"and now my fears they come to me in threes"

mea culpa. i am sorry that i have deprived my six faithful readers of my words this week. i have been preoccupied and distracted with work and my houseguest, isa. i shuttled her the airport on friday at 8 p.m. her visit was mostly welcome. i worried a little -- well, you know me, a lot during her time here...whether i was providing her enough or too little company, fresh air, transportation, iced tea, vegan food, fresh towels, clean linens, sunshine, and on. you know, the whole raft of things that i dwell on.

i got up in the middle of the night because i heard jasmine doing something scratchy in the kitchen. she does this thing that scares me so flipping much. as you might know, one of the many reasons i should never be allowed to be responsible for young children is that i hover, convinced that the little life will be snuffed out while i am not looking. this must be an irish feature of my DNA? (miss bird would say that this always happens in the irish memoirs and fictive accounts she reads...pops is down at the pub on the bottle while mum changes the sheets at home and finds a wee little one dead in bed.) but i digress...

i now live with a dog that weighs 135 pounds and likes to lie prone, spread eagled, totally and completely still in all manner of contorted positions. she looks like she has broken and twisted her spine, and died barklessly, paralyzed on our hardwood floor. it is: so. totally. terrifying.

i should add that jasmine was totally fine. the aforementioned noises were likely figments of my imagination. i warmed a mug of milk, sprinkled some of sarah's very very fancy fancy vietname$e cinnamon in it and shuffled back to bed.

but first i logged on to the interweb and found these two pictures of the little round people in my family. my parents, their pappy and grandmama, decided to photograph things one and two each month in seasonal poses. i think that this is obliquely related to my mother's lifelong habit of decorating the bulletin boards in her kindergarten? at any rate, for your viewing pleasure, the may and june photos are posted herein. my father no doubt posted them to me because the subject line promised: MOON RIVER. i cued the mancini, and found these two.

i am so grateful that patrick and tracy decided to have children and i count my lucky stars that the RNR are so adorable, healthy, compliant (mostly), and photogenic. can you stand how flipping cute these are? almost as photogenic as madeline. and no, i do not know one thing about your eight letters P-I-N-K B-O-N-E. and my parents don't either. i would never ever involve them in a scheme to post packages and be your secret admirer.

i think that barb + mike are marrying today. i am so happy for you two. i am so happy that i could sprinkle very very fancy fancy vietname$e cinnamon over you both. and then i would christen j.b.w. with some too because i think that today you embark on a big trip to go to the o'keefe estate and bake some ideas in a minimalist adobe oven? blessings on you all.