2001-10-26 - 2:12 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: The tune to "Small Town Girl", printed in a romance novel of the same name by LaVyrle Spencer.

On the way back from Tower City on Sunday, we stopped just south of York at a gas station that had a Rutter's Farm Store. Got gas, sandwiches and [happy sigh] pumpkin spice cappuccino.

Now, my mother makes pumpkin pie every year from a family recipe, and it's so damn good. She makes it for Thanksgiving and then for my birthday a week or two later. It's dense and heavy and rich -- not like the frothy light crap they sell in the store -- and I love the pumpkin spices. So I was leaping with joy to find they had this special seasonal cappuccino. I savored every sip I took on the way home, and I saved a few ounces for the next day and I savored it then.

Now, of course, I want more. But the nearest store is 1.5 hours away, and maybe it doesn't even have it. The local convenience stores don't seem to have anything like it. Boo hoo.

Last night before bed, Poindexter was pestering me, as he is wont to do.

Sometimes when he does this I start screaming at him and jumping up and down and punching his pecs with the flat part of my fist (so it doesn't really hurt). He laughs and hugs me tight so I can't move my arms and gives me kisses and continues to pester and laughs when I say "stop touching me" and struggle to get away. We both laugh a lot when this happens. It's hard to explain what this is. It gets my adrenalin going and it's fun. It's not a bad thing. Sometimes I'll yell, "I hate you with a passion!" and he'll laugh and say, "I know you do."

So I said to Poindexter last night, "If you didn't pester me like that, our relationship would be so dull and boring, no passion."

That sparked a discussion. Poindexter is very irritated with the common perception that people who fight a lot have a lot of "passion". He thinks they just have a lot of anger. His definition of passion is being excited and intense about anything, which is quite easily applicable to nearly any situation.

I said, "So when I grab you and start kissing your face repeatedly so you have to squint to keep from getting poked in the eye with my nose, is that passion?"

He mistook this for playfulness, not understanding that I'm completely overwhelmed with feelings of affection for him when I do it and it's either that or squeeze him to death. When I explained this, he said, "Yeah, that's passion."

It's interesting. Why do people mistake anger for passion? Why do people think passion is only about the intense feelings at the beginning of a relationship, or associate it with, say, make-up sex after a fight? Maybe because those feelings are such strong ones.

I have to say, though, my feelings about my husband are very warm and gooshy and content and happy, but they're also very strong. Sometimes overwhelmingly so. I watch him from across the room and marvel at how beautiful he is to me, and how lucky I am to have him.

I'll take that over a fight (make-up sex or no) any day.

My MIL, when she travels abroad, goes to her doctor and asks for a small supply of antibiotics in case she gets any stomach bugs or whatever. She sees her doctor very frequently (she has a chronic condition) and has an excellent relationship with him and he knows she's not going to be irresponsible with the drugs.

So anyway, last time she traveled, he gave her some antibiotics and said, "Take one, then another 12 hours later. These will knock you out for a while but they really work," or something to that effect. She never used them, and yesterday she dug them up to see what they were.

Yep. Cipro. Kinda weird.

Some thought I had this morning reminded me of a woman I lost touch with years ago.

She wasn't a close friend, rather someone I had met on the 'net and met once in person when I was on vacation in her area. We hit it off really well in person. But when I got back home (she lived thousands of miles away), I was going through a difficult period in my life, and wasn't good about keeping up with e-mails. She wrote a couple of "are you okay? why aren't you writing?" kinds of mails and then that was basically it.

I feel most awful about it because this happened right after she shared some fairly personal things with me, by sending me some stuff she'd written in her journal. I can't even remember if I responded to that. I might have said, "I got it, I'm still reading and absorbing" but I can't remember if I did or not. For all I know she thinks I stopped writing because of what she sent, which isn't the case at all.

Jeez, I feel terrible. I'm not really sure why this happened. A similar thing happened about a year later, when I found myself unable to reply to Will's e-mails despite him being seriously worried about me because I wasn't writing -- he even called my parents to ask if I was okay. At that time life was going fine, so that wasn't an explanation.

What the hell is wrong with me, that I do that? It's only happened a few times. It's a form of procrastination, I know -- I don't sit down and say, "I'm never going to write this person again." I just keep putting it off and putting it off and finally it's too late.

Awhile back I told Poindexter about it and wondered if I should try to track her down and apologize. He asked if I wanted to resurrect the friendship. The truth was, I didn't. In that case, he said, there wasn't any point in it. Today I did try to find her, but nothing turned up. I don't know if I should just tuck this away as a lesson learned or try to make up to her somehow.

Well, shit. There are a few e-mails I owe people. I better get on it.

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