Ten-Finger Exercises

april 15

I filled my car with gas yesterday, and today noticed that it says I have 365 miles to go before empty. Doesn't that give you ideas? I could drive one mile a day for a whole year! Of course, the only place I know of that's just a mile's drive is the shoe store, and even I couldn't use that many shoes.

Watched the news of the Boston marathon bombing unfolding before I went to poetry group. Awful. A couple of years ago a backpack bomb was found before it was detonated along the parade route on Martin Luther King day in Spokane. My daughter and her children were walking there. It's so frightening. Bill told me when I got home that some are speculating that the right wing is behind it, because it's Patriot's Day. I certainly hope not. Hope no one is pointing the finger of blame in any direction, but I'm sure the less responsible political bloggers and their minions will be tempted to look that direction.

My friend L from the poetry group called and told me she needed to tell me something. I had hurt her feelings by correcting her a couple of times during the meeting. I am dumbfounded. I know I have done that to her before, and even without her telling me, I knew she was offended. I've tried hard not to ever do it again, and I couldn't think what she could mean. She didn't want to tell me, but I pressed her. She said I'd corrected her pronunciation of chimera and aeolian. I didn't. I've never said chimera and said I didn't remember what it meant, repeating it as she had said it. Someone else looked it up and gave her another pronunciation. Later I asked her what an aeolian harp was, and she talked about it. I tried to Google it on my phone to see a picture but only came up with a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge call the Eolian Harp. I may have mentioned he spelled it differently, but hers seemed the right spelling to me. Needless to say, except to myself evidently and not soon enough for that to have been helpful, I was once more arguing with her, telling her in essence she was wrong. Great. Also, although she did not mention this, the poem I had written and brought in was about depression. She has been depressed. It would be like her to take offense at that as well.

Sometimes I wonder why I'm even friends with her. We seldom ever think or feel the same way about anything. I don't think I'm just being oppositional, although it is my nature. Unfortunately we see each other several times each week, at poetry and the Y, and she always acts so happy to see me.