Do not foresake me in These titles mean nothing.

oh my darling

I think that’s from High Noon.

I’ve been spending time with John Cheever. We just took a liner to Portugal - destination Rome, for a year - to spend his windfall from his first novel - The Wapshot Chronicles - $40,000, in the mid 1950s. He is a sweet man, horny and drunk, and I’m glad I’m not married to him. But he writes great letters and likes dogs. I mean what can a person want from a life’s companion?
sMore than what they get I suppose.

I need to look up Friendship, Maine. It’s a place to summer.

Ah, but here.

Ah, but now.

I’m in Iowa - the northeast corner. The corn is dry and ripe. The sun is coming up. It’s cold. The furnace is buzzing its little heart out. The door to the deck needs work. It always does. At some point we hang a blanket over it and call it good.

I went to writers groups yesterday. There were five of us, including the three of us from the old group. We read what we’d written. The topic was a little wavey - A Person We Still Don’t Like. I complained about my former friend Roxane Gay. Of course we were never friends. But that was better than talking politics. We had been warned.

Sunday Jim and I went to a Dem fund raiser where politics was allowed. I sat with old friends and tried to talk appropriately. The food was good and I did not buy a pie.

Tomorrow may be the book sale at the library. I think I can work that in with voting at the auditor’s office. I might stop at the bank and get my $8500 required minimum distribution out. I can’t decide if I should try to buy a $10,000 CD with it. I might. I might not.

I wonder if you can still take boats to Italy. I wonder if $8500 would keep me going for a while. I do have a fresh passport and I think I can find it.

I regret. A bunch of things.

I need to put my socks on and see if I can watch the sun comes up behind the barn. I need to make some trips up and down the cellar steps. I need to think about what I should be eating instead of what I am eating. I’ve been very self indulgent the last few years. Who comes first? Well me of course.

See you later lovely people.

Would you rather be John Cheever or me?

I’m trying to decide.