It felt so good to sleep in this morning. Or at least I assume it did. I didn't get to sleep in much at all, since I was swarmed by cats. Amusingly it was much like bees, this swarm, due to the rather constant buzz of purring that accompanied them. They all wanted pets and ear scritches and attention and they wanted to sit on my pillow or my stomach or my head and I finally gave up because there was just no way I was ever going to be able to go back to sleep.

We started the day off with a trip in to Davis for what has rapidly become our favorite weekend breakfast – cornmeal waffles with pecan butter. Then we walked down to the Farmer's Market, where we picked up all the ingredients for a delicious dinner: fresh corn on the cob, a pair of white nectarines, incredibly sweet and crisp, and an oddly shaped tomato in a delicate green hue that actually managed to slip by my variable dislike of tomatoes. We also picked up golden cherry tomatoes and a few bunches of grapes.

I keep forgetting that there is this Farmer's Market so close to us, and every time we happen to be in downtown Davis on a Saturday morning it hits me that it is there. They always have such a lovely selection of produce and the prices are usually fairly reasonable and there is no reason why we don't go more often except that we just forget. So perhaps for the rest of the summer maybe we we'll be better at remembering.

My main (and frankly, my only) goal today was to go look at rocks for the path around the raised flowerbed we built earlier this summer. There's a place down the freeway but it's never been open when we drive by. So after a quick detour to drop off all the fresh fruit and veggies at the house, it was off to the rock yard, where we got to pet a rambunctious white puppy and talk back to a rather talkative parrot perched in a little tree, and browse through piles and piles of rocks of every shape and size.

They'll be delivering a ton of rocks to our driveway this Friday, in preparation for some happy path-building fun next weekend. I suppose earlier this year I might have found this a phenomenally huge amount of rocks, but hey, after dealing with 3 or 4 tons of rocks for the wall and a few tons of dirt, what's a measly one ton of rocks to put in a path?

Much like the wall, whose components could simply be stacked and required absolutely no mortar, these rocks will be laid the easy way. We're going to cover the ground with a layer of newspaper (in what is probably a futile effort to curb those rather tenacious weeds), toss on a few inches of loose soil, and plop the rocks around in a circle until we like the way it's laid out. Then we'll add a flat or three of creepers in between all the rocks, give it all a good hosing down, and then cross our fingers and hope for the best.

After we'd ordered the rocks and were trying to figure out what we wanted to do next, I mentioned that billboard on the freeway for the new chocolate candies at Jelly Belly. This is offered as explanation for why we next drove to Fairfield for the sole purpose of going in to the Jelly Belly visitors' center and heading straight for the tasting counter. We've already gone on the tour (and on weekends when the factory isn't even running it somehow lacks a bit of excitement), so it was a pretty quick stop – just long enough to taste a few of the rather interesting combinations (chocolate grape, chocolate and buttered popcorn, chocolate and orange juice). Plus we threw in a few of the regular beans just for variety (the Caramel Apple flavor is actually pretty good. I passed on the Tabasco flavored one, however), and then we were done.

But hey, as long as we were in Fairfield, there is a mall, and behind the mall is a Trader Joe's, and in that Trader Joe's are boxes of the nearly fat free (1 point each!) cheese blintzes we have both adore. Plus, it's the only place we can find vanilla mints.

We were standing in the freezer aisle loading a basket with about 8 boxes of blintzes when we realized we were being watched. She asked, a bit tentatively about the blintzes, noting she'd been curious but hadn't yet tried them. After we both waxed rhapsodic about how much we adore them, she picked up a box and eyed it consideringly. As we walked away in search of cappuccino wafers (also 1 point each!), I noted her adding a second box to her cart. Aha – another convert!

So now we are back home, where I made up for not being able to sleep in by taking a nap. Granted I was surrounded by cats this time too, but it being the middle of the afternoon, they were much sleepier and more inclined to just snuggle next to me and purr me quietly to sleep.