Elsie has decided to come to Vienna with me, which is conveniant as we can travel in her car. She needs some distance, too, she says, and there are so many things we have to tell each other. She knows Angelika - you may remember us in the jacuzzi all together - and is looking forward to seeing her again. We have not decided when we are back, maybe on Sunday evening or on Monday. So have a good time until then, sweet readers.

Some proof that life can be a piece of shit: Catherine was of French origin; she married a local guy who gradually rose to a managing post in a well-known local firm. When I got to know them I was twenty years old and they were already in their fifties; they had two blooming teenage daughters and were a model family. We were singing in the same choir and on very good terms.
Some years ago - meanwhile retired - her husband came down with a brain tumor, which was operated on but left him disabled. In the following years there has also been bypass surgery and he needs a wheelchair for transport. Alreaady before, their eldest daughter had become anorexic - she was close to death more than once and is permanently maked by the illness. There younger daughter, too, did not give them the grandchildren they had so hoped for: she outed herself as a lesbian and moved in with a girl-friend.

Catherine, however, was the center of the family - funny, radiant, looking after the other members, still teaching some French to elderly people, acting in a local comedy group although she was 76.

Last Thursday, Catherine died - of no abvious reasons. Her heart just gave up. I was at her funeral yesterday - the church was packed. Nobody understood why it had to be her. In the end her family left first for all to see: Debilitated by the shock of loss her grinning husband in a wheelchair, pushed by his tall, skeletal, hollow-eyed elder daughter. Behind them, fat and red-faced, his younger daughter hand in hand with a tall woman in dark glasses.

Only not Catherine, who had held them all together with her vigour and positive view on life - she had to die.

"One favour I will ask is that you stay with us on NN so that we, your friends, can watch and guide you along this new and untrodden path", is a sentence - among many good wishes - which I thought particularly nice - I fact I have not yet thought much about my presence here and how to proceed. I have not told Phillip about my intimate English-language NN-diary, actually it's not my wish for him to read all my most private thoughts over the last two years.

I do not think that being in love and married means that you can have no little secrets anymore. There must be some mystery left, because without mystery there is no magic, and without magic there is no love. I think to love a person does not mean to know him, but to be ready to find out something new about him every day. The death of love is the sentence: You are not like I thought you were.

It's interesting how people react to my good news: those who have known me and my sense of independence for a long time are rather doubtful and ask me if I have thought it over well. Some mention my 40th birthday next year and suspect I want to settle down as long as my biological clock is still ticking. But most are positive, and greatest was the joy of Angelika, Phillip's daughter from an early marriage, who is pleased about becoming my step-daughter. She is still in hospital, by the way, we are talking on the phone ever so often, and over the weekend I am traveling to Vienna to visit her.

Phillip is working a lot; he has a new responsibility at the Press House and his holidays are over. One of these days, we will be invited at his boss's house - you may remember: the Editor - and I am looking forward to meeting him again. Actually, I have decided to tell Phillip what was going on between the old man and me during his absence.

The central news is: I am going to get married. If nothing comes between, this will happen around Christmas. A few days before, there will be the official act with the municipality, and on Chistmas day there will be a reception at my house. There will not be a ceremony in church, and I won't be wearing a white wedding dress to symbolize purity and virginity.

We don't know yet who is going to speak at our private ceremony, but it's not going to be a clergyman. We will promise to love and support each other and keep a firm spiritual bond; but we will not promise to be monogamous and physically faithful - ours shall be (I hope it is possible at all) a life of shared promiscuity. A common, permanent feast of the senses - and not the amputation of those like in so many marriages.

What a big change in my life. Who would have thought this only two years ago, when I came to NN at the beginning of my sabbatical as a free floating consumer of casual sex who hardly ever did it with the same partner more than once for fear of boredom and possessiveness. Me - a married woman. Mrs. P. - Phillip's wife. And - what is more - also a mother - this we have discussed at length and thought worth trying.

As it should not happen before the end of the next school year - we have decided not to have unprotected sex before December.

This is the house in which we stayed for ten days. In the background there is the sea. It is in an Italian region called Abruzze - as far south as Rome, but on the other side, on the Adriatic Sea. I loved the view from the house very much: the changing colours over the water, the shiny reflections of the waves on a windy day. In the late afternoon we were sitting outside, talking about us, and our desires, and about our future. When along the coast the lights went on and the stars drew up, we made love in the window, or outside, leaning on the garden wall. In the morning we went shopping for vegetables and fruit and wine, during the hot hours of the the afternoon we slept in the shadow or were reading. And everything was so good.

Yes, I am back from my holdays, which were absolutely wonderful - we drove home all day today, a few hundred kilometers from around Torino (yes, Gio, I might have waved to you from our car window) to Austria. My garden looks like a wilderness, and the pool is unusually cool as it was covered all the time, but my neighbour Helene saw that things got enough water so I have some ripe tomatoes and very sweet and juicy apricots. There were so many wonderful days and things to be seen on the way, but what is most important: there were some decisions made which are going to affect my life greatly. And we had such a lot of wonderful sex that we have almost made up our year of separation (well, almost almost). I will report about all this when I have time in the coming days and had some necessary sleep - school will only start in three weeks so there is enough time for me to tell - hoping, of course, that there are still a few people around who care ...

Am I a different and totally changed person already today? No, definitely not yet. It's the holidays that will have to decide - there we will have time to discuss everything and see how it will go on with the two of us.

Because of some transport problems, Phillip did not appear before nine, and he was pretty exhausted when he arrived. I had put on a light, flowery summerdress which I was wearing on my bare skin, and when I finally heard the taxi stop in my drive, I went to the door to open it. Here he was, only with a briefcase (he had left the luggage at the station) and we fell into each others arms while he was apologizing for being late.

We kissed under the door, and his kisses were urgent and eager, and when I laid a probing hand betwen his legs, he was hard. Then there was no stopping for me: you know I am a woman of strong habits, so I had to welcome him the way I like best. There, under the open door, I sank to my knees which suddenly ceased supporting me, opened his trousers and begun sucking him as if his cum was some magic potion which might heal all my aches. Before I had slipped my dress over my head.

So as he was standing over me with his legs slightly apart and holding the doorframe in order not to tumble down with me, I took hold of his beautiful hard cock with both hands, so that I was almost hanging there. Come, my little friend, beloved stranger, source of my desires, into my mouth, let me suck you and bathe me in your cum and nurish me as I revel in your tastes. I didn't care this time if there was little or much cum he had for me (little would have meant he had cum already on that day; but it was much).

He picked me up and carried me to my bed, but he lay down next to me and was quite exhausted, so we just held each other, and we slept very soon. And this morning there was not much time because he had to go to the office and see after his flat and his luggage and especially his car. So tomorrow we are going to leave for Italy. Keep your fingers crossed for me, my friends, that all goes well for me, so that in two weeks you'll be able to meet a thoroughly happy Alpina.

I had a good night's sleep after all that wine last night, and now it's the day of days. I expect Phillip around 6pm, I have been in town and bought some food for today and tomorrow, I will certainly have more than one shower all afternoon and I have not decided yet what to wear. It will certainly be more than only a whiff of perfume, although that's all I really feel like.

I thank you all, my friends, who have sent me messages or comments lately to encourage me and wish me well. You are a great support, and even if I don't answer messages as often and as carefully as I should, I want you to know that I appeciate them very much. Reading them is always the first thing I do when I come online, and they are really very close to my heart. Thank you very much, too, to those wonderful people who make sure with their comments that my blog does not look too empty and deserted. You take your time and think of me for more the only a moment and give me a sign that you have been here - you make me think and always smile. Feel my kisses of gratitude for this.

I think I will be here tomorrow for a last time before our holidays and maybe tell you something about tonight.

Tomorrow Phillip is back - he will come through this door, stand on this floor. Touch this body. This body who is yearning to be touched by him ever so much. I am shaking as I am mentioning his name, I am wet already today beyond belief.

Someone wrote to me he thought I was walking on very thin ice with my wild hopes of a future with Phillip. Yes, I know. I know I am standing before an abyss. And I am about to make a step into the air, hoping that a bridge will materialize, or that I find out I am able to fly. Oh give me wings, Phillip, so that I can fly with you.

I will drink a bottle of Italian red tonight. I will use Elsie's powertool on me to set my body at rest. I will do everything that makes me sleep deep and long - so that when I wake up it's tomorrow.

There's another thunderstorm with torrents of rain, I had to put on the lamp in my study before to find all the things I want to clear away and tidy up before Wednesday, so that all looks neat when Phillip arrives. I am in some kind of a trance again, however, musing about this and that, wondering what turns my life will take soon. Will I be shaken by the storm like the trees outside my window? Will I be uprooted like the cherry tree down the road yesterday afternoon?

Some of my online friends are worried, they say. It is not possible and not desirable to do something which does not come from deep in one's heart, they say. Can one be tolerant just because one decides to? Can one change pain into pleasure? Is physical attraction a basis for a relationship, even if it is strong? Should it not be love?

Maybe yes - maybe you are right. And yet I have made up my mind: to embark on the ride with Phillip if he cares to take me along. To be for him what he is for me - a necessity, somebody without who life would be empty. His actual elixir of life - as much he is mine. And for that I am not only determined to jump over my shadow, but also to sell it to whoever buys it in exchange for the magic I require.