Damp

“I don’t want to plant plants in the rain,” Chris said this morning. I couldn’t hear the raindrops plonking on the patio outside our bedroom, but he could. Chris has what they call hyperacute hearing. Our back deck is full of plants in pots, as well as a couple of bare-rooted rose bushes, that all need to be stuck into the ground in various places around our back garden. We have half a pallet of concrete retaining-wall bricks in the front yard that need to be moved to the back yard. Our generous neighbors have three wheelbarrows of paving bricks they need us to move from their side yard to our side yard — leftovers from a job we almost finished last weekend. And now it’s raining.

In preparation for a day of garden work, I have a fridge full of good food that only needs to be heated up and eaten. The house is tidy, and the kids have promised to keep it tidy — a promise I know they’ll keep because we gave them the new Harry Potter Lego Wii game. I think video games are a great fun way to teach the kids to play together — and it keeps the house tidy, so I’m a fan.

I did laundry yesterday.

Catherine made breakfast, all by herself.

I do have a couple of errands to run, but mostly, I have the gift of a day at home with not a whole heck of a lot on my to-do list.

It’s a surreal feeling. Did I slip into an alternate universe in which I never had cancer at all? Is this normal life?