I'm wearing my mother's dress. Although I'm not sure who's worn it longer now, me or her. She used to wear it sometimes on Sundays when I was fairly small - maybe eight or ten (which is really young, now that I think about it: alive for only eight years? Small). And I have a picture of her wearing it sometime around '94 - '95, holding Ebony and Merlin's leashes in the yard.

Anyway, I started wearing it sometime around then - which was I guess late high school for me. I can remember going for brunch with James, wearing the dress and my glow-in-the dark John Fluevogs, which were subsequently ruined by cat vomit. But they didn't fit anyway, as much as I wanted them to.

In college, I wore it a lot. On my second or third date with G, I was wearing it when he asked me how I managed such a delightfully small waist on a steady diet of beer and tater tots. I still don't have a good answer for that; at the time I just blushed prettily (as I was wont to do).

Today, Brian and I woke early (or I woke early, and darted around the house like a hummingbird until he got up, too. Then we went of a delightfujl morning walk: we started at the dog park (where we played with a lab mix named Pansy, a pit bull named Toro, and a pony-like Great Dane named Mojo). Then we wandered down to the Castro, where we are brunch (macaroni-and-corn pancakes with blood orange mimosas), bought canvas folding chairs, and went on to Delores Park.

It wasn't until Brian started to get a migrane (ow) that we headed home. And now I'm sitting in the dark quiet apartment, reading Karen Armstrong and writing to you, and thinking about my dress, which has parrots and flowers in it, and has started to look worn at the shoulders.