The weather here is simply unbearable – it’s dreary and/or raining about 75% of the time.  My vitamin D levels must be ridiculously low.  We had a session this morning with the owner of the property we’re staying on.  He talked about permaculture in general, but I did not find him very engaging and was falling asleep due to my sleep deprivation.

When we broke for lunch, I decided to walk up the street, get some coffee and perhaps find a place to eat.  I could’ve sworn I saw a sushi restaurant nearby.  While getting my coffee, I had a fabulous conversation with the owner of the coffee stand.  He’s a really interesting guy.

I crossed the street as it started to rain and sprinted onto the sidewalk under the 7-Eleven to avoid a heavier downpour in progress.  There was a thrift shop a couple doors down, so I wandered in only to find out that it was also a cat adoption center.  The problem with this was that everything in the thrift store (mostly clothes) smelled like cat poop.  I would’ve loved to buy something to support them, but I would’ve offended my roommates if I’d brought it back.

As I did not find a sushi place, and there is not much around to eat besides Mexican, I decided to go into town on the bus.  I walked in the light rain over to the bus stop and waited with some other folks.  The bus here is kind of expensive at $1.50 a ride as compared to 75 cents in Sarasota.  When I got off the bus, I checked my phone’s GPS and headed off toward a restaurant I’d been to.  On the way, I stopped at the garden store and gift shop.  They had a lot of things with recycled content and that were made int he USA.  I got a few things that I needed anyway that were inexpensive or on sale… cloth napkins, nice wooden salad servers, a pastry brush, etc.  I also picked up a beautiful purple glass corked jar for Helen, who loves purple.

I continued down the street and stopped in a restaurant to eat.  I got a table close to an outlet so I could use my computer.  As it turned out, I wasn’t very hungry – blue mood + sleep deprivation = too stressed out to eat.  I stayed for a while on my computer before heading back to the bus stop.  My period came on like a freight train today, and I was starting to feel a little crampy as I rushed back to the course site in the rain.  I fell into my uncomfortable bed for about 30 minutes or so and, when I awoke, I was in excruciating pain.  I mean really bad pain.  I took a Tylenol 3 and started pacing the room.  Then I took another Tylenol 3.  Then one of my roommates came in and asked if I needed her to do something.  I asked if she’d refill my water bottle so I could take some ibuprofin.  She came back, and I took the pills and we got to having a nice conversation, and I think that helped, too.  Of all my roommates, I feel I am most similar to her… we seem to think the same.

After about 30 minutes (and once the 5 pills I took seemed to be kicking in a bit), I went down to the evening class.  It wasn’t until another 30 minutes that the pain really started to subside.  The speaker was very interesting, and I’m glad I went down.  He talked about the future, different ideas about how it will be, and different ideas about how we should deal with it.  He was very pragmatic, which I can relate to.  He lives a few doors down from the course site and showed us his master plan for converting his one-acre property to food production and permaculture.

I dreaded going to sleep as I did not know when the drugs would wear off and the pain would return.