Despite my best intentions, I hovered over election returns until so late that I ache this morning.  I find myself grateful for escaping the crimson tide that deluged my Show-Me State.  But I digress.  It’s Wednesday, I’m Palo-Alto-bound, and thinking of the ocean.

Sunday screeched into the heels of Monday, which slipped its arm around Tuesday and faded into the grimy night.  I walk around the house with my mug of warmed coffee, ruminating over whether to buy a few groceries en route to South Bay, or pack a cooler.  After my 90-day appointment at Stanford, I’m escaping to a night at Pigeon Point.  I feel reckless and energized, for no apparent reason other than Wednesday.

I think the man on the sidewalk grinning just before the piano hit must have felt as I do today.  I’ve always suspected that I have a touch of mania.  I’m not giddy, precisely; just unreasonably hopeful.  I dwell in a state of perpetual acceptance of doom most of the time, despite whatever enthusiasm you might infer from my smile.  I like the world but don’t expect too much of it.  I have a sixty-three-year record of disappointment, after all.

But the little electric heater hums.  The sun shines.  I can’t see the river from this vantage point, but I sense her sleepy sojourn around the contours of Andrus Island.  Constancy soothes me.  Tonight I will wrap myself in a shawl and curl in an old wooden chair, gazing at the sea.

I have no reason for optimism other than a boundless suspicion that possibilities still exist.

It’s the seventh day of the fifty-ninth month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.