Off for the Week-end

Well. There is snow on the ground and the skies are gray. The sparkling sunlight on the cemetery pond is now a sight of the distant past. (A few days ago, actually, but gray days have a way of making sunshine seem like it made its last appearance during the Neolithic Age.) So we will probably not be sitting out on the cottage porch tonight, sipping hot cider and whatever.

And I still have essays to edit and first-of-the-month bills to pay, all of which I was planning to finish by November 1st. But piles of paper on the dining room table have a way of staying put.

And I am thinking that it seems that I probably did crack that bone just below my thumb when I landed on my hand the other night, because the pain will not go away and my entire arm aches. Sometimes. And I can't put any weight on my thumb, which I have discovered is what one usually does when grabbing a bag of groceries or pulling a wet bedspread out of the washing machine. I have diagnosed this little problem as a scaphoid fracture and have been ignoring it, since several websites say that it often takes several days to appear in an x-ray. But I think I will have to walk gingerly this week-end to avoid further slip-and-falls and then -- GIGANTIC SIGH OF AGONY -- I will have to go see a bone kind of doctor next week.

And I cannot figure out why it takes a group of women more than an hour to get out of the house. I am driving two of my friends tonight and I am glad that the gray skies preclude the lake sunset I was planning on photographing, because no way are we getting there until after dark.

But we are going! And by the time we come back, we women, who have known each other for years, will have solved all the problems of the world and there will be no need for next week's elections.

Or we will have at least commiserated over the challenges posed by young adult children and laughed at how we once thought preschool choices were matters of earthshaking importance. Just as long ago we predicted we would. And therein lies the good fortune: we have lasted as friends long enough to see our futures come true, one way or another.