Sunday

I spent a very lazy day today, as I kind of like the chance to do on Labor Day weekend. By this evening, though, I got better. Banged out the entire lawn's worth of mowing in less than an hour and a half, including a good break for cold water. Have done the dusting, which just leaves counter top scrubbing and sheet-changing to do, as I've already planned to leave Swiffing and vacuuming for tomorrow. And put down a good scene for the second novel. Now THAT is productive, and of course nothing else feels like writing does.

My Conference is in less than a month now; amazing and difficult to believe.

And today would have been dad's seventy-third birthday.

I haven't made a German chocolate cake in eight years, which is strange to contemplate.

Stranger still is that, now that I think about it, eight years ago at his birthday I was dating the last guy I ever *did* date, before E. He didn't last terribly long - though longer than he "should" have - and I met E less than a month after we broke up. Strange and yet not so, that *that* was so long ago.

I really like German chocolate cake. But THIS weekend, I'm trying to LOSE weight. That stress/unemployment poundage has been proving responsive, but not to the degree I would prefer, and getting it just-gone has been a frustratingly elusive goal. I don't want to ditch the extra only to welcome it back. I want it gone, like it was for the year and a half I held it (and even ten more of its companion pounds) off so successfully.



The weekend has been good. The time of year my father loved, as a teacher, and the weather he reveled in, as a man. "Glorious" he would have called these past few days, and he'd have been so right. The sort of days it is literally good to be alive.

Work doesn't beckon tomorrow, so I get to do the floors at my leisure, along with getting a haircut ... and, after that, whatever I choose to do. I'm thinking Virginia Museum of Fine Arts - I haven't seen its renovations and expansions, and I love that place - and perhaps some Roma for dinner. Their marinara is low guilt, and incredibly satisfying.

Then again, their pizza is slammin' too. Surely spinach and feta isn't TOO bad to indulge a little ... ?