I met S after work in an art supplies store. Such places are dangerous for me to go, because I think of all sorts of projects I want to do. It's been so long either of us has had any money so usually it's just window shopping and some discreet drooling over the beautiful textures of "handmade in Singapore" paper and blank gold leaf cards and rows and rows of shiny paint tubes and soft brushes to fondle and calligraphy sets and easels and carving tools and soapstone and stacks of art paper... I could die happy in an art supplies store.

But S got his paycheck, and I got paid and received my bonus, and also got paid for the class I substituted for R a few weeks ago. I bought an inexpensive kit for sun printing on fabric and hope to use it sometime around, say, July, when the sun returns to this land of shadows...


We stopped at the store on the way home through the rain and got a bottle of red wine and fixings for burritos. S had the food simmering in the pan when he grabbed the bottle of wine and the corkscrew, and I was grating cheese.

I heard the "Crack!" and the "Crap!" and turned to see him looking bewildered at the cork, still in the bottle, with the screw in it. The screw had snapped off. He laughed, said, "Well I guess it's time to get a new corkscrew."

Luckily, we still had the old corkscrew in the back of the silverware drawer, and he worked at screwing it in so it wouldn't torque the previous screw. "SNAP!" "CRAP!"

He shook his head, and said, "Now we really need a new corkscrew."

Luckily, I remembered the cheap plastic corkscrew we had gotten for camping trips, and climbed into the attic and found it in the kitchen box. While I rummaged, S unscrewed both curly bits of metal from the cork using flat bladed pliers.

The plastic corkscrew did the trick and we examined the cork that had destroyed two corkscrews. It was made of corkoak bark, easily indented by a thumbnail. Must have just been time to get a new corkscrew.