Easing Into the New Normal

Only in hindsight can you look back and see with clarity.

My week at the beach had to work out the way it did in order to get me to the next stage of, what, life? acceptance? love? contentment?

Today was challenging. It was challenging settling back into a routine, challenging addressing deadlines, challenging putting on closed-toe shoes. My brain was not yet ready to color inside the lines. I had to work to stay focused after a week following any tangent that crossed my path and basically following the pleasure principle wherever it led.

P.S. I could so live that way all the time.

But I persevered and things got accomplished, both work and around the house. But if we're going to be honest here, I made it through Monday by the skin of my teeth. Honestly, I can't recall the last time that beach week threw me for such a loop.

Still, I got it together enough to hang out with a friend tonight and even revisit my favorite enclosed garden in Richmond at Sang Jun Thai, which we long-timers still think of as Beauregard's Thai Room. New to me was their outdoor bar (although unoccupied tonight), an odd pastiche of the Flintstones and tacky gold statuary that adds a whole new vibe to the place.

Service was a comedy of errors - they didn't have the wine we ordered, nor the second bottle, then they brought one glass instead of a bottle and then...well, you get the idea - but the food was perfectly okay and that patio is divine on a dry and merely warm summer night like tonight.

I even used the burbling fountain in the pond next to us as as pale substitute for the ocean I'm still missing.

Barely into our conversation, my friend was inquiring about the feet next to mine in a photo I posted on Facebook to kick off vacation. Clearly, the feet were not familiar to him and inquiring minds wanted to know.

Afterward, sitting outside at Saison Market with the usual assortment of crazies ("I love what you said about Jimmy Buffet," a dyed blond stranger told my friend after he openly mocked the Margaritaville man), we drank sparkling Riesling and talked about all the innocuous subjects friends discuss after it's been a couple of weeks and one person has been away on vacation.

I'm just glad it was me who was off lazing on the beach and luxuriating in whatever this next stage is so I could come back as better friend material.

Everything happens for a reason, no?