I arrived home tonight to find half of my living room floor gone. Since we didn’t have any warning our handyman was going to start indoor repairs today. (There’s a crack in the foundation, from the drain in our window well to someplace in the middle of our living room, which explains the flooding we arrived home to earlier this month.)

Poor cats! They really don’t know what to make of this. Jeremiah doesn’t like strangers, so he probably spent the afternoon cowering in the hallway closet. And even Posey and Della probably weren’t thrilled by two guys spending their afternoon in the Burrow without paying any attention to them. So now they’re all over the living room sniffing at the strange sub-floor smells.

So tonight’s task will be to move things out of the living room to someplace else in the Burrow. Since the living room is the majority of our space, that may be a challenge, but Rudi and I have tackled several in our day and will not be deterred by a mere lack of resources.

There are some other photos, but they must be on a different memory card. These are the ones I found this morning…

I’m pretty sure photos like this are why it took me six months to finish the knitting. Jeremiah actually bit the yarn in two in this particular incident.

Jeremiah thinks knitting is hard work.

The final stitches of the quilt spread out on Mum’s 8-person kitchen table. (Check out the pajama bottoms and the bunny slippers.)

A close-up.

All wrapped up — at last!

Because I’ve now missed two three beautiful things Thursdays, I thought I’d give you them all at once plus a bonus:

1. A caring caretaker: John, our Georgetown senior catsitter, took lovely care of the cats while we were gone, leaving them fully fed and watered, watering the basil, fixing the computer, and sweeping up around the (cleaned) catboxes. Who could ask for more?

2. Conversation: Wednesday night, after arriving in north London for a two-day stay, we went to dinner at a recommended Indian/Bangladeshi restaurant. The gentleman who took our order came over after the other customers had gone home and we talked about wide-ranging topics for the next two hours. This is the sort of experience we all hope to get when we travel, but so rarely do.

3. Hospitality: Janice and James of Bay Tree House in London run a lovely B&B at a very affordable rate a mere 30 minutes from Covent Garden. They were warm, welcoming, and offered us the run of their home (even going so far as to buy Tube tickets for us the first morning). I cannot recommend them highly enough.

4. Family: We got the chance to meet some relatives for the first time while on our trip. Di and Ginny are my mother’s twin cousins. Di, Mychele, and Kevin came to the wedding and helped make it a fun evening for us. And Ginny, Sam, and Élissa welcomed us into their home, acted as tour guides around my grandmother’s hometown and the nearby area, and were as lovely as if we’d always known (and liked) each other.

5. Hanging with the Queen: Okay, not quite. But our visit did coincide with the two months a year she opens Buckingham Palace to the public, so we took advantage of the opportunity and went to visit. The palace is impressive (as was the Queen Mum’s White Wardrobe from her first official visit to Paris weeks after her mother’s death), but I especially liked the gardens. They seemed more relaxed than the rest of the estate (you can only control nature so much, as our recent Gulf Coast disasters point out) and very scenic, with benches along the periphery for optimal viewing.

6. Dipping my toes: While the weather was generally lovely for touring (upper 60s and lower 70s), it was not usually the sort of temperature that inspired bare feet or legs. But the afternoon we arrived in the southern coastal resort town of Bournemouth, the sun came out from behind the clouds and warmed the air. We took elevator-like contraptions down to the seaside and sat on the sand soaking in the rays. And we waded through the surf looking for fun shells and flat stones to skip. I love the ocean and always feel so at home with myself when I’m near it. So it provided probably the most relaxed afternoon of our whole trip.

7. A knock-out dress: I was still a little worried about the low-cut dress I bought for this fall’s fancy-dress events, but received a number of compliments on it and on how grown-up I looked. It’s amazing what a killer dress does for one’s self-confidence (particularly when combined with the miracle of double-sided body tape!)!

1. Posey, Della, and Jeremiah (Because they’re lovey and cuddly and wonderful.)
2. Sleeping in (Our trip has us headed all over the place, so I can’t imagine we’ll be getting a whole lot of rest.)
3. The National Book Festival (Last year was a ton of fun — I got to meet Mr. McFeeley from Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood and Maria from Sesame Street!)
4. The first game of the final Mets-Nationals series (to which we had tickets)
5. The beginning of the season and series tv premieres (I like to see what’s worth watching and what’s not.)

I haven’t been sleeping well this last week. The neighborhood stray keeps showing up at 3:30 or so in the morning, stressing the cats and awakening me. Usually I’m able to fall right back to sleep, but I haven’t been as successful this week. The brain just has a hard time turning off right now.

There’s too much going on right now at work for a vacation to be convenient.

But work is so stressful that I really need a vacation.

And, of course, our vacation is designed to keep us moving for 10 straight days. I hope I won’t return home more tired than I left.

The Supreme Court is going to go ultra-conservative. People will forget (or forgive) Bush’s inadequacies. The Democrats will kow-tow. The Republicans will grovel. Few will notice. Fewer will care.

People from Louisiana and Mississippi have lost everything. People are lying dead in the streets. Others are waiting to be allowed to start cleaning up and removing dead bodies. No one will let them. Animals are dying. Animals are in shelters. People are in shelters. Life just seems so sad for so many.

And while we pay attention to those who’ve been hit by major upheaval, minor upheavals uproot smaller pockets of people all over every day. No one throws a benefit for them.

I just feel so … weary.

Where oh where has my tomato gone?
Where oh where can it be?
With its red, rolly shape and its great bite and taste
Where oh where can it be?

No, seriously? Have you seen a cherry tomato? Homegrown? I made the mistake of clearing the rest of the stuff off the counter and then going out for the evening with friends. I came home — one still on the counter, one on the floor by the cats dish, one … where?

The cats look guilty, but refuse to tell me where they hid this new toy.

If you were a cherry tomato, where would you be?

——

8/13/05 Update: The missing cherry tomato has been relocated (and, for good measure, consumed). Thank you for your concern.