Summertime...

...And the livin' is easy.  My goal for the final week of my leave is to be as carefree as an illustration by our dear M. Gruau.

Today should, knock wood, go a long way toward fulfilling that goal.  Miss Rheba is ditching her kid and coming down for a day in town; we're going to be adventurous and see one of our oldest acquaintances in an experimental play as part of Our Nation's Capital's summer fringe festival.  It's always tricky to see someone one likes and admires in a program of monologues - there's not much room to blame the production or the co-stars if the whole thing is an embarrassment, but I trust in this case it won't be.  The performer was our very first boss, yonks and yonks ago when we were ourselves no doubt rather embarrassing, arts-mad teens volunteering at a local rep theatre.  Cut to some three decades or so later and here we are, older if not wiser.  We thought it wise to warn the gentleman, especially given the likelihood that the audience will consist more or less in its entirety of the two of us, and it could only be distracting to spend one's time on stage trying to figure out who that middle-aged couple is and why they're here...

On top of that, tonight we dine with colleagues from the salt mines of Golden Handcuffs and from Sandlands days; they are on the verge of heading out into the great wide world again.  Is it awful of my to say that they are bound for such an unenviable locale that I can say goodbye to them without the slightest twinge that it's not us heading off to a life of large corporate housing, lavish expense accounts, and, not least importantly, le domestiche?  We may be living in reduced circumstances (well, at least comparatively), and in the care only of a pair of once-weekly Peruvian sisters, but at the moment I wouldn't trade it even for the finest Villa Muscato, however much we may miss Mrs. Galapatti-da Silva.

And tomorrow we're getting the carpets cleaned.  Don't tell me our lives lack glamour and excitement, although perhaps not of the sort immortalized by Gruau...