Yesterday Derek brought his beloved cat by for me to meet.  When he saw that quilt laying over the big box my ceiling lights came in he wondered why.

“Bridget peed on it when you grabbed her snout last night.”

“I didn’t hurt her; I was just being playful.”

“Well, you’ve obviously been abusing her or she wouldn’t shake like that and pee on me.”

“Then how come she’s all over me the minute I walk in the door?”

“Because she knows you’re going to let her out.”

I’m sure you are all wondering if I have taken leave of my senses.  I am, too.  I wonder why I have attracted a guy who fascinates me, turns me on, is great fun, someone I would trust with my pin number but not my dog.  My women friends are saints but I keep attracting guys who aren’t. 

My brother’s girlfriend has been an astrologist for most of her adult life, and I consult her from time to time about the men I meet.  After looking at our two charts she says, “This was a fate thing.  You were bound to meet.” 

She was explicit about the limitations, and what she predicted has unfolded.  I wish I could remember how she described us then: 

“He struggles with some sort of disconnect between his mind and body, something he sees mirrored in you.  But you two have all these major” –I can’t remember what she calls them so I’ll use — “intersections where you oppose each other and that will cause you to bump heads.  You will learn from each other but it is to be nothing more.” 

“So, no romance?” I tried to sound like I was joking, given his age.

“Absolutely not.”

It was good advice, something  I’ve wanted to ignore on several occasions when he was being his best, charming self.  But the charts did not lie.  We are constantly coming at things from opposite ends, and the same chemistry that she called the “man/woman thing” makes those disagreements intense.

Most Sundays we have dinner together after my Spanish class and before I go dancing.  When he called I didn’t bring it up and neither did he.  Nor did we talk about the dog. 

I’ve decided she is not to go in the front yard.  At least not with him.  And I’m going to push to get these projects wrapped up so I won’t need him anymore.  I’ll say I’ve run out of money, which is true.  I’ll miss the trading tips, and I’ll miss him terribly, but it’s wrong to spend time with someone who makes Bridget tremble like that, though she does tremble at the drop of a hat.  And she does pee when my daughter yells at her.

Today I went to a long luncheon, all the way in Hillsboro.  I left Derek with the dog and instead of painting the kitchen ceiling he said he did some trading and took a nap.  When I got home the dog was running around in the front yard, which is not fenced.  He used to go out there to smoke cigarettes and I’d let her go, too, because I knew he’d keep an eye on her. Well, on New Year’s he quit smoking so now she goes out by herself.  He trained her to come back when he calls so I was sort of okay with it.  I’ve done it myself in the night or early morning when it’s dark and the neighbors can’t see her. 

Anyway, I went upstairs to get my overhaulls on and some sturdy hiking boots, gloves and protective glasses, because I wanted to play with my new chainsaw.  I lost a good portion of my favorite tree in the snow storm.  It’s right by the road and people were having to dodge the limb that fell almost into the street.  Someone strong moved it further back in the yard but it wasn’t Derek.  Maybe it was my brother. 

Derek ignored it and was against the idea of a chainsaw so I bought it when he wasn’t with me.  We went over the manual together and he came out to watch the first cut but he wanted no part of it.  He went back inside and watched the rest of his movie.  I would have thought he’d be all over that.

The dog was still outside while I was working.  I caught her going across the street so I yelled at her to “get over here.”  I went back to cutting the log when I noticed she was still sitting and staying, something Derek must have taught her.  I told her it was okay but then I caught her sneaking over to the neighbor’s so when she came back I made her sit and stay until I was done which was only about five more minutes.  Still, it was something I never thought she could do.

Derek seemed upset when I got home.  He was doing the dishes, something he does when he’s tense. He said it was because he fell asleep and didn’t get a stop-loss set up on his T-bond trade before the market closed.  After I came in from the front yard he cooked dinner while I had a glass of wine and watched.  I played the CD he brought over the first night we had dinner together but the mood was markedly different tonight.

He got ready to go work out and I settled in with a magazine and the dog on my lap.  I sprawl out in my recliner with a quilt so she doesn’t get those little white hairs all over me.  When he walked by us to get his computer off the coffee table she started shaking.  It wasn’t until I got up to get the phone that I realized she’d peed on me.  I don’t know what he does to her when I’m gone that she’s so scared of him.  He makes a big production of getting her to roll over and heel and trains her using treats.  But, usually, she doesn’t want to come to him.  She hovers by me and quivers. 

I think he uses these jaunts out in the front yard as leverage because the treats are running out and he knows I won’t buy more.  He says he doesn’t act any different around her when I’m gone but I’m not so sure. 

We watched the inauguration together.  Derek is a staunch republican and has refused to call him Obama until this morning.  It was Osama.  It used to make me crazy but there are so many ridiculous things about him that after a while you just shake your head.

We made it through Home Depot without a fight.  That happened in the car.  He gets me so riled up sometimes I’m just about brought to tears.  The next stop was Sherwin Williams.  He said I paid too much so we were returning the gallon. 

He painted in his undershirt and I tried not to look.  I made beef stew.  I’m trying to learn to cook without salt because Henry’s mother can’t have it.  Derek didn’t want me to put canned tomatoes in but I knew it would need the flavor.  He wants everything his way, whether it’s the color of my paint or the flavor of my stew.  I can’t even imagine what a nightmare it would be to live with him.

The woman who runs the cancer program I volunteer with owns a lavender farm.  She used to teach classes about what combination of herbs go with meat, fish, and poultry, and she’s going to bring me the handout. 

When I got home from the hospital he was just finishing up “cutting in” the primer along the edges of the ceiling in the kitchen and great room.  We tried the stew and it was bland.  So he took the arborio and salmon thing I’d made which was terrible and put a dollop in with the stew in his bowl.  He said it was good, which I found hard to believe.  I tried it and sure enough it was.  You couldn’t even taste the fish, just the corn.  It’s fun that he is eager to experiment with food.  That’s how I like to cook, too.

I think what makes everything all right, in the end, is the good communication.  What he doesn’t pick up from my body language he seems to be able to intuit.  I’ve caught him a few times now, reading my mind.

What happened was that his best friend’s wife, who is also Derek’s very close friend (she cuts his hair once a week, he likes it short) who has recently moved out, called him.  Her grandfather was going to be playing slide guitar and her mother was going to be singing at a place I used to frequent.  Now this could have been the guys’ thing he was talking about or it could have been a whole, new, last-minute thing.  Given that it was the woman and that his best friend wouldn’t have wanted to go, Derek may have had a last-minute change of plans. 

That was Saturday night.  Sunday I was leaving church when I saw him approaching with his parents.  We stopped, and his mother and I got to know each other a little.  We talked recipes. 

Yesterday morning he called me at the usual time, and when I was leaving for recorder, he was arriving.  We rolled down our windows, two houses up the street. 

“I bought you something.”

“You must feel guilty,” I said with a smirk.

“Don’t you want to see what it is?”  he reached over to the passsenger seat and pulled out a bottle of Joy.

“Aren’t you just about out?”

“I am.”

We exchanged a look and the moment felt intimate enough that I blew him a kiss.  Not with my hand, I just puckered.  But I drove off a little unnerved, wondering how inappropriate that was.

When I came home my dishes were done, and he was gone.

What I think happened is that he had something better come up.  The first change in plans happened the day of the party.  He said to make sure my phone was charged and on because I was going to be gone all day.  When I got there I called him to say phones had to be turned off and he said, “Why?”  There was so much noise in our building and I didn’t want to be rude so I said I couldn’t talk.  He said something I couldn’t understand so I hung up.  He sounded annoyed.

Once I was in my car on the way home I called but he didn’t pick up.  I changed clothes, did my hair and started to get nervous.  These people are serious Christians and they don’t drink.  Well, Derek does on occasion but his parents don’t.  I thought about going to get a drink before he picked me up but I didn’t want to be smelling like gin when I talked to his mother.  Then I remembered the almost-empty gallon of vodka my daughter left after their last party.  I gagged that down and waited for the phone to ring.

He was so sorry but it turned out his parent’s party was on Saturday, not Friday.  Still in Washington, working on his best friend’s rental house, he was chatty but I said it sounded like he was busy and got off. 

Saturday I had plans with the middle daughter, and he called while we were window shopping on 23rd.  The sun was out but it was still cold, and we were walking arm in arm to keep warm.  He said to call him back when I “had a minute.”  Nothing I’d ever heard him say.

Two hours later I called, and he said he still didn’t know for sure what time the party started, hadn’t gotten a hold of his parents yet.  Odd.  I thought I detected some reticence in his voice. He knew I had a concert that night but it wasn’t until 7:00 or 8:00, I couldn’t remember which, and the more I thought about it the more I liked the idea of eating and running. 

I called him back an hour later and said the concert was at 7:00, and I really wanted to go.  It was at the Unitarian Church, and I needed to mend some fences.  He said he was relieved, that he would have gone if I wanted to but that it wasn’t even starting until 8:00, that it was a surprise party.  His irritation at the later hour sounded overdone.  But his best friend was having a thing that he wanted to go to later that night that would have conflicted.  He made like it was a guys-night thing.

So I stop at the store because now I have to cook and I think, well, he’s still going to need dinner.  I had some salmon that he likes so I call him back.  Now he’s backtracking, saying if his parents throw a fit about it he might have to go to the party.  Not likely I think.

I’m getting out of the shower upstairs and I hear his voice.  He is outside my bedroom window on the phone.  I throw some clothes on, put a towel over my hair, and go see what he’s doing.  He’s sitting in front of the TV.

Were this the middle of a trading day it would be normal.  My house is his house I’m always telling him.  But under the circumstances I’m pissed.  I figure he wants dinner on his way to whatever he didn’t want to take me to.

Turns out he wanted to iron his good shirt.  He’s going to a concert, too.

After Thanksgiving Derek brought over some of his mother’s special salad, because he knew I liked cranberries.  It was so good and so different I asked if he could get me the recipe.  What he showed up with was a recipe book she’d made him for Christmas one year.  She’d handwritten all their family’s favorite recipes. 

We flipped through the three-ringed binder and he marked the ones he liked best, but the chocolate peanut butter pie was not in there.  When I told him to ask her about it he said, “Hey, my parents are coming into town this weekend for my uncle’s birthday.  You could come and ask her yourself.”

I think he spoke without thinking because he kind of laughed and added, “…if you don’t think that would be too weird.”

At the time I was glad he’d asked and was looking forward to meeting them.  He’s met all the girls, my brother and a sister, and his family knows he’s been working here and that we’ve been cooking together.  They know we’ve been trading commodities together and they know I’ve started going to their church.  He assured me they don’t think anything is weird about it. 

But then I started thinking how his mother might feel about me cooking her recipes with him or for him.  They’ve recently moved three hours away and he misses her.  He had been remodeling their house so they could get it sold and was practically living there.  Kinda like he’s doing here I guess. 

Our mutual friend was chiding me today, and I have to admit the whole thing does sound kinda kooky.  The party is at a restaurant, tomorrow night, and they know I’m coming.  It ought to be interesting.

Today I went over to my mother-in-law’s (ex) and made chicken noodle soup.  She suggested I use a precooked chicken so that was easy.  I took all the meat off and used the carcass for stock.  Then I made mashed potatoes and peas to go with the chicken and while we ate dinner the soup cooked. 

She sang the words to her favorite tune in My Fair Lady and told me the story of her elopement in Coronado, something I’d never heard for some reason.  She’s going downhill fast and now that my youngest has gone back to New York she’s living alone again.  Grandma’s still chain smoking Pall Malls and has been for 65 years. When you walk in the house it about knocks you out.  Plus it’s 80 degrees in there.  But I want to soak up every bit of her that’s left, while I still can. 

I made an excellent bean soup with the last of the ham.  I’d diced and frozen the last pound.  It’s like the last of the Christmas traditions.  Except for taking the tree down, which I keep forgetting to do.  It’s in the living room, and I rarely go through there. 

Today was so gloriously sunny I took a walk with the dog around the neighborhood while Derek washed the car.  I had to leave for the dentist and as I backed the car down the long driveway I watched him.  The dog was sitting at his feet and he was watching the sun bounce off the car.

Derek is in a corn contract which I thought he should stay in, even though it was falling and he was losing a fair amount of money.  We have come to a place where we can say what we think the other should do even if we’re wrong and it costs the other some money.  So far I am right.

We went shopping for a floor.  Again.  I told him I wanted to go alone because he would be on edge.  The market for grains wasn’t going to be open for three hours and I think he wanted to get out of the house so we both went.  He wore a new sweater and sang along to the oldies. 

Last night I had our mutual friends, along with their two-year-old, to dinner.  For some reason Derek doesn’t like to socialize with them anymore.  The first time it came up he said “that sounds like a couples thing.”  He called about an hour before they were coming and I invited him.  He sounded tempted but never showed up.

The dinner went well.  I’m used to just having a girlfriend over or my family.  This was just like I see on TV where the hostess cooks and the guests watch, sitting around the island, drinking wine.  We drank beer from a jug her husband brought.  My house was clean and I made meatloaf so she could watch how I did it.  Their little boy played with my dog and I put on some fun music.  Very low-key and something I’d like to do again.  Maybe I’ll have my recorder group over.

Happy New Year and all that.  I had a dreadful Christmas, snowed in and without power for a week.  Christmas Eve found me sitting in the dark, wearing all the black velvet I own, cooking ham over a Coleman stove.  It must have been 34 in the house.  I can finally take down the tree, as I had the last present exchange yesterday.

Having heat and light and a phone and car at my disposal make all things seem possible.  And if you could see my new dry-erase board with all I have accomplished and all I expect to do you would be impressed.

What might give you pause, though, is that I am spending most days with Derek.  Still.  My brother and sisters were over for a belated Christmas dinner and they wondered why the bathroom wasn’t done.  My brother, who lives down the street and can see when Derek’s car is here said, “He’s been here every day for two months.  What’s the deal?”  My oldest daughter said “One of you is taking advantage of the other.  I just can’t figure out who.”

We can’t either.  I think we both wonder what the other one is up to.  New Year’s Eve was touch and go.  We had a marvelous time but as midnight approached we went over to stand in front of the TV, wondering if the other might make a move.  Or maybe that was just me wondering.  I walked away just in time and then he got a phone call.  After that we were both a little disappointed but I was relieved. 

All I know is that I’ve never looked better.  Every morning I do my hair and make-up and put on a cute outfit.  I bought a whole new set of clothes.  My house is clean and there’s always something good to eat.  He’s taught me so much about commodities and helped me figure out what to do with my house. 

He brought over a Bible and I have started going to his church, something that may or may not work out.  I like learning the history but am alarmed by what I heard at the Bible study on Wed night.  All in all he’s been a big blessing, and I feel sure he’d say the same.

The freedom this bullet thing brings bridges the gap between missing you and writing something.  And there is an update.

Our mutual friend, the wife, I named Elizabeth after Boo’s friend.  Not because I know her but because I get the sense that it’s a similar friendship, her’s being more established and with someone more her own age, as I recall.

Elizabeth called today to correct something.  Her husband had offerred, twice, to loan Derek the money to finish the house on time and Derek turned him down.  Derked has mentioned that he sells his houses in the first two weeks they are on the market.  But thank God he didn’t take it.

I had to take the call outside as he was inside, working on my house for $25 an hour.  He goes over to the calendar and marks down his time, the way I asked him to.  And then he goes back to work.  I make him lunch.

He was so stubborn about the stock market, had such a closed mind.  But now that equities are leading the way, instead of oil, he has to.  And I can teach him anything he wants to know.  Finally, I can do something with all this information, in lieu of trading.

I’m skipping tango tonight to scrape the bathroom walls.  You put a little soap into water and spray the walls a couple times before you use what looks like a pliant, metal trowel, if that’s what you call the thing to spread plaster.  He scraped off the floor today and wore a mask because of the asbestos.  But first he took half the sheetrock off of two walls.  I bought a corner pedestal sink.

Last night he stayed for dinner and we talk about the Bible and politics and disagreed on everything but we are each learning from each other as we go.