Sunday ramblings.

Ah, what a lovely day for cleaning out the linen closet! Which is what I did this morning. Also sorted Todd's clothes, and dusted our bedroom. I guess I'm in fall nesting mode. I sorted out a bunch of books for disposal on Friday...it's truly scary when a person can remove 150 books from her shelves and it isn't really a noticeable difference. Yikes.

Todd is pressure-washing the house in preparation for some trim painting later this fall. And after my burst of activity this morning, I'm hanging out in my study pondering fall craft projects and cruising the Internet and chatting with my cousin Roland on Facebook. And blogging.

Tomorrow it will be eight weeks since my surgery and I'm doing just great. I have a haphazard method of taping up my incisions as recommended by the plastic surgeon, and massaging the incisions with Palmer's Vitamin E lotion, as recommended by the nurses at the breast health forum I read. Hopefully the combination of the two methods will result in a reduction of the Frankenstein effect I'm sporting right now.

Other than the tape/massage, and still not doing any strenuous lifting or tugging, I am completely back to normal and working on losing some more weight. Baking pumpkin scones and cinnamon rolls is not contributing to that effort much, but those are things that feed the soul, so I'm making allowances for them, at least until my Tuesday weigh-in when I can see how much harm they've done!

One unforeseen, and slightly frustrating, element of my reduction is that very few of my old clothes fit well--but now that I am raring to buy some new clothes, there is nothing in the stores that remotely appeals to me. In fact, the last few places I've looked, the fall fashions have been actively hideous, like the designer was trying to offend the eye on purpose! So I'm waiting it out. Sooner or later I'll find something I like, and till then, I'll just keep trying to go down another size.

My friend Beverly has started writing a column for a local news site. She's covering mortgage information right now, but hopes to branch out into other topics. There are tons of articles on the site, on every topic you can imagine. She's an excellent writer--go check her out!

I re-read a very sweet book from my childhood this week called Miracles on Maple Hill. I know I read it back in the day, but I had almost no memory of the story as I re-read it. It has a tremendous amount of detail about the natural world, especially wildflowers, and it made me feel a little bit sad to think how few people today would have the wealth of information about the natural world that the kindly neighbor in the book, Mr. Chris, has, and that he imparts to the main character, ten-year-old Marly.

What made me even sadder is the thought of how few people have the opportunity to amass such knowledge--the knowledge that comes from living in a place your whole life, and that your parents and grandparents lived in, and having their knowledge in your bones as well. Mr. Chris is out every day walking through the fields and forests and observing and working in the natural world. When the book was written 50 years ago, it was already an endangered lifestyle...now it seems almost archaic.

Fall seems to be truly here-some days are quite warm, but that breathless, sweltering humid feeling is gone now. And the nights--and most days--are cool enough to have the windows open again. This time of year is so wonderful in Virginia.

Off to make some turkey meatloaf for dinner.