Guess what I saw when I looked out the window when I got up around 6am. Snow. A good three inches of heavy, wet snow. October isn't over and we had snow. Ugh.
I noticed when I was yog-ing that the snow had melted on the patio but had stuck to most of the leaves on there. I thought it looked kinda neat.
The other day when I went to Fleet Farm for weatherstripping and birdseed I also bought a bag of assorted gourds to put into a basket on the front porch. It's not a very big display but a couple of them are very contorted, ridged, and cool looking. Every day I expect to see a bite taken out of one by a squirrel but so far nothing--although they've only been out there a couple days. Time will tell.
When I finally got home I gulped down some lunch (I was starving), went back to pick up the glasses, then came home, grabbed my gym bag, and went to the Y to workout on the weight machines and walk a ways on the treadmill. I've gotten out of the habit of going three days a week and need to get back to it.
When I got home for good I made a batch of Fire-Roasted Tomato-Basil Soup. I had a bowl for supper, m-m-m good, that I added a few cut-up turkey meatballs to for some protein. It was a snowy day and I'd run out of soup. I had to make it. I was too hungry to take its picture when I ladled it out. I will snap one tomorrow. I promise.
29 October--Barbara Malcolm, Spies Don't Retire.
A young woman, a girl really, slid
out of the kitchen in the ubiquitous flip-flops, wearing an oversized and
antiquated floral apron covering a pair of too-long but skin tight jeans and a
t-shirt that looked like pink paint on her thin frame and ended three inches
above her waist. “What can I get you
gentlemen?” she asked, pulling an order pad out of her apron pocket and a
yellow number two pencil from behind her ear.
“I’ll have coffee to start,” George
said. “Dimitri?”
“Da, coffee for me too, please.”
She wrote it down on her pad,
turned and went back into the kitchen.
George looked at the man seated
beside him and smiled. “Did you ever think
we’d get this old?”
Dimitri was disarmed by the humor
and friendliness of the question. “No, I
never did.”
George waited for him to say
something else, when he did not, he tried again. “Thirty years ago it would have been
unthinkable that we meet, not for coffee, not for anything.”
A small smile flitted across
Dimitri’s lips, loosening his expression.
“No, if we had met one of us would have surely shot the other, I think.”
“I think so too.”
The teenager came back with two
cups of coffee precariously balanced on a tray she held in one hand. It was with difficulty that she swiveled the
tray down to rest on the edge of the table.
Careful not to let it show, George nearly laughed at the serious look of
concentration she wore. He was also
careful not to offer to help or to grab his mug. He had a hunch the old woman he’d met in the
lobby was the grandmother of this girl and was watching from the kitchen to
make sure she performed her tasks correctly.
Once she had the coffee mugs placed just so in front of each man and
pushed the pitcher of cream and the sugar bowl toward them, she retrieved the order
pad from her apron pocket, and said, “You ready to order?”
“Not just yet,” Dimitri said,
having not even looked at the menu.
“We’re old friends meeting after
years of not seeing each other,” said George.
“Can you give us some time, please?”
“Surely.” She tucked the tray under her arm and
retreated to the kitchen. Both men
reached for a menu and laughed when their hands collided over the napkin
dispenser.
“Guess we had the same thought,”
George said.
Dimitri answered, “Decide what to
order so we’ll be ready to fend her off when she comes back too soon.”
“Exactly.”
After they had each drunk about
half their coffee, each of them staring around at the empty tables, George
cleared his throat and set his mug on the scarred table. “How did you and Irina end up here?”
Dimitri carefully placed his mug on
the paper coaster in front of him. “When
the Soviet Union collapsed, there weren’t many jobs left for people like me. I wasn’t so active anymore; mostly I had
finally become my cover, a university literature professor. A year after the dissolution, they offered me
a pension. I knew they had in mind that
a younger person would need the job more than me, so I took it.”
George picked up his coffee and
drank a bit. “What made you come here?”
Dimitri fiddled with his empty
mug. “Irina and I talked. We decided we were tired of freezing our
(Russian/word/for/butts) off in the Moscow winters. We looked for someplace warm all year round.”
“Sounds a bit like us,” George said
with a chuckle. “But why this particular
island?”
“Because it is Dutch. We knew the English islands would be no good;
the English are too anti-Russian and suspicious even after all this time. The French islands? Who but a Frenchman would ever want to live
there? The Americans make too much
effort to pretend we are friends now, like those dogs of theirs, uh…Labrador
Retrievers, who act so eager and friendly, even if you kick them. Americans make me tired.”
“Oh, they’re all right for some
things. You can’t beat an American for
being willing to help you out of a jam.”
“Da, but then they think you will
forgive them any stupid thing they say or do.
They have good intentions and bad manners.”
George burst out laughing,
startling his companion into laughing too.
“That’s very perceptive of you.
That’s exactly why they tire me out too.”
Dimitri returned the question. “Why did you come here?”
“I got edged out of my job too,
last year when the government changed and more liberals held the reins. One of them decided that there were too many
old spooks sitting behind desks gathering useless information, so they looked
us over and pensioned off the oldest of us.”
He looked up, hoping to see their young waitress coming to refill their
mugs. He could hear a conversation in
the kitchen, but no footsteps coming their way.
He put his mug down in disappointment.
“Sonia and I had what I imagine was a very similar conversation to yours
with Irina. Neither of us wanted to
spend our dotage shivering in jolly old England so we cast about for a place in
the sun, cliché though that is. I love
to scuba dive, we’d been here on holiday a few times and we thought we could
afford to live here fairly well. We came
down about six months ago, found a place to buy in Belnem, went home to clear
things up and sell the house, and here we are.”
They heard shuffling footsteps and looked up to see their waitress
coming their way, a pot of coffee in her hand.
“Ah,” said George, “our salvation.”
He held his mug out for a refill.
The girl shook her head and
motioned him to set it down. “I’m not so
good at pouring,” she said. “I would not want to scald you.”
“I would not want that either.”
Her face screwed up in concentration,
she filled both mugs and put the heavy pot down with relief. “You are ready to order now?”
Today's "box a day" turned out to be lots more than a box full. I had two Mr. Coffees that Durwood used to take out of town that I don't need so those went. Then I bagged up all of the old costumes and prom dresses and mother of the groom dresses (three armloads) and they went into the back of my car too. I wish I had a conveyor up the stairs so I could just haul boxes to the bottom and have them ride the conveyor up but climbing stairs is good for me. I didn't manage my 15 minutes of writing today. I had to choose between writing and the Y and I chose the Y. I needed to go to the Y. I'll write more tomorrow. *sigh*
--Barbara
1 comment:
Snow!! Already?? Seems too soon but what do I know. But you're taking it in stride and not letting it slow you down. You did have a very busy day and got stuff done. Love your selection of new glasses. Not surprised to see a red one in there.
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