Yesterday included a few hours of work, but also a couple of church services, a walk, talks with friends an family, sewing, knitting, a game of Scrabble with #1 son, and a spell of reading out on the patio, where a nice lush jungly effect has been achieved.

I really like a jungly garden. My husband likes neat rows of plants, preferably not blooming plants, and vegetables are best.

The field beyond the back yard was mown on Saturday, so the scent of new-mown hay is in the air along with mint and nasturtiums. It's lovely to sit on a lawn chair with a good book in such a place.

And then I picked peas from the vines for dinner, along with mint and parsley for the salad dressing.

Morgenstern recommends that people who have trouble not working keep track of the fun non-work things they do so that they can remind themselves of what's enjoyable -- and discover, if need be, why they're not having fun. I find my work fun, too, but yesterday was a marvelous summer day. No swimming, but otherwise just right.

I completed my sixth top for the Summer Top Project, and it does indeed look as though I'm ready for bridge at the retirement home.

I'm going to wear it anyway, at least on the weekends. We can't be vain, can we?

I'm reading Julie Morgenstern's Never Check E-Mail In the Morning: And Other Unexpected Strategies for Making Your Work Life Work. I have a problem with work/life balance. Even though I work efficiently and am very productive, I still end up working ten and twelve hour days.

#1 daughter says it's Parkinson's Law: work expands to fill the time available. So if I make less time available for work, then I'll still get it done, but have time for other things.

I kind of feel like I have to meet deadlines and that's the reason that I have to work so much. However, I also agree that working that much is not a sustainable business model. I'm too old to be working really hard now in the expectation that I'll get rich and retire early.

I'm also too old to ignore my health, and age has nothing to do with the importance of spending time with friends and family and taking time for things you enjoy.

It's possible that Top #6 is causing me to think about how old I am.

However, I really want to be able to take weekends off without feeling as though I'm behind for the entire next week.

So I've made a lot of efforts to get my work schedule into a reasonable form, but I've also failed a lot. Not completely -- I think I am having a more balanced life this year than I did last year, with more sewing and reading and social time -- but enough that it still needs work. Morgenstern's book can be useful for people like me, because she doesn't just say, "Shut the door at the end of the workday" and leave it at that. She acknowledges that there are people who work a lot because they love their work, those who use work as an escape from an unsatisfying home life, people whose "sense of duty is in overdrive," and people who just don't plan for time off. She has sensible next action steps for all these people, and I think some of them will help me.

I took yesterday off. I went to the farmers market, did some baking and sewing, read, hung out with #1 son and talked on the phone with my daughters, worked out, and did a little shopping and housework. When I plan my work week tonight, I'm also going to plan some free time, or perhaps time to do things around my house that have been getting neglected. I'm going to make time for walks on the city trails before it becomes intolerably hot, and get those quilts started.

Morgenstern assures me that doing this will increase my productivity and the quality of my work.

#1 son and I came up with a good quilt block for him, and I've wasted quite a bit of time this morning trying to find a picture of it -- or better yet, a pattern for it.

I found the design in a book called something like 500 Quilt Blocks. Maybe 5,000 Quilt Blocks. I'm too lazy to go look at it right now, and I wouldn't want to link to it because it's not very useful. It shows the block, but not with the pieces marked. Not only do you have to draft the pattern yourself, but you have to figure out how to divide the blocks into pieces.

Usually, I just find the block in this book and then look it up online. However, this block is supposedly called "9 patch frame" and Google has not been able to find such a pattern for me. Nor have I been able to find a block that looks like this anywhere online.

Geometry is in my future.

However, I am going to start today with the continuation of the STP (Summer Top Project). I have only one more week of summer school to teach, but I probably have a couple more months of summer, and I still have fabric bought for the purpose.

So last night I cut, gathered, basted and pinned so I'd be ready to sew up another Weekender Sunshine Top this morning.

I like the first one I made. This is a sort of iffy fabric. I bought it on the basis of a small swatch photo online. I saw that it had yummy colors and pretty swirls. I didn't see that it was one of those weird faux-patchwork prints that old ladies wear.

Maybe I'm old enough to wear them.

The fabric also doesn't feel very nice, another issue with buying fabrics online.

Still, I'm going to sew this up, and wear it, too. Then I'll get on to that quilt.

Okay, I admit I'm eating at my desk, but at least it's good stuff.

I didn't work at all yesterday. Or at least not more than an hour so so.  Otherwise I did things like grocery shopping, housework, and planning a quilt for #1 son.

I'm using the Celtic Illuminations set of quilt fabrics, and I have 60 little Celtic knot squares plus fat quarters of four related prints and some coordinating solids, so I got out all my quilt pattern books and looked through them in search of a pattern involving 60 squares and not requiring any further yardage of the same pattern.

I finally determined to make a quilt with 60 nine patch blocks, using a fancy square for the center of each block and combining print and solids in the other eight blocks. This doesn't actually narrow the options down a whole lot, since it describes Shoo Fly, Churn Dash, Ohio Star, and probably hundreds of other blocks, but it's a start.

  While doing this, I watched What About Brian on Netflix instant watch. This is a show about people having lots of serious problems, which is not usually my sort of thing, but I really like the characters and the way they respond to their problems. Even when they're being stupid and/or evil.

Yesterday was my first Saturday at home since #1 son moved out. I was thinking that this would mean that I would have the car. I was imagining that I'd go to to the farmers market and the fabric store and walk on one of the hiking trails. In fact, #1 son texted me quite early asking to borrow the car for the weekend, so that didn't happen. Instead, I zoomed to the store, bought about half the things on my list, and zoomed over to the boy's new place to give him the car.

Among the things I didn't buy but should have was a new teakettle. I read a novel once in which the lady of the manor routinely put kettles on and then went off to do something while the water boiled, forgetting said kettle and letting it boil dry. In the novel, the butler would simply get a new kettle from the pantry and set fresh water to boiling. I have no butler, so I have to get new kettles every now and then.

In my defense, the most recent kettle had no whistle (this must be why it was so cheap), so it was to blame nearly as much as I am. Really.

I'm now thinking, since I didn't buy the new kettle yet, that I should consider an electric kettle, which I could put in the office, which is where I inevitably am when the kettle boils dry in the kitchen. My office space is so nice now, needing only a few more things done with it for perfection, that it seems quite reasonable to put a kettle in.

The things needed to bring my office space to a more perfect state all require time and money and the use of tools, so they probably won't happen soon.

Nonetheless, I did make a little beginning at getting the house to look like a place where only grownups live. This may take me a little while, and my husband really thinks we should just move to a smaller place instead, so we'll see what happens.

When my husband got home from work, we planted some flowers in the front garden. He had removed all the perennials which #2 son and I planted there a decade ago, so the usual lovely May show didn't happen. I did, however, plant four o'clocks in long planters and they are looking hale and hearty, so we put them into the front garden in the bare places.

The work involved in this left me with a bright red face healthy glow and might have been as good as taking a bit of a hike.

We went to a conference in the big city where #2 daughter and I gave a presentation which went quite well. We attended presentations, went to parties, and generally had fun.
I'm glad I went. I got to meet people I've only known online,  and spent time doing sort of ordinary fun things.

This is the coffee station, which was in some ways the center of the conference.

My class is going well, work is going well, I have a bunch of new ideas, and I'm having fun. Business, #1 daughter tells me, is slow, but I still have plenty of work to do, so I'm just continuing to do it.

#1 son moved into a house with a bunch of friends, so we now officially have an empty nest. My husband thinks we should move to a little apartment, and I suppose we might do so, but for now we're sort of enjoying having the place to ourselves.

Apart, that is, from the dogs. I think having three dogs might prevent us from moving into a smaller place, too.

I continue to feel as though something exciting is about to happen. I don't know what, but it's a nice feeling, so I'll go ahead and enjoy it without requiring anything further of it.

These are three tiny desserts we had at a chain restaurant before we even got to the big city. This weekend was largely box lunches and bar food, so I think this might have been the tastiest thing we ate over the weekend.

Since then, however, I've simply been eating what I felt like cooking for myself, which has been wholesome stuff with fresh vegetables, plus chocolate.

All the other pictures I took over the weekend, and all the ones I've taken this week, too, have people in them, so they can't be posted here.

I can't believe how fast this week is going. I feel as though we just got back in town and here it is nearly the weekend again. I'm currently planning to have a very domestic weekend. We'll see what happens.

I got the shelf thing put together, my husband fixed it so it was put together right, and I added it to my  gradually improving office.

It isn't quite perfect yet. The bin I put in the top left is the wrong size, so I'll have to replace it with the right size of bin. The top of the shelf is not a lovely tablescape. Putting my bnriefcases and bags into the shelf may not be the best use of the space.

However, I know that the key to success with modern shelving is not to put too many books on it, so I'm trying to observe that rule.

I put the bookshelf back together and put few, light things on the shelves which had given up and fallen down.

We'll see whether that solves the problem or not.

Now I am lusting after the file cabinet that matches the new desk. Once I have that file cabinet, I am convinced, I will have the ideal working situation. Well, maybe not the ideal. But as near ideal as I expect to get, what with the dogs and collapsing bookcases and all.

I also got the grant narrative written. There may be more grants to write for this client as well. It's a homeless shelter for pregnant girls, and gathering up their statistics was a very sniffly task, I'll tell you.

I told my husband the shocking numbers of homeless children in the client's town, and he said, "Go get some." I don't know if that's a practical option.

Once I got the shelf built and the stuff off the floor and the grant written, I got back to reading and sewing, and enjoyed it very much.

I finished this top, from the same pattern I used for the linen one. This is a polyester charmeuse, but I like it anyway. It's very shiny, so I figure I could wear it to parties.

I don't usually attend the parties I'm invited to, but I try. I think I also should be more active on weekends. I think hiking and swimming should be on my list of fun things to do when I'm not working.

Reading and needlework are the things that are actually on that list. I have, however, also been to a couple of wonderful presentations by National Geographic photographers lately, and some concerts, and I've enjoyed those very much.

I guess I won't turn into the hermit cat lady.

One of my students wrote her first paper on how she had been poised to grow up to become a hermit cat lady but was now going to college and changing her life. I don't like animals enough to become a hermit cat lady, but the phrase stuck with me.

My class is going well. I am swamped with work, but I think that's good. When #1 daughter and I went to talk with the Small Business Development Center guy, we asked him about the problem of business growth. He explained that this is a problem for companies with  inventory, not for companies like ours. He suggested that we raise our prices.

I'm beginning to suspect that this is the main thing the business advice groups say to people.  It's the main thing they say to us.

I have lots of nice flowers and vegetables outside, so reading out there is another enjoyable thing to do while not working.

#1 daughter is feeling cautiously optimistic about the business, which is quite good for her, and #2 daughter likes her new job and the cool new crowd that goes with it. #1 son has a cool new job, too, and has been at a rock concert all week, so I figure he's having fun.

#2 son also has a new job for the summer, revamping the rock wall at his college's gym, and he's also being counselor to the Governor's School kids and leading New Student Orientation.

My husband seems slightly less morose about his job, and I guess that's the best he can do.

Someone (Margaret Mead? Shirley Jackson? Agatha Christie?) once said that it wasn't wonderful to have nothing to do -- it was wonderful to have lots to do and not do it.

I'm trying not to give in to the temptation to have a day like that, but I really want to.

I have been doing the stuff I'm supposed to do.

I went to Target instead of the grocery store proper or the farmers market, which is more fun but takes too long. The reason for this is that we have fresh veg in the garden and my husband bought meat, something he does when our protein choices have gotten too girly. Since I didn't have to buy fresh goods, then, I was able to take advantage of the lower prices on things like bread and eggs at Target, and thus fit a new shelf into the grocery budget.

My bookshelf (bought for $20 at a neighbor's yard sale and carried home several years ago) collapsed. I therefore have books all over my office floor. I also have other things which didn't get put up when we moved stuff around for the new desk: laptop bags, yarn, envelopes, stuff like that.

So I bought this thing, but in black to match the new desk:

I now have to put it together and put things onto it to get my office in shape.

That's not what I was going to tell you about Target. I was going to tell you that while I was there, shopping and talking on my cell phone like a completely different kind of person, I bought this:

I had read about Rachael Ray in a snarky book of essays. She sounds like one of those girls who ride ATVs and wrassle with their brothers, or whatever is the Northeastern equivalent. However, she cooks things like Cashew Arugula Pesto. This might be an irresistible combination for some people.

It's a strange cooking magazine, though. It has articles on how to look good in shorts and cosmetics spreads and stuff like that which has little to do with cooking, as well as things on parties which seem rather fun. I am not likely to be at a 4th of July party with anyone who will be willing to "role-play our break-up with England," but if such people happened to be at the party I would totally enjoy it.

Total enjoyment is not on the docket for today, though. After the shopping, I wrote up a grant for a homeless shelter. I hope it works for them. I should also write the scripts for our videos, do linkbuilding, put that shelf together, clean house, and blog for my foreigners.

However, I may take a break and go read more of the snarky book, reveling in the fact that I have so much to do and am not doing it.