Hello sweetheart, past dusk, well into the gloaming, it's about to be night. I'm back from a pleasant afternoon out. I drove down to Rhinebeck, we were out of bread and there's a wonderful bakery there with artisanal breads, and I had a half-price certificate. Future breakfasts will include organic rye, Catskill multigrain, raisin-walnut levain, and - though I requested a mere baguette, sheafs of which stood in a large basket - the clerk tucked into my bag a special one - twisted into a heart-shape for Valentines Day. Awww!

How are you, my sweet?
Are you 'hanging in there?,' as I sometimes rhetorically ask my cats. I thought of you all day. I went to church this morning - rushed over there really, I was quite late. I had opened an email account for myself the other day, and realized only today that despite my best efforts to try to anonymize myself, I had done the opposite - my real name blared out in outgoing messages. Ah, no harm done, it's okay, but I did want to adjust that, be "belle12534" as I had fully intended, but had a hard time figuring out how to fix it, and spent too much time this morning on it, to the point that I had to sprint into the shower & into my clothes & though the church is just down the road D had to drop me off. I mean, I can't be late - the future organist must be seen as reliable (even if privately wacky).

The R gave a very moving sermon... she is the 'real deal,' in terms of her calling, and work she does among the sick and dying... today she talked about her long ministering to AIDS victims, in light of readings about lepers. Anyway, I'm just glancing on this, to give you a bit of flavor of my day. At communion I approached, for my first time there, the altar with the rest of the sparsely scattered congregation, knelt, and folded my arms as she had suggested I do, and so I didn't take communion, but did receive her blessing, which was so sweet and warmly given that I suddenly felt quite emotional and tears welled up. Ah, it's okay... it was a nice moment... and I'm glad it meant something to me, and to her - I don't know... it was quite powerful, and simple, and sweet, all at once. And then I returned to my seat. Let me get the butterfly-emotional tears out of the way now, so that I can be stoic organist in future weeks!

Then I came home, fiddled with my email account a bit more, figured out how to fix it, and so now I'm comfortably anonymized. So great was my relief - that bit of agenda over - that I stripped from my Sunday best, new boots included, turned up the heat, and had a wonderful session with you, zip-drive version, somehow it went quicker than other times - do batteries derive extra juice from the charger being plugged in directly above the baseboard heating? Because it was awfully cold today, darling, so the heat was cranking...

Oh sweetheart, so then I stopped by the supermarket as ever looking for the guy I'd chanced to meet on Jan 2 and - much as I had predicted - have not glimpsed since. Ah well, no Adonis of the Utz chips, but I did do awfully well in the "mark-down" department, packages of salmon, organic chicken, russets, at 35-40 percent off.

Oh darling, I'm going to fast-forward from all that boringness and say that I'm still dressed (that is, I got dressed again - afterward) and am back from having yet another elegant glass of wine in a thin tall-stemmed glass - a dry minerally Spanish white, again, this time at a wonderful tiny wine bar in town. You would love it, I'm sure. It's at street level, in a 19th century storefront, all cozily lit with numerous votive candles, an enormous antique mirrored bar on which the drinks menu is scrawled. I sat at the bar and regarded myself, and truly -- look if someone has unique tastes, an absolute type he is going for, then fine -- I can understand that, it's totally okay with me. But I have to say (and I don't mean to sound like some strange Narcissus staring into a pool) that though I have never been a classic, even-featured beauty -- far from it -- the person I saw reflected back in the mirror - I'm sure I looked very nice. Over the last three-and-a-half years I have undergone a transformation, lost a ton of weight - I really don't know how much, but I have dropped a number of sizes --

I have grown into myself, into my looks
I really have
and maybe I'm not even done yet

I glanced at snapshots of myself from a few years ago
and realized how much I had just "lost the way"
but that's not true anymore
no, I'm a goodlooking - handsome? (I'm not sure what that means sometimes) woman - definitely height-weight-proportional

I'm just starting to figure out the craigslist acronyms --
did I mean HWP?
I had to google "420"
oh, okay, that code - I was never interested in that
I still don't know what BBW is

I enjoyed my glass of wine at the bar
thinking of you, darling, you would have enjoyed it
and regarding myself too
on the eve of a major anniversary
I thought about how 25 years ago tonight
our Union Street apartment was full of
a few family members and friends, our closest relations
we were getting married the following morning, at City Hall
which we did

and that night we flew off to London on our honeymoon
and I remember looking out the window
as the jet approached Heathrow
no - before that even
after we had finished crossing the wide Atlantic
and it was dawn over - Ireland?
some greenscape
(not Tahiti)

at (p.m.) in the background
as the proprietor arranged glassware
checked his Mac
sang under his breath along to, seemed to know all the lyrics to
all the songs that came on
Sting sang about fields of barley...