The party is so over

Good news: I had a birthday!

Good news: I was taken to lunch!

Good news: I was taken to dinner!

Good news: I was sent flowers!

Good news: I ordered a Kindle!

Good news: I had ice cream!

Good news: It was a wonderful day!

Inevitable news: My flowers are drooping.

Bad news: Gah. Now I'm even older.

Aggregator

I'm still messing with it, but I've registered www.cathyblogs.com as the place to bring all the blogs I somehow feel obligated to write.

With lines in my head

Mornings

Surely I'm awake

Monday's just a state of mind

--A slap in the face.

Morning moon, don't blink--

That bloody, bruised sunrise brings

Dark violence from the west.

Last night's bright stars

Fell to my yard

First frost.

On Fall

That field of winter wheat

Newly green in January

Fall finds fallow.

Trees drop leaves like tears

A quiet sob of regret

First day of fall .

Drove to work this morning

In a seashell turned upside-down

A sky turned blue and opal pink

Yet not a sea in sight.

Windy this morning

And the moon clung to Venus

As if she could be blown away.

Just a Walk

Voices from a dark deck

Fountains splash in stormwater ponds

The heron doesn't care.

Halogen streetlight outlasts the orange sunset

Someone's dryer freshens the air

Evening in the suburbs.

With John Mayer in my head

O September

O go away, September.
I'm tired of you already;
Tired of your last-holiday-of-summer,
The finality of Labor Day;
Tired of your first-day-of-Autumn
September Twenty-second-ness;
Tired of the back-to-school sales flyers
And the ads for sweaters and backpacks.
I'm tired of the cool fall nights
And the "good sleeping weather" rejoinders.
Tired of football, even, bright lights
And jarring tackles and rah-rah Friday nights.
I'm tired of "The leaves are starting to change!"
Observations, and any references to woolly bears
And their predictions.
Tired, too, of all the "last-of" things,
Last Trip to the Lake,
Last picnic, last swim, last boat ride.
Already I'm tired of thinking about
And all the winteriness ahead,
All the dead leaves and brown grass
And ice.
I'm tired of missing sunny days and warm nights
And fresh tomatos on the vine.
Most of all of I'm tired of dreading
The Official Last Day of Summer,
Even as the mornings shine in my window later
And the evening enroaches earlier.
O come back, Summer!
Don't let September chase you away,
Don't leave me, don't go, please please please
Come back, O Summer! Don't -- go -- just -- yet --
Gone.

About, Time and Grace--Beck's note to Grace (fragment 5)

Darling--
I think I left my cell
In the pocket of my jeans
On the chair by the door.
Could you grab it?
Put on the kitchen table,
I'll get it later.
Or put it in your purse
And I'll get it
When we meet.
Answer all my calls, or not--
But remember if you call me
You'll have to answer, too.
Really, just turn it off.
And you know,
Even without the phone,
All day, I'll be thinking of you.

About getting on the road

A road trip--give me a Diet Coke and a stack of books and I can ride forever.

So I've got some new vampire books to try and plenty of Diet in the cooler.

And passing through Chicago on Lake Shore Drive -- exhilarating:

The city draws us in with a deep breath / We tumble through it, awed / Made small, used up, exhaled