Day 12 Part 1 Places 25-26 : Devon Hills & Taunton

NOTE: this is a re-publish as I do a little editing...

"One effect that still lingered, though, was [Arthur's] joy at being back. Now that the Earth’s atmosphere had closed over his head for good, he thought wrongly, everything within it gave him extraordinary pleasure...There was even, he noticed, a faint rainbow glistening over the Devon hills. He enjoyed that, too."

These may not be Arthur's Devon Hills, but the hills I saw from the train are going to be counted as Place 25. I'm sure the Devon hills were in there somewhere; in Somerset, or the West Country...my UK geography is rubbish. And there's a white horse on these, which is just cool!

When one is in love with the world, it is easy to be in love, period. And I'm a sucker for love stories. Romance. A bit of a challenge to overcome. Followed by bliss:

"...He was wrong in thinking that the atmosphere of the Earth had closed finally and forever above his head. He was wrong to think that it would ever be possible to put behind him the tangled web of irresolutions into which his galactic travels had dragged him. He was wrong to think he could now forget that the big, hard, oily, dirty, rainbow- hung Earth on which he lived was a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot lost in the unimaginable infinity of the Universe. He drove on, humming, being wrong about all these things. The reason he was wrong was standing by the slip road under a small umbrella."

Arthur and Fenchurch "meet" (she is unconscious at the time) as Arthur is hitchhiking home to the West Country, after hitchhiking back to a not-demolished Earth. And then, after obsessing about her, Arthur sees Fenchurch by the side of the road, hitchhiking back to London, and picks her up.

All the hitchhiking happenings probably imply that overall, lots of both good and bad things happened to Douglas Adams - and then Arthur Dent - while moving from one place to another, a passive passenger, carried along for a short while, based on wherever someone else wants to go.

That's all well and good for them, but I hate the sensation of submitting to the whim of the universe. The loss of control, the mandatory flexibility, the roll with the punches...nope, I want to know where I'm going, why I'm headed there, how long it will take, and if possible, who I'll meet that will make the whole thing worthwhile. Or indeed whether HOW I will get there will make it worthwhile:

For example in first class, in my own private coach, like the queen...except wearing a tiara. As you do.

Sometimes that's not possible. But it is fantastic when it happens.

As I write this I am on a train to Place 26: Taunton, which is a critical place in So Long and Thanks For All the Fish:

"“I’d like to go to Taunton,” [Fenchurch] said, “please. If that’s all right. It’s not far. You can drop me at— ”“You live in Taunton?” [Arthur] said, hoping that he’d managed to sound merely curious rather than ecstatic. Taunton was wonderfully close to him. He could … 

“No, London,” she said, “there’s a train in just under an hour.”

Now I'm here, though my train in the other direction, to Bridgewater, didn't leave me time to find a pub:

Tomorrow I will catch Fenchurch's train back to London. Perhaps I will try to find a grubby pub near the station for a cloudy local cider, and a dry sandwich, for the sin of selfishness. Which isn't all that terrible a sin, but does feel like one, when you are really in love with your spouse, feel they make everything better, and yet you decide that you must go off and do fun things completely without them.

"There is, for some reason, something especially grim about pubs near stations, a very particular kind of grubbiness, a special kind of pallor to the pork pies.

Worse than the pork pies, though, are the sandwiches. There is a feeling which persists in England that making a sandwich interesting, attractive, or in any way pleasant to eat is something sinful that only foreigners do.

It is by eating sandwiches in pubs at Saturday lunchtime that the British seek to atone for whatever their national sins have been. They’re not altogether clear what those sins are, and don’t want to know either. Sins are not the sort of things one wants to know about. But whatever sins there are are amply atoned for by the sandwiches they make themselves eat."

Sometimes, life takes a little while to sink in.

My husband has been back to working each day, in an office, outside our home, for over a year and a half. It sucks.

See, when we relocated to glorious Santa Barbara five years ago, we both worked from home. We were office mates, lunch buddies, and spent every day together. For three years. It was AWESOME.

But I was worried I wouldn't meet new people, or make any friends, so I joined Meetup.com, and went out to be social most evenings. Now my schedule generally follows that initial pattern. Most evenings I have extra-curriculars...and I hate it. I have turned Me into a flake, because I schedule and then don't go to things. I make excuses about being tired, needing to stay home and cook dinner, or blame it on the dog (who clearly needs a walk with BOTH me and my husband).

But that's not the real story. Thanks to my dreaming mind, I finally understand that I'm extremely resentful of my own tendency to schedule being away from home most evenings.

Like most married people who work, evenings are now the prime hubby-time. We have to talk, laugh, play games, and get things done during evenings and weekends. And if I'm not home, I get no time with him. And I feel disconnected and sad.

So if I have a New Year's Resolution, it is to drag my husband out with me every night.

Psych! No, that's not it. It is actually to try to find balance between home-social and world-social.

As an extrovert, I get plenty of "alone time" (WTF is that?!?) all day as I work alone. But my husband still needs his alone-time on evenings and weekends, and sometimes we disagree about how much he needs. Well. Sometimes how much he needs feels personal, though it isn't. Working on that too, always and forever. 

So I have to maintain some level of world-social, because that translates to his alone-time. And, of course, I don't want to blow off all of the cool friends I have made, give up the exciting groups I'm in, and miss out on the joyful adventures I have become accustomed to.

What's the answer? 

It's going to blow your mind.

Meal Planning.

Seriously. Yup.

Wait, what does the fact that I don't like anything about cooking have to do with this?

Not liking cooking, I suck at it. Prep, doing, clean up, every part of cooking is awful...except the eating. 

Going out in the evenings often involves yummy dinners out. But eating out contributes to less healthy food, portion challenges, and weight gain. As does being sad and eating emotions.

So sitting down each week to plan meals and inform the grocery-shopper (hubby) what is needed, is also a perfect time to plan how many nights will be in versus out.  Deciding who cooks what when, also informs whether ins and outs, social and solo, activity and rest are in balance. 

So there it is: my case for how and why meal planning is the 2016 resolution that will help me put my social calendar back in balance.

Wish me luck!