Dear Miss Blue,

I would love to hear from you. Things are quiet around here so much so that I, once in a while, slam the kitchen cabinet doors hard so that their woodenness echoes around the place. That's how quiet it is around here.

Aside from occasionally talking to myself, best to talk straight into my bathroom mirror; my mother had the exact same way of trying to be social with the quietness; she had a very tiny mirror hanging on the wall over the kitchen sink and that is where she talked to Mary, her friend, and we all - my sister and I - thought her amazing that she did that. We didn't know that she hated the awful quietness. Even though certain kinds of noise, like the churning of the air conditioner, might seem friendly, it is nothing of the sort; just a temporary noise that irritates like the barking of dogs at the poor mailman as he dares to step up to the mailbox on the porch. Well, all in all, it is too too quiet around here.

Sending love to Miss Blue,

Pearl