Should find a fritter shop, really...

The Baltimore Tea & Coffee Company is not actually in Baltimore. It’s in Annapolis. Right across from the Annapolis Mall (whose real name, which nobody uses, is “Westfield Shopping Towne.” Nobody uses it because Westfield, in this case, isn’t even a place. It’s a Corporation.)

So, if you’re sitting at the counter facing the front window at BT&CC, you enjoy a stunning view of (in this order) parked cars, small trees trying gamely but unsuccessfully to evoke a parklike setting, moderate traffic on Bestgate Road, and the stick-up atrium of the mall parking garage outside Nordstrom. Plus the corner of a red dumpster. Oh wait. Please insert the old guys at a patio table club at the beginning of the list.

BT&CC is #2 in the series of places I’m auditioning for the part of “good place to write.” The first place was the public library. It performed well, except in that you cannot buy a veggie wrap and tea there. It is also possibly true that one is ever so slightly more alluring writing in a coffee shop than in a library. But probably not in my case since the moment the idea of allure even occurs to me I usually spill something.

Jeff is home with Kimberly, who was an hour late this morning due, ostensibly, to an accident and/or gas spill a few miles down the road in Crofton. This morning she wanted to talk about how we might get Jeff to focus. “Focus on what?” I wondered. But it’s something to do with the way he wanders aimlessly around the house moving from his books, to his hand weights, to the bathroom, to nothing in particular. She’s worried that he’ll go outside and take off. (I put some jingle bells on the door to make it more evident if it’s being opened.)

”He doesn’t really focus on anything,” I submitted, not quite clear what sort of response Kimberly was hoping to evoke. “That’s just what he does, and you check with him every so often to see if he’s lost the bathroom or something.” I don’t think that’s what she had in mind, but it occurs to me now she could always show him her shiny black motorcycle, which is parked in the driveway. He’d just like to stare at it for a while, I think. I’m still kind of wishing we were doing daycare instead of home care, but we’ll try this for now. This is the second day of this experiment, and the second day I’ve left the house half-inclined to turn around and say “Nevermind, I’ve got this.”

Guess I won’t do that, for now. Requiring myself to indulge in 12 hours a week of alone time is not harsh treatment, for anyone, and I’ll either a)get used to it with an eventual eye to expanding the time, or b)never get used to it but possibly accomplish a minor thing or two.

And now, it is probably time for me to crack open my well-traveled but too-neglected, page-crumpled notebook which is supposed to remind me of where I left off in writing that book I’m supposed to (by my own supposing, and no one else’s) be writing.