Let me tell you about a girl and her purse.

This is a picture of Maddy's purse. It was a gift from her other Grandma, and she has loved it from the day she got it. She carries it with her everywhere, of course, because she knows from observation that a woman always carries a purse with her Important Things in it!


When she goes up to bed, she puts her purse carefully on the table next to her bed, next to her Cars lamp. If she gets upstairs with all of her other Necessary Stuff (her stuffed dog Meena, her blanky, her binky and her Big Blue Blanket), and then notices that her purse was left behind, she yells for the purse until it is found and brought to her, then it is placed on the table. Where it belongs.


She gets mad if she finds anyone pawing through her purse, and yells, "No! Gettout! Mine!", as any woman would, so I have a picture of the purse, but not of the contents. She has been a little more lenient with me because I am her Nan, so I have been able to look through the contents a little bit, and also I have paid attention when she is looking in it for something, or adding something new, so I have a pretty good idea of what's in it.

• There is a spare binky, just in case she loses the one in her mouth.
• A comb, although heaven forbid anyone should take it out and use it on her hair, which generally looks like monkeys have been doing science experiments on her head.
• A cellphone, or sometimes two, because she knows that a cellphone is an Important Thing to carry with her, and we give her our old ones, so she has plenty to choose from. Her favorite cellphone is the pink one that used to be Kim's. Maddy calls it Phineas and Ferb, because on that show, their older sister Candace has a pink phone just like it.
• She has a chapstick, because you know, Makeup.
• The rest of the contents vary from day to day, depending on what she has been playing with. Today I saw a baby-sized My Little Pony, a Hot Wheels car, and a Scrabble tile that she stole from my house. A couple of days ago I saw her pull out a mirror mounted on cardboard and she smiled at herself in it, murmuring fondly, "I see you...".
• Oh, I almost forgot, she usually has at least one bead necklace and a green rubber bracelet, too. Women like jewelry!

Her purse is often topped off with a small, open bag of chips ("Reetos!"), or a couple of loose cookies, or even a banana that she is transporting from one place to another. She knows it's a good idea to have a snack with her in case of emergency. (I taught her that.)


Last week Rachel and I took Ash and Maddy with us to Rockford so that Maddy could play at Monkey Joe's, a kid's play place full of bouncy castles and bouncy slides (and you know Maddy likes to bounce!), and I needed to go to the Ulta store to see the eyebrow specialist. (Shut. Up.)


Maddy brought her purse and her blanky, and sat in her car seat with both of them balanced on her lap, but just as we got into Rockford, her purse slipped off her lap and landed upside down on the floor of the car! Oh, the screaming!


It had fallen on the far side of the car, and Ash was sitting next to her on the other side, where he couldn't reach it to pick up her Stuff, so he told her she would have to wait until we got to Monkey Joe's for him to get her purse.


Maddy was furiously upset and none of us could reason with her, so finally Ash took off his seat belt, told Rachel not to have an accident and kill him, and he slid back to the rear seat and cleaned up all of her Stuff. He got every bit of it, too, because she was watching him carefully, and when he first gave it back, she could see that there was still Stuff on the floor, and she yelled for it!


Ash gave that purse the evil eye when he finally had all of the Stuff back in it, but he just doesn't understand that a girl needs her purse!

It's a mystery! Also, an evening with Maddy, in which she jumps on Kim's bed.

So today there was a dead bird laying on the floor in the dining room when I woke up! A. Dead. Bird. OMG! I called Rich to come downstairs and dispose of it, but neither of us could figure out where it came from!

I went out to get a pop and a couple of groceries with RA, and when I got back I went upstairs to strip the bed and change the sheets (because it was about time), and in the bathroom I saw that my hairbrush was on the floor, which was weird, because no one uses that bathroom but me during the day, and if I had knocked my hairbrush on the floor I would have picked it up! Then I saw (duh duh duh) a feather in the sink!

Rich was passing by just then, so I showed him the evidence that a bird had been flying around the house, and then I flushed it’s germy, mite-filled feather down the toilet, but still…where did the bird come from? I think it probably came in when Rich had the door open to take Sonny out on one of his many walks today, but it’s a mystery.

So Ash brought Maddy over tonight while Rachel was at work, and the first thing she did was go to the kitchen to get a bag of chips, because I always buy packages of small bags of chips for her (and Rich). She ate a couple of Cheetos (She calls them Ritos, because to her all chips are Doritos) and then she saw the bananas, and wanted one of them, too. I gave her the banana, half peeled, and she took that and the Cheetos and ran upstairs to Kim’s room.

I had to stop and shut down my laptop so I didn’t get up there right away, but when I did, she was jumping on the bed, eating the banana and she had carefully set the Cheeto bag upright on Kim's dresser, where she saw me put the chip bag last time to keep it away from Sonny.

No wait, she wasn’t on the bed yet, because first we had to pick up all the necklaces that were in a pile on the bed, and she sang the clean up, clean up song while we did it! She is so funny. Then she jumped and jumped and jumped. She can deliberately land on her butt now, since her feet slipped and she did it once, and I applauded her butt jump and told her to do it again. She demonstrated it for Ash when he got back from the store, and then they went home.

Oh, also, the minute she came in the house, she stripped off her own clothes and gave them to me to hold. She can undress herself now! That clever girl. She likes to run around in the house dressed in just a diaper, and they have to fight her to put her clothes on if they want to take her anywhere.

In which I walked a long way.

I know I haven't written in a long time. It's been a hot, busy summer, but now I'm ready to try writing regularly again.

What I'm knitting today:

I have the second sock of a pair at work with me. The yarn is Opal in one of the Van Gogh colorways. This one is called Starry Night, but I don't think the colors look as much like Starry Night as they should.

I am working on a baby blanket, but I left it at home because it needs a longer circular needle to work it comfortably. I just haven't felt like finding a longer needle.

Hmm, I also have a sweater for Kim that I started a while ago, but I need more yarn to finish it. I asked them to order more of it and I don't know if it's in at the shop yet. I found another ball of the yarn under the bed in the yarn room when I was in there the other day, so I have enough to start a sleeve now. The sweater is called Eiffel, and the pattern in from Knitty.

Of course I have some other unfinished projects, but I'm not worried about them right now.

What I watched today:

When I got up, Rich was watching Dr. Who, and I sat in my chair and played on the laptop for a while, talked to my sister Sarah on the phone, and made dinner, and Dr Who went on and on. It was a marathon leading up to a season opener or closer, I don't know which, because here's the thing - I don't like Dr. Who. I know, you are gasping in disbelief at my uncoolness, but I don't care. Dr. Who is so boring that I was getting excited when a commercial came on.

What I did instead of watching Dr. Who:

I finally got up and put on my walking shoes and went for a walk, which turned into a two and a half mile hike to Rachel's house. I didn't plan to go that far but it was so nice and breezy outside (thank you, Hurricane Isaac!) that I decided to take a long walk, so I called Rachel to see if she wanted to meet in the middle, and she loaded Maddy up in the stroller and brought a bottle of ice water and met me about 2/3 of the way to her house I was glad to see that bottle of water! It took an hour to get to her house, because the uphills were slowing me down!

Maddy and I sat in the backyard - well, I sat, and Maddy filled her little wading pool with cold water from the hose, and she sprayed my feet, too. Then she wandered off to pick weeds, and was getting too far away from the driveway, so we went in the house. Rachel and Ash were inside eating dinner, and when they were done, Rachel drove me home.

So that was my day. You're welcome.