. Spinning .

Rainy day. Everything’s gray. Nothing to say.

Anyone else out there ruled by the weather?

Arms and legs not dangling, doing something, even if that something isn’t needing to be done gives a minor sigh of having done. Things that do need doing are just complicating things that can’t be faced with half a brain or less of fullest comprehension, contemplation and resolve.

I am reading. I am writing. I’m not ironing, weeding, framing. I’m just doing, I am designing, I am calling things important. Lies can be prevarications–doesn’t that sound so much better?–and the slightest edge in gaining is a call for celebration, or a practice for the ballgame, either one.

Dinner out last night, pizza of the very best aroma, flavors, colors. Pepper living green and pungent hot; sausage wafting scents of garlic, fennel, sauce of cheery ripe tomatoes, anchovies instead of dreaded salt, and broccoli and mushrooms, well, they just laid there. So much good stuff to cover evil high-carb base of bread, serving just to hold and get a grip. And salads, oh my Lord, the salads, creamed with famous house homemade dressing.

Friends with tears between the courses, crying at a look, a word. Two friends are missing; one gone by divorce the other taken from us much too soon to talk or point it out. To everyone around we looked to be three couples. We were in fact, two couples and two singles. They probably wondered why the women hugged and cried.

Tonight, another friend is coming to our dinner table. Shrimp stuffed with scallops, clams and mushrooms dabbed with bits of greens and whites that hopefully are herbs and spices. Potatoes, super salad, and lemon slices carved benignly laying by the dipping butter bowls. No reason for the watching of the diets, not tonight; perhaps there should be red wine, but there’s white. Etiquette rules my table, not Dr. Arkins now, but fresh fruit is steeping in a blend of imported sour cherry syrup and dry sherry. No, no ice cream with this, but Italian lemon ice. All right then, there will be fresh whipped cream to top it off.

Neha of Wanderlust is taking to her wandering again, to Seton Hill to feed her lust for knowledge. We must, at least, make her know she’s always welcome back, if hunger of another sort could lure her back. But then, I suppose we are just appetizers for the seekers of gourmet; but then again, it is the proper way to serve them.

Bills for pills and spills arrive, discounted by the gods as superfluous. Cut them in half, take one every three days, live just a little less longer. Health care, the American way.

How can we not agree, on what seems so obvious; the line goes from wrong to right, bad to good, here to there.

In facing each other, I see with my right eye—which is that on your left; maybe that is where we should start.

The path of agreement, is only achieved, if we line up to follow and march to the sun—or the moon.

Or better, I think, with both eyes wide open; facing and crossing the gap; to focus together, to meet at the center—the X where the lines intersect.

Pat and I met as sophomores in high school, she being transferred from another local school. We were such opposites: She, tall, blonde, extroverted, funloving to the point of peeing her pants when she laughed hard; me, short, light brown hair, introverted, serious to the point of gloomy in my efforts to be “deep.” We doubledated, we were at each other’s houses, we cruised together, slurped raw clams and ate lobster rolls at the hot spot near the shore, slept overnight in a “cat house” in PA with her dad, stayed a couple weeks down in Florida where we bought our first two-piece bathing suits with ties that you pulled to turn them into bikinis. We graduated valedictorian and salutatorian of the business course in our class. We lied for each other, but were completely honest with each other. We did just about everything together–yes, got drunk for the first time together on hard cider–until she got married to a great guy and moved to Tennessee. I tried, but just couldn’t warm up to his twin brother enough to follow through with our plans to be sister-in-laws, but I was main of honor at their wedding, and twenty years later, she was at mine.

Pat came up to Connecticut a couple months ago, surprising me with a phone call from our own town hall less than a mile away from my house. We met, we gabbed, we updated, we laughed until Pat nearly peed her pants.

Some day I hope to actually get to Tennessee and spend some time together. There’s no Jimmy’s for lobster rolls in TN, no parking at Coon Hollow after shooting pool. But I’m sure Pat and I could find a way to get ourselves in some sort of trouble after just a bit of time together and a taste for some adventure.

(I know, I really need to find out why my scanner does such a lousy job on color and resolution. And, I suppose, learn to use my digital camera for new pictures.)