Karen's Birthday!

Yesterday, Karen had a birthday celebration at home. She had the day off, and decided to spend part of it working on her trailer. Meanwhile, William and I put some finishing—well, not exactly finishing, but advancing—touches on the back deck so that she could safely get out onto it, with chairs and a couple of small tables, to have her birthday dinner of shish kabob and fresh corn on the cob.

There were no rails on the deck, but it is big enough at about 9X10 feet that we all felt safe sitting on it, except Tom who decided to eat by the window, close enough for conversation but not hanging out eight feet above the ground.

Thomas made a delicious chocolate pie, and William made some rich chocolate fudge. Notice a theme here? All-in-all, while we didn't get the deck done, I think we gave Karen a nice birthday.

Tomorrow is back to school day, and also William's first home game as a member of the Kingswood Knights Junior Varsity Soccer Team. There was supposed to be a game Friday, but it was cancelled because the other school does not have enough players to field a junior varsity team.

It's going to be an interesting school year. Both boys have to be on the bus around 6:15 in the morning, and get home around 2:45, though William will no-doubt be staying after for soccer practice, and Daniel may be staying over for cross-country training and competition. I'm not sure how his schedule works yet.

We still have two cars for three adults, two of whom work retail, with unpredictable hours. It makes for a lot of drive time. Fortunately, the Wolfeboro Library has Internet-connected computers that I can use to keep up on writing if I have to wait in town for anything, though it doesn't help much with songwriting (library patrons tend to frown on people playing the guitar and singing unfinished songs while they're trying to read and study—go figure).

And as for the deck, the boards we put down for the birthday dinner will be unscrewed and laid aside while we put up the remaining posts and joists and build the framing for the stairs. I also am probably going to have to pour a concrete landing. But we're well underway, and we almost know what we're doing, and since I don't have to wait for an inspection, this shouldn't take long.

And least it seems that way now.