The Long Way Home

Up in the aerie. KZE is pouring from the speakers downstairs, though not at the moment Van Morrison. I baked cookies this afternoon and smudged my cream zip-up sweater - but of course. My W-S apron with its charming provençal print is design-flawed: it hardly begins to cover my womanly bosom. I dabbed at the spot with a brand-new sponge - orange dye leached over the chocolate. Gave up, machine-washed sweater along with duvet cover pulled out of service til next fall. Sweater's now in drier, matelassé cover I'll hang out on the line tomorrow. It's supposed to be in the 80s.

It was a day of domestic duties. Made food dollars stretch at the supermarket. I made a pot of spaghetti sauce, cleared the freezer of roast chicken bones to make stock (I will need freezer room for chilling rosé in hot weather!), and stirred up bread dough.

I l. you. What are you doing in Q so long? A bunch of consulting jobs?

I admonish myself not to go there. What am I going to write about if I don't believe in you anymore? It's like the bubbles gone from champagne, or the cruel, fluorescent way a room looks the morning after a delicious party, the magic all gone out of it. It's not what I want to see.

Lay down out on the porch this afternoon on my exercise mat, which I hardly ever work out on anymore. Now I multitask - carry weights and do arm exercises on my walks. I did some this morning at the conservation area, then in late afternoon at the church cemetery.

It was nice to lie in the sun. Decadent, to be sure. It made me think of how on an unseasonably warm, sunny day such as this when I was in college young women singly or in sociable clumps would go on the dorm roofs and courtyards to sun themselves. To be sure, they were studying for MCATs or reading Ulysses - but it was like a beauty parlor - along with whatever else they had set their minds to do, they were determined to gain a bit of color.

Today I lay out on the porch in my brown denims and a nice top which I think you'd like, scoop-necked, three-quarter-sleeved, formfitting, and in a vague tie-dye pattern in earthy brown shades. I like the way I look in it (and I will note that my "arm" exercises pay off in other respects as well, even if high-end aprons (designed for skinny vegans) don't suffice).

Finally, I will leave you with an image that I love. I discovered it a few months ago. It stays with me. I think of it now and then, not often - but today. I don't mean it as a bit of gratuitous cheesecake. It's how I feel sometimes, thinking of you.











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I saw a pair of young deer motionless in a front garden on my walk this afternoon. They looked at me and revolved as I walked past - what strange creatures...

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