March 28, 2007: Thoroughly Thursday

My day today:  I didn’t have any work! Yea! :o) Briefly:
Walked the dogs.
Coffee with Constance in the garden:  first sunny morning for ages.
Mower to vet:  Mower is now MOLAR-LESS. Friends, if you have a cat, keep on top of that tartar! Buy special cat toothpaste and use it!
Went to Constance’s and made a barrier out of old wood for the door, thus preventing Dodo from wiggling back inside the house.
Went to Lourdes: made Chocolate Chip Cookies. Between batches (tiny oven, nine cookies at a time) I cut out squares of fabric to make a ‘samples’ folder. Thus the guys can choose which fabrics they want to use which I will then bring the next week--saves me from bringing all my fabrics up to Lourdes for eight months. Of course, I had to bring a third of it to Lourdes in order to cut sample squares out. I’ve been meaning to do it at home for weeks and haven’t yet: quilts must be finished by November 1^st” tempus fugit, and all that. One guy was folding ‘ghost money’ to burn on ‘Ching Ming Jie’ (Tomb Sweeping Day) which falls on April 5^th this year (I will hopefully do a blog about Tomb Sweeping Day early next week). He was folding the paper into little shoes, similar to Dutch clogs (‘sabots’?) I thought they were pretty neat!

Here’s a photo of cookies from today in a cookie jar that was given to Lourdes by my friend, Jerri. Jerri will be returning to the States at the beginning of May and has kindly donated a bunch of stuff to Lourdes, including a sewing machine (Yes!), a yogurt maker (Yes!) and an ice cream maker (Yes!) We love Jerri!!

Dinner at home (mmm, leftovers!) Dodo is officially installed in her outdoor dog house and not too thrilled about the change in accommodation. She spent a fair bit of this evening alternately whining pathetically and giving short, sharp barks in order to remind me that I had forgotten to let her in. Dodo is the dog who pees anywhere and everywhere. Dodo is not suited to live indoors!
Up to Simon and Constance’s for a glass of wine. I introduced Sophie (8) to the pleasure of the monster drawing game, you know: Each person draws a head on their paper then folds the paper so only the neck is showing. You trade papers and draw a body, folding again so only the bottom of the waist is showing, etc. She thought it is a fabulous game! We watched two episodes of ‘Sean the Sheep’, a claymation show. It is utterly charming and quite amusing. Similar to ‘Wallace and Gromet’ without the dry humor.
It’s 10:23 and time for bed. I have a cloth-back copy of ‘The Man in Brown’ (from the orphan’s book sale) to begin before I turn out the lights. It’s a copy from 1946 and has that musky, old book smell. Happy Amanda!