Straight up the nose

Last night, Meelyn, Aisling and I were eating some frozen pizza. Since our stomachs are made out of gen-yew-wine cast iron, we were sprinkling our slices with generous amounts of crushed red pepper, which is the condiment of the gods. We eat it on everthing except bananas.

The three of us were being very indolent and watching our good friend, Suzanne Wong, on a really premium episode of HGTV's House Hunters, a show in which we neither were irritated by the home viewers' incessant and unreasonable demands for perfection ("I don't like that blue paint at all.") nor shocked by 1,300 square foot houses that were on the market for $295,000.

Everything was going swimmingly both for the house viewers and us, when all of a sudden, Aisling started blowing her nose, again and again.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"No," she said, her voice muffled by the paper napkin she was using as a hanky. She blew her nose with vigor and then examined the contents of the napkin. "Oh, look, there it is." She held out the napkin to show me whatever "it" was.

"No thanks!" I said, backing away with haste.

"It's the red pepper," she explained.

"Red pepper?"

"Yes, the red pepper I got up my nose when I was eating my pizza."

"Aisling, how on earth..."

"I don't know," she interrupted, her eyes beginning to stream with tears. "I thought it would be okay if I just got it out of my nose, but it still burns."

Nonplussed -- and Aisling seems to have me in an increasing state of nonplussedness as time goes on -- I looked at her, thinking that I have dealt with bumped heads and skinned knees and even, at two separate times, fractured arms, but never have I been called upon to treat a nose for red pepper burns. From the inside.

Since I do have an imagination, I could imagine how it must feel, though. Ouch. The effect of capsaisin on tender nose tissues would be painful. Professional assistance was required, I thought, so I dialed the number of my favorite CVS here in the city.

It took me forever to get through their ridiculous guided menu selection ("For the aisle where we display the Q-Tips, press one; for the gift wrap and birthday card section, press two; to find out if there are any close parking spaces available, press three; to talk to an actual living person, press fivesixninesevenzerozerothreetwofiveeightfourtwonine...")

When I finally got a pharmacy technician, I said, "I have a strange question. My twelve-year-old daughter was eating a slice of pizza and somehow got a red pepper flake up her nose. Could I use nasal saline solution to rinse her nose out, or would plain water be better?"

The technician giggled a little. "We get strange questions all the time. It's no problem. Just a moment, let me ask the pharmacist."

She left me to some badly-played Mozart and I looked at Aisling, whose eyes were still flooding with tears as a result of the burning in her nose. I was really hoping that the saline nasal spray would work, because I had no idea how I was going to get pure water into her nose in amounts that wouldn't drown her, but would rinse away the capsaisin. Saline, though, I wondered. Could that make it burn even more? Nasal saline spray, which we use when we feel iickily sinus-y, comes in those handy little bottles and I think we even had some on hand in the downstairs medicine cabinet. Pure water? I got a bewildered mental picture of trying to pour a bottle of water up Aisling's nose. How...?

The technician came back on the line in the midst of all this mental dithering, just as I was hoping the the syringe-top to the nasal saline solution bottle I thought was in the downstairs medicine cabinet would come unscrewed so that I could replace the saline with warmed, purified water...

"The pharmacist says that the nasal saline solution will be fine," she said. "I hope your daughter's nose is okay."

"Thanks," I said. "And thanks for not thinking this was too bizarre."

She laughed. "Oh, the questions we get at night are usually much more bizarre than this, ma'am."

Fortunately, we did have a bottle of nasal saline solution, right where I thought it was. Aisling armed herself with a hand towel and a bad attitude, and I took the little bottle in hand and lavaged her nose a couple of times.

Aisling spluttered and coughed and flung herself around the living room in a manner that she considered suitably dramatic for having jets of water launched into her nasal passages.

"All right, enough already," I said, slightly exasperated, as she gagged and moaned and wailed. It doesn't do any good at all to offer Aisling too much sympathy, we've found out. She feeds on it. She feeds on it to such an extent that a simple sliver in her pinky finger can become a severed arm, lying right there on the floor at your feet, if you only had the sensitivity to understand her pain. With Aisling, it is better to adopt a cheerful, matter-of-fact mien, otherwise she'll drive you mad with her reeling and writhing and fainting in coils. "Does your nose feel better?"

"Salt..." she groaned, gagging right over my shoes in an alarming manner. "It's saaaaaaaalllllty."

I moved my feet nimbly. "Well, yes, it is salty. But does your nose feel better?"

"It tastes aaaaaaaaawwwwfffffuuuuuuuuulllllllllllll," she moaned, clutching the towel to her face and falling into her father's armchair, in which he fortunately was not sitting. She kicked her feet a little bit. Meelyn, who had been a silent observer of this whole thing, rolled her eyes a little and looked at me. I shrugged.

"Aisling...."

"Uuuuuuuuuggghhhhhhhh....ohhhh, it's terrrrrrrrrrrible..."

"Aisling, your NOSE, is it..."

Aisling looked up at me, the magic of Sarah Bernhardt, Meryl Streep and Glenn Close oozing from every available pore. "Huh? My nose?"

Thursday's List

READING: Whitethorn Woods by Maeve Binchy. I really like this Irish author and her gentle storytelling, her interesting characters. This is the second book I've read by her, the first being an older one titled Light a Penny Candle.

LISTENING TO: some sort of silly football game thingie, with one team wearing really smashing purple and yellow-gold uniforms and the other team wearing white with blue. It seems to be a college game. On Thursday night?

FAVORITE NEW FIND: CVS brand saline nasal spray. I'll explain why tomorrow.

HAPPY TO SAY: The first, four-hour session of the Shakespeare Workshop went so incredibly well, in spite of the fact that I was so nervous, I was afraid I'd throw up in front of the students.

FAVORITE THING TODAY: Hershey jumping up on the bed with me this morning and snuggling up next to me, his beady little eyes brimming over with love. He is so ugly and not very smart, but he sure is a sweetheart.

HOURS OF SLEEP LOGGED LAST NIGHT: Not nearly enough for the past three nights. It is affecting my temper. Maybe I don't have PMS after all? Maybe I am just a sour, rotten, sleepless old hag.

SCRAPBOOK PAGES THIS WEEK: None! I am scrapbook-free until late September.

THE CAUSE OF MY STRESS: This has been a bad month for money, very bad. Unfortunately, the utilities people don't seem to have much appreciation for a spunky phone call where I say, "Hey, listen! You know that $178.47 we owe you? Well, is there a possibility I could work that off by coming down and making coffee for y'all for the next eighty mornings? No? Well, shoot. I think we have a problem, then."

I remind myself during these times that the balance in our checking/savings accounts reflects our choice to homeschool the girls. Any time we decide that keeping up with this choice is too difficult, we can do something different and I can get a job teaching other people's children instead of my own. But somehow, we never get around to deciding that. It's a sacrifice, and sacrifices aren't really sacrificial unless they're hard. Things are hard right now. But next month may well be completely different.

PRAYING FOR: Tom, Sue and the kids. Peter and his family. Lily and her family. Please pray with me.

PMS = Pass My Shotgun

I just read my last three posts and I think I must be approaching That Time of the Month.

If you know what I mean.

You do know what I mean, don't you?

Just give me the chocolate and that bottle of Motrin over there and no one will get hurt.

Gettin' what was coming to you

Years ago, my husband worked with a lady who - although she'd been reprimanded several times - wore inappropriate clothing to work. After being called on the carpet by the owner of the business, she'd sulkily dress in the more demure items in her wardrobe (which didn't exactly make her look like a Puritan goodwife or anything), but after a few weeks, she'd be back to the low-cut tops that showed her midriff, the skin-tight pants, etc. And this was back when Britney Spears was still in diapers.

One day shortly after my husband was hired, this lady, who fancied herself a great deal, was asking my husband how old he thought she was. If I'd been there, I could have told her that this was a mistake. And not just because it was my husband who was being asked; men, unless it's only about an hour until last call and their beer goggles are firmly in place, generally don't do well with questions like this. There were several other employees standing with them and they all looked at my husband with amused expectancy.

So!

"How old do you think I am?" she purred, twisting a strand of her bleached-blonde hair around one talon-nailed finger. She preened herself, he said, stroking an imaginary dust molecule off her bodice, the buttons of which were barely restraining her augmented bosoms. A tiny bit of super-tanned skin below the hem of her blouse spoke eloquently of her many hours spent lounging in a sunbed. She winked at him with one false-eyelashed eye and gave him a big, confident smile.

(All this to sell carpet, tile and hardwood flooring!)


"Uhmm.....errrrr....." my husband stalled, wildly seeking help from one of his male colleagues, none of whom were willing to meet his eye, for some reason. "Ahhhhhh.....forty-two?"

One man made a funny snorting sound through his nose and went off with a muffled excuse about hay fever. The others drifted away, biting their lips and somehow managing to refrain from nudging each other in wicked glee until they were out of sight beyond the Mediterranean tile displays.

"FORTY-TWO??!!" she asked him with Medusa-like menace. "Forty-TWO??!!"

"How old are you?" he asked miserably.

"I am thirty-five. THIRTY-FIVE, you @$$%$&#!"

"Oh," he said, running his finger along the inside collar of his shirt, which he said suddenly seemed way too tight. "Well, you shouldn't ask people stuff like that."

"Well, EVERYONE ELSE guesses that I'm about twenty-SIX," she said through clenched teeth and flounced off, flipping her bleachy hair, her high heels tapping out a furious tattoo on the floor.

One of the other salesmen came up and said, "Dude, that was just......perfect. PER-fect. Thank you."

"Not such a great way to start out the new job, though."

"No, trust me on this. You are our hero."

*********************************************

Fast forward to last week, where I overheard this conversation. The two participants were a very toned, blonde, suntanned, fingernailed, outfitted and jewelry-bedecked person of average height for a woman who probably weighed 105 pounds dripping wet. The other person was a gentleman of about fifty years. They were discussing this last weekend of the summer and all the last hurrahs of grilling out.

"I'll have to be very careful," she said, smoothing her ring-laden brown fingers over her concave abdomen, belly-button piercing on provocative display. "I've gained four whole pounds this summer and I'm getting soooo fat!" And she laughed that tiny, tinkling laugh that makes me want to grab the laugher by the nose and screech "GOTCHER CONK!" pulling her around the room after me in a bent-over, stumbling half-run.

The man standing next to her gave her a brief look. "It doesn't show," he commented shortly. "You still look like an Ethiopian."

I watched this woman standing there, the gears in her mind turning as she tried to turn this dubious remark into a compliment. Because, surely, he meant to compliment her. Right?

Right?

I had to restrain myself from throwing my arms around this man and then stepping back to hold him at arm's length, my hands gripping his shoulders and saying, "Thank you. THANK you."

He is my hero.

Permanently disgruntled

School starts next Tuesday and all of our staying up late with a hey-nonny-nonny and sleeping until nine are over, just over.

The girls have been going upstairs at 9:30 in the evenings, turning their lights out at 10:00. Next week, it will be upstairs by 9:00, lights out at 9:30. My husband and I will be able to canoodle on the sofa again; for the past couple of months of summer vacation, the girls have been downstairs so late, the only canoodling we've been able to do is this:

"Will you press the button on the remote to shut the TV off?"

"No. I am too tired."

"C'mon. Please? I did it last night."

"No, I can't. I'm half asleep."

"Okay. On the count of three, let's stand up. One...two...three...!"

[neither of us stands up]

"Cheater!"

"DOUBLE cheater! You were the one who counted!"

"Let's just leave the television on all night and conserve our energy for climbing the stairs."

The girls have been going to bed early enough that my husband and I have had our lights turned out by eleven o'clock for about five nights running. Even though I am a night owl, I can reconcile myself to that.

What I cannot reconcile is stupid Daylight Savings Time which makes it practically pitch-dark at 6:30 in the morning when the alarm goes off. Why do we have to put up with this?

About eight years ago, I spent a week with Susie when she lived in Charleston, South Carolina. I didn't know about Daylight Savings Time back in those innocent days and one morning I woke up at 7:00 a.m. to pitch darkness and I thought the apocalypse had happened. Susie found this screamingly funny and was stunned and astonished when I quaveringly told her that I lived in a place where it was broad daylight at 5:00 a.m. and what was wrong with this benighted place, anyway?

Now I know.

Indiana is similarly benighted.

Getting up in the morning is punishing enough without having to get up in the dark. In August. Dark mornings are for December, January and February, when it may as well be dark because there's nothing much to do outside anyway.

Equally silly is watching the sun set at 9:35 p.m. Everyone just wants some shade, already. We've seen the hot sun glaring down on us all day. Just....go. Shine on someone else for awhile. This is not Finland. Geez. My younger nephew, Dayden, took this "white night" phenomenon very hard because he kept thinking that Pat and Angie were punishing him by putting him to bed when it was so obviously still daytime.

"What did I do?" he wailed to them, crying stormily as they tucked him in. "I'll be good! I don't know why I was bad!"

Try explaining Daylight Savings Time to a kindergartner. I don't even understand why we have to have it. I ought to be crying too. Maybe I will, tomorrow morning at 6:30.

HA. HA HA HAAAAA!

Earlier this summer, I suffered through a lecture from a middle school teacher who works here in my city. I was there at the pool with my Shakespeare and Greek history books spread out on my bench and she was on the bench next to mine, reading a book and taking notes for a Masters-level class she was taking at the local university. The topic of her impromptu lesson was how homeschooling mothers have a lot of nerve, seeing as how they think they can teach their kids without the benefit of college degree and a valid Indiana state teachers' license.

I listened with boredom and frustration; this isn't the first time I've heard a diatribe like this and I always find that it's best just to let them speak their piece until they run out of steam, keeping an impassive face and maintaining steady eye contact.

When she finished talking, I explained a few things to her about the nature of homeschooling of which she, with her bias, was completely unaware of. Like how if you, as a mom, aren't comfortable with teaching calculus, you can, oh, say....hire a private tutor! Or.....purchase a video course! Or....take an online class on that fascinating thing that Al Gore invented, the internet! Or....sign up for a class at a local junior college!

This woman seemed to think that homeschool mothers can only teach classes on things they are completely proficient in, which, according to her, were: 1. being really weird; 2. dressing funny; 3. baking muffins; and 4. voting a straight Republican ticket.

I couldn't resist needling her e-v-e-r so slightly with the information that my mother, who taught fourth grade in the public school system for thirty-six years, believes strongly that anyone can teach anything, given a good teacher's manual and a cup of flavored coffee.

So imagine my naughty glee when I heard on the local radio news break about fifteen minutes ago that the scores at both of our two high schools and all our middle and elementary schools here in my city have slipped well below the national average in the past three years. And this comes at a time, the announcer intoned in a doleful voice, when more kids from Indiana are graduating high school and going on to college than ever before.

I wish I were at the pool right now. Because if I were, and if I saw her there, I would so be rolling my eyes behind the protection of my sunglasses and smirking just a teeny bit.

Requiem prayer

My friend Sue's husband, Tom, passed away at 5:10 a.m. EST. Tom was twenty-eight years old. He died after a brief and hard-fought battle with cancer. He and Sue have two small children.

Psalm 116

I love the LORD, who listened to my voice in supplication,
Who turned an ear to me on the day I called.
I was caught by the cords of death; the snares of Sheol had seized me;
I felt agony and dread.

Then I called on the name of the LORD, "O LORD, save my life!"
Gracious is the LORD and just; yes, our God is merciful.
The LORD protects the simple; I was helpless, but God saved me.

Return, my soul, to your rest; the LORD has been good to you.
For my soul has been freed from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling.
I shall walk before the LORD in the land of the living.
I kept faith, even when I said, "I am greatly afflicted!"
I said in my alarm, "No one can be trusted!"

How can I repay the LORD for all the good done for me?

I will raise the cup of salvation and call on the name of the LORD.
I will pay my vows to the LORD in the presence of all his people.
Too costly in the eyes of the LORD is the death of his faithful.
LORD, I am your servant, your servant, the child of your maidservant;
you have loosed my bonds.

I will offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving and call on the name of the LORD.
I will pay my vows to the LORD in the presence of all his people,
In the courts of the house of the LORD, in your midst, O Jerusalem. Hallelujah!


Eternal rest grant unto Tom, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. +Amen+

Sunday dinners and Amish food I have known

For the past two weeks, I've noticed on Sundays that we are all sick of summer food. We are done with the grill: the smoked sausage, the pork chop and the chicken breast have no place on our Sunday menus.

It is time to get back to the food of fall.

Now don't get me wrong; we do have some corn-on-the-cob still in the fridge. And tomatoes. But all of a sudden, when I think "fruit," I realize that I'm thinking honey crisp apples instead of peaches and plums. I'd like to have a toasted bagel with pumpkin butter on it for breakfast sometime soon. I want to make some chunky slow-cooker applesauce.

Last Sunday and this, I brought out two of my cool weather recipes. Last Sunday, we dined on roast beef and Yorkshire pudding with green beans. This week, I tucked another beef roast into the oven and cooked it slowly, slowly all afternoon and then made mashed potatoes and noodles, a true Hoosier Sunday dinner if ever there was one. Unless it was chicken and noodles and mashed potatoes.

I can make good noodles, but a few years ago I found out that Kroger sells dried noodles from Der Essenhaus in Middlebury, Indiana, which is a little town in LaGrange county close to the school where I used to work. If you've ever eaten the Amish cooking at Der Essenhaus, you know that it is much more reasonable to just throw in the towel as far as noodle-making is concerned and buy theirs. No fuss, no mess and good noodles. I only make noodles now when we want a fluffy dumpling, which is something I don't allow us to want very often, considering that my fluffy dumplings are made with about a pound of butter.

Thinking about Der Essenhaus in Middlebury gets me to thinking about the Blue Gate in Shipshewana, another place I used to frequent when I lived "up north." My mother and I knew the Blue Gate when it was a cramped little place with mis-matched tables and chairs and ketchup and mustard served in those tall plastic red and yellow squirt bottles. The truly excellent food was served by quiet, reserved Mennonite girls in their plain clothes and white bonnets.

The last time I was in Shipshewana was about five years ago; I went back with my friend Cato and my cousin Carol for a weekend after an absence of about eight years. I was really and truly saddened to find that the original Blue Gate was gone and a new, "improved" Blue Gate had been built in its place. The new Blue Gate was a slickly marketed place with Amish items for sale, placed artfully where they could be examined by diners and squealed over -- "So authentic!" one woman gushed, holding up a patchwork quilt that didn't strike me as being anything close to the best Amish quilting one could ever see. "Look at those tiny stitches!" ("Yes, machines do that nowadays," I thought resentfully to myself.) There were many silk ferns and lots of tacky arrangements on the walls. It looked like a restaurant full of stage props. When our waitress came up to our table, boldly meeting our eyes and calling us all "hun," I felt like I was being punked.

The food was still good, but the Blue Gate was gone forever, taking Shipshewana along with it.

Cato, Carol and I also went over to Nappannee that weekend to eat at Amish Acres, which is still a slickly marketed place, but in a more subtle sort of way. It's not quite so new and crass there; the Amish Acres gift shop has been there for a long time.

We stayed at Der Essenhaus Inn that weekend because I'd heard how nice it was. The three of us shared one room, which was hideously expensive and decorated in an appalling style reminiscent of the photo spreads of Country Living magazine in the mid-1980s. You know. Geese with bonnets on and that kind of thing. I hope they've renovated things since then. Especially if they're still charging those prices.

Anyway, fall food always reminds me of the Amish cooking I have eaten - carb-heavy and relying imprudently on lard, bacon grease and butter. Which reminds me....it may be time to make lemon squares, which we will cut into little bitty pieces.

Oh, who am I kidding?

Volleyball invitational - booohya

Yesterday kicked off the volleyball season with our annual invitational. Three other teams from the area joined us for a tournament. Our varisty team ended up winning the trophy, as well they should have because I watched a few of their games and WOW. Those girls are good. And fast.

Junior varsity didn't do so well as far as winning games went, but their level of play was completely different from last year. This is Meelyn's second season and Aisling's first; we also have two other twelve-year-olds, one of whom is so good that I was awestruck by her instinctive knack for the game. As I watched JV matches yesterday, it was a real thrill to see flashes of brilliance as the ball was volleyed and volleyed back and forth across the net. Of course, there were a few times when the ball would be served by the opposing team, only to land with a dismal thud right in the middle of the court, a feat which makes my husband, who is the assistant coach, drop his head into his hands, his ears turning bright red.

The JV coach doesn't fare much better in this regard, but he has learned the knack of chewing the girls out for being lazy and distracted without making them all cry. Which is quite a valuable skill. Because as it turns out, it's hard to bump, set and spike when your eyes are welling with tears.

I spent a lot of my day working in the concession stand, which is one of my favorite things to do. For some reason, it just suits me. And not because I get to eat. Shut up. You can't stand there and eat if you're working the concession stand. We sold lots of different candy, plus chips and granola bars and packaged cookies and crackers, cups of watermelon chunks, homemade cinnamon buns, pulled pork sandwiches, baked potatoes, walking tacos, hotdogs and nachos, plus a multitude of soft drinks. I enjoy serving people when they come up to the window, plus I had the vantage point of being able to sit on a high stool with my feet on a cooler and see straight down one of the courts. I also had the advantage of a nice fan casting its cool breeze over me as I sat during slow periods in the un-air-conditioned gym.

Yes, you read that correctly. The gym was not air-conditioned. Yesterday wasn't as bad as last year, I will say that. We actually had a lot of rain yesterday and that helped keep it cooler in there, although it didn't do one blessed thing for the humidity. It gave us a lot to offer up, let's put it that way.

In spite of the sticky heat, it was still as really fun day. Meelyn's serve is deadly, causing all sorts of mayhem and leaping about for the other team. Aisling's serve has shaped up so well that she scored four straight points in one game. Volleyball is enormously fun to watch and I sat with the other parents (very nice people, all of them) and cheered until I was a little bit hoarse.

We all missed one spectator, the grandpa of a girl who isn't playing this year. He won the Our Favorite Fan award at the banquet in November 2006 and got a little teary-eyed when he laughingly came forward to accept it.

He had a very loud and gravelly voice and trumpeted forth with some trenchant witticisms and sporting lore that always made me laugh.

His advice for a good serve? "Get a little aiiiiiiiir under it!"

For the team, preparing for an opposing server's onslaught? "You watch this one. Sheeeeeeeeeeeee's tricky!"

What about a dive onto the court, resulting in bumps, bruises and floor burns? "Rub some diiiiirt on it!"

I miss him this year. So the other parents and I entertained ourselves by calling out encouragement in his style. It was a hoot, the kind of hoot you can only have when you've drained six bottles of water and four Diet Cokes and your shirt is sticking to your back and your bangs are sticking to your forehead.

A short time before the four McKinneys left to go home and take showers (we'd been there for about eight hours at that point), some of the other mothers and I looked at each other and agreed, "We look AWFUL." Our daughters were all glowing with perspiration and looking sensationally young and vibrant, but we, the older generation, just looked damp and draggled.

My family agreed: Never have showers felt so good as they did yesterday evening. I was in my pajamas by 6:30, my clean hair smelling of shampoo and tidily fastened up in a barrette, sitting on the sofa in front of the fan, ready to spend a pleasant evening watching television and reading with my husband while the girls went upstairs to watch Princess Diaries 2, a movie of which they never tire.

I love volleyball season.

Did I just do that?

Today, while the girls were at volleyball practice, I was walking through the house picking things up and returning them to their places while deep in thought: I was thinking about how on earth I am ever going to cram Shakespeare's life and the English Reformation and Counter-Reformation and Elizabethan/Jacobean theater into four tiny little hours on Tuesday.

In my left hand, I was carrying some shredded junk mail. In my right hand, I was carrying a plastic cup half filled with water.

As I walked into the kitchen, I dropped the cup of water into the wastebasket and threw the shredded junk mail into the sink and turned around to walk back out. I stopped and had a total Scooby Doo moment -- "Rut ro!" -- and then sheepishly fished the wet mail out of the sink and the cup out of the wastebasket, performing a quick switcheroo with no one the wiser except Hershey and Wimzie, who will never tell because I gave them each a cookie.

Making hay while the sun shines

I'm glad I'm not a farmer, that's all I've got to say. I would hate to be out there making hay in this weather. I'd rather be indoors, making my own kind. Although to be perfectly honest, I'd rather not make any hay at all, preferring, when all is said and done, to sit and read.

My "hay" is housework today. I've taken up a few tasks that I've been neglecting, accomplishing a surprising amount of work in a relatively short time. I've taken down curtains, picked up bathroom rugs and done a load of towels, the companionable chugging of the washing machine keeping me company as I traveled around the downstairs with my long-handled Swiffer, taking down cobwebs and dusting the walls. As soon as the sun moves, I'm going to get doggy nose prints off the south- and west-facing windows. I've vaccuumed the whole downstairs, including baseboards, registers, cold air return ducts and behind furniture. (I found three ink pens under my husband's reclining chair, that miserable hoarder! Wait 'til I get my hands on him! He obviously didn't know they were there either, but still...)

There is still a lot to be done. A lot. One of my most-dreaded fall cleaning tasks still remains, which is dusting hundreds of books and straightening up the shelves they sit on. When we moved to this house several years ago, I patted myself on the back smugly for donating several hundred books that I deemed non-essential to our lives, but the number seems to have increased again. Do they breed? Could I put a group of young female books in one bookcase and young male books in another bookcase, shelving all the old books -- ones passed down from my grandma to me when she died -- on the middle bookcase, to act as chaperones? I can just see my great-grandmother's copy of Anya Seton's classic, Katherine, glaring fiercely at Meelyn's new copy of The Taming of the Shrew as it tries to mingle with the devilish Wine for Dummies.

Or....maybe not. If you've ever read Katherine, you'll know what I mean.

Thursday's List

READING: Next of Kin by Joanna Trollope, which could probably be one of the most beautiful novels I've ever read. It's unusual subject matter and not for every taste, but it's one of those books that changed me, made me....stronger, maybe? I don't know.

LISTENING TO: Aisling playing Vince Guaraldi's moody, evocative version of What Child is This on the piano, bookended by a rollicking rendition of Linus & Lucy and Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.

FAVORITE NEW FIND: Standing in the pool while reading, see below. I can hardly wait to get back in tomorrow.

HAPPY TO SAY: All the HISTO and Shakespeare Workshop binders are assembled and ready to move out the door. All Hamlet books and study notes (complete with an ink pen and a highlighter marker) are rubber-banded together. I just have to print out the handouts and I'm ready for Tuesday. Feels soooooooooo goooooooooood!!!! I've been working all summer to accomplish this gargantuan task and I got it finished before deadline.

FAVORITE THING TODAY: I just had a really long drink of water, water of the perfect degree of coldness. It tasted so good, better than champagne.

HOURS OF SLEEP LOGGED LAST NIGHT: I got a lot of sleep last night because I took a Benadryl to help me get there. I've had four nights in a row of sleeplessness, the combination of a couple of good library books, excitement about Shakespeare and my regular cycle of insomnia.

SCRAPBOOK PAGES THIS WEEK: None, and I don't plan to do any until the girls and I go back to our 4-H scrapbooking workshop at the end of September. We have a lot of prints to sort through and plans to make for upcoming pages. We'll be too busy getting our school year off to a start to be fiddling around with the scrapbooks, although they do beguile us from their honored spot on the coffee table.

THE CAUSE OF MY STRESS: I feel too good about all those binders being filled (forty-two total, nine of them with a sixteen page book inside that I copied off on our printer. In color.) So I don't really feel much stress, other than I have to attend a homeschool group board of directors meeting tonight, which I definitely don't want to do. Oh, I enjoy seeing the other board members, but I wish we could be seeing one another for pleasure instead of business. Urk. Board meetings are very, very dull -- I hate meetings of any sort -- so how I ended up as a board member of two different boards (homeschool group and volleyball league) is beyond my knowing.

PRAYING FOR: Young Peter, who's out in California with his family, receiving the proton radiation therapy for a viciously malignant tumor on his spine. It isn't going well. The tumor is badly placed, wrapped around his optic nerve, so that destroying the cancer may well mean destroying his vision. Everyone is praying firmly and fervently for complete restoration of his health -- a miracle. St. Peregrine, please pray. Join me in an Our Father for Peter, if you would.