Daniel is away

He has gone away until Thursday for a training workshop in southern California, and I am on my own until then, when I fly down to join him. I helped him load up the car with luggage---both his and mine, which means I'll be able to walk onto the plane with a book and nothing else---and on my way back inside, I noticed that our garden looked beautiful, but a little bit grassy. So I stopped and pulled up some stray tufts of grass that are peeping out amid the mulch laid down between the monkey-flower and dudleya. Invigorated by the five minutes of stooping and tugging, I went inside and noticed that the couch cushions were a bit squashed and uncomfortable, and after stomping them back into shape, I reflected that the tidy new appearance of the couch did not quite match the untidy appearance of the coffee table. Three hours later I realize the dishes have been washed, the bathroom cleaned, the carpets vacumed, the kitchen floor mopped*, my desk neatened, the recycling taken out, the rugs shaken out, the living room straightened, and the shoes lined up and put away. I feel quite accomplished and pleased: when you include the mopping, this kind of cleaning does not happen more than once a year, so I am done until next August. I celebrate with a homemade brownie. (They're quite good. If you stop by for tea, remember to ask for one. I can't possibly eat them all myself.)

I've finished up the Trollope books in the house, and have moved on to Patrick O'Brian. They are lovely. I can easily gobble up one a day if I start in the morning, but often other things like brownie-baking and classes at the LSA institute intervene. My hope is that I can read most, if not all of the series, before school starts again, so that when I have to start doing things like grading Ling 100 homeworks and researching Proto-Bantu in order to get my paper on phonological changes in the history of Nzadi set for publication in the grammar I've been invited to contribute to, not to mention doing my own classwork, I will not be putting everything off in order to learn whether the destruction of the mizzenmast will cause the ship to broach to in heavy seas with a 72 that has the weather-gauge on us following close behind**.

I also bought blue jeans. For the past few days, since we washed them for the first time, I've been prancing around in them and composing little entries in my head about the superiority of men's fashion over women's, the fact that men's clothes have just as many variations in size and style as women's, despite the surface simplicity of the sizing system that women tend to vocally envy, the striking difference between real jeans and fashion jeans, and other reflections on the clothes-purchasing experience, which is so rare in this house that many mornings recently I have not been able to dress without first sewing up awkwardly placed holes in my pants. Now that the keyboard is in front of me, thought, I realize that it is not a particularly interesting topic of discussion for anyone who does not come into daily contact with my lower half, so I will forbear.

Hmm. That last paragraph was quite a conversation-killer, even for a conversation with myself. I'm sure my sister could turn it into something worthwhile. She's a brilliant writer, and everyone should read her blog here. She's in Mongolia, which already gives her quite the head up anything I could post.

Who wants a picture? ( I have a few )