Well, the garage is more organized than it was at the beginning of the weekend. We pulled all of our trash out onto the driveway in a vain attempt to sell it. People with vaguely european accents wandered by and perused our offerings before shaking their heads and wandering off again. Jen sold about $40 worth of stuff, mostly to a trio of ladies who pawed through our stuff with the calm efficiency of people who have seen more garage sales than is probably healthy. I sold $30 worth of stuff that wasn't even in the driveway to begin with. One guy wanted records, so I went inside and got some. We haggled a bit, and I sold him some of the ones I knew I wouldn't be able to get much for elsewhere, while holding back the ones that were too rare to go for garage sale prices. Later, a wizened old man hopped out of a truck and inquired after musical instruments. I pulled a busted up old acoustic guitar out of the garage for him to inspect. He nodded approvingly, explaining that he "fixed them up and sold them to teenagers." Five dollars later, he had another guitar to fix up.
The most important thing I accomplished though was to sort through the many boxes of cassette tapes that litter the garage, and pull out all of the ones that are unique to that format. I still have hundreds of tapes that are mere recordings of cds and records I own, left over from when I had a cassette player in my car. I would give them away if I found somebody genuinely interested in exploring some new musical horizons.
I also had a great time pushing The Dickens and Willow up and down the street in a plastic toy car. The smushed together in the driver's seat with their arms hanging out the windows and had more fun than chickens in a cornfield. Willow is definitely starting to be more like a little girl and less like a baby. It is beautiful to watch her grow.

That night, Nathan, betrayed by his own feet at the wrong moment, assaulted the particle board shelf under the TV with his forehead. His forehead lost the contest, and had to be stitched closed with seven stitches. It seems like every time he gets stitches they're on his head somewhere. Hopefully this will be the last time. My lifetime total of stitches beats his by about seven, and we'd like to keep it that way. I stayed home with Lexy, The Dickens, and Willow while Jen's mom drove her and Nate to the emergency room. The Dickens watched Ferngully and fell asleep quickly. Lexy and Willow stayed up much later, Lexy in the hopes that Jen would call (or, more to the point, come home) with news of Nathan, and Willow because conditions for sleep had not presented themselves. Lexy finally conked out to the sounds of the BBC audio version of Lord of the Rings. I got Willow to sleep by walking back and forth with her in my arms, while at the same time singing a little made-up song. Don't ever let anybody discount the power of song!

I have 28 more delivery days before I'm no longer a paperboy. Tonight, for the first time since I started doing this job, I saw goats. There's a whole herd of them on the hillside that acts as a kind of buffer (visual, but not olfactory) between the dump and the business district. Jen says that she heard about a city doing that as a fire prevention measure. It makes sense to me. Why else would somebody put goats there? Maybe I saw the advance troops of some secret goat invasion.

cds I listened to while wondering about goats: The Angels of Light "How I Loved You" and "Everything Is Good Here/Please Come Home", Agalloch "The Grey", Bug Guts "Big Bowl of Warm Fur", Lhasa "The Living Road", and Dar Williams "The Beauty of the Rain"