My apple pie for Mark's homecoming was my best ever! Great crust, flaky but not crumbly, and the apples all held together so that a piece of pie looks like a piece of pie is supposed to look---and taste! I changed my recipe to include some brown sugar along with the white and it came out great. And MacIntosh apples. I want to remember that. I think they were the best apples I've ever used for pie.

Enough pie. I never wrote Sunday about the pleasant journal writer's gathering at Mozart's. It was a small group this time, just me, Greg Bueno, TimBrat and Tim's friend Kurt from San Antonio who has a blog I have not sampled yet. The setting was perfect out on the lake, despite the heat, and the conversation was really good. I especially enjoyed Kurt asking me if my hair color was natural. He was afraid I might take it as an insult, but how could you? If you like my natural hair color, that's wonderful, and if you like a hair color I chose, that's wonderful too. My hair is all natural right now. After a year of experimentation, I haven't done a thing to it in months (not even cut it). I don't know what will happen with the hair next. I'm hoping I can think of something I can offer in trade to my neighbor and let her cut my hair. I'm sure she'd probably do it for free but I don't want to feel obligated (or make her feel obligated).

Today I got the news that a dear old cousin has died. I am sad and feeling guilt. I heard just before we went to Hawaii that she was very sick and only had a short time left on earth. I felt like I needed to go up and see her (three hours away) but that just seemed impossible. I kept thinking about calling or writing and then I would worry about "what would I say?" or "what should I write?" and I let that precious time slip away. I can feel better knowing that I am one of her relatives that has visited her at her house and stopped by on trips through her town, so she knew she was important to me. I need to go look up her age. Somewhere in her 80s and getting close to 90. She still made fabulous food for our reunions in August--the best pecan pie. She was a sweet old lady but she was not a "sweet old lady." She had a sharp wit and could trade barbs with anyone. I mainly remember getting to the reunion one year and having her say, "So, do you have a job yet?" She might as well have said, "YOU BUM!" at the end of it, with the tone she used, but, of course, she was teasing about my jobless situation. Her name was Mable but we all called her "Bud." One of her sisters was named Mildred but she was known by "Miller." One year those two sisters went to visit the grandsons of the third sister (named Lucille, called Sade) at Texas A&M. The friends of the grandsons had the best time meeting Aunt Bud and Aunt Miller---the "Beer Aunts" as they came to be known. It's even funnier when you know what clean-living, fine tee-totaling Baptist women they were. But, they loved to tell that story. Miller is gone, now Bud, and I know Sade is not far behind, poor soul. It is a generation of our reunion that will be missed---they are the ones that always bring the GOOD food! My generation is the one that brings a bucket of chicken from the convenience store/truck stop or a platter of cookies from the HEB.

Okay, off to pie and beddy-bye.