Welcome to our blog!

It's been a gorgeous week, the kids have spent it exploring the creek and Steve and I are wading into a *major* declutter/reorganization of the garage, followed hopefully by the house. We've actually hired someone to help us (I'm hoping it will help us to stay on top of nascent mess to remember how much money we spent to shovel out and rearrange years of accumulated stuff). Meanwhile, Steve keeps trying to get me to read his latest book, "A Perfect Mess," which I'm resisting mightily, as I don't want to believe that mess and chaos is good in any way, shape or form (but for the sake of marital harmony, I'm going to have to break down and check it out...)
We've got a dumpster out front that's already half full, after an afternoon's satisfying work (which is usually where we stop, leaving entropy to regain control of things.) Monday, Iris, the organizer, arrives, with her gentle but persistent questions about whether we really need to keep stuff that we haven't used in X number of years...

Oh, and how can I forget the most exciting event of the day -- the great celebration of Harry's heroism! He came downstairs last night to find our 4-inch-long plecostomus lying still on the floor under the aquarium. He went tearfully back upstairs to tell Steve, who ran down stairs, picked up the apparently dead fish, and felt it arch under his fingers. Plop! He tossed it back into the aquarium, where it sank to the bottom and flared it's fins and looked fiercely excited for the rest of the night. Phew, what a close call. Steve and the kids made up a song (to the tune of the Winnie-the-Pooh and the Blustery Day song, Hip Hip Hooray for the Heroes of the Day, Piglet and Winnie the Pooh Bear!)

"Hip hip hoorish for the saver of the fish,
We're so glad that Harry found him,
Because we almost lost,
Our dear plecostomus,
He flipped outta the tank and the air nearly drowned him!"

(I'm afraid the meter just doesn't work on that last line, but what can you do...)

A crown and cape was made, Maddie pulled him up and down the sidewalk in a decked out red wagon and a cake was baked. (and Dear Plecostomus is still with us -- I dreaded to look into the aquarium this morning and find that he had succumbed belatedly to the stress.)