Saturday
This entry won't be posted until Monday morning, when the business center re-opens. I could dial up from the room, as I did in November 2004, but it's awfully expensive and even more tedious: wonderful as the room is, it doesn't have a desk, and in order to hook up to power and phone (I no longer bother with the battery), I have to work at one end of the high bed, cords stretched to the max while I crouch over the sluggish page loads. Hey, I'm on vacation! And it's the weekend! (I haven't decided what to do about tomorrow's book review Book Review.) Message to RJK: loosen up!
The trip to Dorado was insufficiently uneventful. Not long after we left the suburbs of San Juan behind us, I began to feel the effects of having guzzled too much ice-water in the morning. There was a smash-up on the local road leading from Highway 22 to Dorado, but traffic wasn't too backed-up, and I thought I'd be able to manage until we got to Dorado Beach, but then the driver took a shortcut that turned out not to be a shortcut. The moment we U-turned, on the unpaved, potholed road, bladder pressure just about doubled. The driver thought that it was all very funny, for some reason. Once we regained the paved road, I noticed, in my agony, a thick hedge with regular gaps for power poles. "Momentito!" I gasped. Getting the picture, the driver stopped, and presently I was equally relieved by the discretion of the my situation and by what it made possible.
Once again, we have a lovely room on the ground floor, so that a walk of thirty feet takes us to some steps to the beach. Although there is a strip of sand, the beach is suitable for wading, not swimming, which suits us just fine. How I used to love to swim! I could hardly see a body of water without throwing myself into it. (I swam across St Mary's Lake, at Notre Dame, one night in the very early spring. It was one of those stunts that, as a parent, you don't want to know about.) I still love the water and need to live near it. But I've lost the urge to plunge. I'd much rather sit here on the shaded patio, looking out over the surf when I'm not looking at the screen, writing about whatnot.
Two days ago at this time, I had just won permission from Kathleen to stay home, and to avoid the disruption of travel (not to mention the horror of flying). But then Kathleen said something about what was on her mind (unrelated to my going or not) that within an hour made me change mine. I wanted to stay home so badly that my self-respect still prevents me from acknowledging, or even admitting to myself, that I'm glad for my own sake (as distinct from Kathleen's) that I came. I can go no further just yet than saying that it's very nice to be here. Very nice indeed.
