Frigid

It has never been this cold in SB. Never, in all the years that I have lived here... ah yes, only three winters, but still. I keep waiting for the rain, but instead, this, frigid arctic wind that settles down.

Mexico city was balmy in comparison. New Hampshire was too, says my father who just left.

My child won't go to bed, she's says it isn't fair that she has to sleep alone. I tell her life isn't always fair, the cat comes to my room no matter how I try to get her to stay with I., but she isn't buying it. She snuffles and mopes, and the heat blasts in dueling furnaces. My hands hurt as they wrap around the bicycle handle bars. My nipples hurt as they scrape against formerly tender fabric.

My laundry still sits in neatly folded piles (folded and washed by dad, bless his heart). I turned the left-over salmon from our frozen night on the partially proteced out-door dining area on one of the various wharfs into a dill mousse. I invent a soup of swiss chard, mustard, collard, turnip greens, with a splash of cream. We eat rice crackers, and an Italian black truffle cheese, hummus, a Basque sheeps milk cheese. We finish off the Washington state Reisling. It is cold outside. Mys kin hurts.

I braved the frozen streets, downtown, barren save for a few restless souls (or soles). Watched Notes on a Scandal. I love Judi Dench. The script was great, her delivery was phenomenal. There was something about loneliness. A line, about how certain people don't understand what bone-crunching loneliness is, what it is like to make an entire weekend around taking a bath, about having no one to touch them... It occurs to me that failure to thrive is not just for infants who don't receive the necessary physical affect. I say this as I try desperately to send my monkey off to bed for the fifth time this evening. "Just one more kiss mommy!" She stops and gazes lovingly at me, rests her hands gently on my face, strokes my cheek as I have done to her a million times, at least.

It is amazing, and yet, we can be accused of being too physical, too sappy, cloying, and sweet. Sometimes when you don't know where to draw the line, you run the risk of simply drying up. Or freezing.