Hello darling. Today has been an absolutely beautiful day, on the cool side and dry, and I have felt immeasurably better physically all day, very energetic and purposeful, having neglected chores the last few days due to the heat, impersonating Edward Gorey damsels reclining on settees with a hand pressed wanly against my forehead (sigh). Did several loads of wash - had to, all my shorts were in there, which are all too big for me now I've lost so much weight - I need new ones. So today I dressed up for my walk - wore my skirt outfit along with sneakers and peds. I was a perambulating Glamour Magazine "Don't," and burst out laughing when I viewed myself in the mirror clutching my handweights before leaving the house. A ridiculous outfit, or so I felt, though it was very comfortable to wear a skirt and to get sun on my upper arms.

Changed sheets on the beds, made a pot of Spicy Sicilian Chicken, chopping up eggplant, potato, carrot, zucchini, and peppers, and pitting olives while watching another thrilling episode of Mad Men. I was so riveted that I missed the first stanza of Stella the Artist playing in the next room but I came to and jumped up and cranked it and D who was upstairs on the phone with someone had to go into another room.

Had wonderful communications today with the Secret Life of E.D. people - lovely email exchanges. I had discovered a couple of links I thought they might be interested in, and they responded warmly and asked what I thought of his WashPo review of a recent E.D. book, and I responded including with my take on how I feel that it needs to be firmly, dispositively settled whether or not E.D. was afflicted with epilepsy or not. Maybe the matter isn't yet over - it seems that if the diagnosis (or Gordon's case for it) is to be rebutted - I guess it needs to be done systematically - certainly it seems like a very important thing to do, considering the importance and the impact on E.D.'s future legacy, which if the posthumously surmised diagnosis is wrong - a stake needs to be put through it, Buffy-style, once and for all!

(Break for kisses from Your Scholar, my dearest.)

Aretha Franklin's killing me, Going Down Slow. Oh my. Signed, Where Was I.

I told D about Brian May's Lost & Found English Village project this morning. D sat down and read the HuffPo article and we ended up ordering the book. I am just so taken with the idea of it, and so incredibly impressed. With all the bad news all over -- that labor of love just delights me, gives me hope that the way that theoretically - scarily actually - Anyone Can Become President - a Rock Star of all unexpected people can delve and explore and engage and unearth and present. I don't know if you had a chance to watch the video interviews of May and his scholarly collaborator describing their project - but I think the clips are very thoughtful and worthwhile. D saw that I was looking at the site last night and commented that May has a Ph.D. in Astrophysics, which I respect but didn't really interest me. I glanced at the HuffPo piece again and got a load of the title of his dissertation, entitled, Interplanetary Dust, A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud. Okay, no clue, but there's some concept of dust as the evil we have to guard against that I've read about - I'm very vague on this, sorry (a children's book, a movie, a voiceover by Kidman - someday I'll go down that particular rabbit hole). So as D and I were ordering the slipcased book this morning we chatted about May's dissertation. It's very technical and boring. How boring can it be - it has the word "zodiacal" in the title. It's not astrology, not that kind of zodiacal. There's some other kind?

This post is a complete mess but please take it as a late afternoon delicious cool drink that I hand to you but you say no I'm still working darlin you're four hours and light years and moonbeams and sunsets ahead of me and I'm the standard bearer and taskmaster and it's just not wine o'clock here not yet anyway every moment has it's time and I say oh really because I'm sitting here in my pink cotton bra pretty exhausted but not so much as not to be completely pretty and charming and I have some rose here and I've just taken a big icey sip and held it in my mouth and lean in to me darling it's cool and sweet and delicious and I'm going to give you a great big kiss and maybe pass you an illicit sip - lean in for a kiss my darling --