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Okay, time for a blast from the recent past. Here’s the blog for Seattle when we were just day’s ago on tour for A LICK OF FROST. The hotel staff is on their way up to let us choose between a room with the continuing construction or a new room with a wedding band every night. When the hotel warns you about the band ahead of time you know it’s going to be bad. I think we are going to try and change hotels today. But it’s all good, or it will be. An interesting trip, as they say.
Seattle, at last. We had a greyhound rescue as our animal charity. They are such elegant dogs, greyhounds. Their fur so soft and thin over the muscle and meat of their bodies. We had a very nice auditorium to ourselves since President Clinton had the book store. (Oh, once a president, always a president. It is correct to say, President Clinton, not former-president Clinton. Just so you know.)
The question and answer session went really well, but the energy of the crowd seemed to sour. I think if you guys could have wandered a bookstore and done other things, it would have been easier, but just sitting there and watching everyone else come up to get their book signed, made it harder to wait. There were a lot of babies again. University Bookstore said it was the first time they’d seen a row of strollers. I think we finally got the word out that babies count in line for extra books, but it was a challenge for the parents to keep the babies happy. Some waited patiently, others not so. But that’s a baby thing. My hats off to everyone with rug rats. I found it a very puzzling age with Trinity. So, glad she’s older now.
It was great to see so many new faces, and familiar ones. A lot of you said how happy you were that we were finally back in the Northwest. It was sunny in Seattle the entire time we were there, by the way. All the natives to the area said, it should be raining, but we got beautiful weather that really set off the autumn trees, the mountains, and the water. Beautiful expanses of water, that we would see in more detail from the train we’d take the next day when we went onto Portland.
The last time I was in Seattle I was on my own. It was, I think, a six week tour. Really long, and Jon and I were dating, but not, yet, engaged. I was also divorced, but didn’t feel like sharing that whole process. I guess, looking back, to some of the fans it looked like the end of one relationship was belly back to the other. Because, I didn’t share. The break up of my first marriage was intensely painful, and confusing. I’m happier now than I’ve ever been, but there was a dark part where you believe that the death of one relationship is the death of all. It passes, but I remember it.
I did one of the most romantic gestures I’ve ever done on that trip. I was really missing Jon. He’d giving me one of his shirts that still smelled of his skin to sleep in, and I wanted to show him what that meant to me. I ordered flowers. Roses, to be exact, and had roses delivered to his job every day for about a week. Each bouquet came with a line from the Emily Dickenson poem, “How do I love thee . . .” He actually made some of the women at the library where he worked jealous. Why should a woman be sending a man flowers? Because, I loved him, and I knew he’d think it was cool. One of my goals when I was dating again after more than a decade of marriage was to find a man that would appreciate being pampered. If a guy isn’t man enough to receive flowers at work from me and think it’s cool, rather than embarrassing, we need to be dating someone else. The boyfriends of the women at work got major grief that Jon’s girlfriend was treating him better than the boyfriends were treating the girls.
Oh, and if you think the stupid romantic stuff stopped when we got married, nope. I don’t need Jon’s shirt anymore since I have the whole of him to sleep with, but we still buy gifts, flowers, surprises for each other. I guess, at heart, I’m a romantic. A practical romantic, is what I call myself, but once someone proves that they won’t throw my gestures back in my face, I tend to be a little overwhelming, or can be. Even Jon had to get used to the level of attention that I dish out. He finally decided he liked it, and the rest, as they say, is history.
If Anita ever got truly comfortable with herself in the romance department, not just sex, we could have so much fun spoiling the men.