Maine...

If I am ever going to a frozen tundra (again), I must remember to bring long underpants. I literally felt myself disappearing into...myself, sensing what it must be like to be a woman with penis envy.

Otherwise, the trip was fantastic. Mikey and I ate too much curry (because I had mistakenly planned to cook for 12 people instead of 2). We rented a cottage by the seashore, where the water was so cold we could hear its ice sheets cracking and churning in the shallow depths, crushing gravel. We had roaring fires, which began at first as smoky plumes that rose from the hearth and spilled into the living room because of dampness in the wood. My clothes still smell of charred timbers.

This was a rare weekend--thank god for President's Day--that made possible the plan for an escape to Bar Harbor, Maine. We took the scenic route from Boston, getting lost several times due to my habit of navigating via intuition--he was good-natured about it. There was no snow in Maine, so all of our plans for skiing or snowshoeing were dashed. Our adventures outside were brief-- snapping photos on a cragged jut of rock here or there, trespassing on private property to sneak a view of moss-lined valleys emptying into the pale-gray emerald bay, and getting yelled-at by an impish woman, in spandex stockings and a facemask, for picking up a few rounded stones along the coast. Maine was desolately beautiful: bulbous mountains appeared to tumble into the sea, leaving tall evergreens to hover perilously above the icy gray water below, with a surf driven by wind that pummeled itself against the juts of granite on which the pines stood tall. We defrosted ourselves in the car and watched gulls hover on the sub-zero gusts that whipped and howled around us. The air tasted of frozen salt.

Indoors, I cooked. We played board games and watched HGTV as I discussed the merits of mauvre over taupe for dressing recessed beams. Mikey tended to the fire, avoiding my musings on interior decorating by smiling and nodding his head repeatedly no matter what I said (I'm used to it by now). On the way back, we stopped in Portland Maine, where waitresses greeted us as 'friend' and streets with eclectic buildings had patriotic names like Congress, High, and Free. How very Quaker of them, I thought. We caught a movie. We drove home in the dark.

It was a largely uneventful vacation. And it was exactly what we needed.

Happy President's Day.