The good, the bad and the ugly.

The good: 3 hours in the garden. Turning the veggie patch, planting seeds and seedlings. Watering it all. Watching the silvery spray from the hose as the droplets fell to the earth. Weeding the front gardens. Roughing up the mulch that matted down through the winter. Wondering at the many, many buds on the peonies and hoping they all bloom.

The bad: Playing croquet with Mr. Meltdown (aka the boy). Sitting on the swings as he alternately sobs that he wants to play and accusing me of not letting us play. He seems to love the feeling of persecution and creates it when it's not there. In the end we had a game, a mini-meltdown, a game, a full scale meltdown and finally a game that ended ok. Of course then inside where he sulked because I didn't want to go out and try to hit a ball the furthest. Good grief he's moodier than a 13 year old girl on the rag.

The ugly: I think my "gift" is a memo holder. It is a clippy thing on a spring with a base. It's very light weight and painted uhm creatively. But the boy says the gift is the little teacup cutout with a poem and a decaf lipton teabag inside - which he glued to the poem because, he said, that's the only way it would go in there.