Yeah, I know. The Court’s a bit boring these days. If I’m here, I’m tired and uninspired. If I’m away, well, I’m away.

I made homemade bruschetta with pearl onions and tomatoes right out of the back garden last week. Piled it on freshly baked focaccia and couldn’t stop eating it. That ended up being dinner for me. I used Lu’s recipe, roughly, but used lime juice in place of the red wine vinegar. I don’t think I put any herbs in at all. Just tomatoes and onions that tasted like sun, plus sea salt, the olive oil, and freshly ground pepper.

The editing/second draft work on Orchestrated continues apace. I’m at the Oh Noes Accident And Hospital part of the story, which means I think I’ve bridged all the [write this bit here] gaps that I needed to bridge. I’ll find out as I continue on, but I seem to remember everything being pretty straightforward from this point to the end. This could, of course, be an entirely falsified memory cleverly crafted by my subconscious in order to maintain sanity.

With the air conditioner installed as of last Saturday morning, we are blessedly free of the high heat and humidity warnings that are piling up. And as an added bonus, I no longer hear the landscaping crews and power tools working outside. We were trying to make it through the summer without installing it, and really, we did very well. The summer has been cooler than usual, but apparently the weather’s making up for that with a vengeance. Yesterday around six o’clock the thermometer in full sun on the back porch read 42 C/106 F, and that was before factoring in the humidity. (Putting in the A/C unit two weeks before September. What is this world coming to?)

Camping last weekend was lovely. There was plenty of tree cover to shade us from the sun and a very good fire pit on our site, which ended up being the central gathering area for everyone. Lovely new people; and so the (co!)coven grows. The only bad part of the experience was arriving to find the fire pit still smoldering, which means the people who used it before us weren’t responsible. The not sleeping well and waking up in lots of pain wasn’t great either. But everything else was enjoyable. There were many marshmallows roasted.

My spinning wheel still has not arrived. I am antsy and cranky about it, as we are rapidly coming up on a month since I ordered it. I was hoping to have it by Saturday, as that’s when we’re heading out to the Fearsranch in Alexandria for an overnight, and both Fearsclave and his Wicked Old Step-Mother want to see it. Of course, the WOSM has just gone out and bought her own gorgeous double-drive double-treadle Schacht-Reeves Saxony wheel, so we may end up geeking out together over hers instead of mine, as was the first plan, or comparing the wheels, which was the second plan.

I have a cello lesson tomorrow night. I need to play for a while today.

This is the boy’s final week of part-time preschool. As of next Monday he is full-time, which means this Thursday is his last day with the caregiver, and Friday is his last weekday at home. We’re going to go see Ponyo together to mark the occasion.

So yeah. Not very exciting, here. Mostly tired, with a side of exhausted.