Close to the finish line

I feel like my life the past couple of weeks has just sped up dramatically. Suddenly I am flying to Belize in four and a half short days! I would like to be able to say that I am completely ready, but I am not even close. And this weekend was pretty crazy in parts, so I definitely did not get the chance to relax and get things in order. Still, I am hoping that Belize will help me with that. Once the rush to get there and be ready for it and packed and all that, I feel like I am just going to crash, and that is what I want to do. I am absurdly excited about the prospect of doing nothing for a week. I really need it.

This weekend was actually very calm until yesterday. My friend Elizabeth had given up meat for Lent, and so she/we replaced Easter with the "Meat Blowout." I can't even tell if that sounds disgusting anymore because it's been a major calendar item for the past, well, forty days. The MB(o), as Elizabeth abbreviated it, featured prosciutto with melon, bacon-wrapped scallops, slider burgers with blue cheese, and lamb kabobs, and was generally delicious. (We also had scalloped potatoes, salad and a quinoa dish I'd made, but almost no one ate any of that stuff except the potatoes.) Accompanying this feast was my friend Peattie's grandmother's signature recipe for Lynchburg Lemonade. It's a little shocking how much meat and alcohol the group of us (maybe 15 people total) consumed. The rest of the day went as you would expect... an hour or so finishing off the lemonade in the park, and then a group of us watching movies at my house. Tragically, I was so tired that I went to bed before the conclusion of the second movie (which was Clueless. We were at that level of intellectual ability).

So that was a rather raucous end to an otherwise calm weekend. Friday night I had dinner with Dan and then fell asleep watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (You thought I had moved on, didn't you?) Then Saturday I shopped for hours, buying things for my Belize trip. I didn't really have an exhaustive list, but I wanted some summery things and a new bathing suit. I'm very disappointed with the lack of styles of suits right now... J. Crew has so many of them online but they had like 6 in the store. I basically bought the entire mall, so in that sense it was a productive afternoon. That evening I went to dinner at Delfina, which was fantastic. I'd never been there and it was a real treat. I had the halibut, which was super creamy, and the capers on top were almost toasted so they were vaguely crunchy. Sounds strange, but it was delicious.

Last week I was feeling pretty sanguine about things... I knew I had a lot to do but it felt manageable. I don't feel much differently now... it's not like I have a massive to-do list. I just feel the pressure of time passing, like I'm being forced to accelerate faster than I meant to. It is a good thing that I have tonight free. I feel like going home and collapsing for a little while and letting the stillness happen.