and Tampa is in the distance. I have always liked the photographic contrast of smoke from stacks and clouds. Someday, I’ll get a shot of them together that adequately captures the contrast. Apparently not today, though. This is okay, but it’s not quite coming together, and the haze is distracting. It needs additional colors or something.
Last night, Natasha recommended the park as a good running location, and indeed, she is right. Though I have to drive to the park, it does have a long-enough running trail, and it’s a beautiful, tranquil place. I did not, however, run there this morning because it was too cold to be running along the bay. Thus, the trip over to check the place out and get some photos.
I have lots of pictures of birds in the shallows, but most are only mediocre. Not on my game today, I guess. This is one of the better. I like the shadow and ripples, but the color is flat, and it’s a tad out of focus.
I was walking past a planting bed and came on another plant that I can’t (yet) identify. This is easily the creepiest seed pod that I’ve ever seen. It has spilled about three-quarters of it’s seeds, but when it was full, it was probably about 9 to 12 inches tall. The bed was filled with only these plants, and the pods and berries are scattered throughout. It’s the Pod People! Aargh!
I walked a fairly long way along Beach Drive and Coffee Pot Boulevard, which are separated from the bay on the east by the seawall. This is just one of many lovely, LOVELY homes in the area. I had my zoom lens on, so I couldn’t get most of them in a decent shot. Had I won that big lottery, I’d be buying a place along here!
And then there was this gal (I’m assuming it was a female, but I really don’t know for sure), who was the most fearless bird I’ve ever seen. I took several shots of her when she was standing in the shallows eating, and then she flew up and landed on the sea wall directly in front of me. It’s like she was posing; I was literally less than six feet from her, but she never showed any impetus to fly away.
Most of the shots I took of this heron need to be recropped (as I did here) because I was shooting fast fearing that she would fly. I also tend to be self-conscious when taking pictures and don’t linger long in one place because I feel like people are staring at me.