Surprises

If you are ever lucky enough to get a package from Lass, well, you are lucky indeed. She sends the best packages ever. Here is what arrived on my doorstep today, exactly one week before my birthday:

I can tell you AJ and I will be fighting about many of these things. But I think I’d better put away some of the books before AJ gets home, though:

Andy’s going to run off with the toys and the stickers and also the stamps. He’s been saying he wants to start a stamp collection. There are lots of space ship stamps in there, and also one of Wendell Wilkie. What 8-year-old boy wouldn’t like Wendell Wilkie?

But I’m holding on to the fancy Vietnamese paper for collages. If I can stand to cut it up:

I’m also keeping the air raid sign. I’ll hang it in my office, where I need regular reminders not to panic.

Oh, and if some of the photography looks a little blurry, well, this may be why:

Thanks for making my day, Lass!

No answer on the telephone

I’ve been so busy looking backwards that I have fallen behind in the news.

The short version: you haven’t missed much. Although several rather pleasant things have happened.

On Sunday fairlywell came out and we took an 18+-mile bike ride, stopping on the way back for a bacon & cheese breakfast pizza and an apple galette. Both were outstanding. I love that there is a pie restaurant on the bike trail. And I always love biking with fairlywell.

When we got home, Mr. Spy’s mother and brother were just walking up to the house. They stopped by for a short visit, an effort to get my mother-in-law out of the house. She is still having trouble getting around, although she’s doing much better overall. I took a walk with her and we ran into one of my neighbors, two doors down. It took us a while to get there. My mother-in-law had to stop and rest at the top of our driveway We had been admiring her garden when she came around from the back of the house and we said hello and how much we liked her flowers. She then invited us back and gave us the grand tour of her incredible, botanic-garden quality garden. I think it made my mother-in-law’s day. And I was pretty excited to see it too.

I have been reading up a storm. Recently, I haven’t been reading much for fun. My eyes have been hurting too much after a day of shuffling words around on the computer and reading lots of tiny print. But I picked up a real page turner this week (Alice Hoffman’s The Third Angel) and I read it at every opportunity until I finished it less than 24 hours later. That is one of the things that would be on my hypothetical list of things to do in the summer – indulge in at least one self-indulgent reading binge. Check. It was a much better book than I thought it was going to be when I picked it up. The jacket made it sound very chick-litty and the beginning suggested that was the way it would be. But although I thought the characters were not terribly well developed, the plot was masterful and beautifully executed. And now I’m back to Noël Riley Fitch’s biography of Julia Child, Appetite for Life, which I’m enjoying immensely, despite its myriad editing problems. The thing is, the problems are all due to there being way too much tangential information in the text, but you can tell it’s there because the author was really interested and excited about these things. And I’m totally sympathetic with that. My dissertation is in danger of being much the same way, although at least I have the benefit of footnotes, which are tailor-made for all those interesting tangential things. Also, the description of Julia’s years at my alma mater were great fun. We did an awful lot of the same things 50-some-odd years apart.

This morning, as of 8:30, I have the house to myself for at least 10 hours. I’m trying not to squander it, although I admit at 8:45 I am still in my pajamas. Mr. Spy took first to camp and then will pick him up early to take him to a White Sox game with his brother and sister and one of our nieces. I begged off so I could get some work done. And so I guess I’d better get some work done. Just as soon as I find my slippers.

***New post up at AJ’s Clubhouse.**