My first pasty

After years of reading about Cornish pasties, I finally was able to buy a veggie one in Brighton UK train station. Good.

Sign outside shop

Thank you for enjoying your ice cream before you come in to visit us.

How nicely put.

Squishy friends

I always loved Gloria Steinem's "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle." I found with one exception, that whenever I was in a relationship the quality of my life went down with the exception of the 11 years with a lovely Swiss gentlemen, but that worked because we lived in different cantons and saw each other SOME weekends.

I also admit when ever I saw a couple in a bad relationship, I thought "Thank God, it isn't me." And when I saw a happy couple in a good working relationship, I thought, "I'm glad they're happy and thank God it isn't me." I loved my life as a single. I loved living in two countries. I loved living alone in one and sharing a home with a widow and sometimes her son in the other. My life was as close to perfect as it is possible to get.

Thus when a man, whom I'd met 34 years before, reappeared, I wasn't prepared. Despite a strong attraction back then circumstances were not right. We were friends then drifted apart.

However, this time, there was a cascade of emotions. Different countries made the distance seem safe but 10 days together kinda wiped out that safety zone.

I expected my friends to talk sense into me. What happened. They went all squishy on me.

One said, "Good, I can buy a hat for the wedding?" even though I had never mentioned marriage.

Another, seeing us enter a jewelry store, rushed in hoping we were shopping for diamond. We weren't. It was chain to go with the beautiful pendant that had our combined birth stones that he gave me. Yes, he is a romantic. She keeps asking if she can be my bridesmaid.

Then my housemate asks me to Skype him. When he answers she tells him "We're all routing for you. Even my sister in California is." Then she looked at me. "Donna-Lane is blushing. I've never seen her blush."

Likewise a friend in Argeles who was positive she wouldn't like him, thinks he's great.

Come to think of it, he is great. We are meeting up in a third country next week to see where he might live and work so we can spend more time together.

Trite as the cliché is, "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans." He's laughing but so am I.

Walk

This is leaf-kicking weather and as I walked through the forest near the chalet, there were plenty to kick. Made me want to jump in a pile of them as I did when I was little, but raking them was too low on my priority list to make this memory come alive.

The sunshine, the view of the mountains and the valley, the huge moss covered rocks, the pine trees, a woodpecker drilling his little heart out and the only slight bite of air on my cheeks were all pluses on this get away week.

I passed an older man. He was bald and used two hiking sticks. He smiled and said what a beautiful day it was. I told him that being inside was against the law. He laughed and agreed.

We went in our opposite directions.

Casting the first stone

Or the 20th stone. It has nothing to do with sin and sinning. On the drive up to the mountains, my housemate and I passed tree after tree covered with the recent snowfall.

There was a light breeze and the snow will filter down like so a diamond fall.

We got out and I had the idea if  I threw a stone and hit a branch then the snow would fall and she could snap the photo. Right?

Wrong.

I have a lousy throwing arm and my aim is worse. Stone after stone missed it marked.

Finally she held the camera with one hand and threw a stone with the other and caught what she wanted on the camera.

She must have been a baseball player in an earlier incarnation.