Spicy Dragons & Dinosaurs

Tomorrow is family day. Five years with Julia. A journey, to be sure.

Because of the storm on the east coast, Cheshire is staying in Madison until Wednesday of next week. The extra days are lovely. A bit lazy -- due in part to her wiping out on Thursday when she was roller blading. She took a fall at the bottom of a hill that was too steep for her to control her wheels. She scraped and bruised her face and one leg. It looks awful but is healing.

She relieves my loneliness, and yes, I am sure that it is important that I be alone and lonely for the time ahead, but I am grateful for this time before.

I worked for more than an hour on the back garden, setting up the new and much smaller compost bin. A black plastic box, about a third of the size of the compost bins I've have for the last 10 years. More.

The back garden is a mess. I have not worked on it all summer. I despaired of it when I started. It felt like it was going to take forever to clean and arrange and make some changes. I was so grumpy about it. I could see the work stretching out for a long time and I did not want to do it, but then as I was working -- cutting back a bush which has grown out of control, pulling weeds, transplanting ferns and hostas, spreading a bit of mulch -- and I began to feel a measure of balance return.

Julia is earning reward points to be able to play Mario Brothers on the wii. She earned 20 points for listening and doing as she is told the first time I ask her. She has missed many opportunities to earn reward points and I hope that she gets better as time goes on. Besides just listening, she also gets points for doing as she is told in a cheerful way. Another tough task for her at times.