It’s a small thing, really. But flowers, pictures of gardens, walking through gardens, photographing them. Sigh. They make me happy. If we ever have kids, we may be destined to have an Iris, Daisy, Rose, and (if I could knock Rob unconscious while filling out the birth certificate) Poppy. (OMG, my mother would die.) (There I go with the parentheses again. Gah!)
Photos tomorrow of the new couch and front yard. I swear.
It was one of those kind of weekends. We didn’t have responsibilities at church this weekend so we knew we could relax and do what we wanted. It turned into a weekend of small projects that for some reason, were infinitely satisfying. It started on Friday. We took off a half day and ran some errands.. the dry cleaners and the frame shop. When we were in Key West last month, I bought a watercolor at the Hemingway House. I’ve bought watercolor prints from several places I’ve traveled or lived.. London, Bath, Glasgow. The print from Key West was the only thing we bought while we were there so getting it framed was a bit overdue.
Saturday, I was twitching to get the guest room closet cleaned out. The guest room becomes overrun with homeless stuff –the hodgepodge stuff we can’t figure out where to permanently store. We realized, in our clearing out, Monkey and Zion had built a sort of cat fort by the window. Under the curtains. On a pile of old magazines. On my grandma’s cedar chest. Ugh. It was a mess. We threw the curtains out, pulled out the vacuum and bleach wipes. Cleaned up and sorted, it looked nice. Bigger. Less.. cat-ified. More like we wanted people to sleep there.
We bought new curtains at Cost Plus, got new hardware up. It was long, long overdue. Much like getting the other half of our front yard planted (that was last weekend!). Look at us, being all house-proud. (I will take pictures of the yard today.. I keep forgetting.) (What’s with all the parentheses? I will stop now.)
On the work front, we are profoundly sad that our assistant, Laura is leaving us next week. She’s taken a full time teaching position in Ukiah and will be moving in early August. Laura has been a huge blessing, not just as our loyal assistant but as a dear, dear friend who we will greatly miss. Laura and Bethany housesit for us when we are gone, and we’ve spent many hours laughing together, watching movies, eating, playing. My heart is heavy when I think of not seeing her smile several times a week. 
I think Sam will miss her the most. She walks him 2 days a week before coming into the office and he seriously knows when it’s a Laura day. This was him on Thursday about 5 minutes before she pulled up in front of the house. Waiting for his favorite girl to get here..
Most people know we like to read. A lot. We have piles of books, boxes of books, shelves full in our room, the guest room, the office. I’ve added a new page to R&K this week, Books We’ve Read. I’m looking forward to adding more to it and updating it with what we’re currently reading.
“What happens to us in the future? Do we become assholes or something?”
– Marty McFly, “Back To The Future” (1985)
You know, looking back from nearly the age of flying DeLoreans, rejuvenation clinics, hoverboards and abolished lawyers, the distant past of the mid-1980s in some ways seems a touch more real than the society of confused ambiguities that we all inhabit in 2012. Some of that is age, I’m sure. At 40, you appreciate the spins and twists and muddled middles of life considerably more than you do at 15, or even 30. You learn to fight them less. You start learning to let go. At some point you realize that what you cling to the most are often little more than convenient fictions.
Written by 
Written by