Aside from Monday, when…

Aside from Monday, when I lay in bed and read, spring break hasn't been all that restful. But it has been productive, largely in the actually-getting-my-house-clean sense, so that's something. And dealing with most of my urgent e-mails, although I still have a few major projects to take care of on Saturday / Sunday -- reading the draft of the critical book I'm co-writing with Lisa Lau, and proofing the WisCon GOH chapbook, both time-consuming. I also need to do a fair bit of cooking this weekend, as we're having a tea party on Sunday afternoon, and the more I do in advance, the easier it'll be. So a grocery trip tomorrow, followed by making of sandwich fillings (creamy mushroom, maybe tricolor vegetable), blueberry scones and lemon daffodil cake baked Sunday morning.

Roshani is in town today, so I'm going to steal her away for a domestic research day in the city. Now that I live in a suburb (even if just barely), I have to plan my trips up to the northside of Chicago pretty carefully, so as to maximize the worth of the drive. Plan:

• 6:45 - cook the chicken that I took out of the freezer yesterday -- make half into curry to eat sometime soon, half into a Thai green chili-mango chicken spread for tea sandwiches for Sunday's party

• 7:30 - wake up and snuggle Kavya, hand her over to Jarmila around 8-ish, get dressed

• 9:00 - stop by one of Pam's other house projects in about the stage of completion that ours would be in if we moved in early; decide if that seems safe enough for kids

• pick up Roshani, maybe take her by our house if she's interested in seeing the garden all demolished, have breakfast at Marion Street or Blue Max and show her some of my garden books; she wants to help her dad rejuvenate his garden, and I, of course, have a vast emptiness to contend with at the new house (although not for some time, since we'll have heavy machinery moving through there, and it's of course not actually that vast) -- books include: From a Victorian Garden (Weishan); Rosemary Verey's Garden Plans and Secret Gardens (Verey); On Garden Style (Williams), Small Spaces Beautiful Gardens (Davitt)

• drive up to Nadeau and Architectural Artifacts in Ravenswood; look at relatively inexpensive imported Indian / Indonesian furniture and outrageously expensive salvaged doors, fences, etc.

• 1:00 - take Lori out for celebratory birthday lunch at Lulu's up in Evanston

• introduce Roshani to the wonders of Gethsemane Gardens

• pick up Ethiopian food for dinner, yum

• if there's time, stop at Vogue Fabrics on the way home (this is unlikely to actually happen today) to get canopy fabric for Kavi's bed, as I have tried twice and failed to find fabric I like

Sounds like fun. (Although likely tiring too. :-)