So even after going to bed nearer to 4a than to 3a, I still got up before 8a because those goddamn kids were up chirping with the birdies as per usual. Although this time it was Omar who was as loud as they were. So I just got up.

Apparently, Omar had taken his shower downstairs and when he left the bathroom, the girls were standing there like the dead girls in The Shining and Omar screamed at the sight of them and then they screamed because he had screamed. As the running joke of the day went, he shrieked like a seven-year-old girl.

We all played in the living room, and Omar and I fell into our roles immediately--he was the fun one and I was the one who kept telling them to keep it down, that their parents were sleeping. I want to get to be the fun one, too!

Bonnie had decided that it was Indian Day, and that she was the chief and that everyone had to have Indian names. Our Indian names were Indian Omar and Indian Kymm and Indian Molly and Indian Bonnie. Which made sense.

At one point, Bonnie said, "Kymm, is Omar your husband?" "Not so much." Omar said, "It's a secret," and I said, "We'll see." Bonnie continued, "Are you boyfriend and girlfriend with each other?" "Well, Omar's my boyfriend but I'm not his girlfriend." "But you love each other, you are in love with each other very much."

I'll tell you who is really in love, Bonnie is in love with Omar. She was all over him all day long. She would rush to be walking next to him and holding his hand, or sitting next to him when we were stopped, and she was constantly reaching up and stroking his hair or sticking her fingers in his ears until Fran made her stop. I couldn't say anything, I certainly do the same thing myself. Not so much with the fingers in the ears, but everything else sure looked familiar.

After Cynthia and Fran got up, we took a walk into town, saw the market again, wandered around. The children complained, and at one point Omar picked Bonnie up and carried her for a few blocks. Us adults who know that Bonnie is like the Tardis, much larger on the inside, gasped in admiration that he managed to carry her for as long as he did.

We stopped for lunch at a Mexican place that was quite good, very authentic for Mexican food in Amish country. After that we went back to the house and got the cars to drive to Bird-in-Hand. I let Omar drive again.

Need I explain that we took the long way? The really really long way? It took us two hours to get to Bird-in-Hand, but we got there. It was a beautiful drive through farmland, though, even in the winter without anything growing.

I told Omar that that was rather how he lives his life, he makes everything as difficult as possible and he goes way out of his way for no reason, but that eventually he ends up where he belongs, where he meant to go all along.

O, and the drive home? Twenty minutes. I thought I'd never stop laughing.

We stopped at a restaurant called Good 'n' Plenty that was, frankly, ridiculous. Ridiculous! It's a family-style all-you-can-eat joint where they wheel the food up to the table and you shove it into your pie hole as fast as you can.

Fried chicken and ham and meatloaf and mashed potatoes and noodles and dried corn and probably other things that I am forgetting in my swimming, food-filled head. And some of the most delicious bread I've ever eaten. And then, when you think that you can never eat again, they bring the ice cream and shoofly pie and blueberry pie and cracker pudding and Jell-O and you poke it down your neck with a stick like you are making fois gras.

Then, the lovely waitresses roll you out to your car like Violet Beauregard post-blueberry.

When we got home, we all lay down on the bed in the guestroom and watched "The Pleasant Peasant" episode of I Love Lucy, an episode that I have heard about for a year or two from Cynthia and Fran but have never watched.

Christ it's funny. Lucy writes an operetta called "The Pleasant Peasant" that includes the song, "I am the queen of the gypsies, the gyp-gyp-gyp-gyp-gyp-gypsies!" that Fran has been known to sing around the office.

Then the kids went to bed and the four of us watched the other two episodes on the tape, one where Lucy wrote a book and another where she wrote a play called "A Tree Grows in Havana". Absolutely a scream. I thought I had seen most episodes of I Love Lucy over the years, but I hadn't seen any of these.

After the tape was over, we all went downstairs and played The Wizard of Oz game, and I pissed everyone off by winning twice before anyone else had won once. I won, then decided to start from scratch, and then I won again. Everyone accused me of cramming because I never needed any of the multiple-choices in order to guess the right answers. Who doesn't know that the Cowardly Lion says, "I’ll take care of you anyway, Peewee!" might I ask?

Then we played gin for awhile, and I won two games first, though I won my first game after Cynthia and Fran had each won one, so everyone threw their cards at my head and stomped off to bed. I'm such a game shark. Hee hee hee.

Living with Omar is working out okay, we get along grand. Except that he keeps the house like a fucking kiln. So hot he wants the house to be, and I certainly have nothing against warmth, except that I'd rather not wake bathed in sweat because I slept under a light coverlet. And I'd rather be able to open a window occasionally and get some fucking air without having to do backwards somersaults.

O yeah, and he carries the toothpaste around the house. He took it to the downstairs bathroom from the upstairs bathroom, so I brought my toothbrush down there. Then he carried it from the downstairs bathroom to the upstairs bathroom, and I said, "Will you stop moving the toothpaste everywhere and making me trot along after you with my toothbrush in my hand?" and he grinned at me and said, "It's our first fight!"

I'm someone different in this house, in this place. I'm the kind of person who cooks, who is neat, who brushes her teeth in the morning as well as the evening, who doesn't watch TV or spend hardly any time on the computer, who eats properly, who takes walks, who goes to bed early and gets up early. Not that I'm pretending to be someone else, not at all, this is just how it feels natural to be.

And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

Today's horoscope:
Moods come and go, but friendship can last a lifetime. The words on your mind may not be welcome to certain ears right now. Your presence is strong enough for you to model behavior instead of dictating it.

One year ago today:
He is a surprisingly witty man (on his daughter complaining about his not hearing her, "You try standing in front of thirty billion decibels every night for 35 years! Write me a note!")

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Last Updated Sun 16 March 00:49:09 2003