…for intimacy. Really. Picture this: You’re walking up a dark, cold, cement stairwell, with graffiti on the walls. At the top of the stairs is a heavy door. You go inside, and there are strange, frightening people — young burly men, scary women. You pass into a room walled with mirrors, where you are to undo your pants (or remove your shirt or other article of clothing). You bare your back to the artist, who touches you gently at first, smoothing your skin with a warm salve before starting up the needle. The first touch startles you nearly out of your seat, but you settle into it, bearing each stroke…

…in Sonoma. Back after a long weekend, a long (birthday) week, a long month, even though February is the shortest one. I was road-trippin’ with my gal pals, women I’ve known since early high school. It’s all good — catching up, comparing our lives, aches and pains, loves, kids, jobs, gray hair. Fun, if frightening. I think I need a few days to digest it all. So instead, apropos of nothing, here are some other random thoughts, in no particular order, but bubbling around my brain at 1:30 in the morning. *** The biggest thing: Falling for a new guy is a marvelous thing. The warm fuzzies, the firsts, the…

absent…but I’ve been swamped with work, extra projects (a newsletter, a fund-raising gala, sick kids), etc. and a new beau besides, and now going away for the weekend. I will be back Sunday night with another Muse. Cheers, mates.

…from complete exhaustion after another deadline day, but I just want to add that the cow-giving-birth story was really gross. I forgot to write just how disgusting it was when I passed that cow. It was an eeewww moment. And yet… …nah, it’s too late, I’m zonked and goodnight.

…or maybe not. I was driving to work the other morning, on my hour or two-hour commute (depending on traffic, of course), and passed the huge dairy on the west side of Highway 101 north of Novato. I saw this dairy cow, black and white spots, in a weird squatting position, and I thought with morbid fascination, “Great, just when I look, it’s going to pee,” or worse. And then I saw this grotesque red mucus sac protruding from its hindquarters and I realized as I flashed past at 70 mph that this cow was giving birth, standing on four legs in a muddy paddock with hundreds of other cows…