An amusing story from the Fourth of July festivities. In order to feed the crowd we had at our house, Richard purchased 5 pounds of pork loin, then mixed a huge bowl of marinade and used pretty much every flat glass dish we own to marinate the pork all day. Every time I opened the refrigerator door I was greeted with the spicy smell of garlic and cayenne pepper, and the sight of shelves full of foil-wrapped dishes taking up every inch of available space.

As it came time for guests to arrive, Richard began to remove the meat from its various containers in order to prepare it for grilling. I was at the kitchen sink chopping up onions and peppers and apples for the fajita filling when I heard a splash that did not bode well. Turning I was greeted with the sight of Richard standing at the counter behind me, looking a little sheepish, and marinade all over everything. Apparently the piece of meat slipped back into the dish, creating an arc of liquid so impressive that not only did it cover over half the floor, it made it all the way to the stairs! He began swabbing up the marinade on the counters and the front of the cupboards while I hastily grabbed a towel and attacked the orange liquid that was dribbling down the walls and puddling on the stairs.

It was a pork loin belly flop of massive proportions. I’m not sure we could duplicate it again even if we tried. I am still giggling about it, even days after. It was not nearly as exciting as the great Worcestershire sauce catastrophe which took place in my kitchen after what appeared to have been a mad feline-induced romp through the cupboards several years back (and I was still finding black sticky goo in places I would not have expected it to reach, months after the incident), but I think it could surely take second place.

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This afternoon I finally got around to taking pictures of the latest progress in the backyard. After all the fun we had lugging rocks and hauling dirt, we decided to have someone who knows what they’re doing take care of the next part. The paths (filled with decomposed granite) were put in just in time for the 4th of July. In this shot you can see the arbor gate and the climbing roses. Also note the hedge bushes on either side of the gate, which have now grown tall enough that it’s starting to get awkward stepping over them. In a few more years they’ll actually be a real hedge. We’ll be so proud.

The rest of the yard can be seen here. The corner where I am standing to take that picture will eventually be a tiny, secluded courtyard, mostly hidden by bushes and trees, with a few chairs and perhaps a little arbor, just perfect for reading. In the far side of the yard, where the path ends abruptly on the right, the yard continues on behind the kitchen and that will be a much larger courtyard area whose sole purpose will be to provide a wind break for Richard’s grill.

We had the usual gathering of the families at our house today, in the Fourth of July tradition that started the instant (a few years ago) that we all figured out that the backyard of our house is the perfect place to watch the fireworks without having to fight with the crowds. My parents, Richard’s parents and youngest sister, and my older sister and brother-in-law and my two nephews all piled into our house for the annual barbeque, hours of chatting, and watching of the fireworks.

Richard and I decided to make those pork fajitas we made for my birthday, but this time we weren’t in nearly so much of a rush (phew). Last night we did the main grocery run, and picked up the assortment of peppers and some liquid pectin I’d need to make more jalapeno jelly, plus some beautiful white peaches for pie.

An aside here. When making jelly of any kind, it is vitally important that one read the directions carefully. It is especially important not to add the pectin at the beginning of the recipe, instead of later, when you are supposed to add it, after you have already simmered the goo in the pan for several minutes and run it through the blender. If you do this, your jelly has a much greater chance of actually becoming something resembling jelly, and is less likely to turn into a thicker version of jalapeno syrup.

At least the jelly tasted just fine (if not with a bit more of a kick than I remember), even though it was a bit on the runny side. And I’ve now got an entire quart jar of the stuff in the fridge. I figure that amount will last us through a few years worth of fajitas before I have to make any more (and try to remember the all-important pectin-adding tip I mentioned above).

Last night I put together the frozen pies, which are perhaps some of the easiest pies in the world to make. You take a small container of yogurt, any flavor, stir it into a small container of cool whip, and then pour the resulting glop into a pre-made graham cracker crust. Cover it, toss it into the freezer, and voila. Pie! I always make mine with peach yogurt because that is one of only three flavors of yogurt I like (Although now that I think about it, next time I should try the orange flavor because that would probably be incredibly good), although my mom swears by the lemon (And for those of you on Weight Watchers, if you use the fat-free, sugar-free yogurt, fat-free cool whip, and the low fat graham cracker crust, it’s only 14 points for the whole pie).

This morning I made apple cinnamon sweet potato muffins for breakfast (which are incredibly yummy and incredibly dense) while Richard went off to the store to get the pork. I figure we actually did pretty well for a holiday meal, considering that we only had to do two trips to the store on the actual day (the second was for charcoal and ice). After we ate breakfast, he put together the marinade, and a bit later I baked custard peach pie and cooked bacon and chopped up all the veggies and apples for the fajita filling.

If I look back on it now I suppose I did end up spending an awful lot of time in the kitchen cooking, but it didn’t feel like it at all. I think what made the most difference for this holiday meal was the fact that last month we sat down, looked at our finances, and realized that we could finally afford to hire a cleaning service. So now someone comes in every two weeks and vacuums and dusts and mops the floors and makes the bathrooms sparkle and even gets all the cat hair off all the upholstery, including the cat trees.

It still feels a little decadent to leave a check on the table when I leave, and then come home from work to a sparkling house. But it is so worth the money. It’s utterly amazing. This is the first time we’ve had people come over where we didn’t have to rush around for a few hours beforehand cleaning the house. It’s not that either of us is a slob, because clutter has never really been the issue. It’s the fact that we have seven cats who shed an awful lot of fur, and more importantly, that we share a deep and abiding hatred for household chores.

As holiday gatherings go, today was one of the best. The fajitas turned out as delicious as usual, and the jelly tasted just fine, even if it was a bit runnier than usual. There was plenty of time to talk and laugh and sit outside while the two little guys tore around the yard. The city fireworks display was marvelous, if only because the finale was one of the most spectacular displays I’ve ever seen. And we got to show off the newest changes to our backyard, which include the lovely stone raised flower bed (full of all that dirt!), the wide paths around the pieces of lawn that were put in just this past week, and best of all, our newest set of temporary residents. Yes, the sparrow nest in the climbing roses on the arbor gate is occupied again, and it looks like there are three little balls of gray fluff in this batch too! If they keep at it we may be forced to figure out some way of hooking up a sparrow-cam on that side of the house, if only to get a chance to see the babies grow. I have to admit that I am inordinately pleased that the nest is being reused. Surely this means the curse is fading. I hope.

My older sister met the man who would become her husband in her freshman year in college and from that point on they were an item. We all knew they were going to get married; it was always just a question of when. When he finally popped the question, the next step was the official meeting of the families, although I’m pretty sure my parents and his parents had already met a time or two before.

His parents are two of the most gracious people I have ever met. Louise is, through and through, a lady in every sense of the word. And Dallas was tall and quiet and gentle, but with a sparkling sense of humor and a brilliant mind.

Over the past twelve years we’ve spent time with my sister’s parents-in-law, sometimes sharing holiday dinners and celebrations. They came to my wedding. They came to watch my mother’s consecration as a diaconal minister a few years back. We watched Dallas perform in barbershop quartets. Richard helped my brother-in-law hang Christmas lights around my sister’s parents-in-law’s house.

A few years ago Dallas was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He’d always been such a brilliant man – a professor in mathematics at UC Davis, a voracious reader, a musician. It seemed such a shock that this could happen to, of all people, him.

The last time I saw him was at my wedding, nearly two years ago. The tall graceful man I’d known was quiet and tired, seeming sometimes a bit lost even though at that time at least he still had all his wits. Last summer they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary and managed to gather every one of their friends and family around them, knowing with utmost certainty that this would most likely be their last. It reminded me of that one family reunion I attended years ago, celebrating my grandfather’s 80th birthday, with every single one of his descendants present and knowing that this was the last reunion he would ever attend.

The disease progressed mercifully quickly. Last week he succumbed to renal failure, and last Friday he passed away, his family at his side. He wasn’t really there any more; hadn’t been there for months, but they had time to say goodbye.

I’ve never been able to believe in gods and devils and heavens and hells. But if there really is a heaven out there, somewhere, I know that’s where he is, his mind as sharp as ever, singing barbershop with old friends.

Rest in peace, Dallas. I’m sorry your youngest grandsons (my nephews) never had the chance to get to know you, but don’t worry – we’ll all do our best to tell them all about you. It was an honor to know you and I think someday they’ll understand that too.

I knew I was going to have to go see the doctor at some point, but some little voice inside my head kept insisting that I needed to wait. “Wait until it’s been two months,” the voice insisted. “Wait until you get June’s measurements, because maybe, just maybe, a miracle will have happened and things will have started to go the right direction (that would be down, in the case of my weight), and then you don’t have to go because you can pretend it was all a bad dream and everything is just happy and rosy again.”

Of course, it should be obvious at this point that this is not what happened. In fact, when I did my weigh-in and measuring for June, I’d gained yet another pound, and the little gadget that calculates BMI by sending electrical pulses through your arms (or however it does it) and thus actually really does calculate the percent body fat and does not simply rely on height versus weight – that little gadget said my BMI had actually gone up, even higher than when I first started Curves two months ago.

The amusing thing about all this was that the instant I got on the scale I knew that it was not going to be good news. But I was okay with it. All throughout the measurements and the slap-in-the-face facts that physically I have slid even further backwards, I kept up a running conversation with myself, in much the same manner as those insidious cell phone commercials where that odd little man asks into his phone every few steps “Can you hear me now?” Except I was asking “so are you going to go all emotional?” “No. “Okay. How about now?” “Nope. Still no need to sob hysterically.” “Okay, how about now? Are you going to fall apart now?”

And even though occasionally I keep hearing that little ongoing query in my head the answer still is that I’m fine. I’m fine with the weight gain. Okay, actually, I’m not fine with it at all. But apparently my neurons have decided that they no longer need to go bezerk and dump me, sobbing, in a little blubbery pile somewhere dark and cold. In fact, there have been no episodes at all since the last time. Which in a way I suppose should not surprise me at all because Murphy’s Law clearly states that the moment you realize that you will have to break down and contact a professional to get something fixed, you will never be able to reproduce the error for them, and in fact things will work even better than before, just to spite you.

But I did go see the doctor anyway, last week. For one thing, since new job = new health insurance, I had to get yet another copy of my prescription to send away to yet another mail order prescription company so I can avoid having to go to the pharmacy every month just to get the little happy pills that keep the evil Cramps of Doom (and the accompanying hormonal Day of Suicidal Impulses) far, far away. But I figured that at the very least I should find out if this little issue of exercise+diet = weight gain might be something physical.

We discussed medications for the weight loss, but the doctor was pretty frank about the fact that they wouldn’t really do me any good. He mentioned the possibility of thyroid problems and so he sent me off to get some blood taken across the hall, where I had possibly the world’s best ever phlebotomist because I did not even feel the needle going in! The doctor told me that he is proud of me for doing what I am doing with the healthier eating and the Curves and the biking and the trying-to-kill-myself yard work, because I really am doing everything right. And then he told me what I already knew, which is that it is highly likely that I could keep doing this for six months or six years and that probably I will eventually lose some weight but that basically I have a crappy metabolism and there is nothing in the world that is going to change that. And at least I will be healthy, even if I don’t ever manage to drop even an ounce of flab from my bones.

I have no idea when the blood tests will come back but I am not expecting anything more than a cursory postcard indicating that everything seems normal. Because let’s face it – he is right. Life sucks and it isn’t fair, but that doesn’t mean I can’t keep at it.

Oh and by the way, I did talk to him about the whole sporadic life-sucks-let’s-cry routine, and he pointed out something that hadn’t even occurred to me but which made such perfect sense. He said that it’s very common to have a delayed reaction to stress – stress related to a job, or family, or whatever. And it made me stop and think. Because in the past year – heck, in the past nine months – I was laid off from a job where I might have been bored but at least I loved the work, and I dealt with a job where I was told things that turned out to be untrue and where I felt at times as if I was constantly so angry that it was all I could do to not scream, and now even though I’m in a job that I adore, everything that has happened to me and to Richard in the past few years has sunk in to the point where I cannot help but feel as if I am constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop; that one of these days I will walk in and they will tell me that they don’t need me anymore and then this crazy circle will start up all over again. And suddenly it all made sense that I was finally starting to react to it all; in the only way my poor confused little brain knows how.

I don’t know if this is really the reason. I only know that it makes sense to me, and I so desperately needed those episodes to have some reason behind them beyond some chemical aberration where my brain forgot I was a perfectly rational human being and instead thought I was just a bit insane.

So I’m sticking to this as the truth for now, and waiting to see if it becomes anything else. And all the while, keeping up that running query in my head.

“How about now? Are you going to break down now?”

No. Not now. And if I can help it, not ever again.

After the last few weekends of yard work and biking and all the muscle aches and sunburns that came with that sort of fun, we decided we really needed a weekend where there would be as little physical activity as possible. Also, we hadn’t managed to get a weekend at the ranch in quite a while and since Richard’s family was planning to spend their usual week-before-Fourth-of-July there, the timing seemed right to take a trip through the hills.

Naturally the moment we started pondering going away for a few days of relaxation, the weather suddenly remembered that yes, it really *is* summer, and reverted back to temperatures that can best be described as Beastly Hot. So when we drove up to the ranch on Saturday afternoon, I was not in the best of moods, pondering two days of hiding in the lodge in some nearly futile effort to escape the heat.

Saturday afternoon I did do a significant amount of lodge-lurking. Luckily it cooled down enough to venture back into the outdoors in the evening, and by the time we piled into our cars to drive back to Davis for the last show of the Davis Musical Theater Company’s season, it was finally getting a bit more bearable outside.

The play was Showboat – a play which fit in quite nicely with the rest of the season’s decidedly non-PC theme. There was Carnival, where the moral of the story is that it’s okay if he treats you like dirt as long as he says he loves you (and does it with puppets, no less!). In Carousel we learn that sometimes a punch can feel like a kiss, and that it’s okay if he beats the crap out of you as long as he tells you he loves you. In How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, one of the underlying themes is that the ultimate goal for any woman is to grab herself a husband, even if he *is* a self-centered schmuck. And finally, we have Showboat, where the moral of the story is that it’s okay for him to simply disappear into thin air for 30+ years as long as (yes, you guessed it) he says he loves you.

Showboat also has the honor of being, without a doubt, the absolute longest play I have ever seen in my life, as well as the one most deserving of the “Most Extraneous and Irrelevant Plot Points” award. The first act covers a few months; the second act covers over 30 years, and all with a lot of additional stuff thrown in just to confuse the matter.

Then after the play and our typical after-play get-together with my parents (where we eat pie and discuss/praise/poke fun at the play we just saw) we went back home to sleep as late as we could before heading back to the ranch.

Thankfully, the weather today was perfect. We packed sandwiches (which we never did eat) and returned to the ranch, where we set up our camping chairs next to his parents’ chairs and proceeded spend most of the day just sitting.

This is a novel thing for me – just sitting. At first I read for a while, since I decided I should reread the newest Harry Potter book (it took me about 5 hours to read the book this time because I was actively forcing myself to take it slower). But once the book was done I made myself continue sitting and just do nothing.

We talked. We watched a pair of boys – probably older elementary school aged – construct a surprisingly impressive dam in the little creek that runs through the river, thus turning what was a shallow space of calmer water into a tiny pool so deep an adult could sink up to their chest in the water. I closed my eyes and sat in my chair while Richard and his sister read their books and listened to the sound of the water and the birds and the wind through the leaves overhead.

I did get up a few times – once to go try out the little mini-pool the boys had so industriously created, and once to go on a short walk around the ranch with Richard, during which we saw two wide-eyed deer resting beside the trailer hitch of a camper. But for the most part, I made myself just relax and do nothing at all, and while I think if I’d had to do a few hours more of it I might have gone stark raving mad, the length today was just enough to be lovely.

The boys took down their dam eventually, amid cheers from all of us who’d been watching them put it together, and as evening started to close in the bugs came out in force, which is the reason I have mosquito bites all over the back of my knees. And then after dinner we reluctantly hugged our goodbyes and headed home.

This past weekend wasn’t all dirt and Harry Potter. Saturday evening, after we’d collapsed from hauling dirt and come inside to take showers and naps, we headed off to the Sacramento Convention Center, where we first spent the usual five minutes searching for a parking spot somewhere in the five-mile vicinity of the center, and then had to make our way through cement barriers to actually get in. This is because the big agricultural technology meeting was supposed to start on Sunday so the local police force had been busily setting up road blocks and barriers and stringing ‘no parking’ signs all over the surrounding six blocks (making the parking spot search just that much more difficult) in preparation for what turned out to be a disappointingly low turnout in crazed and destructive protestors. Although I’m sure it was almost worth it just to see all the protestors who turned out dressed as fruits and vegetables, but I am digressing here. Since the convention didn’t actually start until Sunday we managed to get into the convention center without any hassle whatsoever and did not have to do much wandering at all before I spotted an open door and a room full of Methodist ministers in robes, and we knew we were in the right spot.

A few years ago I wrote about the night my mom was consecrated as a diaconal minister, which took place, conveniently enough, in the exact same room in the Sacramento Convention Center we ended up in Saturday night. Well, since that night the Methodist church went and changed a few things such that they decided they really wanted to phase out diaconal ministry and so all the current diaconals were strongly ‘encouraged’ to become deacons instead. It’s not a promotion or a step up in ranks – it’s simply just another branch of the same tree – both diaconals and deacons are called into service ministry (as opposed to those who are called to pulpit ministry, which is the type of preachers/ministers most people are familiar with). There are a few added benefits to being a deacon – namely that they can perform such things as weddings and funerals and technically, diaconals really aren’t supposed to. But on the down side, deacons are required to do a bit more pulpit work, and if one was a diaconal who really did not feel called to the pulpit, this would certainly be considered a rather big drawback.

The whole point of all that rambling is that Saturday night we attended the Ordination Service for the local Methodist conference, at which my mom received her deacon’s orders. It was a very long service, mainly because along with a fairly small group of people becoming deacons, there was a much larger group of people becoming other things as well. And it was much like a graduation, in that each person’s name was called in the slow and deliberate way taken when the person reading the name isn’t exactly clear on the pronunciation, and then this was followed by a few ceremonial steps, including kneeling, praying, and the inevitable hugging and shaking of hands that followed.

Eventually, however, it was all over, and my mom is now a deacon – a state which includes not only a spiffy new stole and a new title, but which (best of all) means that we can *finally* call her Reverend Ma (said with as much twangy drawl on the Ma as possible). Even though she still has yet to use the Action Figure Jesus her loving children gave her in a sermon.

A few weeks ago we broke down and preordered The Book, figuring that with everything else going on in our lives, we didn’t know if we’d be able to make the release date party. The shipping notice arrived Friday afternoon, and Saturday when we returned from lunch there was a note in our mailbox indicating that the mailman had tried to deliver a package. Why he didn’t just leave it in the little lock boxes right next to the mailboxes-on-a-stick like he does with every other package we receive I have no idea, but the whole point of me telling you this is that our copy ended up sitting at the post office, unavailable to us until 8:30 this morning.

Yesterday afternoon after we finished the happy fun that is dirt hauling, we ended up meeting my parents for lunch. Coincidently, they’d just picked up their copy (and in fact lunch plans were made because my mom called me and started reading out of the first chapter, amid my wails of protest because I didn’t have mine yet). And then as we stood in the parking lot outside IHOP (because chocolate chip pancakes are good for muscle pain, I swear) in order to give them back their shovel, they very nicely gave us their copy of the book so we could read it until we got ours. This was certainly above and beyond any parental duty, or the bounds of love because I will freely admit right here that there is no way I would have handed over *my* copy before I had a chance to read it.

But I digress. We got in the car and I decided to heck with my usual issue with the way reading in the car makes me a bit queasy; I immediately opened it up and starting reading the first page aloud. And then when we got home I fell into a chair and commenced reading in earnest.

It took me about four hours to get through the book and by the end I think I surpassed even my own records for speed-reading. And the instant I set it down on the table and announced I was done, Richard snatched it up, fell into a chair right next to me, and was immediately lost to the world. I queried as to dinner plans, he grunted, and I gleefully ordered pizza and finally read The Outlanders across the table from him because I knew he wasn’t going to emerge for any sort of dinnertime conversation. He finished it last night, of course, which is wonderful because the minute I finished the last page I was dying to talk to someone about it and I left him alone as much as I could (except to occasionally ask where he was so I could see how close he was to the end) in order to avoid giving away any of the surprises.

Anyway. I liked it. I liked it a lot better than the 4th book, actually. Petulant angsty Harry was a bit annoying, in a way, but he’s growing up and dealing with normal teenage things. I felt at times overwhelmed by how very much was going on in the book – all the little subplots and such – but I didn’t feel like it was too long. With the fourth book (Goblet of Fire), I felt as if Rowling had really dragged out some sections and thrown in all sorts of filler and the book was far longer than it should have been; with Order of the Phoenix I wanted it to be longer because I felt like there was almost too much going on and nothing got explained as fully as I would have liked. But some things were explained and now I just hope that it doesn’t take her nearly as long to write the next two books because I am far too impatient when it comes to Harry Potter.

I picked up our ‘real’ copy this morning before work and found great amusement in the fact that they had made a very special packaging box just for all the Harry Potter books that were shipped all over the world this weekend. This evening we dropped it off with my parents, figuring the least we could do was give them our brand new fresh-out-of-the-box pristine copy.

It’s a good book. I’m not sure it’s the best of the series, but it’s still quite good. Even Azzie thought it was marvelous. And I ask you – would this cute little face lie?

A helpful suggestion. When you are feeling extremely sore and stiff in muscles where you didn’t even realize you had muscles after spending the better part of a day heaving several tons of dirt into a wheelbarrow and then lifting and/or shoving said wheelbarrow up a ramp or just over the side of a 2-foot wall over and over and over again, here is what you probably should not do the following day.

What you should not do is drag your aching body out of bed, down enough ibuprofen to numb the pain to a dull roar, and then do the hauling/lifting/shoveling/pain-inducing activity for another two hours the next morning.

Or in other words, that’s exactly how I spent my morning.

The pile of dirt left over from yesterday was so much smaller than what we’d started with that it felt as if we were working much faster than before. We kept loading wheelbarrows and dragging them to the back yard and dumping them into the pit, which by this time was mostly full of dirt anyway so things were a little bit easier because there wasn’t as much shifting of the dirt once we’d dumped it inside the walls. And because I could visibly see the pile of dirt shrinking rapidly with each load, I was rather surprised to learn that we’d been at it as long as we had when the last wheelbarrow of dirt had been transported and dumped.

And then because we were already out there and sweaty and covered in dirt, we decided it made sense to move the last of the leftover stones off to one side of the yard. Oddly enough heaving those stones to and fro didn’t seem nearly so much an effort now that I’d spent a few hours shoveling dirt.

I have come to the realization now, after two days spent in heavy manual dirt-related labor, that ibuprofen will have to be my very best friend for the next few days. The rest of the day I have spent carefully doing as little as possible to exert my aching body. My back hurts, but the worst of the muscle pain is in the shoulders and the upper back, and oddly enough in my forearms, especially in my wrists. This is due, I can only surmise, to the fact that shoveling dirt requires an interesting twist of the hands every time I lifted dirt from pile to wheelbarrow. It has also made life a bit difficult, in some odd ways. The simplest things – opening a door or turning a knob – now take more effort. And it feels as if there is a large band around my chest, making it hard to breathe too deeply. Every few hours I pop a few more pills and then sink cautiously into a chair and hope that the drugs kick in long enough to allow me to get back out of the chair eventually.

But we are done. Despite the fact that I hurt in places I had no idea I could hurt (did I mention even my wrists hurt? Opening doors should not be painful, people), it actually feels good to know we did the whole thing by ourselves – not just built this circle of heavy stones but filled it to the brim with dirt just waiting to nourish something green. And what makes me feel even better is knowing that, with the exception of laying the stones and planting the creepers around the base of the wall, this is the last of the big gardening projects for the summer.

Oh, and just in case you were wondering what five cubic yards of dirt looks like…

This entry is a collaboration for On Display. This month’s topic is “perfect circle.”

All week I have been planning for this weekend. All week, whenever someone asks what I’m going to do this weekend, I tell them – we are moving dirt. I have also volunteered to let anyone come and help us move the dirt, but for some odd reason I have had no one take me up on that offer. Go figure.

Tuesday I called the place in the next town that delivers dirt in sufficiently large quantities and set up an appointment to have 5 cubic yards of dirt delivered to our driveway Friday morning. I did this so that we could get up as early as we wanted today and get started, without having to wait for anything. I had it all planned out. Friday morning the dirt would be delivered, and Friday night after Richard and I got home from work we would go off to the hardware store in town and buy us a wheelbarrow. I’d already coordinated with my dad to borrow their wheelbarrow and an extra shovel so we’d have two of each.

And then Friday afternoon I came home from work and there was no dirt. The driveway was pristine. And worse yet, it was late enough that the dirt-delivering company had closed for the day so we had no idea if we would still be able to get our dirt and get this chore done!

Needless to say, there was a fair bit of grumbling last night. So instead of going off to buy ourselves a wheelbarrow and load our car with borrowed shovels and such, we went out for Chinese food, and then came home and consoled ourselves with an episode of Veggie Tales (yes we are still going through all of those). This one included not only a romantic tango about Barbara Manatee, but also our favorite character (Larry the cucumber) singing about how he loves his rubber ducky, *and* a highly informative flannel-graph (In our defense, the latest trio of movies from Netflix also includes What Dreams May Come, so it’s not like silly cartoons about singing vegetables are the only thing we watch these days. Really they aren’t. I swear!).

Luckily all turned out just fine. This morning I called them the instant they opened and they promised to come right out to deliver our dirt. They gave us a time window; we eyed the clock, got dressed, and figured we’d have enough time before they arrived to go grab some breakfast and my parents’ dirt-lugging paraphernalia we were borrowing. So imagine our surprise when we turned onto the main street through town and saw the truck of dirt heading toward our house, much earlier than expected! We hastily did a slightly illegal u-turn, and hightailed it after the truck, since I didn’t really want to go to through the whole “where’s my dirt?’ scenario a second time.

The lady driving the truck dumped a huge pile of dirt on our driveway and after a short trip to get the aforementioned breakfast, shovel, and purchase a shiny new blue wheelbarrow of our very own, we got started.

Dirt is heavy. In case you were not aware of this, let me repeat this statement. Dirt is heavy. Very heavy. We had two different types of wheelbarrows and I would fill them both with dirt in the front of the house, and then we would lug them into the backyard and dump them into the bed, where I would leave Richard to spread the dirt all over the bed (since the bed is 10 feet in diameter) and I’d lug the empty (and much lighter) wheelbarrows back to the big pile o’ dirt and repeat the process over and over and over again.

We aren’t done with the dirt-lugging fun, unfortunately, but we’re definitely more than halfway there. We knew it was time to quit for the day when both sets of arms abruptly decided that lifting and toting were no longer options. The muscles had had enough.

I am hoping that it will only take us a few more hours tomorrow to finish, if only so that we can park the cars back in the garage by tomorrow night. The (not quite as big as it used to be) pile of dirt in the driveway makes that just a teeny bit difficult right now.

I am also hoping that my arms will have decided by tomorrow morning to play nicely again and be willing to last the few hours it will take, because no matter what, we have got to get this dirt moved. And if my arms refuse to cooperate before we are done, I’m a little nervous, because frankly, I do not relish lugging wheelbarrows with my lips.

We had the gardener come over tonight to look over the plans and get things finalized for the next phase of our backyard. Or rather, one of the next phases; putting in the decomposed granite pathways is something we’re more than happy to pay him to do, while filling the raised bed with dirt and laying the path around that fall onto the ‘hey, we can do this ourselves!’ list of back-yard-related fun.

I get excited every time we anything for our backyard, because I can see it slowly coming together, and I know that eventually it is going to be amazing. Soon, very soon, I am hoping we’ll be able to do more than build walls and lay paths and haul dirt; soon I hope we’ll get to the part where we can start actually planting trees and bushes and things. But I have to remain patient, even though sometimes it is so hard.

We preordered season 4 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD (but I think I already mentioned that), and that arrived last week, so the past week we’ve fallen into a routine. We come home from work, we get dinner (in some form or another) and then we curl up on the couch in the living room and watch episodes of Buffy until we’re too tired to watch anymore. Granted there were quite a few moments where we were both laughing our heads off, and moments where I could not help but reiterate my deep and unabashed love for both Giles and Spike, but there were also far too many moments that weren’t quite so good.

Alas, we watched the last episode last night. No more new Buffy until probably early next year. Sigh. And now that it is done I think I have to agree with the general consensus that this is not the best season of Buffy ever. Nothing to do but set our sights for the new Harry Potter book due out this weekend, and hope it lives up to its hype.