The summer solstice can be a fuddling time, what with the veil between the worlds and all.  It’s really mid-summer, you know, not the beginning. But I don’t need to rock on that horse for this post. Much better to just relate the adventures of the past few days.

My birthday is solstice adjacent, which puts me in the solstice zone. It’s that period when the days in the Pacific Northwest are so long that it stays light until 10:00 PM.  Theoretically I love it but it messes with my sleep.

This year the zonal days gave me additional hours to obsess about what is happening on our southern border.  I had been living at a low news level since my week on Whidbey Island at the beginning of June. On the island I watched one hour (Ari Melber, he’s from Seattle) of MSNBC a day and came home determined to adhere to that practice.

I was so determined that I even told my neighbor Bill that one hour was the new normal.

“Uh huh,” he said.

Bill’s news consumption consists of the New York Sunday Times.

Wednesday, the longest day in the year but one, I made myself hoarse screaming at some poor staffer in Patty Murray’s office. The news footage of migrant children being smuggled to some jail in New York City under cover of night and with black blankets over their heads had just come out. I knew that if they were sending children to New York, they must be sending them to other states. I demanded to know where they were in Seattle –the exact street address, mind you. I wanted names of contact people and exact hours when I could personally go down there to hold them and listen to their fears and try to comfort them.

Bill came over as I was hanging up from this highly unsuccessful call. My cheeks were wet, spit was jumping from my mouth and my eyes were probably spinning around in my head.

“Do you know what they –babies –Have you heard about—Fuck trump–nursing –a three month old—all over the country  .  .  .”

“How many hours of news have you watched today?” he asked.

“You’re right,” I said. I snorted snot back into my nose and turned off the TV. The images stayed on the computer. I closed the computer.

Bill returned a lovely wooden cookbook holder that I had purchased for two dollars, not realizing that the reason it had been marked down from $35 was because the ledge at the bottom that actually makes it a book holder was missing. He took it to his shop, added the ledge with a gorgeous piece of wood and sanded, stained and buffed the entire item until it might have been priced at $50.

We chatted and Bill mentioned he would be out that evening. After he left my house I watched until his car pulled away from his parking strip. Then I turned the news back on and watched it, becoming increasingly agitated and upset until he came home at 10:00. Bad sleep and not enough of it. This was the Midsummer night’s eve.

The actual long day was balancing. I had a splendid tea and conversation with my friend Anna. Nancy and Scott came over for our biannual Scotch evening, the other one being on the Winter Solstice. We stayed up late (for me.) They left after dark. Another restless night and not enough of it.

The next morning my friend Kay who shares a birthday with me—this was her 80^th— and I left for a weekend at the ocean. The normally 2 ½ hour drive to my favorite beach resort, The Sandpiper, took us 6 hours for the following reasons:

1) A tie-up at Joint Base Lewis McChord (When did they start calling it this? Since I was a child it was just Fort Lewis. Period.) The tie-up was expected.

2) Not paying attention on the road and ending up in Matlock, which I only know as a TV show but turns out is also a town 30 minutes off Highway 101, which should have easily taken us straight to the Pacific Ocean. I’ve been to the ocean a hundred times in my life and I seem to manage to get lost someplace different every time.

3) Stopping at the Hoquiam Farmer’s Market to look at all the stuff for sale and to have lunch at Deirdre’s Café, Deidre being a talkative woman with a black eye’s worth of false eye-lashes and dark shadow and a Pierrette mouth painted on with black lipstick.

4) Stopping at a sign: Goats for Sale and coochie-cooing eight baby kids. The billy had a beard like Confucius and though he looked as fierce and mean as most studs, he was a big love who pushed his head against mine and licked my nose.

Back to Deirdre’s Café for a minute: I ordered an uneatable-because-too-spicy salad. Kay got a scrumptious looking sandwich of bacon, ham and cheese and dripping with sauce, which she was kind enough to share with me. I took a bite and started chomping. Immediately I coughed violently, sneezed twice, coughed again, almost choked and coughed a third time.

“You okay?” Kay asked, calmly munching.

I drank some water and when I finally found my voice, I asked “As we age, is it normal to sometimes have trouble swallowing?”

“Yup. You need to take smaller bites and chew everything really well.”

I looked at her, bacon hanging out of my mouth.

“Oh, and don’t talk with food in your mouth.”

Before I started to protest with dignity (although I really have nothing to protest,) she added, “I have to watch that, too.”

All right then.

Standing up to leave I looked at the uneaten salad. “I meant to ask her to leave out the spices but I forgot.”

“That happens when you age, too,” she said.

Read about our adventures at The Sandpiper in the next episode of The Solstice Zone.