Coon Bones & Kate Bush

Last Sunday (the 16th), I had my neighbors over for dinner. I wanted some sort of closure with them, especially because, as a result of K.'s cancer diagnosis last Spring, we'd become closer; not necessarily intimate, although K. has shared intimate details of her cancer with me, but more involved--I cared for their cat whenever they left town to visit her doctor in Boston. I was happy to do it, because we're mostly just helpless onlookers in the face of a cancer diagnosis, and it was, at least, something.
The other something I could do was cook, and when K. hasn't just emerged from a barfy round of chemotherapy, she actually has an appetite and appreciates good food.
So I made a couple of spinach quiches and had them over, and K.'s boyfriend (the building's caretaker) somehow got himself on the topic of lucky mojos--charms or spells.
Specifically, raccoon penis bones.
Also known as a "coon bone" or a "pecker bone."

I don't know how the conversation navigated to this esoteric, somewhat voodoo-esque topic (I may've well been dining with the spirit of Marie Laveau), but he told me he'd ordered a number of them and passed them out to his friends, and he even wore his proudly on a lanyard around his neck at a friend's wedding.
For lucky heaps of marital sex, I supposed.
K. grimaced and said, "Eww, it's so disgusting. I hate touching it."
Apparently not having learned when to shut up, move on, or change the subject altogether, I thoughtfully chewed a forkful of balsamic vinegar-sprinkled baby greens and asked what a raccoon penis bone looked like.
"Well," he said, grinning broadly, "I'll show you!" and then ran down the hall and retrieved the thing for my viewing pleasure.
There, swinging at the end of a black silken cord was something that resembled a giant white fish hook. The first thing I thought was, wow. Lady raccoons get it good or get it bad, depending on your perspective.
He then put it on and we continued uneventfully with our dinner while K. and I emphatically ignored the curved baculum swinging on the lanyard around his neck.
The evening was, in spite of the interim pecker bone viewing, very pleasant, and I'm glad I had this time with them.
We ate the apple pie they'd brought, and then I sent them home with the second quiche.

On quite another topic, I curse the commercials for CSI that moodily play Kate Bush's "This Woman's Work" in the background. It wormed its way into my brain and I was finally compelled to download it.
Of course, being in the midst of transition and after a heavy week of teary goodbyes, it was probably the absolute wrong thing to do.
It's desperate, tremulous, scenes of slow-mo driving-into-the-sunset please-don't-leave-me vein-opening music.
Not that I'm planning to open a vein any time soon or anything, but I could easily conjure a painful moving day departure scene in my head, replete with soulful, long-held regretful hugs and final stumbling words of farewell and crumpled, tear-dampened Kleenexes pressed to reddened noses and rheumy eyes, which was all overwrought and dramatically self-indulgent and highly unnecessary.
Yes, time for BirdNerd's Mash-Ups. I need to happily rock this house, not bring it down.
But I still love that song.