The last two weeks around here have been busy.  Pat’s been overhauling his boat – which has been much needed but generally put off with all his other duties for some time.  This past weekend’s Clean Water Act’s 40th Anniversary Celebration and Rally in DC with the Waterkeeper Alliance and plenty of his fellow Riverkeepers about gave him the excuse he needed to just buckle down and do it. He had a volunteer help strip it, but he did the final sanding and then priming and painting.  He finished it up about 3:30 Friday afternoon, just as it was time for him to head up to DC.

I meanwhile, was up to my ears in a free lance project that you will hear more about next week, as well as attempting to sort out details for my next pickling class, doing my home cooked meals to go and picking up some catering as well as back waiting shifts for a friend’s restaurant, trying to bump up our cash flow, in addition to my regular wife & mom duties.

I turned in the last piece of my free lance project this morning, having done most of it last week, writing 4 articles in a writing frenzy last Friday.  There is much relief, although I still have things to wrap up, emails to respond to, an inbox to clean up, a hard drive to clean up, a desk top to find under a mass of clutter…and that’s just for that project.  The house isn’t in too bad of shape overall – moments where I need to procrastinate I found myself cleaning. 

My uncle’s memorial service was this past weekend. It had been pushed back and pushed back for a variety of reasons and Friday afternoon I realized I just wasn’t going to make it.  I was still finishing up one article and after the rush of the last few weeks, I wasn’t looking forward to making a mad dash up to Baltimore and back.  I spent the weekend here with my girl, intent on chilling out.  We had some nice impromptu fun with friends and neighbors, including dinner one evening.  At the time the service was being held Saturday, I was down in the chicken coop, shoveling out the bottom layer of composted leaves and chicken droppings to put some on my garden.  I think, wait, I know my uncle would have appreciated that, as we had many a conversation over the years on our shared love of gardens and chickens and how much better my garden would grow if I had my own source of chicken manure.

It was good to spend some quality quiet time with Edie this weekend.  She seems to be making the transition of new school/new soccer team/bff moving to Guatemala fairly well.  She began last week complaining that one of the boys in her class from her elementary school had stopped her in the hallway to talk college football – the horrors!  I reminded her that she spent most of last football season talking football with this young man (as well as basketball during that season) and that he was probably in the same boat as her, dealing with new school, he was probably looking to talk to any friendly face he knew about anything he could and with her, he knew their common denominator was college football.  I was pretty tickled to discover that by week’s end, she had gotten over the horror of a boy (!!) talking to her in the middle of the school hallway enough to give me the scouting report and matchups for this week’s games.  When I asked how she knew, she just shrugged and admitted to having talked to said boy all week about football in the hallway as if it was no big deal.  I was quite happy to hear it. 

This week is already shaping up to be busy too, although not as frantic as the last two- meetings, get togethers or work just about every night, with a final editing session before my little project is sent to the printer.  I also have some big house projects planned – Edie’s room is getting a desk, but I need to refinish it first, which is prompting a basement clean out so I have space to work before I make over her room.  I also have a glimmer of an idea for a whole new business, because I don’t have enough irons in the fire, clearly.  Last night I dreamt I was pregnant and in labor and we had to get to the hospital before the floodwaters stopped us.   This morning I looked up what all those things meant in dreams – apparently dreaming you are pregnant is a sign of creativity, and dreaming about floods can mean rebirth or unhappiness.  Hmmm.  I can’t quite figure out what the two of them together mean.  Thoughts?