The wife of Ed’s friend in Greenville, NC is Margo. She was so impressed that, as a young dancer in New York, my ballet friend Inese, and I, went to the Pilates studio and met him. He gave us a rundown on what he could do for us. All the professional dancers were using him. We were impressed. But we couldn't afford him so we didn’t sign up. Margo said that “next time” she just had to introduce me to her friends who would be bowled over.

I got, for some reason, a solicitation from Devin Nunes in my e mail asking for money because, doncha know, Nancy Pelosi is probably going to lead the House again, oh curses, and she must be stopped!! So I e mailed back that, since he is destroying the Republican party, and supporting the fascist thug in the White House, I was not inclined to send him money. Exercising phenomenal restraint, I didn’t swear at him.

Putting my house back in order after the trip has been a big deal. The floors are full of blood from Ziggy's chewed up tail, the obligatory cat hair, and random dishes are out and about. I have put the cover (a thermal sheet) I keep on the leather sofa to protect it from kitty scratches into the wash on the sanitize setting (because of fleas). This setting makes a lot of noise -– bumps and thumps -- and Ed went into the garage for something and thought I was destroying the washing machine. Relax, I said. That’s what it does on “sanitize”. He didn’t want to believe me and went away muttering and darkly suggested he’d have to replace the washer because of me.

On our night back, we ordered pizza and that helped preserve my sanity. But no matter if you have takeout, there is still clean-up. "But,"Ed will say, “you didn’t have to cook!!”. But, I say, there is still a table to be cleared, and dishes and utensils to be scraped, loaded into the dishwasher (thank you forces that be), left over slices into the special pizza keeper for the fridge, a dirty pizza box to be cleaned before it goes in the recycle, counters to be wiped, trash to be bagged and taken out to the garage, and a floor to be swept, none of which needs doing IF YOU ARE EATING OUT.

Oh, I forgot to mention that when we were leaving I got the cooler out of the trunk of my car so we could take it with us and didn't close the trunk completely. So the battery died. I tried to move it last night to make room for the Toyota and it was so dead, it needed services. The Triple A guy jump started it and told me to run it for an hour and a half and then take it to an auto shop to have it professionally charged, because it needed that. I can’t do that till Monday. Ed has to go with me, in his car, because it will take hours. Then Ed has to drive me back there so I can pick it up. If the car dies again before I can get it to the shop, I’ll have to call Triple A again.

This morning I served Ed and Dana cheese blintzes that I get from the freezer at the market. They’re rather good – served with sour cream and preserves. I had toast because I am a pound up. Dana is still here but will be getting on the road soon, back to Orlando in the middle of Florida. Meanwhile, Margo at one point served us fruit salad with Oikos Greek plain yogurt and it tasted so much like sour cream, I think I will switch. I won’t mention this to Ed and see if he notices. Am I a bad person?

xx, Teal