Fay's leftovers

We're getting a lot of rain here; it appears to be Hurricane Fay's leftovers. As a result, a dead tree decided to drop a limb or two yesterday, and it just glanced off of my car. I meant to label the photo "collision" but somehow I wrote "collusion." That was a weird slip! Yes, I think it's a conspiracy...that evil tree did this on the first week of term AND while I'm dealing with the book proofs! The tree needs to be taken down. I was hoping the professor would arrange to deal with it. No such luck. He's completely booked up with a short course with 8 AM lectures (yuck) and a semester-long late afternoon class. (Yes, we hate the department scheduling committee about now.) Oh, and my car isn't too damaged and is now parked on the road. We concluded that if the professor's battered Taurus wasn't also parked on the road that day? It would not just be battered, but beaten. Lucky parking, huh?....our cars do spend a lot of time resting on the street or in the driveway, since I work at home and the professor walks to work.

As for me? I don't really enjoy the detail-y aspects of proofreading. I'm observant, which may be a mixed blessing. I don't enjoy dealing with editing (it often introduces mistakes as it attempts to clarify) and it makes me defensive about what I wrote in the first place. I also find once I start being, umm, nit-picky, I can't stop. It's not a nice part of my personality. I look forward to the end of this proof business...I can say that Fiber Gathering is beginning to look like a real book, and it looks pretty good. :)

I've been distracted by a few positive things. Our new cedar chest arrived. Years ago, before we were married, my professor bought me a "hope chest," a cedar chest that I'd admired. It's handmade by the Graham Family and usually they sell their products at the Carrboro's Farmers Market. Over time, we've admitted that a knitwear designer accumulates woolens. A lot of sweaters...and those sweaters that might fit the professor? Take up 3 times the space of a normal garment. These cedar chests fairly reek of that volatile cedar oil, which dissuades moths. It also reminds, in a comforting way, of my childhood gerbils and guinea pigs, whose bedding included cedar chips, but that's another tale! Since we may well be leaving next spring,(assuming all the Canadian paperwork goes through properly) we decided to honor the good craftsmanship of the first chest, and order a second to match. I'm still learning not to walk into it, since there didn't used to be furniture there, but it's already got a few sweaters and two blankets inside. It'll be full soon!

The garden's squish plants that volunteered are revealing their secrets. It looks like we have one potential butternut squash...the weeds are mostly lemon balm that is taking over my yard in a very fragrant way. The other squash confuses us. It seems to turn darker green as it grows, and it is circular, with ridges. What do you think? Acorn? Kabocha? Pumpkin? How long will these take to mature? Squash gardeners, please advise in the comments...

Last, but not least, you should know that all your comments made this week's beginning (with the 6 AM grouchy professor wake-up) much more bearable. Thanks for all your kind words about my storytelling...and about that little boy. Although I love knitting, lately my hands hurt from all the projects I am working on...and it's not much of a living. Some day, I hope to be able to sell a book or two of essays, a novel or stories. Fiction or non-fiction, I really like writing. It's just hard to sell the stories, so for now, I am fitting it in when I can. Thanks for reading and for giving me an excuse to keep spinning yarns, woolly or otherwise!