Thursdays are quiet

There's something about a Thursday that makes them quiet days. Unassuming days. They sneak up on you - gateway to the weekend, but nothing in and of themselves. Which is to say that I have nothing planned today other than writing and house work (as in cleaning before Mom gets here).

I've decided to go with the double date thing as Serena's big idea for George. I think it will work out. Poor George. But at least he winds up with the girl at the end and a whole family he thought he lost forever.

There's a poem I wrote a long time ago (yeeks, eons) that sounds like it is about my mom, but it really isn't. Pieces of it are her (the laugh, mainly), but the overall poem isn't. She's never been to Egypt. She's not a jetsetter or anything. She's not evil. Just a normal person. I keep meaning to finish it, but I never get around to it. The last two stanzas I'm not real fond of at all. Anyway, here it is. Maybe I'll work on it sometime. I'd appreciate any comments. Is it worth finishing up (of course not now, not in the middle of my novel, like I need anything else to get in the way of that, but sometime later)?

Vainglorious

My mother used to
iron folded mini dresses on a towel
slapped hurriedly on the floor
there was never enough time for her---
the doorbell always rang before her hair was done

she owned the bathroom;
her perfume layered the air
and Vanity Fair lay on the floor
her nylons always hung, spider-like
over the rim of the bathtub
and threatened to fall when I stepped in

she told me once of a trip she took to Egypt,
before I was born
she had ridden on a camel and fallen off
into the arms of a tall, dark and handsome Egyptian
He had taught her how to swear

I saw her once, naked in the rain
laughing like a tear drop,
some man I didn't know laughing with her
even the dark could not disguise that laugh
I would know it anywhere, even now

a few years ago,
she asked me to meet her for lunch
and arrived late and in sunglasses
she thought the waiter was cute
and went home with a napkin full of lipstick and a phone number

it didn't matter that she didn't take the glasses off
or look at me instead of the waiter
I knew her eyes were as flat as the plastic---
there wasn't anything in them
that you couldn't see without the glasses on