My darling, this post will just be in the way of a hello, nothing too writerly, just wishing to touch your hand. It's very cold and dark and bleak out, and it's only 5:15, it should be lighter. The sun came out briefly an hour or so ago, then took its exit in a platinum streak in one corner of gray sky. I feel achey and utterly uninspired. Perhaps I was a little too housebound today. Yesterday I went to the conservation area but gave up after a short slippery walk - the place is a skating rink. Today I walked around here but had no bread for waterfowl and so found myself changing my route, shortening it, in order to avoid ducks and geese. Which is a bit constraining - including on the psyche. I'm feeling frustrated at the moment because I used to do this DVD pilates workout up here in the aerie, which I quite enjoyed (as much as routine workouts can be enjoyed) and that gave great results, and I feel that I could use that kind of concerted, APB workout again - but I stopped that particular regime when the DVD player went all cockeyed, which was quite a while ago, many months. But now I'd like to work out in that systematic fashion again - and no DVD player. I understand they're not expensive. D works hard, and he does try to arrange to buy anything I request, he does, and I appreciate it. This morning, for example, I read about a Nat'l Theatre (U.K.) production of Frankenstein, which is getting rave reviews, and which will be simulcast here in town in March. I asked D to pounce on the tickets, because they're bound to be sold out - and he did - I mean, he wants to see it too, but he did right away get on the case. He also told me this morning that we're officially in the CSA for this summer, a subscription to local farm produce - exquisite stuff - that I'll pick up Friday afternoons starting in June, and well into fall. So he does try, and I'm grateful. And yet. And yet I get frustrated because, I don't think I'm a control freak (eye of the beholder), but I do like for things to be more ordered, more predictable, more seamless, not running out of things. So we have Frankenstein tickets and a CSA subscription - but we'd run out of kerosene for hotwater so I didn't take a shower this morning. (D's since filled the furnace.) I don't know, I find that exhausting. And yet - who am I to complain? Here I am living a life of leisure. It's really not how I foresaw or planned things, but here I am. And what lifts my mood and keeps my head on straight is physical exercise, of the workout variety since all other has been out of bounds for years.

What I need is for the ice to all melt, to see some green on the landscape again, to be able to go to the conservation area and properly march around doing my landscape figure eights, to be properly shagged and shag in return or whatever the smutty terminology is, with a man I love. I like to think that I would feel less achey, less enervated, if I just had a proper once-over, again and again, as we like, in some capacious space and time. I feel like Sleeping Beauty - kiss me and I'll wake up, I'll feel better. Physical therapy. I have no interest in a spa massage. What I wish for very much is loving touch.