Mercurial rain

My life is destined to be in the hands of sopranos. Even when I think I'm free of them, another one pops up.

Maybe I should just get used to it.

I mean, it's not all bad.

Lissa and I both ended up at home, alone and bored and lonely this afternoon, and so we decided to get together. I am enormously glad we did. Every time I talk to her, I feel better about her. At her suggestion, I went and picked her up at her place, and we went a little ways away to a small but enthusiastic sports bar to watch the Redskins lose. Like all such places, there was one overdrunk jackoff in a Dallas jersey who yelled incredibly loud on every play (dude, three yards on 2nd-and-5 is not a reason to pump your fist and yell YEAHHH!) and about whom everyone nearby rolled their eyes. Never mind that it was clearly a Redskins bar.

Anyway, we talked, we yelled at the television when needed, and enjoyed spicy food. When it became apparent the Redskins were going to lose, we took off.

I got to meet her cat, who is an adorable long-hair who is built like my late favorite, Tess, but colored like Clara, and who is a big fan of kitty-face-massage. She was present as we talked for probably another hour, before I went home.

I... like her. Sure, there are drawbacks: she has two sons who live with her half the time. She lives in an area that's a little tricky to get to after work (though not impossible). But she loves cats, she's been in theatre (a soprano, of course) and active in dance (she has a minor in dance and said she'd have majored in it if they'd had such a program). She likes an array of music, is fierce about politics and some sports, and she's smart in that way I define "smart." Sharp, alert, culturally-aware, opinionated, diverse, not elitist about anything but people who smoke near her.

Oh, and she's really cute. Not just "cute for her age," which is roughly the same as mine, I think she'd stand up well against any woman of any age. When we talked on the phone before we met up, she asked me why I wasn't after younger women.

"Aren't they... hotter?" she asked me. Well, really, no, not to me. Youth by itself doesn't mean anything, because in my experience around here, youth is too often coupled with shallowness and sometimes flakiness. Give me a classy, elegant, smart older woman every time. And everything I've seen about Lissa so far tells me, she's one. She has a magic quality about her that makes me more at ease with her even if I can't arbitrarily explain why. She's one of the most genuine and open women I've met in a while, and I like that.

I can't wait to see her again, but I will have to, thanks to our respective work schedules and her family issues. I hope a few small changes take place soon in her life that will ease things for her and free up a little time.

And I like how she feels, even if we've done nothing but give each other gentle hugs at hello and goodbye. Yes, I know this is disappointing for those of you who tune in here to get all sorts of titillation, but if you need that, just read back a couple of years.

Strange coincidence: she lives barely five houses away from one of my oldest friends, Patty, who I met when I was 17 years old. I haven't talked to Patty in over a year... I probably should. Besides, once I understood where Lissa lived (Lissa moved to her house only a year ago, so she and I would not have run into each other by accident), it made getting to her place easy.

We had a remarkable amount of rain here Friday and Saturday. Thanks to a strange combination of wind direction and rain density, some water came in under the edge of the roof and eventually made its way through my bedroom ceiling, a fact I discovered when water splashed on my face. I moved furniture around and put a towel down, and the leak stopped when the wind shifted. At least five inches of rain fell here, which my citrus plants appreciate. They all have little tiny fruit on them again.

Tomorrow, I have no idea what to do. I should probably go down and completely clean out the kitchen, because I am going to put all the cat stuff back down there again, even if I don't intend to sequester the cats to the kitchen in whole or in part. I just want to quit vacuuming cat litter out of the rugs in the living room. I may go in to work for a while (there won't be anyone there, so I can get some more code done as we change over to Google as our internal search tool) and then go over and watch Monday Night Football. I may actually get some decent points on this week's football pool thanks to some last-minute picks I made.

Maybe it seems mercurial, but everything feels better when it seems like there's even one person out there with whom I might be able to form a bond.