a Saturdayish Saturday

We haven't had a Saturdayish Saturday in months.

This Saturday we went to Home Depot in the early morning with Christa, in order to get a door. This door will go between the kitchen and the Issler's dining nook, so that both families can have more private dinners if we've a mind to. It was fun wandering around the giant warehouse store, and even more fun letting Brie wander around, getting her feet black and pulling things out of bins. She even tried to lift a paint can, but it proved a bit too heavy.

Then we got home and Brie took a nap, and Adam and I got to relax together. Once she was up, it was off to the park! Our city has an annual "Celebration in the Park" and I've wanted to go for a couple years but we've never made it. Well, once we got there and found a parking spot on the field that the parking attendant approved of, we wandered through a few booths, and then over to a prominant sign listing the entertainment that was going to be happening on the stage that day. To our delight, we found out there were going to be Taiko drummers going on in an hour. (I think that was when Adam decided that this had been a good idea after all.) So we spent an hour wandering around the booths: the Quilt Guild (we entered a drawing for a gorgeous quilt - we dont' find out if we've won till March), the Beekeepers (where we bought some honey sticks), the Leatherworkers, the Blacksmith ("This is a blacksmith on a break," the old man slumped in his chair told us, and laughed), the petting zoo, the pioneer exhibit (Adam taught some confused boys how to wind up an old-fashioned top), and ALLLLLLL the food stands (we confined ourselves to a pretzal and a few churros).

By then in was 2:00 and time for the drummers. They were SO COOL. It was like martial arts meets music. Taiko drumming is a Japanese art form, where there's about seven drummers who play these huge drums together, and it's both an aural and a visual art form. They take stances very similar to karate stances, and play their music with precise, large, beautiful movements. It involves yelling too. Sitting there listening to it reminded us of movies like "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "The Lord of the Rings", because THIS was what the martial aspects of those movies sounded like. Very cool.

Then we toured the old Victorian house in the park. I got to see a real butler's pantry! And when we were in the parlor, Adam asked the docent, "Is that a stuffed ocelot?" to which the docent replied, "Oh, the stuff in here is irreplaceable, priceless." Which didn't really answer Adam's question, but we're pretty sure he must have heard "Does this stuff cost alot?" Which is a really stupid question to ask in a historically restored Victorian house, but it was, of course, NOT the question Adam asked (or ever would). So we were left in wonderment about the stuffed cat.

Then we came home and Brie napped again, and we ripped out almost all of our fall vegetable garden: goodbye tomatoes, cucumbers and leeks. Hopefully this week we will be saying hello to plantings of lettuce and peas. I'm undecided about doing root vegetables, because our soil is so horribly clayey, but I might try anyway and just not expect greatness.

Ted stopped by after getting a haircut, and he and Adam and Dan got up a game or two of cribbage. Then Adam and I (who had stopped by the library earlier and rented one of their dollar DVDs) went to Albertsons for some pizza, and over to Mom's to watch Miss Congeniality 2 on her big screen. While we were there, I finished the stuffed turtle I was making for Brigid. It looks like a little tank, but Adam and my brother both seemed to really like it. Crochet is great! you can make any shape in the world with it, including turtle-shape.


Anyway, is that not a very Saturdayish Saturday? Thank God for days like that.

-Jess