Thursday night, I stayed up too late. (Oh, shush! I know!)

I had probably just dozed off, curled up around Rudi, when I heard Jeremiah trilling at me from my side of the bed. It was not his normal trill, but I figure that he wants to curl up and is disgruntled that I’m in his spot. He frequently trills and has been known to mix it up.

I woke up enough to say, “Okay, sweetie. Lie down.” I patted the pillow above my head.

I heard a tap on my pillow.

I do not know what deeply seated natural instinct made me think, That’s not right.

But the next thing I know, I’ve let out a loud “Eep!” (Rudi, whom I awoke with it, assures me it was not an “Eek!”)

Jeremiah had dropped a cockroach on my pillow.

Now awake, I turn on the light, carefully grab the pillow and carry it to the bathroom where I groggily attempt to flick the cockroach into the toilet. I fail and we both scuttle off to our respective corners to nurse our injuries — real or imagined.

I mean, I’m glad that Jeremiah hunts bugs down. But did he really need to share it with me? And in the early hours of the morning?

Gah!

(Welcome to Monday, folks!)

I think I’m going to join two new reading challenges:

Maggie Reads is hosting the second annual Southern Reading Challenge. I intended to sign up for it last year and failed miserably, so I want to make up for it this year. The challenge is to read three Southern works between now and August 15.

My selections will be (with the option of switching out books):

• Mules and Men by Zora Neale Hurston
• The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
• The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

The second challenge is the Non-Fiction Five Challenge, which runs through September.

Again, with the option of subbing in other selections, I’m hoping to read:

• The 20-Minute Vegetable Gardener by Tom Christopher and Marty Asher
• The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner
• Why the Wind Blows: A History of Weather and Global Warming by Matthys Levy
• Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy through Jokes by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein
• Walden by Henry David Thoreau

Conveniently, I owe a blog review on the advance reader copy of the Levy book, so that should get read shortly, and I’m supposed to be reading Walden with Karen as we speak, so this should spur me to alleviate the guilt I feel every time I see my copy of it sitting on my desk.

Folks, this is my thousandth post. [Huh. Apparently WordPress doesn’t care to document that event and has skipped ahead to 1001.] I can’t believe I’ve written that much — and that you’ve kept reading! Thank you! And here’s to a thousand more (just not all at once)!

But you didn’t come here for accolades. It’s Thursday, so you must have come for the three beautiful things:

1. May 9-16 is the busiest birthday week of the year in our household. Happy birthday to all these beautiful friends: Rudi’s Penny, Eri, Jenn, Kim, and Rudi.

2. On Sunday, I visited the National Geographic Society’s museum for the very first time. (It’s a really cool museum and I foresee it being the subject of a My D.C. in the near future.) But, people, the reason it was so beautiful? Frogs. Hundreds of frogs. I took photographic evidence, but to whet your appetite, they ranged from giant bull frogs to these tiny peach-colored frogs that were the size of my pinkie nail. Amazing!

3. Sunday also offered us delights at the farmers’ market including the first strawberries of the season. We snapped up two quarts and have been parceling them out with dessert each night. Tonight we had them on ice cream sundaes.

As a note, I’ve been documenting three beautiful things every Thursday for more than three years now. Think that’s impressive? Clare has been doing it every day for four years. Please stop by to wish her a happy blogiversary.

Sooner or later, someone is going to notice that I haven’t posted about books since the end of last year. (Or, conversely, no one will notice because no one cares. Unfortunately, I notice and I care, because I constantly refer back to my past book posts, so I just feel guilty with each day that passes without a book post.) So today, we’re just going to say, screw it and go with what we’ve got. This post will be ridiculously long because it covers the first four months of the year. So, feel free to skip it and come back tomorrow if you aren’t into the reading thing. I promise my feelings won’t be hurt.

(more…)

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.