I sit here with hands thoroughly stained red. Oh, yes, and there's a strawberry pie congealing in the refrigerator. We shall have strawberry pie tonight, and it shall be goooood.

I might even make lemon bars. I've got enough time, and I think I've got enough lemons.

Note to self: I need to purchase or replace the following items: big spatula (I've killed another), lemon reamer, pastry brush, pasta forks.

In a whimpering, life-goes-on, did-anyone-notice sort of way, it's over. Jeff took his last final as a graduate student last night. Oh, yes, one could say it's not completely over yet. He has to finish up a project delayed by the inability of a professor to get him the information he needed.

But, in the grand scheme of things, it's over. No more leaving for work at 7:30 and coming home twelve hours later and then needing to study. In a week or so, the books on the kitchen table will go away—as, I hope, will the circles under his eyes.Note to self: rejoice.

So why do I feel so curiously enervated? Maybe it hasn't sunk in yet. Maybe I expected more overt celebrating when he arrived at our friends' apartment last night. I think it will take a week or two of being startled when Jeff appears in the living room by 5:30 for it to be real to me.

Two generations of my family are best defined by the things they almost never discussed with me. For my grandparents, it was the desperate poverty of the Great Depression, followed by the heartbreak that was World War II. For my father and mother, the event that shaped the years of their early adult lives was the Vietnam War.

I am a member of the first generation of my family who, upon looking back, cannot claim to understand what they went through. My generation has nothing of the kind—and this, as my mother once said quietly to me, is probably the greatest blessing we will never comprehend.When I was ten, I was given a school assignment: to interview an older member of my family to learn what their life was like when they were my age. I picked my maternal grandfather's eldest sister, Belva Davis.

Ok...more snapshots of life going on its merry way. View and be appropriately amused.

Okay. Attempt number three at writing a semi-coherent post. Doesn't seem to be in the cards tonight.

I've found lately that my posts are taking on more of the style of a letter to a friend; I'm starting to have trouble distinguishing between the two, and I don't quite know what to make of the change.

Just hung up the phone—tried to call Brad just now. I'm not terribly surprised he's not home; there's hockey on tonight and I really didn't expect him to be there. Strangely enough—I spent the evening with a large (for me) number of people, but at the end of the evening I found myself wanting most to curl up with the phone while talking to an old friend. Since my east coast friends are well off into dreamland, I thought I'd reach out, out west, and see what was going on there.

Too much caffeine. After bowling tonight, I probably shouldn't have downed that coffee from Barnes and Noble.

At last…a draft that might be worth printing out.'Bastille Day'

Maybe this will be the day it will coalesce—
you, me, the empty bottle of chardonnay,
the driving urge to put this breach to rest.
(Another attempt to put the past away.)

I won't lie to you—or, at least, not today,
when you're so determined to be on your best
behavior, to mend a relationship so far astray.
Once more, this night, at your behest

I'll don the satins and silks of recreational
adoration. It's my duty to make things right.
Your body may be my confessional,