Recent progress on the house:

I love the mudroom windows; they should bring so much light into the kitchen. Each of these openings will house a pair of double-hung windows. (I think that's the right term.)

This is the view from the kitchen into the space above the mudroom. Today, Dobek and his crew are installing some steel beams. House not fall down! Yay!

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Just realized as I was retyping the book that the first scene is very clearly echoing the first scene in A Wrinkle in Time. Did I do that on purpose? I can't remember. Regardless, I'm okay with that. It's such a lovely book.

And yes, I said retyping. I sometimes have a hard time making myself do it, but I find that the most effective revision method for me involves actually retyping the text; I'm much more likely to make real changes that way, and it improves the story immensely.

I think I retyped Bodies in Motion four times in total. Hopefully, this book won't require quite that much typing!

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School started today, after a week of break and Labor Day off. (Thank god Jarmila was willing to come back to us for a bit.) I think maybe it was good for Kavya to have a long stretch of somewhat boring time at home -- this morning, no tears or protests, and when we drove up to the school, she told me excitedly that there was the slide that she was going to go down! Once we got to the playground, Kavi didn't even wait for me to drop off Anand before she was running off to play with the toy cars. And when I went over to say goodbye, I got a very cheerful hug and kiss and bye! I wouldn't be surprised if there was a bit of backsliding tomorrow or Thursday, when it's no longer a novelty, but at least it was a happy start to the official school year.

Also Anand's teacher was impressed to see that he was walking already. Walking! Now I actually have to find him shoes every morning. This morning he wore these Robeez fox knights, which are so insanely adorable I might melt. Tomorow, I think the Robeez little aliens Mirna bought him.

And I'm back to school too -- just finished breakfast at Blue Max (it was too hectic this morning to eat at home, in large part because both Kavya and Anand refused bananas this morning, which was revolutionary and really threw off my breakfast plans). Now I have my tea, and I'm about to dive into revisions on the book. I'm leaning back towards Rasathi as a title, by the way. Need to remember to incorporate its meaning into the text at some point.

Goal: Writing every weekday morning, and finished draft ready for Bob by end of September. Let's see how it goes.

My only other thing to accomplish today is take care of my aching jaw. It started hurting on Friday, and the pain seems to be centered on my bottom right wisdom tooth. The one that's growing in sideways. I'm guessing it's a) impacted, b) infected, or c) both. Sigh. Taking my wisdom teeth out has been on my to-do list for a year; I guess it just moved up to the top. Any sense of how long it's likely to knock me out for?

I have an appt. with a general dentist, Dr. Yee (who had fabulous reviews on Yelp and has an office three blocks from my house), at 2 p.m. today; he says he can recommend someone to do the procedure, if he agrees it's necessary. Joy. I think he does kids as well; if he seems good, then Kavi will be coming in sometime soon; I gather at age 3, it's time they start seeing a pediatric dentist, yes? We are not super-diligent about brushing/flossing in this house (well, Kevin is, but not the rest of us), so I am anticipating a scolding or two. Sigh.

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Serious garden advice needed -- killing a lawn.

We have a front yard. The house we bought is a foreclosure, and sat empty for a few years before we bought it. The yard was 'maintained' by the Village, which basically meant that they mowed it regularly. It is essentially a massive weed bed at this point. It has one pretty crabapple tree, a few shrubs (about 6) at the borders, and that's it. Lots of weeds. So we need a plan to reclaim it.

My lot is 50 x 176. My front yard is maybe 50 x 35? I'm guessing a bit there. I'd ideally prefer not to have lawn in the front yard. Don't want to mow, don't want to water a lot (I live in Oak Park, Chicagoland weather, tending towards dry and prairie-like). Like the variety of lots of flowers.

So, okay, I need to kill all those weeds. I admit to trying some Round-up (motivated by a severe invasive tree-of-heaven infestation), but although it got rid of most of the tree-of-heaven, it wasn't very effective on the other weeds -- I don't know whether Round-up doesn't work well on crabgrass, etc. or if I didn't use enough (I was mostly targeting the tree-of-heaven and soaking that), or what. But I'm feeling somewhat reluctant to put more poison into the soil.

I gather that my main options at this point are:

A) rototill (and then lay fresh topsoil over?)
B) lay black plastic over the yard and leave it for several months (I'm sure the neighbors, who have already endured much construction, would LOVE that)
C) lay newspapers over the yard, cover with fresh topsoil, let it sit and decay.
D) more poison

Which leaves me with questions. Approach A would be immediately effective, and I could rent a rototiller, but I don't know whether I need to lay fresh topsoil on top of that? B is ugly. C is appealing because it enriches the soil, but I'm a little worried about the cost of all that topsoil. D we've already discussed.

1) If I rototill now, say, am I supposed to put topsoil over that?

2) If I put topsoil (either on newspapers or on rototilled previous sod/weeds), will it just blow away in the wind and/or accumulate a ton of weeds if I don't plant immediately?

3) Would covering the whole yard with mulch after topsoil (or instead of topsoil) be helpful / necessary, given that we have almost no garden budget this fall?

4) If I have five hundred early-flowering spring bulbs that I ordered some months back (the only thing I'm likely to plant this fall, given the terrifying state of our budget after some months of construction), what exactly do I do with them? Lay them on the rototilled ground before adding topsoil? Actually put down the new soil and then dig holes? (Sounds like a lot of work!)

Help.

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the children are sleeping
there's mud on my son
and the dishes aren't done
but no one is weeping

no one is weeping
there's no noise at all
as I lurk in the hall
I should do some sweeping

I should do some sweeping
I think as I slouch
back down to the couch
my heart is leaping

my heart is leaping
but my body's at peace
curled under a fleece
as my fingers start creeping

my fingers start creeping
to the tv remote
I click, and I gloat
the children are sleeping

the children are sleeping!

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