New Amsterdam: it's become much too much

[desperance]

My rather awesome wife is having a busy week, interviewing hither and yon with three different companies. In pursuit of which, we spent yesterday up in the city. We went to her favourite salad bar for lunch (and I would dearly like to know how they make their dino kale so tender; mine tastes fine, but its mouthfeel is kinda like eating paper), and then she disappeared into an office block up between Kearny and Grant, just exactly where the financial district rubs up against Chinatown. So of course I went down to the Ferry Building (heirloom beans, good cheddar and black garlic) and then up into Chinatown to mooch around the Wok Shop and the tea merchants. I could spend much, of both money and time; but I'm still being good with the one, and trying to be better with the other.

And then we caught the train home, and were held up in Palo Alto by a fatality on the tracks ahead; but Jeannie drove down to rescue us, and we came home to discover that Katherine elves had cleaned our house for us while we were gone, and now it was full of people and wine. And they were good enough to eat leftovers and not complain even when we ran out even of leftovers, and Cathyn brought dessert and an unexpected wife, and all was lovely.

And speaking of the unexpectedness of wives, I learn that the lyric that I have spent thirty years singing "as I lose the possession of everything she touches" is actually "till I have the possession of everything she touches" - which seems to be (in my experience) a definition of marriage. If it says also something about my mean and narrow psyche as measured against her open-handed generosity, well. I do spend a lot of time counting out my blessings, bead by bead on the abacus of my heart.