Beauty * and * Bread

people curious, obviously. The tried-and-true way to find out who reads the blog is to not blog for a while. Apparently one week is pretty much the magic time since I had two emails today asking “where are you? What’s going on?”

Nothing and nothing.

Although our memorial hike for Shevy did happen on Monday (and it deserves and will receive its very own post), I’ve been very busy otherwise, as well.

• What have I been doing, you ask?I actually cleaned out a file cabinet. Sort of. My neighbor and I agreed to share trash-pickup service. The company was supposed to pick the trash up last week, but they forgot, so they told us we could pretty much put as much junk as we want out on the curb this past Wednesday. That spurred me to action on the file front. I have been schlepping paperwork around that’s dated 1998 and before, including documents on animals that are long gone. Why? Because I’ve been too damn lazy to go through it all, shred what needed to be destroyed and throw the rest away. It’s done now, although I’m certain there’s more that could logically have been 86′d, as well. The goal was to be able to merge current files with stuff I truly need to keep for a while longer, and I accomplished that.

• I finally put every bit of the CD music I want to carry with me onto my iTouch. There are now something like 750 songs, of genres ranging from Native American to classical to country to New Age to rock blues to Mexican and (East) Indian. I have so much music that it could play for almost 3 days without repeating a single song. That’s been on my to-do list since I got the iTouch. Actually since I got my original MP3 player, BEFORE the iTouch. I also categorized a lot of the music into playlists, so that the iTouch will play only Native American or only (East) Indian if I tell it to.

• Caring for my little green and furry children has taken time. No, the children are not both green AND furry. Some and green, two are furry and never the twain shall meet. My brown thumb is gradually turning a lovely shade of chartreuse, and those of you who know my propensities for killing living plants should be roundly impressed. These plants LOVE this house at least as much as I do. Maybe more.

• Working takes up a big part of my life. And that helps me afford to feed and care for the green and furry creatures.

• Company. Well, more like family. More about that in the post on Shevy’s hike.

• Family. Not enough of that, let me tell you. And I think I’m gaining a rep as a fair-weather mother. As I was leaving Farida and Jason’s last night after doing a load of laundry, Jason said, “that wasn’t nearly enough time for a visit.” That was very nice of him to say, but I think what he really meant was, “you could come over sometime when you’re NOT doing laundry, just to visit.”  Hunter was very formal in his farewell, too. He said, “goodbye, Farida’s mother.” Hmmmmmmmmm.

That really doesn’t seem like enough to have taken up 7 whole days, does it? Just remember that I worked all but one of them, too. Oh, I said that already.

So, am I forgiven?