Now We Are Nine

So I was digging around for something a couple of days ago and realized with a start that, as of yesterday, the Café has been around for exactly nine years. Insert profound thought about time flying here. Kay Francis (who has been something of a mascot hereabouts) has stopped in to say hi, looking more glam than one generally thinks of her in the '40s.

From the not-terribly-promising beginning of merely wanting to follow in the footsteps of Thombeau, master of Fabulon and many a wonder since (not to mention Peenee, whose rather more squalid digs remain a consistent source of amusement), it turns out that if nothing else, I now have a quixotic but not entirely yawn-inducing history of what passes for my life this past near-decade, and rather sobering it is. This, it turns out, is the 2,626th entry herein, and over all this time (and I know this because I participated in the Great Gadget Craze of 2010 or so), a wide variety of intrepid souls (and implacable bots) have checked in some 1,076,254 times - and I promise they're not all me.

A range of other facts and figures spring to mind.  Since that first entry (Why, of April 28, 2008), My Mr. Muscato and I have lived in two more countries and three more residences. We got our first mortgage and started the Mister on the onerous process of becoming an American.  We adored and lost our dear Koko, and added at some point the now much-beloved and still quite ridiculous Boudi to our menage. I have gone from being a sedentary stout party (and, as it turned out, ticking time bomb) to someone who goes to the gym some five or six times a week and is, two years after my swift kick in the pants in the form of open-heart surgery, a good 80 pounds less hefty.

Then, we lived in a large and airy villa not too far from the Indian Ocean, looked after superbly by Ermilia and then the late lamented Mrs. Galapatti-da Silva; now we abide in a Ford-era concrete monstrosity and rely for better or worse (and I'll leave you to guess which note predominates) primarily on self-catering.  We've gone from the international expatriate whirl to the rather more sedate life of commuting in and around Our Nation's Capital, and if it's not entirely without its diversions, it's without question a great deal less picturesque.

But through it all - even though the general state of affairs is far more lamentable (even potentially horrifying) than we could have conceived back in the days of GWB - it's been great fun to have a place to opine, whine, natter, and generally carry on, and I'm terribly pleased that Gentle Readers continue to pop in now and then. Blogging has come and more or less gone as a modern phenomenon, but - having always rather been drawn to the obsolescent more than the innovative - I really don't mind.

In the words of dear Miss Gertrude Stein, "I write for myself and strangers," but nonetheless it's an unanticipated and joyful side effect that over the years I happen, just from hitting "Publish" on that fateful April day out there in the Sultanate by the Sea, to have made a number of both real and still -  for the moment - virtual friends. If you are one of them, thank you; if you'd like to become one, stick around. Barring the unexpected, while I can't guarantee another nine years, I think there's still a little life in the old girl yet. Let's see what tomorrow brings.

In the meantime, I do think I did rather a good job of characterizing what was at that time the most formless of notions.  "Why?," I asked...

"Because I said so. Because I blame it on the summer night...or the bossa nova. Because that's just the way the cookie crumbles. Because it's always something. 

Why? Why the strange fascination with the films of Kay Francis? With the minutiae of forgotten mitteleuropean dynasties of the 19th century? With the old age of the Duchess of Windsor? With the youth of Tutankhamun? Why the all joy, the tears, the deep, abiding bemusement with the ways of the world? 

Just one damn thing after another."

Ain't it the truth?