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My dearest, so many kisses hello. Let me put my arm in yours - let's go strolling along Warren Street. I'm so enamoured of the enticing aesthetics of this shop, especially the mosaic tile floor (echoes of Olana?), that I surmise are original to the building. Just gorgeous. I've shown D images, and suggested that if there ever comes a day that the bathrooms get redone - we might consider this sort of ornate pattern, done with hexagonal tiles, though perhaps, for baths, in a more muted palette. But I digress - what a beautiful floor. I took a few of these shots last Saturday, others today. Today I noticed the wreath on the door, iridescent scarlet feathers...

(Which, oh dear, reminds me, that beneath the table on the back porch this morning, I was shocked to see a deceased robin, dusted with ice crystals, flat on its back, wings folded across its dusk chest like arms, or angels' wings. What a shock, and I don't know how to account for it. It was beautiful in a macabre way, and when the shock wore off I could reflect on its poignant beauty, this still, frozen artifact - perfectly intact - from what I could see from the other side of the glass.)

Back to the shop... don't you love the names of cities stenciled on either window, the equivalency of them? Yes, darling, Hudson is on the map - a world city!

I laugh about it - it seems so silly - almost like an SAT question (which of these elements doesn't belong?) - but that's only if you're looking at the surface of things. Below the surface - in a 'global market economy' (this time, in my view - in a good way, with free flow of goods, coming & going, exchanging, trading, finding their value, and lots of competition) - Hudson, in the arts & antiques world, I think (in ways I can hardly fathom) truly does rank.

It was freezing out darling, but I stopped by a café to warm up, and enjoyed an unusually delicious cup of coffee with milk, along with half a peanut-butter cookie. I sat on a wobbly stool at the window and savored each sip & each bite. I have felt an unusual sense of incredible physical wellbeing today. I had a session with you (the one yesterday was interrupted, an arrival home, and I couldn't get it back, even with the urgency & drama). Today - no interruptions, just blissful extended opportunity -- which actually made it go quicker, & poof! without extraneous anxiety. Also, at times these days I've been doing my workouts to the Dr. Oz show - and I am learning so much. I mean, some of it is too much -- the micro-diagnosed prescriptions of specific vitamins and/or minerals. But I'm realizing that as well as I eat - now - since I do most of the food-shopping & cooking - maybe I'm still not getting all that I need...

So at the supermarket today (no siting of Mr. '?'), I contemplated a huge display of vitamins, and finally selected one - 'high potency daily for women.' When I returned to the car I took one, with gulps of water from a glass in the cupholder.

Anyway - I feel terrific. Was it the vitamin? The coffee? The peanut butter cookie? Or was it my getting out for a bit – including afterward - for the first time in many months - tromping around the conservation area - in gleaming sunlight?

And all wrapped up & enraptured & encased, in all that - as always - my abiding thoughts of you - ah!

Sweetest, sweetest darling - all my love, many kisses - thinking of you - wherever you are...