all that's past is prologue...

We all seem to be tired in the morning, especially now that it's so dark. It's a major battle of wills to get my youngest stepson up and to school. Patrick is trying to get into work early, but it's hard. And I am trying to sleep in as much as I can, since everyone tells me to "do it now because you won't ever get to in the future." (thanks, I know that, but don't want to think about it). A plethora of morning meetings disallows much sleeping in, though; today I had to meet the sprinkler guy at the Summit house at 7:00. Luckily, Beatrix likes to sleep late (keep that up, honey!), and Geronimo is the funniest — he is Just Not A Morning Dog.

We spent the weekend in Chicago for the wedding of our friend Joann, who worked with Patrick at Carleton. As an added bonus, Patrick's mom has been eager to see her grandchildren, so we dropped Miles off in Iowa City on the way, and he seemed to have a great time. It was nice for us to catch up with family, and we even got to go to a great baby store called Bliss for the Baby; we loved everything there! We stayed with one of my "imaginary online friends" on Naperville. We had never met in real life before, yet we had a fantastic time hanging out with my (new) friend, her husband, and her lovely daughter. We ate great food (Cafe 126 in Iowa City and Orange in Chicago, plus Heaven on Seven in Naperville and some amazing place that served ice cream with cake batter on top!, and we got Dunkin' Donuts — "it's worth the trip"). The wedding was lovely, and between the wedding and the reception we wandered through Marshall Field's (decidedly NOT Macy&#

We just said our final goodbye to Roy, the best pug ever. Although he was unable to move or have bodily control or anything, he was still loved and it was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do.

Because I promised you all a picture, long long ago.

- I want Patrick's house to sell — tonight. - I want Geronimo (who just ate 4 sticks of butter) to stop puking it up. - I want to not have to put Roy to sleep, and to have him feel better and be able to walk and enjoy life. - I want the fence at the Summit house to be fixed — correctly. - I want to find a crib set I like. - I want to go out and buy some really great maternity clothes and get my nails done. - I want to just go out and buy the pack n' play and stroller and changing table I like, rather than worrying about the money. - I want a glass of really good wine. - Or a margarita. - I want a housecleaner. - I want some shea butter rub for my belly and some nice shower gel. - I want a really good book and some uninterrupted time to read it. - I want a really good mix cd.

One of my several jobs is doing write-ups for high-end realtors, and today I walked through a very lovely home. It was extremely elegantly designed, and just dripping with money and taste. The rooms were large and proportional and with beautiful furniture, there were lots of hardback books in the family room and great cookbooks in the kitchen, they had a very nice wine collection, their child had the best of everything. It was certainly liveable, but all on the highest end of the scale. It soon became clear from walking through the home that the reason that they were only there for a few months of the year was that he worked for President Bush, which brought me to the thought of "How do Republicans have that much money?" It was the kind of place where I was glad I showed up in the Audi and not the old Impreza. Our home on Summit is similarly elegant and gracious and has a lot of the scale and high-end kind of things I appreciated in this home. Our house on Ashland not q

All this week, the National Trust conference has been in town, and I have been in any number of sessions ranging from "A Preservation Toolkit for Working Class Neighborhoods" to "Owner/Master Tenant Tax Credits" to "Building Arts Communities in Historic Buildings." The sessions have generally been very good, although it is amazing how draining sitting in 6-8 hours a day of them can be! I also was on the host committee for a kick-ass (if I do say so myself) GLBT reception at the Raspberry Island Boathouse (thanks, Will!), our neighborhood hosted a well-received candlelight house tour for which I did the brochure copy, there was a lovely Goucher reception, and at the Diversity Reunion we won a pair of tickets to the fancy-schmancy closing party for tomorrow night. I got to catch up with old friends and make some good new connections and have learned a lot. I really need to be more proactive in preservation activities. I am hoping that this will give me t