SUKI in Vermont!

Well, and for those of you who have been wunnering about how I pass the time in Vermont, here's proof that it's not all fresh air and emus ...

Yep. I felt Suki needed to be taken out for a run amongst the lush hills and fields of the Green Mountain state. She seems to be enjoying herself! I plan to upload fresh strips every couple of days. I wanted to add screens to this one, but it was proving too much effort to wrestle the image into AppleWorks so I thought I'd just go ahead and post this as-is and maybe if I'm feeling energetic I'll edit it and re-post latah.

Those of you who are feeling especially alert will notice that there's a slight change in my signature ... I'm experimenting with the notion of adopting "Magnolia" as my nom-de-web. Comments welcome.

Meanwhile, in other news, I've been dying to post a message about a GREAT restaurant we all had dinner at (exactly one week ago today!! Just shows you the current rate of time-lapse around me) -- called RAINBOW SWEETS, it was a haven of wicked deliciosa!! The owner is Italian, ex-Brooklyn (NYC), been in business for the past 31 years. The restaurant looks like a small private home just by the side of the road. You enter a warm interior, scented with bakery fragrances and Bill (the owner) greets you like a horde of hungry Huns! His appetite for customers is infectious: quite aside from wanting to eat because the food's good, you begin to want to eat to please HIM! He's part of the experience -- this is one place where it WOULDN'T work to take the food home because then you'd miss Bill's inimitable commentary.

He and his family go away to Europe for two months every year and always (so I am told) come back with wonderful tales of their travels. This year it was Croatia: so -- history, geography, architecture were all part of the evening's dishes! And the dishes were just OOOOOZING. He keeps the desserts out where everyone can see 'em and it doesn't matter WHAT you eat for the meal, you've just GOTTA have dessert by the end of it! I had a succulent Greek spinach pie and avocado salad, and for dessert, two sugar-glazed profiteroles smothered in fresh Vermont cream -- collectively entitled Johnny Depp's B**ls!! If you're a diner of the male persuasion, you get Gina Lollabrigida's B**ls ... just so you know.

ANYHOW! That was last week, right? So this morning, I woke up in an absolutely gleaming-sparkling mood coz I had a dream in which -- despite many obstacles and terrors -- I pushed through and came out smiling!

The dream involved being somehow stranded in Chandni Chowk -- not the REAL CC, but a sort of make-believe nightmare place in the vicinity of the Red Fort. Ruined buildings competed with crowds of Haryanvi rickshaw pullers and sleazy snake-charmers (all right, all right -- turn those Freudian laser-probes off!) and herds of wandering cattle to make my search for a taxi in which to get home utterly impossible. HOWEVER, in the course of the dream, NOT ONLY did I successfully find taxis, but I also (instead of just going home) CHOSE to wander into the heart of the old stone building which appeared to be a haven for snake-charmers and tourist-trapping cobra-wranglers and instead of being oppressed by them, relaxed, was friendly, and was shown their secret methods of frightening the weak-hearted -- which, once they were shown to me, no longer frightened me, of course.

It was a very long dream, so I'm not going to be able to go into all the various details, but I came out of that place not only with no bites, but one of the snake-charmers gave me a (he said) traditional ornament, like a kind of ring/bracelet, which looked as if it had been made from tissue-of-rubies(a kind of pastry-layered gemstone). Towards the end of the dream, I was showing this object to some friends who were knowledgeable about traditional crafts and one of the girls confirmed that it was indeed a very rare and old-style jewel -- not especially valuable, but precious for the craft.

It isn't unusual for me to direct the events of my dreams -- I hardly ever have really bad dreams coz I usually manage to force out the nasty bits before waking up -- but the thing that made this dream especially satisfying was that it didn't require the usual effort. There were the scary bits and then an easing of the fear followed by a calm, philosophical acceptance of whatever-happens-is-okay. And it was (okay, I mean).

And yes, yes -- I am STILL learning to drive ... am STILL struggling up and down the driveway ... But the trees are looking a little more relaxed. Maybe the dream was a message from them??