And the living is easy

The plans for this evening include meeting up with S after he gets off work, then heading to mass at the Cathedral. After that, we have 'homework' to do together (we have this relationship book that is kind of fun and has exercises in it, "Big Picture Partnering," written by a woman in Minneapolis, that we've been neglecting for a few weeks since S started classes).

Now that I've got a weekend off, it feels more like summer vacation. How weird is it to be 26 years old and think of my summer as "summer vacation"? Whatever, it's just nice to sit on our deck and read for pleasure (I'm working on three right now, "The Year of Magical Thinking" by Joan Didion, "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families" by Philip Gourevitch, and "The Tummy Trilogy" by Calvin Trillin—the two former books are very serious and sad and interesting, and the latter usually makes me ravenously hungry, which is v. dangerous).

I am also on a bit of a movie theme, inadvertently so. I watched "The Queen" with Helen Mirren, a week or so ago, and the next film in my Netflix queue was "Marie Antoinette" with Kirsten Dunst, and I enjoyed both of them so much, but they showed wildly different portayals of royalty, and I had the revelation that I'd watched two movies about queens, that I felt I needed a third to round it out. I did a library catalog search, and realized that I already had the perfect movie at home, due to my recent Elizabeth Taylor fascination (I highly recommend her book about her jewelry), so I just started watching "Cleopatra" the other night. Queens of England, France, and now the Nile. There is one more movie in this queenly genre which I have already seen, but not for a while, and that is "Elizabeth," with the lovely Cate Blanchett.

Heading outside to eat more cherries and enjoy the sunshine.