The Stars and the Cookie Jar

Should you ever have the deep misfortune to be seated in an overnight car with forty boy scouts (pack of Cubs, she corrected herself drily) your one recourse is to charm the hell out of the conductor and get him to move your seat check. Otherwise, there is no hope. Fortunately, after the nth boy had fallen across and on top of me, the car attendant gave up and moved me and the rest of the paying non-scout-chaperoning adults to the aft car, generally the quietest of the train. I disdain sleepers, not only because they're hideously expensive, but because they're essentially your single coach seat pressed flat and trapped in a plastic box. They make me panic and think of coffins.

I did eat in the dining car. Dispatching a Cornish hen on a moving train is an exercise in delicacy-of-hand surely on a par with minor brain surgery. The iced tea was Tazo, proving that yes, we are taking over the world.

Speaking of the world -- well, Birmingham -- upon my return I have several Nasty Appointments. The left-arm edema is getting truly alarming, and besides, I wasn't this fatigued when I was pregnant. Surgery is, I think, on the distant (post-summer) horizon. However, coach class on a long-distance train easing down the swampier parts of the East Coast is no place for contemplating one's mortality.

So instead, I finished Tanith Lee's A Bed of Earth. Never was alt-history weirder (it features a flamingo golem -- a golem flamingo?). I wish I understood the ending better, and thought for clarity's sake it could have been longer; I started it in Providence and finished it in Delaware.

This vacation was brought to you by Duracell, Kate Beckinsale in leather, disposable cameras, Target, and iced grande soy caramel macchiatos. Yeah, about six of those. (Also, Grandmother Beryl now has an unfortunate thing for iced Passion Tea lemonades. Yup, taking over the world.)