Crispy edges

Temporary widow status is thrust upon me again as J and the familiar sound of his rolling suitcase leave for three days in Mexico City.

I make him tea in a hideous green travel mug, his very favorite, and then he teaches me to make pancakes the way his grandfather did, using great globs of butter, a medium high heat and a quick flip, delivering soft, pillowy pancakes with crispy edges. He sits in the kitchen as I flip and chats to me, staying way too long, so that his 9:30am conference call will have to be done in the car, but leaving me feeling happy and fulfilled. Our weekends are packed like a fat lady in a tight pair of trousers, with horses and bike-riding and SATs and dinners, so that there is room for very little conversation and we end up just throwing ourselves down at the end of Sunday for supper and American Gangster.

The day at the horse show was lovely, cold, then warm and windy as the Santa Anas began to blow in. Minks was fantastic on a borrowed black horse (whom I want to call "Beauty" as if I were nine and living in 1923) and won 5th, 8th & 9th for her school (out of 60). J stayed all day, took pictures, cheered, chatted up other parents, hugged the child as she came out of the ring, told her how brilliant she was. Other parents stood around gloating too. Lots of Tory Burch jeans and little blue equestrian jackets. I looked like a scarecrow in my jeans and gumboots and an old tartan lumberjack shirt that owes more to Tring Market circa 1984 than to Curt Kobain, but, as we've already established, I'm not proud. We all came home smiley and wind-chapped and collapsing, dogs jumping on us, bubble baths run, Chinese food delivered, Academy screeners piled up by the VCR.

There is love and then there is love.

He gives me this New Yorker cartoon. There's a shrink with a note-pad in his hand, and a man in a suit sitting on the sofa opposite him. The shrink is listening intently as the man says "I do count my blessings, but then I end up counting those of others who have more and better blessings, and that pisses me off." "That's me," Jumby says. "I'm getting better all the time, but that's me."

I've overdone the pancakes, of course. "Not enough butter," says J, "and you have to flip them faster."