To-Do List

Inspirational song: Da Doo Ron Ron (v. Shaun Cassidy)

I wanted a day off. I really did. I pretended I was going to get it this morning, when I wandered around in PJs until noon, waiting for my headache to go away. (I think there might be a lot of Saturday headaches for a while. Our neighbor smokes meat on weekends, to go with the beer he brews. Smoke is a trigger for me.) I lazed around, read a novel, and drank way too much coffee. But my to-do list is just too long to take an entire day and do nothing.

I've put off emptying any new boxes for weeks. My vacation from unpacking is over now. I got back at it this afternoon, and once again I am left wondering how I managed to collect so many fancy dishes I rarely use. I need to have a tea party or wives coffee or something equally prissy. I have more Spode cups and saucers than I will ever use. Perhaps I can utilize them for egg nog this winter. They are about the right size for that (unless you're a machine who can consume more than about six ounces of the stuff without getting a stomachache -- I'm not). When I first saw the pass-through cabinet with the glass doors in my kitchen, I was so happy that I would have a place to put my great-grandmother's crystal pudding cups where they would be visible, not hidden in a dark wooden box where I would forget they exist. Not that I make a lot of pudding, generally, but I have discovered how easy vanilla custards are to make. Now I have a goal, and a cabinet full of reminders to achieve it.

It has been at least two, maybe three weeks since I bought a last few herbs to go in the garden. I've had two kinds of mint, thyme, and parsley sitting in tiny little nursery pots, drying out when I forget to carefully water them. Every day for a week, I've said to myself that I'd get out and plant them so they don't die. Finally today I checked that off my list. Once again, I worried that there is not enough warm weather left for them to get established, and for the several hundred tomatoes to ripen before first frost. I feel like I'm in a race with the sun. Not sure I have a chance of winning.