I just got back from a week with Christine and her relatives. Her aunt and uncle both had to work full time this month but they have two young kids, so the teenagers in the family were taking week-long shifts at babysitting. Christine asked me to come along, which certainly made it more interesting for her and I got to meet her family. You see, her family's always been really close and they get together almost every weekend although the three households are in different parts of the state. So many a plan for a sleepover has been thwarted because Christine was at her grandparents' or something. I've been hearing about them for years and vice versa, but never met them and I was glad to finally be kidnapped along with her.

Her cousins are a six-year-old boy with really red hair named Owen and a very happy eighteen-month old named Tommy. We all played a lot of Nintendo. We always give Tommy an unplugged controller and he sits happily punching buttons while Christine's uncle slaughters us playing Perfect Dark. The rest of the time we played Zelda, which I much prefer. We settled into a comfortable schedule: Wake up at 8:10 or so when Tommy stands in his crib calling, "Are you? Are you?" until somebody comes in. (He used to say "Where are you?" but the "where" somehow got dropped.) Then one of us gets dressed while the other rolls the sleeping bags up from the living room floor, where we had been sleeping. Then the other gets dressed while whoever had already done so starts breakfast. All eat breakfast: some combination of Cheerios, toast, bananas, water, Chex, and peaches. Owen gets dressed while Tommy finishes breakfast. Tommy gets his diaper changed and his clothes on while Owen makes his bed. We either take the dog and walk to the playground in the apartment complex or play Nintendo and read until 11:30, which is lunch. We make sandwiches and then one of us puts Tommy down for his nap while the other does the dishes. While he's asleep Christine and I put some CDs on and read or draw or sew and while Owen plays with action figures or the sofa cushions. After Tommy wakes up we go to the playground again and come home around 5. Then her aunt comes home and one or some of us makes dinner and we eat when her uncle come home. They were both really terrific people. Christine's been saying for ages I'd fit in with her family and she was right. After dinner the boys go to bed and the four of us play cards until around 11:30, when the grown-ups go to bed and Christine and I sit around talking for a while longer. Then around 1 (or 4, the first night, or 6, the last) we go to bed.

And - oh, the coolness of it all - we got a tarot deck! Friday night at dinner we were sitting around and Christine's uncle mentioned a New Age shop. Those words immediately made me thing of a shop in Leesburg my family had been to briefly last year - full of so many things I wanted to look at or read or buy that when we left I felt as if I had been given a view of a wonderful kingdom and then been whisked away. "We went there about five years ago," he continued. "It's in Leesburg." At this I gave a yell and said something to the effect of, "I love that place!" He proposed a road trip and Saturday afternoon he and Christine and I drove over to Leesburg. Christine and I meant to try their Ouiji board that night, so we were looking at candles when her uncle decided that he was going to buy something for both of us. We were happy to get the candles, but then he decided we also needed a tarot deck and a book to tell us how to use it. There was a whole case of decks - there must have been forty different ones - and we had been looking at those, too. I have a deck, but they're not really meant for reading and I don't think it would work too well. We've both been wanting to learn how to read the cards ever since Caelia did, but I don't think it had occurred to either of us to buy a deck there. He insisted we get one, so we finally agreed and debated for a while over which one to choose. We almost got the Art Nouveau deck, which had some very nifty illustrations, but we ended up with the Robin Wood deck. It's better for reading, I think, and the minor arcana makes more sense. So I've got the deck for this week and once school starts we'll see each other every day anyway so we can switch off whenever we want. It'll be fun. I figure if I learn a card or two a night it won't be mind-numbingly tedious. Last night I did the Magician and tonight is the High Priestess. She's so cool. I think she outranks the Queen of Pentacles for my favorite card.

August 13
September 2