one thing i haven’t mentioned is that when we got back, jim told us that the busy beaver was back at work again.  you may recall that he ate jim’s beautiful willow tree down by the water.

clearly the delicious willow taste made him hungry for more.  we have two old peach trees, and mr. beaver chopped down a big part of one of them.  kevin wrapped it in wire so he couldn’t take down the whole tree.

but mr. busy beaver didn’t stop there…there’s a giant oak tree near the peach trees, and he made a valiant attempt at taking that down, too.

it’s a BIG tree.  this isn’t such a great photo, but it gives you an idea of just how big it is.  mr. beaver is quite ambitious, i’ll give him that.

kevin wrapped wire around all the trees that mr. b. might be interested in, so he’ll have to go elsewhere to find something to gnaw his big teeth on.  jim said they have to gnaw or else their teeth will just keep growing.  that’s too bad, but like i said, mr. b. will have to find some other teething post.

lester p. helped me when i was taking pictures.

winnie helped too, of course.

we have this closet off the bathroom by our bedroom.  it’s a funny little space, and originally was the stairs leading to the attic.  i mean, it’s still stairs leading to the attic, but now the attic is empty.  i’ve had several odd dreams about this space, that i went up there and it was huge and filled with all kinds of great stuff.  i don’t think i was ever up there when it was my grandmother’s house, and mom assures me that it’s empty.

anyway, it’s stuffed with all kinds of bathroom debris, all the little bottles and tubes and band-aids and fake halloween black fingernails and many, many things that need to be sorted and THROWN AWAY, but instead we stash them in the closet.

before, when i’d opened the door, les paul was very interested and was desperate to jump inside but i discouraged that.

so, yesterday, i was taking a shower and heard something fall out of the closet and figured les had jumped in, scared himself with the stuff falling, and jumped out again.  when i got out of the shower i closed the door and turned out the light.

but then i though, hmm, where is he?

and there he was, perched on a perfect little kitty resting place on the very top step. that box on the left?  i think  it says “desk stuff,” and my parents left it in the house and it was stuff that my grandmother had and they didn’t know what to do with.  will it be there forever?  probably.  on the right are some paintings and posters and stuff, and in the middle is just the very top of the huge amount of stuff.

i finally coerced les to come down a coupla steps so i could lift him to safety.  whew, he’s a very busy kitty.

i wrote that i’ve been obsessively playing sudoku, but last weekend i had to put it away and go to a massage seminar in indianapolis.  amy went with me, and here she’s posing in our lovely huge room.  it doesn’t look so great in this photo, but it was a candlewood suites hotel, and had a full kitchen and was big and awesome.  the seminar was seven hours a day for two days and very torturous with the blah blah blahing on and on forever for a lot of the time, but on saturday evening amy and i went to a huge, spectacular city park near the hotel.  it’s something like 4,200 acres and has a big lake and an ice skating pond and all kinds of things.  we hiked for almost an hour around the lake, and then we went to a fabulous place.  amy had been busy researching movies and restaurants while i was in class, and she found a place called the cinema grill.  it’s a movie theater with little tables and chairs, and you can eat dinner while watching the movie.  we saw CRAZY, STUPID LOVE, with steve carrell.  i just went to humor amy and thought that at least the experience would be different, but the movie was SO GOOD!  surprisingly good.  i highly recommend it.

and now i leave you with a couple of pictures of the darling animals…everybody is always so tired around here!

here’s lester last night, when he was so exhausted from playing with his stick.

ok ok ok,

friday grace.