I've been working on the creche I started last spring. Now I have Jesus and my cousin Sarah. As I was sewing the swaddling clothes on this morning his head came off in my hand, which was rather unnerving. I had to use Tacky Glue to get it to stay on. My mother, of course, began singing "Oh Sacred Head, Now Wounded". (I feel sorry for people who miss out on Episcopal jokes. Whenever someone says "May the Force be with you," in Star Wars my sister always adds "And also with you. Let us pray." The two of us dissolve into laughter and my friends look at us bemusedly. It's one of the few advantages I can find to being a former Episcopalian.) Sarah's going to have a little gray coat and red mittens if I can just find the red yarn I used for mine. I'm not sure how I'm going to make centimeter-long mittens, but maybe something can be accomplished through felting. We'll see.

This week my choir is meeting every day and calling it a camp. It's nothing like camp, but it's fun. We're going to Italy next April (yeek! Exciting and scary both) so we're doing more American songs than usual. We haven't done a single thing in a foreign language so far, which has got to be a first. Normally the songs in English are far outnumbered by the ones in Latin, German, etc.

I got a fish! The one I got last spring died within two weeks, which was most upsetting. Actually he committed suicide by jumping out of his bowl. I looked into the bowl one night and wow, there was no fish inside. And I looked down onto the bookshelf and wow, there he was. He was still attempting to breathe so I picked him up and put him back in the water, but he only lived a few hours. It was very tragic. I had no idea fish could commit suicide. So after five months or so I felt ready for another one and Mom took me to the pet store. They had just got a shipment in and there were about thirteen betas to choose from, which was nice. I got a red one. His name is Ringo.

August 9
August 27