Dinner with the Bums

It would be so nice if you had dinner with us some time. It's the time we sit and really talk. We talk about everything. Things that happen to us in the small sphere of our personal lives. Sometimes we read things out loud to each other. Wednesday night I read an op ed by Garrison Keillor that a dear friend had emailed to us. We listen to music. We almost always start with something we both love, and then put the iPod on shuffle. For the past few months we've been starting with the Silly Sisters singing Gray Funnel Line or Miles Davis's Flamenco Sketches. It's interesting how different from each other these pieces of music are, and yet they fit our lives perfectly. When we both worked, we talked about the day we'd had, mine at the office, his at the job site. But now that we don't have jobs away from home, we talk about even smaller things -- what we see, what the birds are doing, where to move the swallow's nest box next year (it's too close to the house and we upset them whenever we do anything), what to plant in the greenhouse and what to plant outside.
We talk about the raccoon that was in the yard at 9:00 in the morning, how it stood on its hind legs and tried to stare us down. I say I'm still disappointed that I couldn't focus the camera fast enough to get that shot, but I'm still happy with what I got. We always talk about the state of the world. How we can't believe the way Iraq reminds us of VietNam. How the premise of our invasion now seems so much like an even weirder domino theory. The middle east states would fall one by one to the lure of democracy because we are such happy role models. We remember when we were young and marched against the war. We talk about being older, and how gladly we'd do it again. By now, though, we're ready for dessert-- We're listening to Steve Earle's Transcendental Blues, we're up and dancing, and scaring the cat.