Five steps

Two or three or four good things in a row:
i) My sister and her husband found a hotel yesterday which meant they could take long, hot showers, use their very own loo, and sleep in a proper sized bed prior to their trip to Niagara Falls (June tells me that there is a Joyce Carol Oates book called "Niagara" and a Marilyn Monroe move by the same name.)
ii) Fireworks viewed from Castle Osborn, overlooking West Point, made us all very happy last night. Also a child named Romilly, 10, who was wise beyond her years said to me, as I pulled out my boxes of sparklers "I'm a pyromaniac, you know."
iii) Lovely June arrived on a train from NY and we gossiped all the way to
iv) Millbrook, where we had a brilliant lunch with great friends of ES. Two fab men, an interior designer and a lawyer, in a fab house in the middle of hunt country, with two fat and happy and delicious baby girls, Bunny & Lulu. Lunch was:
Roast Duck
Grilled steak, sliced finely and sprinkled with parsley
Spaghetti alla limone (yums)
Sweet corn salad with baby tomatoes and basil
Sliced purple beets with goat cheese
Followed by:
Homemade pear tarts with pistachio ice cream (Pear tarts made by a fabulous woman named Angela, who lives in Chappaqua.)
v) iv) did the trick and leads to v) perfectly. Minks says "If I can live here, in this house, with these babies, and the horses, I'll move tomorrow."

All in all, a successful day, I'd say.

I love it here. It reminds me vividly of England in the summertime.