Highlights of 15-21

It is nice and warm outside. Deverax wants very badly to climb into my lap and lick my arms. I am not enchanted with the idea. He keeps meowing sadly and tying himself into knots. Finally, he settles on the porch beside me and licks his own arms.

15- I packed up my room to make room for Hannah. I dragged a massive box upstairs and moved anything related to art inside. Now the box is full and very heavy and I am unable to move it. No-one wants to move it since it's the relative size of a night stand. The walls are empty, the mugs have been packed away, the bookshelf is full of my books and borrowed books. I honestly didn't know I had that many. There are even more books and mugs stored in the cellar. I cut an iris bloom and stuck it into my white pottery pitcher. There's a spiky snake cactus/succulent. I also bought tickets for girl's class. Talk about excitement.

16- I mailed a great deal of things out. I hope everyone got everything. I begged Bee to go into town with me. We checked out a new thrift store. We'd been told there could be dresses available. Alas, alas, the dresses bespoke of middle aged crisis. I did find two books and one mug, all of which came out to six dollars. The thrift store itself is white, empty, commercial. I don't like it. We drove into downtown Goshen. I went to a bookstore and came back out with three books, one on order. A matcha, the school kids, and back home. In the evening, hamburgers and hearty games of spike ball with the youth. I left with a bottle of Barb's kombucha.

17- I worked. It was boring. It took three hours. Wednesday's are almost always boring because it's slaughtering time. Bee immobilized herself and couldn't make plans with a friend, so her friend made plans with me instead. The friend bought raspberry sorbet for Bee as a sympathy snack. The friend, who has a name(it's Kate)and I went to Linton Gardens. I'd never been there before. It's a tourist attraction in Elkhart, with greenhouses and outdoor shrubbery and trees, a petting zoo, a pond with floatery, and a slide. They also have a large store with convoluted insides and a café. We wandered through the store--the café was closed--and through the greenhouses into the open. We petted the goats and the donkey and the sheep. Kate fed the goats and the sheep and I fed the donkey, or tried to. Then we sidled past the emu pen, where two emus looked at us sideways with intelligent brown eyes. We peered at the pigeons and the long haired chickens and the peacock. There was a fish pond with Japanese Koi, with no food in the box. Poor fish. All of this we did while waiting for the sprinklers to stop so we could see the infamous slide. The slide was a tunnel slide, with one turn. There was a wonky little house with a wonky door that opened to a ladder going straight up. No handholds. I yanked my body up after my arms and sat at the opening of the slide. I had to recline myself to fit. Down the slide I went. It was wet at the bottom and I dried it with the seat of my dress. Kate came down after me. We both went down twice and laughed loudly and hoped no one was watching. It was great fun.

18- the most normal day of the week. Balmy skies. Solitude. Ascension day--John and Enos took off. I made snack sticks with venison and a new seasoning blend. It smelled like my brother's dirty socks. The end result was not very good. No one liked them.

19- I worked a full day, went to a bar/family restaurant and ate a medium rare burger. It was boring. The volleyball game was boring.

20- Bee and I arrived at Country Lane Bakery fifteen minutes after my exboss and his wife left for an outing in Chicago with their friends. We left with Holstein cookies and Cinnamon cream sticks. From there, we went to Country Road Fabrics. I watched with considerable interest as two Amish men and one Amish woman drove up to the store in their electric bicycles and parked. One of the men borrowed the other's vape. The Amish amuse and confuse. We exited Shipshewana with seven pieces of fabric and some sanity.

At eleven in the morning, four of us youth girls headed to Silver Beach, Lake Michigan. At one in the afternoon, the rest joined us. It was windy and cold, with a uv index of seven. I think we all burned. We walked out to the pier a few times, played spikeball and volleyball, took walks, and some played in the sand. Keela and I walked for coffee in Benton Harbor. At seven, we sat down for pizza in a refurbished train station. The pizza was amazing, better than Venturi's in Goshen, imo. We walked out to the pier again, to see the sunset. It got darker and darker, and a fingernail of the moon came into focus. A lone boat bobbed out in the waves. We sang some songs out there and then we walked back out, hauled up the stairs and divided into vehicles to go back home and to bed.

I didn't sleep very good, on account of my sunburned legs. They are texture picky. I wanted to take them off and set them aside.

21- my friends, Kirby and Savanna were announced this morning, as well as Grant and Shannon. Congratulations, people.

Today was blurry. I can't remember very much of it. I do know that I finished Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies and C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters. I do know that I drove myself to Miso Japan for sushi and crab rangoons. I do know that I ate four rangoons in a row, a sushi roll, the first chapter of In My Mother's House, a dab of wasabi and a ginger slice, and the last rangoon. I do know that I'm sitting on the front porch, listening to the rocker squeak, the neighbor's children yelling, a cow making a racket in the barn, and a mourning dove. I do know that Deverax finally settled down in a gray puddle beside my feet. I do know that I'm ready for tomorrow. I do know that I can hardly wait to see my other sister on Tuesday.

I do know that all is good.