Up early again yesterday morning. I'm on vacation and I get up before 8.30a! This living on Omar's body clock thing is weird.

I forgot to tell you about the ring, didn't I? He had told me a couple of weeks ago that he had a present for me, "Something sentimental," that he would give me when we went to Lancaster. Well, on Wednesday, when we got here, he gave me the ring that he wore in Orpheus. This ring:

In the play it's described as a snake ring with a ruby eye, but it's really a devil ring with the face of the Satan under a layer of red and a forked tail on either side. It's intensely cool. And it's from Orpheus. And, of course, it's from Omar. I am never taking it off.

After breakfast and bathing, we went for another walk. We stopped at this little museum dedicated to artist Charles Demuth that I just loved, and also to this great farmer's market. Then we took the car and drove to Strasberg. The long way, of course, because Omar never does anything the easy way.

I let him drive, don't tell the car rental agency. He doesn't have a license as such, but he has a learner's permit. The harem never let him drive so he never has a chance to practice, but as far as I'm concerned, a 39 year old man really shouldn't have a learner's permit for heaven's sake. He's one up on Fran, at least, who cannot drive a smitch.

He drives pretty well, except that he likes to turn on his blinker blocks and blocks before actually turning, he never looks over his shoulder when he is changing lanes and when turning a corner he doesn't go hand over hand on the wheel but instead he inches his hands very quickly in once direction and then back the other way. Other than that, though, he drove swell.

Strasberg was a nice little bump in the road where we had soup in a cute little cafe where I sang along to "Come Rain or Come Shine", impressing the woman at the counter.

Then we went to this great antique store. Three stories of junk, and by junk I mean that I would have bought the entire store if I could have. I managed to get out just having bought a copy of Pollyanna's Western Adventure, which wasn't bad at all, for me.

When we got home we did some work on the house. Omar said that he likes to do at least a little bit of work when he comes up, so of course I helped. We scraped paint off of the tile in the downstairs bathroom while singing along to the entire score of Sweeney Todd.

Then we cleaned the already impeccably clean house for the Callahan's arrival. Neat people make me laugh, they look at a completely clean room and pull out the vacuum in order to get the sub-microscopic particles, one can only imagine.

Around 5p, when we were done, he got this light in his eyes and looked at me from under his eyelashes and said, "Are you hungry?" "Does that mean that you want me to start cooking?" It was very cute. I made pork chops and mashed potatoes and cauliflower.

After dinner, he pulled out a copy of the very first script that he had ever written, a musical version of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari called Caligari (I said that it should have been called Cabinet!), which was frankly the funniest thing that I had ever read. And I read it. Out loud. For three hours.

Anyone who has ever heard me give dramatic readings of other people's journals know exactly what it was like, lots of MST3K comments, lots of big gestures, it was totally fun. It was over a hundred pages, there were 48 songs, sometimes a song on every page and then twenty pages would go by without a song, there were 17 scenes in Act I and 9 in Act II, there was a flashback after page 100, it was astoundingly bad.

Omar was screaming with laughter along with me, he was so overwhelmed by the badness of it all that he put his socks on his head. "O my God," he said, remembering, "My friends were so polite about it!"

At this point it was after 11p, but the Callahans were coming after 2a, so we lay down in the guest room to watch a TV movie from the 70's called Cat Creature that was quite fun, even if it did star Meredith Baxter before she started plucking her eyebrows.

Omar fell asleep, of course, as he turns into a pumpkin after midnight. He was snoring. It was the cutest thing you ever did see. He did one of those snorts where you wake yourself up and tottered off to bed, leaving me to stay up for Cynthia and Fran and the kids.

I wrote a few entries, then fell asleep on the sofa, and they got here around 3a. We slung the children to bed, then I went up to the attic because Cynthia and Fran usurped me from the guest room, and went to sleep.

And the evening and the morning were the third day.

Today's horoscope:
You're blissfully aware of your place in the world. Your comfort level is high enough to accommodate a healthy curiosity. Pay special attention to the keys that you carry and the doors that they open.

One year ago today:
The point of all this is that a weak character coupled with a healthy ego is probably my most defining personality point, it is something that I struggle with, or more likely, don't...

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Last Updated Fri 14 March 11:18:09 2003