With a multitude of really neat options for tonight, I’m at home with the kids about to watch a DVD (“Meet Joe Black” as it happens). Beth is still not well and it turns out Bryan has a Choir concert in Woodbridge tonight.

Spent the morning with Annie helping clean up a yard so a wheelchair ramp can be installed for a family where the grandmother now has multiple sclerosis and the grandson has muscular dystrophy. It’s amazing how much yard work a mere 12 people can do – particularly when several of them are guys. We took two truck-beds full of yard waste and several trashcans to the county dump and there’s still a major load by the curb. I’m so glad I live in a townhome. On the other hand, I learned that Bryan likes it when I do gardening. At least, I assume that’s what elicited the hug and the comment “You are more precious than rubies” when he found me spreading mulch left over from the morning’s activities around our azaleas.

The Elders were supposed to come eat with us, but Bryan had to leave for his concert before they would get here. And it’s against the rules for them to be in a home if there isn’t an adult of the same gender present. So we packed up the food for them to take with them. Honey-steamed carrots, whole-grain rotini in a mushroom/garlic/mozzarella ‘sauce’ and cut bits of hot dog (taking some shortcuts). Then there was yogurt in token of the ice cream they would have gotten had they eaten at our house, and a bottle of pomegranate-apple sparkling stuff (from Ikea).

Bryan’s been reading me a book (“The Sharing Knife: Beguilement” by Lois McMaster Bujold). It’s irritating because the ‘voice’ keeps trading between the female lead character and the male lead character. And they have (in one day) fallen in ‘love’ with one another. So they are constantly thinking about ‘things.’ It would bother me in any case, but the female lead has just had a miscarriage. The morals of the piece really bother me. I guess it is also because I have just been writing a miscarriage myself, and I’ve had a miscarriage. Somehow I don’t recall the experience being consistent with the desire and arousal being portrayed in the book (PG-13, but still