I'm thinking that perhaps I've lost what few vestiges of common sense that I had lying around in my malfunctioning little brain. So it's Monday, July 3, and the husband-spousal-unit-person has the day off and I don't. He stayed up a bit late last night washing clothes, because we were bordering on the "if we don't wash clothes tonight we're going naked tomorrow" thing.

So I get up this morning, get a shower, and don multiple towels (so as not to flash the neighbors) to get some clothing from the laundry room, which is right off the kitchen. I don the clothes, go back the bathroom, comb out my hair, and realize I need socks.At this point, all I can say is, "Time passed." The next thing I remember, I'm trying to find socks in the pantry. "Hmmm…pop-tarts, cream of crab soup, crackers, canned vegetables…socks?" It seemed logical at the time. I eventually came to my senses and looked inside the dryer to find a pair of socks, but the general sense of bewilderment stayed with me for the rest of the morning.

In more domestic news, we got the ceiling fans put up yesterday, and we're extremely pleased with the results. The one in the computer room went up smoothly with no problems, but the one for the guest bedroom proved to be more difficult. The first fan that we purchased was defective, but we couldn't tell that until it was almost fully installed; we ended up uninstalling it, making a run back to Lowe's, and then putting up another one in its stead.

We got the coolest little gadgetswitch for it. Jeff started calling it the Go-Go-Gadget Switch, and I'm inclined to agree. Instead of the normal flippy switch and multiple pull chains, this switch handles all of it. There's a light button, which you can use for on/off/dimmer, and then buttons for high/medium/low fan speeds. The light button also glows very faintly at night, as well. (Good for those of us with extremely poor distance vision.) I like not having to fumble with pull switches. I expect that we'll be going back to Lowe's and getting a similar switch for the new fan in the computer room, as well.

(I'm in a yabbering mood, so I'll switch topics and keep going.)

My herb garden is getting to be a bit bigger these days. I actually need to pick up some more pots so that I can plant the rest of the seeds I've got. Right now I've got a small and a medium-sized rosemary plant, parsley, sweet basil, oregano, and thyme growing. I've got seeds for sage, lemon basil, dill, lavender, and something else waiting to be planted, and there's something that I just planted the other day whose name escapes me. I'm also growing oat grass for the cats, coaxing my old houseplant Ralph (species unknown) back into health, and tending to my enormous (!) airplane plant (affectionately known as Plantlet).

There's something satisfying in going out to the front porch every other day with my jug of water and carefully watering all these plants that just smell heavenly. The rosemary and the basil are the most fragrant—if I just so much as touch the rosemary with my bare hands, I come away smelling like it for hours. It's hard to resist raiding the plants at this point, but they're really not well-established enough yet for cuttings. I'm trying to think long-term, so that I'll have herbs to get me through the winter, but it's difficult when they smell so good NOW.

I bought some fresh blueberries at the farmer's market yesterday afternoon; tonight I will make them into blueberry muffins, and Jeff and I will have a very nice holiday breakfast tomorrow. After the company picnic lunch today, April and I are headed to the markets again—I'm specifically questing for raspberries and blackberries, and she for something else.

I'm hoping that the strawberry, peach, and tomato seasons will peak while I've got out-of-state friends visiting. Growing up, I was so accustomed to having fresh fruit and vegetables from my grandfather's small farm that I never truly realized that what I considered commonplace was actually very unusual. I tell people that unless you've had a home-grown, fully-ripened tomato (the kind that is blood-red all the way down inside—and better yet, still warm from the sun) that you've never tasted a decent tomato.

The same goes for strawberries, which don't ripen after they're picked—I hate those insipid white-fleshed things you can get in stores. They're just not right. They don't look right, they don't bake right, and they certainly don't taste right.

The women I spoke with at the farmer's market yesterday said that a south Tennessee farmer was bringing by a load of blackberries today. Hopefully there will be some left when I get there—I may be sitting at my cubicle, but I'm dreaming of fresh blackberry cobbler.