My dearest, up in the aerie trying to regain my equipoise of most of the day. I went to the movies and found myself missing you very much, acutely, but I thought about you and felt close to you and it was all manageable. Afterward I did some shopping at the supermarket, then picked up D from a job in town. He's taken the car and gone back to work, and I set about organizing myself in the kitchen, pleasantly moving around it as I went about light tasks, making myself do them, the reward for which would be a glass of wine and sitting up here in the aerie writing and communing with you, an hour I look forward to greatly every day. I'd bought strawberries at the market, so I thought, strawberry pancakes for breakfast tomorrow, so I mixed together the dry ingredients. I put groceries away, put more time on bath towels in the drier, cleared the sink of lunch dishes and loaded the dishwasher, folded dish towels that were dry, fed cats, and then as the final gesture - pushed the buttons on the dishwasher to get it to go - only nothing. Not for the first time, or even the first time this week. It's not set right in the counter, it pulls away and something doesn't engage. It doesn't get fixed, I can't work it, but D can get it to go. It just instantly sent my mood tumbling, because it feels as though everything around here is broken, or in disrepair, or slow, or I can't get it to work, or I need D to get it started. It's very discouraging to me, it wears me down, and makes me feel that I am not in control of even very small domestic things. I'm brought up short by my utter lack of mastery, and feel a sense of helplessness at all the disrepair and dysfunction. Tacks coming out of the carpet runner on the stairs, so that in places it bulges out or is loose. Two enormous cartons containing bathtubs still in the dining room. The beat-up asphalt driveway that I hate (exposed now that the snow's melted) that I wished we could have mostly torn up, filling it in with garden and a narrow, pretty path. I could go on and on - I won't - I know you get the gist. Honestly, one reason I'm looking forward to Brooklyn is that their apartment is in good repair. It's small, it's modest (but charming and pretty) but everything works the way it's supposed to, it's easy to negotiate, I don't have to struggle with it. I didn't in our old apartment either, it was very manageable in every respect. I like living in a house - I really enjoy the extra space, after 15 years in a glorified studio, and a couple of years before that in an actual studio apartment no more, I don't think, than 250-300 s.f. total. That had rats, as it turned out. But that's another story. But I'm reminded of it now, actually, because next door neighbor with the chickens now has a rat problem as a result, for which she's requested D's help in eradicating. D mentioned it to me the other day as I stood at the kitchen sink, I glanced over their way, and I could hardly believe it - I saw the brown forms scurrying across the not-yet-melted snow covered yard. Out of control. But neighbor doesn't like cats, it seems, the one sure "green" thing that would get rid of the rats.

Ah, I am feeling better, darling, I just got frustrated, my mood having gotten derailed by things, machines. Now I'm smiling, and there's relaxing Bach on guitar on the stereo, that I put on deliberately to try to relax and soothe me. It's working.

How was your day, darling, I wish I could know. Do you have a weekend? I'll be an hour closer to you starting tomorrow, I was very surprised to realize that Daylight Savings Time starts tonight. I'm very happy about that - with the longer day and everything melting and suddenly greening up, it's going to lengthen the sense of "warm weather months." I should probably starting tomorrow start wine o'clock at six rather than five...

My dearest, last night in my groggy sleep I reached out my hand to try to touch you - and then woke up. At least I didn't inadvertently call out your name. I called out a wrong name in my sleep a couple of years ago, which got me in an instant forcibly kicked out of bed, I woke up as I got ejected to the floor. Things are much calmer these days, that was a bad time. Pretty much there's an unspoken 'don't ask don't tell' policy in place now, which actually is working pretty well, it buys time. Things were in a much more raw state that other time.

I liked the movie I saw this afternoon, Barney's Version, starring Paul Giamatti, along with a great Dustin Hoffman who plays his father. The film depicted a crazy, improbable yet real story of a love affair and marriage, how things happen in ways one wouldn't predict, the Greeks weren't all wrong with the deus ex machina type surprising twists and turns that happen. It was really very sweet and charming, and I guess I thought of you a lot during it, and missed you very much, because I felt a little like the Paul Giamatti character thinking about the Rosamund Pike character - and maybe you, yourself, are a bit like the Paul Giamatti character in your regard for me. Well, we'll see. I look forward to finding out. Now see, I have reached this point in the post and now a smile has crept back on my face and I feel calm and happy again and in your presence. Ah, sigh, breath, breathe, end of a partita.

Darling, wherever you are, I hope you are having a very pleasant evening. Very many kisses.