resurrection

hellllllloooooooooooooo, dearest readers! (i hope that when you read that sentence you read it in the voice of dame edna, because that's how i thought it in my head when i was writing it. you did? oh, good.) if you ever want to feel loved, let me tell you something, you should try disappearing for a week. by wednesday, i had eight people call me to make sure that i was alright. you know, that i hadn't stepped in front of a subway car or finally jumped off the tallest building here at work. or, i guess, that i wasn't in the hospital with another crohn's flare.

i was somewhere much, much better than dead or in the hospital: i was in avalon, new jersey, at tom's family's summer house. first, let me describe the location: avalon is on the jersey shore, just north of stone harbor. it sits on a strip of land separated from the mainland by a bay, which tom's house overlooks. the back deck faces westward, which means that i got to see seven sunsets over the bay. yes, i am lucky.

i spent the last week:

1. riding around on tom's boat or being dragged behind tom's boat on either an innertube or (unsuccessfully) water skis
2. laying on the beach, next to the ocean
3. laying on the beach, next to the bay
4. laying on the deck, next to the bay
5. swimming (in my speedo, obviously)
6. reading middlesex, which is currently changing my life and made me cry twice on the train back to new york because of the following passage: Though he'd never been religious, he realized now that he'd always believed in the soul, in a force of personality that survived death. But as his mind continued to waver, to short-circuit, he finally arrived at the cold-eyed conclusion, so at odds with his youthful cheerfulness, that the brain was just an organ like any other and that when it failed he would be no more.
7. drinking whiskey sours, our "drink of the week," as tom called them.
8. sleeping ten hours a night, to the point that my fellow houseguests made fun of me and said that i had mono

and, after all of those eight things, i am four shades darker. i am rested. and, i suppose, i'm ready to be back at work. happy monday!