I'm really doing pretty well in keeping up with the postings so far this year. Amazing!

It was really nice today - weather was intermittantly sunny and rainy, but warm enough that you didn't need a jacket. We slept in and then took the dogs for their weekend romp in the park. On the way back to the truck we met a man out for a walk with his two small sons and their pet Nubian goat. Walking him on a lead just like a dog. Titan and Page didn't quite know what to make of this, having never seen or scented a goat before...I no longer feel like walking with the dogs and cats as weird...walking one's goat has to be on par with walking one's pig. Nice looking goat, tho.

We then went to do some shopping - pigs ears at the hardware store, honey at the feed and seed, filled up the car - and went to lunch at Cafe Zenon, which is downtown. It's very nice, everything is made on premises, including mayo! I had calamari with aioli for an appetizer and a 3 bean gratin, with a chocolate rum truffle cheesecake for dessert! Wayne had Chinese wings (hot and spicy), salmon with as tomato sauce, and Irish whiskey cheesecake. Yummers! It was a belated birthday luncheon for us. The manager gave us the desserts on the house - due to Wayne's ingratiating manners. He had spent some time in there while waiting for the new set of tires to be put on the car last week after he had a flat, and they had talked for awhile. We'll have to go back for dinner when we're fatter in the wallet.

Then we walked around the area - I peered into a jewelers shop (I want this, this, and that!). and went into a rug emporium, where we found several nice carpets that we wouldn't mind having. Then we crossed the street and went into the Pewter Rabbit antiques. I found a very nice squash blossom necklace for $675, which isn't bad at all. And we found some nice furniture we would like - a couple of amoires, chairs, a mirror, a dressing table, and a Scottish tallboy. No, I did not add it all up! Until we have somewhere to put it all, what's the use?

On the way home we stopped in at the Market of Choice and bought some organic half/half and milk, and two big bars of soap - one cinnamon and one frankencense and myrrh. I loove the way they smell, and they're goats milk so they're gentle as well. They have these big bars of the soaps that you cut off the amount you want...luxurious!

On the way home we drove down some side roads - I love to do that. I keep hoping that the perfect farm will leap out at us, with a sign 'For Sale' hanging on the fence....dream on, Mia! All green hills and rolling meadows, with a very high and swift river running thru it. Not a place to have a riverside home...just a nice little stream and pond would do me fine.

We had a nice talk while we were walking the dogs. I told him how I feel like I have accomplished nothing, mainly because I've sacrificed so much to compromise, if that makes any sense. Wayne agreed, starting with the color of my jeep (I wanted red, but took black because Wayne doesn't like red), and going through my jobs. I've had jobs I've turned down just so that he can take a job somewhere...the only thing I feel like I've actually gotten is our good marriage, which is alot but I'm not sure that if I had it to do over again, I'd do the same stuff. I've supported my husband at the cost of my own independence, my own accomplishments. I'm not complaining - we weren't bitching and moaning about life - since it was my decision, but I wanted to do so much more, accomplish so much more...(midlife crisis alert!). Chris would say I need to go to school, take some courses...and there are things I wouldn't mind taking, after I get a job...I'm not sure I equate personal enrichment with accomplishment, tho. Damn it, I hate being conflicted! If we can stay somewhere long enough for me to finish up the time I need to have for retirement from civil service, I'll feel like I've done one thing atleast. But even that seems like a long shot here, where cs jobs are hard to come by, and Wayne is talking about being here only a year and a half...