Come One, Come All!

"And then I'm going to go and get lunch in one of these gorgeous new restaurants!"

Said I to my sister Ruthie on the phone this morning.  Well, and I didn't make the lunch date with myself, but I have merely shifted the time back to dinner, and I will go and get some food in one of these lovely new restaurants in a few hours.

What I did instead of lunch was a glorious two-hour nap, from which I awoke with no sign of bleariness or the pop-eyed catatonia which is usually my fate when my naps last longer than half an hour.  See, I awoke this morning at four, as per usual lately, and was unable to go back to sleep at all, so I got up and made myself coffee and started in on the house.  And I had finished it -- FINISHED IT! -- before ten.  Ten was when I heard the first sounds in the apartment of anyone else getting up.  Not a sound from upstairs or next door until then, so I had perfect peace -- the occasional car driving past out on the road, the occasional chirp from the walnut tree outside the window.  Six hours of beautiful, solitary progress.  Oh, and I took my time, as anyone who knows me knows.  My inherent laziness and general fatness and sloth keeps me from passing an inviting chair if my back has begun to ache.  And I had several cups of tea as the morning progressed, and read the rest of a book I had started reading last night, and so on.   I listened to Nero Wolfe on tape as I folded clothes away into plastic bags for the Goodwill pick-up, stacked shoes into the shoe bag,  scrubbed at a stain on the carpet, and hung the shower curtain around the clawfoot.

So now I am ready to receive visitors!  Come one, come all!  I am expecting Doug and Kathy tomorrow, Alan and Jody the day after, and POSSIBLY Joe and Katt and Jamey this afternoon sometime.  Probably not those last visitors, though.  Hard to believe that Joe will actually drive into Northwest Portland!