Raindrops keep fallin' on my head.

Or they would if I ever left the house. Rainy, rainy, rainy. You wouldn't believe how much rain we've had the past week.

Not as much as Baltimore and D.C., but still! It's fascinating, too--you wouldn't even need radar pictures to tell you the rain is sweeping across in bands. It pours, peters out, almost clears up...and then you notice the sky has darkened again and the clouds are gathering to the west. Then it's pouring again.

Our normally-a-trickle creek down at the bottom of our yard is quite swollen. Last Friday we got about three hours of torrential rain, and the creek rose a good three feet, spilling out into the ravine like a little river. It's not that dramatic this week, as there are lulls between the cloudbursts. It's pretty full, though.

I've been checking other bookmarked blogs today, and it looks like June is a slow month for many of us. I could plead busy-ness the first few weeks of the month, but lately it's just ennui. Not sleeping well, not eating well, feeling very clouded over, just like the skies. It's a mild depression cycle, I recognize them quite well by this time. Nothing feels very important, or like it matters very much. I'm waiting it out, and figuring that a week in Ohio over the Fourth of July will ease me out of it somewhat.

When I come back from Ohio, the crackdown will happen. Time to take care of myself...I don't know why it's so hard to be good to yourself, but I suck at it! Probably because all the good things you have to do for yourself don't sound like fun--eating right, exercising, staying on top of finances, keeping the house tidy, yada yada. But they really make a difference, and I know it.

I'm enjoying the rain. It's a nice change of pace from hot, sunny and humid. We definitely have humid, but the temps are reasonable, and the cloudy skies make the house feel cozy and safe.

My new blog!

I decided to start a food blog, with recipes and food memories. It's called Fresh Sweet Corn--check it out!

I've been wrestling with Blogger for a couple of days, trying to get a few more pictures up. No luck yet, and I have a headache tonight, so no wrestling tonight. We got a massive thunderstorm through here late this afternoon, and the headache came along with the change in pressure.

Our creek has swollen awesomely with the couple hours' worth of heavy rain. Looks like a small river down there. Todd is very excited.

I got an e-mail from Simple Scrapbooks the other evening, asking for a layout for their December issue. As SS is my very favoritest magazine, I was pretty pleased! It's a page I did about baking fruitcake and my memory of the home-baked fruitcakes my grandpa used to send us.

Taught my at-home scrapbooking class today with four students, which is about all the dining table can hold anyway. We had a splendid time!

That's it, I'm beat.

Where I've been.

We waved off the last of our June guests yesterday morning. Todd's sister Lisa, her husband Tony and their girls Evelyn and Anna were here for four days, and we had a super time.

I was eager to spend some one-on-one time with the girls, especially Anna, who is almost two. Distance and work have really limited the time I've been able to spend with her in her short life, and I wanted to make up for that this weekend.

Anna is busy, busy, busy, but we did have some fun moments blowing bubbles and digging in the sand. We worked on naming "Aunt Janelle" and "Uncle Todd," and she completely amazed us, as they rolled down the driveway yesterday morning, by waving and saying quite clearly in her two-year-old dialect, "Bye, Aunt Janelle! Bye, Uncle Todd!"

Evelyn was my sidekick all weekend, which was great. I've spent a little more time with her, as she's almost four, but it's been few and far between, and she's always been a tiny bit shy with us. That was completely gone this weekend, and we colored with crayons and sidewalk chalk, tossed the soccer ball around, blew bubbles, had tea parties, cooked together, and watched DVDs together. She's just a pleasure to hang out with.

Here's Evelyn and Anna at the Yorktown beach:

The weekend before last, my parents, my sister Jenita, and her kids Tanner and Kylie paid us a short but action-packed visit. Dad had been promising the kids that he'd take them to the ocean this summer, and they were beyond excited. We went to Sandbridge beach, and I have never seen two kids have more fun than they did. Tanner and Todd jumped in the waves, and Todd showed Tanner how to boogie-board. Kylie looked for clams and crabs and other critters, and did a little small-scale boogie-boarding, too. It was such a fun day!

I'm having technical difficulties posting pictures all of a sudden, so I'll finish updating later. Stupid Blogger.