No yard pictures yet. I left for work early and got home after it was dark. Tonight I must stop at Home Depot for the fencing and a few plants and start filling in the fence line so the dog can go out there with me, so I'll try to snap a few then.

I need to go clothing shopping this weekend, in a most desperate way. I've been wearing the same few things to work over and over, and next week I have to go to Miami for a couple of days, so it's a good time to upgrade my wardrobe once again. I haven't lost a significant amount of weight in the past month but my weight has "rearranged itself" so that some of the size 10s are bagging in the butt in a most unflattering way. I need more skirts, lots more tops and some lower-heeled pumps. This of course takes shopping out of the realm of pleasure and into just another job I have to get done or else. And I cannot buy any of these things at Home Depot.

Work has been wildly busy, not always in a good way, but I can't say it's not interesting. I come home wiped out and I've been running on not quite enough sleep this week, and I'm feeling it as the week goes on. It's motivating me to finish the yard so I have a pleasant place to sit for an hour when I get home. I can feel my stress level rising and I know it's at least partly because I have not been exercising as I was - I'm getting plenty of exercise, dragging bags of mulch to the curb, moving garden hoses, cleaning pond filter, walking miles in the office - but I haven't been doing any Pilates or yoga, and my muscles are in knots again. I need to somehow work that back into my schedule - but it won't be happening this week.

Today is Take Your Yard Ape to Work Day. Oh, I can't wait - children running up and down the halls, getting bored, distracting everybody.... When did "Take Your Daughter to Work Day" morph into "turn the place into a day care center for a day?" I will refrain from my pithy comments about "Oooh, we have to open it to include boys" other than to say no we didn't have to and the original day was conceived with a purpose, but the part that really irks me is that it somehow stopped being a job-shadowing experience for more mature kids and became unrealistic entertainment for kids too young to appreciate it. In some local companies kids are entertained in groups all day, fed lunch and snacks, and rarely see actual people doing actual work. I am not sure how it is handled at my company because this is my first year there, but I know that at many big companies it has been completely distorted from a day of job-shadowing for girls to a silly corporate kids' party day that doesn't give the kids any idea what a work day is really like. I suspect ours will be much more low-key since as far as I know there are no official plans in place to entertain the rug rats. I hope so - I don't mind kids at work, when mine were younger my husband and I brought them with us on many occasions - I mind deeply when it's turned into a corporate rah-rah-party event that has nothing to do with letting kids see their parents at work, and involves kids too young to care or behave. There, I'm done ranting about that subject.

So now I'll rant about this one a little more - the importance of establishing your own credit history early in your adult life. I cannot imagine where I'd be in right now if I was trying to start my own financial identity at this late date, but I know I'd be struggling, as so many women suddenly alone in their forties find themselves struggling. We don't think of these things until we're confronted with them, which is why I'm sharing my experience of starting over alone now and then.

Yesterday I called my bank to set up a home equity line of credit, so I have cash on hand to help pay for the Girlchild's last (yay!) year of college expenses and make some other needed home improvements. The loan lady gave me the rundown on rates (prime + .25) fees (very modest) and took my personal information and plugged it into the computer. She paused a bit and then and happily announced that my credit was absolutely perfect and I had already been pre-approved for a home equity line (for about 10K more than I'd planned) at prime + zero and no fees. I had received those "you're pre-approved" junk mail things off and on and hadn't really paid attention, but apparently I was already blessed by the bank for this loan at their best rate, and all I had to do was ask. I cannot tell you what peace of mind it gives me to know that I have "absolutely perfect" credit and access to tax-deductible-loan emergency money as we need it, and I'm very glad that I was so adamant about establishing my own credit years ago. Nobody expects to be widowed at my age, but stuff happens.

I finished the crocheted critter blanket last night, and it's nice and large and soft. My "pattern" - and you may want to write this down because it was very complicated: Crochet a chain that looks long enough to accommodate a small terrier-sized dog. Skip the first chain, that's your turning chain, and half double crochet in each stitch of the chain to create the foundation row. Chain one to turn. HDC every row after that, ch 1 to turn at the end of each row, until you run out of yarn. Two skeins of Disco Homespun made a blanket about 30 x 24 inches, and worked up very fast. Like I said, it's very challenging. I hope you got all that.