controlled by sweaters (for 2 years)

Some days I just feel fat and itchy and gross and old. I think it's allergies.

On the bright side, I have recently begun typing while looking at the screen instead of the keyboard! This is a huge step, and I didn't even try, it just happened one day!

Actually, today was one of my best days this whole summer. Yesterday was too. I read. I napped. I practiced. I made our bed. I worked out. I cooked dinner. I enjoyed clean floors. Both days I did all that. None of those are things that I usually get to do. Never in a normal semester, and most of the time not even in the summer! And today, Steve bought me the first season of The Road to Avonlea! It was a big surprise! I think this is my first summer where I am actually relaxed and organized enough to enjoy a little time off. I mean, I've had time off before, but either spent it worrying about something, or putting off cleaning my house. Usually both.

A few days ago, I put my sweaters in the attic, and that changed everything. It freed up a shelf in my closet, (which then got to hold all my extra bath stuff, which made my bathroom use-able again, which made the downstairs bathroom not full of my makeup and toothbrush) AND freed up the floor of my other closet, which means my shoes are no longer all over the house, which means my hanging clothes are accessible, which means the important clothes are no longer on the living room banister waiting to be worn. I now have a living room that does not look like a closet, which makes it much easier to clean up the pet hair every other hour when it gets bad. (Okay, not really, but almost.) And since all that is done now, I have time to practice, read, and nap, like a normal person who doesn't have kids yet.

One shelf, one box of coats and sweaters in the attic, and my entire life has changed. It's wonderful. And my cherry tomato plant has three bunches of little green tomatoes on it now.

Anyway, I am perfectly content, but still rather itchy and bloated and old-looking today. I need to go take an allergy pill, and perhaps a glass of wine.

Palm Beach looks a lot different these days...

Today, Steve came home from his errands with flowers for me!!! :) A wonderful bouquet with orange roses, purple mums and alstroemeria, tall green grasses, (which my Kince loves to bite) and these green fluffy, tuft-y blooms on long stalks that remind me of the trees Dr. Suess books. It's beautiful and wonderful and I love it. :) He always brings me flowers when I am least expecting it, and they make me soooooo happy.

He also brought me another surprise! A poster of this picture:


Isn't it wonderful? It's Palm Beach in 1905. He saw it on shorpy and just knew I would love it. I do! :) He is so sweet! I am going to frame it and hang it in our bedroom, on an empty wall where I could never quite hang the right picture. I am so excited. :)