I am taking a chance and writing an entry today, despite the fact that diaryland seems to be suffering another major meltdown. Not only haven�t I been able to post, but I haven�t been able to read anyone�s diaries either. At least the buddy list seems to be working again, so I know what I�m missing.

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My friend L. left fairly early this morning in order to attend Mass at one of my former haunts, St. John Cantius where they were rather appropriately performing Haydn�s Mass in the Time of War in honor of the feast of Corpus Christi, the traditional finale to the church choral music season. Under ordinary circumstances I would have jumped at the chance to go, and might even have attempted to drag AJ along with me, seeing as it was a Mass not a concert. Despite the fact that Cantius is completely unsuited to music of Haydn � all music is reduced to primordial soup within its confines; chant, for which the building was designed, is really the only thing that comes off well � it is my favorite church in the city for its visual aesthetic, so it would have been a pleasant experience regardless.

But despite the fact that my mother-in-law has been recovering well from her knee surgery, my husband has clearly been anxious about it and I thought it was about time I attempted to pay her a visit with him (AJ is too young to go visit, which is why I haven�t been yet). It was a beautiful sunny morning, so the three of us piled into the car and drove an hour or so to the hospital. My husband had had the foresight to make her a video of AJ. AJ made up a little song to sing to her. In the video, he is standing in the kitchen swaying gently back and forth singing (to a tune that sounds more or less like �Three blind mice�):

We miss you Grandma D.
We miss you Grandma D.
We hope you�re feeling better soon!
We miss you Grandma D.!

Like any good song, it made her cry.

D. looked wonderful and was very much herself, which was nice to see. We had a very pleasant visit. She moves tomorrow to a rehab center where she will stay for the next two or three weeks to continue her physical therapy. AJ, who was not permitted upstairs to see his grandmother, was a saint about wandering the lobby with nothing particular for him to do. He informed me proudly, as I came down from my shift upstairs with his Grandma, that he had completed twenty laps around the lobby fountain. He also hit up everyone he could find for coins to toss in for wishes.

After our visit, we decided to explore a nearby park that we�d heard of but never seen and it was well worth the detour. The Grove, as it is called, had something for all of us � beautiful flower gardens, tantalizing vegetable gardens, jungly wooded walks, and a nature museum with tanks full of all manner of turtles, fish and frogs. AJ was particularly charmed by a Bantam chicken (who had, a hand-lettered sign informed us, been saddled with the unfortunate name of �Nuggets�) in a cage who seemed to be talking directly to him. AJ is already asking for a return visit, a request that is unlikely to be met with much opposition from the rest of us.

We dined on too much food at a Greek diner on the way home, where it appeared that we were the only non-Greeks in the place. Although this meal could easily have resulted in a group cardiac arrest, it instead made us all terribly sleepy and as soon as we got home we became the incredible napping family, falling asleep in odd positions as we attempted to stay awake.

The rest of the day was uneventful and consisted mainly of trying to keep up with AJ who had far more energy than should be permitted in a single human being. Due to our profound sleepiness, AJ was forced to invent a few games of his own. At first he tried to include us in games of catch that allowed us to remain sitting down, but then he wanted something more exciting. His excitement took the form of a new game called �Ceiling fan baseball,� where he stands on the screened porch and hits his whiffle ball off the blades of the moving fan and then ducks to avoid the ball�s unpredictable return. Kind of like an underaged Russian Roulette.

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