Saturday, June 23, 2007

All is well for now

My Only Beloved Daughter remembered the ancient technology known as a telephone. Worked remarkably well. She is alive and not doing too badly, despite a journey from hell (wrong stops of trains, five sleepless hours in a country train station, you know) and says Murlo is a sweet mediaeval village. Unfortunately the house the FORTY of the student-diggers are staying in is too small and the dig boss spent today fixing the showers. The fact that he could make headway fixing the showers is encouraging.

My archaeology boss's wife is having a lumpectomy on July 2. Since she is probably the only woman in the world who deserves him (oh, now, she hasn't done anything that bad) and they love each other rather sweetly, for 35 + years of marriage, I ask your help in sending good thoughts. I have very few relatives so I have very little experience in people I care about. (Really, in general. Insert whatever verb you like about what I have little experience in.) I so disapprove of people having any intimations of mortality. I hate it when I can't do anything. I hate it when anyone I love is unhappy. Nothing should happen that can't be cured by a good book or a chocolate cake. We have had approximately TWO sightings of honeybees this year. I know it is all going to hell in a handbasket, I know that's what entropy is all about. I don't know why I cry about it.

It was the most perfect early fall day this morning. The climate is seriously deranged. Doug and I went to a weird gem shop an hour away where we had hoped to find dichroic glass cabochons. There were very few, but there were many other things. I think I behaved pretty well except for the string of peridot beads. Cheap turquoise, inexpensive amber. A bad place for people who like to look at pretty rocks. We had lunch at a little non-chain snack bar overlooking a lake. The fish and chips were not much good but I am not poisoned, and the people were friendly, and the seating was available outdoors. When I complained that a lake that big ought to be able to afford loons, Doug found two distant black dots, who dove and surfaced very satisfactorily.

It's an awfully nice planet, and I am sure that in a million years it won't care much about the warm period in this interglacial. We who are not here for long are obligated to care about the other phenomena that aren't here for very long: rainbows (several lately), hummingbirds, one another.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

That last sentence is some of the loveliest writing I have ever read.

Hope things go well for your friend.

Valerie said...

I too like that last sentence....insightful perspective (or is that a contradiction in terms?).

Anonymous said...

Laura - please give my best to Debbie and Dick. By now the lumpectomy is over and, so too the worry, I hope.