n which Sarahhepola sings the praises of Dumpster diving, soup kitchens, and Wendy's 99-cent menu
Or: Ha! Just keeding.

Things are turning around. For one, I've bathed. For another, I'm out of the car and staying in an actual bed in an actual house run by an actual woman who only charges me $5 a night, actually. For my third trick, try this: I got to spend the whole morning drinking coffee and reading the New York Times Magazine. (Did anyone read the cover story about the increasingly compelling evidence to support the Atkins diet? I tell you, I'm sold. It's all sauteed lard and butter balls from here on, my friends. And that Sam Mendes. What a charmed career.)

Two days ago I took the ferry to Nova Scotia, where I spent the afternoon hiking to a lighthouse down abandoned country roads. Past a beach where the water had almost evaporated, so the gulls walked in these wet, brown puddles, picking at the seaweed and squawked their complaints. The boats dangled from their dock. They had names like "Darth Vader" and "Miss Carrie Ann." Lobster cages lining the harbor, purple lupines lining the roads. Everywhere, the smell of salt and flowers and dead invisible sea creatures. The smell of summer.

"Where are you going? It's too hot to be walking," says an older woman weeding her garden and fanning her face.
"I'm coming from where the ferry docks."
"Goodness," she says, "did you run out of gas?"
"No, this is on purpose."
"It's too hot," she says. It's a kind of friendly scolding. And though it's not really too hot -- maybe 75 degrees -- it's the wrong day to walk all afternoon without sunscreen, and I will end up with a wicked burn.

Did I mention the seasickness on the way over? When I paced, drooling and pathetic, around the restroom, elbowing little girls with barf bags in their hands out of the way so I could make it to the toilet? No. Well, best to skip that part. Things are better now. That's the important thing.

written in Portland, Maine