Some unconnected things

I went for a walk in the early evening to mark the beginning of spring. Thunder was rumbling off in the distance, and I brought my umbrella, but the rain never really materialized while I was out. It was quite warm out, and the walking felt good.

I ended up eating a meal at Bite, where I seemed to irritate my friend Kirsten (a waitress there) by requesting that she put the raspberry sauce on the side of the chocolate mousse Napoleon I had ordered for dessert. I was worried that the sauce would be too sweet.

"It's really pretty with the sauce," she insisted. As it was not my intention to photograph the thing, I let my request stand, and she pouted off to the kitchen to prepare it.

It probably would have been prettier with the sauce, but it was a bit too sweet, and I do not regret my decision.

As I left the restaurant, a man who looked like Beck's dubious cousin was talking on a cell phone in the space between the two doors.

"Yeah," he said, peering out the front door and into the darkened sky above the electric company building worriedly. "I've been seeing a lot of lightning flashes tonight in the city sky, so I'm thinking... ."

The door closed behind me, but I had to pause for a moment to admire his phrasing. "...tonight in the city sky..." I liked that.

Walking home, I tried to assess my current state of mind. The crying fits which were rising up suddenly like a summer storm have stopped, and I think they're gone. I feel more tired than anything else, though some sadness at my grandmother's passing still colors most things right now.

*****

For all the sound and fury, the sky to the west was very beautiful in the hours before the sun went down. The clouds were strangely layered and kept allowing irregular shapes of light to illuminate whole sections of sky. They looked like they had been rendered in oils.

*****

Yesterday I returned home to find samples of a long project I had worked on recently, as well as a box of cookies from the project coordinators. They were saying thanks for the work done on the project, and insisting that this year's brochures are infinitely better than any previous year. The box of cookies weighs about four pounds, even though it has only 24 cookies inside it. Each cookie is only about as big around as a bar coaster and perhaps a half an inch tall, but they are so incredibly dense and moist that I suspect each one contains about a dozen eggs. When I eat one, it is almost too much. They are like eating a meal of cookie, like eating an entire cake. Still, it's a lovely and totally unexpected gesture.

*****

Sunday at the visitation, my aunt sidled up next to me and said "You need to lighten up" in a tone that was not altogether friendly. I was having a pretty hard time on Sunday, but I bit back the first couple of replies that sprang forth and said "Story of my life" in a measured tone. She let it go, and so did I. A friend of mine said later that it should be flattering to know that I can bring down a death gathering with the sheer weight of my pathos. Perhaps I should have stuck with songwriting.