Patricia and Erin left for Dallas yesterday morning and arrived safely home at mid-afternoon. On previous visits, they usually left on Saturday, but some gentlemen friends beckoned them home early. Ah, well. We were all beginning to turn a little inward after four days together, and the long-distance bills were piling up. It was a good visit -- good company, good food, loud laughter, and the girls had some much needed rest. Patricia told me it's always good to come here to rest because she doesn't knock herself out looking for something to do -- because there isn't anything to do.

That's not exactly fair. We could've jumped in the car and ridden up to Vicksburg in an hour or down to New Orleans in 2-1/2 hours. We could've toured the Indian mounds or taken a drive up the Natchez Trace. But after the 6-1/2 hours over here, all the girls really wanted to do was hang out and be fed.

Feed them we did: Lyman's catfish Monday night, spaghetti and meatballs Tuesday night, crawfish and trimmings Wednesday night, and fajitas Thursday night. Patricia e-mailed her boss that she'd be back at work on Monday if she could fit back into the car.

Come to find out, I am a little behind the times (surprise, surprise!). Erin is eighteen years old and in her last year of high school. She has a job and spends her own money as she sees fit, which means that she has had her navel and tongue pierced. Piercings are so common that they're hardly worth comment. We found with our son Jason, the less said the better. If it doesn't arouse the elders, it just ain't hardly worth doing. Cossie, one of the women at the crawfish boil, and I urged her not to do anything to her face, though. Erin is a strikingly pretty girl and it would be a desecration. I also urged her to change her make-up to a more nude look. Why do young girls think they have to wear so much? And such garish colors? That's not what the hot models are doing. Probably did more harm than good with that advice. Thank goodness she's not mine to raise. By comparison, we teens of the seventies were a calm lot. (My ears are burning. My mother is saying, yeah, right.)

The crawfish boil was a success. Six women were present, and Lyman was the cook. He drove down river Wednesday afternoon to buy a 33-pound bag of live crawfish from a family farming crawfish in drained catfish ponds. The crawfish were satisfyingly large for this time of year, so we didn't have to starve to death peeling enough for our dinners. Patricia had never had crawfish before. She picked up peeling them in a snap, found she liked them, and kept pace with best of us. Erin wouldn't touch them. She ate hot dogs instead.

One of our guests was a woman widowed just six weeks ago. The very day her husband suffered a fatal heart attack I sent out the invitations for our party in February. She was, of course, not able to come to that party, but as she's a great fan of crawfish, she was invited to this small gathering. At the end of the evening, once we'd finished eating, she told us that we didn't know what we'd done for her that day. It would have been her 38th (excuse me, that would be 48th) anniversary, she said, and she would have been at home grieving had she not had a safe place to go. Just heart-breaking. We received a pretty thank-you card from her yesterday. Sometimes we do good.

Lucy had a week of it. Patricia was so disappointed early on because Lucy kept her distance and eyed her suspiciously. Patricia kept talking to her, and by Thursday Patricia was stroking her breast. In a few more days they would have been chatting merrily together. As it is, Lucy made a new friend just in time to lose her. We need to expose her to other people more often.

All in all, it was energizing. Now on to the yard.