How I Can Tell I'm Working on Cape Cod--Not Home in NJ

1. Rode my bike here and will ride it back. Carried laptop in neoprene Lilly Pulitzer bag inside backpack. Put purse in bike basket. Zipped by beautiful ponds blanketed with lily pads. Saw low, scrubby hill where we saw baby fox last month--looked for him, but he wasn't there. Biked alongside families.
2. Sitting at an old wood table in the Eastham Public Library, built 1897. There's a framed painting of a ship on the wall. I like it.
3. The woman who shared the table with me this morning is a college professor. We talked about how we hate working on the Cape, but we have to pace ourselves and get it done.
4. When I stepped out to get a bottle of water and a sandwich, I walked to the Eastham Superette. Ever since I was under 5, I've loved that place. It's right across from the Cape's oldest windmill, and it offers everything a vacationer could want, from mini emergency sewing kits to marshmallows, ice cream toppings and books.
5. I hear a kitchen timer going off in the next room. That's where the 15-Minute Internet Express Station is. The timer goes off when the slot you signed up for is over. [But if no one is waiting, you get a grace period.]
6. Something really good happened, like the time H. and I were staying at a B&B on Martha's Vineyard in 1992 and a fax came through telling me I had sold my first short story--for the Christmas issue of Good Housekeeping. This morning, I got an email from an editor at Coastal Living Magazine saying they would like to buy the essay I wrote about Dad and the ocean. 
7. There's a gorgeous kettle pond at the foot of the library parking lot. Depot Pond, the library assistant just kindly told me. Or Mill Pond, some people call it Mill Pond, she said. It's just one of those funny things.

TCOY

• Nice bubble bath last night! And good tooth care. [I can picture you laughing at that, but tooth care is not my strength lately.]
• Bike riding--good for body and mind. Wish I could do this at home! Guess I could bike to Montclair Public Library to work....but not as quaint as this one, with ponds. And no safe bike path at home...busy roads.
• Got big water and sandwich @ Superette....looked at chips and Fritos and pretzels but thought...I don't want those. Why would I want those?