Italo, Madeleina and Marco, and a Friend

What a fantastic weekend and pre-weekend I had. I'm in the middle of a wonderful story about people exercising their right to object to big business--look for it at the fwweekly.com site a week from Wednesday--and my fantastic boss is on my case to get a draft in. But the news changes daily and life marches on, interfering with everything. For instance: Chepa's boyfriend's parents came to visit her, which changed the times I could visit with the babies, both of Chepa's babies as well as my granddaughter, the beautiful and fantastic Taylor Rain. But then Thursday, the day I was crunching to get my story draft in to my boss, my oven caught fire and burned out two elements in a very scary, smoky way.
   Italo came over--by luck he was off that day--to see what was up, and he figured out what I needed and I gave him the credit card and he ordered the elements we needed. That took nearly 4 hours, all of it with me not writing my story. Then he left, and I had Taylor Rain for three more hours alone, which meant a lot of painting, a lot of wonderful kid stuff, but not much writing.
   Friday morning my friend Jeremy, whom I met when he came into my bar for beer in Iquitos, Peru--the semi-famous Cold Beer Blues Bar--about 10 years ago. He was a youngster compared to me, but we became friends and he decided to visit this weekend. Which killed a lot of writing time on Friday. We had a great weekend visit: We had some Jim Beam, we talked politics and the electronic age, we made fantastic food despite not having an oven or one of the big stove burners, and while he was here Madeleina was here. She played with the band at a football game that Jeremy and I attended on Friday night, the night of his arrival, then had a band contest on Saturday, so wasn't around too too much. But Marco came over twice and Italo showed and Chepa came over with Alexa and everyone ate like pigs and I felt like a dad again and I loved the visit and Today the parts for the stove came while I was taking Jeremy to the airport and my boss is pissed off that she has not got a story-draft yet but I know that having lived these last few days with lots and lots of live around me--plus 5 AM-2PM daily working on the story--well, that's gonna make a better story when I give it to her tomorrow afternoon. And then we'll work it, massage it, fill in the blanks till next Tuesday when it goes to press, and in that time two more friends are coming in from out of town.....boy, I sometimes love my life! I love having visitors, I love having grownups to talk with, I love writing my stories, I love my editor.
   And now, this second, I'm off to put some marinated chicken thighs in the oven that Italo fixed. And I am going to put thin sliced red potatoes in water and boil them, then saute them with garlic till they are good and brown, and then I'm making some simple broccoli. And that's what Madeleina and I, alone again, are going to eat: A chicken thigh, some sliced garlic red potatoes and steamed broccoli. And for dessert we're having Bartlett Pears. While I watch the New York Jets. Whom I hope will remember how to play football.
   Have a good one everyone. Thanks for fixing things, Italo. Thanks for entertaining Jeremy, Marco. And thanks for all the rest, Madeleina. I love you all.