I was going to take a photo of the shawl, but it’s only six rows longer than it was last time I shared a picture. In six more rows, I get to leave the ribbing section behind for now and go back to the mosaic design. So, hopefully next week there will be something discernible to show.

On the bookish front, I’ve picked up Pride and Premeditation, Tirzah Price’s riff on Austen’s most famous novel. In her version, Mr. Bennet is a Cheapside solicitor and Lizzie occasionally helps look into cases for him. Mr. Collins is his self-entitled barrister and Charlotte Lucas his secretary. Hoping to convince her father to officially hire her on as a barrister, Lizzie pursues a murder case, in which one Charles Bingley is accused of murdering his no-good brother-in-law, Mr. Hurst. But Lizzie must contend with the most irritating barrister already on the case, a Fitzwilliam Darcy.

I’m also still listening to Queen Elizabeth and her assistant private secretary, Rozie Oshodi, work out a murder mystery. (Or, now, it seems we might be up to three, although only one of them has happened on castle grounds.)

Back in June I decided to splurge and take part in That Artsy Reader Girl‘s #GiftmasinJuly swap. I assembled my box and shipped it two states over, where it arrived just at the end of July. My recipient was kind, specifically calling out some of the fun, random things I’d picked for her, as well as books from her wish list.

This week, it was my turn to be showered with gifts. Look what a great job Jana did with the wrapping! That framing does not happen by accident, and I pointed that fact out to Corey.

Things with my original Santa hadn’t worked out and while I’d been disappointed, I understood that can happen once in a while. The swap’s host, Jana, however, was unwilling to accept that someone hadn’t gotten a box. She reached out to her legions of followers, and she and ten of her elves pitched in to send Corey and me fantastic gifts.

I’d had a long day, and was happy to space out the opening of my gifts, but Corey was having none of that. He hopped right up on the chair and immediately plucked a gift for himself and ran off with it!

I retrieved the package, but decided we could open that one next. A ha! A peek under the wrapping showed me that he hadn’t picked that gift at random!

A whole family of mice toys to play with! Corey thought it was great that he could take them all with him to lie on top of in case I thought I should get to play with them! (I finally cut one loose for him this afternoon for ease of tossing around, but left the other three together for now.)

After that, he was perfectly content to leave the rest of the packages to me. And I drew out the unwrapping in between chores and a nap and supper and going to bed, because a long, crummy day deserves to be followed by an equally long period of delight.

And look how delightful that is, nearly 12 hours later! Four books, including one I’ll save for December and three that I’m going to have a hard time picking amongst for which one I read first. They’re all exactly the sort of books I’ve been enjoying since the world shut down. There were two new nail polishes (I had to talk myself out of painting my nails while on an all-staff call today, but I will probably reward myself for getting through whatever flooding comes my way tomorrow). There were two new pairs of socks — one with Jane Austen and one with doughnuts! There were new pens in cheerful colors and chocolate to make the next long day easier! And then Jana also included local goodies — Stephen’s cocoa mix and Lehi Mills brownie mix. (Jana, Rudi is at his mom’s house in Salt Lake as I type this, and he immediately brought up Footloose when I read him your note.)

I don’t know that I could have asked for a nicer care package for #GiftmasinJuly. Thank you Jana! And thank you to @Mrs_Ally_Kent, @shek1029, @elleyotter, @hermitlibrarian, @xbackstagetweet, @DaisyKatieReads, Anne Phelps (who I know IRL, but who didn’t know it was me she was pitching in to help), @bookishallison, @literaryetc, and @pageoflovealexa! Your kindness went above and beyond, and really helped to turn around a bad day and to set a better tone for many days to come!

Today’s day can be summed up as “too long; didn’t post.”

Stop back tomorrow when I’m going to tell you about the amazing #giftmasinjuly package that came in the mail today from some very kind people. It may have been the main thing to have saved my day.

This weekend was a weird one. With Rudi being gone, I’d anticipated it being full of sleeping late and eating junk food and watching Jane Austen movies. But with the ceiling leak (it turns out the upstairs neighbor’s dishwasher had gone bad), I had to change some things around.

I did a lot more cleaning this weekend than I’d planned (too bad there’s still so much of it left to do!). Sadly, none of it was laundry, because the washing machine broke on Wednesday night and the promised repair technician from the machine rental company has not yet materialized.

I didn’t attend either the protest march or the craft fair in the neighborhood, but I did get to the Rock Creek Kings concert in the park. I also returned some books to the library, hit up two grocery stores and the farmers market, bought some flowers at the garden center AND planted them, and went swimming. Given the pool closes for the season next Monday, I should probably make an effort this week to wrap up my days on time and get in half an hour on the non-stormy evenings.

And there was pretty much no tv or movies of any kind all weekend. But I did knit some. I finished a book and started another. And I squeezed in some work, because I have new people starting this week and I’m behind on deadlines, and I just needed to put a dent in things so I could stop feeling so stressed.

How was your weekend?

Since today was spent cleaning and hanging around the apartment while our handyman worked first upstairs and then in the Burrow, tomorrow I’m going to spend the day more widely afield, including at the farmers market and at the pool.

I’m also going to sleep in, in my bed, rather than on the couch, like I did last night, in case the water dripping through the ceiling light decided to cause an electrical fire. (It did not.)

My ceiling is leaking.

Yes, I do live in the basement, why do you ask?

(I have banged on the upstairs neighbor’s door (but I think she may be away), left phone & text messages for the landlord & handyman, and emailed all neighbors in the building. Pretty sure I’m out of good options until morning…)