How to Avoid the Walk of Shame

Drive home and shower before returning to the office. Better yet, drive home and arrive well before youngest child wakes up and wonders what on earth possessed you to take a walk around the neighborhood in a pair of beat up jeans and flip flops (it could happen!).

I called home at 10, Cletus had three words for me and I'm not going to repeat them here although I assure you they were for my own good.

Oh my heavens I do hope he comes back from Newport. And that's ALL I have to say about that. I should print this out and frame it. Actual discretion observed in the wild animal, Alecto. Trust me, this is as discrete as it gets out here.

I met a sailor last night who asked my mother's name during some conversation at dinner about the early years of sport parachuting. When I told him he smiled. Then I said my dad's name and he shook his head yes. And then he said and of course there is your baby brother. I dropped my jaw (I suppose I should not have) and then offered up a few other names and he either knew them or did not. Not big in the sky diving community; he is a bush pilot for the most part and I'm going to guess in his early sixties. He is, however (as he points out) still a card carrying USPA member. I think he keeps it for the monthly subscription to Parachutist. He has come from Hawaii with his wife for the boat show. This time it will be their boat on display and they are wondering how early they have to be up and off the boat and how un-lived in it needs to look.

They met when he was flying her somewhere, in Alaska I think, and the plane lost engine power and went down in the middle of nowhere. It took him a week to get it fixed and back in the air. She married him. I only know this second hand but if I have the opportunity to spend more time with them I'm going to get at least one of them to tell me the story.

Back on this guy. What on earth am I going to call him? Nothing boat related so far comes even close to a good description of who he is although I do like his name very much. In any event, I'm sure I'll come up with something.

I love to watch him. Who he is being shifts seamlessly from one environment to the next. He is boyish and then petulant (in very, very brief moments and never, so far that I've seen, outside of an intimate environment and when I was insistent or laughed at it he laughed right back. Nice trait in a human being) and then one of the most competent men I've ever witnessed at tasks or conversations that are such an enormous part of him. Overall, he is warm even when he is being stern about something. He is a natural teacher.

Enough about all that. It's time to go to work and hope I've actually had enough sleep to be as sharp as I need to be this morning.

Yesterday I was so distracted I forgot to breathe a good bit of the time and when my fingers went numb I realized I wasn't going to think of a single other thing until I saw him again.

This morning I am breathing just fine. I don't know if this is true or not but I don't feel the least bit distressed about whether he'll be back or not. And I do really want him to. And I really do not want him to if it is not where he should be right now. If he comes back with option C; lovely, if he comes back with any of the other options, so be it.

Damn, woman. Where the heck did that come from?

Maybe yes, maybe no but for a brief time absolutely.