busy Saturday!

It was pouring this morning, a reminder that the cold, rainy, dark days of winter are upon us. Rachel is coughing upstairs as I write this, a reminder that I'll have to drag out the humidifier to moisten the air. Which means I'll be stuck with washing it every couple of days and refilling it -- ugh.

As I was getting breakfast together, I noticed that we only have a few slices of artisan bacon left (I can't bring myself to buy the nitrate-filled stuff at the grocery store when Drew has turned me on to artisan bacon at the farmer's market. However, we can no longer afford the farmer's market so I've stopped buying bacon. Which means we have none to get us through the long winter. Yet another reason to anticipate Drew's return).

"We running out of bacon," Rachel observed.

Then I remarked that she didn't like the blackberries I had put in her lunch bag this week. (I ended up eating them for breakfast this morning).

"I don't like blackberries," Rachel said. "I like strawberries better."

After breakfast I dropped off some dry cleaning, took Rachel to a consignment store and bought a few items for her, then went to a pastry place to buy our breakfast scones for the next few weeks and THEN to the grocery store. Whew!

When I sang her to sleep for her nap, she said a soft "yay!" at the end of "Roll on Columbia." Then, after the first few words of "Red River Valley," she interrupted me to say, "I LOVE that song!"

When she woke up we went my friend Suzanne's house and had dinner with her, her husband Steve, and daugther Lila. Lila is a few months older that Rachel. Suzanne and I have both left the Oregonian; she now works at Portland State writing for the school's Website. She's expecting another baby soon, a girl.

The evening almost ended before it began when Rachel was freaked out by their small dog, Mochi, who raced out to greet her, barking and trying to lick her legs. Rachel screamed and screamed, and I had to take her into a living room chair to cuddle while Steve gracious took Mochi over to a neighbor's house for a playdate. (I really have got to get Rachel to accept dogs or else she will have NO FRIENDS in the entire city).

After that incident we had a lovely time. Rachel and Lila actually got on quite well together except for a few distressing moments when Rachel took a toy or two that Lila wanted to play with. At one point, Rachel was wheeling around Lila's dolly carriage and Lila was wheeling around a toy car and they both stood in one place, stomped their feet and rattled the handles of their respective vehicles and absolutely shrieked with laughter (Lila louder that Rachel, probably because she's older?). It was sooo cuuute!

Then we all moved to Lila's small room and watched as Lila and Rachel played with Lego-like building blocks. At one point they both decided they wanted to build tall towers and it was a joy to watch them as they worked. The whole night made me feel a little less lonely in the world.