Swell Monday

Well, the weekend was interesting. Saturday was the second day of summer (did you know that Friday was actually the first day...Leap Year and all). It was an absolutely gorgeous day...cool and sunny. And we spent the entire thing in the house.

It wasn't too bad after we finally convinced the neighbor's grandchildren that D&K really couldn't come outside. David was bouncing off the walls, though, because he badly wanted to see his daddy. It was a joyous occasion when Daddy and the Sisters were home.

We took the twins to services Sunday morning, as they hadn't broken out with anything, but we kept them away from everyone and whisked them out to the car when it was over. We decided that we should keep them home Sunday night. So the twins and I stayed home.

For some reason, I was just wiped Sunday. I don't know what the deal was, but I was tired. David was again bouncing off the walls, but I finally convinced him to crawl into bed with me and we had a very sweet little nap. It's not often that I can get the little guy settled down that much. Zi came to find us and apparently couldn't. At some point, she decided that it would be a good idea to look under the quilt rack for us? Yeah, that's what I thought. Well, she fell asleep under the quilt rack, which is heavy with quilts. When I woke Dave up, we went looking for his sister. She was nowhere to be found. The doors were still locked so I knew she wasn't outside (and she has trouble opening the doors anyway, so it would be unlikely that she'd get out). We searched high and low for her and David was starting to get really upset when I heard a whimpering in my room, under the quilt rack. I saw her two little pink Crocs twitching and called to David. That's when Zi told me, between sleepy sobs, that she'd been looking for me and couldn't find me.

"You thought I was under the quilt rack?"

"Yeeesssss," she wailed.

"But I can't fit under the quilt rack."

"I knooooooow!"

There's no logic with little people.

So, after he got home, Friend Husband told me that, as a special gift (birthday? thank you for watching the twins for a week?) that he was going to give me Monday off. Hot diggety! I pondered what to do but couldn't come up with anything exciting, so I just went to bed.

Monday morning dawned happily (it's always a happy day when I can go off on my adventures) and the only thing I'd come up with was having lunch with Friend Gina. I thought, "Oh! I can go work in the garden! Or get the house cleaned!" But then I thought that it was very sad that I couldn't come up with something more interesting to do when I was child-free, aside from stuff I already do.

As I was pondering what to do, I did go out into the garden to pick peas. I thought I had a lot more of them than I did. I never can get enough of those sugar snap peas or snow peas. I wonder if I'd have to plant a whole patch to have enough at one time for a meal. I also noticed that I'd missed picking some of the catnip on Saturday so I snipped that and ended up in my new herb garden and noticed that the mint needed pinching back as well, so I did that.

The mint is a new transplant from the other side of the house and I am just so tickled that it is doing so well. I love mint. I know it's basically an invasive weed but I even like that about it. Number one, I can pick as much of it as I want and chances are, it won't affect the plant. Number two, it's hard for me to kill. I like that about my plants. Anyway, I knew that if the transplants needed pinching, the main bed also needed it so I went over there and pinched them back. I ended up with a lot of mint.

I also noticed that the lemon balm needed some severe attention but I so didn't have the time for that...because it was time to make bread dough and then to have lunch with Friend Gina. I got a new challah recipe from a blog I read and since she bragged about it so very much, I wanted to make it.

She was right, it was wonderful. You should make some yourself.

Anyway, I had a lovely lunch with Friend Gina then took myself to Home Depot and Meijer to see if I could find some cheap petunias. I've had no luck finding cheap petunias for the past couple of seasons. I needed to fill my hanging baskets and a couple of cement planters I trash-picked earlier in the spring. I found a few things that would suit and hauled it all home to unload. I brought Friend Husband's computer in from the car for him and grabbed a couple of glasses of Indian soda, then told FH I was off again.

"Where are you going?"

"To the library."

"But we already went today."

"Yes, you did, but I did not."

"But why do you want to go there?"

"Because it's quiet and none of the children there are my responsibility."

"Oh. Ok, have a good time!"

I did. I did a lesson in my Beth Moore study, in which I'm dreadfully behind, then promptly fell asleep (yeah, I think I need to exercise more so I'm not napping through the day). I woke after a short power nap and decided against knitting in favor of searching the stacks for new (and old) books that I wanted to read. After I did that and read a few magazines, I figured it was time to head back to the hacienda.

We ended up having a nice little dinner and I watched Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban with Doug and whichever of the children were in there at one time or another. This is a noteworthy event as I am generally not one to watch videos, but I had just finished the book so it sounded interesting to watch. And it was.

While watching that, I was also finishing up the challah, which came out of the oven 3 hours after dinner (oops). It was every bit as good as Ahava said. We snarfed down one loaf last night and another for breakfast this morning. Yummers.

So now it's back to the dailies: laundry, cooking, cleaning, teaching. I do feel refreshed from yesterday...I hope it sticks with me. I did notice something interesting while Friend Husband was gone. When he was gone, I was a lot more mellow about everything, including the twins, than when he's here. Now, I didn't get anything done either but I did notice that when they came back, I felt like I had to be doing a million things at once and producing. It's a weird and unfortunate phenomenon. I need to figure out a way to get things done but still be mellow. I wonder if it's at all possible.

Well, I'm off...have a super Monday er Tuesday!