I'm Happy Today

I'm happy today hanging out with my old man David  - these are his arms -who slept so late I thought he'd been kidnapped from our very bed, sucked out through the bedroom window by aliens. Call Liam Neeson!I'm happy because we will see our daughter Annie and her man John,though not their baby-dog Archer, still just a pup, though tall enough at 8 months to sweep the counters clean if left unattended.We'll see our daughter Carrie too, which makes me happy......though sadly not her  Chris, or their oldest son, since the two of them will I suppose be watching basketball or some such silly March thing while the rest of us are at our favorite eatery.Along with Carr, we'll also get to see their two younger children who are always ready to join me in restaurant fun. (Today: tiny black-velvet fuzzy-posters with bright neon-colored markers!) Sadly, we won't get to see our son Michaelsince he's out in Utah this weekend pretending to ski, a thing not really in our blood. David grew up with sandlot baseball, and pounding and being pounded by the other kids at the park, while the main pastime for my one sister and me was sneaking into the alley just around the corner from Blue Hill Ave. to inspect this one dead cat as it went through the absorbing transformation from the three-dimensional to something flatter than an old kid glove squashed under somebody's tires. I'm happy because I'm about to sit down and write 14 days' worth of entries in my diary. (My entries are a lot more interesting, I find, if wait 'til I'm really in the mood for the endeavor and can do the mental levitation that let me look at my last few weeks from the air, so to speak, and thus spot the highlights.)I'm happy because I just said 'Screw returning those shoes to Macy's today. The store will still be there tomorrow when my workday ends.'I'm happy because I think I might be about to actually vacuum that room I've been meaning to vacuum for a month.I'm happy because we watched that old chestnut Ghostbusters yesterday and I read my three books and stripped the lid to the piano bench for a piano that lives at the ABC house. I'm happy because I got it all sanded and primed and even stained. Now David will help me screw on the lid, I can put on two finish coats and then trot it on over there.I am not so happy when I remember that I almost learned to play the piano as an adult, together with Michael who was then 11, but quit just as I was getting that itchy feeling in the top of my head when my fingers were starting to know what a note was. We both quit and I'm sad now that we quit, causing the people who gave us the loan of that nice old upright piano to take it back again to give to worthier persons ... But the days are getting longer now and who knows but what I'll go out and buy a little keyboard and have another go at learning a new thing? We learn till we die do we not? I'm happy remembering that truth.And now, me playing that classic beginner's piece The Happy Farmer at age six (but why doesn’t that guy in the suit leave my nice pink dress ALONE!