The deluge has finally stopped. The sodden garden, drenched all day yesterday and into this morning with rain, is drenched now instead in sparkling sun, drying droplets all over, and drying my hair, fresh from showering.

(By the way, did you know that there's a Paloma Picasso Minotaur shampoo? Only she spells it with an e at the end (insert giant sarcastic eyeroll here))

The wheelbarrow is half-full of water, that's how much it rained. I would have tipped it over to empty it, but it looks heavy, and I didn't feel like expending the energy, there's that much water. Plus nothing in its vicinity needs to be further drowned.

I woke up from a restful nap just now

(after a fitful night last night, I kept waking up, checking stats (that is, looking for kisses), returning to bed only to be seized by very vivid semi-nightmarish dreams - though no more recurring ones of 1.0, those were of a different nature, frustrating perhaps but placid, certainly not agitated, violent, or anxious as were last night's. Was it something I ate that caused such psychic nocturnal disturbances?)

and showered and dressed in my pink minotaur outfit and spritzed on Miss Dior and went downstairs and unloaded the dishwasher and stepped into the garden looking at shimmery foliage all around, the sun drying out all the droplets, and drying my freshly shampooed hair

(though not with Minotaure)

Where are you my dearest? I hope you haven't been kidnapped
Are you in transit - from where - Stockholm to London?

Your Dora has turned 52 today

I'm okay with that
I thought that I should blog about my birthday
I tried to remember past birthdays but don't really recall any
Maybe my 35th, oddly, spent with then-friends in Wellfleet
My girlfriend wanted to buy me a tee-shirt for my birthday
I wasn't interested in tee-shirts, I didn't wear tee-shirts, not at the time
What I wanted was this little gilded papier-mache sun, of Indian design
glimmering, golden as a sunflower, but with a painted mascaraed & lipsticked smiling face
sort of enigmatic, sort of odd, this sun with an exotic woman's painted face on it, not, seemingly, strictly necessary, yet oddly cheerful and compelling to me
so I had the tiniest meltdown, not really a meltdown, just standing up for myself
it's my birthday! I'm not interested in a tee-shirt - I would like this sun!
And the sun wasn't cheap - Wellfleet's a well-heeled tourist town
I think the sun might have been $35 - or no, it was my 35th birthday
but this little object was over twenty dollars - certainly - an extravagance

(but what are birthdays for? indeed - extravagances!)

I'm so tired, my love, right now, even after that nap
turning 52 does nothing for self-diagnosed fibromyalgia
which is a background constant exhaustion & achiness

(which flares when I'm sitting still, or after a night's sleep, but disappears entirely while I'm happily engaged in vigorous exercise)

D has just come upstairs
remember that sun thing, that papier mache sun that we used to have?

what?

REMEMBER THAT PAPIER MACHE SUN THAT WE USED TO HAVE?

oh
it wasn't papier mache, it was wood

okay, whatever
do we still have it

(last I recall it was hanging from an eave in the shed, nearby a robin's nest tucked in the dark wood recesses of the interior ridge)

yes, I put it on Rafe's grave - I told you that

You did? I don't remember

Yes I did

Well okay, I believe you that you did
but I don't always remember every detail

that's true

would you mind
(since it's my birthday)
going out and taking a picture of it?

whose camera - mine or yours?

me, calculating: mine

(remember my last camera, the one that I had accidentally put in the wash, neglecting to remove it from the back pocket of my jeans after a walk? it had been completely ruined, but D managed over the weeks if not months that have since ensued, to coax it back to life - and now it works perfectly - and is his camera, which he actually needs for his work, so it all worked out. Happy ending!)

So now I'm at the point of the narrative where D has come upstairs with the camera
and I have put the memory chip in my computer
and am about to view the images

wow
beautiful photos
I hadn't seen that D had done that
Rafe is buried beneath one of our willows
but the grass is so tall & unmowed that I have never yet ventured over there
so I had no idea

aren't you glad -
I certainly am, all these years later -
that I had insisted on, for the same money, the sun?