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September 22, 2008 :: On the road. Again.

Whew. Now that's what I call a weekend. Two mornings up at 7. Two full days of art projects and long dog walks and yard work. Two amazing dinners that ended with Blake and I both asleep on the couch soon after. Something (Claritin overdose? First breath of fall weather? Spider bite?) got into Blake and I the last 48 hours and we busted ass. Weeds, cleared. Dead garden stuff, gone. Back patio plagued by neighbor's nefarious holly-tree berries, swept and ready for grill-outs. Dogs so exhausted from walking they passed out on the front porch without a peep.

And of top of that, we're walking again.

Yeah, remember this started as a walking blog, right?

We never actually stopped, really. Just slowed down a bit for the smoggy, sweltering summer (when I find it hard to breathe outside, and harder to reconcile coming to work so sweaty I need a change of clothes). Now, rejuvenated by fall and spurned on by a need for exercise, we're out and about every single day--on the train to work, on the street toward restaurant dinners, in the neighborhood wearing out Ollie. It also helps that you can't find gas in Georgia right now.

The truck's tank is on empty, and after two attempts to find a gas station that actually had fuel, we gave up. If one anywhere near our house doesn't come back into service soon, I can see myself hiking to work carrying a gas can. (Because somehow, the always 30-cents-a-gallon-more-than-anywhere-else Shell station near my office has fuel.) So, we walked to the Cabbagetown store last night in search of hot dog buns. Then to the train this morning. What we're going to do tomorrow when Blake needs to go perform at the local radio station, I don't know yet.

Regardless, there's a bit of a Mad Max vibe going on around, and it's got my sub-conscious spinning, apparently. Last night, I dreamt an epic storyline where Blake and I are forced to leave our little house and travel with a few belongings to live in some sub-terranean encampment in Grant Park with other city refugees. We had bunk-beds in a large underground dorm where we lived with a dozen others, and, at one point, while Blake was out looking for food, the government came and outsted all of us - told us to grab our stuff and get out, we couldn't stay. Because they were turning the land into live/work condos. We had no cell phones, so I could only leave word to Blake that I was relocating. I spent the rest of the dream looking for him. (Fortunately, I snuck back into our little hovel and found him later, and we decided to go back to our house and just tough it out.) Then, the alarm went off, and I woke up, rattled.

I'm still rattled. And pretty convinced that our country, if not our whole world, is on the edge of some real-life downhill slope.