It's the second week of the HGP, and time for those of us doing it to clean the living room and continue with the lists and planning. We also make a meal to put in the freezer. #2 son was planning to make beef stew, and I am thinking we could double the recipe and put half in the freezer, making that task quite painless.

We went to the farmers market yesterday and found that the Art Festival was also on, so we wandered through the exhibits and enjoyed ourselves very much. Son-in-law especially enjoyed that. There were some amazing paintings, metalwork, stained glass, painted silk, photography -- the number of talented people here always impresses me. On the other side of town, the county fair has equally impressive displays of other kinds of talents, including lovely jams and fine quilts. There is even a table setting division. Until the Arts Festival began a few years ago, people used to exhibit their photographs and paintings at the fair, too, right by the angel cakes, one building over from the cattle. I think the co-existence of the two celebrations shows how well we are doing with our shift from rural to slightly urban . I am glad we happened upon the Art Festival.

The square had its share of musicians among the vegetables. I have admired the boldness of this tuba player before. Who would think that he could be an effective busker with a solo tuba? Well, this week, he brought a sax-playing buddy and they sounded quite good.

There was also a fellow spinning plates. He had fiery rims on his plates, which added to the impressiveness of the feat, but he also kept dropping them, which made the whole thing a little too suspenseful.

We saw friends and bought some of the last peaches of the season, but we were too late for salad or sourdough bread.

Back home, #2 son made an excellent lunch of spareribs in hoisin and plum sauce and garlic-herb grilled chicken, roasted corn and baked beans.

We also made this nice strawberry cake with chocolate-dipped berries.

My parents arrived to help eat the cake, and it was very nice to have the whole family together. It was the first time #1 daughter had seen her grandparents since her wedding.

We finished up the day with football. Our team lost, but they acquitted themselves honorably and did not bring shame to their state by having zero points, so the loss did not impede the partying.

Now I want to talk about something about which I know nothing. I hear you chortling, but really, I don't usually talk about topics on which I am utterly ignorant. This came up in our discussions, though, and it seems to me to deserve some thought.

There is a conversation which now takes place in myriad books and movies. This is the one in which the girl asks "Where is this relationship going?" In books and movies, this invariably is a matter of the girl saying "Are you going to marry me, or am I wasting my time?" while the guy feels trapped and tries to escape the question.

Now, I know nothing about this subject because I have never had this conversation, and it is obviously too late for me to have it now, after 25 years of marriage. But it is clear to me that the conversation has become so much a codified scene in popular culture that it is practically impossible to have it in real life in any other way than the one I have described: querulous huntress and shrinking prey. As soon as the question arises, the whole scene from books and movies unrolls inexorably in the participants' minds.

It seems to me, though, that there are other things this question can sometimes mean. Sometimes the girl is saying, "Um, honey, am I supposed to be being faithful to you?" or "Are you getting too serious about me?" Sometimes she might want to say , "Is this a casual fling for you, or should I be thinking about whether I want to be serious about you or not?"

As it stands, there is no way she can make those things clear, because "I want to talk about our relationship" has come to mean nothing but "Are you ever going to marry me, or am I just wasting ovulatory cycles here?"

And a guy might want to check things out, too, for the same good reasons a girl might want to. He can't even start the conversation, though, because he will still evoke the pop culture scene, but for him it will be even worse -- he will feel as though he is in a comedy from the start. He will be in drag, communicatively speaking. He might as well not bother.

If a man or a woman wants, for good and non-predatory reasons, to clarify the nature of a romantic relationship, how can he or she do it without stumbling into the iconic movie scene?

In addition to contemplating this deep question, we will be enjoying #2 daughter's solo in church this morning, and then taking #1 daughter and Son-in-law to the airport. This will involve a drive on the freeway, but I have already conned #2 daughter into doing the actual driving, so I am only feeling slightly ill at the thought. I am hoping that today is not also the first day of the Sunday School class I have agreed to teach. With any luck, it will begin next week, giving me some time to come up with a plan for it.

  We had a pleasant dinner party. That Man and The Empress, who are as clever Marji deduced a married couple who own the store that I manage, came along with their daughter and her fiance. My husband and #2 son made dinner. This picture does not show the chicken, which was the main dish, but it does show the hot pepper sauce for Sighkey. Sort of. The small square dish in the front is fish sauce and the yellow dots in it are the seeds of hot peppers. Then there is herb-decorated melon, tomatoes, cucumbers in lime juice and rice vinegar with fresh mint. The baskets have sticky rice in them.

After dinner, when the guests had left, #1 daughter and Son-in-law went downtown to join the partying. #2 daughter went there when she arrived, not considering the possibility that her parents were waiting up for her at home and worrying about her. I'm just mentioning that. I did finally call her cell phone and she said, "I can't hear you at all! Byee!" So I figured she was okay.

This is the reason for the excessive partying. It is the first football weekend of the season. Thursday was the junior high game (#1 daughter and Son-in-law went with his family), Friday was the high school game (#1 son went, and we skunked them, 43 to 0), and today is the college game. #1 son, #1 daughter, and Son-in-law are all going. Thus, they have decorated the car. Many people do that here. They also have their T-shirts, and Son-in-law has a silly hat as well.

We are playing the Trojans. I thought that was odd. I thought we always just played our neighboring states, but my kids are very scornful about my thinking that. I also thought that we would have an advantage, because those Californian boys would find our sauna-like Southern heat so enervating that they would not be able to run fast, or perhaps even to move at all. However, the weather has turned fall-like, clear and lovely and low 80s in temperature, so we confidently expect to lose dismally. This does not decrease the amount of partying that goes on.

Son-in-law's parents happen to be in Los Angeles, and they intend to put on their school shirts and walk around the USC campus, flaunting our team. I think they will be disappointed, because as I recall, people in California do not care about football as much as we do.

Today, before tonight's big game, we are going to the farmer's market and then being tourists for a little while, then cooking out, and then my parents are coming over for coffee and cake. We expect to have lots of fun.

Ozarque asked about the refrigerator. It is still not working. This is because we are still waiting on a part. In fact, it has developed new and alarming symptoms which I am trying to ignore, because I want to believe that the part will fix it. The fact that I am classifying raisins as "fresh fruit" shows the depth of my denial.

Yesterday was a full day. That Man and The Empress interviewed a candidate for the clerical position, and I dropped by in an utterly natural manner to meet her. Everyone drops by the store an hour early, right? She can do 13,000 strokes an hour on the ten-key machine. "She did that for an hour?" I said in horror, but this is why I am not a good candidate for the position. I do feel that I should clarify, though, that this was a test she had taken elsewhere, not a horrible audition we forced upon her. We hope she will begin on Tuesday.

Then That Man and I wrestled with the previous day's deliveries.

Deliveries don't usually involve wrestling. Except for the enormous, hundreds-of-boxes type, you would hardly notice them. There are a dozen boxes in the room, maybe, but they are neatly stacked. I open one, take out a stack of things and check them in, label them, put them away, and come back for another. I can leave it to help customers, there is no mess, and perhaps it just adds a little excitement -- ooh! new stuff! -- for shoppers.

This was different. For one thing, That Man was unpacking one shipment. He has a different method from mine. He opens all the boxes at once, removes things, and strews them all over all the work surfaces. He makes stacks and piles, and moves the boxes around to consume as much floor space as possible. I don't know why he does this, but it explains why his office looks the way it does. At one point, The Empress chided him a bit (I think she might have noticed the way we had to reach over his piles of stuff on the counter to check people out, while the roll of labels spilled down the front of the counter and customers picked their way through the trail of boxes) and he said he was doing it decently and in order. He has a system.

But my unpacking also was less tidy than usual. I was doing a warehouse shipment for delivery orders. So all the things had not just to be checked in and labeled, but also sorted into the various orders, packed, billed, and prepared for delivery. The amazing creativity of the people ordering things again forced itself onto my attention (if you want TEC2137, Winter Science, it is best not to write down "EC2137 Resourse book" on the order form. Just a hint). Things had to be gathered from elsewhere in the store, and sometimes from the other store, too.

And, as That Man pointed out a little peevishly, people kept coming in and wanting us to pay attention to them.

#1 daughter brought me lunch and we had a good heart-to-heart. Then Son-in-law came just as Than Man returned from his lunch to watch the shop, and the three of us took advantage of the lovely weather (under 90 and not very sauna-like) to have a drink on the deck of the restaurant next door. There are sculptures of palm trees with giant flamingoes made of old tractor parts, which makes it feel quite tropical.

After work I dashed home for another vegetable-free dinner and then went to the Chamber Singers rehearsal. There had been three phone calls exhorting me and That Man to come. I enjoyed it very much. Singing is always relaxing, and good singing is especially pleasurable. The church choir has as its goal for a song merely to get most of the notes right. Since #2 daughter and I have joined, there has been the new development of thinking about dynamics sometimes, but mostly, the feeling is that as soon as most of the choir is pretty close to the right notes, the song is ready.

In a good choir, having the notes is the beginning point.

The Chamber Singers has some good voices, but so does the church choir. The Chamber Singers has some mediocre voices, and some people with pitch problems, too. It really is not that the church choir is intrinsically worse than the Chamber Singers as far as the instruments go. The church choir, however, will never sound good, because there is no work on the sound. I really don't understand why a group of singers would choose to sound bad, but that is essentially the choice they are making. Some of the choristers have told me about the time they had a conductor who was "really picky" about the sound. I think I know the guy they are talking about, and I liked him a lot, though I only worked with him a few times. But the choir membership just fell down to nothing during his tenure.

Oh, well. I enjoy both groups, and I am glad that I decided to sing with the Chamber Singers this season. The Master Chorale is out, though, I think, even though they are doing Brahms and Mozart. Sigh.

Tonight, my husband and #2 son are cooking Lao food and we are having some people in (including #1 daughter and Son-in-law) to enjoy it. #2 daughter will be sailing in late, but we have promised to save her some food. I am thinking that I might provide some cooling foods, like cucumbers and sherbet. My husband cooked for us a couple of nights ago, and Son-in-law tried to eat a hot pepper the way my husband does -- like an apple, just picking it up and taking bites. It was a green one, "not very hot" according to my husband. Son-in-law is a Navy man, accustomed to doing insane things on a dare, and he took a couple of bites, while the rest of us stood around watching him and laughing. This is what Lao people do when they see Americans eating hot peppers.

We will not do that tonight. I promise.