fall chickens

If I move my legs just so, then I will avoid bumping Isis. Wait: Isis has room! Ed isn't here! Isis, move over!
But where's Ed? Downstairs studying. When Ed gets curious about something, he don't let go just because the clock says it's nighttime. So he's reading, Isis is snoring and I'm trying so very hard to get enough sleep to get me through the long and hard Thursday.

A wet and deeply autumnal Thursday.




Early in the morning, I lose myself in my work and before I know it, the clock strikes nine and I'm about to be late for class. So that for the first time this year I need a bailout: Ed, can you give me a ride to work, please?

And I need another boost: there's no hot water, meaning we really did not solve the problem with the water heater by replacing the gas distributor.

Ed works on the water heater and he pulls on some ragged pair of jeans and we're off to my office.

But we get nowhere. His car has a flat tire.

I am reminded of our drive into Barcelona this June when I willed the car with the flat to just roll that  last mile to the rental place (it did not oblige). This time, it struggled and groaned an eventually made it back home, where we switched cars and I got a lift in the old doneky, whose only problem at the moment is that the brake pads need to be replaced.
 


But all this is insignificant. After work, Ed picks me up at work and we go out to dinner. This Saturday he turns 62 and we'll also mark the seventh year of being together. Since I'll be out of town on Saturday, we have this day to stare each other in the eye and remind ourselves how important it is to find the common thread, even though to the casual observer it may appear that there is none.

We head for Brasserie V - a place just a tad outside of downtown. We ate here a number of times in the days when I still lived in Madison. You could say that if ever there was a place that was as familiar to us as the back of my own tea kettle -- this was it.





We sit at the bar -- we like that best -- and we pretend to study the menu, but it's silly, because we're almost always here for the moulles frites (mussels and fries) and we have that tonight as well, along with a shared salad and with those familiar flavors, I sink back in my thoughts to the earlier years, when we weren't quite on board with each others peculiarly different habits. Hey, I was a mere 52 and he was a fresh 55 and if that seems ancient to you, believe me, it's spring chicken stuff if you're now on the up side of 59.

I'm not with Ed this weekend and still, this weekend is in honor of all that we are. Funny how that works sometimes.