She's Writing a Novel

My last vacation was circa 2004. I don't even know the last time the Russian lover took a leave-town-for-pleasure-rather-than-business trip.

What have I done with all my paid time off? A day off here, a day off there. A shopping day, a visit with mom and dad, a day dedicated to checking a few things off the long-term to-do list. But in almost three years, I haven't taken off consecutive days from work, and I certainly haven't traveled anywhere for the purpose of escaping my life and relaxing.

Well, that will change in a few weeks when I drag the Russian lover away for a few very needed days of being somewhere else. I just confirmed reservations for a 4-night stay here, and not even the apocolypse will stop us from taking this trip.

When I booked the room, I was very particular about which room we wanted. The innkeeper was very accomodating, but suggested we might instead be interested in another room which had a private terrace. I declined politely, and continued to insist we were really only interested in the one room, a room with a large, rustic four-post beam bed. She soon realized that I knew exactly what I wanted, and then perhaps she also intuited exactly why I wanted what I wanted, because after a slight pause she said "yes, that room has a very...special..bed."

Indeed it does. And if you can't figure out why, I'm sorry to tell you that you have no sexual imagination and have left only disappointed lovers in your wake.

Anyway, it's not just the thought of a four-post bed that I'm excited about. This is the type of autumn getaway I've always daydreamed about: the coast of Maine, a small town, a cozy inn with a charming innkeeper, a room with a wood-burning fireplace and two-person jacuzzi bathtub...if it sounds perfect, that's because it is.

There are a lot of things I hope don't go wrong with my car when I'm on the road. I hope a tire doesn't blow. I hope the brakes don't fail. I hope the engine doesn't catch fire.

But apparently, my worries don't cover the spectrum. Because the one thing it never occurred to me to worry about going wrong on the road is the one thing that did go wrong.

I was driving on I-76 between Philadelphia and King of Prussia, a stretch of road which has been the last leg on the road of life for many people. It's not a place where you want things to go wrong with your car.

It's also not the road you really want to find yourself driving along in a torrential downpour. But that is exactly where I found myself the other day. So, I dealt with it. I slowed waaaay down, along with the other motorists. I paid extra attention, and cranked up the speed of the windshield wipers. And it wasn't all so bad, really. I emerged on the other side of the storm, and was driving happily to the steady swish-swish, swish-swish of the wipers when the swish-swish, swish-swish suddenly became a swish-swish, swish- .

I stared at my windshield in confusion. The wipers had just....stopped. Mid-wipe. They hadn't even managed to drag themselves back to their nest in the slow agony of death. They dropped dead smack-dab center of my field of vision, as if their malicious last wish was not only to abandon their duty to wrangle visibility from hostile precipitation, but to become the very objects of visual obscuration themselves.

Mutinous swabbers!

But after the shock of a heretofore unfathomable betrayal passed, the panic set in. Because the sky had not cleared, and the road was still wet, and I was still ten minutes from my destination.

But I managed to get there in one piece, even if that piece was quivering and driving 30mph. And the wipers? Have been laid to rest. But not before another exciting incident involving a previously clear sky, a gradual increase of lightening on the horizon, and a terse race home.

(The storm won.)

We're back from Maine.

It was too wonderful; it's hard to be back. The inn was perfect: the accomodations cozy and spotless, the innkeeper friendly and helpful, the coffee more than passable. We spent the days wandering towns and beaches and lobstering villages and our evenings tucked inside our room with a fire. We'd take a bottle of wine and rest our wind-whipped bodies in the bath before falling asleep under the down comforters. Most nights we fell asleep without meaning to; the fresh air overwhelming us and the long walks tiring us more than we thought. We slept off the stress and exhaustion of the past few weeks, years. We slept dreamlessly.

We made it a vacation in the true sense: we did very little and accomplished nothing. For several days we simply...exsisted. We ate, we walked, we slept. We talked, we were silent. We ignored the lives that waited for us upon our return. It was the first time in a long time where I felt that I was living in the present, that I was seeing the world around me and not simply muddling through it. The surroundings were new and beautiful and, to us, startling:

The silence and the darkness of night - no city lights, only dim street lamps and the milky way. No drunken revelers stumbling by our bedroom window at 1 am, no traffic.

And the town...I'd forgotten that walking down a street could be a peaceful, pleasant experience. There were no harassing bums demanding money and cursing at us, no pretentious fashionistas with small anxious dogs yapping at us, no taxis trying to run us down. Just people here and there...the kind of people you would be tempted to refer to as "folk."

Now I'm back in Philadelphia, and it's a bit like coming home to an ugly nagging wife after a tryst with a kind and beautiful lover.

The coffee is better and sure, there is more to do. But right now I'm still in the mode where I want to be happy being instead of busy doing. Vacation has a way of highlighting just how much of life is running in circles and making you wonder, if that's the case, why you don't choose better scenery.

It is such a simple thing. It's so..ordinary, and maybe that's why I can't find it. But this is what I want, Philadelphia. Ready?

I want a goddamn vanilla cupcake slatherered in vanilla frosting with, at most, a mere dusting of rainbow sprinkles. WHY IS THIS SO HARD FOR YOU???

I can find poundcake cupcakes with raspberry buttercream frosting, chocolate cupcakes with cherry frosting, lemon cupcakes with lemon frosting. There are raspberry cupcakes with vanilla frosting, and vanilla cupcakes with hazlenut frosting and spice cakes with cinnamon frosting. But vanilla on vanilla? Not to be found. And I've looked: I've searched every bakery, every coffeeshop, every quaint little cafe.

What's happening to the classics? It's like those dark years when Gap decided to get all weird and trendy, and suddenly you couldn't find something basic like a black turtleneck at the Gap. It was awful for the broke minimalist dressers of the world. I can't afford Jil Sander, ok? NOW MAKE ME A PLAIN COTTON TURTLENECK!

It's not even reinventing the wheel. It's like trying to improve on the wheel. Like they're going to find something rounder than a circle if they keep bending things long enough. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP IT.

I guess my too-simple taste is just not jiving with this current zeitgeist. I want vanilla, basic black, a straight hem. I want monochromatic. I want parallel. I want things without detail or garnish or ornament or exotic flavors. Maybe I am trying to comfort my cluttered mind. Maybe I am reacting to the volatility of a multi-cultural world. Fine, we live in a confusing mosaic of cultures. I DON'T WANT A MULTI-CULTURAL CUPCAKE.

DAMN IT.