There’s something fishy about that pun.

J came home. We ate lunch. I had a nice vegetable omelette at First Watch. Then I bought fresh corn and a head of cabbage at Publix. I’m making cole slaw to go with the slow cooker bbq tonight. I also decided roasted corn was a better choice than corn bread for dinner, given I had grits with my omelette,

I’m doing more trainspotting and wishing my allergies would go away. I don’t remember them to be this bad.

Life is good, apart from feeling miserable.

Sitting here, in my chair, sort of semi-awake, watching a Russian language show on YouTube. I understand almost nothing. I don’t really care. The images in my head are of sex. Nothing new there. I think of pleasure, power, intimacy, love in kind of an amorphous swirl.

No word from J on when her work is over for the day.

There is poison ivy growing in my backyard where I want ivy to grow. There is also an herbicide purchase in my future.

I feel allergies coming back. It is Spring, after all. There is only so much I can take, before I go back to bed. The discomfort tires me.

On YouTube, Oksana, the Russian Brassiere Maven, is holding forth on cups, straps, bands, what have you. She is a Master of the Science of Bra Fitting.

I suppose I should switch over to Daffy Duck, but no, this unintelligible language is so beautiful to listen to. Maybe Adam and Eve spoke Russian in the Garden of Eden. Who is to say they didn’t? I know, some smartypants anthropologist, but what the Hell.

Basketball. The University of Virginia won the NCAA 2018-2019 Men’s Championship. Exciting? Not really. It’s OK though. About as meaningful as The Miss America Pageant, but it sounds important. Maybe they should merge the two events, have the players play ball in evening gowns.

I switched over to trainspotting, just as the lawn mowing guys started outside my house. Feel sleepy. And hungry. And lonely.

Where is my wife when I need her?

I just made a basic mistake all husbands make. I told my wife I would be coming straight home, then proceeded to stop along the way. I stopped off at the store to get something for tomorrow night’s dinner, plus strawberries, whole bean coffee and toilet bowl cleaner.

Then I had to decide between the roast beef or the pork shoulder, which brand of coffee to buy and lastly, how I would make this bowl cleaner purchase, I got excited when I tbought I could get something free if I bought two. So I rushed to the front of the store to check out the flyer that had the coupon. There I discovered the item I actually wanted was excluded in the offer. At that moment I saw that getting something “free” meant spending money on items I did not really need in the first place.

Meanwhile, my wife is wondering where in Heaven’s name I was and that the “be right home” statement was just so much hot air.

Bottom line to husbands, spouses, and members of long term dyads. Don’t do this..

It is almost 5:30. I have been home about 14 hours. I’m sitting in my chair, waiting for the Northbound Silver Meteor #98 to go through Ashland. I hear the train horn now, see the distant light on the screen. Cars and trucks are moving about the picture as Ashland stirs. The train is actually about an hour late. Here it comes now. The gates go down.  The interior lights of the train are off, except for the dining car.

J is getting ready for work. I will go back to sleep when she leaves.

We are in Macon, Georgia. I am eating a banana nut muffin, part of the breakfast that comes with the room at the Fairfield Inn by Marriott. We have one more night on the road. We could make Richmond in one day, only an eight hour drive but J says no. She is currently sleeping. It is 10 AM.

So much of America looks the same as every other part. That is all I am going to say.

I am in The Villages, Florida for the funeral of J’s brother. He died 29 March of complications of ALS. We spent the week driving down here. I am desperate to go home. I’ve been having an internal debate about the virtues and shortcomings of The Villages. I will say more later. Right now I am exhausted. I want to be home.

But we have the funeral and the drive home. I have been told we will spend two days driving back, through Atlanta, then Charlotte.

Let this end.

I don’t travel well. After Savannah, we drove down to St Augustine, Florida. It is a nice town, as tourist towns go. We ate at a seafood place last night called O. C. White Seafood. We had a nice meal at a fair price. I had Wahoo, J had shrimp in a cream sauce over linguini. The weather is still cool, a real blessing. The leaves are out down South, a couple of weeks ahead of Richmond

Sixty or so years ago, before Disney dominated Florida tourism, there were places like Cypress Gardens with water ski-ing shows and the glass bottom boat tours. There were alligator themed attractions and the Bok Bell Tower. We never went. But kitsch reigned. Now it is a different kitsch; consider Machine Gun World or Indoor Skydiving.

Tourists are different, I suppose. Last night at dinner a lesbian couple with their two children sat near us. They didn’t seem that much different from any other family, quite frankly. The tourists wear their tee-shirts and cargo shorts. Some wear hijabs. Most are obese.

Tourism is about convincing people to stay a while and spend some money. It started on a large scale at the turn of the Twentieth Century when large numbers of people began to have money to travel and experience something new, if only a Ferris Wheel at Coney Island.

When I began, I said I didn’t travel well. My life has structure built into it, swimming pools, grocery stores, a kitchen. When I am away from that structure, I am at loose ends. Even when I write this blog, I feel I am under different conditions, but the smartphone I use is the same. The stories I write are on hold. My imagination needs a space to, well, imagine.

Today involves driving to The Villages. Tomorrow is the funeral. Saturday and Sunday are for the drive home.

But right now, at 8:00 AM, I need more sleep.