Great times with two special families…and finally making good on an idea hatched back in January.

(You know you’re busy when it takes five months to get together.)

We cooked up a couple of ginormous lobsters, John grilled some steak for the non-lobster eaters (we had two…due to allergies, pour souls), and the kids loved it.

I did not. I love the eatin’ hate the killin’.

We had a four-legged guest, too. Dosie was less than enthused.

Sweet girl…

Sweet girls…

…and terrific friends. Proof that your house doesn’t have to be neat and perfect to host a gathering…just open.

…work.

Work hard.

It’s been a tough week, finding reminders of my Old Man around the house…washing the kitty bed only he used (can’t bear to part with it yet), cleaning off “his” section of my kitchen counter, where he always ate his supper, and folding the soft blue blanket and putting it over the back of the couch like always – but not really “like always” because I know he’ll never get up there again.

So, we worked hard. Got ready for the painters to come, unloaded dressers and bookshelves and vacuumed, and swept.

And dusted. Ugh.

And when we (and the painters) were finished, we had a beautiful, tranquil guest room ready to go.

Not so bad, I guess.

And then we went to a wedding (truly:  every bride is beautiful, yes?) and had a great tapas evening … followed by fire, and conversation, and Life with Spectre.

Life goes on. *

* Job 1:21b

I said goodbye to my wonderful, persnickety, beautiful and loyal friend this morning.  I had him with me for nearly half of my life, which is a long time.  

He laid claim to a piece of my heart, and it will always be his.

Deadeye
30 April 1992 – 3 May 2010

* French Proverb.  And so true.  This is my favorite picture of us together – taken by John just before John and I were married  – a very happy memory.

Sundays are pretty much the same every time around here. John & I are especially happy to keep to the house and spend time just with each other since he’ll be gone for an extended deployment very soon.

Anyhoo, we usually get up in a hurry, John makes the coffee while I grab whatever I can find for breakfast (cereal? leftovers? nothing?) and then we run out the door to church.  By 11:00 a.m., we’re back and we either work on the yard, work on the house, head to work, or if I’m lucky, I head to the barn.

Today we picked out paint for several of our rooms we’ve been trying to finish, John hung up a hunting-scene carpet and did some other handy-man stuff, I planted some petunias and hung some up, and we took in a Rays game (Rays won!)

And the breakfast was special this morning – apple pie courtesy of John’s mom.  Even plucked from the fridge shelf in a hurry and eaten plain, it is just as delicious.

Eighteen-year-old Siamese on inspection duty is, unfortunately, not a rarity.  I told John he’ll miss that pesty little critter, too, though.

…and that would be…Margaret Adele Ball Craig.

She was my grandmother (and Armour’s, and Andrew’s, and Sara’s, too…)

I attribute my love of cooking to her!

She gave the best presents – always from a silly character that had a small reference to the gift she was giving you (like “Oliver Twist” the year she gave me a beautiful wooden spoon) and she loved Julia Child before it was cool.

She knitted complicated sweaters (saying she liked knitting because it was ”like doing a puzzle”) and loved peonies, a good mystery novel, and a dry martini.

Gin, please.

She would have been 94 yesterday.

I miss her.