What a week. Dropped the boys off as usual Sunday night, then kept on north to Plattsburgh, where I'd rented a dilapidated cabin for a week. Just didn't want to be in Manhattan. It exacerbates stress. It had no wifi so I had to go to a Starbucks inside a Price Chopper to work during the day. It was nice to have the routine of going to work and coming home. I probably ought to try to do that when I'm here. I brought a bathing suit but it was cold the whole time, which was unfortunate since the bathroom and shower were all outdoors. Friday night, I left and drove to Callicoon and slept in my car in a public boat launch on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River, just across from Cochecton, where I lived awhile after leaving my ex-wife. Listened to a lot of Shawn Ryan podcasts.

Things are such a persistent mess. My car got towed again for unpaid tickets, need to deal with that. Pete Alonso got his 300th home run at Citi Field as an Oriole, and the fans stood and cheered for their own team losing. Learned my older kid has a heart murmur, which I guess is normal and common but makes me so angry. It would be so on-brand for the best person I know who does everything right to drop dead while I persist. My last living grandparent was the one who sat in his armchair chain smoking and being miserable.

Chatting with him about his appointment with the cardiologist and the fight his mother and I were having about it, he said it's a stupid situation and I said that life is a series of stupid situations and he said "No, life is a test to remain faithful to God." I was moved. I know he got that idea from me. I'm lucky he listens to me rather than watches, and hears rather than feels, which was the trap Isaac fell into when Jacob put goat skin on his arms and neck to steal Esau's blessing.

I owe work and money to so many people. It's overwhelming and it's always going to be this way. Nothing is ever going to be any better and one day I'll be old and look back on this era and wish I could live it again. I am going up to Schuyler Falls Sunday night to spend a few days in a cabin. Poor little rich boy.

Last night's dreams:

1. I bought a grape vine from a hardware store and planted it on the edge of the woods beside my old house upstate. In the morning I went back and hundred of fully ripe white grapes had grown. I was shocked and thrilled thinking I could make my own winery. So I bought a large bucket and put the grapes in there and figured I'd keep filling it with the daily harvest and maybe it would all just liquify and ferment naturally. But the next day I saw other people had started using it to store other things like cheese and cucumbers. I was annoyed.

2. I was in the mountains with a couple of cousins and my grandmother's 1993 Buick Century, which she gave to me in 2001 to be my first car. It wouldn't start so I tried jumping it; the battery wires for some reason were in the backseat. I attached the black and red clips to the wires I thought they went to and it sparked like crazy so I switched them around but it still sparked like crazy. I put them back on the wires I thought were correct and it still sparked wildly but I figured that's just how it was. Shouted to one cousin to try and start the car, quick, because the sparks were burning the interior and melting through the wires. But she had wandered off and said she was coming back but didn't, so it just kept sparking and burning and melting. Eventually there was no wire left to connect to but the car started and we got on our way.

3. I drew a picture of a roller coaster and was able to use AI to turn it into a lifelike video of the roller coaster running and felt pretty pleased with myself. I was able to then ride in the roller coaster and I was beside a girl and whenever she moved her head it glitched and disconnected from her elongated neck briefly.

An exhausting weekend. Having apparently not gotten hiking out of his system after a summer full of it at camp, my older son was dead set on a big hike in the Catskills with his best friends. The hang up seemed to be that none of the parents were willing to drive them to the trailhead, so I told him I would. Ultimately though, neither of his friends were allowed to go at all. They are both only children with parents the same age as my parents, so they are protective. I told him I would be too if I didn't have a backup son. So he asked if I would do it with him. I've never had the least interest in hiking but I agreed. I needed to pick him up at 5am to fit the 16 mile hike into the day, which meant that on Thursday night I tried to go to sleep at 9, then woke before one in the morning Friday to head out. The streets were still fairly crowded with bar crawlers. But I felt reasonably well rested and made it upstate with time to spare. Then we drove the hour and a half to Slide Mountain, the tallest in the Catskills. It was tiring, but not terribly, and we got a couple of decent views. Mostly he jetted off ahead of me and I walked alone. He's much fitter than I am and better at just about everything. Watching him quickly disappear ahead of me seemed like some sort of metaphor for raising children. Phoenicia doesn't really support Lyft or Uber, so I had connected with some woman ahead of time who drives. But when we got to the end of the trail, there was no cell signal to tell her to come get us. Luckily, a very kind couple offered to drive us back to the trailhead. I dropped my son off at a distillery in Roscoe to meet up with his mom and her boyfriend, then I drove to Monticello and got a room at the Hampton Inn. I was terribly sore and obviously cheated on my fast after a 16 mile hike, gorging myself on microwaveable garbage from the hotel lobby. The next morning I picked the boys up and drove home. A generally uneventful weekend. Catch at Peters Field, buying a guppy for my younger son's pet snake to eat, Door Dash, watched Pulp Fiction then got to introduce my older son to Eric Stoltz at church the next day, since he's a regular parishioner. I was ushering and he left a little early so I followed him out and asked the question I always ask of successful people: was there ever a moment when you felt like you'd made it. He said no. Afterwards, the elderly Priest who had presented Sammy for his confirmation finally was able to give him and Averill the prayer books he had gotten them. He took us up to the altar and blessed them. At some point I discovered my ex had removed me from her followers on Instagram. It hurt a little but was probably inevitable. On our first date she teased me that Americans all think they are special and I said that I am in fact special. I hold onto that so it's hard to feel unimportant and replaceable though I guess we all ultimately are. I drove the boys back upstate and arrived early enough that Averill and I had a half hour to play catch in the parking lot at the top of the hill. Hugged them goodbye and told them I loved them then filled up the car at the gas station in Fosterdale. Sat in the grass on the periphery of the station feeling like I didn't have it in me to drive another two and a half hours home. Swearing that once the boys go off to college I will never drive again. But I managed. And came home and got into bed early. I had messaged my ex last night saying I was sad she had disconnected on Instagram and that it was hard to believe it's coming up on a year since we met. She didn't respond but I saw she looked at my Instagram story; a picture of Sammy sleeping on the couch. It feels like the hike, glimpses of Averill as he goes on ahead until I can't see him anymore and I'm just trodding along a path I was never interested in to begin with. Everyone moving faster and more purposefully than me who is just sore and tired and bored. Everyone elusive.

I was really pleased with how the bread turned out when I finally got to cut it open last night. Nothing special, but it's bread and it's cool to know I can continue to make it with practically no effort and at practically no cost.

After a day of my monk fast, I've gone from 177.6lbs to 175.7lbs. Not that crazy, since I think I fluctuate that much from day-to-day without doing anything differently. And I imagine a lot of it was just water loss since I I went from two pots of coffee and tons of water to just 750ml of water per day.

Sort of a fun exercise in self-control though. And with a head constantly full of thoughts of "I should do this" or "I could do that", removing food and drink from it has kind of a calming effect.

Over the lent of 2025 I decided to be characteristically crazy and go on a monk-like diet.

For 46 days I consumed nothing, not even water, except for after sundown I would make a porridge from 4 cups of water, 1/4 cup pearl barley, and 1/2 cup of lentils, along with a slice of peasant loaf I would buy at Le Fournil, a French bakery on my corner. With this, I would have 750 milliliters of water to drink.

I went from 170.1lbs to 133.6lbs, saved a bunch of grocery money, and the only minor downside was that whenever I stood up I couldn't see for a couple of seconds.

I didn't necessarily look great with my shirt off, but nobody sees me shirtless anyway, so no big deal; I liked the way I looked dressed. Slim rather than gaunt.

But that particular lent was right before a big trip to France and Morocco, so in the midst of this drastic weight loss, I had a couple of suits tailored, bought some nice slacks, and none of them fit now (I'm currently 177lbs).

I have a black tie weekend in 31 days, so I picked the fast back up yesterday (though I had coffee and water throughout the day) but without the bread, since I didn't have any. I made a plan to run down this morning and pick up a loaf, but then it occurred to me that the whole point of a peasant loaf is that it's simple to make.

I had flour, and salt, and (surprisingly) a leftover packet of yeast from some recent project I can't recall. So I mixed them together, and did the usual dance of adding more water because it was dry, then more flour because it was goopy, and on and on, but then tossed it in a bowl, covered it, and went to bed.

When I got up this morning, just like our savior, it had risen (see pics). It was a bit too wet and didn't hold a form like I would have liked, but I tossed it into the oven at 450 with a pan underneath it that I poured boiling water into for steam.

It didn't get quite as dark as I would have liked, but it looks promising, and held a decent shape.

Will see how it turned out after sunset...

I think it is forgivable and even appropriate to post unflattering photos of oneself when they show the conclusion of physical exertion. Some may argue that running a 35-minute 5k hardly qualifies, but I disagree. It was hard!

I've had a gym membership ever since I moved back to New York City in 2021 and have had fits of consistent usage, with longer stretches of never visiting. During one of the former, when I thought I was getting pretty good on the treadmill, I set a goal (may have been a New Year's Resolution for 2023) to run a sub-30-minute 5k. Mentioned this to a friend who's a serious runner who has since prodded occasionally to invite me to run one with him.

As I detailed in an earlier post, he extended another invite about a month ago as I was trying to pull myself out of a not-irregular spell of wallowing in self-pity. Like Christ asked the cripple in John 5:6: "Wilt thou be made whole?", better rendered: "Do you want to be healed?" And I had the rare moment of being asked the question and saying "sure".

I started getting up at 5:30 and hitting the treadmill. Did it daily for about a week, then had a rare full week with my son and took a day off and never went back.

By the time race day rolled around on Wednesday I was more or less back in the same state the invitation had found me in and I intended to tell my friend I wasn't going to come, but I figured why not. I can jog a half mile then walk or quit.

But somehow, even though it was a very slow pace, I never stopped "running" even though it sucked.

I was surprised that I managed it, even though my stats are underwhelming... (66 of 70 men in my age group, 314 of 331 men overall, and 492 of 541 for everyone). I'd been hoping for some more casual runners...

Add your own saccharine conclusion of endurance or diligence or else not putting in the work but still managing to get by.

In an overcast Falmouth. Woke up dreading the long drive home, after the constant recurring nightmare that I am rushing to get to a flight and am hopelessly late, then another that I was trying to help one son into a swimsuit and he started sobbing and I put my cheek against his wet eyes. Then I wondered where the other son was and wondered if I had left him in a hot car, but realized he is now more than capable of exiting a car. One time after my recent breakup I had the late-for-my-flight dream but I was in a hotel room with the ex and for once I didn't mind or feel stressed.