… at the beach.  Last days of whales, of shoddy internet, of sand sand everywhere, of wind of postcards.  (Did we send you a postcard yet?  If you want one, send address here.)

Will miss not getting any work done, and the cobb sandwich on rye at Cafe Stephanie’s and the lemon Italian soda at Nye Beach Scoop.  Will miss the crazy tarot lady at Key Books, Zach at the “Art and Wine” bar (don’t let him kid you, it’s all wine), the cute little midget crabs that crawl in the tide pools.  Will miss hanging out and doing nothing with the kids on the beach, spending an hour digging holes, reading in my little foldup chair while they splash.  Will miss the noise of water, the birds, the walking back and forth, the bright blue sky when it’s out.  Will miss Lorrie Moore’s Birds of America when I finish it.  Will miss these quirky book shops tucked into every back alley of Nye Beach with first edition Fitzgeralds, biographies of Alduous Huxley, Gertrude Stein, and the Oxford Book of Dreams (which we can’t find now, by the way, have you seen it?  Did someone look under the bed?)

Will miss the tourist stuff by the bay — Undersea Gardens, Ripley’s Believe it Or Not, the Wax Works.  Will miss clam chowder.  Will miss the bed here, really comfy, will miss old 70s songs on 100.7.  Will miss the Mona Lisa.  Will miss running upstairs to C.’s place for Colbert and Sex and the City reruns; will miss offing odious men with her at night, using large sharp pieces of art. 

Stepping out now, beyond the sea.  More later … happy trails. 

You have to be completely inept to get a picture no better than this if you’re watching whales from the Depoe Bay sea wall this week, on the Oregon Coast. Completely. But I guess I am and I did. They were all over the place yesterday, shooting up like popcorn. Coming out of the water nice and slow, flick of the tail and back in. Gray and Blue ones, I think, I forget. They have volunteers posted all over to tell you stuff about whales but I wasn’t listening. There’s a big drop-off where we were so they came right in close. Beautiful. We watched for two hours then kids got bored. By the end there was a big group, and all cheering the good fluke shots like a football game.

I just finished playing Fishopoly with Jr. and G.  Jr. made it up. He made the board, he made the little paper fish playing pieces, he made the great big square paper die.

The game board is a bunch of different-colored dots (they correspond to the colored faces of the die) and some chutes and ladders-type slides.  There’s also an “L” — lose a turn — spot and a “Loos$ Change” square. If you land on “Loos$ Change” you get to “Catch the bus” and “Ride” (follow a squiggly line) back to one of the dots.  You pretty much do this the whole game:  land on some dots, lose a turn, catch the bus, etc.  Though at some point, and I didn’t really figure out what it was, you get a chance to “swim through the mud.”  If you can swim through the mud you catch the magenta-colored fish and win.  The “mud” is a little stand-up tunnel that you have to push your paper fish through without touching the sides; if you touch the sides, you go to Lose a Turn.  I touched the sides the first two shots I had, then sort of cheated on the third (moved my hand so Jr. wouldn’t see my fish touch).  And then I won! It’s a fairly relaxing way to bide your time, watching four-and-a-half-year-old G. roll the dice, move her fish, happy as a clam.  Watching Jr. roll the dice, yell “yeah!”  When I look at what he rolled I have no idea why it’s good or bad.

Anyway, I won. I won Fishopoly!  Life’s a beach

(Fishopoly, The Game. Copywright, 2006; Anthony O. DiFalco)

.. So tall people are smarter, duh! They finally proved it. Did you see tonight, for instance, how much smarter Blythe Danner is than Charlie Sheen? And remember that brainiac Brigette Nielson, the genius of Wilt Chamberlin, the intellectual shortcomings of Tom Cruise? An exception, of course, lies in my house. A. is definitely not four inches smarter than me, no way.

We caught a crab today and we battled the winds and we watched big crazy waves and then came “home” (summer rental) and turned on the fireplace. A. drove inland two hours to Portland and started sweating, 90 degrees. I’m beginning to like it here.

Not getting a thing done, well maybe a thing. Might interview a guy this week, might. Or might just ride the free shuttle all around and let the toothless crazy person teach us magic tricks.

Ho hum, write in. Write in if you’re writing more than me, or if you’ve caught a big crab, or if you think Tori Spelling’s mom screwed her out of a billion dollars.

While you’re at it, write in if you’re reading Claire Messud’s new book, or if you’re tall. Write in if you’re Robert German or Kelly Van Blokland or Mark Button or Megan Fehrenbacher or Trace White and you’re bummed about Maynard Ferguson – didn’t we see him in Reno? Or wait, maybe not Reno but somewhere else where we were all together? Write in if we didn’t and I’m crazy.

Write in if you know why my tomato plants turned yellow and the tomatoes all died. Write if you know a place on the Oregon coast that isn’t cold in the summer, or if you’re sick of Horseshoe crabs. Write in; write in dammit!

First ten people get signed copies of my future best-selling outrageously successful novel, The Good Wife (September ’07).

Good Night, then.  And Good Luck.

So C. and I took a drive tonight to see Mona Lisa, the big local buzz.  Two miles out of town there’s a “Wreck Ahead” sign and we’re all backed up.  Yep, someone wiped out, flipped into the ditch right across the street from the 60-foot da Vinci.  It’s going to be a serious hazard, I can see already.  They’ve got the shoulder roped off so art lovers won’t stop and gawk on the skinny strip of gravel.  Anyway … we got a picture of Mona, and a picture of the bedazzled and upended driver, from out the windows of a moving minivan.  Wheeee!

… write me, I’m bored. (At left, anemones.)

The fun of writing, the really fun part, of course, is making stuff up.  There are two books batting around in this house by the sea — one, a treatise on dating, the other on marriage, both tragicomic farce.  “Revolutionary Road with sight gags!” I said of mine … “Jane Austen with sight gags!” she said of hers.   

Anyway, we have just tonight killed off an annoying character with a Giacometti to the head, and a fake at that.  We dropped it from an upper floor of a bald billionaire’s townhouse.  (Graham Greene did the same thing, not with a Giacometti, though, a pig.)  Drop.  Smash.  Dead.  Fun. 

Gosford Park meets Erica Jong … or something.  Not really.  Not even close.  Who’s checking?

What are you doing today? 

.. So you know. Retreating. Writing and retreating and writing and glaring at the stupid Shilo across the street because I only get their wireless signal if I’m standing up, or on one foot, or patting my stomach and rubbing my head at the same time.

The thing about idylls (this). Well, I’m at the beach. Michele here to watch kids, big house, fruity candles, chocolate pudding, an ocean in the window. And yet. It’s writing maybe. That’s it. Sometimes writing’s no fun.

The paper comes on Wednesdays and Fridays so there’s that today.

It’s been colder than I’d like and the smoke alarm won’t stop beeping (two entirely unrelated things). I yanked it out of the ceiling, threw in the garbage and then fished it back out when the houseowner called to say someone was coming to look at it. So now it beeps on the front porch, from a plastic Adirondack chair. Beeping and beeping. It’s like that hair in the Simpson’s Halloween episode that no one could kill. Also, my Dell battery doesn’t blow up, but it only lasts 5 minutes. [Dumb sex joke here. Ba-da ching!]

In the credit column, we went for a long walk yesterday, all the way to the rocks that Willy (as in “Free”) jumped over in the movie when the bad guys tried to trap him in the bay. We lost the yellow shovel, but it was warm out and the peace was stunning. Me, A. and G.

At the Thriftway here they send someone out with you to the car. Every time no matter what. They unload the bags, take the cart back. It bugs me. I like to do my own, I don’t want small talk. The first time I waved two guys off and the third got me. I’m on my way there now and already mad about it. Grant me the serenity to not care if people follow me to my car.

More later.

Sorry, kids. I’m on an Oregon beach, which means it’s freezing and internet’s as spotty as the gray whales … As soon as I finish the book I’ve come here to get away and finish, I’ll write another book on the absurdity of going away to finish a book. Remind me.

Until then … Happy Birthday Mike Dinan of Potsdam, New York.