The problem, of course, is that none of this stuff will necessarily survive the winter. I plan on covering it with black plastic when the frosts come, but I don't expect they'll do that well. I guess if I'd really thought about it, I'd have dropped them in planters and then planned to bring in the planters. I just don't want to deal with planters in the house with Little Miss Busypants.

We cleaned the fridge out. The owner's sister and the sister's boyfriends apparently weren't terrific housekeepers. I'm not the queen of clean, but it was pretty grodie. There were eggs of questionable origins in there and the freezer had hamburgers so freezer-burned they could have been barbecued via freezer. Of course, in the process of cleaning out this hellhole fridge, we set off the stupid ice maker, which isn't hooked up to water with which it could make ice, but yet it chunks like hell all the time, trying to make ice out of air.

And then there was the dreaming.

The first night, after we got the kids to bed, Mike and I laid around in each room talking about where we'd put various items of furniture. We spent hours looking and talking and planning.

Sometimes there's nothing more lovely than the voice of your best friend talking about his dreams and the things he loves.

We figured that we'll make the room by the fireplace the kids' playroom. We'd originally said, "Oh, we'll make that Mom's sewing room and Daddy's piano room. Then we got real. It's the room by the slider and the YARD! It'll be the place where the toys are. And we'll have area rugs. Lots of area rugs to protect the carpeting.

We ate at the counter and it worked pretty well, so we'll be continuing that tradition. Mike was under the mistaken impression that we'd eat in the dining room where the carpeting is. I merely stared at him in slackjawed amazement and laughed. "The kids? Ha ha! Eating *guffaw* over carpet? *wheeze* Are you nuts? *peals of laughter*" His reply,"Oh, yeah. Good point."

Most of the painting is done, but the master bedroom toilet needs to be fixed and there are some fixtures that aren't quite back up yet.

The owner's father died this week, so it's okay. It'll happen before we get there.

We're still trying to work out the details of when we are going up again, but that'll happen probably the week before Mike graduates. I may go up with the kids by myself and leave him home to study. We'll see.