Letters To

It's Thursday morning, 5:42 a.m. I'm waiting for the boys to get here, and actually got enough sleep last night to get up, shower, dress and make a cup of chai tea. Mornings really are my favorite part of the day. They're quiet and hopeful. No matter how bad things might have been the night before, just seeing that soft glow beginning to develop in the east has a way of erasing the worst of it and kindling a little flame of hope deep inside for something better. Since yesterday afternoon, it's been very foggy here. That's quite unusual for this part of the state because normally we are so dry. We don't even get to 100% humidity when it rains! HUGE evaporation--lots of rain doesn't even hit the ground, it just makes those grey streaks across the sky called virga. So, when it IS foggy, it's very mysterious and creepy, like something out of a Victorian London thriller (Jack the Ripper, anyone?). There's a park directly across the street from us...

It's Super Bowl Sunday and I couldn't care less, but that's OK. I'm also fighting off a horrible cold and that's NOT OK. I HATE being sick, and I'm not sick very often, or for very long, and when I am, I'm miserable. A hacking, coughing, wheezing, sneezing, miserable mess. Sounds lovely, doesn't it? But, after sweating my way through the night with a heating pad, and changing clothes a couple of times, I do feel better this morning. Trouble is, I promised my partner, G., that I would go with her to her ex's house for a Super Bowl party this afternoon. And everyone there smokes (I am a total nonsmoker, and she quit about a month after we met and hasn't smoked since). With a cold, smoke is even worse than normal. She has PROMISED me that we only have to stay about an hour, and I plan to hold her to it. In fact, if I look sick enough, folks will believe me when I say I'm not feeling all that great. Actually, I think that my ambivalenc...