Hermit

I love being alone. It does not make me lonely.

This is the week I have been waiting for. RE is at camp, Greg just left for a 3-day fly fishing business retreat in Deer Valley, so it's just me and Archie-Warchie. Which means it's mostly just me. Our house has become the Hermit's Cabin and I am about to Henry David Thoreau some Walden Pond up in here. I needed this. I feel like I've been coasting on fumes for months. I just need a couple of days to simply and quietly fill up.

Greg grilled four corns for me last night and cut the kernels off the cobs so I'm all ready to go for my chick food no one else wants. Today's lunch will be a red quinoa, avocado, black bean and corn salad and dinner will be miso soup with fresh bread dipped in lemon olive oil and blackberry balsamic vinegar. I will listen to opera or Coldplay while I eat my meals and squeeze a bath in between where I'll do a good job shaving and use up the last of my Tiffany Poole chocolate sugar scrub. I have s'mores goldfish for my snack, a stack of reading on the front burner, and BBC on the back burner. Tomorrow I may drive up to Fashion Place Mall just to get a by-the-minute massage while Archer is buckled in his stroller. Or maybe I'll buy swim diapers and see how he likes the pool while I indulge in an ice cream bar (but not an ice cream sandwich...those stick in my teeth and make my mouth feel fuzzy). We'll see where the wind blows. Hermit heaven.

I have some correspondence to attend to at my secretary desk. I love saying correspondence instead of paying bills or writing letters. It's so Jane Austeny. Maybe I'll even close my envelopes with melted wax and my honeybee seal. Then I'll hand them to my courier on a silver platter and tell him to make haste in the night on his dark horse through the rain to the Rose & Crown where my recipient waits in the tavern by the crackling fire.

Speaking of Regency-era England, I bought Wives & Daughters at Costco months ago and got as far as putting disc one in the bedroom DVD player. The menu repeated itself for days but PLAY was never pressed. It subsequently rained the entire month of May which made me crave the end of the movie when Roger and Molly are in the town square professing their love for one another five feet apart in the pouring rain. The nail in the coffin was hit as I got ready in my bathroom last week and heard the loudest boom followed by the sound of broken glass. I could only guess a robber threw a Chihuly through my laundry room window. Turns out the sawtooth hanger on the back of my wall shelf that housed a hundred jars of sewing notions broke, resulting in baby food and mason jar shards and slivers galore. (Don't cry for me, Argentina. I already cried for myself over the antique blue Ball jars. Suz flew one out on her lap from Missouri for Archer's baby blessing just so it wouldn't get broken and RE bought me one for Christmas at Nook & Cranny with her own money.) While squatting in flip flops for three hours over a horrendously large pile of bits I separated and classified every button and bauble back to where it belonged. Which obviously made me think about Roger and his beetles and how he would have totally dug my ability to organize and pin his insects on the right charts for his research. Roger would have LOVED me.

BBC is getting moved to the front burner. Clearly I need to get this out of my system.

Photo is the front endpaper of a book titled The Yellow House Mystery from which Frenchie made a journal and sold at her boutique.