Last night

Last night I dreamed I was at Manderley again...as I get ready for this weekends trip to New York with the children, that's the line that keeps going through my head.

But the house in Brooklyn about to be sold isn't haunted -- or if it was, no one spoke of it. No dead wife, no vengeful housekeeper. After the end of September, it will become a place that my sister and I might not easily recognize. The early 20th brownstone will be redone by a family with more than enough income to redo the early 20th century pipes and electricity, take down the divide between kitchen and dining room, pull out the pocket doors -- and make it a home in which their family can celebrate all kinds of happy occasions, argue, do homework, and accomplish all the work of constructing a life.

So I don't know why I'm thinking Manderley -- except that this is the last physical place link with my parents and my beloved brother, gone 20 years this winter.

Exeunt omnes. Let the play begin again. The sweet spectres go with the executors -- for free.

I have to say (no you don't, Elizabeth). OK, I'm gonna say that the fight over numbers at the rally in D.C. last weekend really annoyed me. Imagine conservation firebrand Michelle Malkin and blogger Pink Elephant whatsher-name pinning the hugely blown up 1.5 mil on ABC, for heaven's sake. Have they no shame?

Soon afterwards, a writer for the liberal lobby group Media Media used the "l" word to refer to Malkin and company -- a word currently known as Congressman's Joe Wilson articulate response to President Obama's health care speech. Grow up and stop acting like morons. Some of us care about the decisions currently being made on health care and financial regulation and whether more young women and men go to Afghanistan.

In the battle over numbers, the point of the march, whatever it was, is gone -- it seems as if, in the conservative/ liberal blogosphere, the silly season is all seasons.

Crone in training

So when did I become the wise older woman?

I seem to find myself giving advice to lots of people. And fending off some who seem to want to befriend me and get help with their love lives, employment, future books.

I'm getting a little rude, I fear. I tell some people, who want to get the benefit of my foolishness, that I've got not enough time and friends who already don't see a lot of me.

I am blessed with faithful friends -- who give me advice, sought and unsought. Maybe I should send a few of these questing folks to talk to them.

I'm not a crone yet. But when, God willing, I get there, I'll have had much practice.