solitude

...as we flew around Sauvie Island, 90 miles an hour, he stopped: 5 roses for 5 bucks, and we stuffed them in the knapsack, and now, in my living room, they are opening perfectly, the color of sunset, this Labor day-evening -- a sweet smelling reminder of my deep contentment in this life. I was reading, am reading, a book by Sue Miller. It is the one thing I have not completed this weekend that I intended to. The main character was accused of being boring because she settled for contentment. Clearly, she had not lived my life. Contentment is the highest form of praise I can assign to any moment, or series of moments. Absence of chaos. Bliss.

We ate breakfast out two mornings in a row.

We went for a bicycle ride Saturday morning, and this morning, but it was Saturday when we drove by the Road Kill Table. I spied it: a semi-mission style table, a weathered top (maybe a door nailed to the supports) that crumbled away with the slightest pressure. In my neighborhood, people just set stuff they don't want on the curb, and someone generally takes it away. My husband, hoping I'd forget about it, drove on past, but I could not forget it. That's how I know I want something: I keep thinking about it. So, we circled back around, made sure the owners were indeed letting the table go, and once again, I have a new treasure. We brought it home (I did) and Kurt made a new top for it. It is beautiful, and will be a perfect replacement for the too-frilly table I have used for about five years, that I HAD to have, that I searched far and wide and paid too much for at an antique store in Bandon. I am now rewarded with a free table. Buying wood for the top was not exactly free. Makes me glad I am not building a house.

We watched old movies: The Old Man and the Sea and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. I remembered The Old Man... as a better movie, Spencer Tracy a better actor. I didn't like the narration, and Hemingway's writing seemed (sue me) self-conscious and repetitious. We also watched Megalodon and Monster in Law, just to keep things even.

I'll never be published. I have sinned against literature.