The last two weeks have been a blur of activity, although I'd be hard-pressed to tell you exactly what I did. There was weeding and the ever-present weed prevention efforts (file under: hope springs eternal), some watering, some dehydrating (more cherries), a spot of reupholstering, and on and on, with little actually finished. No, wait, we did finish reading Prince Caspian much to the Boy Wonder's disappointment (which came hand-in-hand with an excited rally over the next selection, Neil Armstrong: Young Flyer). Prince Caspian is a lovely tale of renewal, hope and restoration and a wonderful thing to read if you are, as I am, somewhat depressed about current events. And the Neil Armstrong book, well, it has its charms, too. The entire Childhood of Famous Americans series is admittedly a bit twee, but they do present compelling portraits of some really remarkable people in the process of becoming who we know them to have been. You know, child being the father of the man and all that, and as bedtime stories they really are nice. There is probably a reason there aren't many profiles of bond traders or product managers in the series - nor compliance specialists, for that matter (which is how I spend a good chunk of my day)- but it's not something in which I'll delve into too deeply here.

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes, getting things done. On that page I've been meaning to shout out to my former roommate and occasional commenter Meg to congratulate her on the addition of two (I think) children to her family. I dearly wish everyone in the family a lifetime of love and a smooth settling in. If she were in the room with me I'd ask if she ever looks back at the girls we were and wonder how we got from there to here. Myself, I'm shocked on a regular basis.

So here we are, waiting for enough beans to come in to make dilly beans, enough blueberries for jam or pie filling (actually, I prefer turnovers but you know what I'm saying) and perhaps even enough zucchini to become sick of it - although it's hard to believe that point could possibly come, this early in the season. Meanwhile, I've tasked Brainiac to the project of making some kind of rain barrel water-off-the-roof collection system, a job which I sold by reminding him that "specialization is for insects" and he probably shouldn't spend all his free time on keeping our cars running, and I'm trying to work out - again - how to knit. I think my problem was trying to knit left-handed, when clearly (it seems to be now) a girl who throws right and bats right probably ought to knit right, too, even if she writes and eats left. Right?