CLIMBING STAIRS AND DICING ONIONS

Are these really the last vestiges of summer?  Come on Sydney, I just left a New York winter, can’t you drag it out a bit for me…please…

To be honest, I love the winds of change, even in New York I found it exciting.  Fall in NYC really is the most beautiful time.  I would run through Central Park, breathe in the crisp but still polluted air, dodge the leaves as they gently fell and just like I do here, solve the problems of my world. 

I know it’s the precursor to winter, that’s the problem.  And unlike New York, where the superintendent heats your apartment so hot all you need to wear are shorts and a t-shirt and still crack the window, Aussie’s don’t heat properly at all.  I know it’s bad for the environment, I know I should suffer for the sake of global warming, but I hate being cold.  It ruins everything and it makes me so miserable I want to hibernate like a little squirrel and come out six months later.

So come on Sydney, put on a show for me and extend this summer to the end of April at least.  We’ll cruise through Autumn for May, June and most of July, I’ll let you get cold for August then we’ll head to warmer days as soon as we arrive in September.

Not that yesterday’s run was cold.  Not at all.  I had limited time and couldn’t even make it around the bay before my next project, so I sprinted to a steep set of stairs and entertained the people sitting on their decks enjoying a Friday evening cocktail while I ran up and down them like a loon.  It’s therapeutic though, repetition.  Some people like ironing, I like running stairs.  Gregory finds dicing onions and peeling potatoes gives him the same thrill, which I think is just odd.  And it definitely doesn’t count towards training for a marathon, which now that he has started working, has been studiously avoided in conversation of late.  He’ll ask me how my run was, but in an abstract way, as if it has nothing to do with him.  We are beyond the six-month mark now and my ‘team’ are looking like a bunch of pikers.  Eldest brother has bowed out without even bothering to find an excuse.  Gregory as I mentioned, is avoiding the topic entirely and youngest brother didn’t think I was serious when he first agreed to do it, which I think is a bit unfair.  I mean Oprah ran a marathon, surely I can.  I actually run regularly and have done for years, that’s got to give me some credibility for sure.  Oh well, it’s early days yet.  I’ll keep up my little plan, and like I do in my quest for a career in writing and on the stage, just keep plodding along.  I am the tortoise.