If I had a smidgen more energy, I’d be playing with that photo: cropping, rotating, checking the exposure, the white balance, the color tones, adding the Haze filter to get the clouds a little more pronounced and the Clarity filter for a little sharpening on the trees… but I drove all day and I’m tired.

And sore, too. I’ve been eating delicious, delicious tomatoes — the colorful little cherry kind in yellow and orange and shades of red, and I love them so much. But they are a nightshade, and nightshades make my joints hurt, and today my hips and my knees and my ankles and even my knuckles are complaining about the mistreatment. Fortunately, I can stop eating tomatoes and potatoes, and three days from now, I will have forgotten all about those joint pains. At least until the next time I eat too much sugar or too many nightshades.

Moving on: today was a long driving day, which unfortunately for me meant a lot of time swinging back and forth between ruminating — I’ve had two dozen imaginary arguments with my son, today alone — and worrying. And then pausing somewhere in the middle of the swing to remind myself to breathe, to live in the present, to admire the scenery and enjoy the experience. Worrying and ruminating, both, are just choosing to spend time in my own negative brain space instead of choosing to be in my real world’s perfectly pleasant current experience. Sure, COVID-19 may become an exponential disaster next week, but it’s not like I can do anything about that one way or another. Except maybe relocate some of the plastic gloves that I carry for dumping the tanks to the door of the van, so that when I pump gas, I remember not to touch the gas handle with my bare skin.

Still, I made great progress in my driving and managed to get to a rather nice parking lot. I can’t call it a campground — I’m not sure what’s required to turn empty land into a campground rather than a parking lot, but something is. A clear demarkation of campsites, maybe? Fire rings? Whatever is needed, this place lacks it. It’s a parking lot. But a very nice parking lot in a national forest and it’s free.

And now I’m going to brush my teeth & go to sleep, because even though my clock thinks it’s 8:30, my body thinks it’s 10:30. Daylight savings and a time zone switch in the same week!