Mother's Day: The Sacred and the Profane

Last year on Mother's Day, we were in Chicago, and Claire was with us in the middle of her journey back to Claremont from Goucher (along with her friend, Kelsey). It was a most memorable day of church, chocolate fondue and experimental theater.

This year also contains the sacred and profane (so far!). This morning was church with a lovely service. This afternoon was the movies and ice cream. Hal and Claire took me to see Star Trek, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I'll leave it to my readers to decide which was sacred!

Claire brought me home these lovely sunflowers and something she made herself - a venti vanilla chai latte - iced. Liesl sent me something she made herself - one of her special hand-drawn cards. I love being a mom to these girls!

This evening we will attend the MicroFest at Pomona College featuring music by Bill Alves and Lou Harrison. A full and memorable day, indeed.

Lazy Saturday

After the crazy last weekend, I didn't have anything scheduled today. What a treat! After I watched the Dodgers shut out the Giants (!) and before dinner, Hal, Claire and I took a walk through Old Claremont. Here are a few photos from our wanderings. I especially enjoyed this piece of yard art (below).

Weekly Cottage Report

The drywall is almost complete! The kitchen feels more like a real room now. Although we had wanted a tankless water heater, the gas line out to the cottage was not wide enough, and it was too much to replace it, so we are putting in a regular water heater. Our contractor got it from another job where they are replacing theirs for a bigger one and sold us this 30-gallon one for less than half price.

I put a few more pictures on my Picasa site....

Surprise to me....

Today while standing in the line at the public library, I happened to glance at the poster advertising fall events for Claremont: On the Same Page. Friends of the Claremont Library choose a book each year for people of our fair city to read and discuss. The library hosts various events, including a talk by the author (if possible). This year the book will be The Soloist by Steve Lopez. This is the book on which the current movie is based; it is about a schizophrenic musician who studied cello at Julliard, but ended up homeless in LA. True story. I read the columns in the LA Times several years ago when Lopez started writing about this man.

Anyway, to my great surprise, I saw that one of the events would not only be a talk given by Michael Lamkin (the conductor of the Claremont Concert Orchestra in which I play), but that there would be two musicians performing, including me! The other musician is my cello friend, Lynn, so I had to call her to see if she knew about it. She did, but didn't know that it would be in print! So, I guess we have until October to pull together some Beethoven duets! At least Lynn and I get together weekly to play for fun, although we usually play Celtic music.

Mid-Week Stuff

• Today was my third and final morning in Room 7 helping proctor state exams for third graders. I thought we had already discussed torture in this country...
• Drywall is going up in the cottage! There must be 4-5 guys here working every day.
• A columbine has bloomed in our garden (see yellow flower).
• I counted seven snap peas in my vegetable garden!
• After eating dinner on the patio again, we took a bike ride this evening looking for a supposed women's lacrosse game, but never found it.
• We got the first disc of "I, Claudius" on DVD from Netflix today.
  

Cinco de Mayo

With our personal chef and shopper home, we were treated to a Cinco de Mayo dinner tonight. Claire enjoyed her last day of vacation before her summer job at Starbucks starts by riding her bike to Trader Joe's, cleaning the kitchen, and making us a delicious vegetarian Mexican dinner. It was also quite warm today, so we enjoyed our dinner on the patio.

Yard is Complete!

At 7:30 a.m. Saturday, this Wolfinbarger truck came down our driveway and dumped a rather large load of mulch. Many hours and wheelbarrow loads later, we are now declaring our backyard landscaping job Complete! I have added pictures to my Picasa site for viewing. Now I am anxious for summer vacation and time to spend enjoying our new living space.

Weekend, Part 2

Today started with 5 hours at church setting up the luncheon, and clean-up, then a brief rest before the Sunday afternoon version of the concert.

I'll be glad when the work week starts so I can rest!

Busy Weekend, but Claire is home!

Claire made it home on time last night and is now sleeping off jet lag and a looooong plane ride. Hal and I are getting ready to get 21 c yards of mulch to spread over our yard and 1 c yard of red dg to put on our succulent garden. I also have prep for confirmation luncheon this morning as well as a concert tonight. So much for sleeping in today!

Later - - - It was an exhausting day!

Visible Progress

The guys have started putting up drywall in the cottage. Today they moved the kitchen window a bit to the east so that it will be over the sink. Not that there's much of a view out that window....