Because that wasn't enough...

This morning we ran into the play group friend who witnessed the bad morning scene last week. Thinking I needed to apologize somehow for the ugliness, I said, "I think you saw me in one of my less pleasant moments." He had no clue what I was talking about and apparently had not really noticed what was going on, besides me waving at him from the car. But of course, having made that comment, I then had to explain to him what on earth I meant. It all ended up lighthearted and fine, but how embarrassing.

The outing on which we ran into the guy was notable in that it was a long! outing! in the morning! M seems, over the past week, to have switched over from two naps a day to one, and it is an unexpected thrill to be able to be out of the house from, say, nine to noon. It had crossed my mind that this switch was coming, but I hadn't anticipated how freeing it would feel. Yeee ha!

In other news, the zinnias in the backyard are blooming furiously; the magnolia sapling we thought would die is thick with big leaves; our lawn is brown and crunches when you walk over it; all three of my pepper plants have fruit on them; the catnip has gone to seed and been mangled by Lucy and the neighbor cat; and all of the sunflowers remain inexplicably stunted.

Oh! And the best thing—last week we got our hands on a rain barrel. Not an attractive wooden recycled whiskey barrel, but an ugly blue plastic one made locally from recycled materials. We installed it yesterday; now we just need rain.