Hello darling, many kisses here for you, back from a late afternoon walk after my siesta. Much of the day was overcast, then a couple of rains came, quick and hard, and then clearing, and the past couple of hours have been spectacular. I walked alongside the creek, surface water glistening like diamonds. Or like fireflies dancing on the gray, animated spritely sparkles lighting up the rippling dark.

A day of little domestic activities, making an elegant weekend breakfast of strawberry pancakes and thick sliced ham, tinkering with my porch table floral display, repotting a couple of houseplants, mixing up chocolate chip cookie dough to bake, slicing mushrooms and cooking them in a big pan with a bit of butter for a pasta sauce for dinner, wondering where you are, employing the word 'uncouth' (to which D laughed - you don't hear that word much he said) with reference to a so-called 'spontaneous invitation' that was very belated (via email late yesterday afternoon) considering it was for an event 90 miles south this morning that has clearly been long-planned. It's the obviousness of having been an afterthought that I note as yet another breach of manners in the guise of bonhomie whose most recent example I catalogue (since I am no longer surprised) with a perverse sense of pleasure.

As though I've ever been known as the Queen of Fine Manners - I have in the past too often lost my temper, sputtered in frustration - really, I am not so smooth myself, although in a completely different way. I react against authorities - in particular fulsomely self-important ones, with at times disastrous consequences - to myself.

Hence my exile. Ah, my hair is full and long and beautiful (well, not that long - shoulderlength), and here I am up in the aerie as God plays at this crepuscular hour with the dimmer switch, the light seeming to fade in marked notches. Gwynnie's on the carpet grooming herself (yet again - it's excessive, she's losing her hair - but the vet says it's natural). Birds squawk. Cardinals sing tu tu tu. Oh darling, I sing to you - tu - oh you tu tu.

I had a really nice time in my two-part siesta. Thinking of you. Wish you were here.