Poem for Thursday

Postmortems
By Judith Viorst

On the way home with my husband from the dinner party,
I thought I'd very tactfully point out
That he shouldn't interrupt, and that
He shouldn't talk with his hands, and that
He shouldn't, when discussing politics, shout.
And that he shouldn't tell that story while people are eating, and that
He shouldn't tell that joke for the rest of his life, and that
He shouldn't have said what he said about that terrible lady in red because
She happens to be the-person-he-said-it-to's wife.
And that he didn't need that second helping of mousse cake, and that
He didn't need to finish the Chardonnay.
But after thirty years of marriage
I finally understand what not to say
On the way home with my husband from a dinner party.

--------

Not really a day worth recalling except to mention that I managed to avoid a migraine by taking medicine at the right moment. Am so close to female TMI that I could scream, never made it out of the house, wrote one interesting article about attempts to create a device akin to a medical tricorder and two infuriating articles about Brand Star Trek and Paramount/CBS's desperate attempts to keep selling it to new fans or old fans or anyone they can get to drop a buck on it...no sense that any of them understand why the original series was important, it's all about long-term financial investments.

My good friend in London went here, the Royal Horticultural Society Chelsea Flower Show which is honoring Doctor Who by having a full-size TARDIS in the middle of a display called A Garden In Time (and apparently it has working sound effects!) My only British excitement was watching Secrets of the Dead on PBS, which had an episode, "Headless Romans," about the decapitated skeletons found in York and ultimately blamed on the elder son of Septimus Severus, Caracalla, who tried to kill his father and did kill his brother so he could be sole emperor, only to be assassinated while he was taking a leak at the side of the road.

Then we watched The Blair Decade, which was extremely pro-Tony but kind of reflected the feeling I had about him till very recently, when he and Clinton were working together on Northern Ireland and then Blair insisted that Clinton stand up to Milosevic...it's probably why he went into Iraq with Bush, which is a real shame, because his foreign policy has always seemed so much more engaged with the world and less cynical and self-serving than ours. Or maybe he just looks that way right now because I'm so nauseated by Bush and so fed up with the Democrats' hemming and hawing and compromising because they're already worrying about getting reelected...


This is the sunset seen over the park from the highway on the way home on Tuesday.

So, clearly I did not watch American Idol, this week or any other week...is she actually a good singer (and is he actually a better entertainer) or is that just the line the press has been handed? I kind of like that one Katharine McPhee song that was on the radio, but I can't stand any of the other winners' music.