It gets better.

So I drove to my first counselor’s house to pick up some church paperwork that she had handled for me, and there was a text message from Trainman: “We are on the 6:15 train.”

We? LadyZen was able to leave the office before dark-thirty? Woohoo’s all around! I called his cell, and she picked up and confirmed it. Then she handed the phone over to him, and he said, “Sweetie Pie, I’m still holding your doors hostage.”

Sweetie Pie? I looked around, but I was the only person I saw in my car.

They called me when they got into the station at 7:21, and I met them over at Fred’s. Truly a good burger, Francis, and oh those fries! We ate outside, within earshot of the band [also good], and unfortunately plagued with flies. Next time we’ll wait for a table inside.

Trainman remarked that the last time the three of us dined together was back in February, when we ate at Lucile’s with Brother Sushi and DecoratorDude and HisDude, then came back here for dessert. How can this be? As I recall, we grabbed a quick bite before that jazz concert, and of course there was the day-long picnic on the train trip in East Texas. Both, I think, in March. Oh well, not really important for me to be right about this.

[My girls are falling over in shock.]



I have my glass doors for the big bookcase. Or rather, I have the unbroken original door and a fair copy that is only fair. It seems to me that the new pane is just a hair thicker than the old, and perhaps cut a smidgen too long. Or perhaps I do not know exactly the right words to make it fit into the slot. And they didn’t etch a finger-hold into it. It took me perhaps 25 minutes to get the first door into its slot. This involved clearing off a shelf, tipping it up toward the back so it wouldn’t bump the door as I angled it up into the slot on the underside of the top, and sliding it to the right.



Give me credit for figuring out that the back door needed to go in first. I think that was pretty good reasoning at 5:03am! I love this circular motif on the wooden doors. It is echoed by the handles on the armoire that I put on layaway. Speaking of circles...



[Love that orange suit.] So what’s on the agenda today? I need to drop off stuff at the swap at the stake center at 8:30 and leave before I take anything home when it opens at 9:00. I need to do something for my church calling that will take up most of the morning, almost guaranteeing that nothing will come home with me from the swap. I need to read my Sunday School and RS lessons and prepare my cheat sheet for the various meetings I have tomorrow. I need to call people for opening and closing prayers in RS tomorrow. I need to call my second counselor and ask her to conduct tomorrow, since I just realized that tomorrow is not the first Sunday in July, and I am not scheduled to conduct the meeting.

Baby steps, Ms. Ravelled. Baby steps.

What do I hope to do? Find a place for those last two or three books that are still on the floor in the hall. Find new but probably not permanent spots for the boxes that are blocking the hall. Pick up more blue painter’s tape when I take the Annie wig over to Secondborn’s for the kids’ dress-up box, and prep the hall for painting. Fight my way through the clutter I call my studio and bring out the boxes with the framed art. Hang more stuff on the walls in my bedroom. See if the hamper will fit between the pedestal sink and the wall next to the door in the bathroom. Be at the laundromat when it opens at 8:00, and wash at least a load of whites. Figure out where I want to keep the spare bath towels; currently they’re in a basket just inside my studio. [I think the spare sheets would do nicely inside the cupboard portion of the big bookcase in my room.] Finish clearing off the couch. See if Secondborn would let me tumble four perma-press shirts in her dryer with a handful of ice cubes. Somebody didn’t hang them up when they came home from the laundromat, and that same somebody finally got around to throwing out the broken iron while on vacation last week.

Oh, and knit every chance I get. I am not quite in the mood to paint the hall, but I can contemplate it without flinching. I think I will think about it a lot while stretching out on the couch with Autumn Asters. But I don’t think I will actually do anything about it until next weekend at the earliest, when I may also pick up two more horizontal storage boxes: one for the 2008-2010 planner pages and another for out here in the living room, to hold computer paper and the like.

But first, a bit of breakfast, because the wool is calling my name, and I need to keep up my strength.