My brain is blanking.  I’ve been running around doing errands and stuff around the house, and it seems like nothing has actually been accomplished.  This might be due, in part, to the pond vacuum finally arriving, and the particulate it was supposed to remove having become too small to be vacuumed out.  It’s a metaphor.

I arranged for my Oral Proficiency Test to be proctored in Toms River.  Not only can I take it earlier, but I don’t have to go to Yonkers.  Got the dog groomed.  Petco diplomatically expressed that they don’t want her to come back.  Dropped off towels and bleach at the animal shelter, and brought no new animals home.  Grocery shopping.  Manicure.  Washed forty million loads of laundry.  Took the kids out to buy books.  Reseeded the front lawn.  Blew all the tree debris off the patio.  As dull as it is, I’m wondering how I’ll get as much done once I’m employed.  Eh, I know how – I’ll spend less time doing nothing.  Depending on the cash flow, maybe hire people to do a few things.  Teach the dog how to mow the lawn and vacuum.

So. . .we finally got around to organizing the stuff in the Garage on Saturday.  Considering how much crap we’ve accumulated, and what it looked like before, it’s pretty darned good.  All the boxes of stuff (both stuff that belongs in the garage and stuff that doesn’t) is stacked neatly, together by where it’s supposed to end up, and now you can walk through it without being a circus acrobat.  Big props to hubby, who did the bulk of it!

Sunday, we headed up to Bloomfield (after working on Carolyn’s Tower of London Rollercoaster project).  Parties at Gayle and Barry and Sophie’s house are always relaxing and fun, and we and the kids all enjoyed ourselves.  We also got to pop in on some of the old neighbors.  We feel only a tiny bit guilty for leaving you all. . .heh.  We miss you, but there are other people we don’t, and it’s so quiet here. . .Gayle had to remind me that my old house is just that.  I looked at the front garden, overgrown, with the Joseph’s Coat rose blooming furiously, even though it had fallen over and laid flat on the ground.  The pond that I’d put so much love and care into was a mess of string algae, the poor water lily clinging to life.  The lawn, which we had spent a huge amount of money to be regraded, seeded, and maintained, was three feet tall.  I had to step back and realize that the things that had been precious to me were just that – precious to me.

One of the side trips we made yesterday was to Fairfield Garden Center.  There are a lot of places here that sell pond stuff, but none of them have everything I want the way Fairfield does.  So, I had plopped the plants into the pond in the dark when we got home, but I rearranged them this morning.  Later, I dug up some more moss and put it on the rocks, since I love the way it looks.  We also tore painter’s tape into thin strips and used it to mask out mortar lines on Carolyn’s Tower of London, then spray painted it with rock texture paint.  It looks quite cool.  We tried hitting the beach, but could stand it for only about an hour because it was wicked cold.  How wonderful, though, to be able to live close enough to not feel bad about getting only an hour on the beach!  If we’d had to drive an hour to get there, and then paid almost $30 to get on, we would have felt horribly ripped off.  As it is now, we have our season badges, and we’ll pop out there on weekday afternoons for a bit most days of the week.  Woohoo!

Oh, and did I mention yet that I love bittorrent, and I love David Tennant as Doctor Who?  Probably not.  But I do.