“I watched him walk into a room
and he was never out of place.
He knew the answer to every question.
The square and cube of every prime,
the name to go with every face,
like he was king upon a throne.”
- “Nothing in Common”, Jason Robert Brown

I don’t have much to say.  Just really wanted to say that I am really proud of my friends, in whatever endeavor they’re pursuing right now.  They truly keep me sane in the middle of all of the daily crap.

That’s all.

“There is nothing like returning to a place
that remains unchanged to
find the ways in which
you, yourself, have altered.”
 - Nelson Mandela

So, to get the boring stuff out of the way, I had an amazing night last night.  It was amazing in its simplicity.  I made a HUGE bowl of pasta, butter, and parmesan cheese.  I drank my favorite wine from my birthday glasses (Steph, they are TRULY fabulous!).  And I took a pillow outside with me, along with my wine (dur), and read our book club selection on my front lawn until there was no more sunlight.  Then I took a long bath.  And then I went to bed.

It was fabulous.

It was a routine I established back in the BitterHouse, years ago.  Back when we were on Atkins (Dreamfield is the BEST pasta I’ve had, and the icing on the cake is that it’s very low-carb), pasta, butter, and parmesan cheese was a comfort food.  We had also ultimately decided that alcohol contained no carbs. (It was a happy denial.) I’d park on the front porch swing and read until sundown, then take a bath, then go to bed with the window open.

(One night, a man almost made me wet the bed by sneaking around to my open window and whispered my name, while sticking his finger through the blinds.  I crept out onto the porch and we talked until 3 a.m.  Just a random memory.)

It’s this weather.  The slight chill in the air reminds me of fall, which was always such a happy time in the BitterHouse.  Halloween parties, football Saturdays, Christmas villages, shopping on Black Friday, cutting down a Christmas tree..

I feel so much older.  And yet those memories are so vivid.

In other news, I am bound and determined to “short-time” it today.  I have been SWAMPED all week with last-minute crap, and even today shaped up like it was going to be one of those days, but a preliminal meeting with the boss has been rescheduled.  So I shall be taking it easy. 

SUH-WEET.

And just because it really skeeved me out and I can’t stop thinking about it (so I’ll share).. this morning, I went to feed the dogs and found a very large, fuzzy spider inside Mabel’s bowl.  Naturally, I wasn’t bothered by the spider, so I took it inside to dispose of it.

It wasn’t fuzzy.  It was carrying THOUSANDS of babies.

And now I’m itchy all over.