I offer you some rainy-day pictures (from a few weeks ago) in lieu of textual content:

Rudi and I are working from home today to monitor the flooding (keep your fingers crossed, but the worst *might* be past us). In the meantime, I offer you a round dozen songs from random play on the iTunes on my home machine:

1. “Too Bad about Your Girl” — The Donnas
2. “Bobby Lee” — Kris Delmhorst (Kris always seems to appear on my random play lists)
3. “Venus” — The Chris Stamey Experience
4. “Lechón, Lechón, Lechón” — Victor Manuelle
5. “So Young” — The Corrs
6. “Mrs. McGrath” — Bruce Springsteen
7. “Drunk Lullaby” — Redbird
8. “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm” — Dean Martin
9. “Chelsea Morning” — Judy Collins (I like Judy, but this song is so Joni for me that it just seems wrong)
10. “Love in the Lies” — Amos Lee
11. “Dink’s Song” — Roger McGuinn
12. “The Sun Doesn’t Like You” — Norah Jones

Please feel free to play along in the comments.

It’s been raining for what seems like 40 days and nights…

Okay, maybe it’s just been most of the last five days.

But eventually after a steady rain…

no matter how good it is for my garden…

no matter how nice it is to have the pollen washed away…

no matter how wonderful it will be to have a drought-free summer…

eventually…

the ground saturates…

and the rain has nowhere to go…

but inside the Burrow.

You get three generations of Ottleys in this shot:

Ginny and Mum, Gramma, and Élissa and me on the High Street in Andover, England, the town where Gramma, Ginny, and Élissa all grew up.

It’s the only shot I can find on my hard drive that has Gramma, Mum, and me in the same picture…

Happy Mother’s Day, Mum and Gramma!

I was going to write a long, glowing report for you about Sarah’s and my trip to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival tonight, but apparently spending the whole day basking in the sun, breathing in yarn fumes (and fried dough smells), handing out cash, and chatting with a friend is exhausting.

I arrived home to find Rudi holding us a table on the local Starbucks patio and, after a cuppa, we returned home to watch Monk, Cranford, and Sherlock Holmes. I knit a little more with my pretty purple yarn and fully expect I’ll have a finished object to show you by the end of the week. But, really, I didn’t have a lot left in me for an active evening.

So now I’m going to wash our supper dishes and then go to bed.

It was a great day, but I’m bushed!

Despite my earlier post, I got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning and am having a cranky, crabby day.

I dropped a contact (in our less than stellarly clean bathroom).

I continue to be significantly later to work than I’d like to be.

I went to bed early (!!) last night, but still continue to be tired.

My allergies, after a blessed week-long hiatus, are back.

I snapped at my very nice boss when she tried to make things easier for me.

Does anyone have any cheery things to help change my mood? Anyone? Bueller?