Walk.

It has only been a few hours since I wrote, but I have seen so much. So as not to forget-

I went to sleep last night on a lima bean shaped couch in front of an arc of four floor to ceiling 12ft. windows. Romance, art. Sculpture. The amount of gilt and brocade and cushioning in this house is staggering.
Sam said he has been waking up each night he has been here on the dot of 3:58am gasping. And Sam DOES NOT WAKE UP DURING THE NIGHT. He's like a mummy. We all here think this is the ghost at work. I did not wake up during the night, but I did have a night of horrible peculiar dreams one right after the other.
I got up at eight. With a horrible crick in my neck, because as we all know, lima beans only curve one way.
In the daylight, East Haddam is beautiful. It is a little chilly, and the Connecticut River is about three minutes from the door. And it's so lovely. There are little white boats everywhere on it. And just so we're all clear, the Goodspeed is really the doll-house version of the Barksdale. I know this because when we walked through the parking lot at 9am there were several cars of the old folks pulling up and hefting their old woman cargo out onto the pavement. The matinee is at 2:30.
I'm considering going, but it's "Camelot," and I did want to be available for my thirtieth.
We walked the short loop and the long loop. The short loop goes around from the actor housing to the theater and back again. It is very quiet, riddled with dead frogs and snakes, and reminds me of that area behind the Swift Creek Mill Wawa that you pass on the right if you go out of the Wawa the back way. Only much more elaborate and wealthy.
Then we did the big loop. I sweated and panted and gasped. Climbed so many mountains. Many wide golden fields with yellow and lavendar flowers. Tom would love it up here. The big loop is about four miles. We saw a large pile of horse poop, which we enjoyed because we enjoy horses. The minute we got back in the kitchen one of the Proteans, who runs this route every morning and is therefore built like a very very sturdy ox said, "Oh- did you guys notice that huge pile of fresh bear poop?"
Good.
As we neared the end of the loop we passed the church, and the graveyard next to it. I wanted to go into this graveyard because the newest stone looked to be from the mid 1800s and some of them were so faded and lichen-covered that I was curious to see if there was any visible etching anywhere. There was. They said things like, "Annabel Southton, Wife. b. 1403 d. 1407."
So that was all fascinating. I ran my fingers over the words on the tombstones and imagined the people carving it so long ago. And realized, well, we'll all be dead pretty soon now." Time fast.
Each house here has a plaque (in some cases, a green piece of construction paper in a black plastic frame in others) stating when the house was built and the name of the original occupying family. This is cool.
We pass the sweet shop, which of course is closed. They sell lots of stuffed animals in there. And Doug & Melissa items. Also a large antique barn that looked a whole lot like Class 'n Trash in Ashland. They have a large wooden leopard wall hanging that Sam is pretty sure he's going to sneak out one night and steal.
Except that will be a challenge because in all of our four miles I maybe saw 1 streetlight.
I am now sitting at a mahogany table beside lace curtains listening to all the Proteans and Sam wandering around the house warming up. They all have rehearsal in about five minutes, and to get there they have to walk across the side yard and jump a ditch.
Tomorrow we have big plans. There is the East Haddam Neck County Fair. I know. I'm hoping for lots of ponies, piglets, and necks.
Then we are going to see this place called Gillette's Castle, which was apparently built by some man who got the lead in some big show a few years ago and decided with his paycheck he would build a castle in Connecticut.
We are going to Mystic for lunch. Most exciting.
We are going to go find a ladder and go upstairs into the turreted room and climb up into the attic playroom of little girl ghost Emily who died a horrible death and now spends her time waking up the male ingenues of Goodspeed productions at four in the morning.
But I just found out that one of the women in this show, I think the one playing Sam's mother who carries her dog around with her, is insisting that we all gather in the ante-parlor tonight to watch Mad Men.
I squealed.