Pleasant Sunday, poor Monday.

Waking up two and a half hours before my alarm did mean I had time to do all my laundry and also vacuum before lunch, and also get some job-related things finished. And then I moved like a lizard on a cloudy day in September, which is to say very slowly and deliberately. I managed to get everything folded and put away, and made my way through five pots of tea, and even cooked dinner. But all I could manage at the gym was a visit to the steam room.

Given how I had a day of a sore throat that was followed by a day of reasonable functionality that led to today's near-brumation, I'd say it's a cold and not allergies.

And yesterday was so nice, too - even kind, if you can describe a day that way. Possibly the last really nice, warm day of the year. It was my grandmother's unveiling, and the measured stages of Jewish mourning and grief is one of the things I've come to value deeply. That it's given its own space to exist without having to be compromised. The rabbi gave a sincere eulogy, and my father and my great-aunt both spoke. My brothers and I looked around at the blue sky, and the grass, and I watched some sparrows far down the row of graves, hopping in the shade looking for small edible insects. And we were given time to let go.

Lunch was at Tatiana's in Brighton Beach, an event unto itself, and something my grandmother very much would have loved - all sorts of different foods brought out to her, careful wait-staff making a gentle fuss, plenty to drink, lots of people to talk to. We toasted her, and talked, and I went into the ocean for a while afterward. On the beach, I found two pieces of bone, and holding one in each hand, arms above the waves, walked out into the water while pretending I was some sort of shaman on a specific mission with a message to deliver. I didn't think if it was to or from someone in particular; only that, in the scenario I'd concocted, this was how I had to deliver it.

My brothers and dad and I dug for sand crabs for a while, and found a few sizable ones. I kept referring to them as "she" and "her" and "pretty girls" and it didn't take too much of that for everyone else to refer to them as female by default, either. Besides, for those species, the females are the larger sex, so that's probably what they were to begin with.

And I ordered pizza for dinner, because I didn't have the energy to cook. I put half of it into the fridge right away, to resist temptation - and have something for lunch today. It made me realize that, with Star Trek-style replicators, you can order cold pizza directly, without any hot pizza coming into the equation at all.

I'd very much like the energy for writing, but with how sore I'm feeling, that's not going to happen. So it'll be bed and reading for me soon, instead.