Today is April 6th. I always notice when this date comes around, though I haven’t mentioned it to many people.

Four years ago, my grandmother died. She was terribly special to me, and I still miss her. In the months following her death, I often found myself thinking I ought to call and tell her this or that, or that I would put it in my next letter, and it always came as a shock that I couldn’t. It still happens from time to time, but nowhere near as often.

There have been a lot of changes in the family in the last four years–marriages, babies, cross-country moves. Life moves forward and takes us with it. The missing is no longer sharp and sudden, but gentle, savored because it also brings memories of traveling and sitting up close at the opera and her exclamations when I described a teammate’s injuries while playing Ultimate frisbee, and the day when she wouldn’t hug me because my dyed hair and painted face alarmed her.

Yes, that really is me.

I don’t think I’ve posted a picture of her before, so here’s one I’ve always liked. I was showing her plans for a quilt.

Three years ago, I wrote a piece in memory of her life, and I read it again every year. In case you’re interested, here it is:

In memoriam

My grandmother died a year ago today. I have not yet attempted to put my thoughts and feelings into words, though the pen or the computer is my preferred method of expression in most cases. At times I question whether I have truly grieved for her, but more often there is a quiet acceptance of her absence. I miss her painfully, at times. I miss her interest and her wisdom. I miss being able to write her letters. I miss sharing my life with her, and hearing her excitement about my crazy ideas. But I also know that she is in a much better place, and I will see her again. I know that she knows about my crazy ideas and is still excited about them.

Let me tell you about her.
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Well we’re here, and we’ve been here for a few days. We’re trying to balalnce between being tourists and being people relaxing in a great rental condo. Mom brought her sewing machine, and I brought all that fabric I bought last week (well, most of it) and I’ve been working on the quilt top while she puts together photo albums from our childhood. I think she’s caught up to about 15 years ago now. Still a little ways to go, but it’s been fun to look through old photos as she puts the pages together. Man, I had some really appalling fashion tastes.

We’ve explored the area we’re staying in (near Opryland, for any who are familiar with Nashville) and avoided real super-touristy things over the weekend. This morning we visited The Hermitage, Andrew Jackson’s plantation, and had a very nice time all together. I don’t know that I would have chosen there to live, personally, but it’s very nice, all things considered. Remarkable that six of the rooms have original wallpaper – 170 years old now – and the house has been a museum for over 120 years. It’s rather rare to see things like that here in the States.

Tomorrow we’ve got tickets to the Grand Ole Opry show, which we’re properly excited about. Later this week we’re also going to take ourselves on a tour around downtown, visit the reproduction of the Parthenon, and take ourselves down to the Belle Meade Plantation where several of America’s premiere Thoroughbred lines began. Those are the high points, but we’ll probably fit in a few other things here and there.

If you want to tune in with us at the Opry show, it’ll be broadcast on 650 AM WSM Nashville — also streaming live at their website at 7:00 pm central time. Tuesday night.

That’s about all. Matt tells me he’s been feeding the dog and he sent me photos of the pot rack he built and installed to hang out pots and pans in the kitchen, which are the two things I assigned to him before I left. It seems all is well.

Woohoo Nashville!!

1) The design I settled on had some very strange issues that I don’t have time to figure out how to fix right now, so we are settling for Choice #2. Yay birdie!

2) I don’t want to go to bible study tonight, but I’m going because my group is in charge of coffee snacks and I missed last week and I do like going, even if I feel like a slacker because I haven’t done my questions ahead of time for the second week in a row.

3) Most important: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MATT! Not that he much cares if I tell you all it’s his birthday, but I wanted to do it anyway. We went out for lunch and then went shopping (we tried to buy fun stuff, honest, but we ended up with socks, drain cleaner, and dishwasher detergent–we are definitely the life of any party). But really, back to the point: Happy Birthday. :) I will refrain from further mushy-ness now.

I got up this morning thinking it was a fine day for writing. Consequently, I haven’t written a thing.

I did make myself file our taxes, though, so at least that’s done. We get a refund–yay!–and it’s bigger than last year’s, which isn’t saying much, since we only got $7 last year. But I think that doing my taxes might have eaten my brain, because although I can think of three or four things off the top of my head that I could do (ranging from things I really ought to do all the way through things I really shouldn’t waste time on but that are usually fun), I have no desire to do anything. Nothing at all. No ambition, no drive. I could just sit here clicking “refresh” on my FaceBook homepage. Wait, that’s what I HAVE been doing for the last half hour.

So I thought as long as I was wasting my own time, I might as well waste yours, too. Generous, aren’t I?

Earlier this week, in the flurry of melodrama surrounding my laptop, I mentioned that I had an update about Bob2. Here it is:

I finally caved and dug out all the little glued-in rocks around Bob2’s base. I did this mostly with a rather long pencil, and even then Bob2 viciously attacked my fingers once or twice. His soil is now open to the air, and I added 1/4 cup of water right away, because he was very dry. I have a feeling that wasn’t enough water, but as we have established, I know nothing.

Anyway, there were a lot of rocks. I’ve kept them, at least for the time being, in case they come in handy for something. Here’s the photo of Bob2, freed of his gluey rocks, and the dish of rocks from which he has been freed. Beneath them is a page I pulled out of the newspaper with muffin recipes I thought looked tasty, and which served to keep my desk more or less un-dirt-ified while the glued-rock excavation took place.

So there you have it. Bob2 is, at least, not dead within his first month.

I’m headed to Nashville next week–any suggestions on activities I shouldn’t miss while I’m there? We’re pretty flexible on schedule.

And now I’m going to go be boring somewhere else, because you fine folks surely have better things to do. Have a good one!

I’m feeling almost alarmingly cheerful this morning. Maybe it’s because I think I’m finally catching up on my sleep deficit. Maybe it’s because I made lemon poppyseed muffins for breakfast this morning (YUM!). Maybe it’s because I’m caught up on all the pressing emails and online things I needed to catch up with. Maybe it’s because I fiddled with my GoodReads account so that it’s accurate and up-to-date, and I realized that I’ve read 27 books this year. Maybe it’s because, for the second day in a row, the temperature should rise about 70 today.

Maybe it’s because if my mood didn’t improve, I was going to shrivel up in my favorite fleece blanket and not come out for another two months.

Your guess is as good as mine. I’ve got a paper to edit for Matt, an article to read, and article to write for a newsletter, some critiques to work on, and maybe some crosswords to finish. Dinner tonight should be grand. One of my favorites: pan-fried polenta with veggies. Yum yum.

Okay, so that might be false advertising, because I’m not at all certain this will be a great update. But it will be an update, so it’s only 50% potentially false.

I’ve been reading a lot lately. I realize that some of you may laugh at such a statement, but I mean that I have been reading even more than usual lately, mostly because I haven’t been able to get my poor brain to focus on spitting out its own original material, so I’ve been inundating it with other people’s stories. I have no idea what I hope to accomplish in so doing, but that seems to be what’s happening.

In positive news, just in case you were wondering, Matt loves me. Do you want to know how I know? Of course you do! And even if you don’t, I’m going to tell you, because it’s my blog and I’ll cry if I want to. Oh, wait. Sorry. I had a Leslie Gore moment, but I think it’s done now. . . . Yeah. We’re clear.

But back to the issue at hand. How do I know Matt loves me, you ask? Because he cleaned the house today AND he made me gravy. That’s right, folks. Gravy. Chicken gravy especially for me to have to biscuits for dinner tonight, and enough to take care of dinner for both of us tomorrow night.

“But Betsy,” you say, “you don’t strike me as a biscuits and gravy kind of girl.”

Ah, and you’d be right. I don’t like just any biscuits and gravy. Well, chances are that I like almost any kind of biscuits. But gravy? I’m picky about my gravy.

That’s right.

And with that, I’m going to try to write a few more pages tonight. Because, you know, this manuscript has to get finished sometime.

Oh, and Bob2 is still alive, as far as I can tell.

Have I mentioned that I really like Double Stuf Oreos? Because I do. I know I shouldn’t, but I do.

Thing That Made My Day Today: Got home, picked up the mail, and found a thank-you card from our landlords. Just saying they hope we’re liking the condo and thanks for being such good tenants and here’s a $25 movie gift card so we can have a date night. Ha! How cool is that?? And srsly, they must have had horrible tenants before, because I don’t think we’ve been anything other than average, certainly not excellent enough to merit a $25 prize after two months. But hey, I’m not about to complain. Free date night! Whee! Have I mentioned I really like our landlords? Because I do. I really do.

Plan For The Evening: Laundry, and watching movies from the library while I eat my Double Stuf Oreos. And if catfish is on sale, Matt’s probably going to make me fried beer battered catfish. YUM. It’s a fine evening, folks. I’m going to enjoy it.

I haven’t been doing a very good job of following the news lately. No, seriously, I didn’t even know about a coal train that derailed within three miles of my house a few weeks ago.

But eventually I do hear about things, and the recent peanut butter recall was one that had me sending Matt to the pantry to dig out all his granola bars, because he always gets peanut-buttery ones. So he pulls out a CLIF bar and I read him off the dates that are supposedly contaminated, and he says oh, yeah, this is one of them.

And then he looks again in the pantry and says “That’s all we have.”

“Didn’t we buy a whole bunch a little while ago?”

“Yeah. I already ate them.”

I’m not sure if I can describe why, but this has me laughing so hard my eyes are tearing up. He ate them. No salmonella here, or at least none that affected him.

He ate them. *snorfle*

Good night to all, and may your accidental peanut butter eatings be as uneventful as Matt’s.

No, Shiloh has not taken over the household (though we have been making jokes to that effect). She would want belly rubs all the time instead of just every hour, and I have a feeling she’d require turkey for dinner every day, with bacon. We can’t afford that.

I am ashamed to say that in the last two–okay, three–months, any semblance of a normal daily routine has pretty much gone the way of the buffalo. In the frenzy of the last few weeks, especially, I’ve felt more and more drained because of strange sleep schedules and the lack of any unifying element to my days. Those of you who have spoken with me know how scattered I’ve been.

So I’ve been thinking for a while that as soon as I could (read: immediately after residency), I would make some changes. As it happens, it lines up well with a transitional point in Matt’s schedule since his spring classes start next week, so we’re both straightening up together.

Under The New Regime (henceforth, TNR), I will wake up no later than 6:10, do my 20 minutes of WiiFit exercise, eat, and do morning devotions by 7am. I will, five days of the week, write a minimum of 500 words–but I will aim for 1,000 a day. If I don’t hit the minimum, I’m not allowed to join our friends for lunch on Sundays after church. I’ll continue to read–at least one book a week. Matt and I will take the dog for a walk every evening that we’re both home, and we’ll sit down together at the dinner table and eat at least three meals together each week. I’ll be in bed, lights out (no reading!) by 10:30 if at all possible.

That’s deliberate time every week spent taking care of myself, my faith, my marriage, and my writing. Matt’s version is slightly different, except on the points that involve both of us, and we’ve agreed to hold each other accountable to our goals instead of just turning a blind eye.

The New Regime.

So far, things are looking very good. Day One of TNR is a wild success.

I feel I’ve been neglecting you. Let me make it up by showing you pictures.

This year, I think I’ve finally found the secret to the lovely kind of toffee that crunches and then melts on your tongue. The light brown stuff that’s always better than the dark, semi-transparent stuff. Not that the latter is *bad*, just that the former is completely fantastic. That’s right. I’ve made whole sheets of light brown fantasticness, and here’s the proof:

Also, Matt cooked his first turkey on Thursday. He did a fantastic job with dinner in general. . . he cooked everything, with my full moral support (I was napping on the couch). From the top of the photo, that’s stuffing, green bean casserole, turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry ice (okay, I made that the night before) and, down in the corner, you can see the gravy. Matt’s gravy is to die for. Srsly.

You might be wondering how Shiloh has been doing lately. I’ve been so busy I haven’t mentioned any of her recent cuteness. She got a new beef bone for Christmas (with jerky on it!), which kept her nicely occupied while Matt and I opened our presents. She also got a candy cane-shaped squeaky toy, which she loves. Sometimes she throws it for herself and then pounces on it. I think she likes its distressed SQUEAK!! when she pounces.

We taught her right from the start not to expect to get People Food. She doesn’t get it often, pretty much just when it drops on the floor while we’re cooking, and sometimes not even then. So she doesn’t actively beg. But she is aware of the possibility of food falling, and she makes sure she’s around in case it happens. We have given her a super-dog alter-ego. Everyone watch out, because Opportunity Dog loves turkey!

Allow me to illustrate.

You see how she positions herself strategically in the place where food is most likely to fall? She wedges herself in the funniest places to ensure her availability. Also, notice her innocent expression. My appearance with the camera didn’t distract her from looking up at Matt with puppy-dog eyes. No, before I took the picture, she was just standing there looking at the drawers you see in front of her. There, just in case. That’s Opportunity Dog for you, always ready to help.

And I know I’ve been delinquent about posting pictures of the new apartment post-unpacking, and I’m afraid I’m going to continue on that front for a little while yet, but I do have two photos from right before our Christmas party last week, so you get to see the living room.

Nice, eh? We like it. Of course, before too long, the Christmas tree will be gone.

Now I have to go finishing cleaning the house and folding laundry so I can concentrate on other work tomorrow. Toodaloo!