A happy Wednesday! Our last day spending time with David and Heather et al until we don't know when - pouring rain here, a change of pace for Phil and me both, hanging out in the city, going to coffee shops, etc.
But it's so good to see Phil again!
Monday night we camped out, not too far from the road, in the brush - a compromise between Phil and me for sure - he'd have gladly gone for miles, I was so exhausted I could barely make it the few hundred yards we went. At least it was dry that night - and there were some amazing fungi, their fruiting bodies further harbingers of fall, on our route - check out this amanita!
Beautiful but deadly.
Last night we stayed with a friend. It is so good to catch up with people, but I'm finding it's way harder to keep on top of myself, blood sugar, etc, when we're in this hanging-loose kind of mode, than it was at the writing workshop, with a schedule and with the imperative to be on form to absorb everything. There's the cumulative effect from tiredness from that too, I guess, and it's interesting to note that when I'm not doing significant amounts of creative writing in a day, my energy seems lower. (Kind of like how Phil feels out of sorts if he doesn't get a ton of exercise in of a day. Right now, he's donned raingear and his new running shoes, and has gone off on a hike/jog to pick up some huge pieces of discarded iron he noticed somewhere and bring them back to the truck!)
My experience this second round of chelating is that it makes me feel pretty crappy, especially by the third or fourth day. Cranky, skin crawling, guts unhappy, achey (muscles and bones), blood sugar even more delicate. Hopefully those are all symptoms of mercury etc exiting my body, and hopefully things will feel much better when this is over!
We've spent the last three mornings at Side Street Espresso - our friends' favorite coffee shop in downtown Anchorage. The owners are super friendly and know everyone by name. And they have bengal spice tea, my favorite! There's lots of really interesting artwork all over the walls, and apparently the display changes every month. And every single day there's a special coffee drink, named for a real or fictional personality, who is represented in a cartoon drawn by George (one of the owners) himself!
Here's a slightly goofy shot of David and Heather, showing some of the decor too.
Back by the bathroom is a little gallery of several previous cartoons.
Once a year, the artwork of the month in there is entirely composed of these cartoons, and people have the opportunity to buy them. Today, when we went in, the gentleman pictured in the cartoon du jour was sitting right there in the cafe!
