LAST DAY of WINTER... FIRST DAY of SPRING...

OK, so here's the news from the Slough of Despond. It's going to get seriously cold tonight, but they say that's the last we're going to see of arctic weather... God, I hope so.

I came home from my morning job today and found an e-mail from the Silver Fox in my in-box. With something approaching an explanation of why I haven't heard anything for three weeks. And I did two stupid things I don't completely understand:

[1] I immediately replied doing everything but begging him to come see me -- he closed with the enigmatic sign-off "Hugs," which could mean any degree of intimacy and/or commitment -- and

[2] I went out to buy milk and came back with a bag of Those Damn Potato Chips. You know the rest. Well, it was only half a bag, but it was bad enough...

Now, in both of these cases, the question is:

why do I never learn? first off, what good is groveling if what you want is a level of attention that is "adult" in more than one sense? and then, how on earth does eating a stick of butter fit into the world where the Fox might show up in my life after all? I guess it only takes three weeks to reduce me to desperation on most fronts. Doesn't bode well for the future, somehow...

And then, this afternoon, my farthest-away son called, and after losing cell-phone coverage, we moved to the internet, and were just getting underway on the kind of conversation we haven't had in months, when the guy I admitted I had loved for thirty years calls up, out of the blue. Believe me, I had to take the call. But I felt pretty bad telling my son I'd have to call him back. It was a little too much happiness for me to handle.

But I did handle it pretty well, aside from going back downstairs and finishing off the potato chips after all, once the phone calls were done. If it had happened a day or two ago, when I would have killed for a phone call, OK. But why both at once? Can't we establish some sort of schedule here?

I really have to hand it to the Object of My Long-Ago Affection; I'm not sure how I would have responded to such a declaration of love, thirty years after the fact, myself, and I am in fact profoundly moved that his response is to think of me and call me and make an appointment to call next weekend, when it's not so late, his time... Actually, the one thing I dreaded, in the years when I had decided not to act on half my feelings, was that I would meet such a declaration from someone I was fond of. I could never really get myself to say that I would say "no," to any of the ones who spoke to my heart as well as the other receptors.

And what do I find now? They can't in fact be separated, it's all one big organ, like skin, which looks like a lot of different things, but is just one big thing wrapped around a lot of different things. Life is so weird. If I hadn't had many decades of experience to prepare me for the dawning insight -- if in fact it hadn't been the one insight I've had in my life -- it might overwhelm me. Life is just weird, as soon as you let people into it. And my heart, which has not shut anyone out, much as I have been shut out elsewhere, is crowded to bursting with people. So it's become a pretty weird place...

Take the good where you can find it,
and to hell with the rest.

Oh, guess what I just found out. Those May deadlines? They all pile up the week of April @#$%&-ing 24th! So there's another week shaved off the timeline. Holy mackerel...

Hang in there, all, but most especially my faithful BlogBrothers.
You are my rock.
C