We’re in Clearlake Oaks for a few more hours. Check-out time in RV parks is typically the same as hotels: around 11 am. It’s not a terribly long drive back to Fairfield, where we store the trailer. And fingers crossed, when I update the blog next week, I’ll be able to report that I’ve eaten at Jollibee’s for the first time. IYKYK.

In our ongoing quest to try as many new places in the East Bay as possible, we had the “famous fish sandwich” from Mama T’s. It’s a little hole-in-the-wall joint, just down the street from our apartment, and we’ve walked past it a hundred times, always saying “we should try the fish sandwich.” It was certainly one of those “damn, why did we wait so long?!” sorts of things. It wasn’t the best fish sandwich I’ve ever had — that would be the one at Lovely’s — but it was certainly the second best. And the buffalo fries put the meal over the top.

We’ll see how Jollibee’s stacks up. I think, of course, of Anthony Bourdain and his trip there. I think of him quite often; I was in Boston, visiting the Harvard University Archives working on my B. F. Skinner research when I heard that he’d died.

Death. Yeah, you knew I’d get to that subject eventually.

Saturday marked three years since Isaiah’s passing. And Sunday was Mother’s Day. The timing was fucking awful. As Lukas Volger put it in his newsletter, there’s simply “unrelenting Mom content” in the lead up to and during this weekend, which is ridiculously painful. This trip to Clear Lake has helped a bit. The weather was scorching hot, and other than getting out for my morning runs, I’ve sat in the trailer — yay air conditioning — and sat and thought and sat and thought. I tried to do a bit of writing; tried to do a bit of planning; cried a little; ate my feelings; and by the looks of it, I reckon, survived the weekend.

I’m still quite sore from the half marathon, which I’m hoping doesn’t signal an injury. I’ve started swimming — I’ll drop down to three or four runs a week rather than five, and I’ll swim while the weather allows. It’ll give my joints some rest. I’m also going to focus on weightlifting this summer — “the summer of swole” my coach calls it. Let it begin…