Not a penny in it

We interrupt our usual broadcast to bring you an important news bulletin. It's my day off; I repeat: it's my day off.

I had kind of a funny dream that Mel Gibson was our next-door neighbor but he was a really bad neighbor. He kept wandering across our front yard in a raggedy old bathrobe because he had a crush on our other neighbor and was always trying to catch her. I brought out a tray of cookies for Partner and myself and he dumped his entire cup of tea on them as he traipsed past on his way to butter up her little son. I was like: "Mel. Knock it off." I can't say I've ever had romantic fantasies about Mel Gibson. Now why can't I have a dream about Viggo Mortensen...? Oh, actually, I had this great dream about Pierce Brosnan once. He took me to a fancy ball and I had this fabulous shimmery dress, then we were attacked by aliens in spacecraft. It was great.

Yesterday after work I was so happy to be home I went straight out into the backyard and planted some of my cosmo seedlings. It was then I realized just how many I have. About fifty. And that's just cosmos. The past few weeks I've been doing paintings and drawings of the flowers in our yard. I've got a nice painting of our red tulips, but they're now on their very last legs and a good gust of wind will completely denude them. I also have a color drawing of some yellow peonies that I quite like. Last year I painted a vase of gladiolas and I think it's my best work yet. I've not done a lot of flowers in my artwork career, but I find I enjoy it. There are some intensely purple irises in our front yard but I'm kind of shy to go out and paint them. The neighbors would be able to see me.

Where we live all the houses are extremely close together and we actually live at the end of a cul-de-sac so we have neighbors all around. In the back yard we have a tall fence on one side and a hedge of trees at the back, so really only one neighbor could see into our yard. And he never goes into his backyard so it's very private back there. But the front yard is very busy and there are always people about. I'm even shy to garden out there because I don't know what to say to the neighbors if they talk to me.

I guess on a good note, I'm feeling a little better about my foreign accent. I work with a Thai woman and an old lady commented about her in my presence that she couldn't understand these "foreigners." I said to her, "I'm a foreigner" and she said, "Oh you're not foreign, you're a yankee doodle dandy." So there you have it. They don't like foreigners but they like Yankees (doodle dandy).