November 16, 2016

I am NOT sleeping better. I spent over three hours on the phone last night: one with Jean, and over two with Scout. When I hung up at eleven, I binged-watched "[Insert Your Country Here]'s Got Talent" and when I looked up it was two-thirty. I walked the dogs, did my ablutions, went to bed, and fell asleep sometime after four. I got up at eight with a tiredness that made my head feel like it had been filled with cement.

​I rode my bike to the Inn at Rodanthe which is the center point of the movie "Nights at Rodanthe," starring Diane Lane and Richard Gere, and based a Nicholas Sparks book. The movie was released in 2008, and the property was condemned in 2009. In 2010, it was privately purchased and moved off the beach to a safer location behind the dunes. It is no longer an inn: it's now a rental property within sight of two properties which are still on the beach. I'm happy that it has survived, but its change of location and change of business use make it different enough that its movie allure was mostly erased for me.

I took the dogs for a walk on the beach today. I had check cords on them which were tied together, but I didn't let them go. I didn't want them to go in the ocean because I didn't want to deal with either the mess of wet, sandy dogs or the risk of the riptides. The beach is wide and there were few people on it. Two women asked me about the breed of the dogs – a common question given the way they are groomed. The dogs played in the hard sand. The shell fragments were varied but broken, not that BOB needs sea shells. I FaceTimed Jean so she could see the ocean from the shore of her “Rochester grey” Finger Lake cottage. The beach is lovely here, but while I don't want the endless fast-food-restaurant-strip-mall-Myrtle-Beach vacation, I would like a little "toy town" cuteness and some high-end restaurants in my vacation spots. Rodanthe has neither: come here for its quietude, and pack in your culinary and alcohol needs.