Oceans of Rain, Oceans of Laundry

Hello Lovelies! Okay, so I DID miss this week AND last week's blog installments. But it's been quite busy around here! After an odyssey of paying and waiting then paying and waiting some more--several times over the course of a long, hot summer of hand-washing--I FINALLY got a new laundry center! It fits into the spot for it (right next to the linen closet) absolutely perfectly. There's even a little room for the kitchen table leaf, which I was worried there wouldn't be:) Ah the joys of being almost 40:) You finally get to buy yourself a big, fancy present--but it's a major household appliance. I've made my peace with the unfairness of it; I'm happy to be the age I am and fully capable of handling stressful situations that drag on and on and ON! Needless to say, this past weekend was all about doing laundry, and I'm still working through it. But now I also have big baskets of beautiful, good-smelling, clean, fluffy laundry to put away as well as the dirty laundry still in my closet to be washed. You win some, you lose some:) Then yesterday was consumed with a vet visit for my cat, then a long coffee visit with the friend who drove us. It weas probably the most time my cat had ever spent in her soft crate, and it was outside! I think the sun tired her out, even though she was nicely shaded by the black walls and mesh "ceiling" of her crate. She fell asleep twice while we chatted! I was so proud of her for handling it well:) Are fur-baby moms allowed to be as proud of their babies as human moms are of their human babies? Well maybe not AS proud. Very close. Today though, the slight breeze and serious thunderstorms of yesterday and last night have softened to an all-day rain. This is why I finally have a moment to check in, and also why it's so late in the day:( I may have stayed up too late last night, listening to the rain and praying for sleep, then enjoying the rain all morning as I made up my sleep deficit. It's so wonderful to see the Fall colors back and hear the distant call of birds as they fly off to points south. We really should have ALL been born with the aability to escape so easily:) But of course only birds were BORN with the ability. We were given the option instead--we just had to solve the puzzle first:) And we did. Hence a LOT of the people I know from church I only see about 1/3 of the year. The rest of the time they too have flown south to their homes in warmer places. The rest of us are just glad of quiet, slower days like this, when we can get things done right where we are, and take care of ourselves from home. A steady rain always helps; like God and Nature BOTH telling us to take a minute and look around to accomplish things we've been putting off. Like piles and piles of laundry!