Last week of Sabbatical

This is my last week of sabbatical, but I’m philosophical about it, and almost ready to go back to work. It’s been an interesting week—my friend R, a professional house painter, is painting my dining room and kitchen, so the rest of my 1200 square ft. house is crammed with all the contents of the two rooms. I tend to like my environment neat, so it’s an exercise in living with controlled chaos.

The musical I was dialect coaching, “Oliver!” opened last Friday, so I’m finished with rehearsals for a little while. I went back to the gym and started working with a personal trainer; a situation I hope will result in many hi-larious anecdotes to put on this blog.

Last week I decided to take my bike down the hill from the Heights through Little Italy, and Rockefeller Park to visit Lake Erie. It was one of those gorgeous Cleveland summer days that I long for all year long—sunny, clear blue sky, a very temperate 70 degrees.

I got to Gordon Park on the lake (which is really a boat ramp and a long break wall from which people fish all day) and found myself a nice spot on the breakwall in the sun, which I enjoyed for about an hour until a young couple came up behind me. I thought, “oh what a nice young pair out to enjoy the lake,” until I saw them take out what looked like a large cigar and begin passing it between the two of them. A friend more savvy in drug culture told me it was a “blunt,” a mixture of marijuana and tobacco packed into a cigar casing. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew it was drug use, so I left my cozy spot and got on my bike for home. Which was when I discovered that my back tire was completely flattened. Knowing he was in my home and had a vehicle suitable for carrying bikes, I called R to come and get me. While waiting, I took this photo to commemorate the event.


Last weekend D came to visit from Chicago, but it was a comedy of errors from the beginning. Due to Chicago traffic and some kind of hazardous spill on the Indiana toll way, the normally seven-hour trip from Chicago turned into 13. Somewhere around four AM I woke up and realized he hadn’t arrived yet, so I called his cell and he was in Cleveland, having breakfast at the Severance I-Hop. He got about three hours of sleep before he woke up and made two cakes for his parents, one for mother’s day (carrot) and one for father’s day (chocolate). Once the cakes were out of the oven, we went to the lake, where I intended to fly my kite, but wound up trying to detangle kite string the entire afternoon. I felt like Charlie Brown.

We had dinner with one of his friends at a place called Danny Boy’s. D joked that we were going to eat fried bread and cheese, but I had no sufficient imagination for what was in my future. Upon arrival at Danny Boys, we were served a gi-gantic plate of pizza bread sticks and spaghetti sauce. I ordered a side salad and an appetizer-sized pizza. What arrived was a dinner plate-sized iceberg salad served with two rolls, and a 14” pizza, bigger than my head. Bread was also served with the entreés. All I could think was “they would never eat this in France.” I ate about a quarter of the salad and two slices of pizza and took the rest home.

After dinner D and I drove down to the Cuyahoga Valley/Cuyahoga River/Erie Canal tow path, hoping for a 12 mile round trip night hike. As I was arranging my stuff in my daypack and locking my purse in my trunk, I realized I had locked the wrong set of keys in the car, and that my car keys were in the trunk. Of course, since I’m unusually security conscious, I had previously locked the driver’s side lever to open the trunk AND the back seat access to the trunk, and having no keys, could use neither to get my car keys. We wound up calling D’s septuagenarian father to come get us. We hiked a little while waiting the 40 minutes for him to arrive. Then 40 harrowing minutes of D's father driving back to Cleveland. 40 minutes in D’s car back to my car. 40 minutes caravaning back to my house. Exhausted, we took a blanket and a bottle of Presecco out to my front yard for an urban nightcap, but found the sprinkler system flooding the grass. We finally sat in my backyard under the orange sodium vapor lights and toasted to “making our own party.”

R and I have been having a good time chatting and listening to NPR while he paints my kitchen cabinets a lucious shade of butter yellow. The walls are going to be rust. I went to Crate and Barrel today and -- who knew?-- rust and yellow are "in" this season. I'm suddenly chic. Bien sur!