103/365 Swimsuit, Really?

She was freezing. It's like 70 degrees and the sun's going down. But she wanted the swimsuit.

102/365 raised bed right before filling

I don't have a photo of it filled. Once filled, you don't see the trash rock almost at all. And the hostas planted in it will cover the rest. I'm very happy with it.

101/365 Purse Snatching

The phone rang. It was Bobbie from across the street. She said she had to get Nate to school, but that the woman who lived next door--in the Friedmans house--had her purse stolen right in front of the house just then.

I put down the breakfast dishes and rushed to the front of the house. The police were there, taking her statement. Bobbie went on:

"Yeah, she was walking to her car and this guy walked up the sidewalk, grabbed her purse, and ran down the street. She started going after him, too, and Kyle called to her not to, I mean, really."

I get off the phone and think about complacency. We've gotten sleepy between the sycamores. It's been 4 years since any crime worth calling the police about has happened. That one was a doozy--an assault on a neighbor and Jake during the National Night Out Against Crime block party (yes, we do irony here, no extra charge). I watched the cop get in his car and drive away. She went back into the house.

I felt bad. I didn't even know her name--and I know EVERYONE'S name around here. I grabbed one of my little MOO cards, you know, those half-sized business cards, and walked across the street. She was on her phone on the porch. She took the card.

"Email me," I told her. "I'll get you on the block list and stuff."

"Thank you," she mouthed back to me. I ran back across the street to get girls to school.

It's been more than a few days. No word from her--but also not much sign of her. I need to try again.

100/365 Little bit in the middle

Daisy makes the big girls crazy. Bree, Eliza, Iris, and Fiona get together in groups of two or three usually, and oftentimes I let Maeve go with.

Oftentimes it doesn't go well.

If they play outside, there's a chance. Playgrounds, sidewalks, pools, walks to the park--those have a better success rate. But inside Eliza's house? She wanders downstairs to chat with Gretchen and Nick, use the bathroom, sing...and then go back upstairs and wreak havoc with whatever the older girls have started. I figure similar things happen at Bree's house. She's 5 (almost 6). The older girls are 9 and 10. It's just too big a difference still.

But I always offer to call Joy and see if Bonnie Dee can play and this is often met with "BUT I WANT TO PLAY WITH THE BIG GIRLS!" It's hard to be little and it's hard to be in the middle. Things could be going better for Daisy, over all. School is kicking her rear, she's not on the top of the heap socially at school any longer, Leo is taking time away from me and Jake, and Fiona has all sorts of privileges she just can't have yet.

Bonnie Dee is in the same boat: two older brothers and a younger brother and just started kindergarten. I need to guide her in that direction more. They could kvetch about their dang families and what a mess everything is.

99/365 Raised Bed II

So I worked on it through the afternoon. I'm 3/4 the way done with the walls, which are dry stone/stacked wall, but secretly held together with liquid nail of some kind. This is what I did in the front next to my stoop, the tiny strip of land between my steps and the neighbor's gangway steps.

I've used up all the waste rock from the cairn, and that area all cleared out is making me incredibly happy. This week, after it rains tomorrow, I will finish this, line it, and fill it with dirt. The hostas will go back home and be happy.

98/365 Raised Bed

It's time for a couple of raised beds in my backyard. My porch is two-tiered. The lower porch is about two feet off the ground and two feet from the western fence, as seen here. I love my backyard with this porch added on. But there are some logistical issues. To begin with, the gap between the porch and the western fence has some lovely large leafed hostas growing in it, but you can't see them because the porch is too tall. And back, behind where this photo can see, is a water spigot on the back wall of the house. That's not a problem, but it means it's a place I need to get to pretty regularly (pool, sprinklers, the watering system in the back garden is a drip hose). And it's awful. There's a huge pile of busted up concrete and this ugly holey rock that we took out of the yard when we moved in. It's a cairn. It's 3 feet high. And the concrete path is covered in vines and debris. It's depressing to walk into the house by the back door and glance down to that sight.

So I'm doing a few things. I'm building a raised bed the length of the porch, with a gap between it and the western fence to store that danged ladder in. And I'm building it out of all that waste rock, since it's a spot where you won't see the walls of the raised bed anyway. And once that rock is out of the way of the spigot, I'm spreading a sand base over the mess of cracked concrete and waste dirt and laying some concrete pavers. Something I can SWEEP. Something that will stay neat.

97/365 Storm coming in

Mah jongg winds down quickly. We all look tired--a few of us are teachers getting back into the swing of things, almost all of us have kids doing the same thing. We play 3 or 4 hands. I win one. Since Gretchen wasn't there, we didn't have to play until she won at least one hand. Some nights she demands two.

It's my set and I offer to leave it, but really, there are only a few women who play there that night--me, Zelda, Cicely, Jackie. Jen knows how to play but nearly always declines in exchange for conversation. And there are two newcomers--Wendy, and Brenda's new tenant, whose name I've forgotten. I half-heartedly attempted to teach, but my will was weak. I wanted to play a bit and go home and sleep.

"I want to get home before that storm comes in," Jackie said as I made my excuses. So we cleaned up the set--you can play with 3 but you can't with just two. We said our goodbyes and headed across the street, down the street, next door, over there. Lightning flashed, illuminating the dark corners by our porches and next to our cars.

The door's unlocked and I tell Zelda goodnight. Jake's still upstairs on the computer, watching something on netflix. I join him. The storm comes in.