-- Thursday, July 22, 1999 --

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9:24 a.m. Yesterday, late in the day we took a walk to try to scrounge up some dinner. I've been known to cook, but lately I've been merely warming. The days are too long, the nights are too short, the temperature is just too balmy. I look at the stove crouched in the corner and picture a pot or pan on top and me in the front of it and I just -- suddenly I just want to take a walk.

We went to a lot of trouble to find a part of Los Angeles to live in where you could, indeed, take a walk. It's really true that the police will stop you if you're strolling through parts of Brentwood or Beverly Hills without a dog on a leash or if you're not spritzing and hopping atop a big puffy, wedgy pair of running shoes. Just out walking? I don't think so.

But, we live at the beach and there's plenty of sidewalks and boardwalks and footpaths for just plain walks.

Plus, we are a couple of people whose kids are now all grown and flown away, and so we can pretty much do anything we want for dinner: cereal in front of the TV, a long nap instead; miso soup and a magazine outside in the shade. No rules. It's the other side of the madness, the quiet opposite of those days when we couldn't even get the bags of groceries from the car to the kitchen without half of the stuff being munched away before the brown sacks were folded and pushed between the fridge and the wall. Boy, sometimes I really miss those days.

There used to be a thing called "Rachel's Brownies" we would buy, probably at the Pathmark. An unbelievable big aluminum square of chocolate goo that would sit in the middle of the table for its entire short life, surrounded by at least four of us with forks. Not even knives -- just forks. Igor was a fencer in college and he often got the last piece. Now, he has diabetes. Adult-onset? Ha.

We also watched as our friendly neighborhood pizza guy, Phil, expanded his house and added a pool and often thanked us, personally, for his good fortune. I especially liked to be the passenger who carried the warm pies home on my lap in the winter because I could surreptitiously remove the meatball slices from the wedges as we tooled along the country roads.

One night as we were coming back, loaded down with treats, we actually hit a young doe with our small car. Merely grazed or dinged the animal, actually, and as we got out to see what we could do, the heavenly smell of shrooms and peppers and mozzarelly revived the creature and she got up and sniffed hopefully at the boxes. Pizza fixes almost everything. And now there's a yellow deer-crossing sign right there at that very spot in New Jersey, right beside the dip in the road, halfway between Phil's Pizza Parlor and our old house.

So, now we're all adults and grown up. I'm on a major diet and Igor can't eat sugar anymore. It's great to be able to do what you want for dinner.

He's a real guy! It's Harry Perry!

Tomorrow --