Oh, didn't we have a Valentine's Party! Our family in Nashville has taken to gathering on Sunday nights - to eat supper, to catch up with each other, to celebrate any milestones, to just "be family" to each other. Whoever can get there, comes - and loves it. This past Sunday, Vicky cooked her famous Spaghetti Bolognese. For dessert, there would be tiny cream puffs, strawberries, mangos, and pineapple - and a big pot of warm chocolate sauce for dipping.

The crowd was slim, just Dave and me, GrandmaMA and GrandpaPA, and JJVC (John, Jameson, Vicky, and Carly). When I offered to call off the supper, John and Vicky declined. "We've already bought the stuff for the party," John said. "We promised these kids a Valentine's party and we're going to have one!" Vicky added.

Dave and I brought heart-shaped boxes of chocolates for everyone. "Yes," John told Jameson and Carly when they asked, "You can open it now, but you'll have to wait until after dinner to eat it." Both J & C placed their boxes on their dinner plates and Jameson treated Grammy to a review of his latest monster trucks and a personal viewing of a half-way-arrived molar.

Carly followed with a request, "Grammy, bounce me." I sat on one of the slipper chairs in the den, took her on my lap facing me, and bumped her up and down. It was natural to start singing, "I love you, a bushel and a peck..." After several 'sing-it-again'-s, I switched to "You Are My Sunshine."

When Good-Old-Grammy tired of that one, Carly made a new request. "Sing 'Whole World in His Hands.'"

"Hm," I answered, "Didn't know you even knew that song. Let's get a nose-wipe first." A cold has been stalking the child for several days; she tumbled to the floor and brought back two tissues. And then I launched into one verse after another while Carly joined me in-between bounces.

"Carly," I said, "We have to make up some new verses. Let's sing 'mama and daddy' now."

He's got Mama and Daddy in His hands. "How about Granny?" I asked, referring to Carly's maternal grandmother.

"Yeah...and Justin," she answered, referring to her 17-year-old male cousin. After Granny and Justin, we blessed Dave and Jameson, Darrin and Dana, Sophie and Cameron (the Shih-tzus), Jade and Anjie, GrandmaMA and GrandpaPA, Miss Jen and Mama (Miss Jen being the pre-school teacher, and Mama - well, I think it was because Mama seemed to fit).

We sang about everyone that Carly could think of. Afraid that I would announce the end to the bouncy singing, she began requesting the insertion of objects. "Computer and bag, sing 'computer and bag,'" she ordered. So we did - and more. Table and chairs, "car and car," plates and refrigerator. We alternated between our serious voices and our silly sounds. And we bounced.

GrandpaPA laughed with the arrival of each new set of items. "These will be Carly's memories of her Grammy. You're creating something that you don't even know," he mused.

Rescued by the call to dinner! There were places for all of us at the big table since our group was small - no TV trays, no children at the "little table" at this party! Carly sat to my right. Before anyone noticed and before the first strand of spaghetti hit her plate, she finished off her first chocolate. "Okay, Honey, you weren't supposed to be eating chocolates before dinner. Let's wait until after dinner, okay?" her daddy reminded her. But Carly was on a chocolate "trip" and as she bit into the second of the four candies, I whispered (humorously, I thought), "Hey, let's just put this lid back on this box so you won't get in trouble with Daddy..." The tears started to fall.

"Ohhhhhhhh, Carly...I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings," I told her. "Come here," and I took her in my lap. Noting Vicky's quick look toward her weepy little girl, I said, "I scolded her for eating more chocolate..."

"Oh, no, that's not it," Vicky assured me as she served the pasta. "There's something else... she's just not feeling well. John, do you want to take her in the bedroom and clean her up?"

"Well, I do think she feels warm," I answered. John took her in his arms into the bedroom. They returned in just a few minutes, chocolate washed away, nose cleaned, eyes wiped. She climbed in my lap, laid her head on my chest and sucked her thumb. I stroked her hair until she was ready to eat spaghetti.

On Monday, I received an email from a trusted website spiritualityandpractice.com. A friend and I are studying readings by Joyce Rupp in an e-course offered by this site. Fred and Mary Ann Brussat wrote this intro for the day: Joyce Rupp has written about Sophia, the Wise and Radiant One, as she calls her, and has given retreats devoted to how we might connect with her. The wisdom literature of the Bible is filled with insights into her ways and transformative powers. The following prayer to Sophia beautifully describes her nurturing presence and one of the many liberations she offers us. — FAB and MAB

Comforting Mother,
take me in your arms and hold me close.
Give me room to shed my tears.
Grant me strength to meet my anger.
Help me to release the dormant, painful emotions
that keep me from peace and contentment.

I lean on your bosom and find solace there.
The strong pull of your nurturing love
gives me the courage to not run away.
I can meet the feelings that haunt my dreams.
I can face the emotions that crave my attention.

Let me slowly find and embrace the leftover grief,
the unwept tears, the unattended pain.
They are buried in years of keeping busy,
lost in the accumulation of neglect,
hidden in a heart so heavy with hurt
that the voice of the past could not be heard.

Support, comfort, and tenderly nurture me
as I befriend these voices of pain.
Enfold me in your healing embrace
while I bid farewell to these ancient sores.

— Joyce Rupp in Prayers to Sophia

When I imagined being comforted by Sophia, she became first my paternal grandmother – and then I thought, “Funny, I didn’t know Grandmother Blair that well.” My maternal grandmother did not exhibit the ability to nurture. We lived far away from aunts and uncles. Then I realized that I did not know anyone in my family who would have embraced me as Sophia does in this reading. I’m not saying there were not nurturing women among the Blairs, the Shoemakes, the Dickenses and the Bushes, but I didn’t know them.

This morning, I’m hoping that Carly will always remember that Grammy hugged her close and comforted her and sang songs to her, that she will have plenty of imagination - for Sophia.

***

"Carly, which do you want?" I asked, as the big glass tray of cream puffs, mangoes, pineapple, and strawberries came to our place.

"Puff, shtrawbewwy..." and she pointed to the pineapple and mango.

"Wait, you don't have a plate - Do you just want me to put your fruit on my plate?"

"Yes," she nodded, and climbed in my lap. "Grammy, I don't want sauce on mine."

"Okay," I answered - as I wiped off the strawberries. I think I got two pineapple chunks and a sliver of mango.

Church

February 14, 2010

This morning I am having church in my studio. I’m playing good music (a variety), I’m pondering, and I may even pray before church is over. I guess I’ll have to do the sermon myself, but since Dave can sometimes hear me upstairs if I talk down here, I’ll just write it down.

It’s snowing outside. Nothing on the ground yet, but the weather people are promising something. My gas wall heater is on – I can hear it running, but the windows make me cold in spite of my double layers, top and bottom. I know now why Guy, Jr. had his TV under these windows. He was just staying further back in the apartment where he was warmer, either in the bed or in his brown recliner. I wonder if I’ll be hot by the windows this summer…

Wait – maybe I’m not having church; maybe I’m avoiding church. I don’t like church these days. Thursday, Peggy and I talked about each other’s “crisis of faith.” I said I thought I was experiencing a crisis of church. “Not me,” she said, in so many words, ”I am having problems with faith.” Peggy’s sister, Nancy, died of lung cancer two days before Christmas last year. Nancy’s husband, Paul, died the first of the year – January – and, just six months before that, Peggy’s husband, Ronnie, died of a heart attack. I think it was just six months before that one, Ronnie’s mother died. Peggy is sick of funerals, tired of death, weary of losing, perplexed about the future. And her crisis reflects our age-old questions, “Where is God…What kind of God…If there is a loving God…”

Not me. My crisis stems from not even wanting to think about these things, even faith. I mean, I’ve seen where thinking about these things leads. Good church people sending me emails telling me that the President is a Muslim. (Like I’d care if he were…) Or even worse, demonstrating how their hidden brains resent this black man in one of the highest offices in the world – and failing to see the good the United States can do by dialogue and understanding. Which Jesus are we following here? Church people, as a whole (at least here in the South), rejecting the humanity of same-gender relationship. Allowing ordination of a homosexual in a committed relationship is reason enough to change denominations. Wearing the name that we have chosen to set us apart as those who follow The Way – and not ever considering that Jesus fed, and healed, without qualification. People with whom I’ve shared the Bread and Wine re-writing past events in the congregation in order to have things make sense to them, or to rescue their own reputations or those of their family members. And then the community proceeds as if these accounts were fact… An interim pastor plodding through “training” of worship assistants to make sure these lay-people don’t say something in a worship service that is reserved for ordained pastors to say. We must have order… Bussing a few Berundis across town in order to provide a monthly worship service in Swahili, putting on a big feed, and outfitting some sort of “store” with our leftovers so that they can “shop” on each of these trips; meanwhile, no one ever addresses the question “Why don’t any of these Christians come to the Communion Table?” And, further, we will not find a way to minister to the community just outside the church doors. Arguments about what sort of music - or prayers, or sermons, or words spoken, or sequence of events - makes a worship service. We don’t really need any music at all – Is not the Love of God, expressed to each other, enough?

Peggy and I agreed that we will both make it through these current crises, and that God will use her sadness and disappointment – and my anger and disappointment – for good. We also agreed that it was a good thing that we could yammer-fuss-and-cuss with each other.

Posturing. I’m tired of the posturing. If there were a group of Friends anywhere close, I’d be at a Quaker meeting today. Music, yes. Speaking, usually. Reflection, invited. Silence, certainly.

So I really am having church in the studio today.

The View

Every window in this house frames a view. Looking out to the back of the house, the picture is of treetops. Right now only a few leaves remain. When we first moved here in October, the leaves were turning gold and orange and a bit of red. When spring arrives in a few months, there will be thick green with occasional blossoms on mimosas, or Kentucky coffee-bean trees. Only the abundance of chattering squirrels promises to be constant.

These trees are tall and old, rooted in a thirty-foot ravine at the back of our property. Friday morning over coffee at my parents’ apartment, my dad and I pondered just what made that deep crevice. We each expressed surprise that there is no creek way down there at the bottom of the cliff - but Steve, the guy we bought the house from, stopped by on Saturday to retrieve some stray mail and he told us that there are several springs down there. When he was a kid, he would sneak off to play down there.

“Are there snakes?” Dave asked.

“Oh yeah, there are some snakes.”

I watched Dave carefully to see if he exhibited any signs of flight. He only replied, “You won’t catch me down there.”

Friday morning, laptop perched on a TV tray in the den, I faced a window on the front of the house that frames the tops of black bare trees across the street – two 50-year old maples, an old oak, and some crape myrtles. The sunrise sky behind them was striped with muted pink, mauve, lavender and blue. The softball field lights stood out, the only modern element in my morning still-life.

And then on Sunday, I hooked up all my computer and printer cables in my studio in the walk-out basement. My desk sits in front of two windows, much the same as it did at the old house – except the windows are now to my right instead of the left. I do not see the well-cultivated stone-edged garden that I never took for granted. No dogwood tree, holly hedge, yellow rose, daylilies, irises, cannas, purple barberries, coneflowers. No tall pines to screen our back yard from the neighbor’s.

I look out on the patio, the back yard, and the edge of the ravine through the nearest window. My view is limited to the treetops through the second window because of the Fedders cooling machine mounted in the window. That thing comes out very shortly… and it won’t go back in, either.

We brought the birdfeeders to the new house before we moved in. We wanted to “get established” with the local feathers and gain a reputation among their friends as a good place to gather. We’re hosting more chickadees than any other variety, although I do note an occasional yellow finch on the black thistle seed. I’ve seen a cardinal every morning in the brush below the trees, but the larger birds seem to have what they need in the old trees. Or maybe they’re just waiting for a travel report from the chickadees.

Saturday Dad tilled a piece of ground in the far corner of the back yard. “Just a place to put a few things and keep them alive over winter,” I said. “I’ll re-plant them in the spring.” I must get over to the old house to divide perennials and uproot a few small roses. I just don’t know where I want them yet.

“Well, I’ve decided where I want my garden if it’s okay with you,” Dad said. “I’d like to make some raised beds along that bank. I bet there’s some good soil there.”

Dave said he worries that I’ll take up with the studio so much that he’ll not see me too much and that we’ll become estranged in this new arrangement.

“I don’t think so,” I told him. “I think I’ll actually be able to separate work and home a little better.”

We’ll see. I guess it all depends on your view. I know I can’t wait to see the view from my desk come spring.
***

The Tree and Hallowe'en

Seems like every house on Millerwood Drive has a maple tree in the front yard, some more than one. We just have one, but what a spectacular one it is. Last night Dave told me that two or three people have stopped to take pictures of “The Tree.”
I wanted my picture when The Tree was completely full of that gold and orange-to-red but I was about two days late. I couldn’t find the camera – imagine that – and someone on Facebook had to remind me that I have a telephone. Now, the telephone is only a week old and I don’t know how to operate it but I did finally take pictures of The Tree. I imagine that picture will grace our Christmas letter this year.

When I first saw The Tree, I didn’t think about autumn color; I was planning for rope swings with wooden slat bottoms, for Jameson and Carly to beg for pushes until their own legs are long enough, and their muscles big enough, to push off. I imagined a garden between The Tree and the house with a path and comfortable chairs and benches for Mama and Daddy and Grammy and Dave and GrandmaMA and GrandpaPA and all those friends who will pass in and out of this home.

There’s shade there and that will be a difference from most of my gardening on Beech Tree Lane. I will fill in the slope with trailing groundcover, plant soft shrubbery for keeps and white impatiens in the spring. Rocks – there will be flat rocks to walk on and tables to rest a cool drink on. And all that will be “home.”

We only had nine trick-or-treaters and two of those were Jameson and Carly at four pm; they were on their way to their Granny’s house in Lebanon. Jameson was Dracula. His hair was spiked in the middle and he sported the traditional red and black cape, brocade cummerbund, black pants – and hot pink teeth. Carly was Wonder Woman; we tried to think of things that Wonder Woman said on the TV show, but none of us remembered. “Trick or treat,” Carly offered the logical saying for this particular Wonder Woman. My choices of candy were a hit because I had one bag of “Body Parts.” Ewwwwwwwww.

With so few interruptions, Dave and I had time for a grilled steak dinner – and we ate on the dining room table! Woo-hoooooo! Guess you might guess that tremendous progress was made here this week.

“Want a glass of wine?” I offered when Wilma arrived on Friday afternoon. I was in the rocker on the porch for a break, boxes of saved packing material all around me. “I’m just taking a short break. Let’s find you a chair.” We sat and visited – and that is as helpful as the unpacking of boxes. I laid out what I imagined to be our game plan for the afternoon and then took her on “the tour.”

My friend Wilma is a pistol when it comes to work. She launched into the boxes in the piano room and the living room and by dinner (a lovely mushroom sauce chicken, fresh asparagus, and brown rice – isn’t Crock Pot cooking wonderful?), she had filled the music book shelves and emptied every loose box in the front of the house. While she emptied and arranged, I repacked special glassware for safekeeping until that dining room is re-painted.

After dinner, Dave retired to the bedroom to unpack more boxes, so we visited some more. We planned for next undertakings. We talked Beck plan – Wilma is my coach for this new lifestyle change to lose pounds. We talked psychology. We moved furniture in our minds and agreed on uses of space. We let our wine and food wear off. We allowed ourselves to be happy in those moments.
***

If you want a picture of The Tree, you’ll have to come soon. There’s already a golden carpet on the street, the driveway, and half the front yard – It’s a big tree! Just as we are shedding boxes and packing materials and settling into our new home, and just as I am shedding pounds to make a place for new growth in other places in my life, The Tree is shedding what it doesn’t need. It is making room and space for the next season, the next inevitable budding event.

Come next year to see The Tree. And, next Hallowe’en, bring your little goblins to Trick-or-Treat our always changing family compound.
***

Thursday, October 29, 2009
Today is Billy Lee Sullivan’s 60th birthday. Billy Lee and I were sweethearts from fifth grade through our freshman year, even though my family had moved to California after sixth grade. Many years later, after Jerry and I had moved back to Tennessee (Jade was a year old), Billy and I reconnected and I have maintained a friendship with him and his wife for now over thirty years, attending birth events of all three of their daughters and the funeral of his mom, Opie, from bone cancer. Happy birthday, old red-headed friend!

I am writing on a TV tray in the den, my coffee rested below it on one of the children’s chairs. The table to the children’s set is perched high on boxes in the garage and I just figure we’ll let it rest where it is until some more organization magically occurs. See, that’s the trouble… there is no magic to this mess, only tedious work. I keep trying to estimate how long it is going to take us to be “all set up.” I’ve given the projection of 150 days, based on eliminating two boxes per day, following my sight-count of 300 boxes.

Two boxes a day may seem conservative, maybe even lazy, but you see, I have to account for time-outs for corrections (the whole dining room is to be repainted) and finishing up the punch list (let’s see – hang new fixture in dining room, carpet stairwell landing, install new light fixtures in stairwell, repaint a wall in the hallway, resurface and paint the ceilings in the master suite and adjoining bathroom). Two of those items require moving furniture in those rooms. In fact, there is a pie safe that contains its own set of breakables that cannot be filled until the dining room is painted. That means that any boxes of those items will have to be repacked until the aforementioned painting event is concluded. Which leads me to some information I ought to tell about “the boxes…”

The boxes have their own problems. 1. Some of the boxes are rickety, soft, and wampus. That’s because they are used boxes. I don’t object to using used boxes, but there is a certain point at which said boxes might be at “end-stage.” I can envision some of them as re-fashioned comforters on a cold night. 2. Some of the boxes are too heavy for me to move by myself – and they are stacked! 3. Some of the boxes contain items from more than one source. That means I have to unpack every box to make sure there isn’t something in there that I really need right now.
Now, all of the above properties of the boxes, combined, dictate that, whenever I am dealing with inherited and gifted glassware, I have to unpack it and re-pack it in smaller boxes for some future date when I can safely place it in cabinets, shelves, or pie safes. (I wonder why that wouldn’t be “saves?”) And that leads me to the cabinets and shelves.

This kitchen I’m cavorting in these days is compact. I love it – but it’s forced me to make choices about what to keep, what to throw away, what to relegate to the studio kitchen. (Oh yeah, there is a studio kitchen.) The studio kitchen has very little cabinetry, but I’ve fashioned a rather snazzy food and butler’s pantry in a nook with the freezer and refrigerator down there. Snap-together PVC shelves from Wal-Mart are high on my list of most useful modern inventions. And then, there are the items that must be kept in a different place than they were at the old house and I must find the “different place” at the new house. Yesterday, a victory…

My daughter-in-law Vicky came over to help. I told her I needed her to help me think more than anything else. “For instance,” I said, “What shall I tackle next? The contractors are coming today to finish the punch list and to get the dishwasher going.“ (We had no power to the dishwasher, for some reason.) What I should have said was that the contractors were supposed to come… because they didn’t. But I’m glad Vicky and I acted as if they were coming!

“Here, look at this armoire.” I opened the doors to the entertainment case that Dave and I had bought and painted the first week we were married. “I’m wondering – since we have the TV on the wall in here, don’t you think I could make the top of this thing a wine and liquor cabinet?”

“Oh yeah – now that is a great idea! You could add some shelves and even get some of those wire racks that hold stemware. What a great idea.” It was just what I needed to hear.

“Well, then, maybe we should just go to Lowe’s. Maybe we could measure for blinds here in the den and downstairs in the studio and go get some shelves cut and all that. How long are you here for?”

“Don’t have another thing planned until I have to pick up Carly at two. Probably need to leave here by 1:30. Let’s go.”

We found faux wood blinds to order – with red strips to cover the string holes. We found planks of wood and had them cut to 31 ½ inches. We found brackets and wire racks for hanging wineglasses by their bottoms. We found lunch at La Terraza. What did we care that the contractors did not come to get power to the dishwasher or finish the punch list? I was being nurtured and nourished, and Vicky was nurturing and nourishing.

“Where have you been?” Dave was only slightly demanding.

“We went shopping!” Vicky answered for me. “Wait until you see the blinds we’ve got for you!”

“I love that girl,” I told Dave, as she scooted out of the driveway toward the pre-school.
***
I unpacked one large dish barrel and filled three smaller boxes and labeled them “Pie Safe Pie Safe Pie Safe Pie Safe Pie Safe.”

“You’re just worn out, aren’t you?” I asked Dave. He was in his recliner with his eyes closed.

“I didn’t sleep much last night. I’m worn out. What are we doing for dinner?”

“Well, you’re eating the leftovers of my lunch fajitas – and there’s a lot of it – and I’m going to have some leftover ham. I’m cooking some spinach in the microwave.”

“That sounds good.” My, our standards have fallen a bit lately.

“Those guys aren’t coming today, are they?”

“Well, if they do, I bet it will be seven or eight tonight.”

“Nope, dammit,” I said. “Not gonna do it. This is ridiculous.”

“We have to get them when we can get them. Neil has another job.”

“Well, shit. You’re exhausted and I’ve been up since 3:30. I can’t do it.”

“Okayyyyyy,” he said.

I was in my jammies about 7:30. The phone rang at 8. “Yep – come on,” Dave said.
***
This morning I crawled in bed with Dave about 6:30.

“I ran the dishwasher,” he said.

“Was it just Neil?”

“Yep.”

“How long was he here?”

“I think he finished up about 10:45 and we drank a beer.”

“Did he get Mom and Dad’s hooked up?”

“Yep. All of them.”

“Did he mention hanging that light in the dining room?”

“Nope. I don’t think he knew he was supposed to do that.”

“Okay. I’ll call Johnny today and see what he plans to do about the rest.”

“You want to sleep some more?”

“Yeah, give me a couple of hours, okay?”

“Sure. I’ll go down to the den and be quiet. I’ve got some writing to get out of the way.”

I’ll be sure to tell more about the reasons for the “two box a day” calculation. It’s not just the boxes, alternate use of space and furnishings, contractor delays. There’s life that goes on, too, and living within every system of our existence. There’s family – kids, grandkids and parents, church, old friends/new friends and their journeys… Life and living goes on.

The glasses and silverware were absolutely sparkling when I opened the dishwasher door.

Soon it's gonna rain....

I am writing on the porch at the new house. The movers came Thursday, the 15th. And the next day, Friday. And they came again yesterday, the 21st. They pronounced a completion of the project. I've been gathering up the remains at the old house today. We still haven't picked up the stragglers from the attic, the deck, the patio, the garage. But the painter is there, making all nice for the next folks to live at 1073 Beech Tree Lane.

Over at Millerwood Drive, there are boxes everywhere. Most of them are actually somewhere where they don't belong. We chip away at the job, unpacking a few boxes until backs, knees, and a bit of asthma protest enough that we call it a day. I'm tempted to get whiny about this whole process.

I called it a day about four o'clock this afternoon. I soaked in a warm tub, put on my jammies and headed for the porch. Ahhhhhhhhhhh, so now I see one of the benefits of the new place. It's going to rain soon - I can feel it. And I am in my favorite rocker on the porch, laptop in my lap on a pillow. Our deck was uncovered at the old place, so I never sat out in the rain.

Ever so often, I go lean over the rail to look at the porch we put on the attached apartment for Mom and Dad. We are anxious to have them here so close and we're making all things ready for their move-in date of November 4th. Their apartment attaches to our house via what Dave calls a skybridge. I imagine Murphy, our black and white Shi-tzu, running over to say "Good morning." I can almost hear the grandkids squealing on their way to visit GrandmaMA and GrandpaPA.

Time to stop whining about all the work. Change is always difficult, but my change is tiny compared to my parents' leaving the family farm and the big old famrhouse that my dad built, stick by stick by stick, all from salvaged materials.

I smell the rain, hear some fat drops on the driveway. Murphy and I will stay out here a while, breathing in the freshness, feeling the cool. The boxes will wait. There shall be showers of blessing...

Moving....Day 7

I'm already at that point where there's a certain amount of joy over a broken glass...it means I don't have to find a place to put it! We have more total space at this new "house" (hereinafter referred to as "compound") than at Beech Tree Lane, but it's all in such different places. NONE of the additional square footage is in the kitchen cabinets - in either of the THREE kitchens.

Well, actually, the kitchen in the "apartment" doesn't count because Mom and Dad will fill those cabinets on November 4. But there is a full kitchen in my new digs in the efficiency apartment (to be called "the studio") in the walkout basement. I get six hundred square feet of office, kitchen, bath and laundry room. How did I wind up with the laundry room, anyway? But about that kitchen down there...

There's only one small cabinet, but there's this nook where bunches of shelves can hold the overflow from the upstairs kitchen. Here's my strategy: whatever won't fit in the upstairs kitchen, I'll take to the studio kitchen shelves. Mom keeps talking about throwing this big garage sale party in the spring, when we both know what we need here, and what we don't. I figure I'll shelve all these extras until April and then I'll survey the shelves for dust. Whatever has a measurable five months of covering goes in the garage sale!

Jameson and Carly, the two local grand-rugrats, are coming for their first sleep-over Friday night. We'll go down to the studio and I'll pop in some DVD's on heavy equipment, or cooking, or whales - all very popular with J & C. Jameson will watch and provide play-by-play while Carly hands me stuff for the shelves.

This morning I looked out the picture window to the back yard; that's become my first-thing habit already. The porch (or is it a deck?) is finished on Mom and Dad's apartment. I'm imagining Mom watering geraniums and petunias and begonias. I can just see Daddy making a slow but determined descent to his garden.

This is all worth it.