Hello dearest. Beautiful sunny afternoon, dry and comfortable. I felt quite energetic today though now that I've sat down I feel tired. I could use a kiss. I check the stats right now (5:09) and there you are... darling, thank you, kisses back.

I slept a little late today, got up around 8:30 (I seem to sleep in a bit on weekends - why is that?). D had to meet someone in town at 10, and I was trying to get myself going so that I could get in a walk beforehand, before the sun got too high. I asked him to call and see if he could push the appointment back a bit, which he did, til 10:30. So I got "up and running correctly" as KZE's Morning Rick would say, showered, dressed, fried eggs, and got out the door. I pulled into the parking lot, noted that there were only a couple of cars there, unfamiliar ones. I gathered my handweights, tissues and car keys, and got out of the car. There were a few people near the information kiosk, a family, and as I approached to go through the gate and set down the path, they came into closer focus: a woman holding a toddler, another little boy, an older woman, and another guy besides. The faces were in shadow, or perhaps I need glasses, also I wasn't "on." The petite, slender, blonde woman stood in place, seemingly beaming at me. I smiled cordially and looked at her as I approached and thought wow she looks so familiar. I'm peering and sort of cocking my head (perhaps), trying to verify and the woman just continues to beam. Then I tell her something she already knows - oh you're Kirsten Gillibrand. If it hadn't been her I would have been embarrassed - why? mostly because I hardly ever talk to anyone ever at the conservation area, so to hit a perfect stranger with that and be wrong about it?

It did indeed to turn out to be her. She's very lovely in every respect, and introduced me to her baby/toddler son Henry she carried in her arms, a smiling little boy on the path, Theodore, her mother-in-law in a summer hat, and her husband. We stood and chatted a bit. Come here often? (Possibly she phrased that differently.) Yeah every day. Wow - do you go around the whole place? Usually. (I would have simply said yes but Cannot Tell a Lie - I needed to cut my walk short this morning so that D could meet Phil.) I do a figure-eight around the whole park (I drew an 8 in the air), and she said wow, how long does that take, and I said about 40 minutes. Then the mother in law said something about the scenery, and the husband was coming up the path, and I wondered, OMG, is KG aware of my blog what the hell did I write last night? And then I babbled something about how I've lost a lot of weight since I walk there every day and she just glowed and smiled and bounced her son in her arms and beamed at her mother-in-law (who looked very sweet) and I extended my hand to KG and for the second time in the space of a minute she shook it and I said it's an honor meeting you and I'm a fan and you have my vote - whenever (when is she up for re-election - is it this year? I'm so vague these days). (What I thought but didn't utter was that unfortunately I don't have any money to contribute to your campaign...) Then I set down the path and was like - did that just happen?

It was 10:20 when I got back home and I told D, listen if Phil gives you a hard time for being a few minutes late, put the blame on me - I was chatting with Senator Gillibrand. Were you talking policy? No, not at all. By now I recalled that I had once sent her a lengthy letter laying out my thoughts about her position at the time on immigration policy... quite a thorough letter, for me, and our respective views weren't exactly in perfect alignment. But no, that didn't come up this morning. It was all just very pleasant hi's and hello's.

Let me check on the banana bread. Because that's what the rest else I did today with my newfound boundless energy borne of mid-August days that already feel like September. I decided to, in a fashion, clean out the fridge & upper freezer, plus the stand-alone fullsize freezer in the laundry room. I cleared the kitchen freezer of months' worth of chicken carcasses (really - I was feeling creeped out as I chill a bottle of rose amid baggies upon baggies of bones - it got to me). Made an enormous lobster-pot's worth of chicken stock. Stewed plums left over in freezer from last summer. Defrosted old bananas and baked banana bread. Very little went to waste - a baggie of canteloupe from summer of 2008 (however unbelievably decadently delicious it is at a farmstand just this time of year it simply doesn't freeze well), and also a container of freezer-burned grated carrot that I felt little guilt simply dumping on the compost. I try not to be wasteful - but one needs to know when to cut one's losses. I was not about to hide them in a carrot cake.

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Dearest - like KG - though in other respects entirely - you always had me at Hello.