In Drury Lane

AJ just received the following email from his seven-year-old cousin M., who lives in Thailand:

hi aj we are building a house in maine. we might build a tree house. i miss you. love, m.

I wish we could see them more than once every two years. I wish I could take AJ to Thailand to see them. Maybe someday.

* * * * *

Okay, so I didn’t actually have cereal for dinner Saturday night. But I did stick with breakfast-like foods and had a BLT with the very first ripe tomato from my vines. And it was the best damn tomato I’ve ever eaten. I bought the plants as seedlings from an organic farmer who had set up shop in front of a health food store. I’ll be doing that again next year.

I also bought myself a pint of my favorite ice cream (Haagen-Dazs Dulce de Leche) and ate it out of the carton. So juvenile eating habits were accomplished.

Also accomplished: the resurrection of my laundry room. This took most of the day — 6 hours, to be exact. I scrubbed the walls and the floor, covered all the shelves in new shelf paper as well as a couple of boxes I use to store supplies. I cleaned the dryer vents and ductwork with my new duct brush and a vacuum cleaner and dug out an alarmingly large pile of lint: a kitchen garbage bag full. I reattached the ductwork pieces, moved the washer and dryer into place, carried the laundry sink back into the room, and hooked them all up. My first load of laundry showed the washer to be leaking, but it seems to have been because it wasn’t leveled properly. My second load is in now and so far, so good. I can’t tell you how excited I am at the prospect of not having to go to the laundromat this week.

Then I started in on my office. I did another mildew treatment to the wall, took all the plastic tarps off everything and assembled a large pile of goods to take to the charity shop this week, and swept up all the millipedes. I discovered that the drywall, despite the mildew, is in much better shape than I thought and doesn’t actually seem to be that wet. I may not have to replace it after all, or at least not that much of it..

This may not sound like an exciting way to spend a free weekend, but I love being able to spend six hours straight on a project without being interrupted or worrying about what else someone needs me to be doing or how late dinner is going to be. So maybe it’s not the most glamorous way to spend my weekend alone, but I enjoyed it just the same. The best part: all the stuff that’s been piled on my bedroom floor because I didn’t have an office or a laundry room is now back where it came from. My bedroom is starting to look like a bedroom again. The lack of clutter is good for my soul.

I took the night off and watched “Swing Time” and “The Dewey Cox” story with a glass of wine. Ah.

I had more fun today, though. I started off by baking a loaf of bread while the house was still cool. I took my coffee and the paper out on the porch and enjoyed the quiet morning. Then fairlywell came over about 9:30 and, after a mad rush to finish watering the plants, we headed out just after 10 for the bike trail and road about 18 miles or so on the riverside trail, stopping to take in vistas of the river — snowy egrets and herons fishing, men in waders doing the same, the occasional kayakers floating by in their red and yellow boats. The trail was about as busy I’ve ever seen it today on account of the beautiful weather (much better than the last time fairlywell and I attempted this trail when we got rained on hard), but still pretty quiet by Chicago standards. On the way back, we stopped at my favorite pie restaurant, but opted for strawberry muffins instead of pie because the muffins were just coming out of the over. We sat at a table under a shady tree and watched the other bikers riding by.

“Too many temptations on this trail!” one man yelled at us as he rode by. I hope he was talking about the muffins.

After we got back, we dined on more BLTs (the best summer food ever) with more tomatoes from my vines and Fairlywell headed home to do her own laundry. We will all be very clean tomorrow.

The boys just called me from the road. My weekend alone will soon be coming to an end. Time to start dinner. Alas, it probably will not be cereal. Maybe next time.