Let us go then, you and I when the evening is spread . . .

It's been a strange and happy - though distant arrangement .  . . Tony and I.  I have never met him.  He sadly has never met me.  His loss.  IMHO.  But I have loved and worshipped him from afar.  He divorced and strangely didn't choose me - damn internet. Okay seriously?  I would have killed him in his sleep and frankly the woman he smartly married would shank him if he so much as farted and not apologized - I love that about her.  She's from Sardinia. yea.  I'm from Wisconsin.. Like Rodney - I get no respect.  But just saying.  I am an armchair chef.  I have so many things that I can't eat and it makes me feel like half a person.  I can't eat wheat.  I physically can if I want to feel like crap for 2 days and people won't want to stand near my air space - so no I can't.   But It's really the locations.  I guess it all goes back to eat pray love.  Again.  she is my alter ego except for the uber cool house and the already writing gig and the fact that I HAD kids.  I didn't go nuts til AFTER I had kids - so no I could NOT run off to Italy, India Nor Indonesia (aka Bali) though my hair rocks and Julia wishes she had mine.  But I digress - okay really when don't I chase a rabbit or 12?

Tonight is the official END of summer and I did fall to a few pieces though no one was allowed to pay attention.  I cried at my fish bowl office desk (yes I have both an office with a door that I've heard does shut) and a desk though with the level of debris on it I question that sighting!  I cried - real deal tears - my kids are in their final Middle school (the older ones) and my peanut for her Elementary stay.  I vividly remember 5th grade.  Aislinn is there right now.  I'm a way different though not saying better - just different mom than mine.  She is Bravo Tango Whiskey - 63 today.  This very day.  we baked cookies - an F'ton if you must know - that are going to Wisconsin tomorrow.  I looked into cookies by design.  yeah. 7 cookies. 50 bucks.  30 bucks shipping!  bite me.  Printco.  get ready.  I got cookies coming YOUR WAY!  lol!

I am ready to reinvent.  I've said it before.  But Frankly - I'm a little kid standing on the edge of the pool not ready to jump in.  but so so ready.  I need - from the heart. NEED to do something different.  This is really really killing me.  I saw a truck yesterday with "we do custom upholstery and slipcovers" and my heart jumped.  Gah really?  am I going backward?  Or am I just called to creation.  Is that the universe calling me back to my own hands doing the creation?  I really really don't know.

I just know - this is Tony's No Reservation's last LAST tour.  Roger finally watched an episode and strangely I think it sucked him in.  It was one I had seen like 4 times.  The Amazon episode - polished and professional later addition NR - but Tony gets hurt early on and it's a bit of a wild card.  I like it because Brazil is a country I need to visit.  The Amazon is calling and has been - much like the Mississippi called Tim and I a few years too late.  I don't want to miss this again.  I'm tired of missing the hit- missing the day, being a dollar short and a day late has been my mark.  I need to change that.  I need to reinvent.  I've been the lackey - the assistant - the one who has to go to the dry cleaner - for too many years.

My kids start school tomorrow.  New day.  I cried bitterly last week.  No one knew.  Just me.  I feel a shift.

I saw NR at it's first.  I will watch the last.  He moved on.  bring on the winds of change.

LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats	5
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question….	10
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,	15
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,	20
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window panes;	25
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;	30
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go	35
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—	40
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare	45
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,	50
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all—	55
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?	60
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress	65
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin? .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets	70
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!	75
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?	80
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,	85
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,	90
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—	95
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all.”
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,	100
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:	105
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.” .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .	110
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,	115
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old … I grow old …	120
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.	125
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown	130
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.