anticipation...

Lately, I've not been here much. I've been busy with other things. For starters, about a month ago I realized that I'd somehow acquired a nasty computer virus (Google Redirect). It took me a lot of time to figure out what I had to do to successfully remove that from my computer (it had messed with my registry files), but hallelujah, I finally succeeded, and when I did, I called Mike (who's always been my computer guru) and crowed about it. It seems like yesterday that I was hard put to figure out how to do anything on a computer.

Work has been...interesting. Why didn't I get my license and hang out a shingle? I wonder this at least once a week lately, as anyone and everyone, including my boss, seems to find their way to my cube to vent their frustrations. GENERAL PETRAEUS UPDATE: he asked her for $9800; she saw the light and turned him in to both Match.com and the FBI (or so she says).

But I digress. On the weekends, I've been doing my own usual spring therapy, meaning I've been hard at work mucking about in the rain (thank goodness for crocs!), working on the flower beds in the front of my house, which have needed a major overhaul. I've spent the past several weekends removing the old landscaping timbers (which I'm replacing with edging bricks); digging out tired, old plants and turning the Texas clay soil with a pitchfork, working in peat and sand and bedding soil. And after all that prep and redoing, I've planted cosmos and lobelia; Dahlberg and blackfoot daisies; bleeding hearts and angelonia and impatiens; and weekend evenings I've been listening to music and reading short stories by Salter and having a glass of wine and grilling steaks and artichokes for my dinner.

And all of that is good, but all of that pales beside the happy anticipation of a visit from Alex and baby Silas, who'll arrive in a few hours to stay for a little over a week, while Chris is off to Woods Hole for a conference. And so last night, when I got home from work, I drove to Target, where I bought fresh flowers for Alex and a Pack 'n Play for Silas that I spent some time assembling, so that he (and eventually, his younger sib(s) and cousins) will have a comfortable place to sleep. And tonight I'll have the pleasure of their company: everyone's coming here for dinner except Mike, who'll be sorely missed, but who's promised to come later in the summer. And I think of what an old beau once said to me: that coming to dinner at my house is like walking into the middle of a Woody Allen movie, right down to the dialogue. Yeah. I'm not sure he meant it as a compliment, but I took it as one. And as always, I'm looking forward to it.