Lovely Lunch

Earlier this week my mother and I went to one of her friend's houses for lunch. When we pulled up we saw this beauty of a dog. The dog did not belong to the friend but, rather, to a guy checking on the friend's bee houses (hives?). The dog's name was Clyde and he was happy to say hello before rambling on. He was wet, and I just knew he had gotten into some pond or stream and was happy for it.
The weather was very nice. Super sunny and definitely in the 70s. We sat outside to enjoy it. In the end my mother and I both ended up getting on sunburned arm apiece, but it was well worth it.
Our hostess served us a wonderful salad of her own grown and picked lettuce greens, sundried tomatoes, hearts of palm and walnuts. The lettuce, in particular, was exceptional.
For our main lunch fare there was ravioli with tomato sauce with freshly grated parmesan. Very good. We drank white wine and Pelligrino sparkling water.
Dessert was an assortment of fruit and chocolate.
This chocolate was very good. It reminded me of Abuelita or Cibarra Mexican hot chocolate in its texture, little granules of sugar crunchy in the rich dark chocolate. After a short amount of time the chocolate was melted by the strength of the sun and I spread some of it onto apple slices.
The friend and her husband recently got chickens. These are still in their adolescent stage. I like chickens. I like picking eggs and I think I could even eat a chicken I got to know...I mean, I'd actually know how it was treated and, well, I would treat my chickens better than, say, Purdue does theirs.
I am taking a break from a pretty big deal. Today I am trying out for a job in Philadelphia. The try-out is editing three different writing pieces. I have a twenty four hour period of time to do this but each one, with track changes on, shouldn't take longer than an hour (and hopefully less). I was pretty much done with the first one when my Word program froze up, forcing me to force quit. Then, when I reopened the file none of my changes had been saved. So I had to do it all over again...and then I found a recovered version I had already done...I was, and am, as you can imagine, a little put out by that whole snafu. Though, at the same time, it gave me an opportunity to streamline my comments.

My parents are out of town for the weekend which is nice for them and not bad for me. Except for the fact that they drove off with my wallet. My attempt earlier this year to quit smoking collapsed on me and this assignment hasn't helped the cause...and because my parents have the wallet, I have no identification. Tennessee is a bit of a stickler state about carding people, which usually I'm perfectly okay with...I mean I am way over 18. But now I'm looking at my rapidly dwindling pack of cigarettes and wondering what to do. I am tempted to call one of my parents' friends and plead my case...but none of them are smokers and many of them would say this is the perfect opportunity to quit...which it is...but. Um. I don't want to? I do want to, just not today? Shit.

I have also pretty much committed to buying a car on Tuesday. This impending financial burden is weighing rather heavily on my soul. I feel that having a car is a good thing for me and buying one with an intact warranty, good fuel economy etc is better than spending less money for a clunker that will eat money later on...and with the way air travel is going it seems more sensible to drive than fly...but...if I do a bad job today then I don't have any other obviously good options for employment but I will still have this additional expense. Some times I do wish I could just crawl into a hole and shiver. I'm pretty sure that I would be really, really good at it.

Last week my mother and I watched a news magazine show about this guy and one of his maxims was: you're either a Tigger or an Eeyore. I think I'm a Tigger-like Eeyore. Would it be better to be an Eeyore-like Tigger? It would probably be better to just be a Tigger...but all that bouncing? I don't know. I think I might fall somewhere in between. I usually live my life by my own maxim: Everything will be fine. While a Tigger's would be: Everything's great! and Eeyore's would be: Everything's terrible. Okay. Enough.