I Saw Blue Sky

This morning and throughout the day there was blue sky and sunshine.  Hallelujah!  This Cardinal staked its claim on the platform feeder and chased off a Nuthatch, then was spooked by a tiny Chickadee and flew up into the apple tree for safety.



 


Also this morning my neighbor LJ came down to install the new electric starter (that I ordered on Amazon) on my snowblower.  He got it hooked up, pushed the button, and VROOM!  Hooray!  Watch, it won't snow for a month now that I'm ready for it.


 


 


When I was getting dressed this morning I picked out a couple handmade socks to wear and when I put this one on found a hole on top of the foot where the toe joins it.  A hole!  In my sock!  Arrgh.  So I went online and watched how to darn it and gave it a try.  It isn't perfect, and it's sure not as slick as ripping out a mitten thumb and reknitting it, but it'll do.  I think.

It's very hard to see but there were eleven Mourning Doves in the yard this afternoon.  I never realized how much they blend in, even in greenish grass.  Trust me, there are eleven.  I counted.  Twice.




At Friday Night Knitting I knitted on the ribbing of LC's hat to match her mittens.  I am so bad at estimating how much yarn I need to cast on it took me three tries to get 84 stitches without running out (first try), having way too much leftover (second try), about eight inches (third try and just right).  There isn't as much of the variegated yarn left as I had for OJ's hat but I'll knit ribbing until the variegated runs out and then start with the purplish pink called Fairy Tale.  It'll go well with her pink coat.

22 November--Barbara Malcolm, Spies Don't Retire. 

“This is getting tiring,” George said to Dimitri as the Russian climbed into his Range Rover at a corner two streets from him home.

“I know, but what can we do?”  Dimitri carefully closed the SUV door as George eased off the clutch and sent the Rover rolling away into the bright day.  “Confess?” 

“I suppose we could, but do we want to spark that kind of fireworks?”

They drove a while in silence each man contemplating the dilemma--both of them feeling powerless to change their wives’ minds about the other.  So far, no amount of talking and logic had changed either woman’s opinion of their intentions.  Each man was stymied as to the argument that would open their eyes to the fact that the Cold War was over, had been over for years, and they had both retired, moved thousands of miles away from the source of their loyalties.

They were both nearly ten years retired from the field, ten years away from skulking in the shadows, trying to make contacts, trying to turn the loyalties of those perceived to have the information their masters sought, looking for that one small chink in the resolve of the mark that would allow them to worm their way in with money, or sex.

Both George and Dimitri had prostituted themselves for their governments.  As young men, it was an easy sacrifice.  The older they got the more it felt like a betrayal, of their wives and their own moral compass.

Both of them, in their own time, shifted their focus from young, nubile secretaries who might have access to secrets or processes, having typed up the reports of weapons development or communications advances, to stalled middle managers with too many family responsibilities whose incomes hadn’t kept pace with the demands of growing children’s needs and a wife who thought she had married a sprinter when in fact her husband was more of a plodder.  Those men were more of a challenge than the eager, highly sexed young women.  It took more guile, more persuasion to carve that first chink in a man’s devotion to, for want of a better phrase, king and country.  Those pallid, nondescript men sometimes were the most guarded, the most loyal to their jobs.  It took gallons of liquor to get them to loosen their tongues and stacks of money to keep those tongues wagging in one’s direction.  A man who had worked in a department learning the ropes for years had a habit of keeping his counsel, of holding the tiny scraps of information close, not sharing it even in pillow talk with his wife.  Both George and Dimitri thought of the agonizing hours each had spent oiling those reluctant tongues with bottles and barrels of good whiskey and beer, feeling tempted to just slide a tube down those silent throats and pour it in, pour in enough to pry out the scrap of a formula or a schematic to learn enough to be able to leave the husk of their subject drifting in the gutter of their lives, never again to feel the same about themselves, but with enough cash in their pockets to somewhat salve their conscience.

“Bit of a blow, isn’t it?” George said into the silence.

“What?”

He glanced over at what his boss would have called his opposite number and smiled.  “We have both spent our professional careers handily convincing reluctant people to believe that we are sincere, that we truly loved them if they were women or fed a dissatisfied ego with empty sympathy if they were men, and neither of us in the months since we met have been able to make one difference in our wife’s certainty that you are after some nebulous something that I know and I am after you.”

Dimitri smiled.  “Well, there are times I wonder why you are trying so hard to be my friend, George.  Don’t you wonder too?”

That brought a chuckle from George.  “I did, indeed I did when I saw you, and when Billie dragged me across that floor to introduce us, looking so pleased with her little joke, I was ready to contact the old gang and get right back in harness.”  Dimitri nodded.  “But after that sleepless night…”

“Da, I was awake all night too.”

“I realized that you were possibly the only person in my life who truly understands the life I have lived.  Who, without giving anything away, it would be easiest to spend time with.”

Dimitri’s head was nodding agreement looking to George like one of those silly bill-dipping birds one would buy to amuse a child.  “It is true, George, we are a lot alike.  It is logical that we would be the same kind of man, even if I masqueraded as a professor and you were what, a businessman?”

“Yes, I supposedly was a middle manager in the fisheries department.  And I did indeed have an office in their headquarters, even had a secretary to solidify the façade, but she was not just some dolly promoted from the secretarial pool, my Gwen was an operative same as me.  She went a long way toward my success, I’ll admit.  Over the years she developed quite a sixth sense as to which poor chap I paraded into my office to impress into turning on your side.”

“A secretary can be a valuable asset, it is true.  Mine was Tatiana; she was beautiful.  Irina always worried she would lure me away with her soft young breasts and willing thighs, but I saved my infidelity for official uses only.”

Both of them rode the rest of the way to the snorkeler’s group meeting wrapped in retrospective guilt over the times they betrayed their wives’ trust in the service of their bosses.

George parked the Rover and shut down the motor.  He turned to the man that had for decades been his sworn enemy.  “I am glad to have finally met you, Dimitri.  Off the job, so to speak.”

“Me too, George.  I think we will be fine friends.”

“Yes, that is if we can convince those stubborn wives of ours that we have well and truly retired.”

Dimitri opened his door and reached behind the seat to pull out his gear bag.  “Let us go get wet, friend.”

They joined the other men, greeting them roughly as men do, and spent a happy morning paddling around enjoying the simple intrigues of the reef.

Tomorrow is the holiday parade and I get to go!  I got out some warm socks and found warmish clothes.  It's supposed to be close to forty degrees tomorrow but it's right near the river and in the morning so I'd rather have to take off my hat and unzip my jacket than be too cold.
--Barbara