My dearest, my life here is quite slow, seemingly uneventful, leisurely paced. And yet sometimes my perceptions are so vivid, cinematic, changing frame by frame, second by second - it's hard to keep up with it all, savoring a particularly wonderful moment as it's happening, and at the same time thinking of you, and wishing to note it for you, for later, and then the image or sensation is gone, replaced immediately by another, as time careens forward & forward, leaving the immediate past in its receding wake. Yesterday was such a day, when I felt this sense - not of heightened senses, it wasn't that. (I'm not going mad.) It was a particularly fine day, clear, sunny and dry, and at the conservation area so many wildflowers were in bloom, and wild raspberries - every step I took I encountered the most exquisite impression or scene. I just couldn't keep up. Yesterday I had taken some photos, and also dashed a few lines off to M.F.I.F. I thought I might make them a preamble to today's post, but they seemed so literally yesterday - that though I assembled the post today I backdated it - to yesterday.

My darling Prince Albert, I still don't know what's in your laundry, but I suppose it's good we retain a few secrets from each other. I hardly ever imagine you in either boxers or briefs - they're entirely beside the point in my fantasies.

And thank you, darling Dmitri, for listening (hand to your ear) and you're at my kernel too, though I tend to wear my kernel on my sleeve. At least here I do. In Vienna, at a holiday soiree, all would be very buttoned-up kernel. I can keep a straight face, except with you - I smile now to think of your beaming face!

Enough cryptic talk! Either those were your page hits & google searches or they weren't - and I'll let scholars figure out two hundred years from now what I meant. Secrets of the Dead. Ha! I'll never tell.

Oh kisses, darling.

Today was another fine day. It started out rough, with D and me coordinating to shove each of the three cats into carriers for their annual shots at the vet. Claire nailed my wrist as I grabbed that little heifer and tried to drop her in the carrier that stood vertically on end. Forget Alan Ginsberg - boy can Claire howl. The affrontery of having handled her! Gwynnie's a sweetheart - she's always a little late to figure things out - like a sweetnatured stoner - say, whaddup - thunk - in you go, with Claire. Penelope sat on the windowsill in the solarium regarding all this human v. feline commotion. Then it was her turn. She is one smart cat. She didn't struggle so much, but spread her hind legs wide so that it was very hard to get her in the carrier. Strategic! In she went too, though, forthwith, like a toy Jack in the Box whose head you push in and close the lid.

Ah, and then I had the house blessedly all to myself for several hours and took the sweetest advantage with you, darling. We were slow dancing and neither of us could stand it anymore so we went to the Bunny Ranch motel where of course you picked me out...

And then I was up, and in my summer pink leotard/skirt uniform, and was going to go for a walk around here, but the weights were in the car, and without weights that mean business I feel a bit too much like a streetwalker wearing such a pretty outfit for a casual walk. (I don't have workout clothes, or shorts - I'd say I've forsworn them at this point - and it's too warm for jeans. Plus I just love skirts these days. But I have only two: my everyday pink minotaur outfit, and then my "Sunday-best" Pucciesque blouse & black tulip skirt outfit. The End.)

It was overcast, clouds were gathering, so I entered the raised bed corral and in desultory fashion started pulling a few weeds. And then really got into it, and pulled about two wheelbarrows worth - which tells you a lot about the overgrown, neglected state of our garden. And this little area, for all my effort, still isn't completely weeded, though it looks neater. I'm really discouraged that it wasn't planned/designed/hardscaped/whatever right so that it is easier for me to maintain. I was quite hot & bothered by the end, and complained to D when he came home with the liberated cats, I used to love gardening (true!) and now I hate it. Just because I'm overwhelmed, can't keep up with it. Black landscape cloth, for example, that D and I had put down a summer or two ago against weeds - is for the birds. Weeds punch through it. I don't know, the paths between the beds need to be bricked, or cartloads of pine mulch put on them -

oh whatever. Good deed done. Some weeding.

Then I had the car for a bit because D finally had a chance to weedwack the ditch and trim the privet hedge (OMG how overgrown that had gotten, but now it's looking tamed & contained) so I went to the conservation area and marched around with weights.

Came home in time to possibly work out to C.R. but at this point I just about collapsed. There's no way I could do a workout after all that weeding (that was the workout). I lay down - looking exactly, uncannily so, like that Bonnard Siesta painting I always laugh when you signal me with, and fell asleep just like that, naked, face down in the sheets, the furnishings of the room in just those gold and green colors, though no white dog by the side of the bed, though Penelope (mostly white haired cat) snoozed in the window.

And after a nap with fitful dreams that I no longer remember, and waking with a feeling of complete exhaustion, somehow I regained my energy, rebounded to do a whole lot of cooking & food prep in the kitchen. This I did entirely in the nude, while a rainstorm raged outside, pummeling and pounding the tin roof of the solarium next to the kitchen. I love the sound of rain, there was no way I was putting on Ken Burns when I could listen to the black magic of the black rain. And I love going about the kitchen and prepping food in the nude. Who cares if I splash anything (though I'm more careful - experienced now - than I was last summer - you can put on my tombstone - 'don't fry eggplant in the nude.')

Oh what didn't I do in my buff buff state? I clipped two quarts of green beans, blanched them, and wrapped and put them away in the freezer. Baked - not fried - a single eggplant, puzzling what to transform it into - finally it came to me - baba ghanoush. Made more salsa with cherry tomatoes. Whipped cream with superfine sugar & vanilla to go with the peach tart that I baked yesterday that no one's touched for want of whipped cream... sliced baguettes and garlic & tossed with EVOO and baked as croutons... made a pitcher of iced tea with the last of the local honey...

and that's it sweetheart, read more about E.D., am grateful myself for my fine education, even if I can't use words such as 'parallax,' 'corolla,' and 'perihelium,' with her ease & alacrity, though, who knows, they may be coming darling, I have since looked them up in the dictionary and had 'aha' moments.

Throwing my arms around you sweetheart, imagining your wonderfully handsome sweet smiling face, and hoping all is well with you, and that you think of me often, even if you have no idea what sort of underwear I wear, which may be just as well - well, no it's kind of cute actually...

love you
xoxo