Hello darling, another gloomy day, this one wet at least though, gloom with damp purpose. I'm sitting up here in the aerie, musing, dreaming. I've had a pleasant day. I anticipate, for the first time in over a quarter century, a bit of a "date" this weekend, that is, unless he's changed his mind. Which is possible. But I just reviewed our email exchanges from yesterday and the day before, and while they're not exactly -- not by a long shot! -- the preliminary exchanges of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning -- whose beautiful correspondence I've been looking at in a wondrous new digitized project -- they are pleasant nonetheless, very simple, warm, gracious, and charming. So we'll see. Towards that end -- "coffee" -- I thought about what I might wear on our first "meet" (oh dear, the lingo has all changed, or maybe that's the CL lexicon), and so when D came home for lunch I took the car for a bit to peruse the clearance racks at the cozy little department store that I like around here, sort of a mini (but way less expensive) L & Taylor. I dug & dug, tried on a few tops -- they didn't work. I perused the racks one more time - growing a bit anxious because I knew D needed the car back -- and found a single top (one was all I needed) scrunched in somehow, that I'd missed on my first pass... a sixties-style "vintagey" [of course back in the sixties it was cutting edge] pucciesque or possibly Diane VF-style "peasant" top, in a slinky fabric. I tried it on with the jeans I was wearing, and I think it - I - looked good! I haven't worn a "peasant" top since junior high, I don't think... and here they are back in fashion, though re-invented, thankfully, for this fifty-something year-old now. But I looked good, I thought, and I opened the dressing room door and asked the young sales clerk what she thought -- "is it too young for me?" -- oh no, not at all, was her response. I told her it was for a date -- sexy coffee date. Oh my! She thought that maybe the jeans didn't work with it, but I said, hmmmm, these are what I have, or ones like this -- I just needed a top. I stood there, and she stood there, and we pondered. Black pants?, I queried. No, she thought, too formal.

Is he even going to notice the jeans? The practical side of me came out. I mean, yeah, he might notice the jeans, that I look good in them, and so what if they don't totally go with the top. That's the look these days --- and I am, as I wrote to him (as truthfully as my self could) a "youthful 52."

Nah, he'll be so dazzled by my beautiful print top, that he won't even notice that I'm not a "beauty," and "not photogenic," because he'll be so beguiled by my smile, the sound of my laugh, subtle scent of Miss Dior, and how I look at him, and if I need to step away from the table to visit the ladies room, how I look in those jeans, never mind the silly top.

Oh sweetheart...

many kisses