I took last Friday off and had another long weekend. Hooray!

“I have so much to do!” I said to Rob on Thursday night.

“Well, you won’t be able to get to it all,” Rob warned kindly.

“But I’m going to try!” I said.

Here are just a few of the things I managed to squeeze in:

Rob and I spent Friday morning in the backyard pulling up our homemade stone paths and stacking the rocks neatly behind the garage. We’re planning to have the narrow, bumpy old paths replaced with wide, smooth, professionally installed brick paths. I don’t know when this will actually happen, but I hope it will be soon!

Pulling up the paths was pretty hard labor because the paths were composed of some very large rocks.

“So,” I said to Rob as we worked, “what’s the worst part of dealing with the rocks? Digging them up, pushing them in the wheelbarrow, or stacking them?”

“Probably stacking them,” Rob said.

“Agreed,” I said. “My favorite part is when I’m done stacking my load and I get to push the empty wheelbarrow back.”

The sun felt so nice and warm on my head as I strolled along with my empty wheelbarrow. Bees buzzed in the camellia blossoms, and I spotted two yellow-rumped warblers flitting about in the satsuma tree by the garage door. The sky was sapphire blue.

That afternoon I finally filled the pots that have been sitting around empty for months on the front porch and picnic table. I bought some pink cyclamen at Lowe’s and planted three in each pot, tucking them in among some fresh, soft Spanish moss that I gathered under our giant pecan tree in the backyard.

Cyclamen are so cute. With their wing-like petals, the flowers look a little like butterflies, I think, and the leaves are extra fancy—heart-shaped and decorated with intricate patterns like silver lace.

On Saturday morning I met Mom and my sister Kris in nearby Havana to do some antiquing. We spent a few hours joking and poking around in the shops and, in the end, Kris and I each went home with a treasure. Kris’s was an adorable Belleek porcelain lamp decorated with shamrocks, and mine was a Seth Thomas mantel clock with lots of gold embellishments and an interesting curly-grained burl wood veneer. I thought the clock would look perfect in the front bedroom next to the foggy, gold-framed mirror I bought recently and hung over Rob’s dresser. The mirror has such wavy, hazy, distorted glass that it seems like a magic mirror, a portal for (friendly) ghosts perhaps.

On Sunday, Rob and I cooked a feast—country-fried seitan steaks, black-eyed peas, mashed potatoes, sautéed kale, and cornbread. At least four cats were in the kitchen the whole time we were cooking. Carl was supervising from a perch on the Hoosier cabinet, and Becky and Tellie were rolling in the warm air that was blowing out of the oven vent as the cornbread baked. Becky was having a grand time but was also getting overstimulated, and pretty soon she wanted to wrestle little Tellie. Meanwhile, Buntin was on the lookout for crumbs and scraps. I had just fed her, but she was acting like a ravenous freak. At one point we caught her licking melted butter off a paper towel I had dropped. Then she ate a black-eyed pea that fell.

“I think maybe she just wants to participate in what we’re doing,” I said to Rob. “I think she’s just trying to take part.”

“That sounds right,” Rob said. He petted dear old Buntin, who turns sixteen this year. “Buntin is a good, good friend.”