I had a maple scone today in Winchester Center. That's my weekly soft spot, at this point. I'm generally being pretty true to my diet, but it's nice to take a long walk, and have a maple scone. And it's not a short walk, either. The round trip is between four and six miles. So I work it off in the process. I take Katherine there, and it's nice, because there are a lot of people about, Starbucks has a bathroom I can use, there's lots of benches, and a few parks both there and on the way. I can do a little shopping, and get out into the day. Today it was a bit hot, but not too bad. Katherine was in a perfect mood. I try to take her on walks after she's had a good nap, because then she stays awake for most of the time. She likes to sit up in jogger, gripping the shelf in front of her and peering out. It's very cute. She usually takes a nap at some point. Today, it was the walk home. She slept for about a half hour.

She is now very, very close to crawling. She gets on all fours, moves her hands forward, then pulls either one leg, or both forward, and takes another step. That's as far as she gets, but she's still trying to figure it out. I think within a week or so she'll be moving around a lot more.

OK, so the patio furniture arrived this afternoon, and I spent an hour or so before dinner setting it up. It's very nice, and I'm still pissed at Sears, but at least I have it. Oh yeah, if anyone knows where to buy a patio umbrella based for a Hammond patio set, please let me know. Yeah, right.

So anyway, my garage was getting really full of boxes. It's scary, these occassions when recycling week rolls around and I realize that I have, like, 200 boxes in my garage. And then I start thinking, wow, how can the stock market be hosing when I'm clearly propping up the economy? Anyway, I'm a good doobie, so of course since the recycling circular from the City of Medford says they all have to be broken down, I spend an hour in the garage cutting them all into 1x4 foot strips, and tying them up. So a garage full of boxes is rendered as, like, 4 cubic feet of dense cardboard strips on my front lawn. The sad thing is that I know that I will see ten bazillion unbroken boxes on the drive to work out of my neighborhood, and that they will all be taken away, so why do I bother? Because the good doobie comes in last, that's why. The week I decide not to cut them down will be the week they don't take mine away, but clear all the neighbors.

Anyway, Katherine was a dreamboat today. She was so happy. She usually has her fussy moments in the evening, but tonight was pure energy and excitement all evening. It was really nice. Kara told me that she was so happy and playful that she had to actually leave a meeting she was in this afternoon because everyone was focused on the baby. I wish I could have seen that.

Anyway, she continues to get closer to crawling. It's quite funny, really. She'll get down on all fours, but she doesn't realize she has to work her legs, so she'll walk herself down to sitting flat on the floor on her stomach. She also sometimes goes backwards. But she is highly mobile, and you can't take your eye off her for a second, or she'll get in serious trouble.

Oh and also, since we didn't get around to ramming our patio umbrella up the backside of the customer service department of Sears, our set will actually arrive tomorrow, um, I think. So that's good news. Except we still don't have a base for the umbrella. Why should you even care, though? Well, you should care that if you get invited to a party at my place, I won't have to steal, um, borrow my Dad's stuff, and so I'll be generally more rested, and ready to rock.

Well, it was a nasty day for Kara and Katherine today. Katherine is teething pretty hard now, and so she's much more cranky. She cried a lot when I was home, but went down to bed pretty well. We keep the baby Tylenol handy, but it doesn't always work. Tonight was the first time in a long time that she just cried, and there wasn't much we could do about it. But we still love her, she's just very high maintenance right now.