Dear Diary,

 We managed to get the rest of the house finished up and emptied today. I expected to help load the furniture but the girls seemed not to need my help. I went back and canceled the newspaper while the boys (my uncle, my cousin, and my other cousin's husband) disassembled the carport. When I discovered my uncle's back and my cousin's COPD brought them inside leaving my cousin-in-law out in the cold by himself, I passed the last cancellation job over to my sister (who had brought me coffee and donuts) and went out to help.

Dear Diary,

I couldn't get out of bed, but I wasn't up long when my sisters came knocking eager to do up my hair again. I turned them down, but ended up over there anyway. They crinkled up my hair with a different hair product from yesterday and raved at how pretty it was. I'm not sure, but I think that the constant raving about the amazing nature of a feature makes most girls pretty happy. I was a bit irritated and couldn't wait to get done with it. I thanked them because it was kind of nice to be fussed over, but I'm glad I don't have that done often. I escaped to the lobby with Dad's laptop to check my email.

Dear Diary,

Prologue to the next four days.

I flew to St. Louis. My sisters picked me up at the airport.

Dear Diary,

My written journal for today reads:

"Knitting that shawl is taking forever! [Insert story about J & how the pen & how that got all weird]"

The story goes...
My friend got a job teaching just after she got her degree. I started thinking she'd like a fountain pen, if only I could find and/or afford the right one. She's steampunk (very interesting pens to match this quality) and Victorian (there is one pen...just the one, but the absolutely perfect one--at over a thousand dollars). So I needed to compromise. I invited another friend (the aforementioned J) to assist and co-give this with me. So she and I spend months--months!--eliminating pens and narrowing down the qualities.

The pen she chose--she did the ordering--was offline, after she didn't check the pens I directed her to at a particular brick-and-mortar. It was, however, on the list, and she did remember to order a bladder, cartridges, and an inkwell.

When everything had finally come together (the shipments came all staggered and weird), she brought the box to knitting today, and anticipated my arrival. She brought it in and sat with it across from the reciepient. I was on my way. Unfortunately, I did not prioritize getting to the coffee house, and J had to leave to go to work. While I wasn't there, the recipiant was probing for an answer to what was in the box. J had two choices, leave the recipiant hanging and take it with her, or give it to her before she left, hoping I would arrive during the process.

When I got there, she had left. The gift had been well received. The giver was bummed I wasn't there, and I was bummed I hadn't been told there was a time limit.

Eh, it wasn't the most perfect gift-giving experience, but I had done it. We had worked together, chosen the perfect pen-and-ink combination and gave a "Congratulations! You're a Teacher!" gift to a teacher who'd been teaching nearly 5 months by now. I love that pen, and the time we'd spent choosing it was well worth it.

Now, if I only knew if she was writing with it...

Dear Diary,

It was the Open Reading night for the Professors of Mesa State Reading Series. I read first. The person who signed the page first signed halfway down the page. I signed halfway between her name and the top of the page. No one signed before me. I don't mind...I accepted that risk when I wrote it.

The kids were being watched by my husband's aunt, the first time we've ever asked her to do that. The way the extended family unit is crumbling is affecting even us, here, out of the way.

I had spent a few hours browsing the short bits my husband had selected during the day from my LiveJournal. That's where I keep the really good stuff, by the way. Or, where I kept it, anyway. I'm trying to bring that energy over here but it's a tedious thing to change one's habits and make one perform for people one knows.

Which is what I did tonight anyway. My bits were all short. I chose six. I read the one about my sister in the news playing baseball on base in Baghdad. I also chose the one about drag racing a cop. I read the one about how a successful progeneration is one that out ranks the intelligence of the parents.

It was a good night. I recognized most of the people I expected to be there, though the professor who told me I should read was not there and I was a bit miffed.

My husband enjoyed it much more than I thought he would, too. Maybe we have more open readings in our future....if only I could get him to read something of his own.

Dear Diary,

The family that is our family's friends came by. The whirlwind of stresses they relate make mine seem like cake. I don't always understand the decisions other people make.

This is a common comment about this family. One day, I will have something different to say about them. In the meantime, I will refrain from being redundant.

My neighbor stopped by when he returned from Las Vegas and making arrangements for his father. He seems remarkably composed. Hopefully grief does not disintegrate his ability to get credit for the classes he's taking this semester. I understand how one bad semester can end the pursuit of a degree.

Dear Diary,

It was a co-op school day, so it was just the boy and me. We walked to Main Street and logged cars by color and make. He didn't seem to like it much, but he's very good at recognizing a car before he sees its badges. He much better liked the bar graph we built to demonstrate the colors of cars we saw, and the pie chart that we made to show which make of car we saw most often. He's a boy of concrete data--just, someone else can collect it.